Oneiron

  As they ate, Ulrike noticed that the Adelwolf’s right eye repeatedly glanced at the finger on her right hand where she wore her handsome ring. The stone was red now, and the Adelwolf asked, “Ulrike of Salzburg, why are you restless?”

  Ulrike of Salzburg was so embarrassed she was speechless. The red of the ring deepened. Then the Adelwolf said, “Here, let me try the ring. It should fit on my pinkie. Let’s see what kind of mood I’m in right now!”

  Ulrike was startled at this, and the ring turned black. How could the Adelwolf know the secret of the ring? And what should she do now? Grandmother had made her promise to keep good care of it, but Grandmother had also instructed her to obey her elders. What if the Adelwolf wouldn’t give the ring back to her? Then she would be ruined!

  Fortunately the ring made the decision for Ulrike: it refused to leave her finger. Ulrike turned it many times, but the ring wouldn’t budge above her joint.

  Then the Adelwolf lost his temper. Taking her by the hand, he dragged the struggling girl to the water tap. He scrubbed the ring with soap and held the finger under cold water, but the ring wouldn’t move.

  The Adelwolf changed tactics. Taking the sobbing Ulrike in his arms, he sat on a wooden stool and rocked her gently. “Forgive me, Ulrike. I lost my composure because I wanted to try the magic ring so badly. I have my own secret power as well. I can change any other person’s state of mind—but only if they have your ring on their finger.”

  After this the Adelwolf made Ulrike a curious proposal. “What if we lived together? With your ring and my magical powers, we could eventually rule the world. We could make everyone want what we want them to want. Every person in the world would be under our control!” The Adelwolf stroked Ulrike’s back, which was damp with sweat, and kissed her earlobe. “Please take the night to consider my offer, Ulrike. We can discuss it more in the morning. I’ll make you toast, marmalade, and scrambled eggs for breakfast.”

  Suddenly the Adelwolf nipped Ulrike’s ear so hard that she yelped in pain. “I’ve made a place for you in the bed next to me,” he growled. “The pillows and blankets are pure down. I promise that you’ll sleep more sweetly than ever in your life!”

  Ulrike’s ring was a blinding yellow as she lay down next to the Adelwolf. It glowed so yellow that neither could sleep, even though the bed was softer than any other bed in the world. It was as if the sun had set in the bed between them, a burning disk of fire whose cruel light hurt them both equally.

  “Adelwolf,” Ulrike whispered once the blanket was soaked through with sweat and the pillows were waterlogged under their damp hair. “Should I go sleep outside? Perhaps the ring will calm down and then we can both finally get some rest.”

  To this day no one knows what got into the Adelwolf at that point. Had he lied to Ulrike of Salzburg from the beginning when he suggested working together? Or had the radiating yellow light of the ring exhausted him and he suddenly changed his mind? Perhaps he was worried about the possibility of the girl escaping if he let her outside to sleep alone.

  The Adelwolf rose to his knees in the bed and let out a deep, low snarl. With his great hairy paws he took Ulrike by the neck and began to squeeze. At the same time he pushed her legs apart with his knees and pushed in where he had no right to be. The ring had known from the beginning: the whole time it had been red, yellow, black . . . red, black . . .

  Whose hand is that?

  Where are we now?

  Ulrike, where are you?

  I can’t see anything.

  Hands. And a girl under the hands. Shlomith, Polina, and Ulrike float in a position from which it is impossible to determine location, direction, or even orientation; only one hand is visible, so close that it’s barely recognizable as a hand: four, thick fingers squeezing, on one a gold ring, also thick, worn, and dull.

  No, not Hanno.

  That isn’t the hand of a young man.

  That hand is doing evil.

  That hand is strangling a neck.

  It isn’t hard to guess.

  No.

  And that is exactly what happens. The hands conduct their brutal work because the girl happened to be there, on the forest road, a little drunk, a little lost.

  The hands, but not just the hands.

  The knees also do evil, keeping the girl’s legs spread wide to make it easier to get inside, to make it easier to ram in the member that is stiff for once, since for once there is something living and beautiful underneath, something so bloody beautiful it hurts.

