Indigo (14 page)

– He went out on the roof last spring, said Frau Stennitzer.

– And then Tirevit— I began. I'm sorry, what?

– Him. He climbed up.

– Your son?

She nodded.

Only now did I realize that my balloon anecdote wasn't germane to the subject at all.

– Yes. And then, when he was up there . . . oh, it was an incredibly . . . (she shaped with her hands an invisible snowball) . . . an incredibly compact time back then, you know? As if you couldn't get out anymore, but only become more tightly ensnared in it, if you . . . well . . .

– Was he trying to do away with himself?

She shrugged:

– No one knows. Not even him, it seems. Later he said he just doesn't get out that much. Outdoors.

I said nothing.

– He climbed back down on his own, said Frau Stennitzer. Eventually. It's probably not all that surprising. The body gets tired. He came down, and we talked, all day long we talked . . . and I hugged him, even though he . . . well, even though, of course . . . oh, I don't know where all this is leading, you know? I mean, since last summer teenagers have been coming up from the town all the time and standing outside his window.

– They stand outside his window?

– Yeah, climb over our fence, you've seen it, anyone can get over it easily, with a bit of a running start.

– And then what do they do by his window?

– Hold out, she said, and her voice was now as distant as if it were coming from a space capsule. They
hold out
, stand there, in a circle. Sometimes even with a radio. And hold out.

– Hold out? I repeated stupidly.

– A dare.

The space capsule receded even farther.

– They drink beer from cans, which they then leave all over the yard, said Frau Stennitzer. They don't leave anything else behind.

– And what do they say when you chase them off?

– That's the problem, said Frau Stennitzer, looking up at the ceiling. They say, Okay, we'll leave, but this guy here at the window would like us to stay.

– Christoph?

– Yes, he . . . he sits by the window and talks with them. While they sweat and puke in the bushes, it's just so disgusting, I could slap him every time!

– So are they his friends?

– Fr—! No, they're . . . No, why would you say something like that?

– I'm sorry, but it sounds like they're kids who come to your son and . . . well, hang out with him.

– They're using him! They come just to see how long they can hold out in his presence. My God, I could slap him, every time, I swear to you, but I just can't bring myself to do it.

– To chase them off? I asked, because it was unclear to me what her remark was actually referring to.

– That's right, she said with her space capsule voice. This way he gets a bit of contact. But the fact that they're bad people who spend time with him only out of selfish motives? He doesn't grasp that. No, for that he's too . . . well, not worldly enough, I'd say.

– How could he be? she added bitterly.

And when I still said nothing, she snarled:

– Why can't they keep their distance, that riffraff?

I remembered having read that people who are overcome by altitude sickness on Mount Everest and can't go on are often not rescued. On high mountains people keep their distance from each other. Sometimes other alpinists climb past their confused and hallucinating colleagues sitting or lying in the snow and report on it afterward. David Sharp, who lay dying on Mount Everest in 2006 and begged for help, was passed by approximately forty mountain climbers. That image made me think of a well-known writer from my hometown, who hasn't published a book in years but is nonetheless invited to a reading now and then. Immediately after she has read her text, she usually apologizes to the audience with the explanation that she is a very busy author and rushes off, while the other authors who read with her (she is never invited anywhere alone, because probably no one would come) stay behind and grace their colleagues with their presence until the end of the event. Once, as chance would have it, I too had to leave early from one of those readings, which took place under the open sky. Then I saw her, remaining motionless at a great distance, practically invisible to the audience, her shoulders hunched and her summer dress hanging loosely from her body, as if she were standing on a seashore. She must have been standing there for over half an hour already, contemplating the sphere of her colleagues, from which she always took her leave almost as soon as she had entered it.

Interview with the Teenagers

In confusion I said goodbye to Frau Stennitzer and headed, I hoped, toward the hotel to take a rest. My thoughts were constantly wandering off, and I noticed everywhere things that appeared far more interesting to me than the actual reason for my stay in the town. I even managed to get lost in the few roads and side streets and several times I had to turn around at a wall that I had never seen before. I tried to reach my girlfriend, but at the moment I found myself in one of those spatial pauses for breath we call a dead zone; the cell phone was left all alone, stretched out its invisible feelers into the air, but reached no one with them.

