His legs refused to carry him beyond a point from which he could still see his car. He couldn’t bring himself to turn off down one of the lateral paths. The car was his home, his insurance.
He swung round, gripping the wrench tightly, and stood there with his head down, listening.
Just wind.
The animals had gone.
He sprinted back to the car. No sooner was he behind the wheel than he locked the doors. Only then did he put the wrench and the knife on the passenger seat. He left the windows shut in spite of the heat.
*
He had often driven along the A1. An aunt of his lived in Salzburg, and he’d regularly visited Linz to inspect new ranges of furniture for the firm. The A1 was the motorway he liked least. He preferred the A2 because it led south, towards the sea. The traffic was lighter too.
Without taking his foot off the accelerator, he opened the glove compartment and emptied the contents onto the passenger seat. His sore throat had developed into an increasingly troublesome cold. His forehead was filmed with sweat and the glands in his neck were swollen. His nose was so blocked up he was breathing almost entirely through his mouth. Marie seldom went anywhere without some remedies for minor ailments, but she hadn’t left anything in the glove compartment.
The further he got from Vienna, the more often he turned on the radio. Once every frequency had been scanned, he’d turn it off again.
At Grossram service station his hopes were raised by the sight of several parked cars. He sounded his horn. Then he got out, carefully locking the car behind him, and went over to the restaurant entrance. The automatic door hummed open.
‘Hello?’
He hesitated. The restaurant stood in the shade of a clump of fir trees. Although the sun was shining, it might have been early evening in the dim interior.
‘Anyone there?’
The door closed. He jumped back so as not to be squashed and it opened again.
He fetched the knife from the car. He peered in all directions but could detect nothing unusual. It was just an ordinary motorway service area with cars parked in front of the restaurant and alongside the petrol pumps. People were the only missing feature. People and sounds.
The automatic door glided open again. Its hum, heard a thousand times, seemed suddenly like a message to his subconscious. He walked past the turnstile that separated the shop and cashier’s desk from the restaurant and stood among the tables with the knife clutched in his fist.
‘What’s going on here?’ he called, louder than was necessary.
The tables, rows of them covered with white tablecloths, were laid. The self-service counter, which would normally have held soups and sauces, baskets filled with rolls, small bowls of croutons and big bowls of salad, was completely bare.
He discovered the remains of a loaf in the kitchen dresser. It was stale but still edible. He improvised a snack with some sandwich spread from the fridge and ate on his feet, staring at the tiled floor. Back in the restaurant he brewed himself some coffee at the espresso machine. The first cup tasted bitter. The second tasted no better, and it wasn’t until he’d made a fourth that he placed the cup on the saucer.
He sat down on the terrace. It was scorching hot. He put up a parasol. The tables were just as unremarkable as those inside. Each had an ashtray, a list of ice creams, a menu card, salt and pepper shakers, toothpicks. They would have looked just the same had he come this way a few days ago.
He looked around him. Not a soul in sight.
After he had spent a while staring at the grey ribbon of the motorway it occurred to him that he’d sat here once before. With Marie. At the very same table, in fact. He recognised it from its position, which gave him a view of a small, secluded vegetable garden. They’d been on their way to their holiday resort in France. They’d breakfasted here.
He jumped up. Perhaps there was something wrong with the phones in Vienna. Perhaps he could call someone from here.
He found a phone at the cash desk. By now he knew the number of Marie’s sister in England by heart. The same unfamiliar ringing tone.
No one in Vienna answered either. Not Werner, not the office, not his father.
He took a dozen postcards from a stand. He found some stamps in a folder in a drawer beneath the cash register. He wrote his own address on a card.
The message ran: Grossram service area, 6 July.
He stuck a stamp on. There was a postbox beside the entrance. A little notice stated that it was emptied at 3 p.m. No mention of the days of the week, but he posted the card anyway. He took the rest of the cards and the stamps with him.
He was about to unlock his car when he noticed a sports car parked nearby. He went over to it. No ignition key, of course.
*
Jonas left the motorway at the next exit and pulled up outside the first house in the first village he came to. He rang the bell and knocked.
‘Hello? Hello!’
The door wasn’t locked.
‘Anyone there? Hey? Hello!’
He checked all the rooms. Not a living soul. No dog, no canary, not even a fly.
He drove through the village, sounding his horn until he could stand the din no longer. Then he searched the local pub. Nothing.
All the villages he passed in the next couple of hours were off the beaten track. The few houses they consisted of were so dilapidated he wondered if anyone had been living there at all. No chemist’s anywhere, let alone a car showroom. He regretted not having left the motorway near some sizeable town. He was lost, from the look of it.
He pulled up on the right, out of habit. It was a while before he found his position on the map. He’d strayed off into the Dunkelstein Forest. It was over twenty minutes’ drive to the next motorway access road. He itched to get to it and put on speed again, but he was too tired now.
In the next village, which at least had a grocery store, he made for the most expensive-looking house. It was locked, but the remaining half of his wrench came in useful once more. He smashed a window and climbed in.
In the kitchen he found a packet of aspirin. While one of them was noisily dissolving in a glass of water, he combed the house. It was well furnished in dark wood. Some of the pieces he recognised. They belonged to the Swedish 99 Series, with which he himself had done good business for an entire season. Antlers hung on the walls. The floor was covered in the kind of thick carpets known at the office as ‘bug rugs’. None of the decor was cheap, but none of it was tasteful either. Children’s toys were lying around.
He returned to the kitchen and downed his aspirin.
Back in the living room he shut his eyes and listened. From the kitchen came the muffled ticking of a clock. Soot dislodged from cracks by the wind came rattling down the chimney. There was a smell of dust, timber and damp cloth.
The stairs creaked underfoot. The bedrooms were on the first floor. The first was obviously a child’s. Behind the second door he found a double bed.
He hesitated, but his eyelids were drooping with fatigue. On a sudden impulse, he undressed completely. He drew the dark, heavy curtains and turned on the bedside light, which cast a faint glow. Having satisfied himself that the door was locked, he lay down on the bed. The sheet was soft, the duvet cover of exceptionally fine cotton. Under other circumstances he would have felt good.
He turned out the light.
An alarm clock was ticking almost inaudibly on the bedside table. The pillow smelt of a person Jonas had never met. Wind whistled in the roof space overhead. The sound of the alarm clock was strangely homely.
Darkness engulfed him.
*
He was feeling less muzzy than before. Sitting up, he caught sight of some gilt-framed photos on the chest of drawers. With a handkerchief clamped to his streaming nose, he tottered over to them like a sleepwalker.