In Free Fall
[4]
HE FINDS HIS BEARINGS AGAIN EASILY once he reaches the road. Even though a dress rehearsal without the lead actor can hardly fulfill its purpose, he had taken things very seriously. He paced the road deliberately, calculated distances, checked lines of sight, and estimated the gradient and curvature of the corner. He examined tree trunks and finished with a walk around the area. At the Holzschlägermatte inn, he cast his mind over his day out with Maike and Dabbelink. There had been a fleet of shiny motorbikes in front of the dilapidated building that day. Swarms of cyclists had crawled up the mountain and raced down it with their tires singing.
He recognizes the right spot immediately. The road abandons the forest at the top of the hollow, and leads into a kilometer-long downward curve before disappearing between the trees again. The quality of the surface allows speeds of at least sixty kilometers an hour. A cyclist entering the twilight under the canopy of leaves immediately after the glare of the sun would be almost blind for the next hundred meters. During his rehearsal, Sebastian had sought out two trees standing on the left and right of the road like gateposts, and cut notches into the bark at a carefully calculated height, notches that he touches now with restless fingers.
A few meters up the slope, he finds a place from which he can watch the road unobserved. Then he sits down on the ground, unpacks his rucksack, pulls on a pair of plastic gloves that he has taken from the first-aid kit in his car, and lays out his tools in the order he has rehearsed. He has been able to plan up to now; he has no control over the next step. Dabbelink is either training early on Tuesday morning or not. If not, Sebastian will come again on Wednesday, Thursday, and so forth, for all eternity. Or, to put it precisely, until he is taken away and put in an asylum or in prison.
The rising sun dapples his shoulders with trembling points of light. The night air caught in the undergrowth cools his forehead and his neck. Despite this, moisture gathers in the fingertips of the plastic gloves, which Sebastian does not dare to take off. His rapid pulse doubles the length of every second. Half an hour passes without anything of note happening. The rustling and crawling between his feet increases. Some ants are sawing a caterpillar to bits, and carrying pale specks to the entrance of their nest. Sebastian enjoys watching the comings and goings of an entire society that hasn’t the slightest interest in the concerns of larger creatures. From the ants’ point of view, Sebastian’s activities must seem just as surreal as the movements of the stars seem to human beings. He would gladly submit his application to join the ants. He would carry out his duties conscientiously and not step out of line. He would be not an unpredictable loner but someone firmly in the middle—a small cog in the system.
Looking up, he catches the glance of a roundish bird that also seems to be waiting for something. A bullfinch, thinks Sebastian. Suddenly the bird shakes itself and flies off. Perhaps the whirring has disturbed it. Now Sebastian hears it, too: rubber on asphalt. That is all. No human sound, no scraping of metal under stress. Professionals make very little noise.
A yellow back is working its way up the road. The biker sways slightly from side to side in time with movement of the pedals, long limbs tensed, fighting against gravity. Although the man cycles past only a few meters below Sebastian’s position, the lowered face cannot be identified—it is hidden by a white plastic helmet. Sebastian calculates the probability of this being Dabbelink at 80 percent. Scientists are used to the lack of total certainty, it is normal for them. Through the trees, he watches as the cyclist passes the inn and works his way upward along the broad curve. Once the man is out of sight, Sebastian does not lift a finger for a further ten minutes. Then the forced calm uncoils into a frenzy of movement.
Holding his equipment in both arms, he runs down to the road. He uncoils the steel cable, slings it around the first tree, and threads the end through the eye of the clamping device. The clamp engages—Sebastian checks the lever a couple of times. The solid rasp calms his nerves. As he pulls the cable across the road, makes another loop around the second tree, and fastens it, his thoughts follow Dabbelink’s climb to the summit. Now he is on the steepest part and now he is entering the final bend. Together they feel the blood pulse under the skin—both men have sweat running into their eyes. They are working together on a task that connects them intimately. Dabbelink gets to the faded line marking the end of the ascent. Perhaps he checks his time, pulls on a jacket, and allows himself a victorious look down into the valley from which he has risen in thirty-five minutes using nothing but his own muscle. Perhaps he merely puts one foot down on the ground, turns his bike around, and hurls himself into the descent.
