It’s Thursday. After work you get into the car and drive toward Berlin. You had a premonition this time. Like a scratch in your throat. After you woke up you drank coffee and sensed the change. As if the wind had turned. You spent the day in the usual rhythm, you’d even gone jogging for an hour after work, and it was only then that you set off.
Just before Berlin you leave the highway and stop at a gas station. You eat a baguette with smoked salmon standing at a table and talk to the cashier. You learn that her husband doesn’t want to see the children anymore, and that fourteen years after the wall came down hardly anything has gotten better and lots of things have gotten worse. But the cashier smiles when she says that. You like her optimism. She gives you an openness that she hopes will be reciprocated. You smile back and then you laugh together and you drive on.
Only when you’ve passed Fennried do you realize how small the village is. You turn around and drive back. One minute twenty-six seconds from one end to the other. Half the streetlights don’t work. It’s nine in the evening and almost all the windows are in darkness. The light of a television flickers here and there.
You drive through the village a third time. The wind tries to push your car off the road. You lower the driver’s window and enjoy the cold. You stop by a derelict farm and wait. A strange car in a tiny village on a desolate winter’s day. The snow starts enfolding you. The lights in the windows go out. It’s a bit like that night when you were stuck in the traffic jam. Calm. Solitude. And it reminds you a little of the silence of the motel. Both times you surprised yourself. You knew your potential, but be honest, you didn’t know what you were really capable of. Your new knowledge gives you a feeling of certainty now. As if a racing car knew its own strength.
Shortly after one o’clock you get out of the car and walk up to the first house.
What are you looking for? What makes you kill? Is there a medical background to it? A tumor, perhaps, pressing against your cerebral lobe? A sickness that makes you bare your teeth? Did you learn it from somebody? Did somebody take you by the hand and show you that killing is liberating? Is it liberating? Is that why you’re on the road? Are you looking for salvation, purification, absolution? Is it instinct? Is it desire?
Even though the shutters are down over all the windows and terraces, most of the doors are unlocked. You go from house to house. You ring the doorbell if necessary. Sometimes a dog barks at you, and sometimes there’s a chain on the door. You’re always polite and friendly. They let you in, you kill them quickly and efficiently. Most of the people who live here are pensioners. You happen upon two women under fifty. One is a nurse, the other a retired doctor. The doctor’s bell is surrounded by dried flowers and her door is the only one that opens at the first ring.
A village, thirty-eight houses, fifty-nine inhabitants.
You don’t leave a single soul alive.
The house smells horribly of rotten meat, and you wonder where the stench is coming from. The kitchen is surprisingly clean, even the floor has been mopped, while the living room is a rubbish dump. The sofa is shoved across the floor, there are toppled chairs, broken crockery, and vomit on the floor. The table is scattered with colored straws, drink cans, and plates with dried-on leftover food. There’s white dust in the cracks and you assume it’s heroin. It looks very much as if there’s been a party here.
“Looks like they had a party,” says Leo.
“That’s what I thought,” you say.
Leo points outside.
“I thought we might sit in the fresh air.”
The table on the terrace is laid. Leo has fetched pastries, coffee, and rolls from the bakery. There are napkins beside the plates. Leo knows what you like. Even if the situation doesn’t call for it, you want to maintain a clear line. Your men must not think anything’s different just because your brother is sitting dead in the basement and the merchandise is gone.
Tanner and David are already seated. David has opened his notebook. Leo pours the coffee. If your brother came out right now and asked who wanted freshly squeezed orange juice, everything would be the same as ever.
“Have you got a connection?”
David turns the display to face you. Tanner comes around the table with Leo. The picture is in color. Your brother always loved these electronic toys. The cameras are hidden in various places around the rooms, the picture definition is pin-sharp and vivid. You know some private porn movies have been made with them. Your brother knew no shame. Motion detectors activate the cameras as soon as someone walks through the picture. A two-terabyte hard drive collects the movies. David says he doesn’t know how full the drive is, and how many days back the recordings go, but he’s going to look into it.
“Show us the basement,” says Tanner.
David zaps through the rooms—kitchen, living room, for a moment you see yourselves sitting on the terrace, the downstairs bathroom, the upstairs bathroom, bedroom, loft, garage, and finally the vaulted basement. You see the swimming pool and the boy staring at it as if the pool were an oracle. He hasn’t moved from his chair. This is not going to take long, you think and are about to set the notebook aside so that you can have breakfast in peace, when Tanner jumps in.
“Go back one.”
David clicks back one. You see the garage. Tanner exhales noisily.
“I think we’ve got a new problem.”
You see what he means.
“Where are his cars?” you ask, surprised.
“The Mercedes is in the workshop,” says David. “Oskar dropped it off last week, he said the electronics had gone nuts.”
“And the Range Rover?”
Nobody answers. You stare at the deserted garage.
