My partner went into the living room. There she placed the essentials (four glasses plus bottles of wine, beer, lemonade, cigarettes, lighter, ashtray, and chips) on the tray that had been used previously. With care, putting one foot slowly before the other, she carried everything up the steep stairs to the second floor.
Since my partner and Eva still had a few chores to do in the table tennis room (wiping the table in the corner, unloading the tray, shutting the windows, fetching cleaning rags or putting them away), Heinrich and I picked up the table tennis paddles. We started an informal rally without scoring. In the course of this, we remarked how refreshed we felt by this renewed opportunity to engage in physical activity. We struck the ball vigorously, heedless of the consequent fact that many of our shots missed and we had to go looking for it elsewhere in the room.
My partner drew our attention to the sound of the rain, which was no less thunderous than before. This led Heinrich to surmise that we were getting a whole month’s rain in advance. Eva recalled a child’s rhyme to the effect that the fourth month of the year is a law unto itself.
Heinrich exhorted the women to play, and we embarked on a mixed doubles. I once more found myself paired with Eva versus my partner and Heinrich. Eva is a good table tennis player, but her game displayed inaccuracies and even gross errors. Although he wasn’t her partner, Heinrich reprimanded her for this. Eva flung her paddle down and went to sit in the corner at the card table, on which the drinks had been deposited. Looking tense, she informed us that she simply wasn’t in the mood and couldn’t do full justice to her talents, so we must finish the game on our own.
Heinrich said that two against one at table tennis was an unfair arrangement — unfair for the two. His efforts to persuade Eva to return bore no fruit, and an apology proved equally unsuccessful. With the score at 11:11, my partner announced that she too wanted to quit and would watch us — Heinrich and me — from the card table. Ignoring our protests, she sat down beside Eva. Heinrich and I had no choice but to play on by ourselves.
In a complete reversal of our normal relative strengths, I managed to win not only the first set but the second as well. This caused Heinrich to swear and eventually led him to accuse me of bewitching the ball and my opponent. His indignation attained such a pitch that it even sent Eva, who had been plunged in melancholy, into fits of laughter. Heinrich thereupon stepped up the frequency of his expletives so as to create a jocular, relaxed atmosphere. My partner stated that she had never thought Heinrich capable of pulling such silly faces. Her remark was likewise greeted with delight.
After I had won the third set as well (the first two had ended 21:19 and 21:17, respectively), Eva yawned and stretched, saying that she felt the need to go to bed. This intention was fiercely opposed by my partner. We saw each other too seldom because of the great distance between us, she argued, so it was wrong not to make the most of our time together.
Eva replied that she was exhausted and incapable of being congenial company, but she promised to fix us a first-class breakfast early the next morning and make herself available for a whole day’s communal activities and entertainment thereafter. When my partner made another attempt to change her mind and broached the possibility of her drinking a martini, Eva vigorously shook her head.
She rose and wished us good night, though we ran into her again downstairs. This was because the three of us left in the game room had thought it advisable to return to the living room, where we planned to round off the evening with wine and conversation.
While Eva was brushing her teeth, she talked to Heinrich — hampered by the foam in her mouth and the motion of the toothbrush therein — about the duties incumbent upon him as host the next day (sweeping the floor and beating the carpets). Heinrich said she was out of her mind; those things could be done after their guests had left. We supported him in that view.
After Eva had retired, Heinrich, my partner, and I sat down in the living room. My partner had kindly carried the tray of drinks, etc., downstairs from the game room. She suggested playing a game of rummy, but her suggestion aroused no enthusiasm, nor did her wish to play a guessing game. In that case, she said disappointedly, she was going to the bathroom.
Once she had disappeared, Heinrich confided in a low voice that he wanted to see if the murder video program was over. He turned on the television and muted the sound at once. The screen was showing the woman presenter we’d seen before. Fine, said Heinrich, we could start watching at the earliest opportunity. He wound the tape back.
My partner still hadn’t returned, so we agreed to start watching the video right away, though with the sound turned down so as not to disturb Eva’s sleep.
At 1:35, the long-haired brother’s face reappeared on the screen. He was still refusing to speak but was also prevented from doing so by the need to vomit. At 1:51, a barn came into view. We saw the two boys running toward it, the camera unsteadily keeping up with them.
At that moment, my partner came into the living room. She grasped the situation and scolded us. She didn’t feel like watching this now, she said. Heinrich said he couldn’t restrain his curiosity any longer. She would forgo the opportunity, she retorted, and wished us good night.
When the sound of her footsteps on the wooden stairs had died away, Heinrich asked me if she was offended. I responded — truthfully — with a shrug.
Smoke was just rising from the barn. The children emerged and paused beside the gate to watch the progress of their handiwork. When the whole building went up in flames at 2:03, Heinrich approvingly remarked that they were smart boys; it couldn’t have been easy to torch a barn so quickly and effectively.
The boys were interviewed again, this time about their attitude to arson. Did they enjoy playing with fire? The cameraman received no satisfactory replies, so he asked if they would like to set fire to their brother’s corpse. Did they know what burning flesh smelled like? Sobbing anew, they answered both questions in the negative.
Heinrich dug me in the ribs. Could I conceive of such a thing? he asked. Could I put myself in the cameraman’s place? It defied one’s comprehension. What could be going on inside such a person?
2:42. “Screening this video is not sensationalism. It is a vain attempt to come to terms with an incomprehensible human tragedy.”
The long-haired brother was standing on the thickest root of a massive tree. He was enjoined to look at the camera with a cheerful expression. The cameraman said he was sure he wanted to leave behind a favorable impression of himself. If he were crying in the very last pictures of him, it would be bound to vex his mother. Contrary to instructions, the boy began to cry and, like his gap-toothed brother before him, hopped up and down on the spot.
The cameraman angrily complained that hopping up and down did not make a suitable contribution to a nice film, still less render it easier for his mother to take leave of a son. Couldn’t he imagine how distressed she would be to see him like this? In floods of tears, the boy whimpered something unintelligible. The cameraman told him to enunciate more clearly.
The long-haired brother now said, audibly, that he didn’t want to die and he possessed a savings book into which his grandmother had long been making regular payments. If he were released at once, he would let the cameraman have this savings book.
How did he propose to send it? he was asked.
He could, for instance, entrust it to the postal service, replied the anguished boy. The cameraman rejected this offer. Besides, he said, the savings book wasn’t enough. Hadn’t he anything more valuable? The long-haired brother talked of a money box. His parents sometimes put coins in it, and it hadn’t been taken to the bank for months. It occurred to the hog-tied brother that he possessed a similar savings book. He also owned an expensive bicycle, which he would relinquish in the cameraman’s favor. The latter replied that this was insufficient too, and ordered the long-haired brother to climb the tree. The response was a loud, protesting wail.