Night Work (17 page)

His fingers trembled as he scratched a dried gravy stain off his trousers. He put his seat belt on again and drove down Klosterneuburger Strasse.

As he passed the Brigittenauer swimming baths he decided to do the whole circuit again. He accelerated away, but he failed to reach the speeds he’d managed on his first tour. It wasn’t the car’s fault. His testosterone level had dropped and he was feeling dazed. Going too fast had lost its charm for him. He found 100 k.p.h. enough.

After rounding the Danube Canal between Heiligen-stadt and the city centre for a second time, driving at a more moderate speed, he set about collecting the cameras, which he’d numbered so he wouldn’t get the tapes mixed up later on. When he got out on the Brigittenauer embankment in order to collect the two cameras from the balcony of the flat, he stumbled. But for a rubbish skip, which he clung to in the nick of time, he would have fallen over.

He circled the Spider. The nearside tail light was smashed and the offside rear bodywork dented. The front of the car had suffered the worst damage. Part of the bonnet had been torn off and the headlights were shattered.

He dragged himself to the entrance on legs like cotton wool and took the lift up. He didn’t bother to inspect the cameras, just pressed the stop button and turned them off.

It occurred to him, as he lifted the dripping goose out of the bowl and put it down on the work surface, that his airbag hadn’t inflated after the crash. He wasn’t sure he remembered all the details correctly, but the state of the car said it all. The impact must have been considerable. The airbag should have inflated.

Product recall campaign, he thought. He couldn’t help laughing.

He got out some salt, pepper, tarragon and other herbs, chopped some vegetables, rinsed the casserole dish and preheated the oven. Then he dismembered the goose with poultry shears. It hadn’t thawed out completely, so he had to use a lot of force. He slit open the stomach and cut off the wings. Jonas wasn’t a very skilful cook, and before long the work surface was a scene of devastation.

He stared at the drumsticks. The wings. The parson’s nose.

He stared into the maw.

He surveyed the carcass in front of him.

Dashed to the toilet and vomited.

After cleaning his teeth and washing his face, he took a big shopping bag from the hall cupboard. Without looking too closely, he swept the bits of goose off the work surface and into the bag, which he tossed into a neighbouring flat.

He switched off the oven. The chopped vegetables caught his eye. He took a carrot and put it in his mouth. He felt tired. As if he hadn’t slept for days.

He sank onto the sofa. He would have liked to check the door. He tried to remember. He was pretty sure he’d locked it.

So limp. So tired.

He surfaced abruptly from a welter of confused, unpleasant images. It was after 7 p.m. He sprang to his feet. He mustn’t sleep, he had things to do.

While packing he floated around the flat like a sleepwalker. If he needed two things that were lying side by side he would pick up one and leave the other. He went back as soon as he noticed his oversight, only to think of something else and leave it lying there again.

Even so, he was ready in half an hour. His needs were few, after all. T-shirts, underpants, fruit juice, fruit and vegetables, blank tapes, cables and leads. He went into the deserted flat next door, where he’d dumped the cameras after his drive. He selected five of them and removed the tapes, which he marked with the numbers of their respective cameras.

While driving to Hollandstrasse he remembered the dream he’d had that afternoon. It had had no plot. Again
and again half a head or a mouth had appeared. An open mouth, its most notable feature being that it was toothless, with cigarette butts embedded in the gums where teeth should have been. That gaping mouth, with its uniform rows of cigarette butts, had appeared to him again and again. Nothing was said. There had been a cool, empty feeling about things.

The truck was standing outside. Jonas pulled up a few metres beyond it, where the Spider wouldn’t get in his way. He put two cameras in his bag and slung it over his shoulder.

It was stuffy inside his parents’ former flat. His footsteps echoed as he walked across the old parquet floor to the windows and opened each in turn.

Fresh, warm evening air flooded into the room. He perched on the window sill and looked out. The truck was blocking his view of the street. It didn’t bother him. He was filled with a feeling of familiarity. This was where he had stood as a small child, a box under his feet so he could look out at the street. That hole in the window flashing, that drain in the gutter, the colour of the roadway – all were familiar to him.

He got to his feet again. No time to lose.

