Sand

by Wolfgang Herrndorf

  After Canisades asked to see the bodies for the fourth or fifth time and then finally jangled his car key again, the old man suddenly changed his strategy, put a puzzled look on his face and tried now to express surprise at the ineptitude of the police. Four days. He had waited four days! Rats came, the sun was burning, so obviously he buried the dead. While the other one off in the desert, like he said … where he, too, was beaten to death … otherwise he would have returned. The gold son, the silver son, light of his old age.

  “But you buried one? Show me the grave.”

  Tears ran down the old man’s face. He crumpled to the ground, repeating in other words what he had already said ten times before, and Canisades didn’t have to think for too long as to why the fellah was blathering so horribly: obviously he had not only lost track of the one son in the desert, but also had no idea where he had buried the other one. Either that… or he hadn’t buried him.

  He spoke so persistently about money not being any or much of a consolation for his pain and whatever other nonsense, that Canisades finally gave up on seeing a body and asked to see ID or birth certificates for both sons, because he had a feeling they did not exist.

  With great confidence, the old man led Canisades into the smaller of the two huts and showed him an array of written and printed pieces of paper. Canisades was able to decipher some dubious letters, bottle labels, recipes and a TV magazine. The man was illiterate.

  Except for a path down the middle, the entire hut was knee-deep in junk, and it smelled worse of alcohol than the owner. The fellah finally pulled a photo out of a little box and handed it to Canisades: the souk in Tindirma and a confused mass of people. A peddler in front of a primitive wooden stand full of bottles, glasses, carafes, canisters. Not far from the peddler, two small children. The large, blackened thumb of the old man trembled as it hovered above the three figures. Me. My son. My other son. Dead and gone.

  Both children in the picture were wearing girls’ clothing and their faces were soft and feminine. The old man looked a bit like himself.

  “Birth certificates,” repeated Canisades.

  The emotional anguish returned, but instead of any official papers the only thing that turned up in the end was a foul-smelling straw sack that had supposedly been the boys’ bed.

  What gave the fellah credibility was that he reeked of alcohol and blathered on about sins. It was unlikely that an old bootlegger would invite the police onto his property for nothing. Nobody would voluntarily bring the police in here. The old man’s despair was probably real, and the fact that two of his children had disappeared was within the realm of possibilities. But did that really mean they were dead? Had they ever existed? Perhaps, thought Canisades with a look at the photo, the girlish sons disappeared or died years ago, and it was only in the old man’s alcohol-pickled brain that they occasionally lingered on, turned up again and disappeared all over again. Final-stage Korsakow.

  “Shall we have a look at the barn?” Canisades suggested in order to cut things short. As expected, the old man balked. He didn’t want to show him the barn at any cost. With that, the case was closed. It wasn’t clear whether there had been a crime; but if there had been one it was obviously what Canisades had suspected from the start: one of the two golden boys had killed the other and run off into the desert. It was no great loss. He wasn’t motivated to pursue any punishment.

  “No body, no murder,” he said, citing the textbook. “As long as you don’t know where you buried your boys, there are no boys. And as long as you don’t find any bodies here, kindly avoid calling the police again. Otherwise we’ll take a look at what you’re brewing up there in the barn, got it?”

  “There, that’s where I buried him, there!” yelled the old man, pointing hopelessly out of the window. Somewhere there, somewhere nearby, not far away, one could look around. His finger trembled, and a shadow scurried past the window. The old man’s eyes were far too weak to notice the shadow, and Canisades had his back to the window. The shadow moved toward Canisades’ car, stood there and then ducked.

  40

  The Invisible Royal Brigade

  Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.

  NABOKOV

  AMADOU HAD HIDDEN in the Salt Quarter for two days, then the bulldozers showed up. He lived on the street, slept on the beach, he was starving. Going back to Tindirma, where he had last lived and where he had shot four people, was the riskiest and stupidest move he could make, but he soon didn’t know what else to do.

  He reached the road early in the morning and marched easily along. But he had overestimated his own strength. His bare feet hurt, thirst tortured him with every step. When he saw in the distance a large building and several small ones, he crept toward them. At first the property seemed deserted. He was unable to find a spring. Staggering from one hut to the other, he came across an old fellah stretched out on the ground as if he were dead. One eye glazed over, white. But his chest rose and fell. Amadou didn’t dare wake the man. Next to his head sat a canister. Amadou quickly grabbed it, took two gulps and then spat it out. Hard liquor.

  Coughing and gasping, he rummaged around the rest of the buildings and the barn, and since he didn’t find water anywhere, he tried in the end to slake his thirst from the canister. He figured it would work in small sips. It didn’t. It burned horribly.

  He found a few barrels, a ladder and a broken pulley block. Above him a hatch to the attic. He was just trying to figure out how he could get up there when he heard a sound in the distance.

  Peering out of a crack in the wooden wall, he saw a car approaching from the road. It passed only a few meters from his hiding spot and stopped in front of the huts. The driver (light-gray suit, tidy appearance) got out, and shortly later Amadou saw him talking to the fellah. They got to the point immediately. The old man fell to his knees in front of the driver and Amadou heard the word “money”. Again and again the old man assailed the driver, again and again the talk turned to money and compensation. Finally they disappeared into one of the huts. Nothing happened. The driver’s side door of the car was standing open.

