As he drove around the city, casting nervous glances at the steadily darkening sky, he remembered the spiritualist experiments he’d conducted as a part-superstitious, part-adventurous boy. They had been inspired by a half-demented neighbour, old Frau Bender, who kept him company when his mother was busy.
Frau Bender often told him about her experiences with ‘the hereafter’ or ‘the other side’. About table-turning sessions during which the little wooden table had cavorted around the flat with her and her friends’ fingers glued to the top, or about the poltergeists that plagued her family for eighteen months because she and her girlfriends had pooh-poohed their existence. Locked cupboard doors creaked open at night, tapping was heard inside walls, and window panes were scratched by unseen fingernails. Not all at the same time, though. Sometimes it was one phenomenon, sometimes another.
She had a particular passion for talking about the hereafter, which had been described to her by gifted mediums of her acquaintance.
I’M STANDING HERE WITH A ROSE IN MY HAND. A THORN JUST PRICKED ME, her late mother had told her through the mouth of one such medium.
WE LIVE IN A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE WITH A GORGEOUS GARDEN, a deceased woman friend had reported.
IT’S ALL SO VAST, AND THERE ARE MANY ROOMS, said an uncle. EVERY INSIDE EMBODIES AN OUTSIDE, EVERY ABOVE A BELOW.
He was holding a hat in his hands and looking troubled, the medium had said. Did the hat possess some significance?
And then, for the hundredth time, Frau Bender disclosed that her uncle had been found lying dead with his hat on his chest. Nobody knew what he’d died of, and he himself wouldn’t say. The most astonishing part of it was that no one except herself and the rest of the family had known about the hat.
Jonas had readily accepted his mother’s suggestion that he go and play at Frau Bender’s for an hour or two. Although his visit spooked him for days afterwards, he learnt a great many arcane and interesting things there. For instance, that a tape recorder left on at night would pick up the voices of the dead. Or that the dead sometimes became visible for a fraction of a second. On the many occasions when you thought you’d glimpsed something, a shadow or a movement, it was advisable not to discount the possibility that you’d seen a ghost. This happened quite often, said Frau Bender.
She also promised to appear to Jonas after her death and tell him what the hereafter was like. He must look out for little signs of her presence, she said. She didn’t know if she would be able to appear in human form.
Frau Bender died in 1989.
He hadn’t heard from her since.
A violent peal of thunder in the distance. He floored the accelerator.
With some reluctance, he glanced at the rear-view mirror. No one there. He turned his head. No one sitting in the back.
The storm broke just as he stowed the last outside camera in the boot. Not wanting to have to make another trip, he decided to collect the other cameras right away. He drove first to the Burgtheater and then to Hollandstrasse, where he closed the windows to prevent the rain, which was drumming almost horizontally against the panes, from doing any damage to the flat.
The Millennium Tower was his last stop. Gun in hand, he rode the escalator up to the entrance. He was about to board the lift when there was an ear-splitting crash. The lightning strike must have been very close. The lift door slid shut in front of his nose. He didn’t press the button again. The risk of a power cut that might leave him stranded between the tenth and twentieth floors was too great.
In Nannini he made himself an espresso and took his cup over to one of the tables outside the entrance. On his right was the electrical appliances store, which occupied two floors. On his left he could see the walkways leading to other rows of shops. Immediately to his front was the down escalator with the tower looming up beyond it.
He craned his neck in an attempt to see the top of the tower. It was blurred and almost invisible. Rain spit-spattered on the glass roof that spanned the entire shopping centre.
He had often sat at one of these tables with Marie. Although the Millennium City shops didn’t attract the smartest of customers, they had enjoyed shopping here.
He went back inside the café and called Marie’s relations in England from the phone behind the counter. Nothing to be heard but the unfamiliar ringing tone.
If only her mobile’s voicemail had cut in, he could have heard her voice. But the phone just rang and rang.
*
Jonas was so tired after playing the third audio tape, he freshened up by taking a cold shower. Although he’d found nothing on any of the tapes, he was too intrigued to go to bed. He could always catch up on his sleep tomorrow.
Darkness had descended on the city long ago. The thunderstorm had ceased and the rain had moved on soon afterwards. He had lowered the blinds. The young Berliners were silently dancing across the TV screen.
He made himself a snack. Before returning to the sofa with his plate, he stretched his arms and rotated his shoulders. A fierce pain shot from the small of his back to the nape of his neck. He thought longingly of Frau Lindsay.
Shortly after 1 a.m. he put in tape number five. The sixth followed an hour later. The radio alarm was displaying 3.11 a.m. as he pressed the play button for the seventh time.
By the time he had listened to that tape he was suffering from severe overstimulation. While listening to the sixth he had taken to pacing around the living room and doing physical exercises. It wore you down, constantly straining your ears and hearing nothing. He couldn’t rid himself of the sensation that liquid was trickling from his ear canals. Every few minutes he felt his ears and checked if there was any blood on his fingers.
More mechanically than deliberately, he put in the tape that had recorded him asleep.
He went over to the window. With two fingers he parted the slats of the blind. One or two windows were illuminated. He recognised the one over there. It belonged to the flat he’d visited.
Was everything there just as he’d found it?
*
At 4.30 a.m. he heard sounds on the tape.
7
Jonas worked for two hours, by which time the gurgling and rumbling in his stomach could be ignored no longer. He had something to eat and went back to work. He wasn’t thinking of anything much.
By evening he reeked of sweat and had torn his trousers badly, but the living room and nursery were stripped of any reminders of the Kästner family. The kitchen he’d left untouched.
He walked slowly round the flat with his hands clasped behind his back. From time to time he nodded to himself. He’d never seen his old home in this state.
Back in his own flat his stomach started rumbling again. He fried himself some cod from the deep-freeze. That exhausted his supplies.
After a long bath he rubbed some ointment into his right shoulder. The weight of the shotgun sling had chafed the skin. Although he had carried the gun on his left shoulder since yesterday to relieve the pressure, he had hurt the spot while working today.
He extracted the damp washing from the machine. While he was draping it over the clothes horse, item by item, the tape recorder occasionally caught his eye. He looked away quickly.
When he had run out of chores and was already shuffling from one foot to the other, he suddenly remembered the new answerphone. The instructions were brief and intelligible. He was able to record a message immediately.
‘Hello! If you hear this, please come to the following address … My mobile number is … If you can’t make it, tell me where to find you.’
He dialled his home number on his mobile and let it ring. The answerphone cut in after the fourth ring. With the mobile to his ear he heard the message in stereo: