Indigo (17 page)

The sentence hadn't quite turned out as he had intended, his hands made circling, nervous movements, as if he wanted to dispel the ruins of the botched syntax from the air in order to start over.

– Reborn babies, said Willi. You can order them. Look exactly like the babies you lost.

He looked around the room.

Cordula sighed:

– Yeah, I'll never understand that. Why women have those replicas made.

– Phantom pain, said Willi.

– Okay, I'm happy, said Robert.

Everyone looked at him.

– Yeah, because I'm lost, he said. I don't know what you guys are talking about.

– Lucky you, said Elke. It's really totally creepy.

– And my former math teacher is a brutal madman. Ha!

You know, Robin, people's attention is like a leaf in the wind, sometimes it flies this way, sometimes that way, and it lands somewhere on a pile of other leaves.

– I think the real problem is that robots don't
have to
look like humans, right? said Willi. But we do, for . . . evolutionary reasons, or else we'd go extinct, because we would no longer be able to, uh, reproduce, if we, well, that is, no woman would let us anywhere near her, of course, if we didn't look like human beings. But the robots, the robots don't have to look human, they survive even without our proportions and expressions and a pair of eyes and five fingers on each prehensile hand. That's why they appear so violated and surgically altered when they do look like us.

– But robots don't exist, Elke interjected.

– Sure they do.

– But not real robots, she said. Not the ones you're talking about, which walk around and can talk.

– Of course! There are even championships!

– But not really, Elke insisted.

– It depends what you mean by
really
, said Willi.

– You know what? said Robert. This is totally weird. I was lost in this conversation, and now I've suddenly found my bearings again and understand everything. Sort of retroactively.
That
is uncanny.

– Yeah, well, that's what you get for paying such close attention all the time, said Willi.

– Am
I
actually uncanny too? Robert suddenly asked, dead serious.

Willi looked as if someone had pinned a sheriff star directly to his eye.

Robert released him by grinning and firing with his fingers extended into a pistol a
Gotcha!
at Willi.

– Man, you are so . . .

– I am so convincing that I might be able to act on
Star Trek
one day, said Robert. As an energy field or something.

No one laughed.

– But not in the original episodes. Leave the Old Testament alone.

– And in the new ones?

– Depends which gospel. Picard and the others are sacrosanct, they would never accept you. But we might be able to find a place for you in the apocrypha, on
Deep Space Nine
or—

– Which was the one with that sexy old woman, Captain Janeway? asked Cordula.

–
Voyager!
said Willi, deeply impressed. Shit, do you even know how lucky you are that you have a girlfriend who knows her
Star Trek
?

Robert shrugged.

– But that was really awful crap, wasn't it? said Willi. There was that thing, my God, what was that, that creature, which looked like a dirty potato or a reptile, with those spots everywhere. Really disgusting. And that thing was married to some strange woman who was a member of a very rare species. And when she entered puberty, the holodeck medicine man had to massage her feet.

– What?

– Yeah, didn't you see it?

– No, I didn't . . . I mean, I was more into the classic episodes.
Deep Space Nine
,
Voyager
, and that other junk, those were, in my opinion, more like bootlegs. Cover versions.

Robert hoped that the word with
a
that Willi had used before had roughly that meaning.
The limits of our language are simply the limits of our world, Robin.

– Hey, said Willi, I really didn't mean to upset you or anything before.

– It's okay, said Robert. Cordula managed to reactivate me a bit. With this sick shit.

He poked the newspaper, which flickered and then went out. He grasped at nothing, wretched, invisible thing, and shook it until it was back.

– Just like that time we talked about midi-chlorians.

– Han Solo shot first! said Willi.

– Absolutely! cried Robert, and they gave each other a high five.

Elke laughed.

– Klingons, she said. What are Klingons, anyway?

– Wrong franchise, Willi said, shaking his head.

– But I mean, the actors, Elke insisted in an attempt to finally join in. Those were black people, right?

– Are you saying it was racist?

– I think she's right, said Robert.

– Fag, Willi said to him.

It was wonderful to spend time with Willi. In his presence Robert always felt safe. They became neither closer nor more distant. Constant conditions. Sometimes he even lapsed into the old gestures or wandered around the room as if he could still sense the edges of the old zone. He missed it a little. Imagine you cast a shadow your whole life and one day it grows thinner and shorter and more transparent until it is suddenly gone. Dissolved in the solar wind. In the particle stream. Or whatever.

– Oh, said Willi, Klingons are probably Mexicans with their faces painted dirty or something.

Robert couldn't help laughing and immediately put a hand on his belly. Better safe than sorry.

– Mexicans who bashed their foreheads against a wall.

– And doesn't Whoopi Goldberg come onto the
Enterprise
at one point, and she's from some strange planet where everyone gets totally old . . . ?

– Africa? said Willi.

Cordula rolled her eyes, tried to remain serious, and then laughed against her will.

– That's not funny, she protested.

– AIDS, said Robert.

She wanted to stop, but only laughed even more. Robert said:

– Flies on children. Bloody vomit. Civil war machetes, hacked-up faces.

When would she stop laughing?

He placed a hand on his uncontrollably giggling girlfriend's knee.

– You're such a jerk, you know that? said Cordula, who had calmed down.

