by Heinz Helle
What should we write? ‘Help’? In German or in English?
They’re both a bit too intricate.
Plus: A cry for help might also attract the attention of someone who has no intention of helping.
How do you mean?
Well, you know. Whoever is responsible for all of this. Perhaps they’ll see our message and come looking for us to finish the job.
We’d need to write something that will only mean something to someone with good intentions.
A cross?
Perhaps.
But what if the people on the plane are Muslims? Would they be inclined to help if they saw a cross?
Not all Muslims are radicals.
No. But imagine you were flying over a country that’s been laid waste, and then down on the ground you see a crescent in the snow. And nothing else. Just a crescent.
Would you help them?
Why a crescent?
But a cross signifies charity, doesn’t it?
A cross is an instrument of torture.
All right.
What about a thumbs-up? Like on Facebook.
Do you ‘like’ this field?
Not particularly. But a thumbs-up implies, Hey, we’re cool, we’re OK, you can hang out with us, it might be worth trying to get to know us.
But if you’re flying over it?
Hmm.
We debate this a little while longer. We formulate sentences that would take weeks to write out on the field. We invent symbols that no one would understand. In the end, when we’re close to giving up on the project as a whole, we decide to draw a massive peace sign.
In order to leave the white surface as intact as possible, we split up and approach the field from three different directions. Taking giant steps to leave only isolated dots in the snow, we establish a minimum distance from the field’s edge. When we’re ready, we signal to each other. Each of us turns to his right. And then we march. Taking short, firm steps, we stamp the last remnants of meaning onto the planet’s surface. This is the message we will leave here. You can all go fuck yourselves. You can come here and kill us all if you want to, but first we’re going to take this opportunity to write something in the hope that someone will read it and come and save us, and so we wish you all the best, the same thing we wish for ourselves: peace.
It’s slow going. Veering gently to the left, we each trace a 120° arc toward the starting point of the one in front of us. Gruber is the first to reach his destination. Then me. We have to wait a few minutes for Drygalski to finish. I wonder whether he’s really that much slower than the rest of us, or whether his section was actually longer. I loosen my scarf a little. The sun is already much higher in the sky. I hadn’t noticed at all, having been focused on the snow directly in front of me which I was busy treading into the ground, but at last it’s pleasantly warm now. The sun. The snow. Then Drygalski calls out, and we begin to march towards the centre of our circle. Circle of friends, I think to myself. And peace. And sun. And snow.
I take my hat off and stuff it in my pocket. I’m hot. I notice that the snow beneath my boots is growing thinner and wetter. Drygalski and Gruber are still over fifty metres away. I keep moving. When we finally meet in the middle we are all aware of the fact that in two hours at most there will be no visible trace left of our march for peace. Since none of us has any desire to say this out loud, we all stare at the sun in silence, until we are certain that we have all understood that the act of staring calmly at the sun while standing in a thawing field, in the middle of a rapidly dissolving message to posterity, can mean only one thing: You do all realise that snow tends to melt in the sun, right?
We don’t bother finishing the peace sign by tracing the final line to the perimeter of the circle and instead simply leave the field. On the crest of the next hill, as we are about to re-enter the forest, we turn around one last time.
The best or nothing, says Gruber.
Drygalski furrows his brow, but seems not to dare ask Gruber what he means. Behind us lies a gigantic Mercedes-Benz logo.
56
And then we can’t find anything to eat, two days in a row. And so we eat the fruits of the forest, or at least what we city boys take to be the fruits of the forest. Quite apart from the fact that not much grows in the forest in early April, we also have no idea whether the things that do grow are even edible. We don’t even really know what edible means, exactly, since there is a lot you can put in your mouth, chew, and swallow. We walk through the forest, our stomachs nothing but gaping holes through which the pain creeps in, slowly making its way upwards to our throats, our heads, our eyes. Everything you look at hurts, but you keep looking because you have to look closely, you have to know whether this is something you could potentially put in your mouth, chew, and swallow. And you notice yourself growing less and less discerning with each new thing you examine. Of course you used to have clearly defined ideas about what you would put into your body, which substances and compounds you would feed it, and of course you used to think about the way the things you put in your body are the things that build you, repair you, rework and adapt you – so don’t eat too much junk.
We walk through the forest. It is our only, our last friend, and our eyes dart from one thing to the next, and Drygalski says, There should really be a big political campaign to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. People have to know what it means to live in peace, in Europe, in a harmless state of boredom. And he looks right through me as he shouts, for the first time since I’ve known him he shouts, shouts at me, and he shouts: Do you know? Do you understand? And all the while he is staring straight through me at the barren undergrowth behind me.
Gruber is tugging at a root and says, You know, I’m a normal guy, I’m interested in women, and I believe in goodness, which is why I pursue my interest in women in a reserved, polite manner. And then the root slips through his hand and suddenly he’s sitting in the mud, his hands bloody, and he says, If you had to choose would you rather fuck another man in the arse or be fucked in the arse by another man? You’ve got to help yourself, he says, that’s part of being human. Who would we be if we stopped doing that? Can I help you? Look, there are some deciduous trees over there. Deciduous trees are better than evergreens. Leaves don’t hurt the way pine needles do. Should I go and get some leaves for one of you. There are leaves there, nice, soft leaves, he says. But the trees are still bare.
