*
Two minutes’ work with the crowbar sufficed to open the door of Werner’s flat. His bed had been slept in, the bedclothes were thrown back. A towel, obviously used, was lying on the bathroom floor outside the shower cubicle. There was a pile of dirty plates on the draining board in the kitchen. In the living room he found a glass containing dregs of red wine.
What to look for? Jonas didn’t even know. He wanted to find some clue to where everyone had gone, but what sort of clue? Could he find it in a friend’s flat?
He wandered around for a while. For the first time in days, he came across familiar objects. He was moved even by something as banal as the leathery smell of Werner’s sofa. He’d often sat here in the past, when everything was still as it should be.
He opened the fridge. A lump of cheese, some butter, a carton of long-life milk, some cans of beer and lemonade. Werner hardly ever ate at home. He occasionally sent out for a pizza.
Jonas came across the medication in a drawer.
He had found something important without looking for it. This medication meant that his friend hadn’t disappeared of his own free will. Werner wouldn’t even have gone down to the cellar to fetch a bottle of wine without his tablets and inhaler.
He remembered now. Werner had called him on the evening of 3 July. They’d chatted for a few minutes and then made a vague arrangement to meet that weekend. It was Werner who had called him.
He pressed the redial button on Werner’s phone. His own number came up on the display.
*
In Rüdigergasse he tried to recall how the street had looked on his last visit. He immediately recognised the plastic cover on the bicycle saddle. He saw the bottle protruding from the dustbin. The position of the bikes and mopeds also seemed unaltered.
The postbox: empty.
The flat: unchanged. Every object was where it had been before. His tumbler on the table, the remote on top of the TV. The usual chilly atmosphere, the smell of old man. The displays on the electronic gadgets glowed green.
The same silence.
The bedsprings creaked ominously as he lay down. He stretched out on his back and folded his hands on his chest. His eyes roamed the bedroom.
He’d known all the objects he could see since his childhood. This had been his parents’ bedroom. That portrait of an anonymous young woman had hung opposite the bed. The ticking of the wall clock had accompanied him into sleep. The decor was just as it had been thirty years ago. Only the walls were wrong. Until his mother’s death eight years ago, this bed had stood in a flat in the 2nd District. The one he’d grown up in.
He shut his eyes. The wall clock struck half-past. Two deep, resonant notes.
*
Jonas almost drove past the building in Hollandstrasse. The frontage had been repainted and repaired in places. It made a respectable impression.
He prised open the postboxes in the lobby with the crowbar. They yielded with a crash. Masses of junk mail, one or two letters. All the postmarks predated 4 July. Postbox No. 1, which had belonged to his family, and from which he himself had often collected the post, was empty. The subsequent tenants’ surname, Kästner, was inscribed on a little plaque dangling inside.
While climbing the stairs to the first floor and making his way along the old, winding corridor, he remembered how, as a boy, he’d been treated to a nameplate of his own by Uncle Reinhard, who’d had it made for him specially. It was attached to the door, and Jonas had proudly showed it off to every visitor. Bearing his first name and surname, it had even hung above the family nameplate.
As he expected, both nameplates had been removed and replaced with that of the Kästner family.
He tried the handle.
The door was unlocked.
He looked around. Resisting an urge to remove his shoes, he tiptoed into the flat.
Hanging in the hall was a sign reading Welcome! in childish handwriting. Jonas gave a start. It looked familiar. He peered at it more closely — he even sniffed it, he felt so puzzled — but came to no conclusion.
He toured the familiar rooms with their unfamiliar, incongruous pieces of furniture. Often he came to a halt, folded his arms, and tried to recall what the place had looked like before.
The tiny bedroom he’d moved into at the age of ten, formerly his mother’s sewing room, had been turned into a study. The big room that had doubled as his parents’ bedroom and the living room was still a bedroom, but atrociously furnished. To his annoyance, it contained a three-piece suite in the lousy ’98 series from Holland, which Martina had almost had to force him to sell. The presence of children was indicated by some rubber balls and toy guns in a corner behind the door. The bathroom and toilet were unchanged.
In the toilet, on the wall beside the cistern, he discovered, in childish writing, the phrases: The fish and I. The fsh. The ‘The’ and the ‘f’ and ‘sh’ of ‘fish’ had a line through them.
He remembered it well. He’d written that. But he didn’t know why any more. He’d been eight or nine. His father had told him off for scribbling on the wall but had forgotten to wipe it off. Probably because it was in such an inconspicuous place that it had been months before he’d even noticed it.
Jonas walked up and down, leant against doorposts and adopted certain positions, the better to remember. Shutting his eyes, he fingered door handles that felt the same as they had in the old days.
He lay down on a strange bed. Staring up at the ceiling, he felt dizzy. He had often lain in this position, and now, after many years, he was doing so again. He had gone away, the ceiling had stayed put. The ceiling didn’t care. It had waited, watching other people’s doings. Now he was back. Staring up at the ceiling. As before. The same eyes were looking at the same spot in the ceiling. Time had gone by. Time had broken down.
*
Jonas hesitantly entrusted himself to the lift in the Danube Tower. He dreaded to think what would happen if it got stuck, but he couldn’t dispense with technology altogether — that would have tied his hands. So he got in, pressed the button and held his breath.
It was 220 metres to the top of the Danube Tower. When the door of the lift opened again, he was 150 metres above the ground. The observation terrace was at this level. A staircase led up to the café.
He found his bearings there at once and helped himself to a bottle of lemonade. He had often been here with Marie, who loved the view and the odd fact that the café slowly revolved. Jonas had always found this rather weird, but Marie had taken a childish delight in it.
In the control room, you could set how long the café took to complete a single revolution: 26, 40, or 52 minutes. Marie had always managed to persuade the man in charge to set the controls at 26. On one occasion the uniformed technician had taken such a fancy to her that he’d started telling stories just to keep her there. Jonas’s presence didn’t seem to bother him. The café could be made to rotate much faster, he said. The café construction team, to which an uncle of his had belonged, had tinkered with the mechanism while work was in progress. They got the time for a revolution down to eleven seconds before they were caught. Since then a cotter pin had prevented anyone from getting up to similar tricks. Rapid revolutions consumed a lot of electricity and were dangerous into the bargain. Besides, people inside the café felt sick and lurched around like sailors in a gale.
You expect me to believe that? Marie had said. It’s the honest truth, the technician replied with an equivocal smile. That proves what children men are, said Marie. The two of them burst out laughing, and Jonas had dragged her away.
He went into the control booth. To his surprise, he found the cotter pin in place. Having satisfied himself that he wasn’t putting the lift out of action by mistake or overdoing the revolutions like the technician’s uncle, he set the regulator at 26 and switched on.