“Next morning when I turned my car out of the estate onto the road, the man in the pale suit was standing on the other side. He always wears a pale suit, and the suit is always a little too big for him. He could look pathetic and ridiculous, but there’s a threat implicit in the way he holds himself and moves and the way he walks, and he doesn’t look pathetic and ridiculous, he looks dangerous. In the rearview mirror I saw him cross the road and get into a car, and shortly afterward I saw the car tailing mine.”
10
He took a few steps to a chair, turned it so that he couldn’t see the man in the pale suit, sat down with his arms on his knees, folded his hands, and hung his head. I fetched another chair and sat down facing him.
“Then he shot at you in Cape Town?”
“In the next weeks I saw him repeatedly. He was leaning on the lamppost opposite the restaurant where I ate, he was standing outside the bookstore I was coming out of and outside which he hadn’t been standing when I went in, he was sitting opposite me when I looked up from the newspaper on the bus. I had the sea right outside my door, and every morning and every evening I took a long walk along the shore. One evening he was coming toward me, and after that I stayed in the house. But I did have to go out sometimes, and while I was shopping for groceries in Cape Town, he shot at me. In full daylight in the middle of the street.
“After a few days in the hospital I started taking planes again and zigzagged until I finally hoped I had shaken him off. And it took him a whole year to find me again.”
I looked over at the man in the pale suit. He fixed his eyes on me as if we were playing that child’s game when you have to look at each other and hold your gaze without blinking. After a while I looked away.
My seatmate smiled. “What a year! I love the sea and I found another house on the beach, this time in California. In America, too, if you have money and behave properly, you can live unrecognized and nobody bothers you. At first it was irritating not to be able to use my credit cards; they leave a trace. But if you’re not in a hurry you can manage without them. The man renting out the property preferred cash to plastic anyway; probably he was cheating on his taxes.
“Do you know the coast north of San Francisco? Sometimes cliff-strewn and raw, then sandy and gentle again, the Pacific colder and more pitiless than any other ocean, the mountains plunging down to the water all shrouded in mist in the mornings, then their dry brown grass turning them to molten gold in the afternoon and evening sun—it’s as if the world in all its beauty were created every day anew. My house was on the slope, so far below the road that I didn’t hear the traffic and so close to the sea that the sound of the waves accompanied me from morning to nightfall, not loudly and threateningly, but quietly, in a conciliatory way. And oh! The sunsets! I was particularly captivated by them when they flared in reds and pinks; they were paintings of sumptuous beauty. But I was also moved by others in their restraint, when the sun submerges itself in the haze over the water and disappears without a trace.”
He laughed quietly, a little ironic, a little embarrassed. “Have I become someone who goes into raptures? Yes, I have! I could go on being rapturous: about the rich, salty air and the storms and the rainbows over the ocean and the wine. And about Debbie, who was blond and beautiful and didn’t just go through life, she danced. She was Ava’s reincarnation, but while Ava in the end wished me harm, Debbie wished me well. She lived half an hour further along the road, had a house on the mountain, a horse and a dog, and painted illustrations for children’s books. She was good—because she had a feel for the moment, the way children do? She lived in the moment, and without her I would not have enjoyed my last year of freedom as much as I did.”
“Your last year of freedom?”
He nodded his head toward the man in the pale suit. “After a year he was standing again at the entrance to my property. I could have killed him—oh yes, I had got hold of weapons and learned to shoot and could hit a target with a telescopic sight from a great distance. But then someone else would have come. I thought, maybe the attaché is satisfied if I stand trial in Germany, and accepts the verdict, whichever way it goes. Perhaps after that there will be peace.”
“You want to give yourself up?”
“That’s why I’m flying to Germany. If it’s possible, I’d prefer not to be arrested as soon as I reach Passport Control at the airport. I would like to see my mother first and talk to my defense attorney. Things go better if you go to the judge with your attorney and give yourself up than if you are arrested and taken before him by the police. I don’t yet know how—” He turned to me with his quiet, gentle smile. “Will you lend me your passport? We look sufficiently like each other. You can say your wallet was stolen and you’ll be given a little trouble, but it won’t be serious. What’s serious when your wallet gets stolen is that you have to replace everything in it, and you mustn’t worry about that. After a few days you’ll get your wallet back in the mail.”
I just looked at him.
“Was that a little sudden? Sorry. Why don’t we both take a nap?” He looked around. “There’s an armchair still free over there by the window and another near the coat check—you’ll understand if I leave the one by the window to you and take the other for myself?” He stood up. “Good night. Thank you for listening.” He picked up his suitcase from where it stood by the bar, took his coat and hat from the coat check, sat down, rested his legs on the suitcase, covered himself with his coat, and pulled his hat down over his face.
11
I went to the window. It was bright daylight outside. The sun had come up red and was now yellow as it hung in the white sky. I have an old dream of going to St. Petersburg in the summer for the white nights. And now I had my white night here. But instead of water, bridges, strolling people, and loving couples, I was looking at empty runways, dark telescoping gates, and concrete buildings. Not a plane, not a car, not a human being was moving.
