CHAPTER 3, IN SEVEN PARTS
High time for the murder. Everything goes according to plan at first, and then it doesn’t. Showing that waiting is not without its dangers.
[1]
THE HOUSE IS IN THE FARTHEST CORNER of a cul-de-sac and keeps its distance from the other buildings, proud to be the home of a single person. Even in the darkness, you can tell that children do not play in the garden and that the lawn is mown by hired help. There is a stone statue on the strip of grass by the driveway, a crane stretching its neck up toward the sky, prevented from taking off by the plinth on the ground. It has the blank air of an object that brings pleasure to no one.
Sebastian did not even have to ring directory assistance to find Dabbelink’s address. He simply looked in Maike’s address book. He has been crouching behind the trash cans for two hours with his back against the wall of the house. He has watched a glorious sunset through the gap between the bins (the sky a three-colored sea, mountainous clouds with a halo of gold) and is feeling melancholy, as one does after witnessing the optical phenomena of the evening sky. Heedless of his feelings, night has fallen, and Sebastian has spent the time since looking at the flickering windows of the apartments next door. At least three living rooms are watching the same film. There was a fire a little while ago, and then a shoot-out. And now the murderer is taking his time explaining to his final victim the meaning of the plot so far. There follows the hectic flicker of hand-to-hand fighting, interrupted by the colorful flash of an advertisement break. Sebastian thinks he knows who the murderer is.
He shifts his weight and stretches his legs out from time to time in order not to tumble into the driveway at the decisive moment. A snail is moving astonishingly quickly across the spade that Sebastian found in the shed. Every time he looks at the spade it seems a little bit farther away from him, and he pulls it closer.
From the long spells of pale light shining through the windows, Sebastian can tell that the neighbors are now watching the late evening news. The doors and windows of Dabbelink’s house look as if they have been painted on. Just as Sebastian is starting to doubt whether the senior registrar will ever return to this place, the garden bursts into life. Headlights shine on a couple of trees and then cast them back into the darkness. Shadows scurry across the grass. The fence leans to the left and the crane revolves. Sebastian has tucked his legs under his body and is crouching in the position of a sprinter, three fingers of each hand pressed into the gravel. The gate slides open. The car stops a few centimeters from the house. The handbrake sighs and the headlights go out. Sebastian watches through the gap in the bins as Dabbelink gets out, yawns theatrically, stretching his arms, and turns to get his bag out of the backseat. There is no unexpected woman sliding out of the passenger seat; no one is walking past the gate. Dabbelink is alone.
Sebastian is basically a weak person. His friends and colleagues may say that he is strong-willed, but actually, he thinks, as he looks at Dabbelink, a strong will is precisely the mark of a weak person. For only the weak constantly desire things. They have to work and strive, experiment and practice, whereas strong people achieve things quite naturally. Some days, Sebastian can barely muster the energy to sit on a bench by the Dreisam and watch the river flow by in front of him. How much more energy he needs to reach out and clasp the handle of a spade! Sebastian puts the snail down on the gravel gently.
Dabbelink has been kind enough to stay in the same position while these thoughts have been running through Sebastian’s mind. The sound of his own footsteps seems strange to him, as if someone else were walking in long strides across the driveway—a man whom Sebastian is duty-bound to follow as an invisible observer. The senior registrar has heard the crunch of the gravel, too. He stands up and looks at Sebastian uncomprehendingly. The spade is raised high and the blow falls with a dull sound. Dabbelink draws himself up instead of falling down, and his face is surprisingly relaxed. Sebastian draws back to make a fresh attack, turns the edge of the spade downward, and strikes his victim on the head with full force. Immediately, everything human is wiped off Dabbelink’s face. There is a smell of grazed knees—sickly sweet and metallic. The car’s central locking system clicks in five places as the senior registrar’s hand clutches the key. Dabbelink falls over, catches himself, staggers, and holds on to his car with slippery fingers. The next blow makes his arms and legs jerk as if an electrical current were running through him. But his body still resists collapsing to the ground. He lurches to one side and Sebastian strikes into the emptiness; before he realizes what is going on, Dabbelink begins to run. Blindly, perhaps even heedlessly, he brushes against a fir tree, crashes into the gate, and manages to close his hands around the railing. He heaves himself up and over and falls into bottomless darkness. The televisions flicker luridly. Sebastian hears screams, shots, and the anxious whining of American police sirens. The reflections from the screens reach into the garden and move over the front of the house. The flickering takes on a regular rhythm—a blue light circling nearer and nearer. The air smells of freshly cut grass.