You

On the second floor you open the first door and go in. You stop in the anteroom and go back out again. You leave the second room after a few seconds as well. Children. The smell of children. After you’ve gone into the third room, you take a deep breath, a single breath replies. You pull the door closed. The darkness embraces you.

This is the right place.

If you drove past the gas station today, you’d see a closed-down motel. The sight of it would remind you of the night twelve years ago—no light in the windows, motionless curtains, stillness. The flickering neon sign above the entrance is broken. And even though the rest area is always full, nobody parks in front of the motel. Cursed, they say. Weeds have fought their way through the cracks, they press against the building as though to support the façade. No one lays flowers outside anymore. The grave candles have disappeared. There’s only an ugly yellow graffito on the front door: Forever Yang.

Almost two years after the A4 you’ve set off on your travels again, and everyone recognized your signature. The papers called you The Avenging Angel. On the internet you were The Traveler, sometimes The German Nightmare or The Big Bad Wolf. Fanatics called you The Scourge of God. By now the police knew you were acting alone. The clues were everywhere, and the clues didn’t lie. You were aware of that. Clues mean you’ve been there. Honesty is important to you. There’s nothing you want to hide. Everyone should know you exist. Of course your fingerprints were no help to the police. No previous convictions. You exist only in your own world.

Your myth grew beyond the borders of Germany, you made waves all around Europe. In England a bank cashier ran amok, in the Czech Republic it was a customer in a supermarket and in Italy a woman who said she couldn’t stand the pressure anymore. Events began to accumulate. In Sweden a man killed his family and wandered through his apartment block with bloody hands until a Doberman went for his throat. In the Netherlands a boy put explosives in a McDonald’s, joined the queue, and set off the explosives when his turn came. A television evangelist spoke of the Day of Judgment, studies were produced, prognoses filled the commercial breaks. Humanity seemed to be walking toward self-destruction with its arms spread wide open. None of it had anything to do with you.

Not rage, not despair, not self-destruction or revenge.

Not hate, not love, not religion or politics.

You’re in no hurry. You go into the rooms one after the other and sit down on the edge of the bed. You watch them sleeping, the way you would watch a patient who has a fever and needs a cooling hand. You wonder what’s happening to you. The Here, the Now, and you on the edge of a stranger’s bed. With your hands around their neck and your fists in their face. You. Not hesitating for a moment. And they. Defending themselves and then giving up. And there’s always this feeling of sympathy. As if they knew why you’re doing it. As if at that brief moment of dying they understood. At least that’s how it feels to you. As if they understood: that you’re on a quest, that you have to explore the darkness. Because the darkness is always there. And in the darkness there’s nothing to find.

That night you go into forty-two rooms and leave thirty-six corpses. After that you put the skeleton key back in the box and step out into the night like someone who has rested and can now continue on his journey.

The crow has vanished from the tree, the neon sign above the entrance still flickers. Three hours have passed. The traffic moves tirelessly in both directions. The world outside the motel has hardly changed.

On the journey home you look at your hands on the wheel. This time you didn’t wear gloves. Your hands are bruised, the knuckles bloody, the pain feels good. I am, I exist. You’re aware that you’ve left lots of clues. It feels right and good.

RAGNAR (#ulink_83d3af59-0335-5af6-ae14-84628d88be65)

Oskar isn’t the first corpse you’ve found yourself sitting opposite. If you’re not careful, someone might think this is a family tradition. Even if you don’t think that’s funny at the moment, a few hours later you’ll make a joke about it and once again you’ll be the only one laughing.

Your first corpse was a lunatic who behaved normally during the day and came home in the evening and went totally nuts. You’ve read a lot about mental illnesses and schizophrenia. You’ve engaged intensively with the mental effects of wars, because you wanted to understand your father. But how are you supposed to understand the paranoia of a man who’s never been to war?

You found out that one of your uncles suffered from similar delusions. Perhaps it was a genetic defect. Everything’s possible, but not everything’s excusable. Everyone is responsible for his own life, and excuses are for cowards. Your father was definitely one of those.

He worked as one of eight bricklayers with a construction company and met your mother in Oslo in the early 1960s. He proposed and brought her to Germany. The first years of marriage ran smoothly, and it was only when Oskar and you appeared on the scene that everything changed. Your father started training you boys when you were six and Oskar was three. Outside of your apartment he was the most normal person you could imagine. But once the door closed, silence fell. The television was turned off, conversations lingered only as an echo in the rooms, sometimes you even held your breath. As soon as your father entered the room, a different life began for you.