Sebastian stands panting behind the last tree at the edge of the hollow, staring so intently down at the start of the bend that the colors swim before his eyes. He is concentrating so hard, he nearly misses the moment when Dabbelink’s yellow jersey first flashes between the trees in the distance. The senior registrar is fast. At this speed, Sebastian barely has a minute to get under cover. In a few paces, Sebastian reaches the cable and tightens it to the maximum resistance. Then he stumbles into the undergrowth, making an effort to keep his legs from giving in to gravity and running on and on through the forest, over the meadow, and finally into the car. Sebastian forces himself to stop, lies facedown on the ground, and folds his hands over his head, as if waiting for an explosion.
The beauty of time is that it passes unaided and is undisturbed by what happens within it. Even the next few seconds will disappear, and what seemed impossible a moment ago will be over and done with. Waiting is not difficult. Life consists of waiting. Therefore, Sebastian decides, life is child’s play.
The whir of the tires approaches. It grows louder and higher; it wants to move on quickly. Before the pitch can sink again in accordance with the Doppler effect as it rushes by, it is interrupted by a damp slicing. At the same time there is the sound of a human voice, the first syllable of a word that is not completed. “Wha—”
Hard pierces soft. A curious moment of stillness, then metal meets the road in screeching protest. Impact and the slide of a heavy body. Metal rods strike the road—tiny parts clattering in all directions. An object flops into the undergrowth, hopping and rolling, as if an animal is running away in great bounds.
Then there is silence. Something has crashed into this new day and sunk quickly into its depths: the concentric ripples have dispersed and the surface of time is smooth, like an impenetrable mirror in the morning light. Unmoved, the orchestra of birds resumes its interrupted performance. Sebastian looks up. The color of the light is unchanged; a slight breeze rustles the leaves. In such a simple way does a man leave this world: a gateway of trees, a little noise. Immediately after, everything is the same as it was. It has almost been fun, in the way that things can be fun when a little effort reaps a great reward. Good that it was Dabbelink and not someone nicer. The whole thing was a fantastic idea, Sebastian thinks, and his bile rises so sharply at this thought that he bends over and waits to throw up.
When he climbs toward the road again, he is swaying like a drunk. He has lost all control over his limbs. That was it: his only chance. He just wants to get away. The release of tension has opened the floodgates of exhaustion. He is now scarcely interested in whether the cable really caught Dabbelink or how severely. Decency alone demands that the trap be cleared away. Sebastian thinks that he owes that much to humankind; though why, he does not know.
A speed of nearly seventy kilometers an hour will carry an unrestrained body a long way. Hopefully way into the next bend or right into the town, Sebastian thinks, preparing himself for every possible sight. But when he steps into the road, he clutches his hand to his heart like a bad actor. Although he has prepared himself, what he sees exceeds his ability to comprehend.
There is nothing at all, only asphalt warmed by the sun, with leaves and branches casting art nouveau patterns upon it. The scene has been swept clean by the velocity of the act itself: every last screw has scattered into the undergrowth. T
he steel cable glistens like a taut guitar string, and the only change in it is a dark stain left of the center. Sebastian lifts the lever, loosens the clamp, and rolls up the cable, smearing himself with fresh red blood. The skin under his gloves is wrinkled, as if he has spent too long in the shower. He uses his last ounce of strength to pack his rucksack.
[5]
FEW PEOPLE MASTER THE ART OF FEARING THE RIGHT THINGS. Many a one boards an airplane with knees trembling but doesn’t hesitate to climb a stepladder to change a lightbulb in the bathroom. When a bird drops dead out of the sky, people think the world is coming to an end. And when there is a real tragedy—which is never a general tragedy but a personal one—they believe that nothing worse can possibly happen, though the actual horror still lies before them. In the dark pit of despair, they sit in limbo, clutching their heads, which are pounding from the impact. They think that this is the worst it will ever get and plan to pick themselves up again after a brief period of recovery. They do not realize that they are in the waiting room for the actual catastrophe, which will come not as a blow, but as a free fall.
