by Martin Suter
Schoch pondered this question.
Valerie encouraged him. ‘It would be a job.’
‘Exactly.’
Realising that Valerie was waiting for an explanation, he gave one: ‘That’s precisely what I don’t want. Do you think I would be homeless if I wanted a job? People like me don’t want a home or a job. All people like me want is some peace and quiet!’
Valerie, who liked to have the last word, said, ‘You’d have that here.’
When she’d gone he remembered that he’d wanted to give her the key to the wine cellar.
37
16 June 2016
Schoch was woken shortly after two in the morning by Sabu’s strange, high-pitched trumpeting sounds.
He’d watched the sleeping elephant from his improvised bed until late into the night and mulled over Valerie’s suggestion. He must have fallen asleep thinking about it; he couldn’t remember having reached a decision.
He was still lying on his side, his eyes pointing towards the basket. It was empty, and something was pressing against his stomach.
Sabu was lying on her side, her head lying on her bent right front leg, her trunk curled slightly inwards and her back nestled into his tummy.
She must have sensed that Schoch was awake, for she lifted her head slightly and opened her eyes. She met his gaze. Sabu put her head back down, closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
Schoch didn’t bother turning off the light, but put his hand on the small body and was soon asleep himself.
He was woken a second time by the presence of somebody in the room. Valerie. She’d put down her shopping bags and was taking a photo of the idyllic scene.
Schoch carefully removed the bed throw that served as his blanket and stood up.
Valerie took a video of him standing by the tiny pink elephant, looking dishevelled in crumpled shirt and ill-fitting trousers. ‘I can safely say that this is the first time those clothes have been slept in.’
‘I’ll change in a minute. My things must be dry.’
Valerie put away her mobile and started unpacking what she’d bought for Sabu and Schoch. ‘Have you thought about it?’ she asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.
Schoch nodded.
‘And?’
‘I’ll do it,’ he muttered, then added quickly, ‘for the time being.’
38
17 June 2016
The following morning Sabu had disappeared.
When Schoch woke up – ever since he’d stopped drinking he’d been sleeping through the night – the dog basket was empty, and she wasn’t lying in front of or beside it. He got up and started looking. She was nowhere to be seen in the bedroom. Nor in the bathroom. But she couldn’t have left the room.
Or could she? Might he, half asleep in the middle of the night, have mixed up the bathroom door with the bedroom one and Sabu slipped out unnoticed after him?
Unnoticed? A glowing pink dwarf elephant?
All the same he opened the door, turned on the light and looked around the landing. Nothing.
Eventually he found her under the bed, standing motionless right at the back. Like during their first encounter in his cave. A toy out of reach.
‘Come on, Sabu,’ he called out.
But she didn’t move. Her head was lowered and her trunk pointed straight down with a little hook at the bottom.
Schoch went into the bathroom, put on Valerie’s father’s dressing gown and looked under the bed again. The same picture: a tiny, glowing pink elephant.
Schoch went down into the kitchen and heated up the leftover coffee from the day before. Then he mixed up Sabu’s formula milk for the day, cut up some apples and carrots, toasted two slices of bread, spread them with honey, placed everything on a tray and went back upstairs.
Now Sabu was in the middle of the room. She’d made her way over to his trousers, shirt and underwear and flung them about the room. Her ears were spread wide and she was swinging her trunk from side to side.
She may have been tiny, but she still managed to look menacing.
When he told Valerie about this later that evening she said, ‘She’s trying to earn respect. I’ve seen lapdogs who thought they were big bad beasts. And do you know what? Their owners thought so too, right up till the end.’
Schoch nodded. ‘There are human beings like that too. I’ve known a few in my time.’
‘You must tell me about your past life some time.’
‘Some time.’ He paused. ‘Do you think she knows she’s small?’
Valerie thought about it. ‘No. She hasn’t got anything to compare herself with. But she certainly feels like an elephant. As proud as an elephant. As dignified as an elephant.’
‘And she thinks we’re not paying her the respect an elephant is due.’
‘We’re not.’
From now on their relationship changed. Valerie and Schoch treated Sabu with the awe you show such an unreal creature and left it up to her to decide whether she wanted to be trusting, reserved, playful or strange.
Schoch found this reassessment of his relationship with the little elephant rather convenient, as it gave him the opportunity to read more. For after all these years he’d rediscovered books.
Valerie had brought him everything she could find or order about Indian elephants. She’d also bought him a pair of reading glasses. Or two pairs, in fact. The first hadn’t been strong enough. He’d asked for a pair of 1.5 strength reading glasses. That’s what he’d always had, 1.5. It turned out, however, that now he needed 3.0. He’d read virtually nothing for nine years.
Schoch didn’t just read books about elephants. The villa’s strange library contained a real mixture. Unopened luxury editions of great classics, German translations of international bestsellers from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the complete works of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff.
He’d chosen the laundry room to read in. It had a barred window that he could open because it was hidden by a large cherry laurel. When you’d spent as much time outside as Schoch had, you sometimes needed daylight and fresh air. The laundry also had a brick floor and two drains, which meant he could hose it down after reading. Sabu, who kept him company as he devoured the books, wasn’t making any effort to become house-trained.
