The road grants us the not to be underestimated pleasure of the blue, no the gray ribbon, which only thunderstorms are allowed to cut. The country policeman is on his way to the place, where he has already tidied up the bed of a murder victim several times, but he is repeatedly drawn there, just behind the village is the spot, soil cheated of plant growth, wasteland, but today the country policeman is driving further. Strangely enough he cannot remember whether he removed all evidence. Did he pick up the tissue or not. And if so, perhaps there's another one left over. He would also like to see if something was left lying at another spot, further away, where he also was with Gabi, which also has to be tidied up. He removed every piece of fluff, every scrap, but perhaps there are, left over from earlier intercourse, somewhere else, still a couple of stuck together paper tissues, which he now also wants to dispose of, better safe than sorry, he has a powerful torch, almost a searchlight, with him, the country policeman. Its beam will playfully leap after every thread, until he has caught up with and caught it. At this time, in this cold, no one will notice its hard, strong cone of light, still less down there, right by the river. One wrong move and the water puts one in its sack. It's as if the winter had returned, it has suddenly become so cold again. Over there the crouching back of a sawmill, a giant shadowy shape, there, too, the bridge (lovelessly poured of concrete, but completely suitable for heavy trucks) over which one can drive back and forward, the saws are silent, the lips, too, but the stream whispers, which usually one doesn't hear for all the squealing of the huge, rotating, and wood-spitting metal bands. I say: Away with the stream! Down here at last, if you please: THE RIVER. In with the stream and off it goes. Thank you for your free appearance, but you're too big for me to describe, although I would be paid something for it if I asked. At the moment I'm practizing on the little things, though not with the modesty of some colleagues, e.g. a Mr. K. whom I know personally, no, not the one you're thinking of. Once again, my God, what a coarse language one sometimes has to speak, if even animals and plants are to understand one: If one switches off the engine, one can hear it rushing, use another word immediately, let's say: one hears it talking to itself, the river. So the stream has abruptly disappeared, and now the roaring river steps up to us, which had come strolling around a gentle left-hand bend, which it almost missed, and demands its quota of admiration. Now they are running along side-by-side the river and its embankment road, which has been leant against it, so that it looks halfway good, but the road stands there obstinately, stands firm against the river's desires to pull it down, to play with it, and only the inhabitants of the heights move, as fast as they can. To get away from it, because it is threatening to their tender feet or furs.
Dark alder thickets to the right, deep down below by the river, where one always finds them, I don't have to change much there. In addition there is now, a real rarity, a canape on this road, on which there's hardly any traffic at night, an approaching car with a roof rack: Skis rest in their coffin-like box, funny, it looks like a cap for the car, and this box contains play, sport, and fun in such a small space that it would be impossible to squeeze in people as well; how are they supposed to amuse themselves, when there's room for their apparatus, but not at all for them? The roof rack is practical in any case, I think, people can straight away be buried in it if they have an accident. The car shoots past and briefly finds itself on the fringes of a hail shower of contempt caused by the country policeman, who in any case feels contempt for everything that doesn't belong to him. No reason to get excited. So, it's gone, the fast car, like a wet poodle, but in truth it has remained master of the house, it was an S-Class Mercedes. Despite everything the road is and remains dry. The eyes go ahead, don't turn aside, here comes the turn-off we're looking for. The crime didn't happen here, but here, as already suggested, paper tissues from earlier unions could still be lying around. If someone thought of examining these as well, then they would have a scent, although a cold, dried up one. But we don't quite know what modern forensic medicine is capable of. Yesterday and the day before yesterday Kurt Janisch already drove along the road at night to all the places where he's been with a certain young woman, who disappeared, sleepwalkers both, almost asleep in what they were doing, sometimes also calling to the other body: You can't do that, no, or can you? You can do it better than that! Did we leave out any part of this body by mistake? Then we'll attend to it the next time, till the first bit has healed again. And if it can, the body then remains quite at liberty, until one's home again, where another will without fail take an interest in it. And where those already present there, who never go for a walk because they always have to patiently wait, want to suck one dry again for the sake of this obliging service, even if one has arrived back already completely empty and exhausted and cannot possibly be used again today, except for washing the car, where one has to do nothing else except to be and be there. The car doesn't ask for anything more than that. Nature provides the water. Past. Not a sound in the modern car, which glides more than it drives along. Now just don't make a mistake with the speed, don't attract the attention of a colleague (very unlikely!), until one reaches the river bank and then at a particular spot has to scramble down a fair bit, something only local people would think of. The others, who don't know the area, would think it's a vertical drop, and we're not going to break our necks just for a fuck and we don't want to drown either. It's much cheaper breaking one's neck on the road without having done any sport beforehand. Yes, there, about another two-and-a-half miles, that's where the entry to the path by the river, hidden beneath branches, must point the way to an extinguished smile, to a circling screaming, as if birds had come to visit and couldn't find the exit anymore.
It can't be, do you see what I see?, in front there, on the road, a large dark mass, a heated mass, swiftly coming nearer, but with no glowing headlamps fixed to it, why on earth not. Nothing that could sprout wings and lift up into the air, and yet, how strange, that's exactly what it does do now, and there follows, fractions of seconds later, the soft impact of a body, which only just now came swinging along like a not quite full sack, which earlier, still in the forest, no one could beat, and which is now quickly and briskly drawn up from the road over the windscreen, the wedge-shaped profile of this modern Japanese car, as if by invisible strings, before immediately disappearing again. For another moment the night is darkened even further by the powerful bag of muscles, which like lightning and yet at the same time also ponderously (as if workers were bracing themselves sideways with ropes, grumbling and groaning, their feet pressed against the car body, in order to heave up, heave ho, their burden), slides up over the front part and the front window of the car as on a snow plow and has disappeared again, hardly has it appeared, so evidently the whole heavy mass was flung, almost dragged upwards, by the forward ploughing car and now already, like an unidentified flying object (but the moment that it happens, the country policeman knows what is happening), has risen above the car and landed on the road behind it. For the hundredth of a second the huge, already almost slack sack of fur and bones and horns hangs still and immobile above the vehicle like a strange, black moon, then it strives a little higher towards heaven, on a parabolic flight path, whose zenith (delta t), since the object, commensurate with the speed at which Kurt Janisch's car was travelling, will land 15 yards behind the Japanese car in the roadway, in exactly the middle of this stretch. While the bag of bones flies, it turns without grace a couple of times on its axis, a cumbersome comet, whose horned head, heavily burdened by the weight, points almost majestically in rapidly changing different directions, depending on the phase of the flight, and then lands on the road, the body, and is, for a moment at least, completely still. Quite unexpectedly Kurt Janisch's car was deprived of the momentum (M) which was necessary within the time (t) to lift the mass of a huge stag (m), a full-grown ten-pointer, for the killing of which the owner of the hunting ground up there had coughed up quite a sum, if the stag hadn't anyway had to cough its last, from ground level to the apex of its flight path (a), which was located behind the car, as well as to propel the stag in the direction of travel. The result was a drastic deceleration of the country policeman's car by several miles an hour. The car struck the stag above the fibula, or whatever it's called in this and similar animals, the bumper, therefore, caught one of the hurrying, swinging hind legs, losing contact with the ground, the hindquarters sagged away, down to the radiator, and off it went, off went the backwards flight, right over the car. At the corresponding moment in time Kurt Janisch was no longer driving very fast, he had already been approaching the turn-off down to the river and begun to look round, to see where he could park in the seclusion of undergrowth.