In the hallway he laid some planks down on the short staircase that led to the ground-floor flats, making a ramp for the trolley. Having wheeled the two halves of the bedstead up it, he leant them against the wall.

He wouldn’t be able to put the bed up again without technical aids of some kind. He could try to glue them together again, it was true, but they probably wouldn’t support his weight. So he went and fetched some blocks of wood from the truck, blocks he’d obtained from a building site specifically for the purpose. Outside in the street he glanced anxiously at the sky. It would soon be getting dark.

He arranged the blocks on the floor. They were of different heights. He went outside again and returned with a box of books. The first three volumes he took out were valuable, he even remembered their former position in the mahogany bookcase. The next half dozen were Second World War tomes his father had collected after his mother’s death. They were dispensable.

He balanced two of them on the smallest block and distributed the rest, then checked the height. He switched two around, checked again, picked out a slender volume he didn’t need and added it to one of the supports. Now they were equal in height.

He wheeled in the first half of the bed, his mother’s side. Carefully, he tipped the bulky frame over and lowered it until the edge came to rest plumb in the centre of the supports. He did the same with the other half of the bedstead. That done, he fetched the mattresses and laid them down on top.

Gingerly at first, then more confidently, he rested his weight on the bed. When it didn’t collapse as he’d expected, he pulled off his shoes and stretched out on the mattresses.

Job done. Night could fall. He wouldn’t be faced with a choice between braving the darkness on the drive home to his flat on the Brigittenauer embankment and sleeping on the floor here.

Although he was feeling faint with hunger and the light was steadily fading, he worked on. One piece of furniture after another was wheeled in and placed in position. He wasn’t as careful as he’d been when loading up. Rattles and bangs filled the air, the walls shed flakes of plaster, black streaks disfigured the wallpaper. He didn’t care as long as nothing got broken. Even professional removal men scratched things.

The last load of the evening consisted of two pictures, three cameras and the TV. Jonas turned on the TV. He
fancied something, he didn’t know what. He untangled some leads and connected a camera to the TV. He had to press several buttons on the remote before the screen went blue, indicating it was ready.

It was dark now, but the street lights hadn’t come on as he’d hoped. Hands on hips, he looked through the window at the truck. All that could be heard behind him was the faint hum of the camera, which was on stand-by.

Chocolate.

He was ravenously hungry, but what tormented him most of all was a craving for chocolate. Milk chocolate, chocolate with nuts, chocolate creams, anything, even cooking chocolate, would have done. As long as it was chocolate.

The hallway was in darkness. Shotgun in hand, he groped his way to the light switch. When the dim bulb in the ceiling came on, he cleared his throat and let out a hoarse laugh. He tried the door of the flat opposite. Locked. He tried the next one. Just as he turned the handle he realised that it was Frau Bender’s former home.

‘Hello?’

Jonas turned the light on. His throat tightened. He gulped. He slid along the walls like a shadow. The flat was unrecognisable. Its occupants appeared to have been young people. Photos of film stars hung on the walls. The video collection filled two cupboards. TV magazines were lying around. In one corner stood an empty terrarium.

Everything looked unfamiliar. All he remembered was the handsome parquet floor and the moulded ceilings.

He was astonished to note that Frau Bender’s flat had been almost three times the size of his parents’.

He found no chocolate, only some biscuits of a kind he disliked. Then he remembered the grocer’s two streets away. Jonas had often shopped at Herr Weber’s as a boy. He’d even been allowed to buy things on account. The old
man with the bushy eyebrows had eventually given up the business. If he remembered correctly, the shop had been acquired by an Egyptian who sold oriental specialities. Still, perhaps he’d stocked chocolate as well.

Out in the street it was a mild, windless night. Jonas peered left and right. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck as he set off through the gloom. He felt tempted to turn back, but he summoned up all his willpower and walked on.

The shop wasn’t locked. There was chocolate. In addition to tinned goods and powdered soups, the establishment had sold milk, bread and sausage – all of it spoilt now, of course. The owner had dealt in almost all the basic necessities. Alcohol was the only thing Jonas couldn’t find.

He put several bars of chocolate in a rusty shopping basket and added a few tins of bean soup, some peanuts and a bottle of mineral water. He also raided the shelves for a random assortment of sweets and biscuits.

