Indigo (19 page)

Finally everyone was holding a champagne glass, and a billboard next to the entrance to the bank referred to a flute concerto that had taken place here the past week. The iBall at the entrance to the lobby blinked.

Behind their flipped-down visors made of safety glass, the bank counters looked serious and solemn. This year's prizewinners were arranged into groups of two and three and photographed from various angles. A man touched Robert on the shoulder to move him a bit closer to his colleagues, and Robert nearly hit him over the head with the certificate.

In the lobby of the bank hung a number of bad abstract paintings to which Robert clung in order to keep from panicking. They were the actual occupants of these premises. All night long they hung here, shapeless forms that no one wanted.

He took a few sips of the sparkling wine, which tasted like grapes that had gone insane, and began to repaint the pictures in his mind. A helpful gesture. The first painting he transposed into a contorted stick figure whose limbs appeared in different degrees of clarity or blurriness. The stick figure wore a hat, and from its face jutted a cigar or maybe even a chimney. Even though it had the unmistakable shape of a person, the depicted creature conveyed the impression of a primal form found in dreams in the somewhat too-bright corners of a church or in rooms in which the contrast was off.

– Congratulations, he heard a voice say behind him.

Robert feigned a bad fit of coughing. The invisible well-wisher withdrew.

The people at the celebration gradually got drunker and began to tell each other their secrets. Robert listened for a few minutes to a young woman who explained to him that she had finally made her peace with the world, after so many years, and that the resulting artwork was entitled
Men's True All Blood.
He nodded and asked what it depicted. The woman laughed as if he had made a joke. Robert imagined how she would look without eyebrows. Just a slight application of a soldering iron . . . And instead of eyebrows a scar line stitched with little
x
's. Rampant keloid. He went to the buffet and took a piece of bread with cheese and half a grape and a dab of mayonnaise. A version of the
Jurassic Park
soundtrack played by a jazz trio now came from the speakers.

Robert looked at his watch.

It would still be impolite toward the organizers if he ducked out now. He hated these people, who had presented him with three thousand euros for a painting, for possessing such power over him. Almost like a remote control with which you could drive a car around in the neighboring apartment and make it crash into the walls.

The young woman from before approached him again. She had been outside for only a few minutes, she said. She looked somewhat frightened. Robert, who had a strong need to revel in something, asked her what had happened, she was acting strange. Oh, it was nothing, said the young woman, she had just wanted to go home, but outside small animals had been hopping around in the trees and so she had now come back into the bank lobby.

– Marmels?

– No, something else, said the woman.

– Oh,
those
animals, said Robert, nodding. Don't worry, they're here because of me.

The woman looked at him as if he had turned into a huge bull before her eyes. With a boys-are-stupid look she left him. Later, as the cluster of drunk people becoming more and more sentimental with the advancing hour threatened to close in on him, Robert produced a bubble around himself in which he could breathe by beginning to ramble on about contemporary art in itself, photography in particular, twin research (a subject plucked from thin air), and, of course, the old problem of chicken and egg, he also touched briefly on the Brussels legislation, even though he didn't know the first thing about it. It didn't matter at all, people listened to him. And they congratulated him again on the award. He thanked them and asked various people whether the lemurs were still sitting outside in the trees. Some gave him amused or questioning looks, some laughed, others nodded gravely.

Robert walked toward a bright restroom symbol at the end of a corridor. Here a fluorescent tube, probably years ago, had gone mad with loneliness. It flickered and buzzed an incomprehensible medley of Morse signals, an erratic eyelid twitch. It had waited so long for someone to finally stand under it, and now everything pent up in it burst out at once.

Robert was really relieved when he entered the restroom. It was a paradise. All the things you could vent your anger on here! Easily unscrewable knobs on the sink (unlike in the room in Cordula's psychiatric clinic!). And the door handle on the toilet stall was a bit loose. He touched it carefully and then delivered the coup de grâce. He held it in his hand, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, momentarily content, free. Then he emptied his bladder and, without washing his hands, returned to the lobby. He shook hands with as many people as possible, and when it was a strangely gaunt man's turn, Robert at first didn't even notice that the man spoke to him. Long sideburns adorned his open and attentive-looking face. The hair on his head had receded, only an atoll of gray, formerly black hair remained. The man was unusually thin, and the most striking thing was: He had no shoulders at all. If he had worn a black cape, he would have looked like a temaki roll.

– Batman, Robert replied to what the thin man had said to him.

He hoped that this had made his point clear enough.

– Nice to see you, said the man. Herr Tätzel.

– Uh, have we met?

– No, I wouldn't put it that way, said the man.

He had a peculiar accent, somehow French, but also something else, perhaps Romanian. Robert imagined how many thousands of molecules of his urine had just passed onto the hand of this joker.

– I'm afraid . . . , the man began, sighing.

Robert waited.

– I'm afraid I like your painting, said the man, stepping somewhat nearer to him.

– Ah, said Robert.

– I don't even know what to compare its effect on me to. Maybe the closest thing would be that . . . Are you familiar with the piece
Für Alina
by Arvo Pärt?

Robert shook his head.

– It's a very special piece, in my view. These days cultivated people no longer compose in melodies, in harmonies and so on. It's always structures, abstract forms . . . well, anyway. But the piece by Pärt is something else entirely, you don't even know where to begin . . .

– Ah, I see, said Robert, turning away.

The man grasped him by the shoulder. Robert's eyes widened. The thin man smiled, reached into his bag, and pressed a business card into his hand. There was no name on it. Just the name of a company: InterF.

Under it a mailing address in Belgium. E-mail: [email protected]
.

