Juli Zeh - In Free Fall

He pours coffee, out of habit not making any unnecessary noise, and sits down at the table with the newspaper. For a moment he allows himself the illusion that it is Sunday morning, and that Maike and Liam are still asleep in bed while he has woken too early once again and is relishing the gift of two whole hours to himself. The smell of the bananas in the fruit bowl is intense, as though they were planning their return to South America. Sebastian just wants to sit there and read the paper until he hears the pitter-pat of Liam’s feet approaching in the hall. That would probably be the best, perhaps the only sensible way to get his son back—were he not lacking the last shred of belief. When a mayfly drowns in the coffee, he is almost distraught by its death until it occurs to him that these tiny flies are so similar and so numerous that they must surely be reincarnated, if only for practical reasons.

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.

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.