He carries a plate of cheese rolls and more coffee with him into the living room. He presses the remote control, feeling like he is waiting for his favorite film to come on while he has a picnic on the sofa. When he does not manage to interest himself in a program on the river flowing through his hometown, he switches from the regional channel to Channel One. He turns the volume up high to keep himself awake. After an hour, he switches on the radio as well. The coffee has grown cold and the bread rolls are practically untouched. Sebastian switches between channels and programs constantly; screaming voices intermingle. When the hospital scandal is mentioned, he listens. Some expert or other explains that the pharmaceutical industry makes no bones about testing drugs on human beings: new blood-clotting agents, for example, that are tested on heart patients during operations. But mostly in Africa until now, not in Baden-Württemberg. Apart from that, the mass media is filled with reports on seals in Canada, cancer research in Asia, and bands from Scandinavia, all without mention of a bizarre murder that has taken place in the immediate vicinity of the broadcast region. Images of war in the Middle East are punctuated by bad pop music from the radio. A woman reads out the stock prices to scenes from an American family sitcom. Everything has something to do with everything else; everything is connected. Only one thing is missing in the great web of connections—the news that a senior registrar at the university hospital has met his maker in mysterious circumstances.
Sebastian’s rage at the unreliability of TV and radio programs is exceeded only by irritation at his own stupidity. What if the body is not found? What if Dabbelink’s absence from work is insufficient proof of death for the kidnappers? Or what if the accident has not been fatal after all? What if he got the wrong man? A levelheaded person would not have left the scene of the crime so hastily, but tracked down the victim, established that he was dead, and then made sure that the body would be discovered immediately. Sebastian however, as he well knows, has been anything but levelheaded. What he has done was far beyond his capabilities.
The itch from the midge bites travels over his spine and neck and drills into his brain. Sebastian crosses his arms and scratches with his bent fingers, staring fixedly at the television, cradling his upper body like an institutionalized animal.
It is already early evening and Sebastian is just about to leave the apartment to return to the scene of the crime, like a garden-variety murderer, when he finally hears what he has been waiting for on a local radio station. Soon after, the television also knows about it. Sebastian sees flickering images of the patch of forest that he now knows only too well, but onscreen it seems to have little in common with his memories of it. Red and white police tape, bicycle parts lying in the ferns. Three cows chew their cud at the camera. A powerful zoom lens turns the colors to grainy specks. With some imagination, it is just about possible to make out the twisted limbs of a body lying between dead leaves and blackberry bushes. The palm of a policeman’s hand covers the lens. The harsh evening sun has brought beads of sweat to the forehead of the excited reporter, who, while not wanting to anticipate the conclusions of the police, must mention here that the dead man worked in medical director Schlüter’s department at the hospital. He presents the juicy details of his report with triumph. The police found the head of the corpse only after a long search. It was wedged in a forked branch above the heads of those looking for clues, and had followed the proceedings with wide-open eyes.
When the television falls silent, Sebastian feels as if he is sitting underwater. Every movement is slower, every breath he takes creates an eddy, and every thought is a bubble rising. He has carried out the task and thus lost his justification for existence. There are no plans to be carried out now, no reason for him to move. During the night he developed a theory of the meaning of life, a theory that appears clearly before him now in the underwater stillness of the apartment.
Like every other story, life flows backward toward its own cause. The meaning of existence is hidden to most people because human beings normally think things through from beginning to end. The man who recognizes and discovers the principle of the future purpose he serves is able to view every event between now and then as a part of his personal destiny. And so bear it all with equanimity.
Without a doubt, Sebastian’s personal destiny is to save Liam. Among the events that he wishes to face with equanimity, he imagines discovery and arrest, Maike’s horror and his parents’ collapse, crises of conscience, and imprisonment for many years. He believes himself to be prepared for all this. He sits in the same position, with a rotten taste in his mouth—of industrial wastewater and a sky that has remained unchanged for too long—as it becomes impossible to hide his real problem from himself any longer. There are two telephones on the coffee table in front of him: his mobile and the cordless landline phone. Both have just been charged, and checked many times: they are ready. But they do not ring. Their manner of not ringing signals the final severance with reality. Nobody is calling—not the kidnapper, not Liam, not even Maike or the police. Scarcely has Sebastian understood this when the false floor is pulled away. Free fall begins.