Indigo (26 page)
Authors: Clemens J. Setz
â Okay.
Dr. Ulrich, apparently happy to have helped me, left, and I again sat alone in the huge conference room with its antiquated furniture. On the brown globe in the corner, the national borders of the world before 1799 were marked. It was a cheap reproduction, but the thick layer of dust made it appear old and genuine and intensified my feeling of sitting around in the past. Now and then I snapped my fingers or clicked my tongue to savor the majestic echo the room gave. I put away my little private writing project and pulled the math book out of my bag. The preparations for the midday period weren't very demanding, basically I would continue trying to explain the meaning and secret of conic sections, so-called second-order curves. I had of course noticed how uninterested the students' faces, distributed evenly through the auditorium, had looked during the last session, so I had thought about how to pique their interest and at the same time steer it toward certain mathematical questions. Recently a newspaper clipping had fallen into my hands about a man who had lived for twenty years with a twin appendage, a shrunken, shriveled copy of himself. The twin had sat just above his hip, his face was only half visible, the one eye always closed; not once in the twenty years had it opened. But the twin was supplied with blood, his heart beatâonly in the course of the seven-hour operation that separated the two brothers had he stopped living. The article mentioned that the man, still in the hospital, had presented to the journalists there his long scar and had also for the first time in his life let his left arm hang loosely. His gait, the article said, had been tilted slightly to the side. When he walked down the corridor and onto the balcony of the hospital, where the cameras of course followed him, it looked as if he were bracing himself against the wind. The removed twin was reported to have lain, after his final seven hours had elapsed, peacefully before the surgeons with his eyes still closed. And that was when it was clearly visible for the first time that he had during his lifetime had the posture of a little man slipping feet-first through a hatch, similar to a cosmonaut boarding his spaceship, or perhaps like a stunt pilot stuck up to his torso in the tiny propeller plane with which he flies daring loop-the-loops, several hundred yards above the marveling audience, and turns over and over, like a restless sleeper at night, whose blanket keeps sliding away from him in the coldness of the room. Twenty years ago he had boarded this large body, genetically identical to him, and had traveled in it from place to place, they had been together on three continents, until July 22, 2005, the day of the big operation. What was relevant to the math lesson, however, was something else: The scar on the man's flank, where his twin had for so many years perched as if on a seat, was in its form a nearly perfect ellipse. Closed scars in the form of ellipses are a very interesting class of irregular scar formations, I had learned that during my studies in one of the introductory lectures on analytic geometry. Why this was the case and why a fractal scar formation would have probably had to be hell on earth, I had saved as questions for the class. It was possible that we wouldn't even get to it, but it was good to have a cushion.
When, after some time, I cast a glance out the window of the teachers' lounge, I saw in the yard a peculiar gathering. The usual zone game had turned into a sort of circle of sitting students. In the middle, one of them lay on his back. Then, after a while, he turned onto his side and vomited.
I stood up and ran out.
The students immediately dispersed when they saw me coming. I strode through their zones without letting anything show. They grumbled and cursed softly and walked away. Robert Tätzel lay in the grass. I touched him on his shoulder, he cringed and looked at me. I helped him up.
â What are you guys doing? I asked him.
His breath stank of alcohol.
â No idea, he said, taking a few steps back.
â What was that?
â How should I know! he shouted, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
Then he took another few steps away from me. Dr. Rudolph's voice rang out from the steps.
â Tätzel!
He walked straight toward the boy. Robert automatically backed away until he touched the wall with his back.
â What did we agree, for Christ's sake? shouted Dr. Rudolph. Huh? What did we agree?
Robert nodded. Dr. Rudolph took a step back, exhaled indignantly, and gave the air in front of him a karate chop.
Then he seemed to return to reality, turned to me, and said:
â You will . . .
He gesticulated, but the sentence refused to be completed in that form. So he turned back to Robert and said:
â Herr Setz will help you. The telephone booth in the lobby. And this time tell your parents everything. Do you hear? Everything.
He looked at me as if he were expecting a nod. I gave him one. Robert looked down. For a brief moment I registered the unusual way I-kids weptâit looked incredibly theatrical. I had observed it on several occasions in recent weeks, but only now did I notice the commonalities. A feeling of satisfaction and fascinated coldness permeated me.
So you too
, I thought. Like the mask of a Roman histrion, the mouth eggplant-shaped, the eyebrows knitted. A Noh mask. I said:
â Come, now, it's all right. Let's go . . .