Sabu had begun to determine her mealtimes herself. She kept refusing the bottle at the regular times, demanding it whenever she was hungry instead. Occasionally Schoch tried to ignore her, but she became fractious, made her strange noises, nudged him with her head and wouldn’t let up until he’d put his book down and fed her.
He, on the other hand, kept to his mealtimes. At noon he cooked himself something small. His repertoire wasn’t particularly wide, but it included spaghetti with tomato sauce, a variety of egg dishes, roast meatloaf, bratwurst and suchlike.
While he cooked, Sabu amused herself in the kitchen. She liked playing with a red rubber bone that Schoch had found in a storeroom with other dog equipment, or she’d ceremonially parade around the room, or adopt one of her meditative poses.
After four in the afternoon the clock tended to tick more slowly. This was the time when he most missed his drink. He didn’t have any withdrawal symptoms, if you could describe the slight trembling of his hands for what it was: nervousness.
But once again he was tortured by the symptom that had turned him into an alcoholic in the first place: bloody boredom.
39
18 June 2016
For lunch Schoch made himself a cheese toastie with ham and a fried egg. The idea had come to him by chance. In one of the many kitchen cupboards he’d found a gratin dish of the sort he remembered from the past: orange on the outside and glazed white on the inside. These were the dishes they used for toasties in the restaurant cars of trains. The moment he found it Schoch had the smell in his nostrils and taste in his mouth. His decision was made: today he would have a cheese toastie.
He heated up the oven, cut a thick slice of bread, and placed a slice of ham and three slices of
Emmental on top.
Schoch deliberated for a moment, then went down the corridor and the steps that led to the boiler room. He opened the door to the wine cellar and chose a bottle of white – coincidentally there happened to be an Aigle les Murailles, the wine he’d always ordered to accompany his toastie in the restaurant car.
In the kitchen he uncorked the bottle, poured some into a bowl, removed the ham and cheese then placed the slice of bread in the bowl and let it soak up all the wine, before everything was reassembled in the gratin dish and put into the oven.
Schoch heated some butter in a frying pan and cracked two eggs. When they were fried he took the toastie from the oven, placed the eggs on top and brought his lunch to the table.
The shining yellow cheese had oozed out beneath the fried eggs and was sizzling at the edges of the dish. Where the white of the eggs was thinnest it gave a bluish shimmer, while the butter had crisped the edges. He could barely see the ham.
And as for the aroma! Melted cheese, baked ham and hot butter and – white wine.
Forgoing alcohol wasn’t a problem. As a drink. But as a condiment …
That day the boredom set in after lunch already. The prospect of spending from now till evening without human company made him feel edgy.
He tried to take a siesta, but soon gave up and left the room.
‘Are you coming?’ he asked Sabu.
She was standing in the middle of the carpet, swinging her trunk mechanically from left to right and from right to left.
He left her where she was and started prowling around the house.
Shortly after half past two he decided to take a dose of the only psychotropic drug that helped combat these symptoms.
Less than half an hour later he felt relaxed and went back up to see Sabu. She was in a better mood too. She’d stopped swinging her tail and came up to him when he entered the bedroom.
Schoch played with her for a while and made some videos. Then he returned to the wine cellar.
As he came back upstairs he had an idea. On one of his forays around the house he’d noticed in the storeroom a bag of the type used to carry lapdogs. He found the bag and took it to the bedroom.
It was made of slightly tatty, dark blue suede, with a long shoulder strap and decorated with golden rivets. The bag was perforated at both ends and along the sides were plastic windows, which had turned slightly yellow and opaque.
Schoch opened the zip, put Sabu inside and paced up and down.
He didn’t know if she liked this or whether the movement was too much for her, but anyway she lay down.
Schoch put the bag on the chest of drawers. He could barely make anything out through the window, but when Sabu lay like that and her skin touched the plastic it didn’t look like a dog in there.
The right volume of white wine is known to stimulate creativity, and indeed Schoch had another idea. He hung the bag over his shoulder and went to the walk-in wardrobe in Valerie’s parents’ bedroom, where he’d seen a number of furs. Schoch plumped for a simple black Persian stole and took it with him.
After another bottle for them both he was sitting in the tram heading for the city centre, the dog bag containing his dwarf poodle on his lap. He’d be back in plenty of time for the seven o’clock bottle.
40
The same day
Bolle’s old sleeping place had been all right. Underground car park, barely frequented at night, warm, dry and near the places he liked to hang out. The one downside was that they didn’t tolerate him being there during the day, which was a bit of a problem for someone who enjoyed the odd doze in the afternoon. The homeless shelters didn’t allow people to kip there in the daytime, while you kept getting disturbed in entranceways, on park benches and at tram stops.
From that perspective Schoch’s disappearance had been a stroke of luck, although the fact that Bolle had found out about it at the right time had nothing to do with luck. He had his network to thank for that. Bolle knew everyone living on the streets and he cultivated these relationships. He’d visit the relevant meeting points, exchange a few words, crack the odd joke and see to it that people liked him. Through his careful nurturing of these contacts Bolle had found out about Schoch’s sleeping place. And that it had become free.