Two decades later you asked your mother how she could have allowed it all to happen, and whether she’d never had any doubts about her husband’s mental state. She didn’t understand you. She wanted to know why you felt the need to drag your father’s memory through the dirt.

After he had stepped inside the apartment, he took his shoes off and disappeared into the bathroom. Meanwhile your mother put the chain on and bolted the front door with extra locks. With your help she took the metal plate out from behind the wardrobe and pushed it against the door. Two clamps were placed around it and the door was secure. For you it was the other way round. You were trapped.

Once you made the mistake of opening the bathroom door, even though your father had forbidden it. You were curious, and in those days your father’s madness seemed to be only a slight drizzle that would eventually pass. You were seven years old and just needed to find out what he did in the bathroom after work every day. You waited till your mother took Oskar into the kitchen to get the food ready, then you pushed the handle down.

Your father was standing naked in front of the wash basin, washing himself with a sponge. There was nothing else to be seen. You were so relieved that you nearly burst out laughing. It was all you had wanted to know. Your relief lasted only seconds. Your father told you to come in and shut the door behind you. He didn’t look at you as he spoke, he didn’t need to look at you. You obeyed. He set the sponge aside and told you to turn the light off. You obeyed. Your father pulled the curtain over the narrow bathroom window. It grew dark, really dark. Your father asked you if you knew what fear was. You nodded. Your father wanted to hear an answer. So you said: Yes, I know what fear is. Silence. You sensed him standing right in front of you. The smell of his naked body. He must have leaned forward, because his breath wiped over your face like a flame. You have no idea what fear is, he explained. Then you heard water running, and a moment later a wet towel was wrapped around your head. The towel was a shock. Suffocating and cold. You couldn’t see at all, and he used a towel anyway. Your father asked you again if you knew what fear was. He also said: I’ll teach you fear. I’ll teach you everything about fear, so that you venerate and respect it. Because you can’t live without fear. Fear is air, fear is water, fear is everything. You reacted instinctively, the towel was just too much for you, you couldn’t breathe, so you started to swing your fists around.

That was all you could remember.

Later your mother picked you up from the floor and carried you to bed. At six o’clock in the morning she woke you again. You had to wipe up the filth in the bathroom. You caught your breath when you saw what you’d done. There was vomit on the tiles, there was urine and two bloody handprints on the whitewashed wall, which you rubbed away at with a cloth and soapsuds until two gleaming white patches remained. Never again did you make the mistake of surprising your father in the bathroom. You learned to respect fear.

As soon as your father was out of the bathroom, the preparations began. He checked all the windows, examined the front door, and the balcony door had to be secure as well before your mother was allowed to lower the shutters. You remember how she secretly reassured you, over and over again, that things would soon be back to normal, your father was going through a difficult phase. She was wrong. The drizzle was about to become a storm.

Your father had plans.

He took out library books about the conduct of war and taught you how to survive in the wilderness. Once he came home and told you and your brother to take a bullet out of his arm. He removed his shirt. There were his sinewy arms, there were the knotty muscles and no wound. Oskar knew what lay ahead. He burst into tears at the sight of the sinewy arms. Your father pointed at the box.

The box was a battered metal trunk that had belonged to your grandfather. If anyone didn’t obey or burst into tears, he ended up in the trunk. You remember the smell, shoe polish and linseed oil. Your mother shut Oskar inside. No word of protest ever passed her lips. Oskar’s whimpering emerged from the suitcase like the sound of a trapped insect.

Here, your father tapped you on the shoulder, here’s the bloody bullet. Get it out, Ragnar, get it out of there.

You did everything right. You heated the knife over a Bunsen burner. You handed your father a bottle of schnapps and told him to drink it. Your mother held the bandage ready. You didn’t hesitate for a second and cut into your father’s flesh as if it were a slice of smoked pork on a plate. The picture is still very clear in front of your eyes—the way the blade sinks in and splits the skin, the way the blood runs down his arm, first hesitantly, then violently, and your father smiles at you and says: Well done, you’ve saved my life.