And I put a hand on an invisible shoulder, about twenty inches away from the real, still slightly shaking shoulder of the boy.
Robert Tätzel walked ahead, I followed him. Up to now I had never noticed a student lingering near the telephone booth in the main building. As far as I knew, all of them had cell phones anyway. Robert walked up the few steps from the yard into the building and then down the corridor that led to the central staircase, as if he were submitting to punishment. As if he were on the way to a bush from which he was to cut the switch with which he would a moment later be thrashed. I would have liked to ask Robert what the deal was with the telephone booth. But he walked so quietly and purposefully in front of me that I didn't dare to speak to him.
At the telephone booth he pulled out his wallet and took a card out of it. With a mild but despondent are-you-satisfied-now? look he held it out to me. I only nodded, confused.
He disappeared into the booth, stuck the card in the machine, and lifted the receiver. He clamped it between cheek and shoulder and dialed. An old rotary dial. Meanwhile he wiped the tears from his face with his sleeve. Ran his hand through his hair, punched, still silent, in slow motion a resistance in the air. Then he began to speak. And I noticed only at that point that you couldn't understand from outside what was said inside. That was all right, I thought. But I didn't know whether Dr. Rudolph . . .
Servile little creature
, I chided myself. And I turned away, not wanting to stand and gawk any longer in front of the transparent door of the telephone booth.
After about five minutes, Robert came out and held the telephone card out to me. I reached for it, but quickly withdrew my hand, and he returned to his usual distance, about three yards.
â You have no idea how this works, do you? he said.
I took my hands out of my pants pockets.
â Um, to be honestâ
â
Tsss
, he said.
â What did your parents say? I asked.
He laughed.
â Okay, I said. Then I'll ask you something else. Relocations. How often do they happen anyway?
Robert's eyes widened, he looked around.
â I have no clue, he said.
â Why did they beat you up?
â They didn't beat me up.
â Okay, but why did they . . .
â I don't know, okay?
â It's all right, Robert, you don't have to raise your voice.
â Sorry.
He crossed his arms and looked to the side.
â Ah, there you are! said Dr. Rudolph. I just had to finish a phone call. Now I can deal with this. Thanks, Herr Setz, I'll take over from here.
â Butâ I said.
â Robert, thank Herr Setz for helping you.
â Thanks, said Robert, without looking at me.
â You're welcome. But Iâ
â Come with me for a second, Dr. Rudolph said to me, and took a short walk with me through the lobby.
â Those are just toughening games, he said. Basically harmless stuff. But it was right that you intervened. This time it was still a mild form. You know, the students' altered proximity understanding is also . . .
â And alcohol is always involved? I asked.
â Herr Setz, Dr. Rudolph said, grasping my shoulder. It's a nonhomogeneous class, in terms of age too. These things happen.
â The problem is that they realize that his zone . . . proximity understanding . . . that it's waning.
â It took Edison hundreds of tries to get his lightbulb right. How often do you think it burned out on him after a few minutes? The equilibrium hadn't been found yet.
â Yes, I said, butâ
â And it takes nature time too, you have to come to terms with that. We can lament it, of course, that is, this individual development, but on the whole the picture is a positive one, because for some individuals born with it, it does last. Into old age.
Dr. Rudolph stood in front of me, and something was reflected in his glasses that looked like the ghost of a water jet, but I didn't want to turn around to check, and besides, he was already continuing to talk:
â You don't understand the point, Herr Setz. I mean, you're a gifted tutor in your subject. And the students like you, as far as I can judge.
Then Dr. Rudolph walked away with the student Tätzel.
And I followed them.
Not conspicuously. More like an actor in a detective film: You just focus on the camera trailing you from behind and don't think about the people you're supposed to shadow.
I positioned myself in front of the principal's office. What could happen to me if they discovered me here? I had a headache, but curiously it made me adventurous. The midday period had begun thirteen minutes ago, as a glance at my watch assured me. I shook my head and laughed as if the watch had made a joke.
I stood there and tried to keep my body completely still. I felt a little bit as if I were drunk. Champagne bubbles rose in my mind and gave everything a lively, dancing quality . . .
Fresh air streamed through an open window. I felt it pleasantly on my feet. I had forgotten to put on socks that morning.
â Ferenz, how are you doing? I heard Dr. Rudolph suddenly asking.
