Quite unexpectedly, he slept for two hours during the night, waking only when the doorbell rang. Dabbelink was standing in the hallway in his yellow jersey, asking in a very friendly manner if he could borrow a pair of poultry shears. Sebastian woke screaming, soaked in sweat. He sank back into bed, closed his eyes, and tried to let the memory of the previous day trickle into his consciousness as slowly as possible. There was a vortex spinning deep within him, with a strong gravitational pull. This was fear. Sebastian realized that it was possible to be afraid of absolutely everything—getting up, staying in bed, the nighttime, and the day ahead. Most frightening of all was the thought that this fear would itself bring further misfortune. The thought of Liam was paralyzing. Sebastian had to avoid thinking about his son at all costs. He recast the situation in his mind: Liam was not there because he was at scout camp. Sebastian would take advantage of his family’s absence in order to get rid of a rival. He had been assigned this motive by his blackmailers, and he was determined to follow their plans to the letter. Obeying them would bring freedom, he thought, it was his only chance. He was subscribing to a widespread fallacy, but it did not disturb him. He felt better for it, in fact.
When he opened his eyes, a man was standing at the foot of the bed. A paper bag covered his head. When Sebastian tried to escape, his feet got tangled in the sheets. He hit his head against the corner of the wardrobe, and woke up on the sofa in front of the television. The screen was filled with the very large mouth of a woman singing tunelessly. Sebastian padded around the apartment gingerly. The furniture cowered in the kind of muffled silence that comes with blocked-up ears. He touched the leaves of a potted plant cautiously, picked up stray letters and turned them over, and checked the books on the shelves and found they were in order. On the way to the bathroom, he glanced into the bedroom through the open door and noticed an unfamiliar bulge under the bedspread. Walking up to it quietly, he realized that the hump was rising and falling in time with his own breathing. He pulled the covers back and looked himself in the face, eyes torn open and lips stretched in a horrible grin. Time and space split apart in a sudden jerk, and Sebastian was lying in the place of his doppelgänger. He dug all ten fingers into his thighs, hit the wall repeatedly with his palms until they hurt, and finally got up and drew the curtains. A greenish strip of dawn was glimmering over the roofs of the houses.
THE SHOWER DID NOTHING TO CHANGE the impression of having woken too little, or too often, of being caught in a world where the rules have shifted. The worst thing was that there was absolutely no-bo-dy left who could help him out of this trap. He was to talk to no-bo-dy, and could ask no-bo-dy if he had merely dreamt the events of yesterday. Or if, on the contrary, at that service station on the A81, he had woken from a dream that had lasted decades. Reality, Sebastian thought, is nothing more than an agreement between six billion people. He had been forced to unilaterally renege on the overarching agreement. So waking in the morning no longer offered any guarantees. He had no choice but to face the new day without a certificate of authenticity.
Cold water brought strength back into his limbs. Wearily, he suppressed an urge to rush into his study and destroy all his theoretical writings, which suddenly seemed to him the work of the devil—aiming only to turn time and space upside down and thus cast into chaos the conditions required for the survival of reason. At eight o’clock sharp, he rang the number of the scout camp in Gwiggen and said that his son had come down with a sudden attack of flu. A girl with an Austrian accent replied that the deposit paid for Liam could not be refunded. Sebastian did not scream or cry, but simply said good-bye.
After this success, he decided to take care of the damaged Volvo. He needed a reliable car and it felt good to occupy himself initially with an everyday matter. So he drove into town, past the backdrop of a perfectly staged Monday morning—young men in suits cycling through the streets with briefcases on their panniers, visibly exulting in the beautiful weather. On the way, Sebastian decided on three principles to follow: twenty-four hours’ planning at most, the same for the execution of the deed, and a 100 percent guarantee of success.
Of course it would also be a question of leaving as few traces as possible, but that was just a vague matter of chance, not a necessary condition.
