The longing was still there sometimes, a little, especially when he woke up some time during the day, evening setting in again already, and he was suddenly very lucid and very alone.
He watched them getting dressed; the blonde had long hair that had covered her large breasts in bed beforehand, and a couple of times he’d grabbed her hair, enclosing a few strands in his fist so that only the tips were visible, and he stroked them across his face and the lids of his closed eyes like a brush.
‘No,’ he said, ‘not everything, not everything please. Only your bras and underwear and your shoes.’ By ‘underwear’ he meant their extravagant string tangas, but that kind of thing was presumably in right now and lots of young women wore that kind of ‘underwear’, but what did he know? And when they were lying next to him again, what a bed, what a huge, huge bed, and massaging his arms and injecting him in his left and right arms at the same time — ‘My medication, they have to inject my medication, that’s the only service I’m interested in, no matter what it costs’ — he suddenly realised he’d painted all this before. Coloured pencil and pencil and watercolour on paper, forty-eight by sixty-nine centimetres, sold to a former film producer who’d bought the picture of the large shark tank before that and lived with a pile of money in a huge villa with lots of white walls. The big white bed. He was suddenly lying underneath a sheet; he’d pulled it up over his nose. ‘Nose, nose,’ he whispered into the sheet, breathing through the fabric. The brunette handed him the small silver tray he’d brought along specially, his lovely small silver tray, the blonde inserted the tube into his left nostril; the right one had been out of action for a good while now. He giggled into the sheet, and then he snorted and snorted until he no longer knew whether he’d painted all this before or would paint it in the future. And then he wasn’t there at all any more, only two eyes watching everything he’d created, and if he hadn’t created it yet … the blonde reared up, the silver tray so lopsided in her hand that the coke sprinkled like a fine white shower onto the sheet, underneath which Johannes Vettermann no longer existed. And the brunette lay next to her, wearing white fishnet stockings — ‘Ladies, white is not a colour!’ — lying strangely contorted on her side, and her arse looked monumental, two semi-circular and yet slightly angular rock formations, between them the equally white and so tiny piece of cloth of her panties (panties or tangas, at what width of fabric does the difference come in?), and the fishnet stockings weren’t fishnet stockings either, they were ribbons crossing around her legs, and one of the ribbons snaked over her thighs and her arse … and Johannes Vettermann knows he’ll have to force the matter soon, or no one will be interested in his monkey.
Oh yes, it’s a particularly fine example squatting over there in the foreground. A mixture of orang-utan and gorilla with a gigantic head, a monkey with its eyes closed tight, not looking very happy. Oh no, thinks Johannes Vettermann under the white sheet and in front of the white easel, don’t you three dare just disappear! He fences in the bed, fences in the two women and the monkey, but it’s not a fence, it’s ropes round a boxing ring — take a close look you idiots, can’t you see the little boxing girl in the corner of the ring? And Johannes Vettermann knows he’ll have to put some speed into it, he’ll have to force things, and he knows that and he’s lying under the sheet and sweating and sweating while the telephone rings.
He opens his eyes, sees the chandelier above him again, and the telephone rings. He smashes the telephone against the wall; the two women gather up the splinters of plastic from the bed; the ringing won’t stop. And now he knows he has to pick up the receiver. He rolls onto his front, it hurts a lot, and then he crawls slowly towards the door. He feels his heart stumbling and breaking off, feels himself getting weaker and weaker; he’s had so many heart attacks over the past few years. He crawls slowly, moving his arms, moving his legs, and the table with the telephone is still so far away. Why on earth did he take a large suite in the best hotel in town? A small, quiet double room would have done just as well. He hasn’t got much money left now, but because he had so much money a few years ago he doesn’t know what it’s like to be economical. And two beautiful young women belong in a beautiful suite and not in a mid-range hotel with only beer and Coca Cola and apple juice in the mini-bar.
Johannes Vettermann crawls towards the telephone, not ringing any more now, he crawls and leaves a trail on the carpet. His nose is bleeding. But that doesn’t bother him too much; his nose bleeds easily, his mucous membranes have been shot for years now, which bothers him a lot more and he finds slightly embarrassing even though the beautiful women are a thing of the past, but there’s still always something or somebody there … Johannes Vettermann feels ashamed of his wet trousers and his clammy, warm legs. He feels the damp carpet beneath him and tries to crawl ahead faster. But there’s something in his way, and he knows he won’t get past it before he’s eaten up what’s lying on the carpet there ahead of him. Apples, bananas and oranges. He bites so hard into the peel of the banana that it splits open at the other end. ‘Apples and pears, extra-large strawberries, oranges and satsumas and bananas, sweet peaches and melons, redcurrants and blackcurrants, kiwis and pineapples, cherries sweet and cherries sour, gooseberries! Vettermann’s Fruit supplies everything young and fresh and well-grown at low prices!’ He tries to punch his teeth into an apple but the banana has sapped all his strength, and he feels his heart stumbling, feels a pulsing in his head and a gigantic pressure behind his eyes, too much pressure on his blood vessels, and the blood-stained apple rolls across the carpet, and Johannes Vettermann crawls on slightly then lies still, ahead of him the fruit and next to him the shards of the glass bowl.
‘Peaches are my favourite, father,’ he says. His father puts the paper bag of fruit into his satchel, like every morning, and then puts two extra peaches on top. ‘Peaches keep your skin fresh,’ he says. And Johannes Vettermann, fifteen years of age, has very fresh and rosy skin that all the girls envy. ‘Peaches keep your skin fresh,’ he says and hands out peaches. In return, the girls let him draw them; he draws them while they eat his father’s peaches. He draws the peaches too and his father. He draws all the fruit his father brings home with him. Sometimes his father takes him along to the wholesale fruit market, a huge hall full of crates, outside a huge yard full of crates, trucks arriving and unloading and driving away again, cooling rooms full of crates, sales counters across the entire hall, so much fruit, they supply the whole town with fruit, and his father takes him around everywhere, and most of all Johannes Vettermann likes sitting in the little office behind the pane of glass, where he can see the entire hall. He draws. Flies. He knows all sorts of flies. Big ones and small ones, the kind that only live very short lives and die on the old fruit, then there are green ones with long wings that shimmer in the glint of the strip-lighting. Sometimes he draws the flies larger than the fruit. Sometimes the flies are so big that they could grab the workers and fly off with them. He puts big spikes on their heads with which they could pierce through the workers. And he pierces through them. And then he hears them screaming. The flies and the workers. ‘I’ll give you as many peaches as you like if you take your clothes off.’