Drygalski is sitting cross-legged under a spruce pulling the scales off a pine cone, examining each one carefully from all sides, holding them against the light, before throwing them over his shoulder saying, No, that’s no good, that’s not right, that’s not it.
I move away from them a little. I go deeper into the forest, and I hear Drygalski calling, A political community strong enough to keep the peace, and national identity can’t play a role at all, and economic interests may be a primitive reason but a practical one – no moral code is as powerful as your bank account and your stomach. And Gruber shouts, The disproportion between the infinite emptiness of space and the finitude of things is the reason for the boundless superiority of the female sex! The vagina will always be bigger than the penis! And then his words become unclear, I think he is now pulling on a root with his teeth, and I go a little farther away. I pass more trees. And as I pass them, I touch them with my fingers, gently at first, but then something changes – not my pace or the length of my stride, all that remains constant – but my fingers begin to touch the trees more firmly, start to try to grasp them, at first just my fingertips, then my nails, and I can hear my nails scratching the bark, and the scratching grows louder with every tree I pass and the tension begins to increase in my fingers, in my arms, in my shoulders. My nails dig deeper into the bark of every tree I pass, and I keep going because I don’t want any of this, but the bark is getting caught under my fingernails, my hands want to hold on to that bark because it is there, it is just so there, so present, it is, is something, and I need something inside me right now
and I keep going and then the nail on my ring finger on my right hand breaks, and it’s just a fingernail but it makes me so unbelievably angry and sad and I stumble and then I’m crying. Tears are streaming down my face. I’m crying for my broken fingernail, and then I fall down into the soft, decomposing pine needles, hitting them first with my knees, then my hands, then the rest of me, and ever so slowly I press my face into the cool, damp, mouldy materiality of the forest floor. My mouth is wide open, the ground comes closer, closer and closer, and the needles are moving in my mouth, and in the needles something else is moving too, and I think, ants, perhaps, and then I pass out.
57
When I wake up it is raining again. We are sitting in a circle. We are eating. We are eating pine needles. We are eating shoots. We are eating bark. We are eating roots. In very small portions, of course. We don’t want to put excessive strain on our bodies. An hour later Gruber and I both have diarrhoea; Drygalski is throwing up. We’re not sure who’s better off. We are lying on the forest floor and ascertain that we are still alive. Somehow we manage to get up. We lean on the trees and each other, swaying through the forest. We want to get out of this perpetual gloom, this green, this grey. At some point there are fewer trees, spaced farther apart, not as tall: the edge of the forest. A field. The rain can no longer be ignored.
Spring is in the air, says Gruber.
The last patches of white are slowly dissolving on the plain before us. The sky is empty and grey, and if it weren’t for the rain you would not have suspected that the temperature was above freezing. We can see stones, meadows, fields, tree stumps, the ruins of walls. We see the world in all its indifferent, unadorned thereness. We step out into the rain. Getting wet wakes us all up for a brief moment, we feel more alive even though getting wet is always followed by a near-freezing to death in the night. We go out into the rain through the open field. At the boundary between two fallow fields there stands an old linden tree. That’s our goal. The ground is sodden, the mud sticking heavily to our boots. We raise them up like children’s heads and plunge them back into the dark brown mud, our hair streaked across our faces, the rain forming droplets on our greasy foreheads and running down our chins and necks, down our backs and onto our chests. The linden tree between the fields looks inviting, that’s where we want to go, we have to get there right away; after all, it’s raining, and even though we were sheltered in the forest which is now behind us but still closer than the linden tree, we carry on through the field, towards the tree, in the damp, grey air.
At some point we reach it, and we lie down beneath the delicate young leaves and the rain doesn’t reach us as much and then it’s already getting dark again. Did we really take that long to get across the fields? Perhaps it’s just clouds. It doesn’t matter. We lie down and we know that, if we wake up tomorrow morning at all, we will wake up early, because it seems appropriate in this situation, abandoned or burnt-down villages, or burnt bodies, dissolving human beings, fog, soot, death. It feels appropriate to get up early when you are fighting for survival. And so we will get up early tomorrow morning as well, but when we’re awake we will once again see that there is precious little we can do to contribute to our own survival. We will see that we are still here. That will be all. There will be nothing for us to do. If we find some wood, we will make a fire. If not, we won’t. Then we will try to keep warm by jumping from one foot to the other, doing squats and carefully rotating our stiff hips. It’s been a long time since we had the strength for press-ups.
58
Before drifting off, I see the light green of the first linden leaves above me, how it merges with the brown of the branches and the trunk and with the thin layer of water running down the whole of it, until it all merges with the grey sky. The world becomes a fog descending upon not only the things out there but also the words inside me.
As I doze, I see Gruber. He is walking with his head held straight. With each step he places his foot carefully on the ground, lifting the other a bit higher than necessary. He is leaning slightly backward, and after each step he pauses for a moment, as if incredulous that the road hasn’t crumbled into the earth, that the tectonic plate beneath it is still intact.