A mechanic with ponytail and steel-rimmed glasses tugged at the loose ignition cables and congratulated Sebastian on his good luck in still having a car at all. Sebastian did not enter into the question of whether he had been lucky or unlucky, but promised to return in an hour. At a high table in a bakery, he drank coffee. On the radio there was a report on the government’s new plans for reform. The woman in the bakery was selling bread rolls with names that sounded like fitness products and discussing with her customers the imminent end of the world. The only advantage in Sebastian’s situation was that none of this mattered to him any longer. He paid. He picked up his car—repaired and fully cleaned, too, thanks to a special offer at the garage that week. Even the trunk had been vacuumed.
IT IS JUST AFTER TWELVE. Sebastian hangs the tea towel on the hook and walks over to the balcony door. The sun has risen over the ridge of the roof, and casts a rectangle of light between the trees in the courtyard. A cat parades over the cobblestones, lies down on its side, and stretches one leg in the air to clean itself. The scene is simple and clear; the trip into town has done Sebastian good. But he is no nearer to his goal of coming up with a proper plan. Every imagined attempt to approach Dabbelink ends in fiasco. At least he feels no pity when he thinks of Dabbelink—only hatred. It seems to him that Dabbelink is, in some secret fashion, responsible for all of this. Sebastian is wary of this very useful conception on moral grounds. He is also happy that Dabbelink has neither wife nor children—not out of human kindness, but for logistical reasons.
He pulls open all the kitchen drawers for the third time, and also opens the little cupboard under the sink.
Bread knife and kebab skewers. A corkscrew and a potato masher. A hammer.
Although Sebastian knows that human beings like killing, he has never thought the process would be simple. He is annoyed by TV films in which a distraught woman reaches for the fallen pistol on the floor and kills her attacker with one clean shot to the head, despite the recoil and a lack of weapons training. The way Sebastian sees it, normal people can perhaps operate a gun, but will never hit their target. Normal people handle a variety of possible murder weapons every day—parcel string, plastic bags, rolling pins, not to mention kebab skewers (have these ever actually been used?)—but still wouldn’t know how to employ them in order to kill.
Ethyl alcohol. Insecticide.
Sebastian seriously considers getting a professional to do the job. It would be simple for an anesthetist to get the necessary drug, then ring Dabbelink and tell him some cock-and-bull story. They would meet at his house for the handover. They would clink glasses of red wine. With luck, it would look like suicide.
Pastry fork. Duct tape. Poultry shears.
Right at the back is an old bottle without a label, filled to the brim with a clear fluid. Sebastian opens it and sniffs. Nothing. Absolutely, markedly nothing.
His mother had always kept the distilled water for ironing high up on a shelf in the laundry room. If you were to drink it, the dead water would seep into your cells, bloat them, and make you explode. A cool wind touches the back of Sebastian’s neck. Dabbelink’s racing bike is kept in the shelter in front of the cycling club. Two water bottles are beneath the saddle.
When Oskar was asked about his methods at the university, he replied that the art of thinking did not lie in finding the answers, but in teasing answers from the questions. Perhaps, Sebastian thinks, the human being is also a problem that carries his solution within him. Perhaps that is what those who study the humanities call fate. A machine, like Dabbelink, has to die cycling.
Bent over the computer keyboard in the study, Sebastian cannot stop thinking about Oskar. Oskar in the full glory of his infallibility. Perhaps he, too, would b
e unable to come up with a way out of this straight off, but he would know how to rise above by force of intellect. For a moment, Sebastian feels ashamed of wanting Oskar’s support at this of all times. Then he found the right article on the Internet. Contrary to popular wisdom, drinking distilled water is safe. Some health fanatics even consider it good for you as it is sterile. Sebastian reads the article as if it is his own death sentence.
Immediately after this, he is sitting at the kitchen table once again, head buried in his hands. He is a physicist, not a chemist, and certainly not a criminal; he is probably not even very practical minded. They have chosen the wrong man. For a frenzied half hour, he imagines an alternative past peppered with if-onlys. If only he had not set his heart on a couple of weeks of undisturbed work. If only he had not immersed himself in useless theories. If only he had used his time with Maike and Liam fully and wrung every bit of happiness out of it. Now he is being punished for his inattention.