  Amadou waited for a little while, then crept to the car and into the driver’s seat. The key wasn’t in the ignition. He tried to rip off the housing around the ignition lock with his fingernails, then froze when he thought he heard voices. He jumped into the back seat, ducked and covered his head with a sweater that was lying there. Then the voices died down again. He cowered there for a few minutes. Then he anxiously lifted his head and began to search the car. He pulled a few things out from under the driver’s seat. Some wire, a pencil, a bottle of water. He drank the water, carefully broke the pencil into two pieces of equal size, twisted the ends of the wire around the two pieces of the pencil and wrapped them tightly. He tested the contraption by pulling on the two halves of the pencil. It made a sound like a guitar being strummed.

  “… but I can’t do anything on my own. Don’t blather at me, light of your life, sun of your winter years! I believe you, I believe you! And the experts will be notified today, I promise. Our special unit for complications… colleagues of the highest level of competence, the Invisible Royal Brigade. They’ll find the grave, no question. They always find everything, and then they’ll do a full investigation. Without a body we can’t do a thing. And your other son, that’ll be thoroughly checked out, yeah… of course, on my mother. Do you think I’m telling you nonsense? You’re not telling me nonsense, I’m not telling you nonsense, that is my understanding… no, of course not! They’re called that because they’re secret, not because they’re invisible. Nobody is invisible! But you’ll see, they’ll be here soon, and everything will get cleared up. And it goes without saying that you must not speak to anyone about this. Now stop licking my boots… on Allah, on my mother, on anything you want! Go away. God in heaven.”<
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  Canisades got into the car, started the engine and headed for the road without glancing back at the old man with the alcohol-blasted brain kneeling in the dust. The wretched stench of hard alcohol hung in the car as if his clothes or the car had absorbed the odor during the short amount of time there, which was hardly possible. A phantom smell. But he didn’t think about it too much. And a minute later he was dead.

  41

  A Yellow Mercedes with Black Upholstery

  Ben Trane. I don’t trust him. He likes people, and you can never count on a man like that.

  ROBERT ALDRICH,

  Vera Cruz

  MICHELLE WAS LYING in the bed in her room on the sixth floor of the Sheraton Hotel and sobbing. Even though the bungalow had more than enough space for three people, Helen had insisted on putting her up in the main building, and Michelle, who knew what that meant, was in her heart of hearts relieved. Her farewell to Africa was now also a farewell to Helen, the end of their in any case never really existent friendship. The final humiliation came when her kindergarten friend counted out the exact fare for the airport taxi and gave it to her, and Michelle, who some might have said lacked a few things but certainly sensitivity and intuition were not among them, no longer doubted Helen’s real motivation: jealousy. Raging jealousy. Helen wanted the handsome Arab man to herself. She could have him. Michelle wasn’t interested any more.

  While they slowly began to decompress, and in the relaxed lethargy that followed the crying fit that lasted for over an hour, Helen and Carl found themselves headed toward Tindirma. Right up until they reached the edge of the desert, they debated who should enter the commune and make inquiries. Helen won the argument. Michelle’s last words tipped the scale. They were very distrustful of outsiders, even more so since recent events, and the atmosphere was so bad that an Arabic-looking man like Carl would probably not even be granted entry. Helen, on the other hand, was at least known as her friend, and obviously it would be best if she herself went with her, but she knew, this horrible place… not for anything in the world. Not to mention that her flight was already booked for the next day, and so on and so forth. She was sorry. Wild horses couldn’t drag her there.

  In the end she had asked Helen to bring a number of things she had forgotten at the commune, and Helen tossed the scrap of paper with the list on it in the waste basket as they left, saying she could manage to keep two and a half things in her head without a note.

  Out in the desert the day was hotter than it had ever been. Carl tried rolling up his window to keep out the hot wind. But it didn’t help. A mirage made the kissing camels look as if they were floating above a sky-blue lake.

  “There’s something over there,” said Carl looking to the left, and Helen asked whether he wanted to get out.

  “I don’t know.”

  She let the car roll to a stop.

  While Carl climbed up the dunes, knee-deep in sand, Helen re-did her ponytail while holding the hairband in her mouth. She saw the stumbling figure reach the highest point of the dune, put a hand to his forehead and shrug his shoulders. Carl wasn’t sure whether he saw anything. In the far distance a light-gray spot hovered in the air, probably a rock outcropping made to look as if it was moving by the fluttering heat. Endless desert all around. On the horizon a few dark points which Carl recognized as the barn and huts where all this misery had begun. The urge to go there again alternated with the urge to get back to the car as quickly as possible. For a moment Carl thought the light-gray spot was actually moving now… but then he heard the horn of the pickup and he went back.

  Helen parked the pickup in the small street in front of the commune, right by the big gate. Carl watched from the passenger seat as she crossed the courtyard, knocked on the interior door and was let in by a young woman with long hair.