I held my breath. The door to the office was open a crack.
â Yes . . . yes . . . why,
biensûûûûr
, said the principal.
He was apparently on the phone.
Where was Robert? Was he sitting next to him while the principal shouted into the telephone?
â Yes, the problem . . . We just had an incident . . . Yes . . . I know that you guys thought of him, but he is waning . . . his zone . . . his prox . . . yes . . . yes . . . Oh, Ferenz, you old bastard! Hold on, I just need to . . . You can count on that, you'll get your happy end . . . One second . . .
I froze, the footsteps were approaching, hopefully he wouldn't look out the door. So I tore myself away and took a few steps toward the hallway window. There I saw Robert Tätzel, walking outside across the yard, stooped. He hung his head. In his hand he held a conical party hat . . . How had he so quickly . . . Had he passed me and I hadn't noticed, or . . . But then the principal's footsteps were directly behind me, he came out of the office, I heard it as loud and clear as if my shoulder blades had ears, probably he was holding the cordless phone on his cheek.
So I dropped to the floor, collapsed where I was.
â I'll call you back! I heard Dr. Rudolph's voice saying.
Then I was touched on my shoulder and spoken to. I let my eyes close and counted unhurriedly to ten before I opened them again and stammered that I had just felt terribly dizzy. That way I didn't have to look the principal, who kindly helped me to my feet, held me by the arm, and escorted me to the institute nurse, directly in the eye.
When the first baby was born back then, life suddenly took on meaning, said Herbert Rauber, Marianne Tätzel's father. And now, when a grandchild, Robert, was there, death had taken on meaning for him too. For what else was the job of a grandfather or a grandmother but to die for a young person, similar to the way a piano teacher played a piece for a student? Note after note was made accessible to him, not only the little nuances and transitions but also the great unity of the melody were demonstrated, the meaning, the arrangement, the scope. You showed him that this existed, that this was part of every life: the breakdown into component parts. Someone who had four grandparents, said Herr Rauber, would also come to know four deaths. The four had to die so that he, the young, new one, could exist and so that he could go on being here. So they lived and died for him, to the best of their ability. They behaved kindly toward him, were usually more unconditional in their love for him than his parents were, their duties in his upbringing were, after all, only a game, an avuncular cheerfulness surrounded every conflictâand that was how they remained in his memory. And the grandchild learned at an early age (the only time when this realization was still bearable) that something like that was possible and necessary: a posterity in which the dead person goes on existing, is held up like a hand puppet, sewn together from the memory scraps of the people who knew him. Ideally you not only died for your grandchild, but at the same time showed him how this final act was not so bad, no reason for true despair. And that had to be the most noble and meaningful thing you could do in old age. On the day your first grandchild was born, you knew that you would in the future make an effort, yes, you would pull yourself together, to die well, without great fuss, as peacefully and painlessly as would be granted to you, as reconciled and sated with life and ripe as your own acting instinct would permit. People who had no grandchild to die for were to be pitied; for them there was no comfort. For they would die miserably in a vacuum, anxious, helpless, and beset from all sides by the feeling that they still had so much to do on this earth. To have no grandchild, said Herr Rauber, was the worst deficiency you could suffer as a human being. And the death of a grandchild was of all things that happen in the universe the most unnatural. It had also seemed to him a blatant wrong when he was told that Robert was to be part of that new school project.
He himself had a brother with, well, with a psychological impairment. Johann. He had always been totally opposed to any form of locking away. What had been done to his brother, even if with the most humanitarian intentions, remained incompatible with his view of the world, in which all of us turn together through life.
Herbert Rauber was seventy years old. His voice was unusually high, almost feminine. He exuded a great calm, which nearly drove me out of my mind. I sat in the Tätzel family's living room under a ceiling that was at least thirteen feet high, the central room of their pale blue villa in Raaba.
Raaba is not much more than a village caught on the south side of the city of Graz, fused with it like the male anglerfish with the considerably larger female. A long street, company parking lots with flagpoles lining it on both sides, that was the first impression I had of the place.
