He concentrated on making his mind a blank and setting off.
He thought of nothing, thought of nothing, thought of nothing. And then set off.
He bumped into the garden gate. Opened it. Stumbled through the darkness. Groped his way along the wooden wall of the skittle alley.
A crunch of gravel beneath his feet announced that he’d reached the car park. He glimpsed the terrace and hurried on. I’ll kill you, he thought.
The bell tinkled. He didn’t think he could bear it. His hand felt for the light switch. He screwed up his eyes, then cautiously opened them and looked round. Don’t think, carry on.
‘Good evening, I’ve come for some beer!’
He turned on all the lights, laughing harshly, and helped himself to two bottles of beer. Without turning off the lights he made his way back across the terrace to the car park. The glow from the inn windows was enough for him to see where he was going. But he could also see where the light ended and the sea of darkness awaited him.
When he plunged into the gloom he felt he wouldn’t make it. He would start thinking again any minute. And that would be that.
He broke into a run. Tripped and recovered his balance at the last moment. Kicked the garden gate open. Bounded across the threshold, slammed the front door and locked it. Slid to the floor with his back against it, a cold bottle of beer in either hand.
*
At 2 a.m. he was lying in bed, checking to see how much of the second bottle was left. The camera was facing the bed, but he hadn’t started it yet. He did so and turned over on his side.
He awoke and peered at the alarm clock. It was 3 a.m. He must have fallen asleep at once.
The camera was humming.
He thought he could hear other sounds overhead. Creaking footsteps, an iron ball rolling across the floor. At the same time, he was in no doubt that those sounds were all in his imagination.
He couldn’t help reflecting that the camera was filming him at that moment. Him, not the Sleeper. Would he spot the difference when he watched the tape? Would he remember?
His bladder was bursting. He threw off the bedclothes. As he passed the camera he waved, gave a twisted grin and said: ‘It’s me, not the Sleeper!’
He padded barefoot along the passage to the bathroom. On the way back he gave the camera another wave. He patted the dust off the soles of his feet before getting into bed. Then pulled the bedclothes over his ears.
20
He blinked at the camera. It hadn’t been moved. Nor, it seemed, had anything else.
It was 4 August. A month had gone by. At this hour four weeks ago he’d been waiting in vain for a bus. That was how it had begun.
He opened the shutters. A sunny day. Not a branch or blade of grass was stirring. He got dressed. He felt the notebook in his pocket. He opened it at the first blank page and wrote:
I wonder where you’ll be on 4 September and how you’re doing. And how you’ve been doing in the previous four weeks. Jonas, 4 August, Kanzelstein. Standing at the bedroom table, dressed, tired.
He looked at the picture on the wall. To judge by the battered frame and faded colours, it was quite old. It depicted a lone sheep in a field. The animal was dolled up in jeans and a red sweater. It wore socks on its feet and, on its head, a hat cocked at a rakish angle. This curious sight reminded him of his dream.
He’d been looking out of the window of his flat on the Brigittenauer embankment. A bird landed on the arm of a chair standing on a balcony that his flat didn’t have. He was delighted to see the bird. A living creature at last!
All at once the bird’s head changed, becoming broader and more elongated. Its expression was mean and angry, as if Jonas were to blame for all that was happening to it. Under his intent gaze the bird underwent another transformation. It developed a hedgehog’s head and its body grew bigger. Jonas was now confronted by a hedgehog’s head on the body of a millipede one and a half metres long. The millipede curled up and scratched its face, which metamorphosed into that of a man. The human millipede gasped, its tongue protruding as if it were being throttled. Its countless little legs were flailing madly, and pink foam oozed from its nostrils.
The head changed yet again. It turned into that of an eagle and a dog in quick succession. Neither the eagle nor the dog looked the way they should have looked. All these creatures gazed at him. The look in their eyes told him that they knew him of old. And that he knew them.
*
He breakfasted on pumpernickel and instant coffee. Then he opened all the windows and prowled around the house.
He spent quite a while gazing out over the countryside from the south-facing balcony. Its dimensions puzzled him. Everything looked smaller and more cramped than he remembered. The balcony itself, for instance. It had once been a terrace spacious enough to play football on. Now he was standing on an ordinary balcony some four metres long and one-and-a-half wide. It was the same with the garden. He could have walked from end to end in well under a minute. He used to think of the Löhnebergers’ inn as a really big establishment. Now he saw that the open space outside could accommodate no more than four cars parked side by side. Yesterday he’d counted the tables in the bar. There were six.
As for the view from the balcony, in his imagination it had stretched for hundreds of kilometres. He now discovered that he could see little further than the next valley. His eye was brought up short by a range of hills no more than twenty kilometres away. The only really sizeable feature was the forest behind the house, which marked the extent of the property.
In the games room he recognised the cupboard in which the table-tennis bats and balls and a spare net were kept. He examined its wooden sides for inscriptions and messages. He took out a bat and began to play against himself. He hit the ball high, to give himself time to get to the other end and return the shot. The sound of the ball striking the table top went echoing round the almost empty room.
This was where his father had taught him to play. At first Jonas had made the mistake of standing too near the table, which exasperated his father. ‘No, back! Further back!’ he would yell, and he’d been known to hurl his bat at the net when annoyed with his incorrigible pupil. Jonas’s mother and Aunt Lena didn’t enjoy playing table tennis, and his father was no match for Uncle Reinhard.
The handle of the bat had lost some of its plastic coating. Jonas’s hand stuck to it. He tossed it back into the cupboard, took out another and gave it an experimental swing, turning it over in his hand. It looked familiar.
He eyed the bat with a touch of emotion. He had always picked it in the old days because he preferred its black surface and ribbed handle. Now he couldn’t see any appreciable difference between this bat and the others.
Here. This was the place. His father had stood over there, he himself on this side.
He flexed his knees to re-create a child’s-eye view of the table and leapt to and fro as if diving for the ball.
His bat. His walking stick, too. From a time that was long gone. That would never come back. A time he could never re-enter, never use again.
*
Early that afternoon Jonas cooked himself some lunch at the inn. A plateful of noodles and potatoes from the larder he’d discovered behind an inconspicuous door. He ate a lot and drew himself a beer. It tasted and smelt bad. He poured it away and opened a bottle instead.
He sat down on the terrace with the bottle and a fleece belonging to the landlord tied round his waist by the arms. He had also put on a frayed old peasant hat he had found hanging on a hook. The sun was scorching hot, but a strong wind was blowing. He finished off the bottle. Then he thought of the transceiver. He went inside and spent half an hour looking for it until he was satisfied it had gone.