  He waited. The heat in the car was unbearable, and after a while that seemed to him an eternity, he got out and bought a bottle of water in a little shop nearby, without ever taking his eyes off the gate of the commune for even a second. He continued to wait. Finally he knocked on the door of the commune.

  Nobody answered it, but higher up in the building a hatch opened and a dark-skinned woman with short hair told him it would take a while. Helen wants you to know it’s going to take a while longer. Ed was taking a nap, and they had only talked before, and now they were talking in the room of the ouz… and what did he want anyway? No, that’s not possible. There was no way they could let him in, and could he please leave the courtyard, it’s not public property, they didn’t like people in the yard, and by the way why was the gate open? He should shut it behind him.

  The hatch closed.

  Carl waited a few seconds and then knocked again.

  “Can you get Helen for a second?”

  The shadow of a woman behind the window making defensive gestures. Nothing happened. He called Helen’s name, he walked around the courtyard. Finally he got back into the Honda, searched for a pen and paper and wrote to Helen that he had tried to no avail to get into the commune and was now going to have a look around the nearby streets. He put the note on the driver’s seat, looked at it for a second and added an arrow, just to be sure, indicating what direction he was heading: Down the little alley and past the bread, oranges and pottery.

  Due to the heat the street wasn’t very busy. It smelled of fresh-baked goods, it smelled of oranges, and the potter and his assistants were discussing the Olympic question. A beggar was asleep in the gutter. A peddler hosed the remains of fruit and vegetables from the sidewalk, and his cheerful, even-tempered face took on an air of put-on anger as he turned the hose on a group of children creeping toward him in water-soaked shirts. A pregnant woman stood nearby looking as happy and beautiful as the evening. A boy talked with an invisible dog.

  Carl made his way down the street toward the mosque, walking alongside parked cars. Now and then he turned to glance behind him. He felt uneasy. Heavily veiled women looked down, and the grilles of the parked cars stared at him like cross-eyed rabbits, emotionless insects, glasses-wearing intellectuals and bureaucratic meat-eaters. Fish-mouthed chrome-flashing Citroëns with pneumatic suspensions gleamed next to old street-beaters with peeling paint. Lilac, mustard-yellow, pink. Carl blinked and grabbed his head. At the end of the row of parked cars a jug-eared Mercedes whose back rear tire sat atop a crushed soda can. It was a green can with white writing: 7Up. Ants swarmed into the triangular opening. The muezzin called. On the right, men sat in a café rattling dominoes. On the left, backgammon was being played: “And then we turn the plate around and rinse it from the other side, and we repeat that seven times.”

  A peddler squawked the price per kilo.

  “Come on. Come here, have a look, don’t be shy, look what I have, take a look, lookie-lookie, come on, step right up, check it out, check it out, have a look, no, no, get out of here, yes, come here, yes, yes, come on over, yes, have a look, have a look.”

  Without realizing what he was doing, Carl had stopped. He felt a strange sensation in his head and ran his hand over his seven-day stubble. When after a while he snapped out of his thoughts, he noticed that he had been staring for several minutes at a shop window. He focused his gaze and saw a man puttering around inside. It was the window of a barber shop.

  On an impulse he went into the shop, sat down on one of the upholstered chairs and asked for a shave. A hot, moist towel landed on his neck. The barber was a small, nimble man and as he scraped Carl’s whiskers away he talked, the very cliché of his profession.

  Carl didn’t listen, and when now and then he did catch something it seemed to be about some criminal case. He stared at his own image in the mirror, and his image stared back at him with a look of concentration bordering on emptiness. A criminal case and its complexities. Carl closed his eyes and saw the green soda can in his mind’s eye, beneath the car tire, only he didn’t see it the way he had during his walk but rather from the other side, and in the manner of a photograph: square, reduced in size and secured i
n the photo album of his mind with bright-colored tape.

  The barber told him to take it easy. Carl grabbed both arms of the chair and then yelled at the man to be quiet and put his hands over his eyes. A soda can beneath the rear tire in a photo with slightly rounded edges… it wasn’t a photo. It couldn’t be a photo. The top and bottom of the image weren’t parallel. A trapezoid-shaped image with rounded edges and the sharply defined image of a soda can beneath a car tire. What the hell was it?

  “And ever since he’d been on the run,” the barber continued unfazed. “And if you ask me—turn to the left, please. If you ask me, he had help, from the top. A police transporter like that is no cardboard box. A friend of mine saw him in the Empty Quarter! He was crossing the street… nearly finished, sir. I asked why he didn’t do anything. And do you know what he said? He said what do I care about the Nasrani. So I said, I get it, but what you didn’t think of is that there’s a reward, and then he said, four Nasrani, he said, the reward could never be large enough to get me involved with that… that’s no argument, I said, there’s four less, so you might as well take the reward, gone is gone, dead is dead, I said, and then he said…” said the barber and then he said no more. The straight razor in his hand hung in the air for a few seconds above the upholstered chair, which was now empty. A coin jingled into the sink and a towel hung weightlessly in the open doorway for a split second, thrown by Carl over his shoulder as he ran out; then it fell to the floor.