– Pärt's music is just like your painting here. Of the cat. That stillness. You know, it's a piece for piano. And the left-hand accompaniment consists of only a B-minor triad, which is simply played up and down. Completely boring. And the right hand plays a similar melody. He hummed a brief snatch of it. And together they yield this absolute stillness. You can listen to the piece on the street, with headphones . . . and you're suddenly alone. Suddenly at peace. That electricity no longer in your bones, everywhere, you know what I mean?

Robert had the feeling that all the other guests had moved at least three feet away from the two of them. He would have liked most to reach out his arms toward them. The glass he was holding in his hand had begun to sweat.

– I think I do, he said. Hey, what was your name?

– After such a long time, finally a moment when the clock hands stand still, said the man. Or the Geiger counters. Or the sirens. Just stillness. That's an enormous achievement, you know? How did you do that?

– Um . . .

Robert raised his arms.

– I know, said the man. It's not easy to describe. The artistic process. But the peace you found there is like a special vintage. You can enjoy it only in small doses, not too much. You were a student, weren't you? At the institute?

– You mean at Helianau?

– At the Helianau Institute, exactly. It's in your bio.

– Hm.

– A burnt-out case, the man said into his champagne glass, as he brought it to his mouth.

– Excuse me?

– I said it turned out great. Your career, I mean. You know, I might have made your acquaintance sooner, Herr Tätzel. But then the parameters shifted, so to speak. Or rather, were shifted.

– What?

– The parameters according to which we exist. The circumstances.

– Did you teach at the institute?

A stupid question. Robert knew that the answer was no. He knew all the teachers, after all, and to keep the few names and faces in his head was really no great feat of memory.

– No, said the man. I was never really there.

– Aha.

– Would you mind if I asked a personal question?

– I can't say until I hear it.

– Well, then I'll give it a shot, with your permission. It's worth a try. You must have been in boarding school there, at the institute. I mean, you weren't one of the few students who commuted. That didn't happen so often, did it? But wait, that's not my question yet. My question is about daily life there and is, as mentioned, perhaps somewhat personal, but I hope you don't take offense at it. Have you ever played the zone game?

Robert held his gaze.

– You know about that?

– Well, yes, said the man, as if Robert had paid him a compliment.

Robert shook his head.

– No, I haven't.

– You really haven't? Because I thought . . . hm. Strange. I must have been starting from false assumptions.

The man took a sip of sparkling wine. As he did so, he touched his upper lip briefly with the knuckle of his forefinger. Piss, thought Robert. My piss.

– How's your mentor doing?

– Who?

– Your former math teacher, that, oh, what's his name, Seltz . . . Setz, right? Back then he . . .

The man made an odd gesture with his left hand, reminiscent of a police officer attempting gently but in awareness of his authority to drive back a crowd.

– I have nothing to do with him, said Robert.

– Oh, Herr Tätzel . . . (The man acted as if he were disappointed.) You don't have to pretend that . . . But okay, I understand, of course. But you must have been relieved to hear that he was acquitted, right?

– What's this about? Are you with the police?

The man laughed:

– No. It wasn't him anyway. I mean, the thing with that asshole they skinned.

– I really don't know what you want from me, said Robert.

And I'd now like to have my peace
, he added in his head. The man poked a finger into his belly button. Robert immediately froze. He sensed that he wanted to cry for help, but at the same time he was stuck in a sort of tunnel. In a tunnel of heightened attention. The man's face came very close to his own, he smelled his breath, sparkling wine mixed with oil paint. As if he had licked the paintings.

– He visited me, did you know that? It was several years ago. He showed up, supposedly in search of, ah, I don't know, research for something. Which then never appeared, of course. He's written other things, the good man, since then. But I knew, of course, what his visit was actually about, Herr Tätzel. About you. Tell me, how did you get him to do it? I mean, I might, of course . . . ask Herr . . . Schaufler, I think, is the name, yes . . . Max Schaufler this question. How you did it, that is, what techniques of persuasion you used back then. So: How did you, I mean, you don't have to reveal any details to me about your . . . holy alliance so many years ago, Herr Tätzel—

Robert finally broke out of his paralyzing terror and threw his sparkling wine in the man's face. The man immediately began to laugh. People approached, Robert murmured an apology and rushed past them.

Robert made it home only with difficulty. When he finally arrived in his apartment, he couldn't have said what streets he had taken. Cordula greeted him and could tell from the look in his eyes that something was wrong with him. She was acquainted with it, it was her métier, ever since her childhood, so to speak.
Help
, help,
thought Robert, and:
Look at what's happening to me, maybe it comes from contact with you—you, you . .
. His teeth chattered, he couldn't speak.

And Cordula—took a step back.

– Arvo Pärt, said Robert.

– What?

– Mmmh.

– What happened? Did someone make you angry? Wait, I'll bring you something, it'll make you feel better in no time . . .

Xanor, zolpidem, no, he didn't need anything like that, there was a reason he was this way, his state, but he still couldn't say anything. Just a moment, just a moment's patience.

Cordula returned and held a little farmhouse made of matchsticks in front of his face.

– Crush it, she said. It's okay. That's what I make them for.

Robert took the house in his hand.

– Don't know, he murmured.

– It's okay, Cordula repeated, making an encouraging gesture. Break it. That always makes you feel better. Eases the tension.

He had never before in his life bitten into wood, at least not matches. But as he chewed up the little house his girlfriend had built (maybe the bones of Arno Golch's fingers would have cracked and splintered the same way if he had bitten into them . . .) and noticed her surprised but still composed and motherly look, he gradually found his way back to a place in the solar system where his voice could be heard.

– Some guy accosted me, he said.

He chewed. Spat out the splinters of the anger house. Absently patted Cordula's shoulder and murmured a soft thanks.

– At the award ceremony?

– Was probably drunk. For all I know.

We have to be on guard, Robin, that we don't lie to ourselves. Man is a wolf to man.