Clemens Meyer: All the Lights

At some point we turned back to the shelves. ‘Now I know,’ she said. Then we put the last of the pizza cartons in the trolley.

When I got to work the next day I went straight to the beverages aisles. Bruno always came a bit earlier to fetch the forklift from the recharging station, but I couldn’t find either him or the forklift.

There were more customers in the aisles than usual for the time of day. Perhaps there were a couple of good special offers on, and sometimes there are just days when people want to go shopping; I’ve never understood why that is. And I walked along the aisles; perhaps Bruno had something to do in another section, lending a hand, but actually they always gave me that kind of job, and then I saw the boss of ‘Shelf-filling/Night’. He was leaning against the whisky shelf, the customers passing right by him, but he seemed not to notice them at all as he stared at the tiled floor. I went up to him.

‘Hi boss,’ I said, ‘I’m looking for Bruno.’

He looked up and stared at me in surprise. ‘Bruno?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m on Beverages today, aren’t I?

‘You’ll have plenty to do on Beverages for a while — Bruno’s not coming back.’ He gazed past me and I suddenly knew Bruno was dead. I felt like I had to vomit, and I leant against the shelf next to the boss. ‘He just went and hanged himself. That stupid bastard went and hanged himself.’ I felt a fist in my stomach; it wouldn’t let me go.

‘No one knows anything. I’ve known him for more than ten years. No one knows anything. Get your forklift and take care of the beverages.’

‘OK, Dieter,’ I said. I had trouble walking straight, and I kept thinking, ‘Bruno’s dead. Bruno’s hanged himself.’

I met all sorts of workmates as I wandered down the aisles and then realised I had to go to the recharging station. They seemed to know already and we just nodded at each other, some of them looking at me as if they wanted to talk about it with me, but I kept walking until I was at his forklift. I pulled the big charging cable out of the socket. I’d forgotten to switch the power off first; that was pretty dangerous, all it took was a touch of the contacts. I held onto the forklift and gave a quiet laugh: ‘One down’s enough for now!’ I got in, put the key in the ignition, and then I drove back to the aisles.

There was that smell, of animals and stables. His smell was still in the little cab, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if the seat had still been warm. I drove the forklift to Beverages and worked with his smell in my nostrils all night long.

And that smell again, country air, it was fertilising time. I stood on the narrow road leading to the graveyard — I could see it ahead, a little gate, the roof of the chapel — then I turned around and walked back down the road. The funeral would be starting any minute; there were a few workmates there and the bosses, and I’d brought flowers especially, but I walked back through the little village a couple of bus stops outside of town.

I stopped outside his house. It wasn’t far from the bus stop; he’d described it to me a few times. It was a perfectly normal two-storey detached house, like you’d find in lots of villages, not one of those old half-timbered ones or anything. The road was empty and I climbed over the fence. Maybe the gate wasn’t even locked, that’s probably normal in the kind of villages where everybody knows everybody, but I kind of felt inhibited about going into his place through the gate. I walked around the house. A stable, a couple of sheds, chickens pecking away at the ground, further back I saw two cows in a fenced-in field. At first I wanted to go in the stable, but then I saw the bench. It was against the back wall of one of the sheds. I went over to it. I sat down and looked out at the fields. There was a tractor with a trailer in one of them. It seemed not to be moving, and I could only tell by the couple of trees at the edge of the field that someone was driving it. A couple of birds flapped up around it. Why should I go into the stable? I didn’t know which beam it was anyway. I watched the tractor.

‘Raise the fork right to the top,’ said Marion.

‘Why?’

‘Hey come on, just do it. Bruno showed me it. I don’t know, I like it.’ I raised the empty fork as high as it would go. The forklift made its usual sounds, a humming and a metallic pling, then I let go of the lever. I tipped my head back and looked up at the fork, still swaying slightly. ‘And now?’

‘Let it down again, but really slowly. And then keep quiet.’

I moved the lever a tiny bit, and the carriage with the fork lowered itself down again slowly. ‘And now? I don’t understand.’

‘You have to be quiet. Really quiet. That sound, can you hear it, it’s like the sea.’

And she was right; I heard it now too and I was surprised I’d never noticed it before. The fork lowered with a hissing and whooshing sound from the air expelled from the hydraulics, and it really did sound like the wash of waves in the sea. The fork came lower; I sat in the forklift, my head slightly inclined. She stood right next to me, one hand on the control panel. ‘Can you hear it?’ she whispered, and I nodded. Then we listened in silence.

She stands up and walks across the room. From one wall to the other. She raises both fists, looking at the white wraps on her hands. A man signed them, that was … minutes, hours ago? She stops at the wall and throws a couple of left jabs. She keeps her right hand up at her chin and punches left, left, left again. ‘Jab,’ says the old man, ‘keep those jabs coming, don’t show her your right hand too soon.’ She watches her shadow on the wall, she bobs and weaves and moves her torso, jabs left, left, and then a punch with the right, left-right, left-right, and then a right without the jab, ‘Don’t show her your right hand too soon,’ she twists her body into the punch, puts her weight behind it and exhales loudly. She pulls both fists up in front of her face and takes a careful look over her shoulder. The room is empty. She holds her fists in front of her face and dances back from the wall and wonders where the old man is. Sent him out myself, she thinks, that was … minutes, hours ago? She sent him out, sent her brother out too and the trainer, ‘I wanna be alone.’

Still got time, she thinks and goes over to the bench, sits down and leans against the wall. She shifts, feeling the rough concrete through her shirt.

She raises both fists and looks at the white wraps on her hands. The old man put them on for her, holding her arm really carefully, as if her hand were injured. ‘Too tight?’ he asks. ‘No, no,’ she says, moving her fingers. Two men are standing next to the old man, watching every move, and she looks up at them for a moment and then at her hands and the old man’s hands; they’re trembling a tiny bit, or is that her hands? But then they’re still again, and one of the men signs on the white crepe. ‘OK,’ says the other man, looking down at her and raising the corners of his mouth as if he were smiling, and she stares him in the eye until he looks away and turns towards the door. She feels the old man’s hand on the back of her neck and watches the men as they leave the room. You go to her, she thinks, and tell her … tell her I’m weak, tell her there’s no way I can beat her.

Her brother is standing by the door and closes it behind the men. ‘Don’t show her your right hand too soon,’ the old man whispers directly by her ear, and she nods and she’s perfectly calm.

She gets up and begins to run across the empty room again. She stops in front of the big mirror. The glass is flecked with streaks and dots, sweat and water, and in the middle there’s a large crack. She smiles; before her second professional fight she threw a right straight at the mirror, and then, twenty or thirty minutes later, her right fist broke the nose of the girl standing slightly fearful before her — why don’t you move? why don’t you dodge? — she could feel it through her glove, and the fearful girl went down on the floor, crouching down more than falling, and let the referee count her out as the blood seeped over her lips. When was that, a year and a half ago, two years ago? She sees herself smiling in the mirror, she moves her torso to and fro, and when her face touches the crack in the mirror her smile is gone.