There’d been a few things I had to get straight with Vera right from the start. After our first time it was funny seeing her in school the next day, especially as I was with Ludwig when she walked past. We gave each other a nod as we always did, and I was glad it was over and done with, everything back to normal. That made it all the more annoying when fat Flavia, Vera’s best friend, handed me a note in the morning break. Ludwig wasn’t around. Meet me at lunchtime? it said on one side of the paper, and Physics lab on the other. I didn’t go. I wasn’t having any of that. You had to keep things separate. I think I managed to make that clear to her. We only met on nights when spending time with her meant giving up sleep, not giving up my time with Ludwig. I don’t see that anyone could have objected.
Vera often surprised me. One night, for instance, after telling me a bit about her friend Flavia, she said, ‘It’s really nice with Flavia too.’
‘What?’ I said.
Vera kissed me tenderly on the lips, and just then it started to rain, rather suddenly. We hurried into our clothes, I gave her a kiss and we went our separate ways. On the wet bike ride home, I thought a lot about what Vera had said and about her kiss. Did that mean she’d been with Flavia too? To be honest, I found it hard to imagine—Vera in bed with her fat friend. I knew it wasn’t as weird when it was girls as it would be for us, but the next time with Vera was a bit strange—I kept seeing her with fat Flavia instead of me. I’m not saying the thought was entirely unpleasant, just slightly bizarre. Afterwards I asked her whether she was really sleeping with Flavia and me.
‘I don’t sleep with you,’ she said. ‘We do it on a blanket under a bridge.’
She really could be quite cheeky. But I didn’t mind. I gave no more thought to Flavia—or only every now and then.
I’m afraid there was an ugly scene one day, a scene I don’t like to describe, but it was part of that summer and can’t be left out. Ludwig and I had been training hard and were so exhausted that we caught the riverboat home instead of riding our bikes. We sat side by side on a bench at the front, letting the wind cool us, one of those moments when you’re too tired to speak but don’t need to, each understanding perfectly how the other feels. But when we got back to the house under the bridge and went straight to the workshop, we saw something we’d never seen before: Vera was sitting on our Triumph, twisting the throttle grip, which wasn’t yet connected to the carburettor.
Remembering what happened next makes me shudder. Ludwig rushed across the workshop, grabbed his sister by the shoulders and tore her off the Tiger Cub, knocking it over on top of her. That turned out to be lucky, because it gave her at least some protection from the blows—and, I’m sorry to say, kicks—inflicted on her by her brother. If it hadn’t been for their father, who was in the workshop gutting an exhaust pipe, I’d never have got Ludwig off his sister. I dragged him outside, and on the grass beside the workshop he lunged at me. Too well matched, we wrestled for ages, neither of us able to get the better of the other, until finally, simultaneously, we gave up. We soon made it up, deciding that the length and intensity of our fight were further evidence of how alike we’d become. Looking back, I don’t think there was anything so unusual about Ludwig’s attack on Vera. Things often get pent up between brother and sister and then suddenly erupt, and such incidents can seem worse at first sight than they actually are.
The further the summer went on, the quieter things grew between Ludwig and me. For one thing, the assembly work demanded a great deal of concentration, and for another, Ludwig really wasn’t in a good way. I did all the talking and all the work while he sat cross-legged next to the Triumph, watching me. If I turned to look at him, I’d see that it wasn’t my hands he was watching as I filed and hammered—it was my face.
I can recall only one thing Ludwig said around that time, but it was so apt that it was almost poetic. ‘A motorbike,’ he said, ‘is like a coxless pair. Two lives, one fate.’
‘That’s what makes it so perfect for us,’ I added, and I seem to remember feeling almost touched.
