In Free Fall(44)

The sugar in the detective’s cup melted into the cooling liquid, forming a saturated solution. He had to stop stirring so that the doctor could pat him on the hand. On the table in front of him were the results of the MRI scan, photographs in tones of gray that Schilf found so attractive that he considered getting them framed. Glioblastoma multiforme sounded like a rare tree or a deformed insect, so he gave his subtenant a new name: ovum avis—bird’s egg. As the doctor was writing down the name of a specialist for the detective, Schilf rose and said farewell. He did not intend to return. And he would not go to the famous specialist. Anyone who regularly attends postmortem examinations does not expect much from having his own skull sawed open.


“ARE YOU STILL THERE? Can you hear me? Damn.”

Smiling, the detective shakes his head and stretches his spine until he hears a crack. Two rows behind him, someone is furiously pressing the keys of a mobile phone. The advent of the mobile has finally given human beings a means of expressing their metaphysical isolation and their deep-seated doubt about the existence of other life-forms. Can you hear me? Are you there? Who could claim with any certainty that the other person was really there and could hear you speaking? All sentient beings are necessarily solipsists and therefore occupied with ignoring that very fact throughout their lives, the detective thinks. He himself would have every reason to take his mobile phone out of his bag, dial the number to his own apartment, and wait to see if his new girlfriend picks up the phone—he still does not quite believe that she exists if she is not in front of him. Are you still there? He could ring himself or the bird’s egg in his head and ask the same question. If the doctor is right, Schilf has only a few weeks, at most a couple of months left of the rendezvous with the self that people generally call their existence. He would need this time for an investigation in which he himself would be the chief suspect. The connection between his new girlfriend and the bird’s egg had to be cleared up. Perhaps the time-machine murderer is an accomplice and the physics professor a valuable witness. The detective would also have to bridge larger gaps—to find out how the fragments of his life could make a whole. With some patience he would find a solution, one that at least he alone understood. After all, it is not every day that one is declared dead and then called the love of someone’s life within a few hours. Before he finally signs off, the only thing to be done, surely, is to make himself whole.

Somewhere in the growing distance, Julia rolls onto her other side and sighs in her sleep because the narrow room is slowly growing too warm for her. When Schilf thinks about her, about the soft-skinned being heavy with sleep in his bed, who quite naturally spends the day tidying his apartment and reading his books and glows with cheerfulness all the time like a puppy, his stomach contracts with a mixture of fear and happiness. He does not believe in the redeeming power of love, and therefore does not plan to connect his desire to live with the tingle in his stomach. Nevertheless, he does not want to die—so far he has gotten no further than this with his musings. The only thing certain is that Schilf and the detective must hurry at all costs if they still want anything in particular from each other.





[7]


AFTER CHANGING TRAINS IN KARLSRUHE, the detective decides to put his musings aside. From his bag he takes a leather pouch, and from this a matte-silver object no bigger than a pack of cards. His new girlfriend has given it to him. She thinks the game of kings suits him and that if someone were to write a book about him one day, he could be the chess-playing detective, just like Sherlock Holmes was the violin-playing detective. Schilf refrained from pointing out that Holmes was not really a detective and that the violin was not a game of strategy, and accepted the gift with thanks. When he presses the “on” button, the display lights up in shades of blue like a new day dawning. Schilf learned the rules of chess thirty years ago from a friend at school, without mustering any enthusiasm for the game. But he has hardly been able to put down the electronic game since he received it. This pleases Julia. She perches on the side of his armchair looking over his shoulder while he taps away at the blue screen, and her hair tickles him until he has lost and goes out for a meal with her.

The game that was interrupted the previous evening appears at the touch of a button. It is the detective’s turn, as always. The computer never needs more than a couple of seconds to make its move, but he takes half an hour over every one of his. It waits patiently for him. He is unable to work out the simplest algorithm in his head, so he ties himself into knots with his calculations until he finally makes an incredibly clumsy move after rallying himself to “just give it a go.” The gadget lets him make his own fateful mistakes, so at the end he is plagued by the feeling that he has not been beaten but has checkmated himself.