I was thinking this when I realised that it was almost dark. This was a shock. I was suddenly afraid of the mountains, but the next moment I didn’t care, and when I realised that things weren’t looking all that bad, I was even disappointed: I’d been charging up the mountain in a straight line, never turning right or left, so it would be easy to find my way back to the guesthouse. I turned around and walked down the mountain through the darkness. Several times I stumbled, because I was exhausted and because I wasn’t wearing hiking boots, only running shoes, which didn’t have enough grip. I ended up with bruises, and a scratch on my face, and I felt like an idiot for having timed this walk so badly and set out so ill-equipped, but my life was in no danger and part of me thought that a shame. I reached the guesthouse in safety but was so exhausted that I lay down on the bed fully clothed and immediately fell asleep.
In the mirror the next morning, I saw grazes on my right cheek, fine lines scabbed over red. The face of a murderer, I thought—but why should a murderer look like that? I took the bus into a nearby town and bought myself hiking boots, map, knife, rucksack, lunch box and torch, and a fleece jacket, too, because it was colder than I had expected. At midday I set off again. A desolate sky swelled above me; tattered clouds, grey and blue and dark grey, chased across it, wild and turbulent. I thought largely about the same things as yesterday. In the evening I sat alone in the snug; I was the only guest. An old woman brought me home-cooked food and bottled beer. The furniture was made of a wood that was almost black. On one wall hung a crucifix, on another a round plaque cut from a tree trunk, with folksy handpainted lettering. Every good gift is from above, it said. A green-tiled stove was roaring in the corner. When I sat next to it, it wasn’t long before I began to sweat, but as soon as I moved away I felt the cold. So I moved back and forth, and tried to concentrate on a novel. When the old woman took my plate, she didn’t say a word, and that was fine by me.
Because I was awake at five the following day, I went to the cowshed and watched the old woman and her husband milking the cows. After breakfast I set off again. I thought of turning myself in, accepting the punishment I deserved and atoning. But what would be gained? My children would lose their father, my wife her husband, and all three would be left without support. They would have to sell the flat and might still be in debt even then. And there was no guarantee that my father would be released. He had supplied the murder weapon and was an accomplice; he wouldn’t get off without punishment. I would, it was true, be able to atone at last for the crime I had committed, but in my situation that would be selfish. It might ease my conscience, but it would harm my family—and my father is where he is today because he sees everything the way I do. The rubber soles of my boots crunched on the scree. I could hear my breathing—nothing else. There was a light rain. I felt all right, up there in the mountains.
Every day I continued to walk through the autumn landscape. I left my phone at the guesthouse and listened to my voicemail when I returned in the late afternoon. A few business calls and, without fail, my wife and children. On the second or third day, I stopped returning business calls, and then I stopped calling my family back. I watched the milking in the cowshed every morning; I would have liked to help, but the old people turned down my offer. As soon as it got light, I set off into the mountains, whatever the weather. I walked briskly, didn’t meet a soul, and when I was hungry I sat down on a log to eat my lunch. I chewed smoked sausages, ate a roll, drank some milk and went on my way.
My thoughts often touched on Dieter Tiberius. I had hoped that the murder—the manslaughter—would do away with him, but now his ghost was breathing down my neck. I compared his life with mine, compared our fathers, who had presumably made all the difference. His had left and mine had stayed—eccentric, but present. Staying is a big deal, I thought, because leaving is a big deal. I swore there and then never to leave my own family, but the virtuous feeling it gave me was yet another instance of my smug self-satisfaction, my cheap complacency.
I wondered, too, whether I had ended up shooting because of the home I came from, because shooting was something I was more or less born with.
‘You see, it is your genes,’ Rebecca would say.
‘No,’ I would reply. ‘It’s not my genes. My father never shot anyone. He doesn’t have it in him. He’s not a murderer. He can’t—won’t. He’s harmless. It was me,’ I would continue. ‘I had the choice and it was my decision.’
But I had stopped speaking to Rebecca. Every afternoon I lay on the bed, which was too short for me, and brooded—and if the phone rang I looked at the display to see who it was, but I didn’t answer. I put it on mute, fell asleep, woke up and saw the vibrating phone working its way across the bedside table. I sat up, saw that it was Rebecca and lay down again. The phone was dragging itself towards the edge like a wounded animal. I wanted to pick it up, but I felt paralysed. If I took hold of it, I would have to speak into it, but I couldn’t say what I had to say. It fell to the floor. I heard it buzz twice more, then there was quiet. I lay in bed until suppertime. Could I stay longer than the week I had originally planned? I asked the old woman that evening. No trouble at all, she said.
The weather worsened: gales, the first snow. I went out every day all the same, even if only for an hour. The rest of the time I lay in bed or hung around the yard and the cowshed. When I got back from walking on the tenth day, Rebecca was sitting in the snug.
‘Randolphrandolphrandolph,’ she said, ‘I know you’re in a bad way, but we need you at home.’
The next day I flew back to Berlin with her. I was a little frightened that I would again begin to feel I couldn’t impose myself on this overwrought city, but it didn’t happen. I coped tolerably well for the first few days, and after that Berlin was once again my city. Normality set in, post-Tiberius normality.
But the words I have to say are still missing. I am ready. I just haven’t decided yet whether to give Rebecca this account or to talk to her some time, when we’re out walking the dog, perhaps. I suppose it doesn’t make much difference. What matters is that she soon finds out who it is she is living with. I have thought of combining the news, which might come as a shock to my wife, with some other, more pleasant announcement. I’ll tell her that I am almost ready to design and build a home for my family. She would like a house, and I will make her wish come true.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I should like to thank Thomas Ante and Friedhelm Haas.
The menus in this book come from Berlin restaurants Tim Raue, Reinstoff and Vau.
Fear Page 20
