Having thus recovered his motivation, Kraft sat back down to work in the Hoover Tower. He wrote a witty paragraph on the Stendhal quote that God’s only excuse is that He does not exist, then segued elegantly to several thoughts on the autonomy and self-determination of man, who was naturally and necessarily at the center of a modern theodicy. And yet he stumbled at the idea that in Silicon Valley even the evil of failure had been turned into a virtue by being presented as an opportunity. He had no idea how he could sell this idea as grounds for optimism. He watched his creative energy dissipate rapidly and so packed up his things, borrowed Ivan’s SUV, and searched the unfathomable hodgepodge of single-story functional buildings that housed biotech and software firms, shopping centers, industrial facilities, and run-down single-family homes for the university boathouse. He parked in the boathouse lot and as he locked the car, he abruptly ducked his head, startled by a small aircraft from the nearby San Carlos airport that buzzed him like a lazy stag beetle.
* * *
Kraft eyes the bay, at least as much of it as is visible. A narrow, brackish canal, and behind it lies Bair Island, a reddish-brown stretch of marshland, as flat as a pancake threaded by countless meandering canals and punctuated by the masts of high-voltage electric lines. This isn’t the Neckar, to be sure, but from Kraft’s point of view there’s nothing he can or would even deign to see that could justify the procedure to which he is now expected to submit: despite all the flexing with which he tried to display his fitness to row, the student categorically refused to provide him with oars. No, only Herb was authorized to give them out and even then only after detailed instructions on navigating the island’s tides.
Herb has a white goatee and a pair of those sunglasses with lenses as iridescent as insect eyes that can make even a skinny retired physicist like this one look like someone capable of the dirtiest tricks. Kraft is on the defensive from the first Hey, buddy and tries his best to follow the downright complicated lecture on ebb and flow tides, current conditions, flow restrictors and channels, but when Kraft is on the defensive he’s never at his best and tends to lower his guard and as a result Heike and the twins and somehow Ruth and her yellow gerbera as well overpower his consciousness and with it Herb’s lecture, which is now covering something called the Corkscrew Slough and also the Steinberger Slough, along with the issue of turning either right or left, such turns being not only completely inadvisable in current tidal conditions but, more than that, dangerous to life and limb, and therefore to be avoided at all costs. Kraft nods eagerly, yes, he understands, it’s strictly forbidden to get closer than so many feet to the seals and besides the whole island is a nature preserve and it’s forbidden to set foot on it outside of a few marked paths. Fifty minutes, Herb impresses on him, that’s all he’s got to row the circuit, after that things get dangerous and a few places will become impassable. Herb finally lets go of the oars and forces on Kraft a waterproof bag for his cell phone, without which he won’t let Kraft leave under any circumstances. Kraft climbs into his boat and because the vision of his four women during Herb’s lecture has upset his equilibrium, the boat tips threateningly, and Kraft is certain that Herb is looking at him skeptically behind his insect lenses.
But after just a few strokes in which he can feel his muscles revive under his new shirt, the boat begins to glide and Kraft recovers his long-yearned-for calm. He has to admit that he had underestimated the place. After several hundred meters he leaves the port behind, glides in an elegant curve through the concrete flow restrictor and into Corkscrew Slough, and suddenly finds himself in the very middle of the avian world of Northern California. The herons nesting on the flat grasslands ogle him, necks elongated. Ducks of all colors paddle leisurely behind him. A raptor perches on a wooden post. Kraft stops, lays the oars flat on the water, and reaches behind him for the waterproof bag with his cell phone so that he can photograph this ornithological diversity and later identify the creatures with the assistance of McKenzie’s All About Birds. Not that he’s ever been very interested in birds, but his error with the robin redbreast has left him shaken and at least he will now be able to put the sleepless hours ahead, about which he is already apprehensive, to intelligent use. Kraft lets himself drift as he tries to zoom in to the feathered heads with his display by spreading his thumb and index finger on the screen the way the twins taught him, as if he wanted to pry the telephone’s eyelids open to look for a stray lash. For this reason, and because he can’t get the desired magnification, he leans far overboard, making the slender boat wobble alarmingly. Kraft has to grab for the oars to keep from capsizing. Let any who would reproach Kraft for his clumsiness first prove his own ability to grab two oars in a matter of milliseconds without losing hold of his cell phone, and all without being obliged, like our Kraft, once his balance was recovered, to associate the light splash he’d just heard with the painful knowledge that he had not, in fact, executed this tour de force. Kraft waits until his heart, which skipped several beats with the double fright, is beating regularly again, swears, reproaches himself, calls himself an idiot, smacks himself three times on the forehead for good measure, gives up the telephone for lost, and, after giving a duck circling his boat a venomous look, begins rowing again in order to get away from the site of his lonely humiliation as quickly as possible.
