In Free Fall(72)

When a rowdy bunch of nocturnal revelers approach, bound by some giant embrace into a single being, and shout at him in German, asking where to find the best nightclub, he pushes himself away from the wall and disappears into the darkness.

The blue circle of neon lights that serves as the sign for Le Cercle Est Rond is not complete. One of the lights broke years ago, so the circle is open on one side. The bins shoved into the middle of the pavement, and several stray cats, keep the tourists away; since the red-light district was recommended as an insider’s tip in several travel guides, Oskar has been talking about looking for a new apartment. He often says that those who go to the Cercle are the last people left on the planet who go out in order not to be recognized.

The room is lit by candles jammed into empty bottles, and the light sketches the souls of people and objects in flickering shadows on the walls. The tables seem to be more for beer-drinking card players than for the well-dressed men who sit at them in twos or threes, drinking red wine. The men speak in low voices and move cautiously, as if they are trying not to frighten each other.

Sebastian pushes aside the leather curtain at the entrance. The bartender, who is washing glasses under the only electric light in the room, does not even acknowledge him with a glance, though they have known each other for a long time. Oskar is leaning back against the bar, and a lanky young man wearing round-rimmed spectacles is standing in front of him, talking eagerly in the direction of his own feet. It is not possible to tell if Oskar is listening to him as he stands there with his legs crossed and his elbows bent, motionless. His hands are dangling beside him in an attitude of courtesy mingled with lordliness, as if he were allowing a beringed finger to be kissed. In this position, he looks like he could be leaning against a tree trunk in a forest clearing in the morning mist, his white shirt open at the collar, holding a pistol in his hands.

He allows himself little more than an arch of the eyebrows when he notices Sebastian. But Sebastian can see that his friend is shaken to the core. He almost expects Oskar to clutch his hands to his heart and sink to his knees. He has known this man for half a lifetime, and he has never seen him so shaken.

The bespectacled young man has not noticed that anything has changed. His eyes dart here and there behind his glasses as he is speaking, and when he finally raises his head because he has not received a reply to a question, his age nudges eighteen. Sebastian knows these young geniuses who come from afar to discuss the theory of the quantization of time with its renowned originator. In a pub in Geneva, they meet a man who adorns his intellect not with white hair and a face furrowed by thought, but with a classically handsome profile and a smile proclaiming the right to ownership. Oskar puts his mouth close to the young man’s ear and whispers something. The boy immediately raises his hand and walks off toward the restroom.

Within seconds, they are standing opposite each other. It is Oskar who stretches his hand out first. No one can keep himself afloat day after day all on his own. The mingling of their scents is an invisible home. It houses the pain they feel about the space they share, a space that knows only biting cold and blistering heat, but not the conditions for human survival.

Oskar takes the “Reserved” placard off the table in the corner and sits Sebastian down facing a kitsch reproduction of a still life. It portrays a pheasant in its dress of feathers, its neck hanging broken over the edge of a bowl. Sitting opposite Sebastian, Oskar has a view of the whole room. Unbidden, the barman brings over two glasses and a bottle of whiskey that is as old as the bespectacled youth who has left the Cercle after his visit to the restroom. They clink glasses and drink. Oskar is outwardly calm. He does not tap his feet, or pick fluff off his suit trousers. He looks at Sebastian intently.

Sebastian is tracing the grain of the table with a finger, concentrating on not counting the years, not asking how many times he has sat in the Cercle filled with a delicate mixture of happiness and fear. Seen from here, his normal life seems like the memory of a film in which he, Maike, and Liam play the touching lead roles. Every time he has left Freiburg on the weekend for a supposed conference, Oskar has been waiting for him with eyebrows raised—mocking and acerbic, but not angry.

Perhaps Oskar’s supreme quality is not his intelligence, thinks Sebastian, but his patience, which has the force of a natural law. “How time flies” is never a statement for Oskar, always a question.

And perhaps, Sebastian thinks, Maike and Liam’s supreme quality is their boundless trust, while his own is the ability to abuse this trust without scruple. “Can that really be true?” is never a question for Sebastian, but always a matter of physics.