Hanck thought he could make out a pair of eye-sockets in the dark brown skull, a jaw, a few tufts of hair on the back.
‘Do you listen to the organ?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Hanck.
‘I don’t know how many times I’ve asked that skull to tell me whether it’s a toccata or a fugue. He’s explained hundreds of times, and each time I think I understand, but then it’s gone. Can you explain it?’
‘Unfortunately, no,’ said Hanck. ‘It’s not my forte.’
‘I have respect for that,’ said the Old Man. ‘If they send out messages that I don’t understand, having seen things that I don’t see. The exposition took fifty years, then came the pause. Perhaps it’s time for a cadence . . . Or is that just a fool’s cadence that presages a false ending?’
‘I suppose one can only hope,’ said Hanck.
‘Is that what people believe down there, where you live?’
‘Presumably.’
‘But there are doomsday prophets on every street corner!’
‘They’ve been standing there for ever.’
‘And no one cares?’
‘No,’ said Hanck, ‘no one cares.’
‘No one believes in the sagas any more. It was so long ago that anyone succeeded in reciting one.’ He paused, looked at Hanck intently, sternly. ‘For some reason I think that you could do it.’
‘Me?’ said Hanck. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘You know what love is.’
‘I have no imagination.’
‘You don’t need any. You’ve experienced twenty years of love. That’s more than most people get. Write about that, about looking after a child, raising a son, instilling in him the desire to live, the joy of existing and working in this world . . . Write a saga for him.’
‘I can’t. I can’t see any of that any more.’
‘Because you’re full of shit. But it’ll recede, I promise you.
It’ll fall away.’
Hanck looked at the Old Man sceptically. He didn’t understand where all of this was heading.
‘Since you once loved a child . . . Since you once made yourself vulnerable, exposed yourself to the world, you can’t ever hide again, block things out, grow cold.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ said Hanck. ‘I’m incapable of it.’
‘Just listen to you!’ said the Old Man. ‘“I’m incapable of it.” Your dry, official language is perfect for the task of describing the nature of love. Someday someone will have to succeed.’
‘Why?’ said Hanck. ‘Can’t we just let it be?’
‘The end of the world,’ said the Old Man. ‘Anyone can describe that. All a person has to do is go out on the street or look at himself in the mirror. It has no meaning any more.
But rebirth in love? That’s something altogether different.’
‘But what purpose would it serve?’
‘Can you turn love into something sensible, rational and even logical? If you can, then you would also be capable of forgiving.’
‘Is that the goal?’
‘That would be the miracle that would bring about the downfall. Human beings can pull it off if they know how love works.’
‘Why should I participate in that?’
‘You have the ability. It’s your duty. You’ve suffered a loss.’
‘Surely that applies to most people.’
‘But they never get this far.’ The Old Man smiled; whether it was a nasty smile or a kind one, it was impossible to say. ‘And you’ve been drinking.’
‘They have too.’
‘But not that.’ He nodded at the tray with the bottles.
‘Is that . . . ?’
The Old Man nodded. ‘You’re full of capability.’
‘I don’t feel anything.’
‘It’ll come,’ said the Old Man. ‘It’ll come.’
Hanck tried to object to the very last. ‘I’m no friend of big words.’
‘It’s not the words that matter here. Especially not big words. Any idiot can look them up in a book. It’s being able to see that counts. Seeing. Do you think I use this to see?’ He pointed a gaunt finger at his good eye and shook his head. ‘It may sound surprising . . . But you have to understand that I see with this.’ He pointed now at his other eye, the empty socket.
‘I still want to see my son,’ said Hanck.
‘You will see your son.’
‘And what about the one responsible?’
‘What about him?’ said the Old Man. ‘If he’s allowed to roam free much longer, it won’t make any difference what we sit here wishing for the future.’
‘Is that right?’
The Old Man nodded. ‘So . . .’ He rose from his seat and leaned forward. ‘Where did you meet?’
‘At the Colonial Club,’ said Hanck.
With clear but disjointed impressions from a lengthy transport, he at last landed in the realm of the dead. A long ride down in a lift inside a chilly garage, a dark moiré shimmer over soft leather seats in a long limousine, a cabinet for drinks, a monitor with the Old Man droning on about the destination of the journey, like an electronic brochure from a travel agency; well-tended conduits with warm, dry air; naked fluorescent lights on the ceiling, swinging doors made of stainless steel, a hall filled with trolleys, gusts of ice-cold air from a cold-storage room, sombre-looking people wearing vinyl-coated aprons and clogs with perforated leather tops; the clatter of metal instruments in stainless steel bowls, acrid odours, organ tones from a loudspeaker built into a nightstand on wheels.
Details without any context from which to form a whole picture, cut out of a flow from which he had taken small snippets, with a limited ability to make note of more than mere fragments; like during a long trip in a warm train compartment when you doze off in one town, awake in another and imagine you noticed a third.
His sense of loss had created a void that could be filled with anything at all, a vacuum, an inner vortex that could suck in anything, big or small. All his impressions were of equal value, and every detail was so rich that it could be pondered for any length of time without having its hidden qualities extracted. The materials seemed to communicate to him, describing their origins, a lineage that would ordinarily be ignored in favour of their function.
