In Free Fall(84)

“Then you’ve understood what I am talking about.”

They hold each other’s gaze until Schilf looks away and takes his cigarillos out of his pocket. Oskar stretches across the table to give him a light, and stays in that position.

“Intelligent people,” he says, “often pour their despair into scientific formulae. In order to be happy, a man like Sebastian would need a second, a third, perhaps even a fourth world.”

“So that everything that is possible happens,” says Schilf.

Oskar’s features soften into a laugh again, and he runs his fingers through his hair.

“You really are good,” he says, letting himself sink back. “So you’ll understand why the idea of several contradictory things happening at the same time is very attractive to some people. And why it’s like a nightmare, too.”

He looks intently at the glowing tip of his cigarette, takes a final drag, and stubs it out in the ashtray. The stuffed crow has swung nearer. To Schilf, it looks like it is hanging directly over Oskar’s head.

“Thinking like that negates the validity of every experience,” Oskar continues. “It negates us.”

“Perhaps Sebastian has realized that now.” Schilf lets ash fall onto the carpet. “After the kidnapping, which he’s constantly talking about.”

The remains of a laugh play in the corners of Oskar’s mouth.

“Yes,” he says, “perhaps.”

“Sebastian and his family,” the detective says, “are an equation with one unknown. Someone has adjusted one of reality’s screws. It’s the right way to create a false picture. When a person deludes himself into thinking he is in charge, reality puts her fat arms on her hips and leers at him. On the contrary, a good lie is the truth plus one. Don’t you think?”

“To be honest, you’re talking rather confusedly.” Oskar’s eyes bore into Schilf’s face.

This time it is the detective who laughs.

“You may be right,” he says. “Do you know that your friend doesn’t really hold to the Many-Worlds Interpretation at all, but is pursuing advanced theories on the nature of time?”

“Did he tell you that?”

Schilf nods.

“That doesn’t matter,” Oskar says, suddenly brusque. “He’s looking for new ways to escape himself.”

They are silent until the final echoes of the last sentence die away. Schilf’s body fills the corner of the sofa like a soft mass that would feel comfortable in any given position, while Oskar sits with his legs stretched out before him, looking ahead with hooded eyes.

Finally the detective speaks. “Do you love Sebastian?” he asks.

“A good question,” Oskar says, still sitting in the same position.

There is a pause, and Schilf stands up. With his cigarillo in the corner of his mouth, he walks over to the dormer window, where for a moment the view takes his breath away. The steps to Oskar’s apartment have taken him right up to the sky. From this bird’s-eye view, the city is a circuit board of twinkling lights. Rows of diodes connect up into a network of communicating lines, like letters of the alphabet.

Blackmail, more or less, the detective thinks. Perhaps Sebastian has jumped over the wall a second time by murdering Dabbelink. Perhaps he had secretly hoped to find Oskar still waiting behind the wall, but was shocked to the core to find that he was right. And now he is escaping into nowhere.

Since the fracture that separated the detective from himself, he has wondered often whether people are not somehow responsible for every conceivable twist of their own fate. Whether it isn’t that people only ever blackmail themselves.

He recognizes the glowing patches of the Place de Cornavin, Place de Montbrillant, and Place Reculet, the dark ribbon of the Rhône, the colorful twinkling lights of the Quai du Mont-Blanc, and the devouring darkness of Lake Geneva beyond it. As if on cue, the pain starts nagging between his eyes again. It grows hot and bright and draws the city closer to him, bathing it in a glittering light.

Three people, tiny as toy figures, are walking across a pier toward the Jet d’Eau. Two of them are close together, probably arm in arm. The third, smaller person is running ahead like an excited dog. All three have blond hair. The detective sees them in unusually sharp detail in spite of the distance; he can just see their outstretched index fingers, and the happy faces turned up toward the sky to take in the whole height of the white gleam at the end of the pier. The tower of water splits the sun into all the colors of the rainbow.

“Look, Daddy! The lake is throwing itself up into the air!”

The spray soaks their clothes. It is warm.