I had wondered whether it was advisable to show up at the Tätzel family's house so soon after my visit with Frau Stennitzer, which still inwardly preoccupied me. Julia said no. I went anyway. After my return from Gillingen I had sat at home in a sort of torpor and had tried to understand what had happened. Now and then I fell into a feverish sleep and dreamed of a sheep with a large gray human mask and a party hat. I had seen the party hat on the day I had accompanied Robert to the telephone booth. My last day at the institute. The institute nurse. In the brief tussle with Dr. Rudolph in the yard I hadn't sustained any injuries worth mentioningâapart from a black eye, a lucky hit by that fat man flailing his short arms. It had been the chauffeur who ultimately pulled us apart. I had dealt the principal a blow to the belly, and he doubled up and seemed to be waiting to see whether he had to vomit, while the chauffeur laid a hand on his back. But then he swallowed heavily and said softly that I was to leave the institute and the grounds immediately, orâ
â Or what? You'll put me in a costume and have me taken away?
Dr. Rudolph showed no reaction. But the chauffeur seemed to be startled. He took his cap off and rested a hand on his hip. I gave him the finger. He took a step toward me. Dr. Rudolph held him backâstudents were standing in the yard, watching us. Like zombies in a horror film they came slowly closer, but then they stopped and spread out.
Some time later I sat with trembling hands in a train compartment and tried to reach Julia, but she didn't answer. I threw the cell phone across the compartment and afterward collected the pieces remorsefully and reassembled it. And all this just because of a few questions.
Party hat. Costumes. Relocations.
I had begun to stammer, and it must have been obvious how little I knew about the matter.
Then the serious mustache voice of Dr. Rudolph: I was too impatient, I was still adhering to old values. But it was necessary to adapt to the students' needs and refrain from applying to them your own ideas of closeness, daily routine, and so on. To illustrate his point, Dr. Rudolph told me a little story. He had read, he said, that in the fifties at a Soviet primate research station near the Abkhazian city of Sukhumi a wooden structure with a small rhesus monkey bound in a crucifixion pose had been moved into the sun each morning. The significance of this installation had been double, explained Dr. Rudolph: on the one hand a mockery of what was at the time still the all-dominating Christian faith in the Abkhazian population, which had been a thorn in the side of the Soviet rulers and which they tried to drive out by means of the grotesque monkey icon through a sort of shock therapy; on the other hand it had also been a demonstration of the new age and its medical technological possibilities, for: The monkey lacked a scalp, and from his bare cranial bones projected electrodes on wires. And now the failed paradigm shift, said Dr. Rudolph: visitors to the zoo that was part of the station had, as an observer described, passed the monkey rack and had furtively and hastily crossed themselves, all the time,
Herr Setz, are you listening?
â Okay, you're doing that on purpose, aren't you, Rudolph?
â On purpose? Herr Setz, I don't know what you mean. And it's
Dr.
Ruâ
The rest was tussling.
In Robert's room visitors could now stay for six minutes. Ever since he had left the institute, his interval had steadily increased, and his region was shrinking.
â Six minutes, I said appreciatively.
Despite his fifteen years, he looked astonishingly grown up. But not all parts of his body had participated with equal enthusiasm in the last growth spurt, which must have occurred only recently. Part of the shoulders was lagging behind, and the cranial bones too were still holding back a bit.
â I can endure it longer, of course, said Frau Tätzel. And these days it takes me only a very short time to recuperate.
â Morning, Herr Professor, Robert had said.
While I stood in his room, I kept an eye out for the party hat. But it was nowhere to be seen. Instead I spotted an unsettling poster on the wall, which showed a dog photographed in a space capsule. Robert and I exchanged a few words, then I went back to the living room.
â The tea is excellent, Frau Tätzel.
â I'm glad.
â And it really doesn't bother you if I take some notes? It's just for me, it simply helps me focus.
I held up my notebook.
â Go ahead.
â I find it very interesting, Frau Tätzel, that you've taken Robert home again. I was recently in Gillingen, visiting a woman who keeps her child at homeâ
â Aha, yes.
Frau Tätzel crossed her legs.
â And of course I would like to thank you for being so kind as to receive me. I'm sure that Dr. Rudolphâ
Frau Tätzel raised her hand:
â No, no, Herr Setz. He didn't say anything about your departure.
Herr Rauber shook his head too.
â Even so, I wanted to tell you that it's very kind of you. I think a rumor is going around that I'm an alcoholic. At least that's what I was told. I'd just like to assure you that it's not true. I left the institute for other reasons.
â We don't judge, Herr Setz.
â That's nice of you. May I ask you a question?
â Certainly, said Herr Tätzel, who had been silent up to that point.
â Okay, I said. This might sound somewhat weird. But do you by any chance have a family member or a friend named Ferenz?