Shower doors all over town are being opened and closed. Naked men and women are stepping onto cold tiled floors, regarding their wet faces in the mirror with mixed feelings and toweling their damp hair. The time of day could lead Sebastian to believe that he has just gotten up and is getting ready for a perfectly normal Tuesday at the university. His exhaustion has evaporated. From the moment he changed his clothes in the car and tossed them—along with the steel cable and clamping equipment—into a trash can standing ready to be emptied, his head has felt light, as if he were about to rise to the ceiling like a helium balloon. He has bought bread rolls, parked the car, and brought the newspaper up to his apartment with him. He takes a summer suit out of the wardrobe and dresses as if for a celebration, head to toe in the colors of innocence. The parquet feels good under his bare feet and the freshly brewed coffee smells wonderful. Standing at the open balcony door, Sebastian is filled with a blessed certainty: his son is alive. A morning so bathed and clothed in breeze and filled with birdsong might be missing a crude creature like Dabbelink, but certainly not a little miracle like Liam. The same sunlight that is warming Sebastian’s face must be caressing the hair of the sleeping child somewhere not too far away. A hint of the air that Sebastian breathes, Liam is also drawing into his lungs. Sebastian even feels his son’s heart beating in his fingertips as he touches a spray of wisteria.
He pours coffee, out of habit not making any unnecessary noise, and sits down at the table with the newspaper. For a moment he allows himself the illusion that it is Sunday morning, and that Maike and Liam are still asleep in bed while he has woken too early once again and is relishing the gift of two whole hours to himself. The smell of the bananas in the fruit bowl is intense, as though they were planning their return to South America. Sebastian just wants to sit there and read the paper until he hears the pitter-pat of Liam’s feet approaching in the hall. That would probably be the best, perhaps the only sensible way to get his son back—were he not lacking the last shred of belief. When a mayfly drowns in the coffee, he is almost distraught by its death until it occurs to him that these tiny flies are so similar and so numerous that they must surely be reincarnated, if only for practical reasons.
He carries a plate of cheese rolls and more coffee with him into the living room. He presses the remote control, feeling like he is waiting for his favorite film to come on while he has a picnic on the sofa. When he does not manage to interest himself in a program on the river flowing through his hometown, he switches from the regional channel to Channel One. He turns the volume up high to keep himself awake. After an hour, he switches on the radio as well. The coffee has grown cold and the bread rolls are practically untouched. Sebastian switches between channels and programs constantly; screaming voices intermingle. When the hospital scandal is mentioned, he listens. Some expert or other explains that the pharmaceutical industry makes no bones about testing drugs on human beings: new blood-clotting agents, for example, that are tested on heart patients during operations. But mostly in Africa until now, not in Baden-Württemberg. Apart from that, the mass media is filled with reports on seals in Canada, cancer research in Asia, and bands from Scandinavia, all without mention of a bizarre murder that has taken place in the immediate vicinity of the broadcast region. Images of war in the Middle East are punctuated by bad pop music from the radio. A woman reads out the stock prices to scenes from an American family sitcom. Everything has something to do with everything else; everything is connected. Only one thing is missing in the great web of connections—the news that a senior registrar at the university hospital has met his maker in mysterious circumstances.
Sebastian’s rage at the unreliability of TV and radio programs is exceeded only by irritation at his own stupidity. What if the body is not found? What if Dabbelink’s absence from work is insufficient proof of death for the kidnappers? Or what if the accident has not been fatal after all? What if he got the wrong man? A levelheaded person would not have left the scene of the crime so hastily, but tracked down the victim, established that he was dead, and then made sure that the body would be discovered immediately. Sebastian however, as he well knows, has been anything but levelheaded. What he has done was far beyond his capabilities.
The itch from the midge bites travels over his spine and neck and drills into his brain. Sebastian crosses his arms and scratches with his bent fingers, staring fixedly at the television, cradling his upper body like an institutionalized animal.
