He fetched the trolley from the truck and began with some lighter pieces. A linen chest, a standard lamp, the last remaining bookcase. He made rapid progress. Although sweating, he wasn’t breathing much faster than usual. Clothes horse, TV, sofa table, bedside table all disappeared into the truck one by one. All that remained in the end were the bed and the wardrobe.
Jonas eyed the wardrobe, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. It held a lot of associations for him. He knew how the left-hand door creaked when it was opened, a whining sound that went through the whole scale, from high to low. He knew how it smelt inside. Of leather and clean linen. Of his parents, his father. For years he had lain on the sofa beside this wardrobe when ill because his mother didn’t want to go into the bedroom to bring him tea and rusks. Traces of that period must surely be visible.
There was an energy-saving bulb in the ceiling light. It was too dim to reveal much. Jonas fetched the torch and shone it on the side of the wardrobe. He could clearly make out some numbers and letters scratched on the pale wood with the tip of a penknife.
8.4.1977. Tummy-ache. Mummy’s new hat. Yellow. 22.11.1978. 23.11.1978. 4.3.1979. Flu. Tea. Given a model of Fittipaldi’s car. 12.6.1979. 13.6.1979. 15.6.1979. 21.2.1980. Ski jumping.
There were a dozen more dates, some with comments, many unexplained. He was surprised his father hadn’t got rid of these inscriptions. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed them or hadn’t wanted the expense of restoration. His father had never liked spending money.
Jonas tried to think himself into the skin of the boy he’d been then.
He was lying there. Feeling bored. He wasn’t allowed to read because reading strained your eyes. He wasn’t allowed to watch TV because the set emitted rays to which a sick child should not be exposed. He was lying there with his Lego set and his marbles and his pocket knife and other things to be concealed from his mother’s gaze. He had to occupy himself, so he often played rafts, a game that came to his rescue even on rainy afternoons when he was well. The raft was an upturned table. Or, if he was lying beside the wardrobe with a temperature, the sofa itself.
He was adrift on the high seas. It was warm and sunny. He was bound for exciting places where he would have adventures and make friends with great, heroic figures. But he needed provisions for the voyage. So he found excuses for creeping around the flat, pinched chewing gum, caramels and biscuits from the sweets drawer, begged slices of bread, filched bottles of lemonade from under his mother’s nose. Laden with this haul, he returned to the raft and put to sea again.
It was still as warm and sunny, but the raft was tossing around on the waves. He had to clutch his possessions to him to prevent them from becoming soaked with spray.
America was a long way off, however, and his stores were still insufficient, so he landed once more. He needed books and comics, plus some paper and a pencil to write and draw with. He needed more clothes. He needed various useful things to be found in his father’s drawers. A compass. A pair of binoculars. A pack of cards with which to win money from villainous opponents. A knife with which to defend himself. He must also take a gift for Sandokan, the Tiger of Malaysia, to seal their friendship. He could barter his mother’s string of pearls with the natives.
He needed all kinds of things, and he wasn’t satisfied with his equipment until there was barely room for himself on the sofa and he was hemmed in on all sides by blankets and ladles and clothes pegs. It thrilled him through and through to think that he’d accumulated all he needed in order to survive. He needed no outside help. He had everything.
Then his mother appeared to see how he was getting on. She was astonished that he’d managed to get together so many forbidden items in such a short time. Some of them, after much argument, he was allowed to keep. Then the raft put to sea again, lightened of one or two treasures by Blackbeard.
Jonas gave the wardrobe a shake. It scarcely moved. Manhandling it outside would be quite a business. He would have to turn the thing over because it stood on feet and couldn’t be loaded onto the trolley in an upright position.
8.04.1977. Tummy-ache.
On 8 April nearly thirty years ago he’d lain beside this wardrobe suffering from a stomach-ache. He had no recollection of that day or his discomfort. But these clumsy letters and numerals were his handiwork. He’d been feeling ill even at the moment when he was scratching that T, that U, that M. He, Jonas. That had been him. And he’d had no inkling of what was to come. No inkling of the exams he would sit later on, of his first girlfriend, of his moped, of leaving school and starting to earn a living. Or of Marie. He had changed, grown up, become an entirely different person. But this writing was still here. When he looked at these marks he was looking at frozen time.
On 4 March 1979 he’d had flu and been made to drink lots of tea, which he disliked in those days. Tito was still alive in Yugoslavia, Carter was president of the United States, Brezhnev ruled Russia, and he was lying beside this wardrobe with flu, not knowing what it signified that Carter was in office or that Tito would soon be dead. He had been preoccupied with his new model car, a black one with the number 1 on the side, and Brezhnev didn’t exist for him.
When he’d carved these letters the doomed crew of Challenger were still alive, the Pope was new in his job and had no idea that Ali Agca would shoot him, and the Falklands War hadn’t started. When he’d written this he hadn’t known what was to come. Nor had anyone else.
*
The rattle of the trolley wheels on the stone floor echoed round the building. He paused to listen. He recalled the feeling he’d had on the Brigittenauer embankment. The feeling that something was wrong. And the sensation of being watched outside the Gasthaus Haas. Leaving the trolley and wardrobe where they were, he went out into the street.
‘Hello?’
He sounded the truck’s horn in short, sharp bursts. Peered in all directions. Looked up at the windows.
‘Come outside! At once!’
He waited for a few minutes. Pretended to be lost in thought, sauntered around with his hands in his pockets, whistling softly to himself. Every now and then he turned and stood stock-still, looking and listening.
Then he went back to work. He trundled the trolley outside, and soon afterwards the wardrobe was on board the truck. That only left the bed, but he’d done enough for today.
*
Something about the narrow cellar passage puzzled him. He stopped and looked around. Nothing caught his eye. He gave himself time to collect his thoughts, but he couldn’t think what it was.
He went to his father’s compartment, cleared his throat in a deep voice and wrenched the door open so roughly it crashed back against the wall. He gave a harsh laugh, looked over his shoulder and shook his fist.
A snapshot of himself with Frau Bender. He was sitting on her lap with one arm around her waist, laughing. She was smoking a cigarette. On the table in front of her, a glass of wine with the bottle and a vase of wilting flowers beside it.
He couldn’t remember her drinking. A child wouldn’t have noticed such a thing, presumably, but it didn’t fit in with the image he still had of her. She lived on in his memory as a friendly, well-groomed old lady. Far from looking friendly, the woman in the photograph was glaring at the camera. Frau Bender didn’t look very well-groomed, either — quite unlike his idea of a lady. She looked like a slovenly old hag. All the same, he’d been fond of her then and he still was.
Hello, old girl, he thought. So remote.
While studying this dusty snapshot of his parents’ former neighbour he recalled her favourite pastime: dangling a weight over photographs, preferably those dating from the war, to see if the people in them were still alive. Meanwhile, she would reminisce to Jonas about the people in question.