When he stands up to get a glass out of the cupboard, his spine bears the memory of his tensed posture. The distilled water tastes of nothing, a liquid corpse. Sebastian suppresses his revulsion and drinks. After the second glass he is able to cry. He drinks a third, and his tears flow into his collar. The sound of crockery rattling in the apartment below comes through the open balcony door, marking the boundary beyond which an alien everyday is progressing relentlessly. If it were within his power to do so, Sebastian would silence the clinking plates, the hands that are stacking them, the twittering of the birds, the distant grumble of car engines, and the entire, bright harlequin world outside with a single blow.
As he stands there motionless, letting his damp cheeks dry naturally, enjoying the brief moment of peace after his outburst, his exhausted brain tosses forth something else Oskar has said. For you, my diligent friend, thinking is hard labor. A solution that is obvious the moment it springs to mind is best.
Sebastian leaves the apartment and walks down the stairs to the cellar, where his seldom-used tools are kept.
[3]
SEBASTIAN HAD NOT NEEDED THE MOBILE PHONE alarm to wake him up. He had not taken his eyes off the clock on the dashboard. The Volvo is parked on a track in the woods. Darkness has turned the bored pine trees into a wall. When Sebastian leans forward he can see the shaft of Ursa Major against a little patch of sky. He has always thought that this constellation ought to be replaced with a new and more interesting one. When he opens the car door, the smell of the forest hits him: plants that suck up nourishment from the rotting wastes of past generations. His foot lands on springy subsoil, a contact so natural that the next movement follows from it. Sebastian takes the rucksack out of the trunk and sets off.
A forest considers various processes going on in it to be perfectly normal. It does not strike Sebastian as odd to be climbing a mountain away from the road at half-past three in the morning. He can concentrate entirely on not stumbling over tree roots, carefully untangling thorny blackberry branches from his sleeves, and fighting the fatigue that is tempting him to lie down on the cool ground and see in the break of day peacefully. When he reaches the edge of the forest, the night has already withdrawn between the tree trunks. Dawn is breaking over the broad, grass-covered hollow high above, which is hugged by the Schauinsland road. A cow raises its head, and turns back to its endless munching when Sebastian lays a finger on his lips. He climbs through the barbed wire and keeps a respectful distance from the animals. Just as he has crossed the meadow in a diagonal line and entered the cluster of trees opposite, sun slants across the crevice between the tops of two mountains. The air is clear as glass, casting every contour into sharp relief. Every tree is an individual, every pebble is in its right place. Shafts of light pierce the patches of even ground. Grass grows wherever there is room. Insects circle over sunny patches. From a distance come the workshop noises of a woodpecker. All creation belongs to the animal world at this time of day, and every man is like the first or last on earth.
Sebastian has already walked this route during the dress rehearsal, no more than three hours ago. But knowing the ground does not make the final leg any less difficult. There are dead branches to stumble over everywhere and thick undergrowth that forces him to make detours. Sebastian has to use his hands to help him up the steepest inclines. After five hundred meters he is soaked with sweat and sits down on a tree stump to rest. He has barely taken off his jacket and tied it around his waist when the midges land on his arms: three on the left and seven on the right. He slaps them dead but the swarm is instantly replaced. Hundreds of midges dance around him jostling for position, landing and sticking their nozzles into his skin. Only female midges bite, Oskar once told him on the bank of Lake Geneva. Females fight, feed, and sting. That is why “ant,” “wasp,” and “midge” are all feminine in German. Sebastian squashes the tiny bodies between his hands, mixing them with his own blood.
When he cranes his neck to look up the mountain, he can already see the bushes lining the road. Two wind turbines murmur in the distance, the placid rotors turning above the forest canopy, looking out over the whole of Freiburg. A group of scouts are whispering their way through the forest, carrying cooking equipment and folding spades on their narrow backs. They gather at the edge of a clearing two hundred kilometers farther east, so Sebastian knows nothing of this.