Corkscrew Slough is a credit to its name and winds in tighter and tighter turns through the marshes as if it wanted to make it clear to Kraft time and time again that it most certainly is not the Neckar River. Indeed, he toils mightily through the twists and turns and because he constantly has to look behind him, his neck is soon stiff. There can be no talk of contemplative gliding. He pulls with all his strength on the left oar only to have to even himself out by pulling hard on the right. The initially elegant curves give way to a frenzied zigzagging and before long the sculling boat runs aground with a grating sound. Kraft rocks his hips and, artfully applying the oars, manages to free the boat from the soft mud. As he does this, he notices how low the boat is sitting; he can now barely see over the surface of the land. Only the very tops of the highest buildings are visible, along with the mountain ridge behind them, over which a fogbank is rolling into Silicon Valley as it does every evening. The water level must have already fallen considerably. Fifty minutes, Herb had said, but how the hell was he supposed to know how long he’d been out already without his watch, which he’d left in a locker, or his phone, which he now misses twice as keenly in view of the seals that have suddenly appeared, stretched out in glorious nonchalance on the still damp mud- and sandbanks, goggling curiously at Kraft as he rows past. Now that’s a photo opportunity that would have impressed the girls. There, less than eight meters away from him, is a huge pile of them, heaped together like sausages on a grill. Eight meters, Kraft calculates, is that more or less than twenty-five feet, and did Herb actually say twenty-five and not thirty-five? Then again, maybe the animals really are closer to twelve meters away from him, the number eight having perhaps simply been inspired by the story he’s planning on telling the twins? Kraft gets tangled up converting yards and feet into the metric system with its thicket of shifting decimal points and is defeated by this anachronism of the Anglo-Saxon world. Better safe than sorry, he thinks, and tries to put as much distance between him and the fat bodies as the channel allows.
This, however, is easier said than done, because the channel is growing ever narrower due to the dropping water level, and mudbanks rise from the shallow water on all sides, requiring Kraft more than once to row a tortuous course that brings him far too close to the seals, something he absolutely wants to avoid after seeing one of these hefty creatures crawl out of the water and advance on dry land with astonishing agility by contracting and expanding its body in countless folds like the bellows of an accordion and then scale his dozing congeners, causing an outbreak of loud braying and an explosion of violence in the hitherto peaceful heap. Barks, howls, and yowls resound and Kraft takes note of the teeth bristling in their gaping mouths as ch
ests smack against each other. The biggest one, a male, Kraft has no doubt, evidently feels especially disturbed by the impertinent newcomer and, rearing his massive body up, lets out a menacing roar that does not fail to have its full effect on either Kraft or the unwelcome seal. Kraft redoubles his efforts.
