Sorry

She brings you a glass of mineral water and sets it down on the coffee table next to the photograph. Two boys on a bicycle. They’re grinning, they’re so young that it hurts.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she says and leans forward to brush a strand of hair from your forehead. Intimate. Close. You don’t flinch. Your self-control is perfect.

“Did you miss me?” she wants to know.

I’ve dreamed about you at night, you want to reply, but you’re not sure whether that’s the truth. There are dreams and there’s reality, and you wander back and forth between them, struggling to keep them apart.

She smiles at you. Now there isn’t just curiosity in her expression, there’s also a trace of desire. You force yourself not to look at the sculpture, you force yourself to return her smile. At the same time something in you tears. As silently as a cobweb. Her desire is too much for you. And you thought you had self-control. And you thought you could do that.

“I need to use the bathroom.”

“Hey, come on, you’re not ashamed of me, are you?” she asks.

Your face is red, your fists clenched under the table. Shame.

“Second on the left,” she says, tapping your knee. “Hurry up, or I’ll have to come and get you.”

She winks at you, lascivious and playful. I’m not nine years old any more! you want to yell at her, but there’s only a cold stiffness in you, and that stiffness lets nothing through. You stand up and walk into the corridor. You open the second door on the left and shut it behind you. In front of the mirror you look up, but your eyes avoid you. It hurts, it hurts again every time. You hope it will be different one day, and that hope holds you upright and eases the pain.

It’ll soon be over.

You kneel on the tiled floor and lift the lid of the toilet. You’re quiet, no coughing, no groaning, just the sound of a splash. When nothing more comes you take the toothbrush from the toothpaste cup and shove it into your throat to be sure that your belly really is empty. Then you wash your hands and rinse out your mouth. Before you leave the bathroom, you put the toothbrush back and, with some toilet paper, carefully wipe clean all the surfaces you have touched.

Soon.

She’s still sitting in the armchair smoking—arm bent at the elbow, head tilted slightly back when she lets smoke escape from her mouth. Even that gesture is so familiar to you that the memories overlay one another like a handful of slides. Back then and today become now, and now becomes today and back then. She holds the photograph in her hand and studies it. When you are standing behind her, she turns her head and her eyes flash. You aim the gas at that flash until the can is empty and she is lying on the floor in a whimpering heap. Then you start removing any trace of yourself from the room. You drain the glass and put it in your pocket. The photograph has fallen from her hand. You pick it up and put it in your pocket. You are careful, you are precise, you know what you are doing. When she tries to creep away, you turn her on to her back and sit down on her chest. Her arms are trapped beneath you, her eyes are swollen. She rears, her knees come up, her heels drum on the carpet. You put one hand firmly over her mouth, and with the other you hold her snot-streaming nose closed. It all goes quickly.

You make a package out of her. You press her thighs to her chest and shove her arms behind her knees. She’s not very big. You’ve thought of everything. Ten days of planning was enough. She fits in one of these black 120-liter trash bags. You carry her out of the flat. On the stairs you meet an old man. You nod at him, he nods back. It’s as easy as taking out the garbage.

It’s late by the time she wakes up.

You were a bit disappointed when you first stepped into the apartment. It was dirty and deserted, it was nothing like what it had been. You had expected more. Places with a past like that shouldn’t be deserted. It’s disrespectful. People make pilgrimages to Dachau and Auschwitz, they look at the concentration camps as if they could read something from them, while a few yards from their homes a new form of horror is taking place and they aren’t even aware of it.

It was very hard to find the right photomural. You drove all over Berlin, and it was only after the fifth specialty store when you described to one of the clerks exactly what you were looking for that he went to the storeroom and came back with several rolls.

To your surprise he let you have them all for nothing.

“No one buys this kind of crap these days” were his exact words.

Sometimes you wonder if you aren’t exaggerating the details. Then you give yourself the only logical answer. This is all about memory. It’s about details. Details are important to you. You prize details.

The wall is still wet with glue. At the spot where the metal ring used to be, there’s now a hole in the wall. Before you glued the photomural over the hole you had to stick your index finger into it. You marked the spot: the X is exactly at eye level.

The left shoe falls from her foot when you press her against the wall. As you do you get so close to her that you feel ill. Her unconscious body is soft, and it’s hard to keep it vertical. Your strength calms you down. You’re chest to chest. Her breath smells like cold smoke. You lift her arms up, her feet part a few inches from the floor, you swing the hammer back and strike.

The nail easily penetrates the palms of her hands, placed one over the other. Three blows are enough and the head of the nail is all that sticks out from her wrists. The third blow wakes her, your eyes are level now and she screams into your face. The scream fizzles out in a dull tap against the insulating tape you’ve stuck over her mouth. You look at each other, you will never be as close to her again. She twitches, tries to kick; your body presses her against the wall, holds her in position. Panic and contentment and strength. Strength, every time. Tears shoot from her swollen eyes and hit your face. You’ve seen enough and step back. Her weight pulls her down. The surprised expression. Something jerks. The pain makes her tremble, a shudder runs through her body, her bladder empties. The nail holds. She hangs on the wall with arms stretched upwards. Her right shoe falls with a quiet click, her toes scrape over the floor in search of purchase. If looks could kill, you’d be long dead.

