He dragged himself to the entrance on legs like cotton wool and took the lift up. He didn’t bother to inspect the cameras, just pressed the stop button and turned them off.
*
It occurred to him, as he lifted the dripping goose out of the bowl and put it down on the work surface, that his airbag hadn’t inflated after the crash. He wasn’t sure he remembered all the details correctly, but the state of the car said it all. The impact must have been considerable. The airbag should have inflated.
Product recall campaign, he thought. He couldn’t help laughing.
He got out some salt, pepper, tarragon and other herbs, chopped some vegetables, rinsed the casserole dish and preheated the oven. Then he dismembered the goose with poultry shears. It hadn’t thawed out completely, so he had to use a lot of force. He slit open the stomach and cut off the wings. Jonas wasn’t a very skilful cook, and before long the work surface was a scene of devastation.
He stared at the drumsticks. The wings. The parson’s nose.
He stared into the maw.
He surveyed the carcass in front of him.
Dashed to the toilet and vomited.
After cleaning his teeth and washing his face, he took a big shopping bag from the hall cupboard. Without looking too closely, he swept the bits of goose off the work surface and into the bag, which he tossed into a neighbouring flat.
He switched off the oven. The chopped vegetables caught his eye. He took a carrot and put it in his mouth. He felt tired. As if he hadn’t slept for days.
He sank onto the sofa. He would have liked to check the door. He tried to remember. He was pretty sure he’d locked it.
So limp. So tired.
*
He surfaced abruptly from a welter of confused, unpleasant images. It was after 7 p.m. He sprang to his feet. He mustn’t sleep, he had things to do.
While packing he floated around the flat like a sleepwalker. If he needed two things that were lying side by side he would pick up one and leave the other. He went back as soon as he noticed his oversight, only to think of something else and leave it lying there again.
Even so, he was ready in half an hour. His needs were few, after all. T-shirts, underpants, fruit juice, fruit and vegetables, blank tapes, cables and leads. He went into the deserted flat next door, where he’d dumped the cameras after his drive. He selected five of them and removed the tapes, which he marked with the numbers of their respective cameras.
While driving to Hollandstrasse he remembered the dream he’d had that afternoon. It had had no plot. Again and again half a head or a mouth had appeared. An open mouth, its most notable feature being that it was toothless, with cigarette butts embedded in the gums where teeth should have been. That gaping mouth, with its uniform rows of cigarette butts, had appeared to him again and again. Nothing was said. There had been a cool, empty feeling about things.
The truck was standing outside. Jonas pulled up a few metres beyond it, where the Spider wouldn’t get in his way. He put two cameras in his bag and slung it over his shoulder.
It was stuffy inside his parents’ former flat. His footsteps echoed as he walked across the old parquet floor to the windows and opened each in turn.
Fresh, warm evening air flooded into the room. He perched on the window sill and looked out. The truck was blocking his view of the street. It didn’t bother him. He was filled with a feeling of familiarity. This was where he had stood as a small child, a box under his feet so he could look out at the street. That hole in the window flashing, that drain in the gutter, the colour of the roadway — all were familiar to him.
He got to his feet again. No time to lose.
In the hallway he laid some planks down on the short staircase that led to the ground-floor flats, making a ramp for the trolley. Having wheeled the two halves of the bedstead up it, he leant them against the wall.
He wouldn’t be able to put the bed up again without technical aids of some kind. He could try to glue them together again, it was true, but they probably wouldn’t support his weight. So he went and fetched some blocks of wood from the truck, blocks he’d obtained from a building site specifically for the purpose. Outside in the street he glanced anxiously at the sky. It would soon be getting dark.
He arranged the blocks on the floor. They were of different heights. He went outside again and returned with a box of books. The first three volumes he took out were valuable, he even remembered their former position in the mahogany bookcase. The next half dozen were Second World War tomes his father had collected after his mother’s death. They were dispensable.
He balanced two of them on the smallest block and distributed the rest, then checked the height. He switched two around, checked again, picked out a slender volume he didn’t need and added it to one of the supports. Now they were equal in height.
He wheeled in the first half of the bed, his mother’s side. Carefully, he tipped the bulky frame over and lowered it until the edge came to rest plumb in the centre of the supports. He did the same with the other half of the bedstead. That done, he fetched the mattresses and laid them down on top.
Gingerly at first, then more confidently, he rested his weight on the bed. When it didn’t collapse as he’d expected, he pulled off his shoes and stretched out on the mattresses.
Job done. Night could fall. He wouldn’t be faced with a choice between braving the darkness on the drive home to his flat on the Brigittenauer embankment and sleeping on the floor here.
Although he was feeling faint with hunger and the light was steadily fading, he worked on. One piece of furniture after another was wheeled in and placed in position. He wasn’t as careful as he’d been when loading up. Rattles and bangs filled the air, the walls shed flakes of plaster, black streaks disfigured the wallpaper. He didn’t care as long as nothing got broken. Even professional removal men scratched things.
The last load of the evening consisted of two pictures, three cameras and the TV. Jonas turned on the TV. He fancied something, he didn’t know what. He untangled some leads and connected a camera to the TV. He had to press several buttons on the remote before the screen went blue, indicating it was ready.
It was dark now, but the street lights hadn’t come on as he’d hoped. Hands on hips, he looked through the window at the truck. All that could be heard behind him was the faint hum of the camera, which was on stand-by.
Chocolate.
He was ravenously hungry, but what tormented him most of all was a craving for chocolate. Milk chocolate, chocolate with nuts, chocolate creams, anything, even cooking chocolate, would have done. As long as it was chocolate.
The hallway was in darkness. Shotgun in hand, he groped his way to the light switch. When the dim bulb in the ceiling came on, he cleared his throat and let out a hoarse laugh. He tried the door of the flat opposite. Locked. He tried the next one. Just as he turned the handle he realised that it was Frau Bender’s former home.
‘Hello?’
Jonas turned the light on. His throat tightened. He gulped. He slid along the walls like a shadow. The flat was unrecognisable. Its occupants appeared to have been young people. Photos of film stars hung on the walls. The video collection filled two cupboards. TV magazines were lying around. In one corner stood an empty terrarium.
Everything looked unfamiliar. All he remembered was the handsome parquet floor and the moulded ceilings.
He was astonished to note that Frau Bender’s flat had been almost three times the size of his parents’.
He found no chocolate, only some biscuits of a kind he disliked. Then he remembered the grocer’s two streets away. Jonas had often shopped at Herr Weber’s as a boy. He’d even been allowed to buy things on account. The old man with the bushy eyebrows had eventually given up the business. If he remembered correctly, the shop had been acquired by an Egyptian who sold oriental specialities. Still, perhaps he’d stocked chocolate as well.