Christopher Kloeble: Almost Everything Very Fast

Fred claimed that his father — Albert’s grandfather Arkadiusz — had been a diver. A man with extraordinary lungs who had reconditioned subterranean canal systems, who had once dived to the floor of the Baltic Sea without aid of equipment, and who, back when Fred was barely larger than the belly in which he’d spent nine months, had been snatched away by a sudden rush of water and disappeared forever into the rambling network of sewer pipes beneath the town. It may have been true, or just a fantasy, but in any case it meant that someone always had to flush the toilet on Fred’s behalf, something he balked at even more than he did shaving: “My dad is traveling forever through the pipes — sometimes he’s in America, and sometimes he’s in Poland, and sometimes he’s here, too.”

Albert stood up, stepped into the bathroom, and plugged in the electric shaver, but when he turned around, Fred was gone. After hunting through the whole house, he finally found him out in the backyard, in the BMW 321. It was a vintage model from the late thirties that belonged to Fred, even though he didn’t have a driver’s license. He called it the Speedster. Its mint-green paint looked as if it had suffered a high-temperature pressure washing. Its tire treads hung in tatters. The sound of the horn was best described as whiny. The leather upholstery smelled — in Fred’s opinion — deliciously musty, just like it did between his toes. An empty flowerpot kept the passenger-side door from falling off its hinges.

Albert climbed in beside Fred, who was sitting at the wheel. His stubble gleamed in the late sunlight, and the encyclopedia lay in his lap. He had it open to D. D as in Death. With his index finger he pointed to the illustration of a tombstone in Carrara marble. “What color is that?”

“Dove-white?”

“Do they have swan-white, too?”

“Definitely.”

“Can I have one like that?”

“A swan-white tombstone?”

Fred nodded. “It has to be a very beautiful stone, Albert.”

“Done,” said Albert. “A swan-white tombstone for you.”

They sat silent for a moment while, outside, the noise of cars passing along the main street subsided, and they were blinded one final time by the sun before it plunged behind the moor. Fred looked dreamily at the picture of the tombstone.

“Everyone always says going dead is bad. I don’t believe it. I’m sure it’s completely different. I bet it’s great. Like a huge surprise. Actually, I’m looking forward to it. It would be even better if the two of us could go dead together, Albert. Only, I think that would be hard. Because I’m faster than you.”

“I’ll hurry,” Albert promised him, and immediately Fred beamed at him like a child — a child who had gotten on in years, with bags under his eyes, gray temples, and little creases around his mouth.

Then the smile slipped from Fred’s face: “Mama says all your Most Beloved Possessions go dead, someday.” The tone of his voice had changed, as if he’d just that moment remembered what dying actually meant.

“And what would that be, a Most Beloved Possession?” asked Albert.

Fred laughed, as if Albert had asked an unbelievably stupid question: “A Most Beloved Possession can be anything at all!”

“A father, for instance?”

“Sure! Or a car.”

“And what’s your Most Beloved Possession?”

Fred snorted and rolled his eyes. He stretched out one arm, opened the glove compartment, and drew out a dented tin box in which something rolled and rattled. While opening the scratched lid, Fred bent over the box, obstructing Albert’s view, as if he wanted to make sure that what he expected to find was still there. Then he held a chestnut-sized stone, which gleamed metallically in the evening light, under Albert’s nose. “Take it!”

To call the look on Fred’s face one of pride would have been an enormous understatement.

Albert weighed the Most Beloved Possession in his palm — it was astonishingly heavy, and resembled a wadded-up, petrified sheet of rich yellow paper. An absurd thought came to him, which Fred promptly uttered: “Gold.”

“Really?”

Fred whispered, “My Most Beloved Possession.”

Even though Albert nodded appreciatively and stuck out his lower lip, he was skeptical. The stone in his hand corresponded precisely to his idea of a gold nugget, and that immediately aroused his suspicion.

“Who did you get this from?” asked Albert, and handed the gold back to Fred.

Satisfied, Fred stowed the stone back in the tin box.

“I said, who did you get it from?”

Fred said, “It’s mine.”

“Did you steal it from somebody?”

“I never steal.”

“Was it always here? Why haven’t you shown it to me before?”

“When I’m dead, you can have it,” said Fred, and looked at him excitedly; the green of his eyes shimmered like the surface of a lake, one whose depth it’s impossible to gauge. “Then you’ll be rich.”

Albert returned his look, wishing once again that it was possible to ask Fred a simple question and receive a simple answer. A completely normal conversation, that’s what he wanted, one in which Fred didn’t sidle away from his questions. Most of all, he wished he could believe Fred, that he didn’t find himself doubting every last one of his statements.

“Hmm,” said Albert.

“Hmm,” said Fred.

At that precise moment, the neighbor’s rooster unleashed a wild cry. Fred grimaced and rolled up the driver’s-side window. “He never knows when to be quiet!”

Albert tapped on the stopped dashboard clock beside the speedometer. “It’s late,” he said. “The Sandman is making his rounds.”

Papaaa

That evening Albert couldn’t sleep. He lay there with his eyes fixed on a luminous, fingernail-sized, star-shaped sticker on the beam above the bed. When he was younger he’d looked at it every evening until his eyes shut; he’d found it comforting that this tiny light had shone for him, shone defiantly against the blackness of the country night.

From a drawer in the nightstand he drew a yellowing newspaper article. The second April edition of the Oberland Messenger from 1977. Right on the first page there was a report by one Frederick A. Driajes, a story that as a child Albert had read over and over again before falling asleep. It bore the title:

The Day the Bus Attacked the Bus Stop

On the day the bus attacked the bus stop, the rain was stronger than ever before. Every drop was separate! I never wait in the wooden house they built so that people don’t get wet. Inside there’s a big picture of a clown from the circus, whose name is Rusch. His eyes are black and shiny and you can see all of his teeth. I’d rather wait in the rain. That’s why I’ve got my poncho! The Königsdorf bus stop is right on the main street. Everyone who drives through Königsdorf drives past it. The cars are all different colors. But I only count the ones that are green, like my eyes. Once I counted almost fifty green cars — that’s almost more than fifty green cars! There’s also a sign there. Which says 479. Farther off, there’s the church’s bell tower. When it strikes twelve times, it’s twelve o’clock, and I go home for lunch. The 479, which arrives at 6:30, was the bus that attacked the bus stop. But that day it arrived at 6:15! The 479 certainly was driving two hundred miles per hour. Because I wait every day at the bus stop, I can calculate that easily. Even if I’ve never ridden on a bus before. I will never ride on a bus. After all, a bus can make you go dead.

Apart from me, Herr Strigl was there, too. Herr Strigl is a little man with a mustache. He used to work as a driving instructor. But he worked too fast, and now he has to take the bus. Frau Winkler was also waiting for the bus with her little baby. Mama says that Frau Winkler is ambrosial. When you see an ambrosial person, then it’s like you don’t see anything else. You can’t see anything else. And if you do see something else, it looks like nothing at all. And then, there was a man in an overcoat waiting for the bus, too. Mama doesn’t know him. I’ve always thought funny things about him. That he was like the spider in my room. I always imagine that it walks across my face while I’m asleep. It was like that with the man in the overcoat. I didn’t think he walked across my face while I was asleep, only that he was the kind of man who did things I didn’t like. He never smiled. He was always next to the picture of the clown, and he never talked.