It had also been Barry’s idea to shoot the interview in Yuri’s school. He thought that Yuri writing on a blackboard would make for a nice picture.
Lotteke, our camerawoman, found the blackboard idea clichéd. Instead she wanted to film Leo and Yuri on the beach, drawing equations in the sand. Our editor-in-chief called this even more clichéd.
A cliché is something already done by too many other people. Our being stuck here, in this specific school building at this specific location, we thus owe to those other people: the romantics, the photographers, the movie and TV professionals who have written things in the sand over the past few decades. If they hadn’t done it quite so often, we might have taken our crew to Scheveningen after all. And then we would’ve been standing on the beach during the bang.
So things could have been worse.
Things could, of course, always be worse. But often things could also be better. And in our case the chance that things could have been worse was greater. Seems to me.
* * *
I have to remember this. Repeat it in my head when I’m hungry or can’t sleep.
It could have been worse.
It could have been worse.
Day 13
Yesterday Kaspar asked, “Is there a logical reason for all of us to be sleeping in the gym?”
I don’t remember why we started sleeping in the gym after the bang. Maybe we were scared to sleep alone. Maybe it was just because the mats were there.
In the Middle Ages, kids and adults often slept in the same room: naked, under one blanket, sometimes also alongside strangers. Not until the eighteenth century did everyone get their own sheets, their own bed, and, eventually, their own room, television, toilet, and their own bathroom shelf for their own towels and toiletries. Sociologist Norbert Elias called it the civilizing process. And that’s what seems to have set in here yesterday.
Kaspar suggested dividing up the classrooms. Everybody thought it was a good idea. I did too. No more sighs from the other people still lying awake at night. I thought it would be peaceful.
I was wrong. Now that we’ve moved it is mainly quiet. And quiet and peaceful are two very different things.
Earlier tonight I could hear Leo put something down and Yuri ask a question. But as soon as I lay down, alone on my mat, as far away from the window as possible, all I heard was that sea that hides in large shells: The rush of my own blood through the veins along my temple. Otherwise it was quiet. Not a creak, no whir from outside, not even the constant beeping of something electronic. Not that I’d really imagined anything else. After all, I knew there were no longer any cars driving by, no longer any trees rustling in the wind, and no longer any birds shrieking. I just hadn’t heard it yet: the massive nothingness. Silence. The sound of everything that’s no longer there.
Furthermore, it was dark. Without the moon, or a streetlight, or headlights that cast little panels of light on the curtains, darkness is complete. After a while I didn’t know whether I was awake or sleeping.
At the first sound of stumbling I briefly thought I was dreaming. But when you think you’re dreaming, you most likely aren’t. The sound was real and it was coming from the classroom above me. Barry and Kalim were sleeping upstairs, but not in the classroom above mine. Had one of them moved his mat? Why would they have done that? Now I heard footsteps. Someone walking. And it sounded as if this person was moving tables.
I often used to hear my neighbors move furniture around. So often that they likely weren’t actually moving furniture around. Maybe sound exaggerates things. Like someone combing their hair will look like they’re waving when seen from afar, or like someone getting up to use the bathroom will perhaps sound like someone stacking chairs and tables. Whatever it was, the movement above my head continued.
It had to be one of us; that much was sure. Were I to get up and go upstairs, I’d find him or her in the classroom. I’d ask what was going on, he or she would answer, and I could finally get a peaceful night’s sleep. Knowing helps you get a grip on the situation.
I waited a little longer. When the dragging turned into banging, I got up and grabbed my coat.
* * *
Upstairs, the light was on in three of the four classrooms. I had to blink a few times. In the classroom to the right – the classroom over mine – someone was hunched over. He was wearing blue trousers and a polo shirt with a company logo. It was Kalim.
He was doing something with a plant.
Briefly I hesitated. I now knew for sure that all I’d heard was one of us. Should I still go into the classroom, ask what was going on?
Kalim walked over to the sink, an empty vase in his hand. While he held it under the faucet, I thought about the little flowerpot I’d knocked from the windowsill a few days ago. The moist earth: It must have been Kalim who’d been watering the plants.
He ran a sponge over the vase. Then scrubbed the sink with the same sponge. His lips were moving. I couldn’t hear if he was humming or if he was talking to himself.
Just as I was about to turn around, Kalim looked up. Now that he saw me he pressed his lips together tightly.
“Hey,” I said.
I raised a hand. Kalim too.
Quickly I walked up to him, through the door, into the classroom. As if I’d been planning to do so all this time, hadn’t been peeping at him from the hallway first.
“What are you doing?”
“My job,” Kalim said. He looked straight at me. His brown eyes looked black.
I was the first to look away.
“You don’t have to,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “I do.”
“No,” I said. “Really, you don’t. It’s not your job anymore.”
“Yes it is.”
“No it’s not.”
Now Kalim pointed at me. The sponge still in his hand, his sleeves rolled up, his trousers wet.
“You,” he said, “you are still a TV maker, right?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Then what are you now?”
