Indigo (35 page)

– Well, said Christian, yeah, yeah, at the time all that was already . . . these explanations, they . . . really went around everywhere. That he wants to protect the past and so on. The anonymous horde of missing persons, who might still be living somewhere, unrecognized, under another name. That a number of people in hiding gave him money to copy himself in. Or that he actually works for various governments that are involved in organized human trafficking. All hard to say.

– But then why did he use his own face, I said, I mean, there would have been a hundred other options.

The men shrugged.

– Hard to say, said Christian.

– And it's also consistent with the structure of programs like that, Paul added, that you use some sort of constant face mask as a basis, some sort of default setting of the various pivot elements. Iris, chin dimple, root of the nose, hairline, cheekbones, et cetera.

– You don't really have any idea what all this means? Christian surmised with a laugh, gesturing to my notebook, which during the whole discussion had been open in front of me, while its pages had remained completely white.

To demonstrate to me how such a program worked, Christian wanted to confront his latest SimulAged software, which he had recently purchased, with the picture of a child who had disappeared almost eighty years ago.

The boy had lived until December 1927 in the Upper Austrian town of Kremsmünster. At a dance one day shortly before his seventh birthday, at which his parents were also present, he had simply disappeared in the middle of a crowd. The parents, quoted in a newspaper article, reported having seen him calmly walking toward the bodies whirling wildly around one another. He had walked in a rather straight line, as people do who see the ocean for the first time and, as if remote-controlled, drawn by ancient magnetism, march toward the waves breaking on the shore. And it had been really eerie to witness how the whirling limbs of the dancers always only very narrowly missed him—and how he was suddenly no longer there, concealed by music and movement and colorful clothing. The father asked the band to stop playing for a moment, his son was somewhere on the dance floor. The bandleader had responded to this request with understanding and amusement, according to the article. They began to look for him, but the boy was nowhere, more and more people joined the search, they checked everywhere, under every table, they even examined the boards of the dance floor to see if one of them might be loose. But they found nothing. The boy remained missing. Several years later he was declared dead, and an empty child's coffin, carried by two men instead of six, was lowered into a grave. Christian Thiel had discovered the article with the blurry portrait photo of the boy by chance in a collection of old newspapers. I stood next to him while he scanned the picture. The soft sighs of the scanner were reminiscent of the sound of elevator doors sliding apart in an exquisite hotel. The software, for which Christian had forked out almost three thousand euros to be able to provide it to his agency's desperate clients, grasping at any straw, took only a few seconds to calculate the result. On the screen appeared the face of a very old man. Christian tried out several hair and beard styles and ultimately chose a thick full beard.

– Looks like Tolstoy, I said.

– Really?

– Yeah, in a way.

– I don't actually know what Tolstoy looks like, said Christian.

– The way people imagine God, I said.

Christian laughed. He printed out the picture and tacked it to the wall over his desk.

– That could really be anyone, he finally said, after he had studied the face for a while. Old people somehow all look the same.

– Once this factor is under control, said Paul, then you move on to the next point and take a look at the known story. In this case we know, um, well . . . he simply walked toward a crowd and disappeared in it. Do you believe the story?

– Well, the first thing is always the story, Christian said with a shrug. You have to start from it, yeah . . . With Magda T. it was in the beginning also only a story.

– Hm, said Paul. If he wasn't trampled by the people, he might still be alive somewhere, living in an old people's home, without family members, almost ninety years old, blind, senile.

– Pfff, said Christian. There are countless people like that too.

– Yeah, said Paul, you're right.

He cast a glance at me, the sort of look that strangers waiting in front of closed elevator doors exchange.

– The software is really impressive, I commented. Amazing.

– Hm?

Christian turned around to face me. He looked at me as if I'd made an extremely unusual remark.

– The software works, I repeated. And even with such an old picture. That's amazing, isn't it?

– I think so too, said Paul. It was worth the money.

Christian said nothing, he only gave a brief nod and turned back to the printed-out picture on the wall.

– After such a long time, he said softly. Look at him.

– We could maybe give him glasses, said Paul. Or a hairstyle like Einstein. Or Beckett.

– Who? asked Christian.

– Samuel Beckett.

– I don't know what he looks like. Also like God?

– No, not so much, I said. He had very powerful hair. The whole energy of his appearance was concentrated in his shock of hair.

–
Ts
, said Christian.

Paul typed on the laptop and conjured onto the old face a thick cloud of untamed hair, snow-white and flickering. When he saw Christian looking over, he took a step back and gestured to the screen. Christian only smiled and looked back at the picture.

– You know what's really odd? Christian said after a while. I have the feeling that I've seen him before. Somewhere.

– Where? asked Paul.

– Don't know. But I could swear . . .

He came up very close to the old face and tapped with his forefinger on its forehead.

– Could we do another test run? I asked. Just so I can see how it works. Maybe one of you has a photo ID we could scan? Or we could take a webcam photo, or—

– No, said Christian. That's a rule we have, no fake cases, we . . . Wait, I just thought of something . . . The . . .

Paul held up his arms, as if to say:
I wouldn't have anything against it, but he said no. He's the boss.

– Okay, then I'm going to go, I said. My train . . .

– Yeah, we should probably also get back to work, said Paul. Now you have an impression, right?

– If anything, said Christian, then . . .

