Maybe This Time

by Alois Hotschnig

I covered the mirror and burrowed into bed under the towels I had dampened to cool my skin. Like everything else in the room, I too was draped in sheets, and I tried to remember how things could have come to this.

  It worked, or at least I thought it did. I remembered a story, my story, at least I thought it was. And the calmer I became by thinking about this story, the more sharply the pain returned, and I was pleased to be forced into alertness. The pain would pass, and I tried to distract myself by concentrating on this thought, which worked for a while, until I noticed that everything I remembered vanished the moment I thought of it, vanished permanently, as if it had never happened, as if I had never experienced it. As soon as I remembered something, I seemed to forget it. No matter what I thought. The last few hours. How I came here. There was an answer, which appeared like a familiar face in a crowd, but it immediately disappeared and was as strange as all the others.

  The letter, I thought. What has been written can’t disappear. The sealed envelope was on the table next to yesterday’s notes.

  I didn’t recognize a thing. Among the sentence fragments that had been cut and reassembled without apparent rhyme or reason, the words origin and downfall appeared again and again. Origin and downfall, sometimes crossed out and rewritten, or one replacing the other.

  There was no address on the envelope. I held it up to the light and could just make out some writing on the paper inside.

  They can come, it said. They can come and get me.

  The courtyard in front of the house was, in fact, a public square, I now realized, surrounded by iron railings, the paving stones bright and baking in the sun. Mothers sat on the benches. Their children ran from the shade under the trees out into the warm sunshine and back again. The window opened at the first touch and the cool breeze soothed my skin.

  On one of the benches I noticed a girl who looked familiar. So did the dog licking her hand. I had already met them.

  Who was to come and get me? To go where?

  I didn’t dare open the letter and decided to look only at the notes on the table, but first I made sure that the door was still locked.

  They can come. They won’t find me.

  I picked random notes from the piles of paper, and the sentences on them seemed to be written just as randomly. They were unintelligible paragraphs in which I tried to defend or justify myself, though why it was impossible to tell, at least for the moment.

  No one can escape themselves, I read, there is no escape from one’s self, and I heard myself laugh in a voice that was not mine. I had escaped from myself long before.

  These sentences were no help, yet some stuck with me. I couldn’t get them out of my head. It was as if they might explain what had happened. But they didn’t. I am preparing my departure. I am leaving my name to the lies.

  Next to the bed was a sheet and I pulled it over the sentences with a movement that was not mine. I hadn’t left, and the sentences couldn’t be trusted. Nor could the noise that had been coming from the next room for some time now.

  The door to that room was not completely shut, I now noticed, and a draught moved the door, opening and closing a gap. In that room, too, everything was draped in white.

  No one knew I was there and I wanted it to stay that way, so I shut the door. The knob was pleasantly cool in my hand.

  At this point I also became aware of a smell that had not caught my attention before, even though it was a strong one and permeated everything. It was the smell of the elderly, of medicine.

  Into whose story had I fallen, I wondered. The story had as little to do with me as the smell. Just as I didn’t fit here, so nothing here fit me, except for the notes, and I had no idea what I should do with them. I had covered them like everything else. The sentences were not to be trusted. These are the facts, they said, there is evidence against me and who will believe me, no one. Protestations followed reproaches, all sorts of claims that meant nothing to me, suppositions and self-incrimination, paragraphs rendered unintelligible.

  Next door, the floor creaked.

  Encounter

  It raised its head and froze in this posture as if to threaten an enemy, then resumed its march again. Its carapace gleamed in the sun. Its pincers snapped audibly on nothing. Occasionally it would grip a stalk of sturdier grass with them and, as if searching for a better view of its surroundings, it would hoist itself up, only to let itself drop once it had reached the top of the stalk or the upper side of a leaf, and lay motionless on the ground. It would remain almost completely immobile for a while, then suddenly continue on its way with a violent start, or it would circle around the next stalk and burrow its head in the earth at the base, or it would turn and set off in the opposite direction. Again and again, it would stop dead, perhaps sensing a threat. Then it would struggle on, its body rising and falling, towards a cluster of paving stones set in the grass and leading to a gravel path. The carapace creaked as it scraped the stones, and the animal stumbled and fell onto its back. It jerked itself back onto its feet and crawled into the cooler grass, continuing its march. The struggle seemed to tire the animal since it frequently stopped to lie full length on a stone, and each time it took a bit longer to lift its soft, defenceless underbelly. In one attempt to push itself off a stone, it tumbled over the edge onto the gravel. Its limbs waved in the air. Its underbelly was noticeably lighter than the rest of its body. It rose and fell continuously, swelled and collapsed in on itself. An ant ran across it, briefly touched its face, its jaws, and disappeared under the pebbles. Then the ant returned and crawled over the creature’s face and up to its eyes. The ant gnawed and tore at the eyes. It disappeared again and returned, biting deeper into the creature each time. The creature must have injured itself in the fall, because it was now dragging its left side. And yet, despite this handicap, it moved nimbly over the gravel, which was spread so sparsely in spots that patches of earth, the same colour as the creature, could be seen amongst the rocks. Whenever it reached one of these clearings, it tried to burrow into the ground, but soon gave up and hauled itself along towards the kerbstone from which it had fallen and which it intended to climb over. It did everything it could to get back to the grass, but its little legs foundered on the stone’s smoothness. It laboured almost obsessively along the edge of the path until it found a gap in the kerb through which it could squeeze onto the lawn. There it lay still for a time and began to tend to itself. It ran its antennae carefully over the damaged limbs and brushed them across its mouth. Its mandibles moved back and forth as it crouched and stretched. With a jerk it managed to flop onto one of the stones, but landed on its back. A violent trembling shook its hind legs and spread through its whole body, then abated, growing calmer until it subsided completely. Meanwhile the shovel-like forelegs banged wildly against its head. Its mouth opened and closed ceaselessly, as if begging, and its underbelly collapsed and stayed flat. Its lustre was gone except where the ants were at work. They had come out of the grass in droves and swarmed over its body. The forelegs had stopped banging and hung motionless in the grass. Its mouth was wide open. The ants crawled in and out and made off with their booty. They nibbled and gnawed at the body and hollowed it out until it was light enough. Then they carried the husk away.

