That was impossible, though. Something had to be different. Something.
This was where what he’d seen on the tape had occurred, so it belonged to the place. But the place had sloughed it off — no vestige of the past clung to it. Just a shower cubicle. No steamed-up glass. No condensation. Just a memory. A void.
It was shortly after eleven. He programmed one camera to come on at 2.05 a.m. and another at 5.05. Then he turned on the third, undressed and got into bed.
17
He could hardly believe it when he checked the time on his mobile. It was after ten. He’d slept for eleven hours, but he didn’t feel refreshed in the least.
In the kitchen he realised he’d forgotten to get any bread from the Egyptian’s shop the night before. He heated up another tin. There was some coffee, but it was a sort he disliked. He made do with mineral water.
After breakfast he tidied up. He opened all the windows to ventilate the stuffy rooms and shook the bedclothes. He rewound the tapes, filling the air with their threefold hum, and put the dirty crockery in the dishwasher. While engaged in these activities and without admitting it to himself, he kept a constant watch. For changes. For pointers to something he hadn’t noticed the day before.
He had a cold shower without shutting his eyes, belting out a sea shanty in which pirates were keelhauled and made to walk the plank. While he was drying himself in the living room his eye lighted on a bar of chocolate. He hesitated for a moment, then reached for it.
Within an hour he’d emptied the entire truck. Everything was inside the flat. All the chairs, all the bookcases, all the cupboards, all the boxes. Not sorted out yet, of course, but he didn’t have to leave the building from now on. He could watch last night’s tapes while working.
It took him just under three hours to dust all the furniture, check it for damage and shift it into position. While the Sleeper slept on the screen beside him, Jonas dusted lampshades, mended a hole in an armchair and buffed off the scratches on a cupboard, watching the TV at every opportunity.
The Sleeper seemed to have had a quiet night. He turned over now and then, but most of the time he lay still. Jonas even thought he heard an occasional snore. He wondered why he was so tired.
Between the first and second tapes he took a break. He found a ready-to-serve meal in a kitchen drawer and heated it up in a little wok. It was inedible. He added some soy sauce and other seasoning. No use. Grimly, he plunged the opener into yet another tin of bean soup.
The second tape began the way the first had ended. He fast-forwarded it. Meanwhile, he tidied things away. When he was working in the kitchen and out of sight of the TV, he switched to normal play and turned the volume up full. He also darted into the living room every couple of minutes to see if the Sleeper was still buried beneath the bedclothes. On the right stood the bed. Facing it on the left was its miniature reflection on the TV screen. He himself was lying asleep in that reflection.
The Kästner family’s crockery and kitchen utensils ended up on the rubbish dump in the backyard. All he kept were some frying pans and saucepans, because he’d noticed that his father’s kitchen equipment was less than ideal. He couldn’t find the mug with the bear on it, the one he’d drunk from as a child. Only three of the old glasses were there. As for kitchen gadgets that required some skill, such as a pressure cooker or a coffee machine, his father appeared to have got rid of them.
He switched to fast-forward again. Whatever might eventually happen to him, it was impossible to make complete recordings of himself while asleep and watch those recordings conscientiously during the day. That would mean doing nothing but sleeping and watching himself sleeping. He wouldn’t be able to do a thing, he would be tied to the cameras.
Towards the end of the second tape, when the Sleeper was still lying motionless under the bedclothes, Jonas felt he’d been taken for a fool. His movements became more sluggish. He slammed cupboard doors and stuffed clothes into drawers regardless of whether or not he was creasing them. Until, among a pile of books, he discovered some old comics that had escaped his notice while packing.
Jonas liked comics. Even as an adult he had bought the occasional Mort & Phil comic without blushing. There was even one in the toilet at his flat on the Brigittenauer embankment. But these were special. He leafed through them as if they were much sought-after rarities, examining every dog-eared, jam-stained page. He must have been twelve, or fourteen at most, the last time he’d held this comic in his hand. Twenty years had gone by since he’d cut the slice of bread whose butter and jam had smeared this page. This comic had languished unopened on a shelf for two whole decades. He’d finished reading it one day, put it away and forgotten all about it. And he hadn’t had a clue how long it would be before he saw this picture, this speech balloon, again. He was seeing them again only now.
A marginal note scrawled in a childish hand: Funny!
He had written that. He didn’t know why, only that he’d written it, that it was twenty years ago, and that he’d still known so little at the time. That this ‘Funny!’ had been written by a boy who knew nothing about girls, who would later study physics and aspire to become a teacher or academic, who was interested in football and may have had some maths homework to do. And that the person who had rediscovered this comic was wondering why he hadn’t come across it before. The comic. And the memory.
He glanced at the screen. The Sleeper wasn’t stirring.
The characters on one page had been given glasses drawn with a ballpoint pen. He couldn’t remember doing that.
Jonas started to read the comic in his hand. Even the first page made him grin. He read on with increasing enjoyment, casting only an occasional, mechanical glance at the TV. The absurdity of the plot, the characters, the drawings delighted him. The next time he looked at the screen it was blue. At once, he put in the third tape. The Sleeper was still asleep. He pressed the fast-forward button.
He finished the comic, laughing aloud more than once. Having read the last page he skimmed the rest of it again in a happy mood. He couldn’t remember this issue. He might have been seeing and reading it for the first time. This surprised him. Once read, his children’s books had always imprinted their stories and characters on his memory.
The Sleeper was sleeping. So soundly that Jonas checked to see if he’d pressed the freeze-frame button by mistake.
He arranged the books on the shelves, browsing from time to time when one aroused his interest. He glanced at the screen, looked around to see if he’d done enough to justify taking a break, then read on until his curiosity was satisfied.
Box after flattened box went sailing out into the backyard. Pressing the freeze-frame button, he went into the bathroom to connect the washing machine and hang some hand towels on the hook beside the washbasin. Back in the living room he pressed ‘Play’ and set about sorting out his father’s personal possessions. A few rings. His medals. His passport. Some minor souvenirs. These he put in the drawer they’d been kept in for decades. Only the knife was missing. It was stuck in the wall. He also couldn’t find some photos, which might turn up in the cellar at Rüdigergasse.
The thought of the knife being irretrievable distressed him. His mood had brightened for the first time for weeks and he didn’t want to sour it. He picked up another comic.
Jonas surveyed the room. He’d finished, really. A few things might benefit from a more thorough clean, but that he could do another day.
He stretched out on the bed and helped himself to some peanuts. The tape was fast-forwarding, the display registered 2.30. He switched to normal play. With his head facing the TV, he turned over on his stomach and started reading. He crunched a peanut with relish.