Quiet had descended on the lounge. Nobody was watching TV or drinking at the bar or talking. Some had opened their computers, others a book. Many were trying to sleep; people had even stretched themselves out on the floor. I went to the counter at the entrance and asked about the onward flight. The young woman had heard that a plane was being readied in Frankfurt. It wouldn’t arrive before eight a.m., so there were at least another four hours before we would leave again.
I went back, pulled the empty armchair out of the light of the window and into the shadow of the wall, and sat down. In this position the man in the pale suit could no longer see me. Before, he had fixed his eyes on me every time I looked at him.
I think it’s time I introduced myself. My name is Jakob Saltin, I studied physics, my specialty is traffic patterns, and I’m the head of the Institute for Traffic Studies at the University of Darmstadt. How many trains need how many tracks, how many cars need how many lanes? What causes traffic jams and how can they be prevented? Where must there be traffic lights and where must there not be? How should they be sequenced for optimal function? It is a fascinating branch of science. But it is as sober as all science is, as am I.
I no longer read any literary books—when would I find the time? But I read a story years ago in which a traveler tells another traveler that he’s killed his wife. She had a lover—did he kill him too? At any rate he acted out of passion and despair, after music and alcohol had gone to his head. I’m not so sure about the alcohol, but the music definitely. If I remember correctly, the one traveler only listened to the other traveler. The other traveler didn’t make any request of him.
My seatmate had tried his story out on me. Next he was going to have to tell the police, the prosecutor, and the judge, and he wanted to gauge how it would go over. What kind of a figure he cut in it. What he should leave out and what he should embellish. Had he selected me to listen precisely because I resembled him somewhat in face, body, and age? Had he intended to ask for my passport from the start? And to leave me so moved that I’d be unable to say no to him?
But no, the flight was fully booked; he couldn’t have chosen the seat himself, so he couldn’t have chosen me as his audience, either. Why was I so suspicious? The Russian mafia wasn’t his world, he’d said—diplomatic receptions in Berlin, picnics in the desert in Kuwait, expensive houses on the coasts of Africa and America, and speculations with women, camels, and millions aren’t my world, either. He didn’t know how often he’d flown around the world—I had never yet flown around it and would not have been sitting in first class if business class hadn’t been overbooked and I’d been given an upgrade. I have no sense whatever about the world my seatmate had described to me. Did I have any sense about my seatmate? Had he murdered his girlfriend?
For traffic scientists, accidents are parameters like any others. I’m not a cynic, but I’m also not sentimental. I know that accidents also happen to the human genus. There are human beings animated only by the desire for quick money and an easy life. I know them as students and as colleagues, in the business world and in politics. No, my seatmate wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t seeking the easy life, he was seeking the beautiful life. He wasn’t driven by a lust for money, he wanted to play with it.
Or was there no difference between the two? The hard thing in life is to know when to hold fast to one’s principles and when it’s acceptable to bend them a little this way or that. I know that dividing line in my own profession. But outside it?
Then I fell asleep. It wasn’t a deep sleep; I heard when a suitcase fell over, when a cell phone rang loudly, and when someone’s voice rose. At seven thirty the loudspeaker informed us that a plane would land within an hour to take us to Frankfurt. Breakfast would be served at the buffet.
My seatmate came over. “Shall we?” We went to the buffet, collected coffee and tea, croissants and yoghurt, and sat down at a table. “Did you manage to sleep?” We had a polite conversation about sleeping on journeys and the quality of airplane seats and armchairs in lounges.
When we were called to board, we went together. People were moving in the passageways, the shops had opened, and arrivals and departures were being announced on the monitors and by the public address system. The airport had awakened.
12
We sat together on the flight from Reykjavik to Frankfurt as well. We didn’t talk much anymore. He asked me about my wife and children. I’m taciturn when it comes to my wife, who’s dead, and my daughter, who left—that my wife might still be alive and my daughter still with me if I’d given more of myself to both of them—how could I talk about that? Perhaps it isn’t even true and I reproach myself unnecessarily.
I waited to see if he would actually ask for my passport again. I don’t really like being drawn into other people’s personal problems. I have enough to do solving traffic problems. They require my total attention, and that attention is rewarded; if they were solved, the world would be a better place. I’m proud that I developed a traffic blueprint for Mexico City that unblocked the traffic that used to clog it day after day and got it moving again and brought new oxygen to the suffocating city. Or could have, if the politicians had implemented the blueprint correctly.
But my seatmate was no longer a stranger. I had sat in the dark with him, emptied a bottle of pinot noir with him, listened to his story, seen him animated and moved and upset, squeezed his hand and put my hand on his back. I decided I would give him my passport.
But he didn’t come back to his request, and I’m not someone to put myself forward. We were sitting in the last row in the upper deck, and when the plane reached its parking place at the gate in Frankfurt, we were the first downstairs and the first at the door. When the signal was given to open the door, he hugged me. I don’t go in for today’s all-hugging-all-kissing culture, but I returned his hug; two men had met, two strangers in the night, had talked, hadn’t given each other everything they might have given, but had achieved a certain closeness. Perhaps I also returned the hug with real feeling because I’d been drinking champagne and was a little buzzed.
