Indigo (45 page)

With that she left me standing there.

A man with an old-fashioned pince-nez on his nose was among the mourners. He had fastened his eyes on me. I returned his gaze, held it for several seconds, and then looked elsewhere. When I looked at him again, his gaze was unchanged. Piercing, intense. Possibly angry.

Then I realized that I still had the white button-shaped iPod headphones hanging around my neck. I quickly put them away.
Oh, my goodness
, I indicated with an apologetic gesture in the man's direction. That did nothing to change his aggressive staring. At least he raised his forefinger to his temple and saluted. I saluted back.

On the wooden cross on Christoph's grave his initials were larger than the other letters. “C.S.”

“Arrived in the Lord,” said the inscription underneath.

I staggered backward a few steps and accidentally stepped on someone's shoe.

After the burial the family and friends dispersed, only a few people gathered around Frau Stennitzer. She eyed me from a distance. I suspected that, if I approached her again, she would tear out one of my arms or perhaps an eye.

She gestured toward me, and a man with a strange tall hat who stood in front of her turned around in an inconspicuous way to face me. I raised my hand.

I didn't join any group, but instead went by myself to the tavern across the street from Pension Tachler. The pension itself was closed. I sat down in a dark corner and ordered an orange juice. After several minutes someone came up to my table. Because the figure stood in front of the bright windows, I made out only a silhouette. A tall hat was put on the table in front of me.

– May I bother you for a moment?

I looked at the stranger, incapable of giving a meaningful reply. What was he planning to do? Was he going to throw me out of the tavern? Or start a fight?

– I just wanted . . . um . . . if you could sign this here . . .

An edition of
National Geographic
joined the hat. The man leaned forward so that I could see his face, moistened his middle finger with his tongue, and opened the magazine. When he had arrived at the article “In the Zone,” he pointed to my name and said:

– If it's okay, here . . . please . . .

I made a lost gesture with both arms, a mixture of shrugging and putting my hands up.

– Oh, sorry, of course, the man said, patting his chest down.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a beautiful old and experienced-looking fountain pen. He pressed it into my hand and pointed again to the same spot.

– Something like this . . . um . . . well, how to phrase it, something like this of course makes the rounds in a relatively small town like this one, hahaha, you understand.

I put the fountain pen to the paper, and under its tip an ink dot emerged, which slowly grew larger and larger.

– It's not every day, said the man in exactly the same tone, that someone does something like this for us, as it were.

My name was there. I had written it automatically. I thought about whether I should tear up the article and the whole issue of
National Geographic
then and there, but the man gently took the magazine and fountain pen out of my hand and bowed.

– Have a nice day. Um . . .

He stopped short, put the open magazine back on the table.

– The middle initial, you forgot it, he said.

He tapped with his forefinger on the author name under the headline.

With trembling fingers I drew a thick umbrella handle between my first and last name. I made it thicker and thicker, until the man took the fountain pen out of my hand with a laugh and carried away the magazine.

– Haha, he said on his way out. Yes, all right. Haha.

A waiter brought me my orange juice. Even though I felt a bit nauseous, I ordered a grilled cheese with it. When I tore at the perforation of the tiny ketchup packet and a thin, red, surprisingly fluid jet squirted onto the plate, I had for a moment the feeling of losing my mind. To fend off the attack, I focused on my knees and touched and patted them, I also wiggled my toes and imagined what they looked like in my shoes.

When I wanted to pay, the waiter bowed to me and said it would not be necessary, of course. The mayor took care of it.

– The mayor, I repeated.

– Yes, just now, as he was leaving. He came back specifically for that. He always makes sure that everything is taken care of.

The waiter clapped me on the shoulder.

– People immediately feel famous, he said. When they appear in an exposé like that. But exposure is necessary, or else the malady won't be recognized.

Scarcely back on the street and in the sunlight, I was approached by another person. Only after a few seconds did I realize that it was a woman. An older woman with a headscarf. I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and clutched my pencil. Where is the best place to ram a pencil? Into the third eye? Through the lower lip into the gums? Into the temple?

But the woman only wanted to know where the train station was. I pointed in the right direction, and she nodded and thanked me.

Slowly I began to move, heading toward Glockenhofweg. I just wanted to take a look at the burnt little house in the yard and then get out of here.

No one else was out in the town. Frau Stennitzer must have gone with her family to one of the larger restaurants for the funeral meal. I stuck my iPod headphones in my ears and listened, to put myself in a somewhat more respectful mood, to Arvo Pärt's meditative piano piece
Für Alina
.

When I arrived at the house on Glockenhofweg 1, Frau Stennitzer was standing at the gate to the yard, as if she had been expecting me. I was a bit startled and immediately pulled the headphones out of my ears.

– Yes, I . . . I wanted to say goodbye to you, I said.

She opened the gate for me.

– Aren't you spending any time with your family? I asked.

The fact that Frau Stennitzer was standing here in her yard so soon after the funeral struck me as a mysterious doubling of her presence. Déjà vu. A glitch in the Matrix.

– No, she said. Come in.

I followed her into the house.

– You wanted to say goodbye, she said. That's nice of you.

– And I wanted to tell you that if there's anything I can do for you, anything at all, you . . .

– Hm, she said.

It sounded like a very tired, weak cough.

– Why did you come back? she then asked.

– To say goodbye.

