You

The Traveler

Taja

Darian

Nessi

Darian

Schnappi

Ragnar

Stink

Taja

Darian

Schnappi

Darian

The Traveler

Taja

Stink

Darian

Schnappi

Taja

Nessi

Neil

Stink

Ragnar

The Traveler

My Thanks To

A Note About the Author

A Note About the Translator

Read on for an extended extract of Zoran Drvenkar’s chilling début thriller, Sorry

About the Publisher

PART ONE (#ud4cae6aa-ea3f-57cf-a4d4-3eb177ce22f3)

I (#ud4cae6aa-ea3f-57cf-a4d4-3eb177ce22f3)

did you ever know

there’s a light inside your bones

Ghinzu BLOW

THE TRAVELER (#ud4cae6aa-ea3f-57cf-a4d4-3eb177ce22f3)

As much as we strive toward the light, we still want to be embraced by the shadow. The very same yearning that craves harmony, craves in a dark chamber of our heart chaos. We need that chaos in reasonable portions, because we don’t want to turn into barbarians. But barbarians are what we become as soon as our world falls apart. Chaos is only ever a blink away.

Never have thoughts made waves so fast. Stories are no longer passed on orally, they are transmitted to us at breakneck speed in kilobytes, so that we can’t turn our eyes away. And if it gets unbearable, we react as the barbarians did, and turn that chaos into myths.

One of those myths was created in the winter fourteen years ago, on the A4 between Bad Hersfeld and Eisenach. We won’t write down the exact date; anyone can do the research for themselves. And in any case, myths don’t stick to dates; they are timeless and become the Here and Now. We return to the past and make it Now.

It is November.

It is 1995.

It is night.

The traffic jam has been growing for an hour now, thinning into three lanes, then two, and finally one, before it comes to a standstill. The highway is blocked by snow for over twenty miles. You can only see a few yards ahead. The snowplows creep along the secondary roads toward the traffic jam, and get stuck themselves. The skies are raging. The headlights look like lights under water. It isn’t a night to be out and about. No one was prepared for this change in the weather.

People are stuck in their cars. At first they keep the engine running and search optimistically for a radio station to tell them that the traffic jam will soon be over. They search in vain. It’s one o’clock in the morning, there’s no sign for an exit, and if there was one it would be impassable anyway. Standstill. The headlights go out one after the other. Engines fall silent, the only sounds are the wind and the falling snow. Coats are pulled on, seats reclined. There is an inconsistent rhythm—the cars start up, the heating stays on for several minutes, before the engines fall silent once more.

You are one of many. You are alone and waiting. Your navigation system tells you you are an hour and fifty-seven minutes from your house. You can’t believe this is actually happening to you. That this can be happening to anyone in this country. A simple traffic jam and nothing goes.

You’re one of the few people letting their engines run uninterrupted. Not because you’re cold. You know that as soon as the silence envelops you, resignation will set in, and you’re not the kind of person to give up willingly. You even leave the satnav turned on and study the display, as if the distance from your destination might be reduced by some miracle. And the more you look at the screen, the more you wonder how something like this can happen to you.

One thousand one hundred and seventy-eight people are asking themselves the same question tonight. They’re sitting there uncomfortably and cursing their decision to set off so late. In the end they give up and come to terms with the situation. Not you. Your engine runs for two and a half hours before you turn the key and are engulfed in silence. Your gas is running low. The satnav turns off. No light, no radio. Every few minutes you turn on the windshield wiper to sweep away the snow. You want to see what’s going on out there.

And that’s why you see the first snowplow parting the snow on the opposite side of the road. It looks like a weary creature dragging the whole world slowly behind it. At the side of the road the snow makes waves that immediately freeze. If they’re clearing one side, then they’re bound to be working on ours too, you think, and study the snowplow in the side-view mirror until only the glimmer of the taillights can be seen. It’s only then that you close your eyes and take a deep breath.

Years ago, your sister gave you a yoga course as a present, and some of the exercises stayed with you. You go inside yourself and meditate. You become part of the silence and within a few minutes you fall asleep. An hour later your windows are white with snow, and a pale light fills the car, as if you were sitting inside an egg. The cold hurts your head. The windshield wipers have stopped moving. You rub your eyes and decide to get out. You want to free the windshield from snow and see if there’s any sign of a snowplow up ahead.

The disappointment is as keen as the cold. You stand next to your car, and in front of you there’s only darkness and behind you there’s only darkness. I’m a part of it, you think, and wait and hope for a gleam of light and suddenly you burst out laughing. Alone, I’m completely alone. Only the wind keeps you company. The wind, the snow, and the desperate peace of cars that are stuck. The laughter hurts your face; you should move, otherwise you’ll freeze.

You take your coat off the backseat. Needles of ice hammer down on you, snowflakes press against your lips. You put on gloves, take a deep breath, and feel surprisingly whole. As if your existence had been striving for that moment—you, getting out of the car; you, turning around and feeling the falling snow and smiling. It’s a good smile. It hurts less than laughing.

A truck creeps past in the opposite lane and flashes once as if to greet you. Its tailwind reaches you with full force seconds later. You don’t duck; you feel the wetness on your face, stumbling slightly and wondering why you can’t wipe this stupid grin off your face. The truck disappears, and you’re still there looking at the apparently endless snake of vehicles in front of you disappearing into the darkness. You turn around and look at the darkness behind you. Nineteen years, you think, it’s nineteen years since I felt like this. You wonder how so much time could pass, and decide not to wait another nineteen years before continuing your search.