It seemed to occur to him that what he had intended to say wasn't appropriate to the situation at all. He had no longer been paying any attention to us. A slight flush passed over his face, and he pretended to clear his throat.

– Yeah, we really should get back, he said. Well, Clemens, it was a pleasure.

Oliver Baumherr saw me to the door.

– Impressive, isn't it?

– Yes, I said.

– But you don't look impressed. You seem somewhat disappointed, Herr Setz.

– I'm just confused. I read those pages you gave me. Relocation . . . Now I understand the term. It just means to move. And . . .

– Not
just
to move, right?

– I mean, yeah, okay . . .

– You really do seem confused, Herr Setz. But you'll realize that I've given you something you can use later. Good luck. And I wish you continued success.

– Thank you.

– Here's your coat. Hold on, I'll help you into it.

As I walked through the midday hum of the city toward the train station, I thought about Tolstoy—not so much his work as his face—and tried to imagine what the world would look like if he had disappeared shortly before his seventh birthday, never to be seen again, instead of the boy from Kremsmünster. Somewhere in Russia, at a dance, of which there were certainly enough at all times and in every country in the world. The parents of the boy from Kremsmünster would have been able to watch their child grow up, would have spent solitary hours reading writers other than Tolstoy, and the boy would have become an adult, later an old man. Sons, daughters, grandchildren. Finally he would have died and been buried in an ordinary grave. And the world wouldn't have missed the never-written works of Tolstoy any more than it now missed the boy.

Unsettled and intimidated by this realization, I stood around on the platform and regained my composure only when a few men with large musical instruments joined me. As we boarded, one of them asked me to help him with the double bass, which I did immediately, happy and relieved about the fat, hefty weight of the large case, adorned with various travel stickers, in my hands.

Only once the train was moving did I realize that I had left my favorite novel, Halldór Laxness's
Under the Glacier
, which I had brought with me specifically to read during the two-and-a-half-hour train ride back to Graz, in the hotel room. Confused, I put a hand on the windowpane, as if that might brake the train a little. Ever since I was a child, my sympathy with things and animals had been stronger than with people. Lost scarves wept all night in the darkness, a busted umbrella felt like a raven with broken wings and was inconsolable about the fact that it would never again feel the fresh rain on its stretched skin, a bee buzzing along the inside of a window longed for the air and the sun and the nearness of its colony, and a tree from whose crown an old Frisbee was shaken was sad about the loss of its toy or jewelry. At the same time I loved exploding buildings, soldiers falling in flames out of helicopters or riddled with machine gun fire, and I jumped up and down with joy in front of the television when a person in a kung fu movie—whether or not he deserved it—had his neck broken by the acrobatic attacks of his opponent and he lay on the ground wheezing and struggling for breath, and the victor positioned himself majestically in front of him one last time and bowed to him, as if he were greeting death itself, which invisibly entered the scene to collect its sacrificial offering. To this day it seems to me as if I had learned only yesterday to empathize with people and feel their pain and still had to get used to the unbearable brightness in which it bathed the world. My hand slid into the pocket of my coat. It touched plastic. I pulled out the unknown thing. The case of a radio play cassette. Bibi Blocksberg, the little witch. I opened it. Instead of a cassette, there was a slip of paper in it.

Ferenz

33, Rue de la Loi

Bruxelles

And a very long telephone number, followed by
cell
. Confused, I looked at the cassette case. On the face of the little witch Bibi Blocksberg someone had drawn a Hitler mustache. When the train entered a seconds-long tunnel, I was overcome by an unusually violent urge to gag. I stood up and walked through the cars a bit in the hope that the balancing games made necessary by the gentle curves and the rocking and shaking would distract my body a bit, give it something to do. To soothe myself I called Julia.

– Hello.

– Hello, are you already on the train?

– Yes, I . . . I just felt sick.

– Too much Nancarrow?

– No, but I think, ah, you're not going to like this . . . I think I'm going to go to Brussels next.

– Clemens, she said in a sad tone.

– No, no, I think I now have a better overview, though it's still pretty difficult . . . I was given a contact address.

– Maybe you'll change your mind if I tell you who just called here.

– Frau Stennitzer again?

– No.

Then Julia told me that an hour or so ago a friendly-sounding man had called and asked for me. He was from the publishing house Residenz Verlag, she said. He had read my
National Geographic
articles and wondered whether I might have written other things too, stories, longer manuscripts, whatever I would like to show, he was very interested.

– From Residenz Verlag? Really?

– Yes, said Julia.

– Wow, I said.

For a while, neither of us said anything.

– Bibi Blocksberg.

– What? asked Julia.

– Oh, nothing. Good news. Residenz Verlag. Really good.

To bring myself completely back down to earth, I told Julia that I had seen in front of the train station in Vienna a little dragonlike dog chasing some bubbles that a girl with a dripping wet dispenser in front of her face conjured in the air like three-dimensional Venn diagrams. When Julia asked what color the dragonlike dog had been and what picture the term
dragonlike
should actually call to her mind, the connection broke, and I held the cell phone in Geiger counter fashion in the air, in search of a residual signal, which was perhaps hiding in a corner, and even pressed it, before I abandoned the attempt, against the cold window in the aisle, into the breathless flickering of the tree trunks in the little wooded area shortly after Wiener Neustadt, through which the train was passing.