In Free Fall(102)

If this mixture of anticipation and trepidation suited someone who was marching along an unknown path toward an unclear destination, the hike that Oskar had started on early this morning would truly be a long one.

There is a break in the forest. Oskar looks out over a broad hollow, dotted with sleeping cows, dark mounds of flesh in the grass. The road leads up toward the old inn, which looks rather put-upon with its blocked-up windows and doorways. Just before the building, the road swings around toward the left in a steep curve, disappearing between the trees after a hundred meters.

Oskar is happy to have the chance to walk a stretch under the open sky. Every dead tree in the forest is a shadowy man in a long coat, and the snap of every twig is a mysterious footstep. Enjoy the beauty of nature, the detective had said on the phone. Oskar counts his steps to avoid self-reflection. The seconds have slowed down, and are much slower than the tempo of his steps. One after the other they tip over the edge of the present in slow motion. Perhaps it seems that way because Oskar is striding forward so briskly. It happened down there. At three hundred his understanding of the situation begins to slip away. At four hundred he no longer knows what he is doing here at all. At five hundred he has reached the inn. He cranes his neck and squints into the distance. Something is shining in the half-light under the treetops where the road enters the forest.

A bell sounds and he nearly jumps out of his skin. He had not heard the cyclist coming from behind. He just manages to leap to one side as something yellow flashes past him. At the end of the curve the racing bike straightens its course and the cyclist pedals on with his head lowered. Oskar wants to scream. Barely a split second later, the bike reaches the forest. Something explodes onto the road and a shower of metal parts catch the light; screws and rods clink and clatter in every direction. Another split second, and all is silent. Deathly silent.

Oskar’s leather-soled shoes are not made for running on slippery pavement. He slips and stumbles, ducks under the steel cord just in time, and slides to a standstill. He steps carefully over the wreckage of the bicycle. A man in a yellow jersey lies there, his upper body hidden in the undergrowth, his legs stretched out into the road. Oskar stares, incapable of taking another step, completely unable to think clearly. The eloquent inner monologue which has been with him since his childhood, always ready to pipe up, has been silenced. It’s incredible how loudly the birds are singing.

Oskar senses rather than hears the movement behind him. He tears his gaze from the body on the road and turns around. The first detective chief superintendent is standing to the left of the steel cable, still as a waxwork. On the right-hand side is a woman in a flowery dress.

Two sentinels at the posts of a demonic gate.

The woman is holding a man by his hair, a man who consists only of a face and a neck. The eyes are wide open and staring shamelessly at Oskar. The woman starts walking toward him and seems to want to pass the severed head to him; a Salome, only without the silver platter. She stops in the middle of the road and puts the head on the ground. It tips over to one side and rolls toward Oskar, turns a semicircle on a vertebra, and lies still. Oskar realizes that he needs to breathe. His dizziness subsides after two breaths.

“I understand.” He wants to cross his arms but they are hanging too heavily by his sides.

“Sebastian!” he shouts. Nothing in the tableau moves, so he lowers his voice. “You weren’t the expert in doublethink. I’m afraid it was me.”

If he had a saber, he would turn it around now and lay it on the ground in front of him.





[8]


HE EXPECTED THE ATTACK, so the shock from the bird’s egg does not topple him immediately. A whistling in the ears, wherever they may be, a stabbing behind the forehead, wherever that has gone, finally a rip straight across the brain, whoever is using it. A rip through the whole body, cutting the detective in two. A person has two of almost everything—legs, hands, eyes, nostrils—so two people can easily be made out of him.

The first few seconds are not painful. Schilf uses both hands to support his head, in which a determined battle is raging. Something is struggling to break free of a prison in which it has been growing for far too long. A sharp beak pecks against the shell. Black dots dance rhythmically in the field of vision. His eyes are no use any longer, so he cannot see if Sebastian and Oskar are lying in each other’s arms. If Schnurpfeil is pushing his bike up the road to stand next to Rita Skura. Instead he sees a fountain of water rising to infinite heights, and a broken rainbow in the mist. A boy whose hair is dotted with spray stretches his arms out toward the sky, laughing. When he turns around, his face is just as much Liam’s as another boy’s. My son, the detective thinks. They’re all lying, the boy says, pointing at his watch. A blond woman looks down at the boy, smiling. Then she looks Schilf in the eye. We’ll see, she says.