But it was ajar, he thought, ending his one-sided conversation with Natalie’s voicemail. As with the previous attempts to call her, the voicemail had kicked in after ten rings.
He went into the bathroom and pushed the shower curtain aside, but of course he didn’t find the model of the hospital there, nor on the balcony overlooking the courtyard or on top of the wardrobe. He even looked outside the front door. By now he was doubting his sanity so much that he checked every room a second time, starting with Natalie’s most holy place: her dark room.
The windowless, tiled room at the far end of the T-shaped hallway had originally been intended as a guest bathroom; now it housed a small laboratory bench and ventilation system, several fixed sinks and a lockable chemicals cupboard next to the washbasin. Natalie had created an additional partition behind the door, using a light-excluding theatre curtain, beyond which Leon had ventured three times at most since they moved in. The dark room was Natalie’s territory, a foreign land for which he had no entry visa.
Again, he felt like an intruder, like he was doing something wrong.
He pressed the switch next to the partition, and the red lamp bathed the room in hazy light.
Hidden away somewhere, so that it couldn’t be turned on by accident, was the switch for the conventional ceiling light. But Leon wasn’t in the mood to search for it, and the lamp gave enough light anyway.
Nothing stood out, apart from a disturbing black-and-white photograph that Natalie had clipped to a washing line. The picture showed her face on a stranger’s torso – that of a naked, pregnant woman. It was obviously a montage, but a very good one, because it was impossible to make out a single flaw in the transition from neck to chest.
Natalie must have created the image for the exhibition that Anouka was now working on alone.
Star Children.
Leon looked around more carefully this time, noticing prints of other, slightly modified motifs of the pregnant woman, still swimming in the fixing baths.
He took a step closer.
The smell of the developer was almost impossible to bear, but he didn’t know how to turn on the ventilation system. Leon’s eyes filled with tears. One of the pictures floating under the red light, as though in a pool of blood, became more blurred every time he blinked.
That’s impossible.
Leon wanted to turn away, but the pornographic brutality of the image had an almost magnetic allure. He leaned forward, feeling his stomach flip like he was on a rollercoaster just before it plunged into the abyss for the first time.
This can’t be real.
It wasn’t so much the manipulated image that shocked him, which was of Natalie, her eyes closed, ramming a broken bottle neck into her rounded belly; it was the object swimming in the fixing bath: a string of artificial pearls. And there was no doubt who it belonged to.
Natalie’s name was on the pink identity bracelet, the good-luck charm, the one that had been swinging from her mobile phone as she ran from the apartment.
8
When asked how they met, Leon and Natalie tended to keep quiet and just smile. Sometimes they told the truth, joining in with the questioner’s laughter as though to confirm they were joking. But they really had met for the first time in a brothel, and it had been La Fola, one of the most renowned in the city.
At the time neither of them believed the other’s explanation as to what had brought them there. He had been on a stag night, while she was looking for inspiration for her final project at art college, entitled ‘The Naked Society’.
The music was as loud as in a nightclub, meaning that Leon had to lean in close to Natalie to read her words from her lips. They were marked by the gentle impressions of her front teeth and a little torn at the corners of her mouth, but that didn’t stop her from grinning broadly at much of his conversation. Even the parts that weren’t funny in the slightest.
‘I hate photos,’ he had admitted to her hours later, after he had parted company with his friends. They had gone for a walk together, without giving so much as a glance at the window displays of the over expensive boutiques along the boulevard. ‘Especially photos of myself. I’m not very photogenic.’
As proof, he presented his ID photo.
‘The photographer obviously didn’t like you,’ she said, and even though he laughed at the observation, Leon knew she hadn’t meant it as a joke.
Natalie opened her handbag and pulled out a Polaroid camera.
Before he could protest, she had pressed the button. While waving the print around like a fan, she explained her theory to him: ‘The greater the love of the photographer for their subject, the better the picture.’
Leon stared speechless at the photograph in his hands.
‘And do you like yourself?’ she asked.
‘Much more than in real life,’ he admitted, feeling a bit dazed.
A little later they kissed.
How can something that began so perfectly end so terribly? thought Leon as he sat there in his study, only a few weeks after their third anniversary, opening the package that had just arrived.
At first glance the order seemed complete: an elastic headband, two motion sensors, Velcro tape, cable, batteries, a USB stick.
And of course the radio-controlled camera.
Admittedly it didn’t look exactly the same as the model he had picked online, but it wasn’t the first time the shop had delivered the wrong thing. And in this case it was to Leon’s advantage, for the camera had a higher resolution than the one he had actually ordered.
He carried everything into the bedroom, where he had already started up the laptop on the bureau. A hypnophobia forum online had ended up being a real treasure trove of information. Leon was clearly not the only person wanting to film himself in his sleep.
As he fastened the camera to the headband with the Velcro tape, he felt himself starting to get sleepy. But I already slept for an eternity, damn it. What’s wrong with me?
His desire to sleep increased with the speed of the progress bar on the screen as the camera’s software installed on the computer.
