“Thanks, Kaspar,” Leo said.
He said it neutrally. And that’s exactly why it didn’t sound neutral at all.
“Oh, stop it,” said Kaspar. “From the very start I’ve been doing everything, while you… You just sit there. Or no, sorry: You play some basketball and open a coloring book once in a while.”
Leo slowly nodded. As if he’d seen this coming. His answer also sounded canned, a politician who keeps giving the same stump speech on his campaign trail, “I think everyone’s doing what feels best to her or him. And I believe that is what’s ultimately best for us as a group.”
“But couldn’t you guys help for once?” Kaspar said.
“You don’t let yourself be helped, Kaspar!”
That last line Leo shouted. It startled all of us. Leo never shouted in public. Not since we’ve been stuck here and not before either, as far as I know. It also didn’t sound like an unfortunate volume-control issue; no, it sounded like something had escaped. Something so powerful that Leo couldn’t immediately wrangle it back under control. He looked angry, the muscles in his neck taut. And I saw bodybuilders. Their red cheeks, the howls they emit when they drop the barbell after holding it over their heads for ten long counts.
“All I want to say,” Kaspar said, a lot more quietly, “is that it’s mighty convenient for us as a group that ‘what feels best’ to me is doing things that also benefit other people.”
“You’re right,” Leo said. He sounded a lot calmer now. “We’re very lucky that way.”
Suddenly I remembered a magazine interview. The questions I’d forgotten, but this answer was now zipping through my mind: “Presenting TV shows doesn’t make the world a better place. I’m appreciated for something that’s of no use to anyone. It isn’t fair. But it does make me happy.” Perhaps it was the false modesty required of celebrities; something Leo said for the benefit of people like Kaspar, who at some point did think of him that way. And now I realized that Kaspar probably still thought of him that way. That we appreciated Leo for just the fact of being Leo: indeed something of no use to anyone.
“All right,” said Kaspar, “maybe I’ll feel better if I just eat that mouse by myself next time. All the better if that is ultimately also ‘best for us as a group.’” Then he scraped up all the now cold rice grains from his cup in one scoop. There were just a few too many. We saw a few grains fall, but Kaspar didn’t pick them up. He stuck the spoon in his mouth, swallowed without chewing, emptied his glass of water in one gulp, and slammed it back on the table.
“Come on, Erik,” Natalie said. Her hand disappeared underneath the table. Maybe she briefly squeezed Kaspar’s knee. She seemed to be the only one who hadn’t noticed her mistake.
“Why did you call Kaspar Erik?” asked Yuri.
Before Natalie could answer, something happened that changed everything; something that completely separated the night from the night I’d imagined beforehand.
Something started buzzing.
A monotone buzz that would make animals with a wider range of hearing act strangely. We looked at the ceiling, that’s where the buzzing was coming from: Fluorescent lights flickered on and off. The refrigerator now also started to make a sound, grumbling the way it does when you accidentally leave it open. The buzzing grew louder; the lights kept going on and off. I thought about movies with possessed houses and poltergeists in the TV.
“Look!” Yuri shouted. He pointed at the oven, at the display where red LED dashes should indicate the time and temperature. Now the red dashes formed numbers that didn’t have anything to do with temperature or time. They blinked like a digital thermometer after you turn it on: 9999. Black. 8888. Black. 0000. Black. EЯЯOЯ.
Everything went black.
I got up and waved my hand in front of my face. I didn’t see a thing. It even seemed darker than it does at night, in my own classroom, although that must’ve been because this time we hadn’t turned off the lights ourselves: This darkness assaulted us; we had no control over this darkness. And when you lose control over something, that thing by definition turns into a threat.
“Shit!”
“What’s happening?”
“Mom?”
“I’m here, sweetheart!”
“Maybe it’s a blown fuse?”
“No, the light in the hallway’s not working either, and that’s on a different circuit.”
“We need a flashlight.”
“Ow.”
“Sorry.”
