Indigo (18 page)

3.
The Helianau Institute

I've often passed it on the train, this massive building that seems to grow directly out of a mountainside. This impression is strengthened by the trees surrounding the edifice and the ivy partly covering it. On sunny days, from a particular point, all the windows flash at once—as if an explosion were occurring inside.

I sat in an open compartment reading my favorite novel,
Kangaroo Notebook
by Kobo Abe, and listening to “Looking for Freedom” by David Hasselhoff in an endless loop. Across from me sat a man who had a mineral water bottle on the little table in front of him. On the numerous bends of the Semmering route the bottle wandered constantly from left to right on the table, and the man's gaze was so intent and fixed (instead of normal glasses he wore an old-fashioned pince-nez on his nose) that it seemed as if he were controlling the bottle's movements telepathically.

I was picked up at the Payerbach-Reichenau station. A mustached man with a circle drawn on his cheek with marker stepped out of a black VW bus and greeted me.

– You are Herr Setz?

– Yes, I said.

– Please.

He opened the side door of the VW bus and gestured to me to get in. I made myself comfortable on the bench seat among a heap of plastic bags. In the bags, as far as I could tell, were books and toys, as well as pieces of laundry. After a few minutes these objects began to give me an unpleasant feeling.

We drove down a winding road into the valley, a bit later the road ascended again and we reached the mountain ridge. The closer we came to the huge building with its flashing windows, the uneasier I became. At first I blamed this on the unpleasant effect the contents of the plastic bags had on me (I had the impression that the colorful laundry items were costumes for a carnival celebration), the stuffy air in the vehicle, and the centrifugal force shifting every few seconds from left to right on the curves.

Then we went more or less straight for a while, and the speed didn't seem as breakneck as before, and yet all of a sudden I felt violently ill, I reached forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder.

– Please, can you stop, I . . .

We exchanged a glance in the rearview mirror, from which, bizarrely enough, a small nail file dangled, and I could tell from the look in his eyes that he immediately understood. The interior of his vehicle was in danger. He slowed down, pulled over, and turned off the engine. I opened the side door, flung myself out of the VW bus, and bent over, because I thought I had to vomit.

The chauffeur walked once around the vehicle with calm, slow steps and stood in front of me.

– Nerves, he said.

I filled my lungs with the cool, oxygen-rich forest air. It did me good, and I felt a bit lighter. The nausea subsided, I straightened up.

– It's only nerves, the chauffeur repeated. In reality you can't feel anything at all from here. We're still at least a hundred yards away.

I wanted to explain to him that it had nothing to do with that, but the need to just stand there and breathe for another few seconds was greater, so I said nothing.

– You probably persuaded yourself, the man said with a calm voice, that you would soon be entering the zone. That happens to a lot of people.

He gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder.

A car passed us, heading up the forest road. A Mercedes. I watched it until it rounded a bend. Then I said to the driver:

– No, it wasn't that. I have . . . you know, I have a problem with huge buildings, that is, with institutes like this, sanatoriums or . . . yeah, basically with this style of architecture, I . . .

I was feeling a bit nauseous again. Leaning over, I rested my hands on my knees and took a deep breath.

– What kind of problem? he asked.

So I told him, standing on the side of the cool, shady forest road, that I had a strange phantom memory from my earliest childhood. But unlike other people who are quick to see that as evidence of a previous life, I believe that this memory was simply misfiled in my brain under
Experienced myself
, instead of being correctly filed under
Seen on television
or
Dreamed
. Mix-ups like that just happen.

– And the memory has to do with something like this?

He gestured to the large building complex, which actually looked even more awe-inspiring from up close than from the train window. Through the thin rows of trees you could, although it was only partly visible, get a sense of its monstrous proportions.

– Well, I don't know, I said. I remember a time I spent in a huge institute . . . and the boredom I felt when I waited all afternoon in the yard.

– Waited for what?

