In the middle of the clearing he sat down. Visible overhead was a rectangular patch of blue sky tinged with red. At that moment, he knew the wolf-bear would appear tonight. He would hear crackling sounds, then footsteps. And then the beast would burst through the bushes over there and pounce on him. Huge, unstoppable, impersonal. Invincible.
‘No, please don’t,’ he whispered feebly, tears springing to his eyes.
The darkness frightened him even more than the increasing cold. The battery in his mobile was flat, so he didn’t know what time it was. It couldn’t be much after seven. He had obviously strayed deep into the forest.
He took one of the little cards from his pocket.
Shout loudly!, it read.
The fact that chance had dealt him a suitable instruction raised his hopes. He got to his feet, the better to shout.
‘Hello! I’m here! Over here! Help!’
He turned and shouted again in the opposite direction. He didn’t dare shoot because he’d left the bag of cartridges behind on the old chest. Although he didn’t think he would have to fight off something or someone in the immediate future, the feel of the smooth wooden butt reassured him. At least he wasn’t completely defenceless.
But … What if nobody came?
What if he couldn’t find his way back?
He peered in all directions. He shut his eyes and listened to his inner self. Was this how it would end? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust?
He tried hard to make his mind a blank. Took deep breaths, imagined himself elsewhere. Some place where there were no goosebumps, no hunger and no suspicious rustling sounds. With Marie. In bed with Marie, thigh to thigh. Feeling her softness, her warmth. Feeling her breath on his face and the pressure of her hands. Inhaling her scent, hearing the faint grunt as she turned over without losing contact with him.
He wasn’t alone. She was with him. He always had her with him if he chose. All at once, she was far nearer to him than three or four weeks ago, when he thought he’d lost her.
He was feeling better. His fear had dwindled to a growl in the background. He was calm. Tomorrow morning he would find his way back. He would go home. And then he would go looking for Marie. He mustn’t fall asleep, that was all.
He opened his eyes.
It was dark.
*
It must have been about midnight when the stiffness in his arms and legs became unbearable. He tossed the rifle into the grass and sat down.
His thoughts had stopped obeying him hours ago. They drifted, took on colour, lost it again. Enveloped him, were enveloped. The wolf-bear appeared in them, he couldn’t chase it away. The creature radiated a savage power and determination that tormented him until, without his doing anything, it disappeared and he was filled with a mysterious warmth and cheerfulness. He felt tempted to get up and go on looking for the way back, but the knowledge that he would soon be governed by other emotions restrained him.
He looked up. Convinced that he was being stared at by someone seated almost within arm’s reach but invisible to him. At the same time, he noticed that his eyelids took longer to blink than they should. Alarmed, he reached for the gun. It seemed two or even three times further away than it had been. He couldn’t see his hand, but he sensed that its progress towards the gun was becoming steadily, inexorably slower. He lowered his head and shook off his hat. He wasn’t moving at all, he felt. Listening to the rustle of the trees, he noticed that every sound consisted of many individual notes, and that these, in their turn, were made up of acoustic particles.
He didn’t know how he managed to snap out of this. His willpower proved stronger than his inertia. He jumped up, levelled the rifle — and waited to see what he would do next.
He laughed.
To his own surprise.
*
3 a.m. Possibly 2 a.m., possibly half past three. He didn’t dare go to sleep. Although his joints were aching and red rings were dancing before his eyes. Every sound the night wind struck from the trees echoed in his head. Trying to keep reality and imagination apart, he looked around. He pretended he was having problems with his shoelaces or the zip of the landlord’s fleece, just so he could scoff and swear aloud.
Whenever he had thought about God and death, the same image had always recurred: that of the body from which all derived and to which all returned. He had doubted the Church’s teachings. God wasn’t one, he was everyone. What other people called God, he saw as a principle in the form of a body. A principle that sent everyone off to live and then report back. God was a body that sent off human beings, possibly animals and plants as well, or even stones, raindrops and light, to acquaint themselves with everything that went to make up life. Returning to the body at the end of their existence, they shared their experiences with God and absorbed those of other people. That way, they all learnt what it was like to be an arable farmer in Switzerland or a motor mechanic in Karachi. A teacher in Mombasa or a whore in Brisbane. Or an Austrian adviser on interior decoration. What it was like to be a waterlily, a stork, a frog, a gazelle in the rain, a honey bee in springtime or a bird. A woman in heat, or a man. A success, a failure. Fat or slim, robust or frail. A murderer or a victim of murder. A rock. An earthworm. A stream. A puff of wind.
Living life in order to return and bestow that life on others. That had been his notion of God. And now he wondered if the disappearance of all life meant that God and the others had no interest in his life. That his life was redundant.
*
6 a.m. He sensed the dawn before he saw it. It didn’t come in its usual form, as a kind of resurrection or liberation. It was merely cold. As soon as it was light enough for him to avoid bumping into trees, he got to his feet. His teeth were chattering, the dew-sodden shirt and trousers clinging to his body.
He spent the first hour trying to get his bearings, following false trails, looking out for landmarks. All he saw was a monotonous alternation of bushes and undergrowth, glades and dense forest. None of it looked familiar.
Later he came to a broad clearing. There he remained until the sun had driven the cold from his bones. His thirst, which was steadily intensifying, made him move on. No longer centred on his stomach, his hunger had induced a feeling of general weakness. His dearest wish was to lie down and go to sleep.
From then on he proceeded haphazardly. He consulted the cards in his pocket, but their only injunctions were Red Cat and Botticelli. He trudged on with his head down. Until a sound came to his ears, a liquid sound. It came from his right.
He didn’t make a dash for it at once; he looked in all directions. No one was watching him. No would-be practical joker.
He set off to his right. His ears hadn’t deceived him, the gurgling sound grew louder. He fought his way through the undergrowth, ripped his trousers on a bramble bush that scratched his hands and arms as well. Then he saw the stream. Clear, cold water. He drank until his belly almost burst and rolled over on his back, panting.
Images arose before him. Of the office, of his father, of home. Of Marie. Of earlier years, when he’d had a different hairstyle. Of a younger Jonas with all kinds of interests. Flirting with Inge in the park, arguing heatedly with friends in cafés, counting empty beer bottles in the kitchen the morning after. As an adolescent in front of the brightly lit windows of sex shops. As a boy on a pushbike, smiling as only children smile.
He clenched his fists and punched the ground. No, he would find his way out of this forest.
He got up and patted his trousers down, then followed the course of the stream. For one thing, because he didn’t want to die of thirst; for another, because streams usually led somewhere, quite often to houses.