Thomas Glavinic: Night Work

Or so Jonas had thought. But it wouldn’t come to that, not now. The fuel rods would continue to emit radiation until it had all dispersed, yet silence would have reigned on the planet for no longer than the time it took to click your fingers.

He was falling ever more slowly. His body seemed to be a part of what lay ahead, just as he was becoming a part of that moment and the owner of the uproar in and around himself.

People had spoken of heaven and hell, heaven being reserved for the good and hell for the bad. Good and evil existed on the earth, it was true. Perhaps those people had been right, perhaps heaven and hell did exist. But you didn’t have to play the harp or be roasted on a spit by creatures with horns. Heaven and hell, as he had conceived of them, were subjective forms of expression for the past self. Anyone who had come to terms with himself and the world would feel better and find peace in that long, long moment of death: that was heaven. Anyone spiritually impure would consume himself with fire: that was hell.

He could see everything so clearly from up here.

Happiness was a summer’s day in childhood, when the grown-ups were watching the World Cup on TV and water wings were being handed out at the swimming baths. When it was hot, and there were ice creams and lemonade, shouts and laughter.

Happiness was a winter’s day on which you should have been at school but were on board the night train to Italy with your parents. Snow and mist and an imposing railway station, a comic book and a cosy compartment. Cold outside, warm within.

He saw a mirror flying towards him. He saw himself. He went into himself.

He saw the Secession building wrapped in sticky tape, the Danube Tower, the Big Wheel. He saw the bed in the middle of Heldenplatz, infinitesimally small. He saw his TV-set sculpture in the Belvedere Gardens, barely visible.

Happiness was also being pushed along in your pram as a little child. Watching the grown-ups, listening to their voices and marvelling at so many new things. Being greeted and smiled at by unfamiliar faces. Sitting there and riding along at the same time. Clutching something sweet in your hand and feeling the warmth of the sun on your legs. And, possibly, meeting another pram, a little girl with curls, being wheeled past each other and waving in the knowledge that she was the one, she was the one, the one you would come to love.