I felt very much at ease sitting there next to the dead man with Ludwig. I didn’t want the night to end, especially once we’d brought the dead man to life and begun to imagine him living with us. We planned to take him with us to our tower in Asia—he’d be useful there, because farmers are good handymen. It was hilarious imagining him as the caretaker in our tower, running up and down the stairs in his shorts and shooing the little Vietnamese people along in front of him. We liked him and were able to put him to good use.
We hardly noticed it getting light, but eventually we realised that the traffic on the bridge had grown heavier. We’d been lying on the grass, not talking, for an hour, each of us thinking his own thoughts. They were probably the same thoughts, pleasant thoughts of our future. When it was almost properly light, Ludwig dragged our farmer back into the undergrowth.
I’m afraid that our dead man began to smell the following night. It had been hot during the day and didn’t cool down properly in the evening. He gave off a sweet, slightly nauseating smell. We tried to revive the mood of the previous night, but with that smell in the air it was hopeless. Ludwig spoke gloomily of the pointlessness of a world where you couldn’t live with the dead, and despite sharing all his thoughts, I’m not sure I quite understood what he was getting at—at least not consciously. Our conversation tailed off and we sat in silence beside the dead man, who looked considerably worse than the previous night—older, much older.
‘What are we going to do with him now?’
I asked as the traffic on the bridge came to life.
Ludwig said nothing, and I rode home on my bike feeling sad.
When we were fitting the chain over the cogs the next day, a police car pulled up in front of Ludwig’s parents’ house. Because of the heat, we’d pushed the motorbike outside, where we could work in the shade. Two policemen got out and walked to the garden gate, the way policemen always walk: slowly, legs apart, faces inscrutable, as if they knew a great deal but weren’t allowed to talk.
‘The cops,’ Ludwig called into the workshop.
His father came out, wiping his oily hands on an oily cloth. I could sense his nervousness. He walked to the garden gate and we followed him.
One of the policemen said a man had gone missing, and since there’d been several cases of people jumping and landing in this garden, they wanted to know whether we’d noticed anything unusual.
I was suddenly afraid you might be able to smell the dead man even from the gate and began to sniff—quite loudly, Ludwig later told me, but the policemen didn’t notice.
‘No one’s landed here,’ said Ludwig’s father. ‘Sometimes they fall over by the agricultural repair shop,’ he added.
‘Would it be possible,’ one of the policemen asked, ‘for someone to land in the bushes over there without your noticing?’
‘If anyone jumps here, we know about it,’ said Ludwig’s father. ‘And my son always hears it when somebody jumps, even if the rest of us don’t.’
‘Haven’t heard anything lately,’ said Ludwig.
The policemen exchanged glances and I could tell that each was relieved by the other’s reluctance to crawl into the bushes and look for a corpse.
‘We’ll ask at the agricultural repair shop then,’ one of them said.
They turned to go, but Ludwig had a question. ‘What kind of man are you looking for?’
‘A farmer,’ said the policeman who had done all the talking.
As we headed back to the Triumph, Ludwig thumped me on the shoulder. ‘You see,’ he said.
The following night we held a funeral for our caretaker that he couldn’t have faulted. We rolled him up in an old rug and carried him to the river. There on the bank was a wide skiff we’d rowed out during the day. We stuffed a few stones from the river’s edge into the rug and secured the whole thing with tape. Ludwig lit a candle, dripped some wax onto the rearmost cross brace and set the candle on it. We put the rug in the stern and rowed slowly to the middle of the river until we were exactly under the bridge. The candle flickered.
Ludwig climbed into the stern and tried to heave the rug overboard while I held the boat steady. It was a delicate undertaking—with the caretaker and the stones, the rug was pretty heavy. More than once it looked as if we might all end up in the river. In the end, Ludwig managed to get the caretaker into the water without either of us being pulled in with him, though the boat rocked like anything. For a long time we sat in silence, looking at the light of the candle flame. I didn’t pray, because I didn’t know how at the time.