The day I put in the manifold and the exhaust pipe, neither of us had spoken for over an hour when it occurred to me that it was a long time since we had last talked about our tower in Asia. Not wanting to lose sight of our project altogether, I suggested putting in an underground car park beneath the tower—the deepest underground car park in the world. Ludwig liked that kind of thing, and he seemed very bad-tempered lately—he needed cheering up. So as I tried to screw the exhaust pipe to the manifold—a fiddly business because the parts weren’t a perfect match—I told him that our underground car park would need forty levels, because there’d be so many people living and working in the tallest tower in the world.
‘Forty levels,’ I said, doing the sums out loud, ‘would go at least a hundred and forty metres into the earth—it would mean digging a really enormous hole.’
What appealed to me the most, though, was the thought of driving all the way up from the bottom. Even in regular multistorey car parks I loved those hairpin bends connecting the levels and the thrill you got in your belly, driving up and down.
I think I had just told Ludwig how we’d ride our Triumph all the way from the lowest level up to the top—at high speed, of course—when he suddenly interrupted me.
‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘Stop going on about that stupid fucking tower.’
I felt slightly hurt to begin with, but I soon realised he was right—the tower was a childish idea we’d outgrown. He didn’t have to say it the way he did, but he was hardly eating at the time. In spite of his diet, he was usually a kilo or two heavier than me before the regattas and had to sweat off the excess weight—go jogging with two tracksuits on, one on top of the other, and then finish off in the sauna. We’d won one regatta and lost the next. After that there were only three weeks to go until the regional championships on our reservoir.
We didn’t mention the tower again for a while, though Vera sometimes talked about it, chattering away about her plants and tortoises, and dithering between a yellow bow and a green one. I never bothered replying. I have a feeling I was pretty grumpy and uncommunicative myself at the time.
It was my poor mother who had to bear the brunt of my moods. She only ever got to see me at breakfast—by the time I got home at night, she’d long since gone to bed. She’d recently begun to snore slightly, which I knew because she always left the door to her room ajar. Until I got back, she only half slept. ‘I get worried,’ she told me at breakfast on more than one occasion, and there was no mistaking the reproach in her voice. I said nothing. I can’t remember a word of what I might have said to my mother back then. It’s possible I didn’t speak at all. She was working in the department store again, but in ladies’ clothes, not curtains. She often saw my father and his new wife in the canteen, and sometimes they had coffee together. That annoyed me. Most of what my mother said annoyed me. It began first thing in the morning with Johann, time to get up, her voice all nice and kind, and her hand stroking my cheek as she said it.
I do remember seeing her once at about three in the morning. I’d been with Vera and hadn’t long been asleep when I was woken by the phone. I jumped straight out of bed, because it could only be Ludwig—and it was. He’d sometimes rung me at night in the past when he’d had a sudden thought he couldn’t keep to himself—that we ought to build our Asian tower in Rangoon, the capital of Burma, for instance, rather than in Hanoi. But it hadn’t happened for a while.
‘Johann,’ he said, ‘get dressed and come round right away.’ He sounded wide awake.
‘Has something happened?’ I asked, but it was a stupid question. I could hear that nothing bad had happened. I even thought I detected excitement in his voice.
Just then my mother came out of her bedroom. Has something happened? her eyes asked. She was wearing striped pyjamas, and her hair was so thin, I wondered whether she wore a wig during the day, and I suddenly felt sorry for her. Perhaps I felt sorry for myself, too—I’m not sure. I didn�
�t want an old mother, but I knew then that was exactly what I had. After years of not caring how old our mothers and fathers were, it had recently started to matter to us. Anyone with young parents had acquired a certain kudos, perhaps because we assumed that young parents were like friends—or just less embarrassing. We were of an age when parents were almost permanently embarrassing. If someone had a party, for example, you could be sure that their parents would soon turn up and start dancing. They would dance differently from everyone else and wouldn’t notice how embarrassing they were. I saw an awful lot of parents dancing at parties and the looks on their children’s faces. It was painful, especially when the parents were old. My mother spared me that, but she did, as I realised that night, have extremely thin hair. I resolved not to be seen with her anymore. We really could be very cruel at times.