  The girl didn’t conceal anything. She walked the forest road in her yellow bra, black shirt wrapped around her hair in a turban. She didn’t even flinch when he drove up in his big rig, rolled down the passenger window, and yelled, “Are you hot?”

  It was as if the girl spread her breasts even wider, enjoying the warmth and the attention, as if she coquettishly shouted back, “Yeah, I am a bit hot!”

  He decided to take a chance. He cast the girl a wink and said, “I’ve got air conditioning in here. You want a ride?” He was certain she’d refuse. But instead she said, “Sure, why not! Can I take a nap? You have a bed in the back, right? I’m tired.”

  The girl quickly scrambled into the cab. “You’ve ridden in a truck before, haven’t you,” the man asked, trying to dispel his own confusion. “Yeah,” the girl said and sat down in the passenger seat. Pushed up by her bra, her small breasts glistened with sweat.

  Suddenly she leaned forward. Her navel disappeared in the folds of her bare belly, and her shoulders almost touched the fan. The girl undid her turban, and wet, dark hair cascaded down her back in loose curls. Then she shook her head in front of the fan as if using a blow drier. “Where are you hauling that wood?” she asked. “Why is this forest being chopped down?”

  That was enough. The girl was there, and everything was ready. Her back was pretty and white. The lace bra made an indecent yellow arc in her narrow back.

  “Hey, what the FUCK are you doing?!”

  The man quickly removed his hand. The girl was hot, so hot! Her body sprang upright, her belly flattened, and her hair followed the arcing motion. Then the girl pulled on her wrinkled T-shirt and began to crawl into the rear of the cab. “Let me sleep for a minute,” the girl whispered and nestled under the blanket. In his truck.

  The crazy girl really was going to take a little nap in his truck.

  The crazy girl just curled up like a shrimp, fuck you very much. In his truck.

  Now I see!

  Me too.

  Where are we?

  On the ceiling of some sort of small room.

  And that guy . . .

  Is assaulting me with his trousers around his ankles.

  Ulrike! Doesn’t this shock you at all?

  What?

  That you’re being raped . . . and murdered!

  But I don’t feel anything.

  Now?

  Not now. And not then. I put my head on the pillow, and then the guy came after me and started ripping my trousers off.

  And?

  And what?

  And that’s it?

  And that’s it.

  But he’s strangling you!

  I remember that I thrashed. I tried to get out from under, but he knelt on my thighs.

  I can see your legs behind his back.

  I imagine it did hurt then.

  Of course it hurt!

  Maybe you lost consciousness quickly?

  Maybe you just don’t remember?

  Maybe you were traumatized. Traumatic amnesia. A hole in your memory.

  Ulrike’s face is hidden behind the man. There, under the man, Ulrike opens her mouth and screams noiselessly. Her head can’t move. Her flaming red head. The man can’t stand to watch. He begins to come. He snatches the pillow from under Ulrike’s head. He puts it over her face and presses with all his might. His lower body works even faster as Ulrike’s arms and legs thrash powerlessly under the weight of the man’s knees. The man lasts. The orgasm begins to hum in his lower bod
y, to gather strength. Jerks, thrusts, pauses. Thrusts. Thrusts.

  Ulrike has stopped moving.

  I have to go now.

  That’s how it looks.

  Horrible to happen this way.

  Is anyone better off?

  An end is an end.

  So it wasn’t Ulrich with the glass eye.

  Who?

  Oh, forget it. I’ll tell you if we ever meet again, Shlomith and Polina.

  The Ulrike floating on the ceiling of the cab like a helium balloon sinks onto the man who has finished his sawing, who lies on top of her and weeps. Ulrike slips through him until she reaches her fading self, sliding into her final breaths as effortlessly as water through gauze.

  Goodbye, Ulrike!

  Goodbye, goodbye, beautiful Ulrike!

  Auf Wiedersehen, Ulrike!