I was very sad, as if I’d buried someone I’d really known. And somehow it was almost as if I had known our caretaker. I knew all about his first life, as a farmer, and all about his second life, in our Asian tower, which I presume was a happier one, because caretakers don’t have such trouble finding wives, especially in Asia, where practical skills are more highly prized than over here. I think it was right to sink him in the river. He’d wanted to end his life under the bridge, and now he had found a permanent place there. Besides, he wouldn’t be alone there, because we, his last friends—if, that is, he’d had any friends before us—could go and visit him every day. From then on, Ludwig was always careful to plan the intervals in our training sessions so that we could use gentle oar strokes under the bridge. I think it’s fair to say that our caretaker’s life had a happier ending than he might have dared hope for, but the funeral was a sad occasion even so.
When we had moored the boat to the bank again, Ludwig suggested that we go up on the bridge together. We hadn’t been up there for ages and I liked the idea of going to the place where things between the caretaker and us had begun. We climbed the hill and then walked beside the crash barrier to the middle of the bridge. The river lay beneath us. We stood at the fence for a long time, thinking about our caretaker, who had stood here with all those terrible thoughts in his head, looking back at his miserable farmer’s life. Nothing but fields and pigs, day after day, and so little chance of finding a wife. If he had only got to know us sooner, we could have told him about our gloomy but wonderful tower in Asia—about the work awaiting him there, and the quiet little women who are just the thing for a farmer. I’m sure he wouldn’t have jumped then.
I was completely taken aback when Ludwig suddenly climbed the fence. To my horror, he threw one leg over, sat down on the top and then pulled the other leg over to join the first. His hands gripped the fence on either side of his buttocks.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked. ‘Get down from there.’
‘You come up,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll see what the caretaker saw before he jumped.’
I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stand down below while Ludwig sat up on the fence waiting for me. I climbed up, swung one leg over the top and then the other. I closed my eyes, then opened them again. What a view. It was amazing to see the valley without the fence in the way—the river directly beneath me, the lights of the little town—but I was never so terrified in my life. One breath of wind, I thought. One breath of wind and you’ll fly like the caretaker. I didn’t want that. I had Ludwig—I wasn’t alone. I had Vera too.
‘Give me your hand,’ said Ludwig.
‘I can’t let go of the fence,’ I said.
‘Give it to me,’ he said, slowly taking his own hand from the fence. I was sweating. ‘We’re twins,’ said Ludwig. I loosened my hand and he grabbed it. We swayed a little, then we were still. I began to sweat even more. ‘Let go of your other hand,’ said Ludwig.
‘Are you crazy?’ I said.
‘Let go,’ he shouted. ‘We have to do it together.
I’ll count to three. One…’
Never would I let go of the fence.
‘Two…’
It was cold—I suddenly felt the cold. Autumn, I thought. Soon it’ll be autumn.
‘Three.’
I loosened my hand. Very cautiously, I glanced at Ludwig. I knew I mustn’t turn my head. I knew I mustn’t move. Ludwig wasn’t holding on anymore
either.
‘We’re holding each other,’ he said. ‘We’re twins. Just you and me.’
I’ve no idea how long we sat like that. It felt like a long time, but in a situation like that, there’s no way of knowing. Long enough, at any rate, to shake my fear. We sat on the top of the fence looking down into the valley. There was the little town, the boathouse on the reservoir, Ludwig’s parents’ house, the workshop where our Triumph was waiting, the river, and on the riverbed in a rug was our caretaker who had once been a farmer. But perhaps he was already in our Asian tower, changing light bulbs—who knows?
I confess that I began to get worried when a whole week went by with no sign of Vera in the workshop. I started sniffing in class again, trying to get a whiff of women who’d had sex. I still love that smell like nothing else. I paid no attention to our teachers, or the writing on the blackboard, turning my head this way and that, sucking in the air until my nostrils flared, cursing soap and water and deodorant and perfume, wishing myself back in an age before people began to fight their bodily smells.