Fifty minutes: Herb’s insistent words echo in his head. Fifty minutes are long past, Kraft knows this, but whether he’s been out one hour or two, he cannot say. In any case, the fogbank has dropped low into the valley and in the office buildings the software developers and the marketing experts have turned on their ceiling lamps, which now glow dully through the haze. Kraft fervently hopes the fog will stop before the bay, but soon he can only make out the seals when he is close enough to smell them and they, startled by his sudden appearance, break out in agitated barking. At least, Kraft has the impression, the channel has grown deeper and less winding. It even seems to have straightened out and at the very moment he notices a faint roaring and gurgling, he feels the current grab the hull and pull it faster and faster forward. Kraft tries to fight it by digging his oars into the water, but the boat starts to rock violently, and he immediately realizes that all resistance is futile. He looks behind him and peers strenuously into the fog. The water around his boat revels in small swirls and dancing waves, and suddenly a wall looms out of the fog with a wide gap in its middle through which the water shoots in foamy agitation. Kraft lets go of the oars and grips the sides of his boat as it hops and dances and lurches. Still, he bravely keeps the narrow boat balanced; then, just as he passes the flow restrictor, one of the oars hits the wall, the boat turns sideways, Kraft throws his body from one side to the other, in vain: the boat capsizes. He has the presence of mind to pull the cord between his feet to free them from the shoes fixed to the boat’s footrest and he falls into the water. He gashes open his knee on a submerged stone, the boat slams him in the back of the neck when he comes up for air, again the cold water closes over his head, the current grabs him, twirls him head over heels like a spin cycle, and pulls his gym shorts down his legs before he touches ground that is at least firm enough to push off from and he surfaces dazed, snorting, spitting, and making frenzied swimming motions. He makes it out of the current, leaves the boat for lost, his gym shorts too, and with powerful strokes he tries to reach dry land through the fog.
Before long he feels ground under his feet, but it offers no support. His bare toes sink deep into the slime and the seagrass wraps around his member and tickles his scrotum. He stretches out flat in the water and snuffles in the twilight. He certainly doesn’t want to land in the middle of a pack of seals by mistake. Or maybe precisely what he should do is to crawl out of the water on his belly and howl pitifully, like the fluffy baby seals with their big, trusting eyes just before the club smashes in their heads—as he saw in the YouTube video the twins played for him, their eyes brimming with tears—and take advantage of the others’ blubber to warm himself by slipping between their bodies. As the streetwise manager of his own catastrophes, Kraft knows the cold will soon be his biggest problem. He manages to grab a handful of grass and pull himself up. He hoists himself onto firm ground, gasping and smeared with mud. On his hands and knees, he peers into the fog. No, no seals nearby. No one to warm him, but also no one against whom, chest to chest, he will have to measure himself.
Kraft straightens up and peels off his ice-cold, soggy Stanford shirt. He stands naked in the marsh. He puffs out his chest and draws back his shoulders: Did he not just give death the slip? Did he not just elude danger on the strength of his own resourcefulness? Is that not ground enough to stand upright and to his full height? Kraft knows that he would normally dismiss this kind of virile and vulgar physical self-confidence with a disdainful smile, but at the moment it is of vital importance. Nonetheless, at the first gust of wind that sweeps over his broad chest, he feels his nipples contract and with them, his self-confidence. Shivering, he wraps his arms around his cowering body and focuses solely on the burning pain in his bleeding knee. He will die here, a miserable death from exposure, no, worse, Herb will rescue him, naked as he is, coated with mud, bleeding, helpless … Herb, that emaciated insect, that physicist with his tide models, his flow velocities, distances to maintain, and time windows; for him all these were nothing but variables in an equation from which all superfluity had been subtracted. What does a guy like Herb know about an individual’s entanglements with the world, about the necessity for chance, about the beauty of the superfluous, about suffering, about humiliation? For a guy like Herb it can all be tallied, every evil offset by a good. Who the victim is plays no role, the important thing is for the equation to balance in the end. They call it elegance, those number jugglers. What does a guy like Herb know about elegance? The abstract splendor of the whole, perhaps. But what about his, Kraft’s, concrete pain? His nakedness, his bleeding knee? The ferocity of the seals? The beauty of the herons? No, it’s out of the question to let this Herb, this apostle of the system, rescue him. Not that physicist. Kraft must save himself. He has to get out of the marsh on his own and swim across the canal to the dock. Maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll be able to get to his locker in the boathouse without being seen, that way he wouldn’t have to face Herb without any pants; without a boat, it’s true, but at least not naked. And he would have rescued himself.