  Kehlstein sex murderer gets life

  Yesterday the Passau district court sentenced 58-year-old truck driver Raimund Rüdiger Feierabend to life imprisonment. On August 15, Feierabend raped and murdered Ulrike Kuhbauer of Salzburg near the base of the Kehlstein in Obersalzberg in the cab of his truck. After committing his crime, Feierabend concealed the body in an old storage barn nearby.

  Kuhbauer, 17, was returning from her job at the Eagle’s Nest restaurant in the evening when she was brutally attacked. The teenager left work around 6 p.m., walking down a path toward Berchtesgaden, but she never arrived at the bus station. The police focused their search along the hiking path. Kuhbauer’s body was found in an abandoned barn one week after her disappearance.

  Despite international reporting, this shocking sex crime hasn’t made a dent in Obersalzberg tourism. “We’ve actually had a few murder tourists, as they’re called,” said Eagle’s Nest restaurant manager Wenzel Feiersinger. “They talk about the killing while they’re here, and some even ask the staff for more details.”

  The restaurant begins its seasonal closure at the end of October and reopens in early May. “We all hope the situation will have calmed down by the time the summer season begins. Kuhbauer was a very well-liked employee. We can’t go on talking about this tragedy with complete strangers.”

  Comments (4)

  Senta 26.10.2013 21:26

  Condolences to the family in their time of grief. Thankfully the killer got a stiff sentence!

  Reply

  Scheiße_Geist 26.10.2013 21:45

  Free business idea for Herr Feiersinger: Ulrike T-shirt. Yodeling Ulrike doll. Ulrike schnapps. Ulrike magnetic button.

  Reply

  Bella Rossa 26.10.2013 21:52

  Have some common decency! That’s the most offensive thing I’ve ever heard.

  Reply

  Wahrheit & Feuer 26.10.2013 22:27

  You don’t know it, but this is just the beginning. DYING IS GOD’S REVENGE!!! No one ever should have opened that sinful place. The battle of the great day of God Almighty will be upon us soon. Read the Bible. Jesus says, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (John 3:36)

  Reply

  WHITE: A NEW SURVEY OF DIVINE LOVE

  Now Shlomith and Polina are alone. Polina and Shlomith. One and one. Face to face. Thoughts to thoughts. One heavy thought facing them both: the following death will also be death for the one left behind.

  That thought is etched identically in both of their minds, hard as flint. Shlomith or Polina? Where did it start? Maybe there’s no difference. There is only Shlomith. And Polina. Facing, united, agreed. Harmony shot through by one shared, leaden knowledge: next comes death.

  No more crisscrossing, conflicting thoughts, questions, interjections, or new beginnings. No disbelief, which had always been present somewhere, in some consciousness beneath consciousness, a silent yet gnawing corrosion: Has all of this been an illusion, my illusion, the voices my own, the thoughts from my own mind?

  Shlomith and Polina look at each other. Translucent bodies, like jellyfish floating in slow motion in the air. Polina’s amoeba-like rotundity. Shlomith’s outlined, bony frailty. And then: a gaze. Then eyes.

  Polina.

  What, Shlomith?

  So this is how it ends.

  One leaves, the other stays.

  Alone.

  Alone.

  It isn’t enough that both of them know it. Just the same they have to think it through together, because that’s still possible. They have to drag the thought forward like a boat with alternating oar pulls: one and one is the same as death, including the death of the one left behind.

  Shlomith.

  What, Polina?

  It’s my turn.

  I know.

  But where am I?

  Yes. Where are you?

  The space is empty. Above stretches a night sky tinged dirty yellow by the lights of Moscow; below, a white blanket of freshly fallen snow. Shlomith and Polina do not release each other’s gazes, but they wait, they listen.

  Then somewhere a door opens. A creak, a slam: a clump of people tumbles out of the darkness into the yard. The sound makes the door and the wall around the door, the wall makes the building, and the space receives form: they are in the back courtyard of the Zlom theater center. The figures also begin to take shape. Three men, four women. Three of the women walk arm in arm, one man and one woman hand in hand, and two of the men sing. They approach.

  Do you know them?

  That’s Jura . . . And Maruska and Serjoža. And Irina and Zina and Ženja. And Oleg.

