“Maybe we were right after all.”
“About what?” I asked.
“The medication. It must be Natalie’s. She’s acting so hysterical.”
“Yesterday you were saying we shouldn’t worry about it anymore.”
“Yeah,” said Barry, “but I didn’t mean it.”
“Then why did you say so?”
“To keep you calm.”
I should have known. Barry will lie for as long as he believes that to be the best thing to do. That usually is a long time.
Briefly I fell asleep. I dreamed Natalie and I were walking down the hallway. At the sound of the bang she ran into her classroom and I hid under a table. Leo pushed his mug towards me. “Here, take mine.”
When I awoke, Barry was gone and the light wouldn’t go on.
Day 29
The power went out again. This time around five. I wonder how long it will last. Maybe the lights will go back on again in a minute. But then again, maybe not.
Day 93
In the beginning we had electricity. This meant that things happened when you pressed a button. That something would start spinning deep inside a machine, a light would go on or off. But after a while the lights also went out without someone pressing any buttons. Except for the last time, they would always go back on again, although the time between going off and going on was different each time. Sometimes it stayed dark for half an hour. Then a whole day.
At night, if we needed to use the bathroom during a blackout, we got the flashlight from the table in the hallway. If someone else was already using it, we sat on the table and couldn’t see anything until that someone returned.
In our classrooms we now put our things in fixed places, so we could also find them in the dark. My sheet on the mat. Melissa’s diary underneath. The shirt I sleep in on the big desk, and the potholder I wash my face with on the right side of the sink.
If the power went out in the evening, we went to bed early. But if the fluorescent lights started flickering by the end of the afternoon, we spent the darkness together. Around a table with tea lights and the tall red candles they used to stick into blocks of green foam at Christmastime. The strange thing was that in the previous weeks the talk around the table had mostly been about the past, but when the lights were out, we’d suddenly be talking about the future.
Then we’d wonder if the lights would go back on again this time.
“I don’t think so, ’cause did you see how quickly the oven went out this time?”
“Maybe the oven’s broken, the fluorescent lights still blink like before.”
We’d speculate about the heating possibly also failing.
“Central heating’s a different system.”
“Different system, same power station.”
Sometimes we’d mention the water supply.
Though water was never a subject we’d discuss for too long. Especially not when Yuri was around. In his presence we also never spoke about what would happen if the food ran out before we were found.
Sometimes we’d imagine how one day there would be a loud thumping at the door.
Yuri would open the door and find a man: someone from the city or a random passerby who’d seen our curtains were still closed.
“It’s over!” the man would shout. “The sky is clear, the fog is lifting; what are you still doing here?”
Carefully, Yuri would stick out an arm: just testing. If nothing happened, he’d go back into the school, call everyone down. Together we’d burn our mats and sheets. Then we’d get the stuff we had on us before the bang, and carefully, very carefully step out of the building, into the sun.
“I’d run so fast!” Yuri said, the first time we imagined this. “Straight to Burger King, get four Whoppers in a row. What would you eat first?”
We listed burgers, specific sandwiches we used to eat at our favorite lunch spots, casseroles that our parents or grandmothers used to make, and a lot of dishes without rice. “If that’s still available,” we would carefully add.
“Couldn’t we just buy it in the supermarket?” asked Yuri.
“Of course, honey,” Natalie said. “If the supermarkets are open, at that point,” Kaspar said at the same time.
Yuri bit his lower lip, squinting a little, “Do you think the schools will start back up immediately?”
“Not immediately, I don’t think,” Leo said.
“And you, you also won’t need to go to work?” asked Yuri.
Leo shrugged.
“We’ll all have to help clean up,” said Kaspar. “Clean up what’s broken and rebuild what’s no longer there. Everyone.” He looked at Leo. “Every one of us.” Now Kaspar also looked at Barry and me. We both nodded.
But I thought: As soon as we can go outside again, we’ll want news reports, extra broadcasts, and livecasts all day long. People will need to create that footage. And even if there no longer was any TV or internet, people would still need information. It was likely that the people who would communicate that information would be the people who were doing so before the bang. So I didn’t believe I would ever have to build anything.
“And who’d would you wanna see first?” Yuri asked. He looked at his mother. In a slightly challenging tone. As if he’d asked a trick question. Or no: as if he wanted her to understand that he understood there was a reason to ask a trick question.
“Dad, of course,” Natalie softly said.
If he’s still there, I thought all of a sudden.
* * *
That’s the way I was thinking, those first weeks. In terms of scenarios and possibilities for the future. We were all thinking that way. Because that’s what we were used to. A vestige of the old situation.
Because the time before the bang, the time when life was still work or vacation, was all about later, yes: Everyone was preoccupied with the future. Always. Everywhere. In some sense, the old situation was built entirely on speculation. I was a part of it myself.