He was drinking a coffee in the Salvation Army hostel lounge. Beside him was Karlheinz, sipping a peppermint tea. Both were silent until Furrer, the manager, came in, walked across the room, nodded to the handful of guests and went into his office.
‘He’s got more junk to store now,’ Karlheinz muttered.
‘Why?’ Bolle asked.
‘Schoch’s stuff.’
‘Why?’ Bolle asked again.
‘He’s disappeared.’
‘Since when?’
‘Dunno. Giorgio, the guy with the three dogs …’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know. He’s got three dogs …’
‘He found the things in Schoch’s sleeping place. Schoch always takes that stuff with him in the mornings.’
‘Where is his sleeping place?’ Bolle asked.
‘No idea. But it must be wonderful, given how long he’s crashed there.’
Later Bolle quizzed Lilly, the junkie who hung around with the dog lovers. He contrived it so that she begged him for a cigarette, which wasn’t difficult as she was always begging everyone for cigarettes. He gave her half a packet and asked casually if she knew where Giorgio’s sleeping place was.
In the end it cost him an entire packet plus five francs before she spilled the beans.
That same day he packed his rucksack and went to the place she’d described to him. He found Giorgio’s cave even though it was well camouflaged by all sorts of bushes and grass. From there he went a little further along and found Schoch’s hideaway. Slightly less well hidden – the bushes in front were rumpled, a bit smaller and lower – but the cave was dry and comfortable. Plus a toilet and running water right by the door, as he quipped to himself.
It smelled a little strange, like in a stable; there were patches on the sandy floor that looked as if someone had spilled soup, while dry twigs and hay were scattered everywhere.
But this wasn’t a problem for someone who in his last regular job had been team leader in an office cleaning company. He bundled up the twigs to make a brush and swept the muck out of the cave. Then he unrolled his mat, put down his sleeping bag, took a can of beer from the rucksack and toasted his new lodgings. Then he made his way back into town.
The only disadvantage was the distance. From the station it took him between fifteen and twenty minutes, depending on his alcohol level. A bit too much effort for an afternoon sleep. But walking’s healthy, he told himself. And he didn’t need a siesta every day.
He certainly needed one later that afternoon, however. He’d been celebrating this serendipitous change for the better rather over-exuberantly and needed a nap if he was going to spend the evening in company again.
He was heading along the river path, staggering occasionally, and deep in a semi-audible conversation with himself, towards his new home. Some of the allotment-holders were using the rain-free afternoon for a little garden work, but the banks of black cloud were already gathering in the west.
He saw a bench roughly level with Giorgio’s cave and took a brief rest there.
Bolle stared at the rapid, brown river making mischief with its flotsam, and nodded off.
He was awoken by a gust of wind. The bank of cloud had moved closer. Bolle trudged the last hundred metres to the point where he had to leave the path and negotiate the rest of the way along the steep embankment.
Maybe the access issue is another disadvantage with this new billet, Bolle thought. It wasn’t completely without risk if you’d had one too many – which wasn’t a particularly uncommon scenario, if Bolle was being honest.
Now right below the cave, he started scrambling up. Twice he slipped down again, but when he’d finally made it to where he could peer inside through the bushes, he saw that someone was t
here.
Schoch!
He had his back turned to Bolle and was crouching on the ground, talking to someone. Schoch’s right hand appeared, which had been hidden by his body. It was holding a piece of fur, which he placed on the ground.
Bolle was about to announce his presence, but what he now saw made him lost for words.
Behind Schoch’s silhouette emerged something that looked like a tiny elephant. It was pink, it was moving and it was glowing faintly in the gloom of the cave!
Bolle rubbed his eyes and brow with his hand, shook his head like a wet dog and turned away.
Half running, half slipping, he fled from his vision. When he got to the river path and started hurrying back to the city with a jiggling rucksack there was only one thought in his mind: stop drinking!
Part Two
1
Circus Pellegrini
28 January 2015
Kaung stood in the director’s caravan, his head bowed. Pellegrini and Reber were sitting down, while a scarlet-faced Roux was standing right beside Kaung, bellowing at him.
‘Fool! You’ve ruined a scientific experiment that cost many times more than you’ll earn in your entire life! What a bloody idiot!’
Reber made use of the pause to draw breath. ‘For goodness’ sake please stop! This isn’t going to bring the foetus back.’
Roux ignored him. ‘What the hell were you thinking of, you imbecile?’
Kaung said something so softly that Roux couldn’t understand.
‘What?’ he yelled.
Slightly louder, Kaung said, ‘Baby was dead.’
‘Not for science it wasn’t! For science it wasn’t dead until it was burned like rubbish!’
‘Sorry,’ Kaung muttered for the umpteenth time.
‘Your apology is of no bloody use to me! I can’t put it under the microscope! I can’t give it a chemical analysis. I can’t even wipe my sodding arse with your apology!’