– At least I don't flay my fellow human beings. What did he do with the skin? Make a cape?

You know, Robin, the bat cape is more than just a uniform. It's a calling.

– Ew!

Elke shuddered.

– I definitely have to read one of his books, murmured Robert.

– Will you guys stop already? Cordula said with a laugh. You're impossible!

He had an urge to take the small paper ball in which the little faces he had drawn were mixed like chocolate shavings in stracciatella ice cream and set it on fire. How beautiful a single cool, bluish flame in the middle of the kitchen table would be at this moment . . .

– Well, but you know what's really, I mean
really
, that is, in actual fact, uncanny? asked Willi. Forget flaying, forget the mutt in space. I just discovered something totally insane here.

He had the newspaper in his hand.

– Check it out, this thing here in the picture should look familiar to you . . . ?

The thing was obviously not the man with glasses and a serious face, the just-acquitted math teacher. He was looking directly into the camera. His gaze had something precociously owlish about it. But next to him, on the table, was a bottle. It wasn't clear what it contained. But on the label, a small dog's head could be seen.

– Doo . . . Robert said softly.

– He's got nerve! said Willi. But style too. That's what you'd call understatement.

– I feel sick, said Elke.

Willi seemed not to know whether to respond to that with a smiling or a compassionate face. He made both, which just looked ridiculous. Like a drunk clown.

– Glugluglug, said Robert, drinking out of his thumb. There you have it.

Willi studied the picture.

– You know what? You can't tell at all by looking at him.

– Yeah, he had that pretty well under control, said Robert. At least I assume so. Back then you couldn't tell either . . .

– After suffering an attack . . . reclusive . . . maintained his innocence to the last . . . devote himself completely to writing . . .

Willi's reading forefinger scanned the lines of the article.

– An attack? asked Cordula.

– It doesn't say here of what, murmured Willi.

– Like the virus that time whenever anyone beamed, said Robert, who wanted to change the subject for Elke. (Her face had gone pale.)

– Huh?

– That time when some error creeps into the beam system of the
Enterprise
, a sort of computer virus, and the people who are beamed all have a horrible attack after they've rematerialized.

– And what the hell is the white flight of steps about? asked Willi, who was reading a line in the article with his finger and hadn't caught any of what Robert had said.

– You know what? Maybe he really is innocent. Maybe we should—

– Maybe you should visit him? said Willi.

– Are you crazy? Haven't you read what he . . . And I'm supposed to go see him? He wouldn't even understand what I want from him. I mean, he has attacks and drinks and . . . peels . . .

– Robert, said Cordula.

– He doesn't look that way at all, said Elke, who had now ventured close to the photo too.

– What way?

– Well, you know. His eyes are somehow clear. Here, look.

– It's probably an old photo. Believe me, he definitely doesn't look like that anymore.

There was a pause. The newspaper became slightly darker and blurrier. Cordula tapped it.

– I wonder what can trigger a thing like that, she said. I mean, how it gets to that point. Does it build up gradually or . . .

– Why don't you just ask what you want to ask? Robert said angrily.

– What?

– You know what I mean.

– No, I—

– Oh, don't play innocent. You wanted to ask me, so ask. It's in your head and it wants out. No need to be ashamed. God knows I've heard worse things. Last week Frau Rabl was here and apologized to me for her filthy little piece-of-shit kid.

– Robert, I really don't know what you're talking about.

– Yeah, said Willi. I'm sure she didn't mean to . . .

– My God, it's really not that hard. Ask me. Go ahead. I can deal with it. Do you think that just because I don't have it anymore, it's gone? It probably never goes away completely. It's like a parachute I carry around with me my whole life. You know? Like those paratroopers who land on the ground and then drag the parachute along behind them like gigantic broken wings.

– Nice image, said Cordula.

– Yeah, I think so too, said Elke.

– My goodness, Robert said with a laugh, don't deflect. At least not so blatantly. I want you to ask me, please. In front of our friends. You see, I'm even begging you to.

– Robert . . .

– Should I fall down on my knees? Or . . .

– It's all right, she said.

She went to him. He hadn't even noticed that he had backed away into a corner of the room. She took his hands, which he held out in front of him, and guided them very gently back down.

– You don't have to shout like that, she said. I didn't mean to offend you.

– I want you to say it, said Robert.

Her face and her eyes were very close. That was a problem. Robert had to look down at the floor.
I have guests. I'm making a fool of myself in front of them.
She sensed his tension and let go of him, took a step back.

– I'd never say something like that, she said.

– No, Willi said softly.

– What would you never say?

She sighed.

– I'm sure, she said. You hear? I'm absolutely sure that it had nothing to do with his work back then. That's all I'm going to say about it.

What was the word for a female coward? Cowardess. You cowardly bitch. But that was too strong. Another hole in vocabulary discovered. And that at the age of twenty-nine. Indigo gap.

– With his work back then, said Robert. At the institute, you mean. Right? With us. In our proximity. In the zone—

– Robert, please. Please.

She had raised both hands. Conciliatory gesture. Back then, at Helianau, that was how they had greeted each other. You brace your hands against the air and press the invisible pillar between you and the other person. After a year or so, he could feel it, the resistance of the air. A gentle bulge, imaginary and pleasant, against the palm, always a few degrees warmer than the untouched surrounding air.