People started moving. I felt Yuri slip past my legs, others bumping into me. And the voices kept coming from all around, sounding in front of me, behind me, in the back of the kitchen, and then right beside me again. It proved impossible to determine who was standing where. Or where I was standing myself. I got a hold of something I suspected was the sink and thought about skiers who get buried under an avalanche; about how sometimes they’ve spun end over end a hundred times and by the time they come to a stop they no longer know what’s up and what’s down. “Then you need to spit,” a mountaineer once told me. “If the spit runs across your chin, then down is below you. But if it runs along your upper lip to your nose, then you know you’ve got a problem.” I felt nauseated.
With arms outstretched I looked for the table. My hand slipped along the tabletop until my wrist hit a chair. I sat down. That helped, the dark stopped spinning. Though I still had the feeling that something could jump in my face at any moment now, a feeling I could only avoid by squeezing my eyes shut.
“Dammit,” I heard Leo mumble. I tried to estimate how far away from me he was, and flinched when I suddenly felt a hand on my head. The hand was big and warm, sliding down along the back of my head. Fingers walked along my neck, as though counting my vertebrae. They went inside my vest, the fingers. Slipped towards my shoulder blade. There they stopped. As if their owner suddenly was no longer so sure.
“It’s me,” I said.
Immediately the hand shot up: Out of my shirt, into the void.
“Shit, sorry,” I heard Barry mumble.
I wondered whom his hand had been meant for.
“What’s that, there, in the hallway?”
“Look Mom, a headlight!”
The light was so bright that we couldn’t see who or what it was coming from. Like a vehicle approaching you on a narrow country road: It could be a motorbike, but also an eighteen-wheeler. So you’d better stand still until it has passed you by.
No one said anything. The light kept coming closer, aiming right in our faces. I looked down so as not to get blinded. White spots danced in the dark.
When I looked up, the light had reached the kitchen.
Kalim had reached the kitchen.
He must have walked to the utility closet immediately after the blackout, knowing there was a flashlight there. “Kalim!” Leo shouted. “Our hero!”
We put the flashlight in a cup on the table, pointing it at the ceiling. The reflected light only showed contours: Six upper bodies and heads, Natalie must have put Yuri on her lap. One by one we said things like “yikes.” Then we discussed what would happen if the lights wouldn’t go back on again.
Without light we’d end up in complete darkness every night from about seven onwards. Furthermore, no electricity meant no television, radio, or computers; we would no longer be able to check whether the transmissions or the internet had returned. We’d also no longer be able to use the refrigerator, the oven, or the coffee machines. And there was a chance the heating would give out.
“Maybe it won’t be all that bad.”
I don’t know who started up with that, but once it had been said, we all parroted it.
“Yeah, maybe it won’t be all that bad.”
The radio, television, and computers weren’t any use to us now either, and the internet returning before the electricity seemed unlikely. Besides, we never used the kitchen appliances, and we might not be able to dry our clothes without heating, but then maybe we should just wash them less often. That’d be fin
e; they were hardly ever really dirty. The advantage of eating so little: no stains on your clothes. That we’d have less light was in itself annoying, but hey: We had a flashlight. And maybe from now on we could get up a little earlier, so we’d make more use of the light coming from outside: The daylight we barely see, but it’s definitely there between seven and seven. “Well,” we told each other, “it’s not like this changes that much.”
I nodded too. But I immediately thought to myself: This is what people do. If the standard of living declines, we make up all kinds of things to make the new situation acceptable. But acceptance is often a kind of self-deception. And that things would most definitely change became apparent when Yuri needed the bathroom.
Natalie took the flashlight; we stayed behind in the dark. No one said anything. But I think we were all thinking the same thing. The dark hadn’t just made us dependent on the flashlight, but also on each other. We would have to share it and that would only work if we stuck closely together. The freedom we’d secured by occupying our own classrooms would have to be given up: Every day, from around seven onwards, that one light would chain us together.
“That went just fine,” said Natalie, back from the bathroom. Yuri carried the flashlight. He aimed the light at each of our faces in turn, laughing if we squinted.