In accordance with this new way of seeing – whether it was the result of an act of will or disturbance – the concrete of the walls, which otherwise were like a mute grey statement, might stand there harping about gravel pits, enormous plateaux of abandoned open-pit mines, ulcerated precipices, entire ridges from the ice age that had been worked, excavated away, mixed with limestone from other mines, as well as water and loose aggregates, in an arrangement of the Earth’s crust that was altered and combined and cast in a new form.
The wood of the floor whispered of branches that pointed in another direction, trunks that had stood in a different part of the world, in forests that had stood in another era, with rings that spread out, year after year, to all points of the compass, a growth process that was cut short. Now the forests were felled, dried, sawed, planed and trampled by perforated clogs.
The hinges on the doors creaked about mining, about ore and iron and steel and forging, entire regions that were undermined and collapsed and turned into lakes where sludge and swamp and algae and primitive organisms now slowly claimed all the flooded bedrooms with tulle curtains that billowed like kelp in a feeble current.
He saw the Old Man intoning on the monitor, with a faint gleam in his one good eye, a barely visible flush on his hollowed cheek. ‘You arrive as a miraculous accident, a random accumulation, a collision between coercion and freedom. You lick forth your own face. No one wants to look anything meaningless right in the eye. Everyone wants to see order, consistency, logic; the facial features of ancestors are licked forth and licked away until only an anonymous skull remains. A face is a dense fog that slowly accumulates and is then dispersed around a white headland . . .’
But the love he had spoken of would c
learly embrace the whole world, every living creature: ‘All this will pass away, paintings, songs, cathedrals . . . All will collapse, rot, burn, wash away and fade . . . Only to be born again, an entire world will be licked forth out of nothing, everything will happen once more, yet again. A warm muzzle, a rough and strong muscle will eagerly lick forth a new progeny; that is our fate, to lick forth people to rejoice at this meaningless glory. Even Bach will be licked forth out of the silence, note by note . . .’
Finally he found himself released out into the open, someplace ‘out there’, on his way down, northward.
A colourless sky above a desolate land. Neither light nor dark, an eternal hour of the wolf without wolves, a pale moon, pale stars.
The two ravens lead the way, black against black, with the rustling of crinkled moiré; they are reluctant, of course, but display a forced politeness. ‘This way . . .’, and then silence for a while, and then again from far off: ‘Over here, this way . . .’
A huge territory with the primeval rock exposed where expanses of forests, meadows and bogs had previously existed for millions of years, waiting to be used, waiting for the proper conditions, the perfect mechanics in the instantaneous destruction from a hydraulic flow.
Bones blasted by shifting sand.
Uprooted trees impregnated with rain-borne heavy metals.
The undercarriage of a freight car rusted fast to the rails.
‘This way . . .’ As indifferent as an usher.
Across endless expanses of motionless, lifeless waste products, unbearable in their monotony until the ground begins to slope, the dark grows more intense. Methane gases. The reek of sulphur.
‘As far as we go,’ he hears. ‘We’ll wait at the exit.’
He continues alone. There is only one way to go, only one direction, downward, northward. The vapours make tears well up in his eyes, he feels the air seep out of his lungs. He begins to have doubts, wants to turn round, but knows it’s not possible. The sand is loose under his feet, he can’t crawl back up, he has to continue downward, onward, into an even deeper darkness that soon envelops him completely. He can no longer tell whether he’s outside or inside, but he starts to hear voices, living voices. Shouting. Weeping. Moaning. All the sounds of human suffering.
Hanck had never been out this far. All his kinsmen who had died had bid farewell much closer to life. It was only the most desperate who went out this far, those who refused to accept the reliably conveyed news of a death, who could not ignore the missing link between a beloved person and a bag of ashes.
You had to be prepared to stay out there, to feel so tired, so worn-out and tested, that you would never have the strength to take the long road back. Hanck was prepared for this eventuality, accepting it without the least hesitation.
So there were no actual visiting routines. Everything looked like desolate rubbish that nature had tossed about in its aimless fashion. Perhaps at one time in the past certain measures had been taken, some sort of portal erected, an entrance, a number of rocks placed in a row to mark the path.
Hanck thought he could make out an entrance and headed that way, but as soon as he turned round, what he had just perceived as a straight and distinct path was merely a huge heap, without the slightest discernible shape.
Only a great yearning for someone who was beloved could make little, inconsequential things look like signs to follow – two sticks on the ground that the wind had blown across each other could form an arrow pointing the right way. Three stones that, viewed from a certain angle, lay in a row were another confirmation.
That was enough to revive his courage. But not enough to instil in him faith and trust; it was sheer willpower that drove him on, the search for meaning.
Hel, who was in charge of this realm of death, had seen him coming, perhaps even heard him from far away. She had turned her head, listening with first one ear, showing her pale, lifeless side; then with the other, revealing the half of her face that was red, purple and black with rotting flesh.
