In Free Fall(29)
[6]
IN HIS LECTURES, SEBASTIAN LIKES TO PRESENT A TYPOLOGY of waiting that he has come up with himself. Waiting (so he begins) is an intimate dialogue with time. A long period of waiting is more than that: it is a duel between time and the person who wishes to investigate it. Ladies and gentlemen, when you are next waiting in the student administration office for some information, do not bring a book. (Laughter.) Give yourself over to time, subjugate yourself, deliver yourself to it. Have a discussion with yourself about how long a minute is. Find out what on earth the instrument on your wrist has to do with you. Ask yourself what this waiting is meant to be: a betrayal of the present in favor of an event in the future? (Silence.) But what is the present? (More silence.) In waiting, you will establish that the present moment does not exist. That it is always over or not quite there when you try to grasp it. Past and future, you think, are directly connected. But where, ladies and gentlemen, does the human being find itself? Do we perhaps not exist at all, in truth? (Restrained laughter, dying down quickly.) Are we not really here at all, because the suit of time does not have holes for arms and legs? And think: man does not only wait for the never-ending lunch break of our department secretaries to be over. (A single laugh, followed by whispering.) You, for example, are waiting now for the end of my lecture. After that you will wait in the canteen for your lunch. During lunch you will wait for the start of the next lecture and during that lecture you will wait for your free time. Of course you wait the entire time for the weekend, and for the holidays. Waiting, ladies and gentlemen, consists of many layers. You are all waiting to pass your examinations, to finish your degrees, and to find jobs. You are waiting for better weather, happier times, and your one true love. We are all waiting, whether we want to or not, for death. We fill the layers of waiting time with all kinds of activities. Have you noticed something? (A long, artificially inflated pause.) Life consists of waiting; waiting is what we call “life.” Waiting is the present. Man’s relationship to time. Waiting sketches the silhouette of God on the wall. Waiting (Sebastian raises his voice at the end) is the stage of transition that we call our existence.
His lectures are popular. They give the students the impression that he has cracked the phenomenon, and that he will lead them out of their everyday ideas into a new understanding of time.
In truth, Sebastian has not even grasped his own typology of waiting. He has blithely overlooked an important category. It does not have much to do with time at all—at most, with the suspension of it. It is a waiting that is completely absorbed in itself and does not allow for any distractions: no watching TV or reading a book; no eating and no going to the toilet. This waiting consists of preventing reason from collapsing, and keeping the body from committing suicide. It is the waiting of one who is falling for an impact that does not come.
SEBASTIAN IS SITTING with his head tipped back against the sofa. His hands are lying on his thighs and his feet are shoulder-width apart. The body does not need a sense of equilibrium in this position. Even a dead man could maintain his balance. Through half-closed eyes he gazes at the upper half of a bookcase, the luxuriant tufts of a houseplant occupied with producing ten shoots a week, the top edge of one of the paintings that Maike has on loan from the artists in her gallery. Lots of red on a black background. He cannot remember the title of the painting. Even so, he is perfectly happy with what lies in his field of vision. Nothing is bothering him as his thoughts shuttle between two points to no avail. On one side, the conviction that continuing to obey instructions is the only right thing to do (no police, tell no-bo-dy). On the other side, the fear of endangering the life of his son through inaction. There is no room for other considerations. Not for asking how long it will take till they get in touch with him. Nor for the thought that he should at least be happy the police have not shown up: every passing minute gives him hope that he has managed to get away with the crude murder.
The sun has set; the air no longer smells of Liam alive somewhere. There is nothing to indicate that Sebastian’s waiting is not the start of a lifelong vigil. His beard is growing, and his fingernails and hair, too. It is dark for a long time; then it slowly grows light.
THE RUMBLING IN HIS STOMACH STOPS just before noon the next day. The stores of sugar and protein have been used up, and the body is setting to work on the fat reserves now. The pain in his back had become unbearable at some point and finally disappeared. Sebastian is no longer sitting on the sofa, but has become part of it. He has blurred at the edges and is now a permanent part of the room that is part of this building, which is in a town in a network of streets, train tracks, waterways, and flight paths that stretch all over the earth, which revolves around a sun, which is part of the Milky Way, and so forth. Sebastian is in a state between waking and sleeping, interrupted by moments of consciousness in which he knows that, regardless of what the future brings, he will never again be the person that he once knew. That he can never return to what his life used to be.