Sometimes I thought I detected something, a sour scent I associated with the half-hour after sex, and I don’t think I can begin to describe the euphoria that broke over me at such moments—the exquisite sensation that crept from my brain to the tips of my toes but lasted only a few seconds before I was gripped by sadness. This girl, sitting so unassumingly in front of me, had done it last night, and I hadn’t. Everyone was doing it.
I saw Vera at break, smoking cigarettes with Flavia. I didn’t talk to her. I gazed at her longingly, but only when I was sure no one was watching. When she passed close to me, I pressed my lips together and breathed in through my nose until everything went black and I felt dizzy—once Ludwig had to grab my arm to stop me from falling.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
And then there she was, sitting in the workshop, on the stool, and when she got up and kissed me I couldn’t wait—I fell to my knees, pushed my head under her dress, pulled down her knickers and pressed my face between her legs. I could feel her hand on my head through the fabric of her dress, and I stayed there like that for a long time. I don’t know what I was thinking—strange, new thoughts, I imagine.
We didn’t go outside that night. Instead, I carried her to the workbench—she was so light—and set her down next to the screw clamp. She took me inside her—slowly, carefully—and this time she was the one who said sh, not me. While we were doing it, though, she knocked a pot of rust primer off the workbench. The lid was off, and an orange splotch spread over the floor.
I felt a little ashamed afterwards, I must admit. I was so overcome—and we often find it hard, I think, to look back at moments when we were particularly happy, because we don’t recognise ourselves.
‘What’ll your dad say?’ I asked. It was a stupid question, I know, but at such moments stupidity is our only salvation.
Since I’m being frank—and I’ve decided to be completely frank—there’s something else I should add. As Vera was sitting there on the workbench with her eyes closed, it’s possible I was thinking:
That fat friend of yours can’t give you this—or rather that obese pig, because she really was getting heavy by then. It was mean of me, I know.
I might as well admit too that Vera had once asked me whether I’d like it if she brought Flavia along sometime.
‘Why?’ I asked, and I’m still slightly annoyed at myself for sounding so shocked.
‘I thought men fantasised about that kind of thing,’ she said, ‘and Flavia’s completely different from me—all soft, you know, and she has such amazing tits.’
It was strange to hear a woman talking like that—somehow I didn’t feel she had the right. It was our way of talking about women.
‘She likes you,’ said Vera. ‘I’m sure she’d come and join us, or else we could meet at her place.’
Somehow it didn’t come to anything—I don’t know why.
Anyway, Vera said she didn’t think the orange splotch on the workshop floor would be a problem. It was strange in the workshop. It was strange not lying next to each other afterwards, and I didn’t know what to do. I suppose what I really wanted was to leave. In the end I sat down on the motorbike that Ludwig’s father usually tinkered about with.
‘Why doesn’t your dad ever come to our races?’
I asked, because it was so quiet.
‘Maybe he’s scared,’ said Vera, who was still sitting on the workbench, her legs crossed. She was smoking. She’d only recently taken it up, but she smoked quite a lot.
‘Scared of what?’ I asked.
‘That you might lose,’ said Vera.
‘But why should he be scared of that?’
‘Maybe he lost once too often himself.’
‘Did he?’
‘Don’t know,’ Vera said. ‘He hasn’t always fixed motorbikes, but I don’t know what he did before—he doesn’t ever talk about it.’
She came and sat pillion on the motorbike, wrapping her arms around me. I noticed that she was shivering—the nights were growing colder. ‘Ride with me to the wild sea,’ she said.
If the motorbike we were sitting on had had an engine, I really might have ridden off with her then and there. Her head was resting on my shoulder and she began to make soft engine noises, a low rumbling sound. I could feel her pursed lips vibrating against my shoulder, and the whole thing just seemed silly to me, but at the same time not silly at all. It was a beautiful moment, really.