As Ludwig kept talking, I tried to reassure her with looks and gestures.
‘Okay,’ I said in the end, and hung up. ‘That was Ludwig,’ I told my mother. ‘He’d had a sudden thought.’
‘At three in the morning?’ she asked.
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ I said. ‘Go back to bed.’
Isn’t it strange that a time comes when you start sending your parents to bed? And isn’t it even stranger that they obey you? My mother went to the toilet and then to bed. I got dressed and waited in my room until I heard her soft snores.
Ludwig met me at the garden gate. I could see straight away that he was looking much more cheerful than he had in a long time. He took my bike and pushed it into the garden.
‘At last,’ he said.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Something’s happened.’
He led me to the other end of the garden at a kind of jog. There, at the edge of the wood, I could see somebody lying on the ground. I stopped. Vera, I thought. It was clearly a human body, but it wasn’t moving.
‘Ludwig,’ I said, ‘what is it? Who’s that lying there?’ I almost asked: What have you done? but I knew immediately that he wouldn’t do such a thing. He was my brother.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Come closer.’
‘Who is it?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ludwig.
‘Is she…is he dead?’ I asked.
‘Dead? Yes, of course. Come on.’
I took two steps towards the body and saw that it was a man with short hair, smaller than us. He wasn’t really lying—he was huddled up with his face to the ground, one leg folded beneath his body, the other stretched out behind him. His bum was slightly raised and his back arched more sharply than you would have thought possible.
‘He jumped half an hour ago,’ said Ludwig. ‘I heard him land and came straight out. The others are asleep.’
‘Are you sure he’s dead?’ I asked.
‘Anyone jumping from up there has to be dead,’ he said.
I looked up and saw streaks of light flash by as cars flew over the bridge.
‘Have you rung the police?’ I asked.
‘Just look at the funny way he’s lying,’ said Ludwig. He took a step towards the body.
For a while neither of us spoke. A car drove west, another east.
‘Come on, let’s sit down,’ said Ludwig, settling himself cross-legged in front of the body and leaning forward, his elbows propped on his legs, chin resting on his hands. ‘What do you think his name is?’
‘Don’t know,’ I said.
‘Aren’t you going to sit down?’ he said, and I squatted down behind him on my haunches.
‘Do you think it’s a good idea,’ I asked, ‘to be sitting here like this when the police come?’
‘Wonder why he jumped,’ said Ludwig. ‘Maybe his girlfriend left him, maybe he just had a boring life, maybe he was going to die anyway. Imagine being told you’re terminally ill—that you’ll soon be in constant pain and wheelchair-bound and all that shit.’ A truck drove over the bridge. ‘Though he doesn’t look ill,’ Ludwig said.
‘When are the police coming?’ I asked.
‘The police don’t understand this kind of thing,’ Ludwig said.
‘So you haven’t called them.’
‘I called you,’ he said. We were silent. For a moment I thought the dead man had moved, but of course he couldn’t have.
‘Isn’t it amazing, the way he’s lying there?’ said Ludwig. ‘So quiet and still. Have you ever seen anyone that still? I haven’t. Even when you’re asleep, you move a bit—you breathe and snore—but this guy really is completely still.’
‘Please call the police,’ I said.
‘Now listen,’ Ludwig said, ‘I’ve been waiting a long time for something to happen, something big. Death is a big deal, you know that. A dead man can tell us things, and I’m not going to let the police fuck that up for me. This dead man belongs to us—just us, you and me. We’re going to come back and sit here some more, and things will be good for us.’
I think he said something along those lines. He was crouching in front of me, grasping me firmly by the shoulders. I nodded. He thumped me on the back with his right hand. Then he got up.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘you go home now. I’ll sort things out here.’
I got up and had another look at the dead man. I noticed that he was wearing shorts. Why’s that? Why would a grown man wear shorts? I wondered. I couldn’t see his face, but he didn’t look like a child—he was too big. Then I left. At the garden gate I turned and saw Ludwig dragging the dead man under the trees.
