He pointed to the brain model, which was now as grey as it had been at the outset of his demonstration.
‘Back to the default position?’ said Marc. ‘A total reset?’
‘The choice is yours.’
Bleibtreu opened his desk drawer and took out a small but densely printed sheet of paper.
‘You need only sign this application form and we can start at once.’
11
It was a mistake. Marc knew he shouldn’t have let himself be talked into it, but he thought that submitting to the preliminary examinations and just never coming back would be easier than entering into a long discussion with Bleibtreu about the pros and cons of his wholly unacceptable experiment.
That was why he had only pretended to agree to be examined for any physical or mental condition that might preclude him from taking part.
Who knows, perhaps you won’t prove to be a suitable subject after all, had been Bleibtreu’s final argument.
An undetected mental illness, a serious infection or a weak heart would render him useless as a guinea pig. Even his rare blood group, AB negative, was something of a problem.
Another two and a half long hours elapsed before the Maybach dropped him outside his rented service flat in Schöneberg. A hundred and fifty minutes during which they’d taken his blood, tired him out on various pieces of gym equipment for an ECG, and electroencephalographed his brainwaves for abnormalities. He’d felt like a national service recruit when a GP asked him for a urine sample and checked his heart-lung functions while he was waiting for the oculist to test his eyesight.
The doctors had shown no interest in the fact that many of these examinations had been carried out by his father-in-law only a few weeks earlier. The Bleibtreu Clinic was unwilling to rely on extraneous data, so he’d even had to undergo more CT and MRI scans.
But most of the time had been taken up with ingenious psychological questions. Unlike the personality tests in women’s magazines, which Sandra had always been so fond of, those seemingly innocuous questions had left Marc wondering what on earth their purpose could be.
If you had the choice, which would you rather do without, one eye or your sense of smell?
Which do you dream in more often, colour or black and white?
Complete the following sentence: ‘I’m in favour of the death penalty for…’
Marc had already forgotten what answers he’d given, he was so exhausted. Besides, his joints ached with every step he took. All he could think of was the sleeping pill and the hot bath he would soon be taking. He was so engrossed in his thoughts, it was no wonder he failed to see the dark figure lurking beside the entrance to the flats, where it had been waiting for him for a considerable time.
12
‘Leana Schmidt?’ He repeated the name she’d given him once before. That day, a few hours earlier, immediately after Julia’s attempted suicide at the open-air baths in Neukölln. Her hair still looked as if it had been ironed flat at the back and he thought he glimpsed a plain, pale-grey trouser suit beneath her trenchcoat, which was buttoned up at the neck. The only thing that slightly dented the somewhat stern impression she made was a supermarket plastic bag overflowing with ‘women’s purchases’ – the sort of goods which men ignore on principle, like bunches of radishes or sticks of celery. Sandra and he used to laugh at their disparate shopping habits. She would fill her supermarket trolley with fresh fruit, low-fat cottage cheese, fabric conditioner and parsley, whereas he lingered in front of promotion racks stacked with blank CDs and cordless drills, or bags of crisps.
‘How on earth did you find me?’
The slim creature put her shopping down and kneaded her fingers where the handle of the bag had cut into them.
‘I went to your office. They gave me your address.’
She spoke briskly, almost as if she expected him to apologize for keeping her waiting so long.
‘Well, what do you want?’
‘I’m… I was the nurse on your brother’s ward.’
‘Well?’
He took out his front-door key, not that he had to use it. Although one of the list of house rules he’d been handed when moving in exhorted tenants to lock the door to the street after eight at night, they observed it as seldom as they did the ban on dumping glass bottles in the communal refuse bin.
‘I’m worried about Benny,’ she said firmly, and Marc gained a pretty good idea of how this resolute woman treated her patients. Her tone was professional without being intimidating – a combination to prevent them from feeling patronized but authoritative enough to deter them from questioning her instructions. Leana Schmidt was probably not an ordinary nurse but the sister in charge of a ward, or at least on the way to becoming so.
The automatic light in the lobby came on as Marc went inside. She picked up her shopping bag and followed him in.
‘He told me you saved his life once.’
‘Really?’ Marc said curtly.
Eighteen months ago he had found Benny in the bath with his wrists cut. They normally met only once a year – at Christmas beside their parents’ grave – but that morning his mobile had registered three unanswered calls and his mailbox had recorded a message – almost unintelligible it was so broken up and overlaid with static – in what sounded like his brother’s voice. When Benny didn’t respond to his calls, Marc had obeyed a spontaneous impulse and driven to his place. There he received a drastic demonstration that the message on his mobile had been intended as a last farewell.
‘I don’t think you should have retracted your statement.’ Leana blinked. ‘To the judges and doctors, I mean.’
Marc still couldn’t fathom where this odd conversation was leading. When he’d saved Benny’s life by calling the emergency services, he’d employed an old trick that always led to an attempted suicide being placed under immediate psychiatric supervision: he stated that Benny had previously threatened to kill him as well. This automatically branded his brother a danger to the public. It also constituted a criminal offence. Since Benny had already attempted suicide several times, an overall view of the circumstances warranted his temporary committal to a secure institution. Marc’s lie had been a means to an end: getting his brother off the streets and out of an environment that was quite clearly dragging him ever deeper into the mire. Besides, Benny wouldn’t find it as easy to get hold of a belt or a razor blade in a psychiatric ward. He would also be out of Eddy Valka’s orbit at last.
‘Look,’ said Marc, ‘I’ve had enough would-be suicides for one day…’ He tried to open his letterbox, but some vandal seemed to have messed up the lock with a screwdriver.
Not that on top of everything else!
The key wouldn’t fit, so the only post he could get at was a furniture brochure stuck in the slit.
‘…so, if you’ve no objection, I’d like to call it a night and-’
‘Your brother changed so suddenly,’ she broke in. ‘From one day to the next.’
She caught hold of his sleeve. He was tugging at it in an attempt to free himself when the light went off. The timer had run out, and since the antiquated switch in the hallway wasn’t equipped with an LED in the usual way, he took a while to grope his way over to it. By the time the light came on again he was feeling utterly exhausted and incapable of putting an end to his conversation with this mysterious nurse.
‘Of course Benny changed,’ he said. ‘He was in a loony bin.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t mean that. He’d let himself go for months on end. Wouldn’t shave, wouldn’t eat, lay awake all night. He often refused to leave his room – became genuinely violent when asked to do so.’
Marc nodded resignedly. This was no news to him. It was why the doctors’ prognosis had been so poor and Benny’s temporary admission had turned into long-term confinement.