And Jonas himself? What if a car had killed him? Or a disease? Or even a murderer? Then he wouldn’t have existed at twenty or thirty, nor would he exist at forty or eighty.
Or would he? Would the older Jonases have existed? Somehow, somewhere? In some unfulfilled form?
*
He parked the truck outside his block of flats. The embankment road was as deserted as ever. The Danube Canal gurgled softly past. Nothing seemed to have changed.
Once inside the flat he packed the clothes belonging to the dwarf from Attnang-Puchheim in his holdall and took a last look round. The inflatable doll was lying in the bathtub where he’d left it. The sack filled with debris from the wall was bursting at the seams. He tied up the neck and heaved it out of the window. He enjoyed watching it fly through the air. It landed with a crash on the roof of a car.
He thought for a moment. Yes, that was the lot.
He was worried there wouldn’t be room for the 4WD, but the tailboard shut even after he’d driven it up the ramp and stopped a good two metres short of the Spider, which he’d loaded aboard the truck in Hollandstrasse. There was even some room to spare.
He found a filling station near the Augarten. While diesel was flowing into the tank he explored the shop. He’d already skimmed every newspaper and magazine on the shelves. The shop also stocked a wide range of soft toys, personalised coffee mugs, sunglasses and models of St Stephen’s Cathedral, as well as drinks and chocolate bars. Jonas filled one plastic bag with a random assortment of snacks and tossed some cans of lemonade into another.
On a revolving stand, in addition to products for cleaning car windows and polishing bodywork, were some Day-Glo nameplates of the kind truck drivers liked to display behind their windscreens. Albert headed the list, followed by Alfons and Anton. Out of curiosity he looked for J. To his surprise he found a couple of Jonases sandwiched between Johann and Josef. He took one and put it behind the truck’s windscreen.
*
Although it wasn’t dark yet, he got the cameras ready for the night. He was tired, and he wanted to make an early start. Besides, he hoped that if he watched last night’s tape before sunset, it wouldn’t prey on his mind so much.
Jonas locked the door and shut all the windows. He looked out at Hollandstrasse. The truck was parked outside the building next door, so as not to obstruct his view. No movement was visible. Standing close to the window pane, he thumbed his nose and stuck his tongue out.
*
The bed was empty.
No sign of the Sleeper.
The knife was embedded in the wall.
Jonas wondered when the recording had been made. He couldn’t remember what time he’d set it for, and, as so often, the alarm clock was lying face down on the bed although he’d turned it to face the camera.
He was about to fast-forward when he heard a sound coming from the TV. It was a long-drawn-out, high-pitched wail. So high-pitched it could well have been made by a human voice, but also by a musical instrument.
Eeee!
Angrily, he jumped out of bed and darted across the room. Either he was hearing a ghost, or someone was making fun of his fear of ghosts.
Eeee!
He was tempted to switch off, but his desire to know what would happen next proved too strong. He got back under the bedclothes. For a while he turned his back on the screen, but that was even more unendurable. He looked again. No one to be seen.
Eeee!
‘Very funny,’ he called out. His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat. ‘Oh yes. Yes, well. Oh. Yes, yes.’
Should he fast-forward? He might miss some message. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that the sound would lead to something.
Eeee!
He immersed himself in a comic. This enabled him to push the wailing sound to the back of his mind sufficiently for him to let the tape run on. He even grinned at some drawing now and then, but he more than once had to start a page again from scratch.
Music?
Where was the music coming from?
He turned off the sound. Listened. The wall clock was ticking away.
He turned up the volume again. Wailing. But there was something else, something softer. A kind of tune.
He listened, but he couldn’t hear it any longer.
Eeee!
‘And the same to you!’
It was getting dark. Assailed by toothache and a fit of conscience, Jonas pushed away the box of chocolates he’d been eating, there were hardly any left in any case, and pressed the pause button. Then he went to the bathroom and cleaned his teeth. On the way back he noticed that the kitchen was in darkness. He turned on the light.
All he saw at first was someone’s back coming into shot. The figure turned round. It was the Sleeper.
Wide-eyed, Jonas watched the Sleeper go over to the wall and grip the hilt of the knife, staring defiantly at the camera. He pulled it out with ease.
The Sleeper walked towards the camera until his head almost filled the screen. He stepped forwards, his eyes and nose becoming visible in extreme close-up, then stepped back again and winked in a strangely endearing manner. The only thing Jonas didn’t care for was the way he brandished the knife near his throat.
Having nodded as though in confirmation of something, the Sleeper moved out of shot.
19
Although it was only first light, Jonas padded barefoot across the creaking floorboards to his clothes, which were draped over a chair. He peered out of the window. Some rubbish skips were standing on the other side of the street, just visible in outline. The street looked as it did on a normal Sunday morning, when the last of the night owls had come home and everyone was asleep. He had always liked this time of day. Everything became easier when the darkness receded. It was appropriate that murderers should be strapped into the electric chair or sent to the gas chamber a minute after midnight, Jonas thought, because there was no more hopeless time than the middle of the night.
He had some breakfast and packed the camera. When the sun came up he said: ‘Goodbye, have a nice time!’
He not only locked the front door behind him, he sealed it with sticky tape. No one would be able to get in without his knowing.
*
While driving along the motorway he pondered on the latest videotape.
How had the Sleeper pulled the knife out of the wall with no effort when he himself had failed to do so several times? True, the Sleeper wasn’t in bed when the tape started. He could have messed around with the wall and the blade beforehand. But how? The wall was undamaged.
Where the motorway had three lanes, Jonas drove in the middle. Where there were two he kept to the right. He sounded the horn from time to time. Its powerful blare gave him a feeling of security. He’d switched on the driver’s transceiver, which was emitting a soft hiss. So was the radio.
In Linz he looked for the pub where he’d eaten during the thunderstorm. He spent some time cruising around the district where he thought it was, but he couldn’t even find the chemist’s he’d raided for cold cures. He gave up and drove back to the main road. Finding the car showroom was all that mattered.
The Toyota was standing outside, just as he’d left it. Although it didn’t appear to have rained for quite a while, the car was quite clean. The air was evidently less dirty than it used to be.
‘Hello, you,’ he said, and drummed on the roof.
He’d never felt sentimental about the Toyota before. But now it was his car, the one he’d owned in the old days. The Spider would never be that for the same reason that Jonas never got himself any new clothes. No new shirts or shoes, because he couldn’t have regarded them as his property. What had belonged to him before 4 July belonged to him now. He would never get any richer.