‘What will we do when it’s winter?’ she asked.
‘We can’t lie under the bridge when it’s winter.’
I’d been wondering the same thing myself. It had been worrying me, as I didn’t have an answer.
There were ten days to go until the regional championships, and we’d lost the preliminary race to the Potsdam twins by a long way. Ludwig was in a state that could only be described as desperate, so I was glad when he said, ‘Let’s go and play pinball again.’ I’d started to miss it too, and it would, of course, be a perfect distraction for him. But when we went to the taverna, something happened that came as a complete surprise to me. You might even say I was shocked.
We’d just finished the first game and had two or three sips of our water when Ludwig went to the counter and ordered not just yeeros, but yeeros with chips and tzatziki, and a Coke. He said nothing. He ate slowly, taking his time, and then he ordered ice-cream. At first I sat on a stool and watched him in silence, then I went back to playing pinball by myself and won a free game. Ludwig seemed very pleased with himself when he was finished. When we left the taverna, he bought two bars of chocolate, which he ate on the way to the boathouse.
That evening he asked his father if he’d make pancakes again, like he used to, and so his father made pancakes. The three of us sat at the kitchen table like in the old days and ate. I stopped after my first pancake, Vera after her second. Ludwig carried on eating. Vera looked at me, then at Ludwig. Nobody spoke. Their father fried pancakes, adding them to the ever-growing pile, and Ludwig ate them. I think he ate five altogether—or perhaps it was six.
‘What’s got into him?’ asked Vera when we were lying at the edge of the woods later that evening. We had two blankets with us: one to lie on and the other to cover us. Even so, it was too cold, and I no longer felt at ease under this bridge anyway, since the farmer had jumped. I kept thinking someone else was about to jump and land right next to us. I’d lost my fear of dead people, but this wasn’t the time or place for a visit from one. What’s more, it clearly wasn’t entirely safe lying here. Who knows what happens when someone lands on you from fifty metres up?
‘I don’t know either,’ I said in reply to Vera’s question. ‘At lunchtime today he just suddenly started to stuff himself.’
‘I thought you had to keep your weight down,’ she said. ‘But let him eat. Maybe he won’t always be so uptight then.’
I didn’t like it when she talked about Ludwig
like that.
‘He’s been starving himself all this time,’ I said.
‘He has every right to eat properly for once.’
I was in a bad mood and left soon afterwards.
On the way home I was preoccupied with the thought of the last race. There were still ten days to go, and if Ludwig carried on eating like this, he’d end up over the weight limit. Sixty-five kilos was the most he was allowed to weigh, so he couldn’t put on more than two and a half kilos. It might be just about all right, but it would mean that I’d have to lose exactly the same amount. If he weighed sixty-five, I couldn’t weigh more than sixty, as our total combined weight couldn’t be more than 125 kilos.
The next morning I skipped breakfast. My mother asked a lot of questions, and I almost thought she was going to cry. Mothers and food—that’s always going to be a minefield. The first thing I ate that day was a cabbage salad at the taverna. It was seasoned with caraway and tasted good. I had a glass of water to drink. Ludwig ate moussaka and tzatziki and drank Coke. We didn’t say a word, and I didn’t look at him.
I starved myself for ten days, living off cabbage salad, Ryvita and apples. My stomach was an empty cave with someone clawing at the walls. It hurt all the time, and I often felt sick. After training, Ludwig sometimes had to help me out of the boat. When I didn’t manage to connect the cable to the Triumph tachometer first time, I very quickly lost patience. Ludwig sat beside me, eating almond cake. His father fried pancakes for dinner, and Ludwig looked happy. Vera sometimes ate three or even four pancakes to make sure Ludwig ate at least five. She looked happy too. I drank water and ate Ryvita topped with slices of apple. As soon as Ludwig was asleep I rode home—even if the light was on in the workshop.
Twins Page 7