“People, where’s the fucking Range Rover?”
“I don’t know,” says David.
“Call the workshop and find out.”
David starts to get up, he’s overzealous.
“What are you doing?” Tanner asks him.
“I thought—”
“Sit down and let’s have breakfast. The boy is more important right now.”
David sits down again and pushes the notebook to the end of the table so that he can keep an eye on it. Leo asks if anybody wants the croissant. Tanner shares it with him. You try to concentrate on the food. You can’t get your brother’s face out of your head. His frozen gaze. You know that gaze. You’d recognize it anywhere.
He looked so surprised.
“Any idea why Oskar is sitting frozen in the basement with a stupid remote control in his hand?”
Of course no one knows what’s happened here. It makes you uneasy. If the boy weren’t in the basement, you would immediately check the recordings from the last few days yourself. It’s your job to know everything, to have everything under control. What did you miss? You assumed the girl would listen to you. You should have been able to predict all possible deviations. Right now the boy in the basement is your only hope of shedding some light on this mystery.
You look at your watch.
The boy has only nineteen minutes left.
Time has always been important to you. For years time was a barbed-wire fence put up by your father, which enclosed your family on five days out of seven and separated you from the outside world. The fence opened at weekends, and normal life returned. In this normal life you met your father after eight unsuspecting years.
Do you remember what it was like running through the streets at fifteen? Do you remember how everything felt transient and how you lived with the fear that there would be nothing afterward? That only the Now existed, and everything had to be savored before it was too late?
You lived for the weekends, because those two days meant freedom. No one talked about where your father disappeared to during that time. Oskar asked once, and your mother pressed her forefinger to her lips as if that answered all the questions. You saw the sadness in her eyes and understood that she was no different from you—your mother endured everything too, and didn’t know what was going
on around her. Over the years your pity turned into raw rage. A mother has no right to be unsuspecting. She should protect her children. She should know what happened.
On the weekends you disappeared from home without explanation, just like your father. You were fifteen and no longer believed that he was accomplishing secret missions or working for the army. You tried to think about him as little as possible. You spent the night with friends in Bremen and existed in another reality. You drank, you smoked weed, you watched a load of bad videos and just waited to be eighteen so that you could disappear entirely from your old life.
And then he crossed your path.
How surprised you must have been when you were standing in line at the baker’s one Sunday morning after partying all night and you saw your father walking past the window. Your reaction was spontaneous. You charged out of the bakery and stared after him. There was nothing special about your father walking past you. Not even in Bremen, had it not been for the little boy on his right-hand side and the woman on his left. The boy was holding your father’s hand, the woman had linked arms with him.
Not your mother, not your brother.
It was only when they had disappeared around the corner that you set off running, you followed them four streets to an apartment block. You saw them going down the hall to the backyard. The boy ran ahead, the woman followed your father. You stood in the yard and watched their silhouettes moving up the stairs to the third floor.
The following week was like all weeks. The nightmare of your lives didn’t change, although that was exactly what you had expected. You were sure your father would see through you.
Nothing happened.
For five days you gritted your teeth.
On Friday night you left the apartment, on Saturday morning you were on hold, watching the windows of the apartment block.
The boy, the woman, your father.
You just wanted to catch a glimpse of the three of them together. You lied ruthlessly to yourself on this point, but that was okay, because the situation was unfamiliar. If something is unfamiliar you have to observe it, your father taught you. You didn’t know what you wanted, you just knew it would hurt in the end.
When they left the house, you were standing on the opposite side of the street. Your father was so different. You saw him laughing, you saw him stroking the boy’s head, then kissing the woman. Lovingly.
Your father wasn’t your father.
You had to look away.
Outside the cinema and opposite Burger King, outside a bookshop, a flower shop, outside the supermarket and the butcher’s. You followed them everywhere and all the way back to the block. You were starving and thirsty, but you didn’t drink or eat. You knew it would distract you. From your fury and helplessness, which raged inside you like competing forces, sending out waves of darkness.
Hour after hour.
Only when midnight approached and all the lights went out on the third floor did you turn away and run to a friend. You slept fitfully, and took up your post again at seven o’clock on Sunday morning.
The apartment block was waking up.
You knew they would be having breakfast and talking now, that the radio was on and the toaster was spitting out toast. One more Sunday in your life. You were so lonely that you started crying.
At half past twelve the woman left the house with the boy.
You retreated to the street. You didn’t want them to see you in the courtyard. As they walked past you the boy said, “And what if we have the ice cream first?”
The woman laughed and walked on with the boy.
The hall smelled of fresh paint and sisal. On every landing there was a rubber tree, the windows were clean, nothing looked threadbare. You climbed the three flights of stairs and had a choice of two doors.
On the left lived F. Hommer. On the right, in curly letters on a brass plate, was the name Desche. You ran your fingers over your surname and thought: So this is where I live.
It took you ten minutes before you could ring the bell.
He was wearing a white shirt and blue linen trousers. He was barefoot and looked like someone who had just come from the beach. You had never seen your father barefoot before. In one hand he held a newspaper, in the other a ballpoint pen. You couldn’t look him in the eye. You studied him as if he were a headless creature. The way his toes contracted for a moment. The way the newspaper in his hand trembled. You noticed the wedding ring and you imagined him taking his old ring off every time he left you, and swapping it for this one. You wondered how easy it must be for him to switch from one family to the other. And why? That was the question that wouldn’t let you go.
Why?
“Ragnar?”
Even his voice sounded different. Smaller, more insignificant. A voice without threat or danger. Just a voice. And you still couldn’t look him in the eye.
“Christ, boy,” he said, and took a step backward.
Perhaps it was an invitation, perhaps it wasn’t, but anyway you marched past him into the apartment. Shoulders hunched, fists clenched. The door fell shut. The sound of bare feet on the wooden floor. He touched your shoulder. His words were brittle.
“This must come as a bit of a surprise.”
He’s nervous, you thought, and wanted to ask so many questions, wanted to fire so many accusations at him, but you couldn’t do it, because your instincts took over. His hand on your shoulder. Danger. You didn’t even turn around. Your elbow slammed into his side. When your father doubled up, you grabbed him by the hair and threw him down the hallway. He crashed against one of the cupboards. Two of the doors flew open, some games fell out, a yellow tennis ball rolled over the floor. Your father was gasping. Before he could get up again, you twisted his right arm behind his back. You were your father’s son, he had drilled you, you knew what needed to be done. A bit of pressure was all it took and he was standing on tiptoes, his feet squeaked on the floorboards as you pushed him into the living room. Big sofa with matching armchairs, a television set with the sound turned down, a balcony. You wanted to throw him over the balcony. You wanted to hit him with the television. You had so many questions.
You let go of him.
He fell and lay on the floor, he held his arm and didn’t say a word as you stood over him and still couldn’t look him in the eye. Your breathing didn’t quicken, you weren’t even nervous, only one mad question made you uneasy.
What if this is his real life and I don’t really exist?
His eyes tirelessly sought your gaze, while you had been staring at his chest, the way it rose and fell as he breathed heavily in and out. You wanted to reach in and tear out his rotten heart and ask him how he could do that to you all. He knew what you were thinking, he said, “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I don’t want to understand,” you heard yourself saying, and as you said it you knew it was the truth. Sometimes any explanations are unnecessary, you learned that day. Since then the following thought has stayed with you:
Some actions are inexcusable.
Then your father attacked you.
You can afford quiet moments of naïveté when you’re lying in bed at seventy-five being spoiled by a twenty-year-old girl. Then you can be naïve and unprotected. Then you can close your eyes and believe in the good in people. Then. But not in front of your father. Not there.
He was so quick on his feet that you had no time to register that his weakness was put on to make you drop your guard. One hand grabbed you by the throat, the other arm came across your chest at an angle. He rammed you against the wall like that, once, twice, one of the pictures fell down and shattered on the floor. Your father’s eyes were slits. You knew and feared that look. Your ego shrank away, your legs turned to jelly and wouldn’t hold you upright.
What had you been thinking? Were you trying to be a judge? So your father led another life, he cheated on your mother and lived in an apartment that was ten times better furnished than yours was. So what? Have you forgotten who this is? Father
and teacher and tormentor. He can do as he pleases. He is God, he is the world, he is the air, and if he wants he can take your breath and snuff you out.
He grinned into your face and your fear went up in flames and all those years under your father’s fist flowed into that single moment. He shouldn’t have grinned. Your knee came up and thumped into his belly. You knocked his hand away, your fist met his Adam’s apple. He staggered backward, unable to breathe, but he didn’t let go of you, he tried to drag you to the ground. If he goes down, he’s taking me with him. You kicked his legs away, his grip loosened, he slid along the wall and landed on his back. The sound of the impact echoed noisily around the room. Your father’s face turned crimson. He was looking at you the whole time, and there was this surprised expression on his face. It was the same look you would see years later after you’d lifted Oscar’s eyelid. The same question after the why. There was something in your father’s eyes, a very particular depth that you hadn’t noticed before. A heavy, rattling breath left his chest and he lay still. You kept your distance and looked at him. Anything was possible. That he was bluffing again; that he was no longer alive.
That he knows what I’m thinking?
Even that.
You bent carefully over him, again there was that rattling breath, then silence. Your father’s mouth gaped open and stayed open. You waited for his next breath.
Nothing.
You brought your face close to his, something looked up at you from the darkness of his eyes, something moved toward you. You held his gaze, you weren’t afraid—not of the darkness, not of your father. Then that something disappeared, your father’s gaze broke and dimmed. His last breath hit you.
Coffee, dust, something rotten, something sour.
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