Natalie said, “Maybe it’s not a complete catastrophe?” “No,” some of us mumbled. “Not a catastrophe, no.” But when the fluorescent lights suddenly blinked on ten minutes later, our exhilarated cheers betrayed that none of us had meant it.
It was eleven, the blackout had lasted two hours.
“But, what does it mean?” Natalie asked. “Everything just turning back on again.”
“It means that there are still other people, out there somewhere,” said Leo. “People still doing their jobs.”
I wondered who those people were. Whether they sat behind desks and still listened to their bosses. Whether they could charge their phones and then played games on them. Whether they ate stuff from their cafeteria and when that stuff would run out.
“We cannot assume everything will stay this way,” said Kaspar. “We have to prepare ourselves. Make torches, collect candles.” He pointed at the flashlight on the table, “That takes D batteries. I haven’t found any of those yet.”
Leo nodded, “Kaspar’s right. We have to prepare ourselves for the electricity cutting out in the near future.” He looked at Kaspar. “We’ll make a plan tomorrow, ok? And then all of us will help.” Kaspar smiled broadly: proof of reconciliation or irritation; both were possible. “Shall we just go to bed then, now?” Natalie asked.
The others disappeared in the direction of their classrooms. I wanted to do the same. But there was something: Something wasn’t there. The feeling was disorienting, like when in the past, on my way to a meeting, I sometimes suddenly discovered that I’d left my phone at home: Knowing that you’ve forgotten something tears a little hole in your soul.
I was no longer wearing my vest. I must have taken it off during the blackout.
I walked down the hallway, went up the stairs, ran almost.
Sure enough, my vest was on the kitchen floor, under a chair, all bunched up.
I immediately went through my pockets: no pill bottle.
I crawled under the table and looked behind the chair legs, patted down my skirt and vest again, slipped my fingers in the crack underneath the refrigerator, held my vest upside down, looked behind the chair legs again, and found a piece of dried bow-tie pasta.
I stuck it in my mouth and sucked.
* * *
“Either it rolled underneath the oven or someone took it.”
“Let it go, dear,” Barry said. He was already on his mat. “It’s eleven thirty, I want to sleep, you want to sleep, and at this point we’ve got other problems to be thinking about.”
He took a sip from a glass that was on a little chair, lay down, and drew up his tablecloth, “Will you turn off the light when you go?”
I didn’t want to turn off the light. I didn’t even want to go. I wanted to lie down beside Barry and continue talking about where the pill bottle went.
But I know what he meant. We do have other problems to be thinking about. And problems are like broken hearts; just like hearts instantly un-break when a new love arrives, so do problems only remain problems until a new problem arises.
“21:00 – 23:00 Blackout,” I wrote in Melissa’s diary a moment ago.
Now it’s just a matter of not leafing back.
Day 105
I dreamed I woke up with a knife against my temple. I saw who was holding it and also knew what he was planning: He wanted to do to me what he’d done to Barry.
But I also dreamed I wasn’t scared. That I put the tip of my index finger on the tip of the blade, that I slowly pushed it away, that it stuck me, like one of the Sleeping Beauties from the Memory game we never play anymore, maybe because we prefer not to remember things we might as well forget.
“I’m not afraid,” I dreamed I said, “I know that knife, it’s blunt and rusty because Kaspar used it after the accident.” To prove it I got Melissa’s diary and leafed backwards. And forwards again when I didn’t find what I was looking for. It didn’t help. I didn’t find anything. Not the accident, not the bang, and also not what happed to Barry and Kaspar and Natalie, because the pages I was turning all came unglued and darted up through my classroom to the ceiling, where they hung like little banners, but I laughed, because I knew all this was all completely normal: Numbers and letters are in the left half of your brain, you do your dreaming with the right.
Maybe I was awake by the time I thought that last part. And if there were still people around, they’d say: “Other people’s dreams are only interesting when we’re in them ourselves.” But you don’t need to nod now, because you were in it, and now I’m going back to sleep because it’s not even close to afternoon.
