Фолькер Кучер - The Silent Death

‘Will you look at that,’ Rath said. ‘I see you’re commandeering my people after work too.’

‘ Your people! If we belong to anyone, it’s Wilhelm Böhm, yourself included. I hope you’re looking forward to Monday. The boss is livid!’

‘I could never stand Mondays.’

‘Hey!’ Czerwinski gestured with his beer glass towards the dance floor. ‘Isn’t that Ritter over there?’

Rath didn’t respond.

‘It is, you know,’ Brenner said. ‘She makes a good Iltschi, doesn’t she?’

‘Iltschi’s the name of Winnetou’s horse, you idiot,’ Rath said.

Brenner wouldn’t be deterred. ‘She’s a hot number, that one. That arse! Tits a little small for my liking. I wonder how she is in bed.’

Rath felt the anger rising within him. It was all he could do to keep himself in check.

‘Apparently she let you have a go.’ Brenner was clearly determined to provoke him. ‘So, how was she? Did she take your dick in her mouth?’

Rath grabbed the fatty by the collar and his beer glass fell to the ground with a wet clatter, spraying beer and shards everywhere. ‘If you don’t shut your fucking mouth, I will have you.’ Rath’s face was millimetres away from Brenner’s.

‘You think you’re the only one that little tart’s blown?’

Rath channelled all his rage into a crisp blow to Brenner’s solar plexus. The detective in prisoner’s clothing bent double and Rath slammed him upright with a left hook. Czerwinski grabbed hold of his upper arm. Brenner was panting and cursing, bleeding from the nose and mouth. ‘Did you learn that from your gangster friends?’

People were staring. Some had even stopped dancing, among them the Cowboy and Indian.

Charly’s cute face was horrified. Hopefully she hadn’t recognised him.

‘It’s all right,’ he said to Czerwinski, tugging against his astonishingly firm grip. ‘It’s OK, Paul, let me go. I won’t hit him again.’

Czerwinski’s grip loosened, and Rath tore himself away, leaving the room without a backwards glance.

He has prepared everything, arranged the light, the film in the camera, laid out his tools, filled the syringe; everything is ready. As he regards the evidence of his careful preparation, he is assailed once more by a feeling of impotence, this feeling that causes his knees to buckle, to sense the void at the pit of his stomach; this strangely hollow feeling that he knows only from dreams, which allows him to glimpse his own core and – worse – realise it is empty.

It ought to have happened here.

It ought to have happened now.

If she were still alive.

The feeling of impotence remains and calls forth an image he thought he had long since cast to the bottom of the ocean, never to return to the surface. But now it emerges as he opens his eyes, spinning slowly, turning on its own axis, so that he can view it from all sides. Even with his eyes closed, he sees…

Even with his eyes closed, he sees Anna.

The contours of her face, her beautiful profile that is silhouetted against the bright window.

Her lips move softly, quietly.

It isn’t so bad, he hears her say.

Her hand moves to stroke him, and he recoils. Sits up. Turns away.

I love you, he hears. We’ll manage.

We won’t manage anything.

His first words after the failure.

We won’t manage anything.

He should have known. He had been hoping for a miracle, for love, for Anna whom he so endlessly desires. He underestimated the disease. It is stronger than everything else. He hasn’t vanquished it. How did he ever imagine he could? He will never vanquish it. The most he can do is forget about it for a while.

The disease has destroyed him, neutered him, he is nothing, a spirit wandering ceaselessly over the earth, a sexless spirit whom no one can set free.

We’ll manage, Anna says, we have time. Lots of time. I want to share my life with you.

Impossible, he says, I’m not normal. I’m not capable of being normal.

Normal? Who is? As doctors, we know that best of all.

There’s no point. I’ll never be able to be a real man. Never.

You’re a desirable man. Do you know how much our fellow students envy me? To say nothing of all the nurses who pine after you.

She laughs. Why is she laughing?

I’m a sham, an empty shell, I’m not a man.

She tries to take him in her arms, but he pushes her away.

Her cry as she bangs her head against the bedside table. Her hand that feels blood. Her disbelief, and the tears that flood her eyes.

He didn’t mean it, he never meant to hurt her, never, but he is incapable of going to her, of comforting her, of apologising; he sits there as if paralysed and just looks at her, until finally he averts his gaze.

He doesn’t see her dressing, just hears the door slam as she exits the room.

Her horrified expression, her eyes staring at the blood she has wiped from her forehead… It will be the last time he sees her.

He doesn’t return to university.

He never dates another woman.

A few days later he buys his first cinema.

He knows where he belongs now; the disease has shown him.

Paradise: a movie theatre in which a never-ending film is screening images from his dreams, complete with the voices and songs he hears in them. Sounding images that assuage his homesickness, which is really wanderlust, a yearning that has no purpose and knows no end.

The demons had returned, only he hadn’t recognised them at first.

He lay in bed, heart pounding, unsure of where he was until, slowly, familiar contours emerged from the darkness, the outline of his bedroom. The heavy curtains only let in a little light.

The demons had returned, but in a different guise. Even now, panting in bed with his forehead wet with sweat, staring at the ceiling, the visions were as clear as if they were on a screen. Everything had been different, but no less appalling for that.

A forest, its trees unusually tall and straight, their tops out of sight; the trunks covered in black moss and disappearing into a thick, white mist. The forest floor was lost in fog too, the trees rising from it only to become obscured again further up.

He wandered here looking for something, though he couldn’t remember what until, amidst the monotony of black trunks, he had suddenly come upon red spots of colour in a sea of black and white. Someone was standing there: a woman in a red coat.

He approached her as if magnetically drawn. Her back was turned, but it had to be Kathi. It was her coat.

‘Kathi,’ he said. ‘Good that I’ve found you at last. I need to talk to you.’

The woman turned slowly, as if struggling against a viscous mass. He saw the face but couldn’t recognise it; its contours were fuzzy, as if her features had been left behind in the gooey matter the air had become. He saw her as if through a layer of thick paste. Something dark opened. Her mouth. She spoke and he heard Kathi’s voice.

‘Baumgart,’ the woman said. ‘What are you doing here?’ It had to be Kathi. It wasn’t just her voice, but her figure under the coat, her breasts, her hips that were slightly too wide.

Rath tried to contradict her, to say his own name but couldn’t, nothing came out, not even a husky croak. Instead, his right arm moved. Rath saw the Kathi woman stare at his arm. He turned his head and saw the long knife in his right hand; tried to prevent the movement or at least divert it but couldn’t, even though his arm was moving as slowly as a film being shown at the wrong speed.

‘Let me go!’ Kathi cried, for it was indeed Kathi. Her face was becoming ever clearer. The thick air was dispersing and growing more transparent. ‘Help, please help!’