You burst out laughing, you can see how painful your laughter is to Marrer. Perhaps you shouldn’t overdo it, or he’ll fire the next bullet at you before you’re through with laughing.
“Tell me, how silly did you feel standing in front of those corpses and mechanically reciting those texts? The words were written just for you … You didn’t understand a thing … You—”
“You were
punishing
us?” Marrer interrupts you in disbelief. “That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“You’re messing with me, right?”
He doesn’t believe you, he doesn’t want to believe you. He’s an idiot, but he’s an idiot with a gun in his hand.
“Your presumption, your arrogance,” you say, each word like spitting. “Why should I mess you around? What you have done in the name of remorse and guilt should be forbidden. How dare you be so presumptuous?”
“But we wanted to help, we—”
“
YOU JERKS WANTED TO PLAY GOD
!” you suddenly explode, knowing of course that you’re overdoing it a bit. But you can’t think of anything
better. You know they never wanted to play God. You’re just bitter that while you were engaged in the arduous struggle with your own guilt, four people came along to be paid for something that had cost you your entire identity. No one should have it so easy, so you made it hard for them.
“I was so guilty,” you go on, “that I lost myself. I couldn’t look myself in the eye any more, do you understand that? How are you going to solve that one? I looked for a solution. And when I did that, I became your mirror.”
“And for that two people had to die?” You laugh.
You thought Marrer was more intelligent.
“I would have done what I did to those two even if you hadn’t existed. You fit into my schedule.”
“Timetable?”
“Right. Timetable.”
“And Wolf? Did he fit into your timetable as well?”
“What?”
“We found him yesterday in the ground by the villa. What were you trying to tell us with
that?
What can a sick mind be trying to tell me by burying my brother alive?”
You try to concentrate; you have no idea what happened to Wolf Marrer.
“I …”
“You know something? If I’m being perfectly honest, I don’t want to hear your answer. You’ve talked enough crap. Is this the source of your guilt?”
Kris holds the photograph up to you. Butch and Sundance on the bicycle.
“You know what I think of your guilt?” Kris goes on. “It belongs to you alone. No one will take it from you. And this is what I think of your guilt: nothing.”
You stare at the photograph. Everything comes together into this moment. There it is again. The ringing in your ears and reality starting to jerk and tremble before it freezes with a scraping noise. You look at the photograph in Marrer’s hand, you see his face behind it. The grief, the rage. He’s here to kill you. He doesn’t care whether it’s right or wrong. He just knows one thing:
You must cease to be
.
Remember the moment in the restaurant when you first heard about the agency. Reality froze then too and you wondered what would happen
if you died at such a moment. Would you simply disappear? It was a premonition of this moment. No bullets are needed now. Everything has frozen.
You feel the darkness around you; you wait for Marrer to go on talking, to put the photograph down and shout at you. Nothing happens. The photograph floats in front of your eyes, Marrer’s mouth doesn’t move, and then the darkness surges closer. It comes from every corner, it fills the room like liquid, like warm black blood. Slow and sluggish. The darkness creeps down the walls, it comes away from the ceiling and starts to flow around Marrer’s feet and comes at you from all sides. You are nothing now but a silent particle in a silent world that will never again be set in motion. And as the darkness completely enfolds you, you disappear just as silently, leaving no traces, from this reality.
I
T’S OVER
. Time has ceased to exist. I wait for sunrise. When the sun has risen, I will get out of the car, and then it’ll be over. I haven’t opened the trunk since yesterday, and that’s how it’s going to stay, I will never open it again. I bought wet wipes and glass cleaner at a gas station. At another gas station I vacuumed the car. I cleaned the interior, and since then I’ve been sitting here waiting for the sun to rise.
The view is enchanting. I know Frauke would like it. All the light and the peace that lie over a city at the start of the day. I know what Wolf would say now. He would hug me close and give me warmth. He would say:
Are you cold?
And I would nod and his hands would be everywhere, warming me.
How I miss his warmth.
How I miss his warmth.
The sky has a purple glow, and slowly the purple dissolves and turns pale and fades to a matte blue. The sun is like liquid mercury. I can’t take my eyes off it. I persevere until my eyes are swimming with tears, then I close them tight and the sun reappears behind my closed lids.
Cars go past. A bus. A rattling moped. More cars. I wait for the lights to change, pick up my bag and get out. The morning air is fresh and clear. Maybe I’ll stroll down to Friedenau. I can do that whenever I like. Maybe I’ll go and stand below Jenni’s window and call her name.
Maybe not
.
I lock the car, walk a few yards, and stop on the bridge. I look down on to the Lietzensee. Everyone’s still asleep. There are individual lights burning in the hotel, the trees don’t yet cast shadows. Even though it’s so early, a few people are sitting by the water. Perhaps they slept here, perhaps the spring nights are already so warm that you can sleep outside. They’re sitting on a blanket with their legs outstretched, their voices are faint and thin. One of them squats by the shore smoking a cigarette. One of them looks up and sees me. Wolf. He raises both arms as if he
were bringing in a plane to land. I wave back to him. The others look up now. And there is Frauke, dressed head to toe in black and tired, but she laughs, I can see her laughter, warm as sunlight, warm and everywhere all at once. She waves, she presses a hand to her heart, then she presses the hand to her mouth and blows me a kiss. And I know I should walk on, but I can’t leave her alone, it’s so hard. And Wolf lays his arm around Frauke, and the man by the shore flicks his cigarette away and reaches his arm back and throws a stone over the water, and the others go on talking as if nothing had happened, while the stone jumps once, twice, three times over the surface of the water before disappearing silently into the depths.
Gregor
, I’ve tormented you over and over again with this novel, until you found out how much I was tormenting myself with it and took me aside and told me it would all be OK.
Peter and Kathrin
, for your enthusiasm and your criticism.
Daniela
, because you never had any doubts when I was full of doubts, because you love the darkness and forgive me my evil self.
Ana and Christina and Janna and Martina
, you took the sting out of my nervousness.
Ulrike
, because you were committed to every sentence and every thought.
Felix
, my very personal secret agent, who kept the fire burning, who covered my back and was always there.
Eva
, you touched me with your words and believed in me when times were dark.
Carol and Liz
, for taking me over the ocean, for being so patient with me.
Shaun
, who made me sound like myself.
Ullstein Verlag
, your enthusiasm healed wounds.
Andrew Vachss and Jonathan Nasaw and Jonathan Carroll
, for the thoughts that shouldn’t be.
Ghinzu and Tunng and Archive and Mugison and The National
, for the rhythm and the all-night stints.
Corinna
, two hard years working as a Muse and you never once complained.
Love ya
.
Zoran Drvenkar was born in Croatia in 1967 and moved to Germany when he was three years old. He has been working as a writer since 1989 and lives in a former corn mill just outside of Berlin.
Shaun Whiteside has translated over fifty books from the German, French, Italian, and Dutch, including novels by Amélie Nothomb, Paolo Giordano, Marcel Möring, and Bernard Schlink, as well as classics by Freud, Nietzsche, Musil, and Schnitzler. His translation of
Magdalene the Sinner
by Lilian Faschinger won the 1996 Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize. He lives in London.