Juli Zeh - In Free Fall

“She thinks I’m a murderer,” he says.

“Not without cause, if I’ve understood everything correctly.”

“It would be simpler to tell her the truth if she wouldn’t anticipate the result.”

“Aren’t you expecting a bit much?”

“Oskar.” As Sebastian presses his hands over his eyes, he feels the effect of the chili again. “She won’t stand by me. I’ll lose her, and Liam, too.”

Oskar stubs out his cigarette and lights another one; this is faster than he normally smokes.

“You won’t give up,” he says.

“What’s absurd is that I feel as if I’ve staged the whole thing myself. Not in practice, but in theory.”

“Are you talking about your Many-Worlds Interpretation?”

“If something can happen and not happen at the same time in a microworld, the same thing must be possible in a macrocosmos, too. Haven’t I always said that?”

“Let’s put it this way: you cultivated a somewhat casual approach to the difficulties of moving from quantum mechanics to classical physics.”

Sebastian wipes his streaming eyes with his cuffs.

“Liam was kidnapped and also not kidnapped at the same time. Since then, everything has lost its validity. I now live in a one-man universe. Its name is guilt.”

The coffee machine behind the bar hisses. Someone laughs politely. The pheasant’s neck still hangs over the side of the bowl.

“Pull yourself together,” Oskar says. “You’re talking nonsense.”

“No I’m not!” Sebastian turns his red-rimmed eyes to look his friend full in the face. “If I hadn’t been so obsessed with getting a few days of uninterrupted work done, I would never have taken Liam to scout camp. That’s causality. You like causality, don’t you?”

“To hell with it,” Oskar says.

“I’d left the Many Worlds behind me long ago.” Sebastian’s voice grows louder and more urgent. “I wanted to use physics to prove that time is nothing more than a function of human perception. I wanted to pull the rug out from under your feet.”

Oskar catches the finger Sebastian is pointing at him and places it back on the table.

“Sooner or later,” Sebastian says, “you will prove through quantization that time and space share most of the properties of matter. That will be the next turning point after Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein. You no longer know the craving to achieve something groundbreaking. Inside that craving lies guilt.”

His glass clinks hard against Oskar’s and they drink, holding each other’s gaze.

“Even if that were true,” Oskar says, “my achievement would have been only to add to the endless series of errors that we call human history. That’s all. You know nothing of guilt.”

“I’m going to put it to you simply,” Sebastian says. “You have chosen physics and you are loyal to it. I chose two people, and I have not been loyal to them.”

Oskar blows smoke across the table.

“You’ve really changed. I quite like it.”

“Oskar, is there anything more important to you than quantum physics?” Sebastian asks.

The armrests creak as Oskar jolts back in his chair with a laugh that changes his face completely. Sebastian has witnessed this laugh a thousand times, but it still astounds him. The corners of his own mouth turn up, and they are suddenly smiling at each other, sitting wrapped in a cocoon of warmth and mellow light that the outside world cannot touch. The moment passes as quickly as it came.

“Are you really sitting there asking me that in all seriousness?”

Sebastian examines his empty glass intently and pushes it aside.

“Let me tell you a story,” Oskar says. “The day after the kidnapping you called me on the phone. After work, I drove straight to Freiburg, and got there very late. We sat up talking the whole night. I drove back to Geneva at about six in the morning and turned up at the institute more or less on time.”

Sebastian’s mouth is hanging open slightly.

“You’re mad,” he says.

“And you should start protecting yourself.”

“In my statement, it says that I was alone in the apartment the whole time after Liam disappeared.”

“Maik wasn’t supposed to find out that you called on me for support instead of her.”

“What were you really doing that night?”

“Nothing that anyone I met would remember.”

Sebastian is gripping the edge of the table with his hands. The whiskey is going to his head and he feels as if his skull is getting ready to detach itself from his shoulders.

He pauses, then says, “I don’t want an alibi.”

“ Bien ,” Oskar says. “How about another story.” He looks at his reflection in the mirror again and smooths his hair. His hands are trembling. “We’re in Switzerland. That gives us a couple of days. I can get my affairs in order within two weeks.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This,” Oskar says, knocking on the table, “is not the only continent on this earth.”

“You want us to run away? Go into hiding? Live with the Bedouin?”

“Not exactly.” Oskar leans forward. “There are research centers in China. And in South America. At my level, certain irregularities will be mere trifles. We would be welcomed with open arms.”

It takes Sebastian a few seconds to register the meaning of these words. He lets go of the table, shifts in his seat, tries to prop himself up on one elbow, and sits still again.

“What about Liam?” he asks.

“We’ll take him with us. As far as work goes, you’ll have to stay in the background for a bit. You’d have time for him.”

“You’re not serious,” Sebastian whispers.

“Yes I am,” Oskar says. “For you, the last few years have been all about your wife. About your family. About physics. For me…” He places his cigarette packet and his lighter in parallel before he continues. “It was only ever about us.”

Their knees touch under the table. Oskar reaches out with his hands and pulls Sebastian’s head toward him until they are bent over the table, forehead to forehead, breathing the same air. Sebastian leans forward with his whole weight, concentrates on the warm point where their heads meet, and wishes he could flee his own body through this point and find refuge under the crown of his friend.

Of course. It would work. It even had a certain logic to it. Running away, not the first time, but the last. In retrospect, it would give the long series of small escapes a goal and a cause. Everything would acquire an order, even start to make sense. He would be no longer just the ball in the game, but the master of his own misfortune. This time he would kidnap Liam himself and acknowledge what he has long been: a criminal. The passage of time would help him to regard the exceptional situation as normal.

And normality as the past, Sebastian thinks.

Only when their foreheads crack painfully together, because he is shaking with violent sobs, does Sebastian notice that he is crying.

“You know I have always…”

“Let’s not talk about it,” Oskar says. “This isn’t a good moment.”

“When I look at Liam…”

He finds it hard to speak. He is clasping his friend around the neck, holding tight to keep himself from collapsing onto the table.

“When I look at Liam,” he says, “it’s impossible to regret anything.”

“I can’t regret anything either,” Oskar says. “The past is a stingy beast. It doesn’t relinquish anything, especially not decisions.”

Oskar takes a handkerchief out of his pocket. He dries Sebastian’s eyes and cheeks before pushing him away and sitting him upright again.

“You’ve had a few drinks,” he says. “Are you driving back anyway?”

Sebastian nods.