As I doze, I see Gruber as he was a few weeks ago, in the warehouse, staring at fifteen thousand pairs of men’s double-stitched Y-fronts, 30% cotton, 70% polyester, packed neatly into boxes and carefully stacked on EUR pallets. They are ready. Each easy-open packet contains five pairs, the Italian design and trendy blue-and-red colours visible through the clear plastic window on the front. Gruber’s eyes scan the packing slips bearing the addresses of the wholesalers awaiting this shipment of men’s undergarments, and he imagines the fifteen thousand penises which will soon be resting securely in them, occasionally being manoeuvred through the opening in the front and then put away again, and he imagines the thirty thousand testicles that will remain patiently in place all the while, comfortably couched in the cotton-polyester blend. He looks at the pallets and imagines the billions upon billions of spermatozoa being produced every day by those testicles in those Y-fronts, and he imagines the thousands of human beings who may or may not be born as a result, and the houses they will build and the cars they will drive, the women they will love, and the IT solutions, household objects, commodities certificates, hit songs and men’s undergarments these people will produce, some time, perhaps. Gruber is waiting for the DPD guy. The boxes are packed, the forms have been filled in, he’s had more than enough coffee, and the others have all gone off for lunch. He goes back to his office, sits down at his computer, opens his browser and types the word ‘facial’ into the search function on RedTube. He’s not thinking of masturbating, that would be pathetic, masturbating at work, he’s not a teenage boy any more, and besides the company belongs to his uncle, no, probably he won’t even get an erection right away, and he clicks on Tera Patrick vs. Rocco Siffredi & Nacho Vidal, not because he wants to wank, but because he enjoys seeing sperm land on a lovely face, in a lovely mouth, on a lovely tongue.
Lovely sperm from a lovely cock.
The telephone rings.
Pro-Fashion, Gruber speaking.
On his screen, three naked figures by the pool.
Not at lunch, Herr Gruber?
The progress bar is growing.
Herr Özbay! Where are you?
The three figures begin to move. The video freezes for a moment.
Brunnthal junction. It’ll be a while.
You do know that the shipment has to be delivered to head office in Penzberg today, right?
The video resumes.
What do you want me to do?
Nacho gives Tera a slap in the face, his little silver bracelet glinting in the sun.
No idea. Listen to the traffic alerts?
Then he sticks his thick member in her mouth.
Herr Gruber. I’m sorry. There was no way I could have predicted this.
Rocco approaches from behind. His cock is even thicker than Nacho’s. He lays it gently on Tera’s fontanelle and begins to gyrate his hips, as if he wants to inseminate her scalp. Unperturbed, she carries on sucking Nacho’s cock, like she hasn’t had anything to eat for weeks. Her large hoop earrings swing back and forth.
Granted. So what now?
Well, you know the people at Metro’s dispatch office. Rocco takes his penis out of Tera’s hair.
So?
Rocco strokes his cock a little. Evidently the little number with the scalp wasn’t as much of a turn-on as his passionate expression might have led one to believe.
It’s all just an act, after all.
I thought maybe you could persuade them to stay a little longer today.
Rocco goes around to stand in front of Tera next to Nacho.
Are you serious?
He gently slaps her cheek with his now fully engorged member.
Well, you know.
Side by side like this, even Nacho cuts a rather poor figure compared to Rocco.
So: you are late.
You probably won’t be able to make the delivery on time. As a result, my company will probably demand compensation from you. And in order to avoid that, you want me to call the Penzberg people?
Rocco is not just your average joe.
Look, if we don’t deliver today, then it will above all be you who fail to deliver. Metro don’t give a shit whether it’s the driver’s fault or not.
Tera can barely fit it in her mouth.
Is that a threat?
But somehow she manages it. Nacho wipes some pre-cum on her cheek, but he seems to sense that he is superfluous here now.
Herr Gruber. How long have we been working together?
Oh, Tera, the indignities you put up with.
All right. You’ve almost moved me to tears. But why don’t you call them yourself?
Tera, you beautiful creature.
Are you really asking me?
Tera, with your big, dark eyes.
Absolutely.
Tera, with your long, black hair.
What do you think the Penzbergers are going to do when I call and say, Hello, this is Özbay?
Ah.
Gruber presses pause.
I’m sorry. What was I thinking?
Five years we’ve been working together.
I’m really sorry.
It’s OK.
All right, we’ll figure it out. I’ll call those Nazis at Metro and you just race to get here, all right?
Did you say race?
I mean hurry!
Thank you, Herr Gruber.
No problem. We’ll get this sorted out. We always have in the past.
See you later.
As I doze, I see Gruber press play again.
59
In the end, we don’t wake up until quite late. Maybe because we’re starving to death. Maybe because we’ve been walking ever so slightly uphill for the past several days, the upward slope almost imperceptible, so you end up walking faster than you really can, and you get more tired than you should, because you think to yourself, this isn’t steep, and so you don’t stop to rest. And at some point you’re puking up bile, because there’s nothing else in your stomach.
