Why We Took the Car (18 page)

I did find a little pair of scissors in the first aid kit, but I'd never cut hair before. She didn't care, and she wanted it all cut off except for a row of bangs in front. She sat down on the side of the dike, took off her T-shirt, and said, “Go ahead.”

After a few seconds she turned to me and said, “Why haven't you started? I don't want the T-shirt to get covered in hair.”

So I started cutting. At first I tried not to touch her head too much while I was cutting her hair, but it's difficult to give someone a haircut with tiny scissors without bracing yourself on their head. And it's even more difficult not to keep looking at naked breasts when they're right in front of you.

“Look, he's jacking off,” said Isa. I looked toward the edge of the woods and saw an old man standing there — not even behind a tree — with his pants around his ankles spanking it.

“Oh, man,” I said, taking the scissors away from her head.

Isa jumped up, picked up some rocks, and, with lightning speed, started running toward the old man. She shot up the hill and started throwing rocks as she ran. She was throwing the rocks fifty meters, easy — and dead straight, like laser beams. And somehow it didn't surprise me. Anyone who could run like her could obviously throw well too. At first the old man kept stroking, but when Isa got a bit closer he whipped up his pants and staggered into the woods. Isa followed him, yelling and waving her arms wildly. But I could see that she had stopped throwing rocks. When she reached the edge of the woods she stopped. She came back out of breath and sat down in the exact same spot as before.

I must have stood there like a statue for a while because at some point she tapped my thigh and said, “Go on.”

The only thing missing was the bangs. I kneeled in front of Isa to be able to make a straight line. And I gave it everything I had to avoid taking even the tiniest glimpse anywhere except at her forehead. I held the scissors perfectly level and made a tentative initial trim. Then I leaned back and surveyed it like a real artist and cut a bit more. The hair fell past her small eyes and on down.

“It doesn't have to be perfect,” Isa said. “The rest of it's a mess anyway.”

“Not at all. It looks great,” I said. And in my mind,
You look great.

I didn't say anything more. When I was done, Isa wiped the hair away and we sat next to each other on the dike, looked out at the view, and waited for Tschick to come back. Isa still hadn't put her T-shirt back on. In front of us the mountains were still shrouded in a bluish morning mist that also hung in the valleys. I asked myself why it was so beautiful. I wanted to say how beautiful it was, or how beautiful I thought it was and why — or rather, how beautiful it was and that I couldn't explain why it was so beautiful. But at some point I figured it wasn't necessary to explain.

“Have you ever had sex?” asked Isa.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

She had put her hand on my knee and my face felt as if someone had thrown boiling water on it.

“No,” I said.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Do you want to?”

“Do I want to what?”

“You understand what I'm saying.”

“No,” I said.

My voice was suddenly high and squeaky. After a bit Isa took her hand away and we sat silently for at least ten minutes. There was still no sign of Tschick. Suddenly the mountains and the view seemed totally uninteresting. What had Isa just said? What had I answered? It was only a few words — what did they mean? My mind was racing, and it would take five hundred pages to write down all the thoughts that went through my head in the next five minutes. I'm sure none of it was too fascinating anyway — it's only fascinating in the moment, when you're in a situation like that. I kept asking myself whether Isa was serious. And whether I was serious when I said I didn't want to sleep with her, if that really was what I'd said. Though it was true that I didn't want to sleep with her. I mean, I thought she was amazing and all, but at that moment, on that misty morning, I thought it was perfect just sitting there next to her with her hand on my knee. And it was incredibly disappointing when she took her hand away. It took an eternity before I was able to form a sentence. I practiced saying it in my head about ten times and then said it aloud in a voice that made it sound as if I were about to have a heart attack. “But I like having your . . . um, uh . . . hand on my knee.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

My God. Why? Another heart attack.

Isa put her arm around my shoulder.

“You're shivering,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“You don't know much.”

“I know.”

“We could kiss. If you'd like.”

And at that exact moment, Tschick came into view carrying two bags from a bakery. There was no kissing.

CHAPTER 34

Instead, we went up the mountain. We had never planned out what we wanted to do, but as we ate breakfast we kept looking around at a mountain that looked like the tallest mountain on earth. At some point it became obvious we had to go up it. The only question was how. Isa wanted to hike up. I agreed. But Tschick thought going on foot was absurd. “If you want to fly, you use an airplane,” he said. “If you want to wash your clothes, you use a washing machine. And if you want to go up a mountain, you use a car. We're not in Bangladesh.”

We drove through the woods toward the mountain, but it was difficult to figure out which turns to take. Only beyond the mountain did we find a road snaking its way toward the top, and we crept along cliffs until we reached a pass. From there the road went back down again, so we had to walk to the peak after all.

Either we were going up some route the tourists didn't use, or we were the only ones there that morning. In any event we didn't come across anyone except a few sheep and cows. It took two hours to reach the very top, but it was worth it. The view looked like a really great postcard. There was a giant wooden cross at the highest point, and below that a little cabin. The entire cabin was covered with carvings. We sat down there and read some of the letters and numbers cut into the wood:
CKH 4/23/61, SONNY '86, HARTMANN 1923
.

The oldest one we could find was:
ANSELM WAIL 1903
. Old letters cut into old, dark wood. And then the view and the warm summer air and the scent of hay wafting up from the valleys below.