– For someone to pick me up. From the yard an uncanny, snow-white flight of steps leads up to the door . . . and behind it are hundreds of rooms, to the left and right, one door next to another, and at the far end a room where the doctor lives.

The chauffeur nodded.

I had never told anyone but my girlfriend this story. And now this man, whose name I didn't even know and who had a strange marker circle on his cheek. He lit a cigarette, took a deep, thoughtful drag, and looked into the sky.

– Well, he said, it happens. Stuff like that.

– The funny thing is that I of course have no conscious memory of the first three years of my life, I said. Like most people, I know what happened only as of the fourth or fifth year, before that everything is somehow . . .

I made a vague gesture with both hands.

– Mm-hmm, the chauffeur said with a nod, as if he had heard the same thing hundreds of times before.

– That's why I got agitated just now, I said.

– It's all right, he said. Happens to everyone.

I wondered what I would do if I discovered in the institute yard the flight of steps from my memory. Should I panic?

The chauffeur, who had noticed my unease, held out his cigarette pack to me. I gave a wave of my hand:

– No, thanks.

He put the pack in his pocket, took another deep drag from his cigarette. Then he said:

– You can walk the rest of the way if you'd like. I'll let the doorman know.

A bus waited in front of the main entrance in the sun. On the ground next to it stood a gas canister reminiscent of a muscular brown male torso. It was warm, there was a faint food smell in the air, and sparrows whirred and chirped in the cypress hedge to the right of the main entrance.

The chauffeur was waiting for me at the gate. He showed me the bell button, I pressed it. A voice answered, and the chauffeur bent down to the intercom and said:

– Yes, Herr Seitz for nine o'clock, please!

Then he waved goodbye to me. Behind me I heard him whistling, probably with relief. The gate buzzed and sprang open of its own accord.

I entered the building and found myself in a small anteroom; to the left was a booth as for ticket sales in a museum, to the right a tall closed portal. I approached the booth, in which I couldn't make out anyone, and looked inside. A head with a bread roll in its mouth appeared. Without taking the roll out of his mouth, the man smiled and greeted me with a nod. He gestured to a microphone protruding from the wall, through which I was to communicate with him.

– Hello! I shouted. My name is Setz! I have an appointment! At—

– Yes, great, came the voice from the loudspeaker next to the microphone. Welcome, um . . . hold on . . . one minute, okay?

He disappeared through a door in the back. I stayed where I was and stared at the bite marks in the roll, which now lay on the small desk. Next to it stood a thermos shaped like a cooling tower of a nuclear reactor, a laptop, and a thick
PONS
English-German dictionary. Behind the desk was a stack of boxes, next to it a fire extinguisher, on the wall hung a calendar with pictures of Elis dolls. I wondered whether I should take a few photos with my cell phone, but then I decided against it, because the room might be video-monitored.

After a while the doorman returned. He flipped a switch and the portal opened. Then he disappeared again into the back and stepped through the portal toward me. He held in his hand a small visitor's pass, which I hung around my neck.

– Do you have anything in your pockets like pepper spray, a taser, a knife . . .

– No.

– You have to leave your jacket here, please, I'll give you a coupon for it.

I took off my jacket and handed it to him. In exchange I got a small piece of paper with a number on it:
7/44
.

Dr. Otto Rudolph, the principal of the Helianau Institute, is professor emeritus of education at the University of Klagenfurt. He is also patron of the charitable organization New Benjamenta devoted to the distribution of learning materials in underdeveloped countries. He has a firm handshake that conveys resolve.

When I saw him for the first time, he seemed to me like something that must originally have existed in a completely different form. His appearance was a bit too bright, and the contrast in his face was adjusted strangely. You had the urge to fiddle around with imaginary controls in order to change his color composition. Only his eyes were unremarkable, ordinary. A pale blue. As if his creator had made them first and for the construction of the rest had beckoned an apprentice.