Then the door was opened and my seatmate didn’t wheel his suitcase, he picked it up and ran. Once inside the terminal building I didn’t see him again. Nor did I see him at Passport Control. He was gone.
13
With my passport. When I reached for my wallet in Passport Control, it wasn’t there. My wallet belongs in my left inside pocket, and when it isn’t there, it isn’t there. I know where my things are.
During the flight my jacket, like his, had been in the charge of the stewardess; my seatmate must have asked her for his jacket at some point but given her my seat number, been handed my jacket, and taken the wallet out of it. He didn’t want to risk my turning down his request.
The police were friendly. I told them that I’d shown my passport in New York and hadn’t used it since. That I had no idea where I could have lost my wallet or where anyone could have stolen it from me. A policeman accompanied me back to the plane, which passengers were still exiting, and I hunted fruitlessly for my wallet around the seat, in the overhead locker, and in the coat cupboard. Then I was asked to go to the police station. Luckily my photograph is on the university Web site and there was someone in the dean’s office; they confirmed it really was me.
I took a taxi. Only when we’d reached Darmstadt but were not yet at my house did I realize that the only money I had with me was what I was carrying loose in my pocket, far too little for the long journey. I told the driver and also said I had plenty of money in the house. But he didn’t trust me, took what I had, and threw me out of the taxi with a lot of wailing and cursing.
It was very warm, but not sticky. After the night and the morning in planes and lounges, the police station, and the taxi, the air was invigorating, even though it was just Darmstadt city air that smelled of gasoline at the red light and of hot fat in front of the Turkish snack bar. I felt better with every step, buoyed up by the feeling that I’d accomplished something. What? I couldn’t say. But it didn’t matter.
What I couldn’t say, nobody wanted to know anyway. Things would have been different if my wife had been waiting for me at home or if I knew that my daughter would be calling in the evening to welcome me back and ask about everything I’d done on my trip.
I reached home in the early afternoon. My little house has a little garden. I opened a deck chair and lay down. Then I stood up again and fetched a bottle of wine and a glass. I drank and fell asleep and woke up again, still with the good feeling that I’d achieved something. I pictured my seatmate going through Passport Control with my passport, ringing his mother’s doorbell, embracing her, sharing a cup of tea, talking to his defense attorney, and going to the judge.
14
The next morning my life resumed again. In the last weeks of the semester there’s an extra amount to do; over and above the classes and seminars and meetings there are the exams, plus on top of all that I had to catch up on everything I’d set aside because of the conference in New York. I had no time to think about my seatmate and his story. Yes, he was an interesting oddball and his story was an interesting story, but the whole thing was the affair of a single night, a night considerably shortened by the loss of six hours on the flight from west to east, then somewhat extended again by the stop in Reykjavik, but all in all a truncated night.
After a week my wallet came in the mail. I wasn’t surprised, I had been relying on my seatmate. But I was relieved; I had been in need of my debit card and my credit cards from time to time.
The note that my seatmate had stuck in the left inside pocket of my jacket I found only weeks later. “I would rather not have taken your wallet. You were a wonderful traveling companion. But I need your wallet and you don’t need the problem of deciding whether to say yes or no to me. Would you like to visit me in prison?”
The newspapers had already reported that he had surrendered and that the trial would soon resume. When they covered the trial, they also mentioned the old lady who claimed she had seen my seatmate not just push his girlfriend but force her ov
er the balcony railing. She didn’t appear before the court; a few days before my seatmate had given himself up, she’d disappeared. But her statement to the police was read out. I would have thought that a statement taken down and made watertight by the police would be more dangerous to the defendant than a statement in court that the defense attorney could pick apart. But the opposite turns out to be the case. It is harder to take apart a witness than to accuse a policeman of failing to ask this or that, thus getting a sworn statement that is one-sided and worthless.
She had disappeared a few days before my seatmate gave himself up. It didn’t sit well with me. Had he—No, I couldn’t imagine it. There are so many reasons why an old person can suddenly disappear. They can go too near the edge of a gully while out on a walk, and fall in. They can walk too far and lie down exhausted, they can have a heart attack in their holiday apartment and not be found for months or years. Such things keep happening.
My seatmate got eight years—some commentators felt this was too high and some too few. The court didn’t absolve him of negligent homicide but nor did they convict him of murder; they convicted him of manslaughter in the heat of an agonizing, already long-standing dispute that suddenly came to a head.
I don’t want to get into it. My professional specialty is traffic, not criminal law. I judge how the traffic in a city can be rescued from a coronary. Guilt is decided by judges who do nothing else, day in, day out.
But the verdict didn’t convince me. There is a rightness when someone who has taken a life gives up his own. To lock him up for the rest of his days makes no sense. What does life in a cell have to do with a life that has been extinguished? Because there are mistaken verdicts there should be no death penalty, I know that. But eight years? The punishment was laughable. Anyone who hands down a sentence like that doesn’t trust his own judgment. Anyone who hands down a sentence like that would do better to let the defendant go free.