He shut his eyes and pressed his forefinger against the bridge of his nose, trying to remember. If the weight swung to and fro it meant alive, if it moved in a circle, dead. Or was it the other way round? No, that was right.
Jonas slipped off the ring Marie had given him and opened the catch of the silver chain he wore around his neck. He threaded the ring onto it and tried to close the catch again. His trembling fingers made this difficult, but he finally succeeded.
Having improvised a table out of a stack of boxes, he turned on the torch and hung it on a hook. Then he placed the photograph on the topmost box and dangled the chain and ring over his face in the picture. His arm was too unsteady, so he had to support it.
The ring hung motionless.
It started to swing slightly.
The swinging increased.
The ring swung to and fro in a straight line.
Jonas looked around. He went out into the passage. In the light of his torch, a thick skein of dust cast a restless shadow on the wall. The tap was dripping incessantly. The air smelt strongly of the insulating material, but the smell of oil had disappeared altogether.
‘Come on out now,’ he called gently.
He waited a moment before going back into the compartment. He stretched out his hand again, this time over Frau Bender’s face. He rested his elbow on the carton and supported his forearm with his free hand.
The ring hung motionless over the photo. Then it started to shake, to swing. The swinging increased. It moved in a circle. A definite circle.
How often Frau Bender had done the same thing. How often she had sat over photos of people and pronounced them dead. And now he was doing it over a picture of her, and she was beside him no longer. She’d been dead for fifteen years or more.
He reached into a box and brought out a handful of snaps. Himself with a school satchel. With a scooter. In a field with a badminton racket. With some playmates.
He studied the last picture. Four boys, one of them himself, playing in the backyard now filled with the Kästner family’s junk. Some sticks shoved in the ground, a little coloured ball, in the background a plastic tub of water with objects floating in it.
Jonas placed the photo on his makeshift table. He held out his arm and dangled the ring over his face. It started to swing evenly, back and forth. He held the ring over one of the boys, Leonhard.
He stared at the chain.
The light in the passage went out, leaving the box dimly illuminated by his torch. He shut his eyes and forced himself to remain calm.
The ring didn’t stir.
He withdrew his hand and shook his arm to relax it. Removing the torch from the hook, he picked up his gun and stomped out into the passage.
‘Hey!’ he called. ‘Hey, hey, hey!’
He switched on the passage light and turned on the spot. After standing there for several seconds, he went back into the compartment.
He repeated the experiment. Over himself the ring swung to and fro. Over Leonhard, nothing.
He dangled the ring over the third boy and waited, trying to remember his name.
The ring didn’t move.
What nonsense it all is, he thought.
He fiddled with the catch, intending to remove the ring from the chain. Then, on impulse, he put out his arm again and held the ring over the picture of the fourth boy, Ingo.
It quivered and started to swing.
To move in a circle.
He repeated all four experiments. Over himself the ring swung to and fro, over Ingo it moved in a circle, over Leon-hard and the nameless boy it remained motionless.
He pushed the photograph aside and reached for the pile he’d left on the edge of his table of boxes.
Himself in the backyard in bathing trunks. Himself with a trophy he certainly hadn’t won. Himself with two ski poles. Himself in front of an enormous Coca-Cola hoarding. Himself with his mother outside his primary school.
He laid the photo down, stretched out his arm and dangled the ring over his own picture.
The ring briefly moved in a circle, probably because he hadn’t kept his arm steady enough, then went back into the usual pendulum motion.
He held it over his mother’s face.
It hung motionless, then moved in a circle.
Photos of himself with his mother, of himself with a football, of himself with a tomahawk and feathered headdress. Of his mother on her own, of his mother in hiking gear. Of his grandmother, who had died in 1982. Of two men he didn’t remember.
He held the ring over them. It moved in a circle both times, just as it had over his grandmother’s picture.
Photos of Kanzelstein. Himself with his mother in the garden, picking sorrel. Himself in a field with bow and arrow. Himself at the wheel of Uncle Reinhard’s VW Beetle. Himself at the ping-pong table, which came up to his chest.
Finally, a photo of himself with a man whose head had been cropped by the upper margin of the picture. He laid it down on the table.
Above his own face the ring swung to and fro.
Above the picture of the man beside him it remained motionless.
That might have been because the head wasn’t shown. Hurriedly, Jonas looked through the pile until he found a photo that showed his father’s face as well. He repeated the experiment.
The ring didn’t move.
*
Hungry and exhausted, Jonas flopped down on the mattress and draped the ragged blanket he’d fetched from the truck over his feet. He hadn’t noticed the time, and it was already dark. He had avoided being outside after dark ever since his trip to the Mondsee. In view of the feeling of uneasiness that had come over him on the Brigittenauer embankment, he had no desire to go home at this hour.
He cleared his throat. The sound echoed around the empty flat.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said aloud, and turned on his side.
Lying within reach on the floor, which was littered with scraps of paper and crumpled balls of sticky tape, was a box of photographs he’d brought up from the cellar. He took out a batch of them. They hadn’t been sorted. Photos from different decades were mixed up together. Ten snaps displayed five different locations, two black-and-white photos followed three in colour, and the next pictures dated from the late 1950s. In one he was tugging at the bars of his playpen, in the next he was being confirmed.
He studied a photograph of himself taken a week after his birth, according to the inscription on the back. He was lying, wrapped in a blanket, on his parents’ bed. The bed he was lying on at that very moment. Only his head and hands were visible.
That bald creature was him.
That was his nose.
Those were his ears.
That pinched little face was his.
He peered at the tiny hands. He held his right hand in front of his face and looked at the right hand in the picture.
It was the same hand.
The hand he could see in the photo would learn to write, first with a pencil, then with a fountain pen. Nearly thirty years ago the hand in front of his face had learnt to write, first with a pencil, then with a fountain pen. The hand in the photo would stroke the cats that wandered over from their next-door neighbour in Kanzelstein, take hold of the old wood-carver’s ornamental walking stick, play cards. The hand in front of his face had stroked the cats in Kanzelstein, taken hold of that walking stick and played cards. The little hand in the photo would some day design interiors with a ruler and compasses, type on a computer keyboard, light someone’s cigarette. The hand in front of his face had signed contracts, moved chessmen, sliced onions with a kitchen knife.
The hand in the photo would grow, grow, grow.
The hand in front of his face had grown.