by Heinz Helle
I don’t know whether it’s been one minute or ten. I see Drygalski fall to his knees and with his left hand begin clearing away the wet, slushy snow beside the man’s smashed head until the damp, flattened ground comes into view, and then he begins to hack at it with his axe, once, twice, three times, four times. Drygalski is hacking at the ground and I am ashamed because for a moment I have no idea why. What the hell is he doing? But then I realise, thank God, I realise just in time to avoid looking like an idiot in front of my last living friend. I know that this is the only right thing to do, the rightest thing we’ve done since we saw that village in flames, perhaps even in our entire lives, and then I sink the shovel into the earth that Drygalski has loosened with his axe. I pick up the first load of earth and place it carefully to one side. We will need it later.
By the time we deposit the last shovelful of earth over the man’s body it is almost dark. We don’t have the energy to pat the grave flat. We are breathing heavily. We lean on each other, making sure not to hold onto each other for longer than our exhaustion requires. Then we stand there for a while, each of us on his own, by that rectangle of brown framed with dirty snow. We look into the valley. The bare peaks on the opposite side are still clearly visible. Down below it is already night.
64
I imagine Drygalski, a few weeks ago, in his laboratory, searching for his cure for cancer. In his latex-clad hand he is holding a Petri dish with razor-thin slices of frozen mouse tumours.
His red Air Max IIs are planted firmly on the ground.
The day before he benched a hundred kilos for the first time.
The formaldehyde stains on his lab coat are not visible to the naked eye.
His mother is also his boss here. Technically it’s his father who runs things – he owns the lab – but he never asks how work was when Drygalski comes home to the house that he still shares with his parents. His mother is at the lab today too. She is about twenty metres away, past the decontamination tunnel, behind a large monitor, and while his mother is going over project descriptions and updating employee files perhaps she is thinking about the expensive equipment that her son is using back here.
He thinks, Her son. He thinks, This expensive equipment I’m using. He thinks, All non-bonded or non-specifically bonded molecular probes have to be eluted before the samples are placed under the fluorescence microscope.
He thinks, I hope I can do it this time.
He can see his own reflection in the glass cabinet next to the microscope, and he can see that he cannot see any part of himself except for the white overall with a hood, mask and safety specs.
He has the correct sequence of steps in his head. He could have recited the correct sequence in his sleep, if you had woken him up, let’s say at three in the morning, which fortunately has never occurred. He is single, but at least he sleeps well, and his single status will change once he moves out of his parents’ house, he just needs to work some more, save up some money so he can buy a flat and get out of there.
It’ll be some house-warming.
He can even recite the correct sequence of steps after five vodka tonics.
There’ll be some chick, a friend of someone’s girlfriend’s, who’ll feel right at home and stay the night.
He can recite them after ten vodka tonics.
Sometimes we ask him what the steps are. He never tells us.
The monitor lights up.
The image is complete.
Shit. Back to square one.
65
We say less and less to each other. One-word sentences give way to sullen grunts and half-hearted gestures. Gradually we even stop looking each other in the eye. We communicate sideways. There is someone beside you. He can also see that there is nothing down there in the valley, he is also clearing away some of the mud from the entrance, he can also see that the bread is covered in mould, and: he is also hungry. He also used to call the central area of this building the living room, the stove the stove, the firewood firewood, or at least he did when there was still some left, the chair the chair, the table the table, the floor the floor, and the lady with the sword in her heart on the poster above the couch Mary, Mother of God. As long as there is someone beside you, everything is still in its right place.
At some point the last slice of mouldy bread has been eaten. The snow is melting. The patches of green on the slopes seem fake and unhealthy to us. A uniform white would be nicer. White would be more appropriate for a day like today. We are sitting in the living room, waiting, and sitting, and then it gets dark, and we keep waiting. We sit in the dark and wait for it to be over.
Snow or no snow. Light or no light. Lying or sitting or standing, or in fact probably lying, that’s probably best when there’s nothing to do apart from standing and sitting and nothing to see apart from snow or no snow, light or no light.
66
At dawn it begins to snow again. I see Drygalski gripping the edge of the table with his fingers. He lets go. Then he grips it again. His eyes are closed. I pretend not to notice him. I am lying on the bench, keeping my eyes closed as well, and only occasionally peering in his direction through a narrow slit in my eyelids. Outside the windows the dark green slopes are slowly turning white again. Drygalski places his other hand on the seat of his chair and grips it. His knuckles are as white as the snow on the windowsill. He pushes himself up, slowly extends one leg and lowers his chin slowly to his chest, leans his torso forward, his centre of gravity shifting above his hips, over the edge of the chair, over his knees, and just before he tips over and falls face first on the floor he lifts his buttocks and is standing. Carefully he stretches his legs. Slowly, he staggers over to the sideboard. He takes a small knife from the knife block. I know that the small knives are the sharpest, I occasionally used to use one of them to chop onions. Drygalski pauses in front of the door and looks over at me. I can feel his gaze even though my eyes are still closed to the extent that I can discern shapes, objects and colours, but not pupils. Drygalski is looking at me, something he has rarely done recently. He is standing there with the small knife in one hand, his other hand on the handle of the door that leads into the corridor. His back is bent, when it always used to be straight, and the way his trousers are hanging around his legs and his jacket over his shoulders, you would never have suspected that Drygalski used to be over-weight. I can just about see the dark circles around his eyes. Holes inside which, somewhere, lies that which I used to know, if it is even still there. I will never find out. I’m not really looking. I’m keeping my eyes half closed. When he takes his hand off the handle and raises it, slowly, solemnly, as if he were about to give a speech, I open my eyes, but before Drygalski can notice, he changes his mind, puts his hand back on the door handle, opens the door and is gone.