  So you know them.

  Unfortunately.

  The tune is familiar . . .

  Jura and Oleg are singing a song named “Katyusha”. It tells about the Second World War. About a girl longing for her lover on the front.

  I know that song too! We sang it in Hebrew at the kibbutz. “The pears and apples were in bloom . . .”

  That’s how the song starts. It’s a sentimental, nationalistic song. All Russians love it.

  Including you?

  Including me.

  Slightly inebriated, Polina’s coworkers walk unsteadily, Serjoža as always seeming to move in Maruska’s wake. But there’s no sign of Polina. Silence falls. The laughing people disappear into taxis taking them to bars or their homes. Maybe to strange beds. Maybe to their own.

  Polina . . . Have you ever wondered why us?

  You and me?

  No, all seven of us. Why us specifically?

  I don’t know, but I’m sure we aren’t the only ones. It would be pretty arrogant to think that this strange fate only befell the seven of us.

  But where are all the others? Where are the men? Where are the children? Why didn’t we find anyone after Ulrike?

  Maybe our group was full.

  Full from whose perspective?

  How would I know? Maybe there isn’t any reason it was us. We were just thrown together. Randomly.

  But who did the throwing?

  No one. I was speaking metaphorically.

  You don’t believe in God?

  Not any more.

  Somewhere underneath, down where all the most obscure mental swellings tend to hide, a space gradually begins to grow, thought upon thought: a vacuum where a certain familiar, but purposefully forgotten, image might insidiously re-emerge.

  Too bad my mother can’t see me now.

  Out of all the people in the world, Shlomith, your mother is the one you wish could see you?

  She’s dead. But yes. I’d like to see her expression now.

  I don’t have any trouble imagining my mother’s expression. It would be the same sort of incredulous dismay as when she died.

  My mother died expressionlessly. In her own bed.

  Was it a beautiful death?

  Not really. At the end she was so full of anger.

  I wish Maruska and Serjoža could have seen me a moment ago. It would have given them something to think about.

  You have something stuck in your craw?

  Oh so many
things! Serjoža thinks he knows everything. And Maruska is an idiot.

  As if by mutual agreement, Shlomith and Polina release each other’s gaze and glance around. Had there been motion somewhere on the periphery of their vision? Would Serjoža and Maruska return to look for Polina? Would Irina, Zina, and Ženja call her by name? Would Jura and Oleg appear and cry, “Forgive us, Polina!”

  But the yard, surrounded by piles of snow, is still empty.

  Polina, I don’t think you’re coming.

  Seems that way. I don’t understand why we’re here if I’m not, though.

  Maybe you are. Maybe we just haven’t noticed you.

  But where could I be?

  Do you remember when you described your final memories? You talked about warmth.

  Then it’s clear we’re in the wrong place!

  But you came to the whiteness wearing a sable coat.

  And only one boot.

  Polina, we just have to go looking for you.

  Polina and Shlomith close their eyes as they had done following Rosa Imaculada, so nothing visible would disturb them. The only place Polina can think about now, the place where she herself might be, is Zlom, the back room of Zlom, where the employees sometimes spent the evening.

  Polina begins guiding them with determination toward the red painted back door. In her mind she sees the familiar rusty lock that only works if the door is given a swift kick. In her mind she hears the familiar squeak; no one ever oils the hinges. Then they’re on the other side. A tattered corner sofa marked with cigarette burns. A large, shabby, plush rug that’s collected splashes of this and that over the years on its oriental design. Empty bottles and full ashtrays litter the floor. Along with her fur-trimmed handbag.

  She’s been in this room.

  And then it comes, the first sentence, a familiar purring voice and an accusation like a lightning bolt: “Polina, you’re drinking too fast.” Out of nowhere, just as she’s beginning to relax, beginning to forget her fear. “Polina, you drink too much.” Just as she’s gathered her strength to talk about a serious issue that has been bothering her for some time. “Don’t you think so, Serjoža?” The symmetrical nostrils tremble. “You drink like a Russian man, Polina.”