At school the next morning we didn’t mention the dead man, but I think we both felt a certain excitement—an excitement that bound us together as nothing had before. We were the guardians of a secret, but it was not the kind of secret usually kept—or rather, flaunted—by people our age. Ours was a real secret, and we cared even less than usual when our geography teacher tied himself in knots trying to explain the current political situation in the Balkans. We exchanged glances and smiled.
After school we went for a long row and then spent the rest of the afternoon putting the wiring harness in the Triumph. In the evening we sat in Ludwig’s room with the radio on. At eleven, he started listening at the door to see if his father had gone to bed at last. It was after midnight when we crept downstairs. I was worried Vera might be waiting for me in the workshop, and the light was indeed on. But Ludwig didn’t see it, or else he saw it and thought his father was still tinkering about after all.
We walked to the edge of the woods and Ludwig pulled the dead man out from the undergrowth. For the first time I saw his face. It was broad, with quite a round nose, and he was missing a few teeth. His hair covered his ears and looked strangely neat. I wondered whether Ludwig had combed it the day before.
That night we sat with our dead man until dawn. I don’t want to give the wrong impression. It wasn’t a solemn occasion—or only to begin with, perhaps, when Ludwig spoke of our friendship and how alike we’d become, and how important the dead man said it was that we stick together. We were twins, and now the dead man was with us too, but that made no difference except maybe to bind us even closer, because we shared him with one another and shared things were binding, whereas things you kept to yourselves drove a wedge between you.
He went on like that for the first half-hour while I, still somewhat tense, sat beside the dead man—not right beside him, but a metre or two away, cross-legged like Ludwig. I thought Ludwig had spoken well. Then the mood changed. It may seem odd, but before long we were feeling upbeat, even happy, and had to keep reminding each other not to laugh too loudly.
It began when Ludwig asked after a short pause why the dead man would be wearing shorts. He’d noticed, of course, just as I had. We always thought the same things, however ridiculous. The dead man was wearing pale corduroy shorts and even had a belt. Our fathers never wore short trousers, and neither did our teachers—none of the men we knew did, even in summer, no matter how hot it was, and we puzzled over it for a while. It’s amazing how trying to work o
ut why a man might wear shorts can lead you to imagine an entire life for him. Hot weather might just be reason enough for a man who spends all day out in the open, we thought—and who does that apart from builders and farmers?
We decided he was a farmer, as there were some farmers in the region and he did have a rustic look about him. That told us he hadn’t had a wife, because farmers couldn’t find wives these days—and that in turn told us why he’d killed himself. He was lonely, and couldn’t stand it anymore—all day in the barn and out in the fields without a wife. We were quiet for a while, because we felt sorry for him. It was sad to think of him sitting in his farmhouse in the evenings, tired from work and feeling lonely. Then one of us—I think it was me—said that the reason farmers couldn’t find wives was probably that they wore shorts. We started to giggle and were soon in a silly mood we couldn’t get out of.
‘Men in shorts,’ said Ludwig, ‘always sit with their legs apart so you can see their balls, and women don’t like that.’
Perhaps it seems inappropriate that we talked like that about a dead man—and in the presence of a dead man—but I didn’t feel bad about it at the time and I don’t today. It’s just the way it was. When I think about the hysterical way we carried on that night, though, I do wonder whether the decomposing corpse wasn’t releasing some kind of laughing gas.
We imagined that he’d run a small organic farm, been nice to his pigs and hadn’t felt bad at all during the day, because he knew he was doing everything right and that he was a good person. But none of that was any use to him when he sat in his farmhouse in the evenings, drinking beer and watching endless football matches—even second-division games. When the phone rang, he’d think maybe it was the blond he’d met at the local dance, but it would only be the vice-president of the Livestock Association. Ludwig’s voice cracked slightly as he said that, and he may even have had tears in his eyes.
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