But as he takes a sip of dead water, out of the corner of his right eye he catches a glimpse of something moving. The ferns are rustling. Something large is coming nearer. Sebastian jumps up. His stretched nerves conjure images of brown bears. Suggestions for an appropriate reaction do not follow. He watches as a figure unfolds in the ferns, but it does not swell into the threatening mass of a bear, only the trim form of a little man. Agewise, he could be Sebastian’s father. His face is hidden in the shadow of a floppy hat, his eyes looking around restlessly from under the brim. It is a while before Sebastian takes in this apparition. The man is festooned with equipment: a large net sticking up over his right shoulder, two cameras dangling from the left, a lantern-shaped cage in the crook of his arm, and a butterfly net in his hand. He purses and stretches his lips constantly, turning his head this way and that, as if he is greeting everything he sees with air kisses. Finally he stretches his arms out, as if he has realized that he was expecting to meet Sebastian here.
“Son!” he cries, rounding the “o.” “Rare to have company at this hour. It’s a good day. Look.”
His Wellingtons wobble around his calves as he approaches, raising his knees as if he were wading through water.
“The best ones are always the most difficult to catch. They like being alone, prefer the shadows at this ungodly hour. And they show the world a mask, or perhaps a second face.”
The butterfly net drops to the ground and the old man holds the lantern-shaped cage in front of Sebastian’s face. Unprompted, Sebastian takes it in both hands. Through the transparent walls a fantastical face grimaces back at him, round eye-whites showing, a broad nose, cheeks with dark shadows on them, and a mouth with pink flews, like the jaws of a predator. Sebastian, who could not have spoken even if he knew what to say, feels as if the hideous face is looking right through him in the most unpleasant way.
“From the family of hawk moths,” says the butterfly catcher, slapping himself on the thigh—not with joy but because of the midges. “Smerinthus ocellata, a fantastic specimen. Look at this lady’s real face.”
When Sebastian turns the cage, he sees a miniature gas mask: bulging eyes and a trunk, feathery feelers sticking out of the sides like tiny fringes of fern. The hawk moth allows him only a cursory glimpse before it creeps into a corner and folds its wings together, transforming itself into what looks like a piece of bark. Sebastian passes back the cage.
“That’s nature for you,” the butterfly collector says. “A labyrinth of distorted images and trickery. Everyone deceiving everyone else.”
He positions the cage contentedly in the crook of his arm and lifts his equipment. As he is turning to leave, he looks Se
bastian in the eye for the first time. “What about you?”
It is only now that Sebastian realizes who is standing before him: the witness who always materializes at the end of a murder case. Instead of panic he feels an impulse to laugh, which he suppresses with difficulty. Murder is one of the few things that he has always been absolutely sure he would never do. The presence of a neutral observer suddenly brings home the absurdity of his behavior with full force, and he realizes that he has not come to terms with the meaning of what he is about to do. “Thou shalt not kill” is not enough to make a clear-cut judgment, and they’ve forgotten to add the list of exceptions to this rule. In any case, he has little time to come up with the answer to a much simpler question.
“Mushrooms,” he says, rubbing his hands on his trousers as if he can rub away the absence of a mushroom knife and a basket as you would dirt. The butterfly collector sizes up his lack of equipment with amusement.
“A little early in the year.”
“That’s probably why I haven’t found any.”
The small man nods, seemingly pleased with this appropriate reply. He swings the hawk moth in the lantern-shaped cage in farewell and walks away. Sebastian shoulders his rucksack and continues his ascent. Soon he can no longer be sure if he has really bumped into the butterfly collector or not. In his exhausted brain, layered memories of the past forty hours and thoughts of the minutes ahead jostle each other. When he closes his eyes, he sees a hawk moth with the face of a cat. Distorted images and trickery, thinks Sebastian.
When he looks toward the direction in which the small man has disappeared, there are birds in the branches everywhere. Sebastian sees them sitting on the ground and swaying in the bushes. The longer he looks, the more numerous they become. Chaffinches, wood pigeons, jays, nuthatches, song thrushes. Sebastian wonders how he knows their names. And if it is possible that they, too, know his name.