In Free Fall (10 page)

“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 Sebastian 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.

[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. The 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.