  The Light in My Room

  I turned off the light and looked out towards the island. I heard someone calling, but I could not see that far in the darkness. After a while, lights flashed in the reeds, and I could finally make out the man whose voice I had been hearing for hours. From his boat, he shone a light into the reeds, where I now saw something white floating back and forth across the water. It always returned to the circle of light, like a person trying to get to shore. In fact, it was just a piece of cloth, perhaps a vest belonging to one of the children I had seen on the island that afternoon. The man kept shining his light on it, but didn’t pull it out of the water.

  I remembered how they rushed back from the island in their boat, and the minute they set foot on land, they disappeared into their house
s without the usual hue and cry that spread through the area whenever they returned.

  They made their way from a spit of land through the reeds and out to the island. It always took a while before they could be seen again in the undergrowth, since they had become so adept at disappearing into the landscape. Whether any sound from the island reached me depended on the direction of the wind.

  They were a gang of children from the area, not many and not always the same ones. It was hard to say why they were so drawn to the island. They went there often, almost daily, even though access to the island was prohibited, because of the few protected species that nested there.

  They took sticks and poles with them in the boat, and apples, which would end up floating, a few days later, in the water near the reeds.

  They played at being hunters in the reeds. With their sticks and poles, they waded in the mud along the shore, and frightened animals shot out of their holes and escaped out over the lake. Then they rowed to the island, and, depending on the wind, either a slapping beat of oars could be heard, or silence. This silence drew me to the window more often than any of their yelling.

  When they headed back or were on their way over, they made sure they were safe from prying eyes, and if they realized they were being watched, they waved cheerfully and headed off in another direction. There was no use in taking it personally, since everyone here had sneaked onto the island at one time or another.

  The light was still shining in the reeds and the man poked at the water with a hook.

  I drew the curtains, knowing perfectly well what there was to see. The man himself had made sure of that. I thought of him often and in dreams I climbed into his boat and he rowed me out to the island. Now he was at it again. A vest floating in the water, a piece of cloth that had got caught in the reeds or an empty boat trapped in the branches by the shore meant that for days, even weeks, it would be impossible to calm him. For years things had been quiet at the lake, even if the quiet was always only temporary, since there were plenty of opportunities to find things in the water. He had spent those years, growing old, in his boat. He went around the lake for his work, but seemed to be constantly searching in the water, along the shore, in the reeds, on the island. Everyone here thought they knew the real reason for his agitation. And yet, because of his consideration towards the children, many felt he was best left alone.

  He supplied the local inns with fish and sold the rest of his catch in the town nearby. During the day he sat in his boat, and in the evenings he slipped along the shore. At night you could find him in the bars near the harbour or, again, in his boat. He was considerate and polite, but still often rowed past without saying hello, only to draw attention to himself at the next opportunity with an enthusiastic wave. This would be followed by an invitation to join him in his boat. He was so friendly that I, especially as a child, could not refuse and we took many excursions, as he called them. While we were together he would tell me all about his work and what he had caught that day and all that he had seen and done day in, day out, throughout the year and in all the years he had spent fishing on this lake. He talked to me, but seemed absent-minded. Then he would suddenly look at me intently and searchingly, but without ever asking about anything in particular. As we approached the island, he always grew nervous and jumpy. He broke out in a sweat, his shirt sodden, his entire body trembling, his eyes fixed on me. Only the oars kept him steady. His trembling gradually subsided and once again his expression became open, relaxed, even friendly. As if he had noticed my shock, he smiled in embarrassment and ruffled my hair. We turned and rowed back to shore, and yet, as relaxed and open as he appeared to be, he never once took his eyes off me. He seemed to be using me as a means of following his boy’s trail, even finding him. I didn’t want this and tried to avoid him, but couldn’t. Next time he had changed and asked me about school, about my classmates and friends, their likes and dislikes. He wanted to know everything. Occasionally, he managed to convince one or the other of my friends to row out to the island with him, and he would stare at them just as intently, searching for something or maybe just remembering his son, thinking of what he might have looked like now. Whatever the reason, it was as if he had identified and understood something in each of us, so we were glad when our parents forbade us to go near him again.