“Nobody.”
I said it without thinking. Nobody.
It felt good.
“Guys, what kind of a soiree is this?” Barry had his glasses on, but otherwise all he was wearing were his boxer shorts.
“Kalim was cleaning.”
“Oh,” said Barry, “maybe he couldn’t sleep.”
Kalim squeezed his sponge. Some water dripped along his lower arm. As soon as he saw Barry and I looking at it, he quickly put the sponge down on the sink.
“I go to sleep now,” said Kalim.
“Yes,” Barry said, “we’re all going to sleep.”
* * *
I walked Barry to his classroom. We stopped outside the door.
“Isn’t it quiet?” I said.
“Yes, dear,” said Barry, “very quiet.” His hand was on the door handle.
“Are you able to sleep?” I asked.
Barry shook his head. “I keep turning the lights back on.”
“Can I…”
“… Do you want to?”
We both shuffled into Barry’s classroom. I lay down on the mat, Barry turned off the light. Together we drew the plastic tablecloth over us.
“Have you looked outside?” I asked.
“No. You haven’t either, right?
“No… But Barry?”
“Yes?”
“That time with Lotteke, what did you see exactly?”
I heard myself ask the question. And also what it sounded like. A child who wants to hear the same fairytale for the umpteenth time, despite knowing that mom doesn’t feel like reading it again.
* * *
Once upon a time: Lotteke. She left a few hours after the bang. Kicking and screaming. Though she seemed so peaceful when we heard the news. Calmly she watched the television. She even made coffee. But during our first discussion about what we should do, Lotteke said nothing. Silently she fixed her gaze on the screen. Even when the image dropped out, Leo got u
p, Barry hit the TV, and Kaspar screamed they should do it differently, Lotteke didn’t react. She stayed were she was and watched TV, even though it now snowed black and white dots.
“Lotteke?” I asked, “are you ok?”
Lotteke didn’t respond.
“Lot?” I asked again.
“Tomas,” Lotteke now said. She was still staring at the gray grains on the TV. “Tomas is still at home.”
Tomas: Her two-year-old son. She’d brought him to Christmas drinks once, otherwise she never talked about him. Lotteke was the sort of woman who believed professionals didn’t discuss personal matters.
“Is someone with him?” I asked.
“Yes,” Lotteke said, “his dad.”
Leo had turned off the TV and was tinkering with the cable. Lotteke kept staring at the black screen. “Tomas,” she whispered, “goddammit, Tomas…”
Now her gaze slowly began to change. Her eyes growing large, as if she did see something. Maybe she did. Her son, in a burning building, trapped under a beam, or standing at an open window several stories above a wide, empty street.
Suddenly Lotteke jumped up. She strode to the hallway and pulled her coat off the rack.
“I have to go see my son,” she said, “I’m leaving.”
Leo shook his head. “Don’t do it, Lot. Tomas is better off if you stay here. He’s probably safe with his dad.”
Furious, Lotteke turned around, “Tomas needs his mother!”
Seeing her like that, her cheeks red, one arm in her coat, I realized it was the other way around.
“Wait!” Leo shouted when Lotteke headed for the front door, “Lot, wait!”
“Don’t do it, Lot!” Barry and I were also shouting now.
But Lotteke only started walking faster. Like she was trying to outrun our words.
In four, five steps, Leo reached her. He grabbed her from behind, wrapped his big arms around her.
“Let me go!” Lotteke yelled.
But Leo pressed her against him. Like a penguin presses its young to its belly so it won’t freeze to death.
“Let me GO!” Go, GO: Lotteke’s yelling echoed through the hallways. Yuri, who until now had been silently watching, softly began to sob. Natalie picked him up and carried him into the kitchen.
“Let me go!”
“Don’t worry,” Leo said calmly. “You’re just panicking right now, and you know: We all are, in a way.” He kept her against him. The sleeves of his T-shirt cinched his upper arm.
Suddenly Lotteke stopped screaming, no longer struggling to free herself.
“Shh,” Leo whispered in her ear. “It’s ok.” Lotteke’s body hung limp in his arms. Gently Leo let her go. Lotteke wobbled, briefly looking like she’d fall: A spinning top after its last spin.
But Lotteke didn’t fall. Lotteke started running.
“Stop her!” Leo shouted to Barry, who’d moved in front of the door during the struggle.
Barry grabbed Lotteke’s arm, but Lotteke tore herself free and kicked him in the stomach. It was a clever kick. Well aimed and right on target: The kind of kick you see in video games. Barry fell against a door, its hinges rattling.
I couldn’t see what happened next from where I was standing. But Barry called Lotteke’s name, and Lotteke kept screaming that Barry should leave her alone. And then all of us heard the outer door opening, someone falling down, the door closing, and Barry hissing “Shit.”
For a while the only sound was Yuri’s sobbing from the kitchen.
Then Barry walked back into the hallway. There wasn’t a lot of light: The curtains were closed, one of the fluorescent lights flickered. But everyone immediately saw he was alone.
“She’s gone,” said Barry.
“Is the door closed” Kaspar asked.
“Yes,” said Barry, “the door is very closed.”
“What did you see?” I asked.
“Gray. A sort of gray fog, but thicker.” Barry swallowed. “I have to sit down for a bit.”
Since Barry collapsed that night, we keep asking him the same questions.
“What kind of fog was it?” “Did you touch it?” “Didn’t you see anything else?” “What happened to Lotteke when she walked outside?”
And Barry keeps giving the same answer, “Sorry. I don’t know.”
The fairytale as we now all know it: We know that Lotteke used to be around, but we have no idea if she’s living happily ever after.
* * *
Barry wrapped his arm around me. “This is nice. You sleeping over.”
“Yeah,” I said. I pressed his hand to my collarbone, spooning him. Even though spoons never really spoon like that.
“Barry?”
“Hm?”
“I want to ask you something else.”
I heard myself talking. I heard Barry talking. But in the dark the voices didn’t sound like ours.
“Ask away…”
“Do you ever feel guilty? About Lotteke, I mean. That you didn’t stop her.”
“No. I tried and it didn’t work… Do you feel guilty?”
“Why do you think?”
“Because you’re asking me.”
“I don’t know. But of course I could also have tried to block the door.”
“Yes. But, you know. We all did what we thought was best.”
“Yes.”
I had done what I thought was best. Best for me.
“It would have been really different, with Lotteke around.”
“Hm hm,” Barry muttered. His hold slackened, his breathing slowed, until he let me go and turned over.
When I woke up I was lying next to the mat.
Day 92
The last instruction we received was this: “Follow the instructions until further instructions follow.”
When the television switched to snow, Kaspar had already copied them down. On a poster from the seventh-grade classroom: an anatomical drawing of a fly. Kaspar pulled down the poster with one tug, turned it over, and used a black marker to write on the back:
Instructions:
Close windows, doors, and other openings.
Tape shut the vents of air ducts and openings (with newspaper or plastic).
Close blinds and curtains.
Do not approach the doors.
Do not approach the windows.
Follow the instructions until further instructions follow.
We hung the poster on the door of the gym. If the light in the hallway was on, we could see the fly through the paper, then his legs shot like lightning bolts through the words “air ducts and openings.”
I could picture it very clearly, looked at it every night.
Maybe you think it’s weird. That we had the poster hanging there. After all, we knew the instructions by heart by then, Yuri even repeated them before he went to bed, “Do not approach the doors, do not approach the windows…”
“Yes, sweetheart,” Natalie would say. “Yes, sweetheart, we know.”
But maybe the poster was like the decorative tile my mother had stuck on our bathroom door: “Life is a party, you just have to hang the streamers yourself.”
That too was an instruction. A simple one. Yet my mother thought she should read it every time she went to the bathroom; she probably worried that one day she’d forget.
And we were similarly afraid that we’d forget the instructions on the poster.
We didn’t know what would happen if we didn’t stick to the rules. But as long as we had followed them, we’d stayed alive. So whatever happened, whoever or whatever disappeared, the poster remained. It became stained by condensation, and smoke curled up the corners, but the marker was waterproof and the instructions remained legible. They became the constitution of the new situation. And our only certainty when we tried to understand what happened.
Day 21
I found something. Something I don’t understand the meaning of. Maybe it’s unimportant, but it has preoccupied me all day.
It started with a rustle
in the trashcan. It’s one of those round ones, described in office supply catalogs as “modern,” really only because it’s silver colored: For centuries now, the color of the future. The lid was up, but I couldn’t remember ever having tossed anything in. All the trash we produce – oatmeal bar wrappers, pasta boxes – comes from our joint supply and goes into a big trashcan in the kitchen that’ll probably never fill up.
The rustling grew louder. The trash bag crackled, I heard ticking and nibbling, and I thought about the little pellets we’d found in the kitchen the first few days. After the rationing, the printer paper was nibbled on for a while.
From the can came soft peeps. I peered into the black bag.
I saw nothing.
The can was heavier than I’d estimated, almost slipping out of my hands when I turned it over. With a little poof the mouse fell to the floor. Somehow convinced the creature was dead, I shrieked when it suddenly leapt up.
The mouse shot through the classroom, bumping against the legs of chairs and tables, and ran towards the curtains. Right underneath the window the animal froze, afraid of something beyond the windowsills. His little ears trembled, like those of a conditioned lab rat expecting an electric shock every time it hears a beeping sound. Briefly he stayed there, shivering. Then he turned around and ran through the classroom again; away from the curtains, away from the windowsills, away from the window, until he hit the wall and shot along the baseboard into the hallway.
That’s when I found it. A plastic pill bottle. It must have fallen out of the trashcan along with the mouse. I picked it up, examined the label: It didn’t say whose it was, just the prescription: “Halopax, 800mg 1x a day after a meal.”
Everything There Was Page 4
