Thomas Glavinic: Night Work

He drove across the border to Freilassing.

No one there.

*

No one.

*

Almost unable to believe it, Jonas drove round the village for an hour. He had secretly assumed that he would come across some human activity on German soil. He’d expected to see soldiers. Possibly tents and refugees — even, perhaps, tanks or people in protective clothing. Civilisation, anyway.

He turned off the engine. Staring at the sign that indicated the route to the motorway for Munich, he drummed on the steering wheel with his fingertips.

How far should he drive?

Using his mobile, he dialled the number of a furniture manufacturer based near Cologne. The phone rang three times, four, five. An answerphone cut in.

*

It was dark by the time he parked in front of Salzburg’s Marriott Hotel. He tossed the wrench into his bag and stuck the knife in his belt. Locking the car, he peered in all directions and listened. Not a sound. There had to be some flowering shrubs nearby. He could smell their scent but didn’t recognise it.

He stumbled through the revolving door and into the lobby. It was so dark inside he caught his foot in the thick carpet and knocked over an ashtray on a stand.

A shaded lamp was burning on the reception desk. He put his bag down, drew the knife and peered round the gloomy lobby. Without looking, he groped for the main light switch with his free hand.

He blinked.

Once his eyes got used to the light he noticed the stereo system housed in a cabinet beside a wide-screen TV. An empty CD sleeve was lying on the deck. Mozart, of course. He pressed play. It was a while before the first notes rang out.

He took a closer look at the stereo. It was a more expensive system than he himself could ever have afforded, complete with every conceivable extra. The CDs were automatically cleaned. There was also a repeat button. He pressed it and turned up the volume until it made him wince.

He wrote on a slip of paper: Someone’s here. 6 July . He secured it in a conspicuous position beside the entrance, then wedged the side door open with an armchair so the music could be heard in the street.

He took a random assortment of keys from behind the reception desk, feeling as if the loudspeakers’ output would flatten him at any moment. He had never heard anything like it from an ordinary home stereo rig. His heart thudded as if he’d been running, and he felt slightly sick. He was glad when a dozen keys and their tags were jingling in his pocket and he could escape the din.

Using the stairs because he didn’t trust the lift, he found a place to sleep on the top floor. It was a suite of three interconnecting rooms and a spacious tiled bathroom with underfloor heating. The music from the lobby was inaudible with the door shut. If he opened it, however, he could tell when the various sections of the orchestra came in.

He locked himself in and ran a bath.

While waiting for the bathtub to fill he turned on the TV. He dialled Marie’s mobile again and again, and tried her sister’s number for the hundredth time.

He toured the suite, his feet sinking into its oriental carpets. The floorboards beneath them creaked faintly. Once, he probably wouldn’t have noticed this, but the unnatural silence of recent days had honed his hearing to such an extent that the slightest sound made him jump.

A bottle of champagne was chilling in the minibar. Although it didn’t seem appropriate, he stretched out in the tub with a glass in his hand. He took a sip and shut his eyes. There was a smell of bath salts and essential oils. Foam hissed and crackled around him.

*

Next morning he found his shoes not only one on top of the other but face to face. It reminded him of the way Marie sometimes arranged their mobiles: as if exchanging an armless embrace.

Jonas felt pretty sure he hadn’t left his shoes like that.

He checked the door. Securely locked.

He regretted not having taken some bread or rolls from the deep-freeze in the hotel kitchen the night before. He found a couple of kiwi fruits. He scooped out their flesh and ate it as he stood by the fruit shelf in the kitchen.

The stereo system was still blasting out through the entire building. Wincing, he hurried to reception. He scribbled his name and mobile number on a slip of paper, together with a request that anyone who found it should call him. This he stuck to the reception desk. Before leaving the hotel he stocked up with paper and sticky tape.

Salzburg, Marriott, 7 July , he wrote on the postcard he dropped in the letterbox outside.

*

At midday he drove through deserted Villach, at half past he sounded his horn in front of Klagenfurt’s celebrated Dragon Statue. In both places he wrote postcards and left slips of paper bearing his phone number. He didn’t stop to search any buildings.

Several times he pulled up in the middle of large squares where he could get out and stretch his legs in safety, without having to watch his back. He called out. Listened. Stared at the ground.

Thanks to his powerful car and the fact that he didn’t have to worry about oncoming traffic, he crossed the Loibl Pass and reached the frontier within a few minutes. The frontier post was deserted, the barrier raised.

He searched the offices and dialled some numbers stored in their phones. Nobody answered. He left a message there too and did the same at the Slovenian frontier post a few hundred metres further on. He filled his tank, stocked up with mineral water and sausage, swallowed an aspirin.

It took him less than half an hour to cover the eighty kilometres to Ljubljana. The place was deserted. So were Domzale, Celje, Slovenska Bistrica and Maribor.

He left messages in English and German everywhere. Posted cards with Slovenian stamps on them. Dialled stored numbers at service stations. Tried the internal communications network at toll gates. Set off alarms and waited a minute or two. Left business cards behind because he’d run out of notepaper from the Marriott.

Just short of the Slovenian — Hungarian border he passed an overturned truck. He braked so sharply he almost lost control of the car. The cab of the truck had come to rest on its side. He had to clamber on top to open the driver’s door. The cab was empty.

He examined the nearby area. Skid marks could be seen. The crash barrier was damaged and part of the load — building materials — was lying in the ditch. Everything pointed to a normal accident.

*

Jonas didn’t find a soul in Hungary either.

He drove to Zalaegerszeg. From there he took the expressway to Austria and crossed the frontier at Heiligenkreuz. Absurdly, he felt he was back home.

The night before he’d left a matchbox propped against the front door the way he’d seen people do it in films. It was still there when he checked in the morning. In exactly the same spot.

Except that the side with the eagle was facing upwards, not the one with the flag.

The door was locked. It was a deadlock. No one could have got in without a duplicate key. Besides, the matchbox was still propped against the door. No one had been there. No one. It was impossible.

But how to account for the matchbox?

*

When he made himself some coffee the milk curdled. He hurled the cup at the wall. It smashed, leaving brown splashes on the wallpaper.

Cautiously, he put the milk bottle to his nose. He winced and pulled a face, then dumped it in the waste bin and poured himself another cup.

He stormed downstairs with the cup in his hand, spilling half its contents. He put it down on the grimy pavement outside the supermarket and kicked the automatic door a couple of times. When it refused to open he picked up a bicycle and flung it at the glass. A few scratches, nothing more.