67
Do you remember, it was four o’clock in the morning, at your going-away party at my place. There were still people there but all the guests had left, because the ones who remained were much more than guests, and we were jumping up and down in a circle in the living room, our arms interlocked around the shoulders of the ones on either side of us. We were kicking the air in between us in time with the music, as if we were trying to destroy anything that could separate us, like a football team after a victory, a football team who are their own biggest and only fans, and we were dancing and kicking the air, the music was really loud and we didn’t care what it was, and then you said, I’ve really got to go now, and then we opened the circle, we let you out, and you pulled us in one by one, we hugged, and slapped you on the back, Good luck, Take care, Have fun, and then you walked out of the living room and we went back to our drunken footballers’ dance, and then you came back in one more time and we all gave you another hug and patted you on the back again and said, Take care, and Have fun, and then you left and came back a third time, and we all burst out laughing, Go on, bugger off on your stupid round-the-world trip!, and you were laughing too, and then I saw you from behind in the corridor heading for the d
oor and then you were gone, and six months later you came back in one piece and we acted like nothing had happened. Do you remember, Drygalski? Drygalski. I said, do you remember?
68
Walking through the snow on the mountainside is hard enough when you’re well fed and don’t have arthritis or frostbitten toes or pressure sores on your behind. I spot the round, red stain from far away. Drygalski is lying there face down on the ground. The knife to his right, besides his open hand. His left arm by his side. He is lying with his head pointing in the direction of the valley. He’s done that so that he would bleed out more quickly. I kneel beside him and touch the back of his neck. He’s barely warm. I see how thin he is. I run my hand down his back, I can feel his bony shoulder blades, his spine, his pelvis. I can feel that he no longer has a fat arse.
I see what Drygalski must have seen as he stepped outside in the knowledge that this would be the last time he would step outside and see anything. The grey sky. The valley. The burnt-down village. The treeline on the mountains opposite, a straight, dark boundary, below which all is dark, and above which the peaks rise up, dissolving into the sky. I imagine Drygalski standing there, looking at all of this one last time, at this one, never-changing, frozen world. He takes a few steps out into the field, onto the slope, he kneels down and feels for his carotid artery with his left hand, then he sinks the knife into it with his right, calmly, deliberately, hard. Then he puts down the knife and gently allows himself to fall forward, and as his body falls over, so too does his knowledge of the world, of up and down, right and wrong, of the names of the things all around him, all of that falls with him towards the valley, and it flows with his blood down the mountain, downward towards the centre of the Earth.
I would have done the same for you, I think, picking up the knife with my right hand and hitching Drygalski’s jacket up with my left. Each one of us would have done the same thing for all the others, I think, pushing his jumper up. We were the only ones left, I think, pulling his jeans down over his emaciated arse, without even loosening his belt. You beat me to it, I think. His buttocks are as white as the snow. The blade pushes against the cold skin, pushes deep and then the tissue rips and the flesh expands, enveloping the steel. Blood seeps out. With a careful sawing motion, I trace the outline of a square. Then I remove it.
69
If there should ever be another perfectly ordinary Monday, in November for all I care, when my alarm goes off at six thirty a.m. I will leap out of bed like the St Petersburg ballet. I will stand bold upright in the dark listening to that rhythmical beeping, I will move my head in time, up and down, then left and right, harder and harder, and tears of joy will fly from my eyes in all directions, in the morning darkness.
I will lie down flat on the floor and crawl like a seal across the groaning parquet towards the bathroom, naked, and I will hope to get a splinter of oak, oiled, antique, which will let me know that this is all real.
With feigned nonchalance I will get in the shower, turn the tap and scream as though the water were ice cold, but it will be hot, wonderfully hot, and I will scream anyway in disbelief at belonging to a species that was capable of designing and building such an apparatus.
I will resolve not to leave the shower for three whole days.
The skin on my fingers will become wrinkled.
After half an hour I will get out of the shower after all and I will take a freshly washed flannel, smelling of fabric softener, and run it under ice-cold water, and then I will stuff it in my mouth and then I will take a large bath towel into the living room and spread it out on the shag rug, and then I will lie down on it and roll myself up inside the rug and the towel.
I will revel in the sound the flannel makes when I suck on it and in the cold water emitted by the cotton fabric directly into my mouth.
Then I will go back into the bathroom.
I will put moisturising cream in the palm of my hand and then slap myself in the face with it, first one cheek, then the other.
I will run into the bedroom as fast as I can, my head only barely missing the door frame, and I will smash through the mirrored sliding door of my wardrobe and dive with the wreckage right into the hard shelves full of soft textiles so that I, the shelves and the fabrics crash onto the floor, and then I will writhe my way into my clothes like a snake.
Whatever is still clinging to my body when I exit the wardrobe I will declare my favourite outfit.
I will leave the house and wait for the sunrise.
It will be a clear day.
And when the sun appears I will inhale the cool, fresh air and say: Sun.
Then I will smile. I will do this every morning.
And after just a couple of years it will be impossible for an outside observer to determine whether it is the sun that brings forth the word or the word that brings forth the sun.
AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, the Canton of Bern and the City of Biel/Bienne for their support for the writing of this novel.
Thanks also to Julia Weber, Hansjörg Schertenleib, Silvio Huonder, Paul Brodowsky, Matthias Nawrat, Philipp Mattheis, Robert Kumsta, Godehard Brüntrup and my Stammtisch.
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