– I'm glad you've come, Herr Setz, he said.

– It's my pleasure.

– You're lucky, said Dr. Rudolph. Professor Sievert is an old friend of mine.

– Ah, I didn't know that.

– Normally there's a waiting list for the institute. But in your case . . .

He made a jaunty fluttering gesture with both arms.

Right next to the main building a large tree grew at an angle from the earth, striving away from the structure. It looked like a limbo dancer trying to make it under the second floor.

At some distance I noticed a small striped cat sitting on a wooden stake like a motionless candle flame.

– Look, I said to Dr. Rudolph.

– What?

– A cat.

He nodded and kept going.

As we walked, I waved to the cat, which followed me with its eyes.

– The students here all have their space, said Dr. Rudolph. The space they need. If one of the children has to be transported, then we take this bus here.

– And then the child sits in the back row?

Dr. Rudolph gave a hint of a nod.

– It's not about subjecting the children to our understanding of proximity, but rather respecting their own. And that is, unfortunately, it must be said, truly possible only in institutes like this one here. Here they have a social structure they can rely on. A fabric in which they are embedded and . . . and it doesn't unravel with the first little irritation.

– So how much does it cost a year to stay here?

First Dr. Rudolph made a grimace as if he were disgusted by this question, but then he raised his hands and said:

– The basic fee the parents pay is twenty thousand euros a year.

– Twenty thousand?

– Sorry for laughing, said Dr. Rudolph. But it's a typical mathematician question. Haha. And on top of that come other special things, of course, such as zoom equipment. For dealing with everyday life.

– Would it be possible to see one of the classrooms?

– Of course. There are only three, by the way. But they are (he held up his glasses and looked at his watch) all occupied at the moment. At ten-thirty, though, Lecture Hall A will be free.

4.
Award Ceremony

The
M
on the cat's forehead had turned out particularly well. The rest was, well,
okay
, at best. The scars were pretty corny. The apparatus containing the animal was somewhat too foreshortened. And the wooden stake was too dark. A recurring mistake, unfortunately. But people seemed to like the painting. They saw all sorts of things in it. Sometimes women even burst into tears and clung to their own clothing.

This time he had worked with photographs. Or rather, not directly with photographs, but actually with stills from a movie. It was a documentary on a university in the United States, which was repeatedly mentioned in the media as a negative example. Eventually a student with a hidden camera had marched into the testing facility and had gathered over fourteen hours of video footage. The filmmakers, a married couple from Australia, had ultimately turned the fourteen hours into two. Interspersed with that material were interviews, one of them with the student. In it he explained how he had hidden the camera in his baseball cap, and then he elaborated a bit on his personal motivation for going through those rooms in the first place. Had he run into difficulties in his work? Had he been searched or at least asked what he was doing there? What exactly had he experienced? Robert had considered using a still of the young man for a painting too. But it wouldn't have been especially difficult, the colors he consisted of were all quite simple, and their interplay was no great challenge either, with the possible exception of the shirt. The cat that you saw at the 1:35:21 mark was certainly more difficult. And also the thing in its chest. Not particularly strong, but still.

The painting had even brought him something. State sponsorship award. Robert had told Willi first, and he had respectfully laughed at him on the phone, which had made Robert tremendously happy. Only then had he told Cordula. She had hugged him. The award ceremony was held in the lobby of a bank. Tuesday evening, seven o'clock. First came speeches by two older gentlemen.

The first man spoke of responsibility and art, the second of responsibility and society. He also referred to the crimes of the past. In the end he went into the subject of the future a little, which, as he said, was here in such numbers today, in the form of bearers of hope, and then took a step back from the lectern over which he had bent unusually far for the duration of his speech, as if he were giving it a chance to rest from the long ride together. Then the prizewinners in the individual categories were called up and went onstage. The prize for best stage design went to a stunningly gorgeous woman, and Robert forced himself not to stare at her incessantly.