Tschick pulled out a pocketknife and started carving. As we talked and basked in the sun and watched Tschick carve, I kept thinking about the fact that in a hundred years we'd all be dead. Like Anselm Wail was dead. His family was all dead too. His parents were dead, his children were dead, everyone who ever knew him was dead. And if he ever made anything or built anything or left anything behind, it was probably dead as well — destroyed, blown away by two world wars — and the only thing left of Anselm Wail was his name carved in a piece of wood. Why had he carved it there? Maybe he'd been on a road trip, like us. Maybe he'd stolen a car or a carriage or a horse or whatever they had back then and rode around having fun. But whatever it was, it would never again be of interest to anyone because there was nothing left of his fun, of his life, of anything. The only people who would ever know anything at all about Anselm Wail were the people who climbed this mountain. And the same thing would be true of us. Suddenly I wished Tschick had carved our full names in the wood. Though it took him almost an hour just for the six letters and two numbers he did carve. He did a nice job, and when he was finished it said:
AT MK IS '10
.

“Everyone'll think we were here in 1910,” said Isa. “Or 1810.”

“I think it looks nice,” I said.

“I like it too,” said Tschick.

“And if some joker comes and carves a few letters in between it will say
ATOMKRISE '10
,” said Isa. “The famous atomic crisis of 2010.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Tschick, but I thought it was pretty funny.

The fact that our initials were there with all the others — alongside initials carved by dead people — really did my head in.

“I don't know how you guys feel,” I said, “but all the people here, the dates — I mean, death.” I scratched my head and didn't know what to say. “I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think it's cool that we're here. I want you to know that I'm happy to be here with you. And that we're friends. But you never know how long — I mean, I don't know how long Facebook will exist, but I'd still like to know what becomes of you fifty years from now.”

“Google us,” said Isa.

“You can Google Isa Schmidt?” said Tschick. “Aren't there a hundred thousand of them?”

“I was going to suggest something different, actually,” I said. “What do you say to meeting here again in fifty years? In this exact spot, in fifty years. On July 17, 2060, at five o'clock in the afternoon. Even if we haven't had any contact in thirty years. Everyone will come here, regardless of whether you're a manager at Bosch or living in Australia or whatever. Let's swear on it and then never mention it again. Or is that stupid?”

No, they didn't think it was stupid. We stood next to the carved initials and swore. And I bet we all thought about whether it was possible that we'd still be alive in fifty years and be back here. And wondered whether we'd be pathetic old people, though I didn't think that was possible. Figured it would probably be difficult for us to get up the mountain at that age. That we'd all have our own stupid cars, that inside we'd still be the same people, and that thoughts of Anselm Wail would still hit me like a ton of bricks, just as they had today.

“Let's do it,” said Isa.

Tschick wanted us all to cut our fingers and daub blood on the initials, but Isa said we weren't Winnetou or whatever. So we didn't do it.

As we were walking back down we saw two soldiers below. At the pass, where we'd left the Lada, a couple of tour buses were parked. Isa ran over to one of them. The side of the bus had illegible writing on it, no idea what it said, but Isa went right up and started talking to the driver. Tschick and I watched from the Lada. Then Isa sprinted back and called, “Do you have thirty Euros? I can't pay you back right now, but I will sometime, I swear. My half-sister has money, and she owes me — and I need to go to her place.”

I was speechless. Isa grabbed her wooden box out of the back of the car, looked at me and Tschick, cocked her head to one side and said, “I'll never make it there with you guys. Sorry.”

She hugged Tschick; then she looked at me for a second, and then she hugged me and kissed me on the mouth. She turned and looked at the tour bus. The driver waved. I pulled thirty Euros out of my pocket and gave them to her silently. Isa hugged me again and ran toward the bus. “I'll get in touch! You'll get the money back!”

I knew I'd never see her again. Or at least not for fifty years.

“You didn't fall in love again, did you?” asked Tschick as he picked me up off the pavement. “Seriously, though, you have the touch with women.”

CHAPTER 35

The sun beat down and the asphalt looked like liquid metal as it receded into the distance. We were out of the mountains and were coming up on an intersection where cars were standing still. They looked as if they were quivering in the afternoon heat, like they were underwater. It didn't look like construction. More like an accident. And suddenly we saw a car with a flashing blue light on its roof.

Tschick swerved to the right and turned onto a road through a field lined with tall electrical transmission towers. The road was wide enough that a truck could have driven it, but it was grown over with grass and looked as if it hadn't been used in a long time. The police didn't seem to have noticed us. But we could see the police car for only a few more seconds before the road wound its way into a birch forest. There were birch saplings beneath the bigger birches so you couldn't see more than a few meters in any direction. The only place you could see anything was above, where the sky shone through the tops of the trees and transmission towers were visible now and then. The road kept getting narrower and didn't really give the impression that it was leading anywhere. It finally ended at a lopsided wooden gate hanging awkwardly from its hinges. Beyond the gate were marshy lowlands, and those marshy lowlands looked so different from the rest of the landscape that we looked at each other with the same thought:
Where on Earth are we?
We deliberated for a few minutes, and then I got out and yanked the gate open. Tschick drove through and I shut it again.

Flat mounds of light-colored earth were separated by dark swampy patches that were purplish green. And scattered in the swamps were concrete blocks with metal rods sticking out of them — and each rod had some kind of yellow flag on it. At first there were only a few of the concrete blocks, but the farther we drove, the more of them there were, until the entire landscape consisted of the blocks with yellow flags stuck in them. One every few meters as far as you could see. The Richard Clayderman tape would have been the perfect soundtrack because the view was just so tragic — like a sad tinkling piano. The road was getting swampy too, and Tschick crept along in first gear through soft potholes, the transmission towers always next to us. I was sweating. Four kilometers. Five. The terrain began to change, rising slightly. The row of transmission towers ended and the wires hung down from the last one like hair. Ten meters beyond, the world ended.