He then had to carry out a function test by lying motionless on the bed, which was astonishingly difficult despite his tiredness. His nerves were jangling. After just a minute he sat back up again to check whether the motion sensors had sent a radio impulse to the component in the USB slot of the laptop, activating the filming function.
Bingo.
The green LED lamp of the USB stick blinked in rhythm with his heartbeat, showing Leon the recording status. When he took the headband off again and laid it next to him on the pillow, the colour changed from green to red. The recording stopped as soon as the camera went into standby mode.
Leon stood up and went over to the bureau. Moving the mouse nervously, he opened the video player’s display window. The brief recording was just one megabyte in size and started immediately as he clicked.
Leon stared at what his head movements had managed to capture, overcome by a confusing sensation, similar to the one he’d had when he heard a recording of his voice for the first time. He saw his bed-sheets, followed the camera panning over the wardrobe to the monitor, which was flickering feverishly on the recording, and felt like a stranger in his home.
So as not to be woken by the sun rising, he lowered the blinds and pulled the curtains. The camera had an infrared recording function and a low-light amplifier that was considerably more sensitive than the bulky thing Dr Volwarth had attached to him all those years ago.
Despite the jeans and thick sweatshirt he had on, he was cold with fatigue, and contemplated taking a bath to help him sleep. But he was afraid nothing would stop the thoughts exploding in his mind. Eventually, he drank a glass of red wine and pulled on a thick pair of socks with soles of rubberised dots. Then he put on the headband with the camera, laid down in bed, and waited for his eyes to close.
9
Leon had always been the kind of person who brooded over things. While Natalie could simply tur
n over and fall asleep even after a heated argument, he would often lie awake for hours on end, staring at the ceiling and trying to get to the bottom of things.
He could still remember clearly the last time he found himself in a similar, almost schizophrenic state of limbo, in which his body was screaming for sleep but his mind for answers. It had been after that unfortunate dinner when he met Natalie’s parents for the first time.
Leon had arrived alone in the expensive Italian restaurant, where the walls looked like the event pages of a society magazine: every centimetre adorned with pictures of politicians, singers, actors, artists. All of them grinning broadly, arm in arm with the owner as though he were their best friend and not just a clever businessman primarily interested in gratifying his own vanity.
Leon felt uncomfortable from the start. Not because of the ambience, but because he was a coward who had disowned his own parents. Unlike Hector, Natalie’s father, Klaus Nader couldn’t afford Savile Row suits, not on his waiter’s salary. He would choose wine not by taste but by price, if at all. And if presented with a wine list dominated by expensive bottles, his likely response would be to ask for a menu where the prices weren’t given in Turkish lira.
And what would they have talked about? Certainly not about whether it was better to winter in Florida or Mauritius to flee the awful weather. Maria Nader was just happy if the tram tracks didn’t freeze up in January, and she was more likely to worry about whether the special offer from the newspaper supplement would still be available the next day than whether seat 4C in first class with Emirates was the best around. His adoptive parents, who had adopted him shortly before his sixteenth birthday, had travelled first class just once. And that had been by train, and only because they got into the wrong carriage by mistake.
Yet the evening didn’t get off to the stilted beginning Leon had feared. Hector and Silvia Lene might look like they had just jumped out of the pages of a brochure for luxury retirement properties – healthy, dripping with jewellery, suntanned and full of energy, albeit still unmistakably in the autumn of their lives – but Hector relaxed the atmosphere with some humorous and witty anecdotes, which surprisingly weren’t about financial investments or second homes, nor about his passion for collecting classic cars. He even complained about the steep prices in the restaurant, rolling his eyes at the small portions, and Leon became increasingly ashamed at having made a cheap excuse for his parents’ absence. In all likelihood everyone would have got on well; he was probably the only snob at this table, one who had failed to stand by the people who loved him unconditionally. Even though the Naders didn’t share Leon’s interest in architecture and had never been to university, they had sacrificed a car, holidays and other comforts just to finance his studies.
He felt sick as he realised how badly he had acted, how great was his betrayal. Leon could try to convince himself that he just wanted to spare his parents the embarrassment of having to pick up the cheque (their pride would have prevented them from yielding to their son), but in truth he knew he was ashamed of his background and that this was why he’d made a cheap excuse as to why Mum and Dad were unfortunately feeling under the weather today.
He had decided to make up for his mistake and quickly suggest an invitation in return, when something happened to make it crystal clear there would be no further meeting. Not with his parents. Not with him. Never again.
It happened in the toilets. Leon was standing at the urinal when Hector walked in and positioned himself at the next basin, humming cheerfully. Leon was trying to hit the sticker of a fly attached to the urinal as a target, when Hector addressed him: ‘She likes it dirty.’
‘Excuse me?’
Hector winked at him and unzipped his fly. ‘I know I shouldn’t say that, as her father. But as men we can speak openly, right? You’re not a prude or something, are you?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Leon, trying to force a smile. He glanced over only briefly, and his gaze inadvertently landed on the hand of his future father-in-law, whose member was either half erect or unusually large. The stream splattering down on to the enamel was correspondingly loud and intense.