I talked to my friends about buying houses and living in them with someone or alone. About taking a year off, about changing jobs or apartments. Some friends talked about getting children, others about having children, and all of us talked about thinking about the things we really wanted to do. Apparently we were doing things we didn’t really want to do. Even though maybe we did want to do them a little bit. We did do them after all.
Meanwhile, we let our visions be fed by men and women who were so beautiful that we let them sell us the future. On TV and billboards they stirred pots, washed their hair, applied make-up, and tussled on new couches. They smiled the whole time, smiles that said: One day, you’ll be smiling as brightly as us; later, after buying this shampoo, pasta sauce, mortgage, or mascara. And so we were offered a future everywhere we looked or listened.
Ultimately, speculation was our favorite pastime, and the future was the best remedy for the present, apart from Sudoku.
Until the future actually arrived. That happened sometimes. I saw it happen to people. The future arrived the moment someone would talk more about the past than the future. And by the time the future had begun, it would immediately disappear. The end of speculation. The start of a life of boredom. In that sense “later” was something to be scared of. Maybe that’s why we were so preoccupied with it.
At least that’s the way it was in the old situation.
By now we no longer talk about the past or the future. Because thoughts like that have never led to anything here. No man has come to the door, we haven’t been found, there’s no Whopper in sight. Instead we suffered losses and accidents and many more things we’d never imagined before. And now we need to conserve our strength. So we only speculate when it’s really necessary. When we have a question or a problem and a decision needs to be made. The last time that happened was a while ago. But I have the feeling another one is on its way. A problem. A cause for speculation.
Day 31
So it turned out to be final. The light will no longer go on. And the heati
ng either.
Today Leo whispered, “I haven’t been this cold since… well, North Dakota.”
Day 136
“Good morning, beautiful.”
“Good morning. Aren’t you going to tell me what day it is?”
“Sunday.”
“Ah. That means breakfast in bed then.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“There’s something. I don’t know…”
“What?”
“Don’t be scared.”
“Leo? What’s wrong?”
“There’s no more water coming from the tap.”
“Really, nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Then we’ll drink something else.”
“Merel…”
“Then we’ll drink eggnog.”
Day 41
Yuri’s sleeping, sleeping deeply. I hear it in his breathing. Slow and steady. He can still do it. Not me.
It’s my gums. Infected crescent moons causing a throbbing pain in my mouth: The pangs shoot across my entire face.
It’s also the cold, I think. My body no longer has the fuel to heat itself. Just lying still underneath my sheet feels like camping out by some windy lake without a sleeping bag.
Now that the heating no longer goes on, I keep all my clothes on again at night. The difference between day and night is getting more and more hazy anyhow. At night I try to fall asleep, during the day I try to stay awake: Neither works.
Sometimes, when I cannot sleep, I masturbate. Afterwards I still can’t sleep, but I do feel a little less cold.
I could always do it well. Masturbate. I came quickly, often multiple times in a row. But never without a story. When we hadn’t been here very long, I just thought about what I always thought about when I fingered myself or found myself under a strange guy. That story was: I’m standing in an elevator.
It’s a sophisticated elevator. With golden buttons in four neat rows, and a bell that pings when the doors open. The elevator stops; I hear the bell; a man comes in.
It’s a sophisticated man. With thick dark hair, a double-breasted suit, and a beard that looks nonchalant but undoubtedly is the result of meticulous trimming.
The sophisticated man stands beside me in the sophisticated elevator. We look at each other for a second. We briefly kiss, then his hand slides under my skirt. With two fingers he pulls down my panties a little. Then his fingers slip inside me and get to work.
Often I’d come before we even got to the fourteenth floor. And if I didn’t, then the bell would ping again and a woman would step inside. But most of the time it did work and the elevator doors stayed shut the whole ride.
Of course, the story was banal: It served a practical purpose, and all practical things are banal. It doesn’t matter, as long as it works. But after the bang, the impact of the story diminished a little every night.
I think it was the elevator. The buttons, the bell, the doors, and the fourteenth floor of the department store or office building the elevator had been made for. I keep finding it harder to believe in all those things. So when I stepped into the elevator, I more and more often thought: Just stop, this is self-deception. And yes, self-deception usually leads to pleasure. But as there might no longer be any elevators, and also no trimmed beards and definitely no mouths full of healthy gums, this self-deception had lost its credibility. The story became a farce and I kept feeling cold, all through the night.
Fortunately it’s easier now. Coming. At least I don’t have to imagine things that are no longer there. I only have to think about what I’ve seen here.
* * *
I’d been reading all morning: My head was full of knights and their quests, and I wanted to know what the others were doing. There was no one in the hallway, all the doors were closed, no sound coming from any of the classrooms. There suddenly was something alien about it, that long quiet empty hallway. As if no one lived here, this a random empty school building like the world used to be covered with on Sundays. I heard my footsteps echo, more hollow than usual, it seemed.
On the stairs I ran into Kalim.
“Hey.”