Frau Tätzel placed her teacup lopsidedly on the saucer and corrected the position with her thumb.
â No, she said.
â Are you sure? I might have been pronouncing it wrong.
Frau Tätzel leaned back. The smile had disappeared from her face, but had been replaced by something very similar.
â Sorry, I forgot to turn off my cell phone.
â It's all right, I said. Go ahead and let itâ
But she had already taken it out of her pants pocket and was tapping around on it, then she flipped it shut and said again:
â Sorry.
â No problem at all. You know, a few strange things happened during my time at the institute.
â It's the same for everyone in the beginning, said Frau Tätzel.
Herr Tätzel uttered a soft:
â Mmmh.
I told them about the costumes and the zone game in the yard.
â That's normal at that age, said Frau Tätzel. You don't have kids, I assume, do you?
I shook my head.
â Lots of things change, said Herr Tätzel. When kids are there. Right, Herbert?
â Yeeeah, Herbert Rauber said with a nod.
â I can imagine.
â And with a kid like Robert, well, even more things change, said Frau Tätzel. Do you still remember the first car ride with him?
â Oh, hahaha! said Herr Tätzel.
Herr Rauber sighed.
â That's why I bought that out there, said Herr Tätzel. The pickup. Because of the bed. The first long car ride with Robert, that I'll never forget. Robert was sick, and we drove him to the hospital. He wouldn't stop crying, and his belly was rock-hard. We were worried, of course.
And he told me about the initial slight dizziness as he laid the screaming baby on the backseat. His son had lain there completely doubled up, and due to his caution, due to his sympathy, he had lost precious seconds.
â Because I knew, of course, I didn't have more than a few minutes. After that the dizziness would become more intense, and I might have to throw up. I underestimated the first attack of vertigo, because I . . . haha . . . I started swerving around when I was out of the garage, remember?
Frau Tätzel smiled and nodded, yes, she still remembered well.
â The lights got weird after a while, that is, they looked weird.
â The lights?
â Well, the lights of the other cars and the streetlamps and . . . Have you ever read Oliver Sacks?
â Yes.
â It was exactly like that.
â Could you maybe describe it in a bit more detail? I asked.
â Well, the poor blood flow to the brain is of course to blame, at least I assume so. It also causes the splitting headache and the numb spots on the face. It's a really horrible condition, you know? You feel cold and hot simultaneously, your teeth chatter and at the same time you want to tear your clothes off.
â Did you have that feeling right after you set off for the hospital?
â No, I knew well you have to use the first five to six minutes, so I floored the gas pedal.
He laughed again.
â Determined, Frau Tätzel said suddenly. There's no other word for it. A determined intervention.
Unfortunately, now he could no longer drive a car due to his polyarthritis, said Herr Tätzel. So his wife had to learn how. In general she had, after overcoming the worst phase of her life, taken the oars in both hands, so to speak. The oars, Herr Tätzel repeated, forming with his arms a sort of dinosaur beak in front of his face.
His wife laughed and patted him twice on the knee.
Unlike in the rest of the rooms in the house, in the living room only a single, very bright lightbulb hung from the ceiling, and its light flickered a bit at irregular intervals. The frequency was high enough that you noticed the flicker only if you concentrated.
â May I ask what you mean by
worst phase of her life
?
â I was depressed for a long time, said Frau Tätzel.
Her father put his large, benevolent paw on her shoulder and gave it a brief squeeze.
â The thought that evening was coming was enough to totally drag me down. Now it's light out, but later it will get dark. Now all the shops are open, but later they'll be closed, and I won't be able to buy anything, I'll be hungry and maybe even thirsty, since I don't drink the water from the tap because the calcium taste makes me sick. Thoughts like those, all day long.
â And that was . . . because of . . . ?
I realized that I had put my foot in my mouth.
â No, she said. No. It had nothing to do with that. So-called depression has, contrary to popular opinion, absolutely nothing to do with grief, exhaustion, despondency, or disappointment. Quite the opposite. In depressive stages of life, sadness would even be desirable. Salvation. I don't know whether you can relate to this at all, but depression means first and foremost a complete lack of interest. Everything seems boring and stale, and the state of curiosity is as far in the past as . . . well, farther than your own birth, you can't even remember ever having been interested in anything . . .
She looked at her husband, but he was playing with a hair on the back of his hand and didn't give her any sign whether she should continue.