Before going into the bathroom he put a blank audio tape into the tape recorder and pressed the record button. He turned the machine so that it faced away from the bathroom. Then he showered, cleaned his teeth and shaved with care.
He got dressed in the living room. The display on the microwave said 12.30. The tape had been running for twenty minutes.
Standing right in front of the tape recorder’s built-in microphone, he said:
‘Hello, Jonas.’
He counted up to five with his eyes shut.
‘Good to speak with you. How are you?’
Three, four, five.
‘Feeling rested? Tense?’
He spoke for nearly three-quarters of an hour, doing his best to forget what he’d just said. A click indicated that the tape had run out. He rewound it. Meantime, he finished getting dressed.
He dialled his mobile number on the landline. It rang, and he answered it. Placing the land-line receiver on the floor with the tape recorder just in front of it, he pressed the play button. Then he put a second tape recorder beside it, put in a tape and pressed the record button. With the gun over his right shoulder and the mobile in his other hand, he left the flat.
He cruised through Döbling, driving along streets he’d never visited before. He kept the mobile pressed to his ear for fear of missing something. He steered and changed gear with his other hand. It occurred to him that he was violating a road traffic regulation. At first this idea merely amused him. But it set him thinking about a more fundamental point.
If he really was all on his own, he was free to lay down a new penal code. Laws remained in force until new ones were agreed upon by the majority. If he constituted the majority, he could discard an entire social system. Being sovereign, he could theoretically exempt theft and murder from prosecution, or, on the other hand, prohibit painting. In Austria, the disparagement of religious doctrines was punishable by up to six months’ imprisonment. He could annul that law or increase its severity. Aggravated theft rendered a person liable to up to three years’ imprisonment, in contrast to non-aggravated theft, the relevant sum being 2000 euros or more. He could change that.
He could even decree that everyone had to go for one hour’s walk a day while listening to folk music on a Walk-man. He could invest stupidities of all kinds with constitutional status. He could choose another form of government. Indeed, devise a new one. Although the system in which he lived was really anarchy, democracy and dictatorship all in one.
‘Hello, Jonas.’
He nearly collided with a dustbin standing beside the road.
‘Good to speak with you. How are you?’
‘As well as can be expected, thanks.’
‘Feeling rested? Tense?’
It was himself he was hearing. He had spoken those words an hour ago, and now they were happening, happening again. At this moment they were becoming something that was happening, that was having an actual effect on the present.
‘Rested, not tense,’ he muttered.
He was struck by the difference between the voice in his ear and the one he heard inside himself. The one in his ear sounded higher-pitched and less agreeable.
‘It’s twelve thirty-two by my watch. What time do you have?’
‘Thirteen fifty-five,’ he replied, glancing at the dashboard.
He remembered how he’d knelt in front of the tape recorder in his living room and spoken those words into the microphone. He saw himself fiddling with the ring on his finger, studying the pattern on his coffee cup, turning up his trouser leg. He recalled what he’d been thinking when he’d spoken those words. That was then, this was now. And yet one was connected with the other.
‘Turn left at the next intersection, then sharp right. Then take the second turning on the left. Stop outside the second building on the right-hand side of the street.’
The instructions took him to a small street in Oberdöbling. His taskmaster had underestimated his speed, so Jonas spent a minute drumming on the steering wheel and shuffling around on his seat.
‘Now get out, taking the gun with you, and lock the car. Go to the building. If there are several floors, your objective is the ground-floor apartment. You won’t need your crowbar, get in through a window. If it means a bit of a climb, so be it. Be athletic!’
He was standing outside a suburban house. A notice on the gate warned intruders of a savage dog. It was locked. He climbed over it and went up to the house. An Audi was parked outside the garage. The house was adorned with window boxes. The stretches of grass flanking the gravel path had been mown quite recently.
The nameplate beside the door read: Councillor Bosch.
‘Mind the broken glass! Now go into the kitchen.’
‘Easy!’
He peered through the window but couldn’t spot an alarm system. He smashed the pane with the butt of the shotgun. Glass rained down on the floor. There really wasn’t a burglar alarm. Having quickly knocked out the remaining glass, he climbed in.
‘Open the fridge. If you find an unopened bottle of mineral water in there, drink it!’
‘Don’t badger me!’
One door led to the bathroom, another to a boxroom, the third to the basement stairs. The fourth was the right one. Breathlessly, he opened the fridge, which was encased in beechwood. He really did find a bottle of mineral water, and it was unopened. He drank it.
While awaiting fresh instructions he surveyed his surroundings. The furniture was bulky and traditional. On the wall was a poster of Dalí’s Soft Watches, already affected by heat and steam from the stove.
He found the combination puzzling. The nature and quality of the decor suggested elderly occupants, whereas the poster belonged in a student’s digs. The owners’ offspring had probably insisted on this stylistic clash.
Beside the poster was a tear-off calendar. The top sheet said 3 July. Beneath the date was the motto of the day:
The truth knows its own value. (Herbert Rosendorfer)
He tore off the sheet and pocketed it.
‘Now look for a ballpoint and a piece of paper.’
‘Will a pencil do?’
He found a ballpoint in one of the drawers. There was a notepad on the kitchen table. The top sheet had a shopping list written on it. He folded it over and shut his eyes, humming a tune and trying to think of nothing.
‘Write down the first word that comes into your head.’
Fruit, he wrote.
Great, he thought. I’m sitting in some stranger’s kitchen, writing ‘Fruit’.
‘Put the piece of paper in your pocket. Now look round the place. Keep your eyes open. It’s better to look twice than miss something.’
Jonas marvelled at the banality of his taskmaster’s pearls of wisdom. He’d spent the whole time trying to remain on his own side of the line. Trying to avoid thinking of what he’d recorded on tape so as not to anticipate what was coming. Now he briefly stepped across the line. He thought hard, but he couldn’t recall having spoken the last sentence. He returned to his own side. Made his mind as much of a blank as possible.
In the living room he came across a sort of ancient Egyptian statue. He didn’t know much about the history of art, so he couldn’t say exactly what it was. It appeared to be the figure of a woman, possibly a life-sized effigy of Nefertiti. The face was expressionless and rather forbidding. With its massive head and voluminous, veil-like hairstyle, it reminded him more of a black rap singer on MTV. He wondered who could have installed such a thing in their living room. He’d never had any clients with taste like that.
He toured all the rooms, talking into his mobile as he went. He reported on the decor of the master bedroom, the rugs in the hallway, the empty birdcage, the aquarium in whose softly gurgling water no fish swam. He described the contents of the wardrobes. He counted the files in the study, fingered a heavy ashtray made of some unfamiliar material. He rummaged in drawers. He went down into the basement and paid a visit to the garage, which reeked overpoweringly of petrol.