Day 24
There’s something weird about my dreams. They’re no longer about before. I mean: They’re no longer about my home, my friends, the people at the production office, or that I’m flying over a forest without any clothes on. If I do dream now, then it’s about here: the hallway, the classrooms, Barry, Leo, Natalie. When I wake up they’re still here: the hallway and the classrooms and the others. I could just as well have kept on sleeping, I think more and more often.
This morning Yuri woke me up. He was crying, in the classroom next to mine.
Yuri often cries, by now I can see it coming. When he’s very tired and doesn’t get his way, he pouts and softly starts to whine. Most of the time it’s over as soon as Natalie picks him up, presses him against her shoulder, and strokes the back of his head. In the beginning I marveled at the ease with which Yuri let himself be comforted, as if his tears were just a pretext to allow him to smell his mother’s hair. But this morning was different. Yuri didn’t just cry, he wailed.
“No-o-oooo!”
Like a little girl.
I poked around underneath my mat, looking for the balls of Play-Doh that I put in my ears when I want to sleep at times that others want to make noise. Until I saw what time it was. Eleven thirty. Why hadn’t Leo woken me up?
“Yuri, no!” Natalie yelled. In the classroom next door something fell.
* * *
The door of Natalie’s classroom has glass in it. The bottom pane is opaque, so small children can’t look in. Or out.
Through the clear upper pane I saw that the floor of the classroom was scattered with Monopoly money and orange origami paper. It was strangely festive.
Natalie was on her knees on her mat, holding up her hands. She was saying something, but I couldn’t hear what. Now she held her hands in front of her face, as if she wanted to protect it against something. Against more Monopoly money perhaps.
“I hate you!”
There was a bang; the door flew open. Yuri ran out of the classroom, through the hallway, up the stairs.
I waited a few moments before I
went in.
Only now could I really see what a mess it was. Tables turned over, chairs upside down, puzzle pieces everywhere, Monopoly tokens, origami paper, Memory cards.
“Hey,” said Natalie. Her face was red, blond hair stuck against her temples. I hoped she wouldn’t notice that I noticed she’d been crying.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was wondering where Leo is. Do you know why he didn’t come wake us?”
“Kaspar wanted to look for candles.”
Natalie’s voice sounded unsteady, she had to swallow before she could keep talking. “He wanted to start right away this morning. Leo joined him.”
“Ah,” I said, “the boy scouts on patrol again.” Natalie smiled, probably relieved that I was making a joke. To give her the chance to wipe her cheeks dry and get her hair out of her face, I looked around the classroom. Natalie interpreted my glance differently. “I know, what a state, right?” she said, as she grabbed a pink box and started picking up Memory cards. Almost automatically I scoured the floor with her, looking for the other cards. One was right by the door. It had a princess on it with a blue dress, a tiara, and a waist not much wider than her upper arm. I picked it up and gave it to Natalie.
“Thanks,” she said without looking at me. Should I stay or go?
Natalie put a card with a mermaid on it in the box. “Yuri wanted to play foosball,” she said. “But we’ve done that so many times already. I thought: Let’s do something different for once.” She nodded to a card in the far corner of the classroom, “You can see the result.”
Natalie bowed her head. She stared at the lid of the Memory box; at five princesses who picked up the hem of their dress without showing what was underneath.
For a while we were quiet. Until Natalie said, “I’m not really like this.” She was still looking at the lid in her hands. “A mother who screams at her kid. I don’t want to be like that at all.” With her index finger she traced the contours of a yellow ball gown. “He’s just hungry. Of course I get that. Every time he asks for food it hurts.” Her finger slipped along the wavy hair of a mermaid. “Every time I eat something, I think: What am I doing? Why don’t I give this to him? Why don’t I just push my spoon into his mouth? I can see that he’s suffering. That the portions aren’t big enough. He’s the most important thing in my life and I’m just letting him starve. What kind of mother does that?”
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