‘Good, I’m glad to hear it. Because I wouldn’t marry my daughter off to some uptight faggot. She needs a proper stallion.’
‘Sorry?’
‘She gets it from her mother. You might not think it, to look at her now. But under the slap, Silvia’s still the same exhibitionist hussy whose virginity I took over forty years ago.’
Leon’s fake smile began to choke him. He was still hoping that Hector would cry out ‘I had you going there for a minute!’ and clout him on the shoulder with his massive paw. But Natalie’s father was deadly serious.
‘Like mother, like daughter. It’s no secret that Natalie was unbelievably horny even from an early age. And so blatant about it. She always left her bedroom door open when her boyfriends stayed the night. And there were more than a few!’
Hector laughed and shook himself off. ‘I didn’t want to see it, Leon. But Natalie made it impossible for me not to. That’s how I know what she gets off on. Handcuffs, collars. Pulled really tight, like on a mangy dog.’
He pulled his zipper up, then, noticing Leon’s amazement, gave him a questioning look.
‘Hey, this stays between us, OK? I mean, we are family now, aren’t we?’
‘Of course,’ Leon stuttered, and didn’t say a word for the rest of the dinner. He felt even more ashamed than before; at the beginning of the meal he had genuinely regretted that his own father wasn’t as worldly, well read or cultured as Hector. At the end he was furious he didn’t give Hector a piece of his mind and take a swing for him when, as Hector said goodbye, he let his hand rest on Natalie’s behind for a brief moment. And Leon hated himself because he knew he would never work up the courage to tell Natalie about the conversation in the men’s room, because that would not only have poisoned her love for her father, but possibly her love for him too.
And I can’t risk that. I can’t risk losing you, thought Leon now, years later.
With the thought, the memory of that awful dinner began to fade.
He opened his eyes, and the nightmare was over.
10
When he sat up in bed, Leon didn’t know where he was. Normally the light from the aquarium woke him. Today the darkness around him was so intense that he lost his sense of orientation.
For the first few seconds he thought he was imprisoned in another sleep paralysis and was dreaming his fruitless attempts to reach out for a light source. Wherever he stretched out his hand, he grasped into nothingness.
Natalie, where are you? was his first clear thought as he realised he was lying in bed alone.
And why do the bed-sheets feel so strange?
He traced his fingers over the cotton, missing the warm imprint of her body as she slept. Where was her familiar scent, that mix of fresh hay and green tea he could usually smell even hours after she had got up?
In that moment all he could smell was his own stale breath, and the sheet felt unusually smooth.
And numb.
Exactly. Numb. That was the right word.
Leon clawed his fingers into the sheet, made a fist, and as his eyes slowly became accustomed to the scant light in the bedroom, he remembered why he had woken alone.
And why, hovering a short distance away, a little red light was blinking.
With a start, he sat up and rubbed his eyes.
The computer. The recording.
Leon reached his hand up to his forehead, but the camera wasn’t there.
Was it just a dream after all? But if so, then why is the USB stick blinking?
He rolled to the left, grappling around on the nightstand until he found the switch for his reading lamp. When he turned it on, he screamed out.
It was a brief, involuntary reflex that he would have been ashamed of in Natalie’s company, but he couldn’t remember ever having been so shocked in his life.
Not when, at the age of el
even, he was awoken by the screams of Adrian’s mother as he stood there with the knife in his hand next to the child’s bed. Nor when he first saw himself sleepwalk in Dr Volwarth’s practice.
None of his therapy sessions had ever been as disturbing as this moment, as he looked at his own hands to find they were covered in pale-green latex gloves.
What in God’s name . . .?
In the light of the reading lamp, he stared at his fingers like a lunatic realising in a rare moment of clarity that he had just committed a crime.
That’s why the sheet felt numb!
That’s why my hands feel like they don’t belong to my body.
Repulsed, he tore off the surgical gloves and threw them next to the bed. The elastic had clung so tightly to his wrists that his fingertips were shrivelled as though he had spent too long in the bath.
He pushed back the bedcovers and crawled out of bed. He was even colder than he had been before going to sleep, and felt like he hadn’t slept for even a second, but a glance at his clock on the nightstand revealed the truth: fourteen hours had passed.
What happened in that time?
On the way over to his laptop Leon stumbled upon the headband with the camera attached to it. It was lying on the floor next to the wardrobe, and he resisted his first impulse to pick it up and put it back on.
An alarming thought shot into his mind: This is a crime scene, you can’t touch anything.
Look, but don’t touch!
Leon brushed a few carelessly discarded items of clothing from the chair and sat down on the heavy metal stool in front of the bureau. He opened the laptop and was blinded by the light of the monitor. Squinting, he opened the software. His fingers felt uncomfortably dry on the keyboard – they were still covered with the remains of talcum powder from the gloves.