She was the killer’s daughter, an entrepreneur, serious and sympathetic, with a kind of dignified confidence and a natural aura of authority. Hanck could respect that, and he showed his respect by looking at her openly, without lowering his eyes. She was supposed to instil fear and terror, and she knew how to make use of her resources, and her frightful appearance which had once exiled her to this region. But she wasn’t repellent to him. He stated his name and business without a quaver in his voice, prepared to accept any status whatsoever: temporary guest or permanent resident.
Hel had broken away from this inherited disposition. She was now friendly and forthcoming, not at all unreceptive to the sense of loss that can plague those left behind.
She said that he was welcome.
She said that she knew what the case concerned.
She said that she would help him and make the best of the situation. Although of course there was no question of giving his son back.
There was a cloakroom, with a coat hook and a shelf for hats. A wastebasket filled with blue plastic coverings to put on over dirty shoes. It felt almost natural to pull on a pair of these protective coverings and then walk into a dead and sterile area where the acrid, pungent odour might be perceived as something good, the odour of life.
He entered a waiting room with a sofa, a table covered with weekly magazines. On the front covers the latest winner of the TomBola lottery exclaimed: ‘Now I’m just going to live life!’
Handkerchiefs were everywhere, neatly folded and pressed into dispensers made of stainless steel.
And he wept. He needed only to see a glimpse of Toby’s fate for his vision to become clouded, his throat tight. Sobs welled up from inside him, wrapping the place in a thick fog.
He heard a scream that seemed to come out of the walls, out of the concrete, out of the ice age.
Every time someone pulled out a handkerchief, a flap rattled shut, attached by a spring mechanism. Hanck dried his tears, blew his nose, dried his tears again. The little flaps made a metallic clattering sound. His soft, shapeless sobbing, a cloud of despair and impotence, was captured by these artificially constructed, highly absorbent fibres made for undesirable secretions, preserved in stainless steel.
‘Don’t cry, Pappa.’ That was the first thing he heard. ‘Pappa, don’t cry.’ That only made him cry harder, his sobs even more overwhelming. How he had longed to hear that voice! He had missed it so much that he had walked around back home conjuring it up, forcing it out of all the mute objects that his son had left behind – a jacket, a pair of shoes, a piece of brick.
‘There, there . . .’ The metallic clanging of the flaps on the dispensers sounded clearer the more handkerchiefs were pulled out. Hanck emptied an entire storeroom, leaving a pile of crumpled wads.
He had never wept like that before and never would do so again.
And he had wept his son out of the haze. Hanck saw him, as clearly and distinctly as ever before – the infant with the inscrutable eyes lying in an incubator, the boy with the soft hair and the straight shoulders, a grown young man with his mother’s smile.
‘Is it okay?’
Hanck nodded. He was utterly shaken, he coughed but was able to breathe again. ‘I miss you terribly.’
‘I miss you too.’
‘Are you in pain?’
‘Er . . .’ He didn’t want to make a big deal out of the whole thing. He had a deep red patch on one cheek, a wound on his forehead, a tooth that had been knocked out, and a big gash on the back of his head. ‘I can hardly feel it. It happened so fast.’
‘Someone told me about it.’
‘Probably made it sound worse.’
‘Damn it . . .’
‘When I was a kid . . .’ His son paused, waited for his father to blow his nose.
‘Yes, what about it?’
‘I prayed to god to let me die before you did. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to stand the grief.’
‘I thought the same way,’ said Hanck.
‘But my prayer was answered.’
‘Because you prayed to an idiot.’
The son looked at his father for a moment. He shook his head, as if displeased by what he saw. ‘You need to pull yourself together.’
‘I know.’
‘When did you last shave?’
‘No idea.’
‘Pull yourself together.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘What do you mean by “we’ll see”?’
‘I’m stuck.’
‘Stuck how?’
‘I can’t grieve. I want revenge. I want to see that devil suffer.’
‘That’s pointless. You don’t have a chance.’
‘That’s what she said too. Bora. But . . .’
‘Bora? Did you talk to her?’
‘Yes,’ said Hanck. ‘I was there. I’ve been to your room.’
‘You’re out of your mind.’
‘That’s possible. But I had to. I had to find out what happened.’
‘Bora . . .’ repeated Toby. ‘Bora . . .’
‘She had a crush on you.’
‘Those sisters are deadly dangerous.’
‘She told me everything. Said that you had sneezed. I found this . . .’ Hanck took out the piece of brick, held it out towards Toby. But he didn’t want it.
‘Keep it.’
‘Is that true? That you sneezed?’
Toby smiled, almost laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help it. It was wonderful.’
‘But that sneeze brought you here.’
‘I couldn’t know that would happen.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant.’
‘What did you mean?’
‘I don’t know.’ Hanck fell silent for a moment. ‘I thought that I had so much to say. But now I can’t remember a thing.’
‘You don’t need to say much. You’ve already said all that’s necessary.’
‘It doesn’t feel like it.’
‘Maybe not to you, but to me it does.’
‘But it was all just . . . beginning.’
‘I have to be content. There are plenty of young people here who have seen nothing but shit. Not even a lot of shit. A little shit, because they never had time to see more. At least I got some applause.’
The Hurricane Party Page 24