It took a little while before I came to the main square of Gillingen. I looked at my watch and discovered that I had been marching through the town for almost forty-five minutes.

Then I saw them. Three young people, two of them bald, just as Frau Stennitzer had described them. They were coming out the door of the tavern, two older boys and a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old girl, who was probably supposed to represent the rurally appropriate version of Goth. The boys were almost a whole head taller than she was.

They stopped, looked at me briefly. Then they moved on. I followed them from a considerable distance, at a leisurely pace. A few times I had to stop and take a breather under cover of some sunlit house wall. To allay my sudden anxiety, which had grown imperceptibly during my meandering through the town, I played on my iPod “Monk's Mood” by Thelonious Monk in an endless loop and tried to breathe completely normally and evenly with the chords. Finally I caught up with the teenagers at a bridge. There were no more houses here, that happened fast in this area, an unmindful step and you're standing in a no-man's-land that you usually get to see only through train windows. Passionless and uninterested-looking grass growing at a slant from the ground, half-paved roads, and loads of strange equipment on the roadside, not yet nature, but no longer civilization.

– Excuse me, I called. May I ask you something?

No response. But they didn't run away, so I took that as an invitation.

– Hello, I said, as I approached. I'm not from around here, I'm just here on a visit. Do you know the Stennitzers, up there?

I gestured roughly in that direction.

– Shit, said one of the boys, throwing his shaved head back theatrically.

– Now it's really happened, said the other one.

– No, no, I said, raising a hand. Nothing has happened. I was just visiting there. And I was told that you're Christoph's only friends.

The girl grabbed the wrist of one of the boys and pulled on it gently.

– Everything's okay, I said. Christoph is doing fine.

– So, then, what is there to discuss? asked the other boy.

– Nothing at all, I just wanted to ask how—

– Oh, she shouldn't get so worked up all the time! the first one squawked at me. She's really starting to get on my nerves . . .

– Frau Stennitzer?

– Yeah, she shouldn't interfere.

A loud noise behind us. We got out of the way of the tractor, which drove over the bridge with a peculiar slowness that muddled your thoughts as in a fever dream. Light brown mud was stuck to the huge tires.

– May I ask something? What did you mean before by: Now it's really happened?

The skinhead laughed as if I had made an incredibly obscene joke. He slipped his hand under his shirt, formed there a sort of mouth through the material, and said:

– Omnomnomnom!

He snapped playfully at me and the girl. She laughed a little. Then the boy drew a pocketknife and flipped it open. I felt a tremendous urge to knock him out and then inscribe his compact bald head.

The boy tapped around on the pocketknife and I saw that it wasn't a knife at all but an MP3 player. I shook my head and took a deep breath. Country air. Tractor noises.
I'm in the here and now.

Soft music could be heard. Cawing and screaming, accompanied by electric guitars and by drums being kicked through a room by a gigantic foot.

– Didn't mean anything, said the boy.

– How long have you known Christoph?

They laughed again. The girl clapped her hands.

– What's so funny?

– You're totally fried, right? the boy with the MP3 player asked.

– You mean from exhaustion?

They laughed again.

– With Christoph you can really listen to music, said the other boy, who up to that point hadn't talked much. Besides, with music it's okay. Right?

His friends agreed with him.

– It's easier with music? I asked.

My voice actually did sound somewhat funny. The teenagers slapped their thighs with laughter.

– Hold on, I'll turn up the volume. Poor guy, said the boy, pressing around on his MP3 player.

Although I was having trouble speaking at a normal speed, I explained to the teenagers that the thing with the music reminded me of a passage from the work of the great French entomologist Fabre, where he describes a peculiar superstition of Calabrian peasants, who believe that the poison of the tarantula causes wild convulsions of the limbs and irrepressible dancing mania among women. Music was regarded as the only remedy for this so-called
tarantism
, according to Fabre, I said. There were even special, particularly catchy melodies to which a clearly beneficial effect was ascribed, and those melodies were collected for centuries and provided on sheet music to every woman who was bitten by a spider.

The two bald boys snorted and nudged each other.

– Shit, said the less talkative of the two. He is royally roasted . . .

The girl looked somewhat embarrassed, not sure how I would react. But I laughed with them, in that bright, safe moment shortly before my departure from Gillingen, even though I had no idea anymore what we were laughing about or under what sign, plus or minus.

[Red-checkered folder]