The shopping basket proved a nuisance on the return trip. It was impossible to carry the thing and hold his gun at the ready at the same time. He walked slowly. Here and there a lighted window illuminated a stretch of pavement.

He couldn’t shake off the notion that someone was lying in wait behind the parked cars. He paused to listen. All he heard was his own tremulous breathing.

In his imagination a woman was lurking behind that van parked on the corner. She was wearing a kind of nun’s wimple, and she had no face. There she crouched, waiting for him as if she’d never moved before. As if she’d always been there. And she wasn’t waiting for just anyone. She was waiting for
him
.

He had an urge to laugh, to yell, but he didn’t utter a sound. He tried to run, but his legs refused to obey him. He approached the building steadily, not daring to breathe.

In the hallway he turned on the light, walked up the ramp and along the passage to the flat. He didn’t look back. He went in, put the basket down and pushed the door shut with his behind. Only then did he turn round and lock it.

‘Hahaha! Now we’ll feast! Now we’ll guzzle! Hahaha!’

He looked round the kitchen. The units and all the equipment had belonged to the Kästner family. He put a large saucepan on the stove and emptied the contents of two tins into it. His tension gradually eased as the scent of bean soup rose into the air.

After eating he took the shopping basket into the living room, where he was greeted by the hum of the camera. The bed didn’t collapse this time either, when he tested its stability with his foot. He went to get a blanket and a pillow and lay down. Tearing the wrapper off a bar of milk chocolate, he thrust a couple of squares into his mouth.

He surveyed the room. Although the furniture was still far from complete, the pieces he’d so far brought in were back in their original places. The brown bookcase and the yellow one. The ancient standard lamp. The rather greasy armchair. The rocking chair with the worn arms, in which he’d sometimes felt queasy as a child. And, on the wall opposite the bed, ‘Johanna’, the picture of an unknown woman that had always hung there: a beautiful, dark-haired woman leaning against a stylised tree trunk and gazing into the beholder’s eyes. His parents had jokingly christened her Johanna, although no one knew who had painted the picture or whom it represented. Or even where it had come from.

The undersheet was soft. It still gave off a familiar odour.

Jonas turned on his side and reached for another piece of chocolate. Tired and relaxed, he stared at the window that overlooked the street. A double window, it was so
ill-fitting that old blankets had been laid on the sill between the inner and outer casements to prevent draughts in winter.

This was where he’d handed over his letter addressed to the Christkind just before Christmas.

His mother used to remind him to make out a wish list for the Christkind at the beginning of December. She never forgot to mention that he must be modest in his requests because the Christkind was too poor to be able to afford more than a thin garment. So Jonas would sit at the table with his feet dangling clear of the floor, chewing his pencil and dreaming. Would a remote-controlled jeep be too expensive for the Christkind? How about a toy racetrack? Or an electric motorboat? The most wonderful presents occurred to him, but his mother said his requests would put the Christkind in an awkward position because they couldn’t all be granted.

As a result, Jonas’s wish list eventually consisted of just a few small items. A new fountain pen. A packet of transfers. A rubber ball. His letter ended up on the threadbare blanket between the windows, ready to be collected by an angel on one of the following nights and delivered to the Christkind.

How would the angel manage to open the outer window?

That was the question Jonas pondered before going to sleep. He didn’t want to shut his eyes and yearned to stay awake. Would the angel come tonight? Would he hear him?

His first thought on waking: I fell asleep after all. But when, when?

He ran to the window. If the envelope had disappeared, as it usually did on the second or third day, seldom on the first because angels were so busy, Jonas experienced a feeling of happiness far greater than anything he felt weeks later on Christmas Eve itself. He was delighted with his
presents, and with the thought that the Christkind had been near enough in person to leave the parcels beneath the Christmas tree while he was sitting in the kitchen. His parents used to invite Uncle Reinhard and Aunt Lena, Uncle Richard and Aunt Olga to dinner. The tree was lit up with candles. Jonas would lie on the floor half-listening to the grown-ups’ conversation, which had become a steady murmur by the time it reached him. He felt enveloped by the sound as he leafed through a book or examined a toy train. This was all very lovely and mysterious, but nothing compared to the miracle that had occurred a week or two earlier, when an angel had come to collect his letter during the night.