– No, no, that's not what I mean, I mean . . . I called you, in your hotel room in Brussels, remember?

– How do you know—

– Oh, please, said Frau Stennitzer. Stop that. Let's talk like reasonable people, all right? During our phone call, you seemed quite changed, Herr Setz. You confirmed Christoph's arrival.

– Excuse me?

– Why did you do that? It confused me.

– I have no idea what you mean.

She sighed.

– I don't want to drive you into a corner, Herr Setz. It wasn't completely obvious. It was very subtle. But still clear.

– What was clear?

Her face contorted in disgust.

– Please, don't be so . . . He told me. He told me everything. Even that you asked him to describe to you what's on such a video! I don't want to judge you, but I find that pretty repugnant, I have to tell you in all honesty.

– What? But no, that wasn't how—

– I find that absolutely voyeuristic and a whole bunch of other things too, which I'd rather not even get into now. Why did you ask him to do that? That's so—

I made a time-out sign with both hands:

– Please, listen to me, that wasn't how it was, okay? I don't know how you know about it, but Herr Ferenz wanted to play the video for me, and I couldn't watch it. So I asked him whether he could describe to me what's on it—

– But why? That's doubly sick! I saw the video too, it's not that bad! No reason to have it recounted to you image by image.

– How are you acquainted with . . . ?

She took a step back, and it looked as if she were quickly casting a glance over her shoulder into the hall of the house to check something. The door there was slightly ajar. I stared at it. But the crack of the door didn't widen by a centimeter.

– I can't trust you anymore, she said. That's all I can say. Herr Ferenz will have to find someone else.

– Someone else?

– Yes. You're not suited to it.

– To what? I don't understand what you mean. Really. And I'm very surprised that you know Herr Ferenz, he didn't tell me anything at all about that, so—

– You didn't notice anything? she asked, in tears.

– No, I—

– You bastard!

Her fist struck my right upper arm.

– Wait! I said, intercepting her hand. Please, just a second! Talk to me. Explain to me what you mean. Are you afraid of something? Is that it? Are you afraid that someone . . .

I didn't know myself how the sentence was supposed to go on.

– Afraid!

Frau Stennitzer spat the word out contemptuously at me.

I lowered my arms. A helpless, flightless animal.

– Haaaaah, Frau Stennitzer uttered, seemingly pressing all the air out of her chest. I have respect for what you did. I mean, I really have respect for . . . for . . . that you went there and so on. But we're different, can't you understand that? We were different. Christoph was . . .

She gestured in the air.

– Christoph was different. Christoph was really ready, you understand? You have no idea. You have absolutely no idea.

The last words got lost in her chest, because she was speaking with her head hanging. Her voice had withdrawn to a warm, familiar place, to the orchard of her childhood perhaps, or into the vivid memory of the innocent past.

C.S., I thought. The initials on the grave.

Arrivé
.

The sun began to dance around the house, and I had to put a hand to my temple to keep from falling over then and there.

– You're worthless, said Frau Stennitzer. Come on. I'll show you something.

She walked with me through the house and across the patio into the yard. Surprisingly, the sight of Christoph's little house gutted by fire wasn't at all disturbing. It looked as if the house had been newly painted, with black, bubbly, grainy tar. Because there was danger of collapse, we took only a few steps into the building. I stopped outside the door that led into the boy's bedroom on the right, and looked around. As if it were a sculpture made of matches, said Frau Stennitzer, the little house had gone up in flames.

Outside, in front of the little house, in the grass littered with glass shards, lay the brown air mattress, unscathed.

Frau Stennitzer told me how and where she had found it.

At some distance from the house it had lain, next to it beer cans, cigarette butts, and even a (she needed all her energy to pronounce the word) used condom.

She had picked up the air mattress, warm fabric-like material, not at all smooth, meant for wet, happy bodies that wanted to drift for a while in the water.

Without dealing with the trash lying next to it in the grass, she carried the air-filled thing into the house. It hadn't been at all clear to her what she was doing. In another set of circumstances, she probably wouldn't even have made it into the living room, she most likely would have dropped the air mattress, perhaps even pulled out the plug in shock—and like a mad nightmare giraffe the mattress, snorting and voicelessly whinnying over so much suffering in the human universe, would have let out its air.

Only once the air mattress was lying on the couch did it dawn on her that it was a huge repository of breathing air. The lung contents of her son. Storage spaces connected by small sluices as in an oil tanker, so that a leak wouldn't cause everything to sink immediately. Breathing air. Packaged in brown.

She had left the room and had wondered where you could touch the mattress without suffering any damage.

The world's largest repository of the breathing air of the late Christoph Stennitzer.

She had had to laugh, she told me.

I made a helpless gesture with both arms and tried again to put a comforting hand on Frau Stennitzer's shoulder. But she recoiled from me.

– We're taking a ride on the cable car later, she said. A few friends and I. Perhaps you'd like to join us, Herr Setz?

– Okay, I said.

– Because now you've visited us in Gillingen twice and haven't even seen the cable car up close yet.

And for a moment a strange, almost excited smile flitted across her face.

3.
The Winner

How beautiful it looked when paper burned. You should burn something every day, just as you brush your teeth every day.

The folders might still be usable. Robert put them in his backpack.

The most pleasant aspect of the whole thing was that he couldn't even say why he had done it.
Only villains feel no remorse, Robin.
He smiled, closed his eyes, and leaned back. Burnt-out.