Behind him, Kraft can hear the rushing and gurgling of the flow restrictor. He peers intently into the darkness. A cool breeze makes him shiver again but also parts the fog for a moment and clears a view of the cylindrical towers of the Oracle campus, their lights pulsating in the dusk like giant accumulators. That’s good, now he knows roughly where he is. He has to keep heading slightly to the left until he reaches the large canal and from there he can look for the lights of the boathouse. Hesitantly, he puts one foot in front of the other; he, who never goes barefoot, is paying for it now as the stiff, salt-tolerant grass stabs his tender soles. If only he could see better where to put his feet, but now it’s almost completely dark and the thick fog has closed in again. He stubs his toes on rocks, sticks, and poles. He inadvertently steps into a deep hole, twists his ankle, and screams with pain. If he’s torn a ligament, it’s all over for him. Then he will have to face death or Herb. He gingerly puts his weight on his sore ankle and takes a few tentative steps. Yes, he can do it. He is making progress, hobbling and limping, but progress all the same. Indeed, he advances slowly because the terrain is strewn with holes and pools and every few meters streams meander through the grass. The salt burns his wounds and the wind blows over his wet skin, making him shiver to his very marrow. With one hand he protects his wizened privates.
Would she be able to read about his death in the papers? Or about his humiliating rescue? The latter seems by far the most shameful, because with a touch of goodwill you could see the former in a somewhat tragically heroic light. Would the San Francisco Chronicle print a picture? NAKED GERMAN SCHOLAR RESCUED FROM BAIR ISLAND! Would this be the first thing she, Johanna, saw at breakfast tomorrow, thirty years after he made her so furious that she disappeared to California forever?
He has to admit, he makes better progress in the mud and the muck when he gropes his way forward on all fours, abandoning the upright gait he defends so ardently when he lectures his students. He abandons all thought as well, and surrenders himself completely to the subsoil, to the damp earth that squirts between his fingers, to the hard grass that gives him purchase, that he can grab, to the low bushes he has to avoid because they tear at his ribs, and occasionally to a stone, on which he can feel a last hint of warmth. When he lies flat on the ground, he can escape the wind. Now and then he raises his head and tries to orient himself. All at once the fog seems less impenetrable. Kraft even believes he can make out a few lights. Maybe he’s already very close to the canal, maybe, yes, he’s definitely made it, and hope sprouts anew in his heart. Then the fog suddenly clears, blown away like a thin curtain of silk and lace, revealing the entire expanse of the valley. An endless twinkling and sparkli
ng sea of light, the orange network of sodium-vapor lamps, the flashing lights on the landing strip, the yellow rectangles of thousands of windows, the shining and fading car headlights, a glow that illuminates the sky and bathes the marsh in a gentle light and, as if the fog had lain like cotton in his ears, he can now hear the sounds emitted by this beehive, a humming and buzzing of a thousand motors and myriad air-conditioning units, the thrum of work creating the digital future. Kraft rises again to his full height. Naked but on his feet, he stands in the wind. There, less than three hundred meters away, the center of the world stretches out before him, the engine of progress, the incubator of the future, shimmering, glowing, gleaming, it takes his breath away, floors him. Johanna, Johanna … how did I make you so angry? Kraft collapses, falls to his knees, covers his face with his hands in a gesture filled with a pathos that doesn’t suit him at all, as if he had to shield himself from this concentrated charge of civilization that contrasts so drastically with his pitiful condition. In this self-imposed obscurity, this cave built from his own palms that smell of slime, grass, fish, and the sea, he surrenders to a crushing sense of guilt. An entirely unspecific sense of guilt. Still, he gets lost in it as in a dark, ancient city and it feels as if, behind the walls, hidden from sight, terrible things are happening and he isn’t sure if he’s guilty of all this evil or only guilty of not preventing it. But no one will be able to accuse him later of not trying to do anything. He musters all his strength of spirit and shakes the doors of this ancient city, but they don’t give an inch and he remains outside, condemned to inaction, and all the while, as if from a great distance, a call echoes through the empty streets: Richard, Richard—with a Californian accent.
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