Kalim looked like he was expecting me to say something else. So I said, “I’m looking for Barry.”
“I don’t know,” said Kalim.
I didn’t yet understand what that was an answer to.
Upstairs, the doors were closed as well. But through the paned windows of his classroom I could immediately see that Barry was not alone.
They stood facing but not looking at each other. Barry had his eyes closed, Leo was looking past him, in the direction of the blackboard where we’d done a drawing the day before. Yuri had written strange names along the bottom: Ray Kon, Hillary, Hiro Granger.
Leo didn’t seem to be reading them, the names. It seemed like he was concentrating on something else, peering at it almost; the eyes of a sprinter in starting blocks.
If Barry took one step forward, his forehead would hit Leo’s chest. But the men stayed still, their shoulders a few inches apart. Only Leo’s elbow was moving. He kept looking at the blackboard, until Barry’s face changed.
Barry’s mouth fell open, his eyes closed. And when I saw Leo smile, I thought about the hand I’d felt in my neck during the first blackout. Also, I thought: There’s power in humility.
Ever since, at night, my elevator changes into Barry’s classroom. In front of the blackboard stands the man with thick dark hair, but now he has a long, badly maintained beard. His hand slips under the skirt I wear day and night. Sometimes a second, shorter man joins us. And sometimes I never enter the classroom, staying in front of the paned windows and watching the two men touch each other.
* * *
Tonight the story went that way as well. But before I could decide whether I’d enter the classroom or not, I heard my name.
“Merel?”
I don’t know how many times Yuri had already whispered it. I hope this was the first.
When I turned over, he directed the flashlight onto his own face; by now we’ve learned that it makes no sense to blind the other person.
“Merel,” Yuri whispered, “are you asleep?”
“No,” I said, “not really.”
“I had a dream,” Yuri said. “That I was lost. In the snow. In the forests of North Dakota…”
Yuri had never come to my classroom before. At least: not on his own. When we’re playing a game or reading, there’s always others around. And if Yuri wants to play foosball, he asks Natalie first, then Leo, then Barry, and finally Kaspar. Because only Natalie seems to be allowed to deny Yuri anything, there’s always someone who says yes. So I’ve never stood opposite him at the foosball table. I don’t mind that. Yuri’s presence makes me uncomfortable. When he enters a room, the others immediately adapt: They give him a quick smile or a kind pat. They phrase their sentences in slightly simpler terms, or more complicated ones, so Yuri will or will not be able to catch their meaning. That switch seems to be an easy one for them, as if it is a natural, instinctive process: Just like a dog will start panting when the temperature goes up, that’s how the others effortlessly conform to Yuri’s presence. Me, I can’t manage that. Whatever I say to him – “Will you shuffle the deck?” “Which page were we on?” “You’ll need to ask your mom.” – it feels like I’m reciting lines from a bad play. And like everyone can tell. It’s the knowing that others can tell that worries me. Muzzles me in Yuri’s presence. So I was surprised when he was suddenly standing next to my mat.
“I thought,” Yuri whispered, “maybe you’d like to read to me?”
I didn’t want to read to him. Yet I heard myself say ok. I was already getting up when Yuri said, “We can’t though. My book is at Kaspar’s.”
“You want me to go get it?”
“No.”
“Shall we read something from my book?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Yuri wanted something. I just didn�
�t understand what. I thought of cats that keep meowing even after you’ve filled their dish with kibble.
“Mom is with Kaspar,” Yuri said. “And now I can’t sleep.”
He dropped the flashlight; only now did I see he’d brought the red cloth.
“Can I sleep with you?”
I hesitated. Was it strange that Natalie had left Yuri alone? Maybe it was just for a bit, maybe she was coming back later tonight. I doubted she would like it when Yuri was with me when she got back. On the other hand: Maybe Natalie had fallen asleep at Kaspar’s. Now her son was alone and who knows how scared and cold. Natalie would probably like it if someone looked after him, I decided. Also because it would take more energy to send Yuri away than to let him stay.
“Sure you can,” I said.
To make room I rolled to the right side of the mat. I’d expected Yuri would lie down on the left side, but instead he put his red cloth over me, crawled next to me, pressed his back against my stomach, and pulled my arm around his waist. His breathing quickly steadied. It did take a while before I dared let him go, as I was afraid to wake him. Scare him by not being his mother.
I could lift him up and carry him to his own classroom. But the blanket is warm. Yuri is warm. And if I listen to him long enough, I might automatically relearn how it works. Falling asleep.
Day 50
They’ve put him on the teacher’s desk. Looking in, we can only see their backs. Sometimes Natalie’s shoulders start shaking; then Kaspar puts an arm around them and then that doesn’t help.
This afternoon there was still crying coming from the classroom. Natalie’s, but also Yuri’s. Now it’s been quiet for a few hours and all three of us are wondering something we don’t dare say out loud.
“He wouldn’t be…”
“He couldn’t be…”
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