Juli Zeh - In Free Fall

When Schilf changes the focus of his gaze, the glass covering the dark background reflects his face. He feels as if this picture is the only window through which he can look out of this room into the world.

“Does your father tell you about his work?”

“He thinks it’s good that I don’t understand everything yet, because explaining things helps him to think.”

“And you’re interested in what he does?”

“I research time as well. I often used to lie in bed and try to catch hold of a second. I lay in wait and then suddenly whispered ‘ Now ,’ but the second was either not there yet or already over. Now, of course, I know that time is quite different. And that they”—he points at the alarm clock ticking next to his bed—“are all lying.”

“And what is time?”

Liam turns and rustles in his desk drawer with unexpectedly lively movements until he has found a piece of paper and a pen. Schilf bends over him so that he can see better, smells the child-smell of the unfamiliar head, and starts breathing through his mouth. Liam draws two red circles a hand’s breadth apart.

“What’s that?” he asks.

“No idea,” Schilf says.

Liam taps his pen on the paper impatiently.

“Do they have anything to do with each other?”

“They look similar. I can’t say anything more.”

“Very good. And now?”

He puts the tip of his little finger down in one circle and his thumb in the other circle.

“Now they are connected,” the detective says.

“Just imagine that you and I are the circles and that the piece of paper is a three-dimensional space, and that my hand has come from an unknown, higher dimension.”

“You’re talking about coincidence,” Schilf says.

“No,” Liam says indignantly. “I’m talking about the fourth dimension. You asked about time, after all.”

“Your hand is a coincidence to the circles. Or a miracle.”

Liam thinks about this.

“Yes, possibly.”

“Did you think all that up yourself?”

“Almost. My father helped a little. He always says he is basically trying to solve quite simple puzzles.”

“What a pity that the two of us,” Schilf says, tapping himself then Liam on the forehead, “are only small red circles on a flat surface.”

Liam’s laugh does not yet have lines to flow along, but must carve out new paths on his face—yet it emphasizes his strong resemblance to Sebastian. He pushes both hands through his hair exactly like his father does. His forearms do not have a single mosquito bite on them.

“When you were little,” he asks, “did you like researching things, too?”

“Yes,” Schilf says. “I liked talking to insects.”

“But that’s got nothing to do with physics.”

“I used to stand next to the rain barrel for hours, saving bees that had fallen. I used to think about what that meant to the bees.”

“Did you want to be a vet?”

“For the bees, my hand was fate. And a kind of fourth dimension.”

“You’re a freak,” Liam says.

The detective tweaks the boy’s nose playfully, and the laugh they share comes easily this time. Schilf goes to the door. He feels light-hearted.

“Will you remember your promise?” Liam says.

“Do you know Oskar?”

“Yes, Oskar’s cool.”

“Do you think I should visit him?”

“Definitely.”

The detective raises a hand in farewell and Liam waves back.

Sebastian is still out in the hall. He hasn’t moved at all. He is overcome with confusion after hearing murmuring voices and laughter coming from Liam’s room. Schilf walks past him on his way to the front door.

“Good-bye,” the detective says and then repeats, “You’ve been very helpful.”

As Schilf shambles down the stairs to the street, tiles start coming off the roof above him. Beams and rafters and joists fly apart in all directions. The rapid crumbling of the walls runs along the top of the whole building like stitches unraveling in a sweater. The foundation disappears and the earth closes over. A pencil sucks up the lines of an architectural drawing until the piece of paper is blank. The idea of a four-story building in the Wilhelminian style evaporates into mist in the head of the architect. Somewhere in the distance, a cockatoo flies up into the air with a shrill cry of warning.

“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT NOW?”

“Yes. The heat. Thank you for the water.”

The detective has spent a lot of time recently telling people how he is feeling and thanking them for something or other. It is probably part of getting old, like waking up early.

The young woman bending over him has hair dyed a synthetic shade of red, and reminds Schilf of a film he saw some years ago, in which a girl is running all the time. He means to preface his next question with a gallant gesture, but it turns into a clumsy wave because of the way he is lying on the floor.

“Can you tell me where I am, please?”

“In Freiburg,” the young woman says. “Or were you asking about the name of the planet? Or the galaxy?”

Schilf tries to laugh but stops immediately, because his brain is sloshing around in hot fluid.

“I’m familiar with the constellations. What kind of shop is this?”

“This is the Gallery of Modern Art.”

“Very good. That’s where I was heading.”

“That’s probably why you walked in the door.”

“Very likely. Is Maike here?”

“She’s in the courtyard with the birds. Do you know her?”

“I’m a friend of her husband.”

Schilf allows the young woman to help him up, even though he feels quite steady on his feet by now. Her hair smells of mango, and the fair-skinned arm that she offers him smells of coconut. They pass affronted paintings, bad-tempered sculptures, and a few hostile installations; they get to the back door and linger at the threshold. Schilf feels as if he is looking into a piece of paradise. The walls of the small courtyard are covered in moss, and beams of light slant down through the leaves of an overhanging chestnut tree. The sunlight conjures up the familiar metallic shimmer on the head of the woman who is leaning over the hatch of a large aviary, just as she bent over to unlock her bicycle earlier. The caws of the parrots turn the courtyard into an exotic place, a bit of outback hidden in the midst of Freiburg’s town center.

“Maike, you have a visitor.”

Maike shakes seeds from a box into an earthenware bowl and distributes peanuts on little dishes as if she has heard nothing. Three of the yellow-faced birds flutter to the bottom of the cage and watch her. When she has finished feeding them, she stands straight.

The detective thought he was prepared for anything, but he is nevertheless shocked. Maike’s eyes are expressionless, her lips pressed together. Her face is stretched over her cheekbones like a mask that has grown too small. Her obvious reluctance to engage in conversation allows the detective a few seconds in which to feel moved. There is a shadow over her bright surface, and it seems to Schilf as if it has the shape of a tall man. Suddenly he wants to do everything possible to protect Maike. He wants to sacrifice himself in order to divert catastrophe from her, even though he has come here as catastrophe’s master of ceremonies. Maike stands stiff as a post in front of him—she is nothing more than the wife of a witness, a mere accessory to a case. Not for the first time, Schilf curses his job. The investigator does his work behind a glass wall, he frequently says in his lectures at the police college, always behind a glass wall. Other people’s lives are like his own past to him: he can look at them, but not enter them, and it is always too late to change things.