Jonas had always wanted to brave some public peril. To win the laurels of one who had undergone some great ordeal.
To be a survivor.
To be a member of the elect.
Now he was.
*
Driving along the Donauinsel wasn’t difficult, but he was afraid of missing some important detail, so he set off on foot. He soon came to the shop that hired out bicycles and mopeds. This, he remembered, was where he and Marie had rented one of those pedal-operated buggies favoured by tourists at seaside resorts in Italy.
The place wasn’t locked. The keys for the mopeds were hanging on the wall, each tagged with its registration number.
He picked a dark green Vespa that would have delighted his sixteen-year-old self. His parents had no savings. The money he’d earned from his first holiday job wouldn’t run to more than an ancient Puch DS 50. When he bought a second-hand Mazda at the age of twenty, he’d been only the second car-owner in the family after Uncle Reinhard.
With the shotgun clamped between his thighs, he cruised along the island’s asphalted roads. Again he had the feeling that something was wrong. It wasn’t just the absence of people. Something else was missing.
He got off and walked down to the water’s edge, cupped his hands around his mouth.
‘Hello!’
He hadn’t shouted in the hope that anyone would hear him. It relieved the pressure in his chest for a moment.
‘Hello!’
He kicked some pebbles along in front of him. Gravel crunched beneath his soles. He ventured too close to the water and sank in, soaking his shoes.
His quest for the red object no longer interested him. It seemed pointless, looking for a scrap of plastic that had drifted past here days ago. It wasn’t a sign. It was a bit of flotsam.
The day was growing colder. Dark clouds were racing towards him, wind lashing the long grass beside the road. Jonas suddenly remembered the phone at home. He turned to go just as the first raindrops spattered his face.
8
He awoke from a nightmare. It took him a few seconds of bemusement to grasp that it was early in the morning, and that he was lying beside the phone. He sank back onto the mattress.
He had dreamt that people were streaming back into the city. He went to meet them. They straggled past him in ones and twos and small groups, like people going home after a football match.
He didn’t dare ask where they’d been. They took no notice of him. He heard their voices. Heard them talking, laughing, joking together. Never closer to them than ten metres, he walked down the middle of the street. They passed him on either side. Every time he tried to attract their attention, his voice failed.
He was feeling worn out. Not only had he spent another night beside the phone, but he hadn’t got around to undressing.
He checked to see if the receiver was on properly.
While looking for some pumpernickel in the bottom drawer of the kitchen cupboard, he caught his backside on the fridge. The mobile in his hip pocket took a knock. Although it was unlikely to have been damaged, he fished it out and checked. His mobile had to be preserved at all costs. He couldn’t afford to lose the SIM card, at least.
No sooner had he pocketed it again than a terrible suspicion came over him. With trembling fingers he accessed the list of outgoing calls. The most recent entry was his own home number, dialled at 16.31 on 16.07.
He dashed to the phone. Trampling around on the mattress, he rummaged in a heap of paper until he discovered the note lying, clearly visible, on top of the address book.
16.42, 16 July.
*
Although he’d intended to do some work at his father’s flat, he drove aimlessly around the city. He headed south along the Handelskai. When he passed the Millennium Tower he looked up. Dazzled by the sun, he swerved and braked sharply, then drove on more slowly. His heart was thumping.
He saw from afar that his banner was still revolving around the Danube Tower. He drove up to the entrance but didn’t dare get out. He looked for some indication that the banner had lured someone there. High overhead, the café continued to rotate with a rhythmical hum that was drowned at regular intervals by ominous splintering sounds. It wouldn’t be long, he imagined, before the whole superstructure disintegrated.
He drove across the Reichsbrücke into Lassallestrasse. A minute later he pulled up beside the Big Wheel. He made a brief tour of the area, gun in hand. It was hot. There was no wind. Not a cloud in the sky.
Satisfied that there were no nasty surprises outside, he walked past the café and into the Big Wheel’s administrative offices. The control room lay beyond an inconspicuous door in the shop that sold miniature models of the Big Wheel and other tourist tat.
He looked at the console, which was the size of a school blackboard. Although the controls weren’t marked, as they were in the Danube Tower, he quickly grasped that the yellow button turned the entire system’s power supply on and off. He pressed it and some lights came on. An indicator started flashing. He pressed another button. The lowest gondola, which he could clearly see through a window from his place at the console, began to move.
A marker pen was lying on one of the desks. He used it to write his phone number on a computer screen. He also left a message on the door. Then he put the marker pen in his shirt pocket.
He walked to the nearest hot-dog stand, the one he’d eaten at on his last visit. He found a packet of biscuits on a shelf and breakfasted on them, never taking his eyes off the gondolas.
Should he board one?
*
He combed the amusement park on foot, turning on all the rides he could. Although he couldn’t always get the controls to work, he managed to do so often enough to fill the fairground with music and movement. The din wasn’t as loud as it used to be, of course. He hadn’t started enough roundabouts and Flying Carpets for that. Besides, there weren’t any people. If he shut his eyes, though, he could still, by a stretch of the imagination, yield to the illusion that all was as it always had been. That he was standing beside the fountain surrounded by half-drunk strangers. That he would soon buy himself some grilled corn on the cob. And that Marie would be back from Antalya tonight.
*
Jonas carried the mattress back into the bedroom and changed the sheets. The floor beside the phone needed tidying up. He stuffed the empty crisp packets and half-eaten bars of chocolate into a plastic sack, tossed the drink cans in as well and swept the floor. Last of all, he scrubbed off the rings the glasses had left on the floorboards. While doing this, he resolved not to let things slide again. He must at least keep order within his own four walls.
He set up the video camera facing the bed and turned it on. The view wasn’t inclusive enough. Although he would later be able to observe every flicker of expression on his face, this videotape would be of use to him only if he could manage to lie still all night. Quite a challenge.
He zoomed out as far as he could. Still not enough. He moved the tripod back a metre and peered at the miniature screen again. This time the image was satisfactory. The whole of the bed was in shot. Not wanting another surprise, he made sure the camera and tape weren’t damaged.
He was still too on edge to go to sleep, so he sat down in front of the TV with a bag of popcorn. He’d exchanged the Love Parade video for a feature film — a comedy — with the sound on. He hadn’t watched a feature film since his first few days of solitude, so he hadn’t heard a human voice other than his own.
At the first words of the female lead, such horror gripped him that he wanted to turn the film off. He resisted the urge and hoped it would pass.