  He almost always had in his boat one of the children who even now and so many years later still made this area feel less safe. He taught them how to fish, something they willingly took up, and in winter he taught them to ice skate. That way he could spend time with them throughout the year. They weren’t shy with him, and they trusted him. At least they appeared to. They sat in his boat with their fishing rods and let him help them up when they slipped on the ice. Yet I got the impression they tolerated rather than liked him, because more than once I saw them duck into the reeds and hide when he rowed past. He was, in any case, the inevitable witness of their secret expeditions to the island, or at the very least an accessory, since it is inconceivable that they could have slipped past him unnoticed. So they obviously agreed to sit with him in his boat every now and then to keep him from telling on them.

  He would never have kept quiet about us, though. On the way out to the island we already had water in the boat, more than usual. The boat didn’t belong to any of us, so no one bothered to take care of it. It had been abandoned years before, tied to a tree trunk that rose from the water. On that day the boat rode lower in the water than usual. We rowed out anyway, probably because we had the new kid with us. He had come to our school a few weeks earlier, and we took him with us to the spot where we always landed, an opening in the reeds, a clearing where we tied up. That is where I always picture him, standing there in the reeds, looking at us, wondering what we had planned for him.

  All summer long they searched for the boy. They found his bicycle not far from where we had set off.

  I have not set foot on the island since then, and since then the boy’s father has not left the lake, and I have watched him all the years since.

  We never said a word about the incident. Life went on and we still met up, but we no longer went out to the island.

  I turned on the light and sat on the bed. The next morning, there were children creeping around the house. The light’s on in his room, I heard one say. A moment later they were standing in the doorway and in my room, looking straight at me, bright-eyed and happy. One of them held out a box with a kitten. It had adopted them, they said. They asked for milk for the cat, and when I came back into the room, they were standing at the window. They were looking across the lake over to the island in the reeds.

  Morning, Noon and Night

  The wall in front of the house had been replastered and the moss had not yet regrown to cover it like the other walls in the area. The railings were freshly painted and the hedge behind them was sparse. On top of the wall stood some candles. Streams of wax trickled down the new cement and pooled on the pavement in little puddles. Children jumped over the puddles as if they were obstacles.

  Old limes and oaks lined the street. Women and children walked in their shade. Dogs roamed between the trunks followed by their owners, who stopped and waited, examining the trees’ craggy bark. Then they continued on their way. Sometimes a car would brake and stop at the junction before driving on. The sound of its engine faded into the surrounding noise.

  A small boy walked along the pavement holding a woman’s hand. He steered his toy car along the garden wall. After a while he broke away from the woman and ran ahead, still steering his car along the wall. Whenever there was something in the car’s way, he lifted it over the obstacle and set it back on the wall. Then he dragged it along the metal railings. He imitated the noise it made, humming and singing to himself, his voice rising and falling as if he were changing gears. The woman kept calling after him, but the further he went the faster he ran, until he finally rounded a corner and was gone.

  An old woman had reached the junction. She stopped in front of the house and w
alked up and down, in a world of her own, with her arms crossed. She kept turning the corner and heading a few steps down the street. Then she stopped and stood still and turned and retraced her steps, only to return once again to the spot where she had doubled back. She straightened twigs here and there in the hedge and strayed into the garden. She was lost in thought, distracted, and whenever anyone approached her she recoiled and abruptly changed direction. Then she backed several steps away from the wall and, after a moment, stroked it with a finger.

  As she did so, she began looking across the street at me. I had been watching that spot and the woman from my vantage point for a long time, and I could sense how much my presence irritated her. I didn’t want to annoy her further. I crossed the street towards her, went right past her and strolled down the road.

  The moss on the garden wall was dried out and yellowed and the paint was flaking off the railings. Behind it, the hedge stopped people peering into the partially overgrown garden. There were old villas, chestnut trees, beeches and willows, and sunbathing bodies on folding and reclining chairs under the trees. There were birds chirping and a smell of barbecue. Everything needs water, said a woman behind the hedge. From a verandah came the sound of a flute. One song, played over and over again, always breaking off at the same point with the same mistake repeated each time. A man’s voice took up the melody and hummed and sang from that point on, correcting the mistake and falling silent. Then it all started again from the beginning.

  A tram turned into the street, and a dog that had been lying before an open garden gate and barking at the passers-by sprang up and ran towards it, whimpering. There were children on the tram and a girl, who had evidently been waiting for the dog, called out a name. She beckoned him over and threw something out of the window, a soft toy. The dog raced after it and sniffed and gnawed at it. Then he took off with his trophy.