It is already early evening and Sebastian is just about to leave the apartment to return to the scene of the crime, like a garden-variety murderer, when he finally hears what he has been waiting for on a local radio station. Soon after, the television also knows about it. Sebastian sees flickering images of the patch of forest that he now knows only too well, but onscreen it seems to have little in common with his memories of it. Red and white police tape, bicycle parts lying in the ferns. Three cows chew their cud at the camera. A powerful zoom lens turns the colors to grainy specks. With some imagination, it is just about possible to make out the twisted limbs of a body lying between dead leaves and blackberry bushes. The palm of a policeman’s hand covers the lens. The harsh evening sun has brought beads of sweat to the forehead of the excited reporter, who, while not wanting to anticipate the conclusions of the police, must mention here that the dead man worked in medical director Schlüter’s department at the hospital. He presents the juicy details of his report with triumph. The police found the head of the corpse only after a long search. It was wedged in a forked branch above the heads of those looking for clues, and had followed the proceedings with wide-open eyes.
When the television falls silent, Sebastian feels as if he is sitting underwater. Every movement is slower, every breath he takes creates an eddy, and every thought is a bubble rising. He has carried out the task and thus lost his justification for existence. There are no plans to be carried out now, no reason for him to move. During the night he developed a theory of the meaning of life, a theory that appears clearly before him now in the underwater stillness of the apartment.
Like every other story, life flows backward toward its own cause. The meaning of existence is hidden to most people because human beings normally think things through from beginning to end. The man who recognizes and discovers the principle of the future purpose he serves is able to view every event between now and then as a part of his personal destiny. And so bear it all with equanimity.
Without a doubt, Sebastian’s personal destiny is to save Liam. Among the events that he wishes to face with equanimity, he imagines discovery and arrest, Maike’s horror and his parents’ collapse, crises of conscience, and imprisonment for many years. He believes himself to be prepared for all this. He sits in the same position, with a rotten taste in his mouth—of industrial wastewater and a sky that has remained unchanged for too long—as it becomes impossible to hide his real problem from himse
lf any longer. There are two telephones on the coffee table in front of him: his mobile and the cordless landline phone. Both have just been charged, and checked many times: they are ready. But they do not ring. Their manner of not ringing signals the final severance with reality. Nobody is calling—not the kidnapper, not Liam, not even Maike or the police. Scarcely has Sebastian understood this when the false floor is pulled away. Free fall begins.
[6]
IN HIS LECTURES, SEBASTIAN LIKES TO PRESENT A TYPOLOGY of waiting that he has come up with himself. Waiting (so he begins) is an intimate dialogue with time. A long period of waiting is more than that: it is a duel between time and the person who wishes to investigate it. Ladies and gentlemen, when you are next waiting in the student administration office for some information, do not bring a book. (Laughter.) Give yourself over to time, subjugate yourself, deliver yourself to it. Have a discussion with yourself about how long a minute is. Find out what on earth the instrument on your wrist has to do with you. Ask yourself what this waiting is meant to be: a betrayal of the present in favor of an event in the future? (Silence.) But what is the present? (More silence.) In waiting, you will establish that the present moment does not exist. That it is always over or not quite there when you try to grasp it. Past and future, you think, are directly connected. But where, ladies and gentlemen, does the human being find itself? Do we perhaps not exist at all, in truth? (Restrained laughter, dying down quickly.) Are we not really here at all, because the suit of time does not have holes for arms and legs? And think: man does not only wait for the never-ending lunch break of our department secretaries to be over. (A single laugh, followed by whispering.) You, for example, are waiting now for the end of my lecture. After that you will wait in the canteen for your lunch. During lunch you will wait for the start of the next lecture and during that lecture you will wait for your free time. Of course you wait the entire time for the weekend, and for the holidays. Waiting, ladies and gentlemen, consists of many layers. You are all waiting to pass your examinations, to finish your degrees, and to find jobs. You are waiting for better weather, happier times, and your one true love. We are all waiting, whether we want to or not, for death. We fill the layers of waiting time with all kinds of activities. Have you noticed something? (A long, artificially inflated pause.) Life consists of waiting; waiting is what we call “life.” Waiting is the present. Man’s relationship to time. Waiting sketches the silhouette of God on the wall. Waiting (Sebastian raises his voice at the end) is the stage of transition that we call our existence.