It’s time to part. You show her where to look. She tries to turn her head. You knew she would do that. It fits. So you walk over to her and place the second nail on her forehead. It’s bigger, sixteen inches long, and has a special name that you don’t remember. The man in the hardware store told you it twice and you nodded and said thank you. She freezes as the tip touches her skin. Her eyes speak to you. They say you won’t do it. They order you not to. You shake your head. Then she closes her eyes tight shut. You’re surprised, you expected more resistance. You expected her to kick out at you again, to defend herself.

She gives up.

Your lips touch her ear and you whisper:

“It wasn’t me.”

She opens her eyes wide. And there’s the look, and there’s the understanding.

Now.

You drive the nail through the bone of her forehead. It takes you four more blows than the hands did, before the nail pierces the back of her head and enters the wall. She twitches, her twitch becomes a quiver, then she hangs still. Bright blood trickles from the ear you whispered into; a dark thread of blood emerges from the wound in her forehead and wanders between her eyes over the base of her nose and her cheek. You wait and study the elegance with which the thread of blood moves over her face. Before it reaches the insulating tape, you pull it from her mouth. Spittle seeps over her lips and mixes with the blood. Her right eye closes, as if it’s weary. You open it again, it stays open. You follow her frozen gaze. It’s fine, you don’t have to correct anything, everything is right.

PART I (#ulink_30525606-cd2d-57bd-be0d-eb5ca64c9e0a)

After (#ulink_58694110-a09a-5232-8978-4a0274a5f8d6)

IN THE DARKNESS of your thoughts I would like to be a light.

I have no idea who wrote that. I just remember the piece of paper that was pinned up on the kitchen wall one day.

In the darkness of your thoughts …

I want someone to come out of the forest with a flashlight and aim the beam at my face. Being seen can be so important. It doesn’t matter by whom. I’m disappearing into myself more and more.

It’s the day after. My hand rests on the cold metal of the fender. I listen as if my fingertips could hear the vibrations. I need more time, I’m not yet able to open the trunk. Perhaps another hundred kilometers, maybe a thousand.

… I would like to be a light.

I get in and start the engine. If someone should ever follow my journey, he’ll get lost in its incoherence. I’m moving through Germany like a lab rat in a maze. I lurch and every step is uncertain. I step sideways, turn in circles. But whatever I do, I don’t stand still. Standing still is out of the question. Sixteen hours are bundled together into sixteen minutes when you travel aimlessly. The boundaries of your own perception start to fray, and everything seems meaningless. Even sleep loses its significance. I wish there were a light in the darkness of my thoughts. But there is no light. So I’m left with nothing but my thoughts.

Before (#ulink_c5cfd67c-a925-5776-b608-ae534ebc4ccc)

KRIS

BEFORE WE TALK ABOUT YOU, I’d like to introduce you to the people you will soon be meeting. It’s a cool, late August day. The sun is extremely bright in the sky and resembles the flickering gleam of light switches in corridors. The people turn their faces to the sun and wonder why so little warmth comes back.

We are in a small park in the middle of Berlin. This is where everything starts. A man sits on a park bench by the water. His name is Kris Marrer; he is twenty-nine and looks like an ascetic who decided a long time ago not to be part of society. Kris knows only too well that he is a part of society. He has finished school and his studies. He likes going to the seaside, he enjoys good food and can talk about music for hours. Even if he doesn’t want to be, Kris Marrer is definitively a part of it, and this Wednesday morning he feels that clearly.

He sits on the park bench, as if he were about to jump up at any moment. His chin is thrust forward, his elbows on his knees. It isn’t a good day today, he knew it wouldn’t be a good day when he woke up, but we’ll get to that later. What’s important at this moment is that he regrets seeking out this particular park bench at the Urbanhafen. He thought a few minutes’ peace to gather his thoughts was exactly what he needed. He thought wrong.

A woman sits on the grass a few yards away. She’s dressed as if she can’t believe the summer is over. Sleeveless dress, sandals. The grass around her looks exhausted, the ground is damp. A man stands in front of the woman talking to her. His right hand is like an axe cutting silently through the air. Sharp, angular, quick. Every time the man points at the woman she flinches. The couple isn’t particularly noisy, but Kris can clearly, distinctly hear each of their words.

He knows now that the man has been unfaithful. The woman doesn’t believe him. When the man lists all the women he has slept with, the woman begins to believe him and calls him a bastard. He is a bastard, there’s no getting around it. He laughs in her face.

“What did you imagine? Did you think I’d be faithful to you?”

The man spits at the woman’s feet, turns his back on her and leaves. The woman starts crying. She cries silently; the people react as people always do and look the other way. The children go on playing, and a dog barks excitedly at a pigeon, while an indifferent sun sees nothing it hasn’t seen a million times before.

On days like this it should rain, Kris thinks. No one should split up with anyone while the sun’s shining.