Throughout the years your father didn’t let you and your brother go to bed before midnight. There were always shadows under your eyes. There was so much to do, so much to learn. He showed you war documentaries and taught you how to look after a gun. At the age of nine you could take a Luger apart and put it back together. You could tell the ammunition of different calibers apart and say which was best suited to which situation. You studied the human body for its most vulnerable spots.

Even though your father never killed anyone himself, you learned from him and became his tool, while Oskar stumbled after you and couldn’t work out what was going on. He was simply too young. He was frightened, and you protected him. It worked. Your father focused his attention more and more on you, and Oskar was spared.

You gave your brother that protection until today.

From Monday evening till Friday night your family led a different life. Even though your father went to work during the day and you were able to resume normal life in the meantime, it was only on the weekends that you really had time to breathe. On Saturday and Sunday your father disappeared without a trace and no one mentioned it. For two days he stopped existing for you. You boys assumed he was carrying out secret missions or perhaps working for the army. Eight years passed before you penetrated his secret. Even now you don’t know if your mother was completely unaware of what was going on. How could she not have known? She wasn’t a weak woman, or a stupid one. But she had fallen for your father, which can turn any strong woman into a pitiful creature.

Worst of all were the days of discipline. Your father was testing Oskar and you to see if you could keep your mouths shut. He wanted to know how far you would go to protect each other. He thought up games for it. Tell your brother a secret, he said to you. And so you bent down to Oskar and whispered in his ear. What secret did your big brother tell you? your father then asked Oskar, who immediately widened his eyes, held his breath, and shook his head. Sometimes your father ordered him to lie on the floor and then pressed Oskar’s little face into the carpet with one hand. Or else he pulled him up by his hair, until the tips of Oskar’s toes scrabbled above the floor. What secret did your big brother tell you? The same question, over and over again. Tears flowed down Oskar’s cheeks, he didn’t want to disappoint his father, he wanted to be big and strong and show what he had learned. Your father grabbed him by the throat. I can feel the secret, he said, it’s hidden in here, I can feel it, I can feel it really clearly. That was too much for Oskar, he slumped unconscious to the ground. Your father turned to you. Your brother was brave, he didn’t say anything. Now there’s just you. What’s your secret? What am I not supposed to find out? He threatened you with a lot of things, and you were the brave soldier and stood stiffly and looked past him, because eye contact was forbidden. He hit your mother to make you speak. Nothing. He asked you if you wanted him to rape her in front of your eyes. You shook your head and held your tongue. That was a mistake. You’re saying no to me? He took you into the bathroom, and there in the dark and with a wet towel over your head you cracked. It was too much. It was memory and it was the madness of a man who was your father and always found a way into your head. The secret came stammering over your lips. It was over. Your father led you in silence from the bathroom. He waited till your brother was conscious again, then he spat in your face and said, You’re a traitor and you would have gambled away your whole family’s lives. Your brother had to spit on you too and your mother wasn’t allowed to look at you for the rest of the evening.

It was all a matter of discipline.

Since that day more than thirty years ago you have known exactly what silence is worth. Today your father could do what he liked to you, he wouldn’t have a chance. You’ve learned from him.

It takes Tanner and David forty minutes to find the boy. They bring him down to the swimming pool. David tries to tell you all the places they’ve been looking. You wave him away, you don’t want to hear it. They leave you alone.

He looks like he’s about twelve, but you’re sure he’s older, otherwise he wouldn’t be in your son’s crowd and they wouldn’t be friends. You wait for him to meet your eye before you say, “Do you know who I am?”

He shakes his head. He doesn’t know your face, but he knows your name.

“My name is Ragnar Desche.”

He ducks down, he actually ducks down. Good. His eyes flicker from left to right, he gradually realizes how much trouble he’s in.

“Your girlfriend stood us up, that’s why you’re here, do you get that?”

He nods, even though you’re sure he doesn’t know what you’re talking about. You let it go, you want to get it over with as quickly as possible.

“As I’m sure you’ll have noticed, I have a small problem here. You see the man in the armchair?”

The boy turns his head.

“His name is Oskar. He was my brother. Now do you understand why I brought you here?”

The boy looks at you for a moment, then turns his head away. You can see the dark fluff trembling on his top lip. You should ask more questions, make him feel he has something to say.

“Where do you come from?”

“From here.”

“And your parents?”

“Slovenia.”