She likes the provisional quality of the buildings in the shopping center, which will be knocked down after a couple of decades and replaced by others. She likes the piles of merchandise, the soulless items sealed in plastic. She is capable of walking around for hours on end and picking up the things on display. She tests the fabric of clothes, sniffs them, tries them on. In the food sections, she opens packaging and quickly crams some of the contents into her mouth.
The customers in the stores seem somehow incomplete, they are missing something in their present, provisional setting. Anja doesn’t perceive them as people, not even the salespersons. On the rare occasions she is addressed, she gives a start and mutters something, No thanks, just having a look, and goes on her way.
She concentrates so hard on her walking that it ceases to be automatic. Her sensitivity becomes extreme, the cracks between the tiles irritate the soles of her feet. When she comes home after such expeditions, she is exhausted and can barely tolerate the children, and yells at them over everything and nothing.
FOR A TIME, Anja lives in a clump of pines so dense that almost no light gets in. Only the moss on the forest floor glows with a fluorescent green. She has been on edge for months, and this is the safest place. Like a diseased animal, she has retreated here. It’s difficult to force herself to go to school every day, the only thing that gets her up in the morning is her fear of being found. When Michaela asks her to come around after school, Anja shakes her head. She spends whole afternoons in her sleeping bag under an old army groundsheet that she bought at a flea market. The ground under her is covered with a dense layer of pine needles that set up a little cracking and rustling. It’s been a long winter, in some spots the snow is still there in late March. Once it’s thawed away, Anja dares to leave her pine refuge. She sets up on the edge of a clearing, on a little piece of boggy meadow ringed by trees that’s hard to get to. Only animals come here, and sometimes a hunter. A week before Easter it finally gets warm, and the forest seems to change from one day to the next.
Anja hears the twittering of the birds and the quiet rush of distant traffic on the highway, and shouting children crashing through the undergrowth. A low-flying plane approaches slowly, seems to hang overhead forever, and moves away. The wind picks up and shakes the last of the dry leaves on the trees, which make a sound like rain. When she shuts her eyes, the space seems to expand; when she opens them again, the colors are unexpectedly pallid. Only the green of the pines is strong, and that of the fresh grass, just starting to peep up among the old dead grass, crushed by the snow. Everything here is alive, even dead wood is swarming with creatures, with funguses and beetles and ants. At the far end of the meadow is a high stand, creaking in the wind.
In autumn, there’s a hunter sitting up there. Anja has got up, put her clothes on, and brushed her teeth, when she suddenly becomes aware of him. Perhaps he made a noise, or she had a sense of being watched. He hasn’t leveled his rifle at her, even though for a moment she’s afraid she might get shot. Then fear gives way to a feeling of security. She carries on calmly, stowing her things under the groundsheet, and dives into the bushes.
The man comes again. For a whole week he’s sitting up there every day, watching her. He must realize she’s seen him, but he gives no indication of it, not so much as a nod or a little wave of the hand. She relishes the attention, but at the same time she can feel something being broken. The spell is shattered. One morning the hunter is no longer there. For a while, Anja carries on as before, waits for him to come back. She is impatient, comes up with various theories. For the first time she feels bored in the forest, and the cold weather gets on her nerves. She can feel that she won’t last out much longer. When she is found shortly afterward, she is almost relieved.
WITHOUT BEING WHOLLY AWARE of it, Anja expects to find the hunter in the bookshop. Even though they’ve only seen each other at a distance, she is sure she would recognize him. He has dark green trousers, a fleece top, and a funny little hat. His rifle is slung over his shoulder. He doesn’t say a word, only looks at her and smiles. His smile is kind, but it spells danger. Anja shrinks back, hides behind a bookcase, waits for him to come after her. She flees from him, luring him farther into the darkness of the shelves, the vaults full of books, full of boxes. She hurries through a labyrinth of passageways she has never seen before. The hunter is close behind. He won’t let her escape.
ANJA MET MARCO. He liked to visit the shop from time to time, to order books on automatics and robotics. They got talking, and finally he asked her out for coffee, so awkwardly that she couldn’t refuse. He courted her, she knew for ages that he would eventually try to kiss her, she was almost counting on it. It took a couple of dates before he finally got up the courage, and then everything happened very quickly. They married when Anja was pregnant.
Shortly after their tenth anniversary, Marco confessed one evening that he had a girlfriend. For weeks he had been troubled and nervous, and Anja couldn’t really say she was surprised. The indifference with which she greeted the news infuriated him. She didn’t hold it against him, he had to get rid of his agitation somehow, and the way he did it was blaming her, and shouting at her, and then immediately apologizing and weeping and then shouting again. Be quiet, she said, the children.
The separation passed off without strife or scenes. Only when Marco asked her to forgive him, she impatiently shook her head. She kept the apartment and the kids. Marco and his new girlfriend moved back into the city. The kids spent more and more time with their father, and before long got on with the girlfriend better than they did with Anja. Each time she handed the children over to Marco, he would ask her casually whether she was seeing anyone. He was hoping she would remarry, so that he could stop paying her support. Anja would have been happy for that to happen, but she didn’t need a man, or companionship wasn’t what she needed.
One time, the security guard sat down at her table. It felt as though he was in breach of a tacit agreement between them. Anja shook her head in annoyance. She walked off, leaving her half-empty plate. After that she avoided the supermarket for a while.
When Anja passes the school building, she can look through the large window into the classroom, but she doesn’t recognize any of the children. She walks through the business park. The sky is clouded over. She looks at the display of the domestic appliance store, which is right next to the erotic center. She feels the glances of the men walking in and out, they simultaneously disgust and fascinate her. At the pedestrian crossing, she has to wait for a long time after pressing the button. Trucks are bringing fresh goods; cars have their music turned up so loud, they seem to be throbbing. Behind the main storehouse and the rail tracks is a little creek, along which a footpath leads. Anja looks at the mural on the high wall around the recycling center, it’s of a jungle scene. Some things are merely hinted at, green and gray cross-hatched areas, a pale blue sky. Only a few details have been fully executed, crumbling temple ruins, a few enormous trees, a leopard that seems to leap out of the wall at the onlooker. The painter seems to have given up his work long ago, in one or two places the picture has been daubed with graffiti.