Authors: Thomas Glavinic
Then he suggested filling in the time with another game of cards. My partner opposed this idea, citing our excessive nervous
tension in expectation of the video. Heinrich bet me the video wouldn’t be shown before midnight. I accepted the bet and won.
At 11:58 the plump anchorwoman reappeared. She announced that the video would now be screened. Approximately four hours’ material was available. The channel had edited it down and would transmit the crucial scenes, or scenes that encapsulated the entire course of events. Any children and adolescents under the age of sixteen now watching the screen should be sent out of the room by those responsible for their upbringing.
Heinrich jokingly ordered his wife out of the room, but Eva didn’t consider this funny.
From one moment to the next, the quality of the images on the screen changed. A digital clock was running in the top right corner of the picture. In the first scene, it showed 0:08. This signified that the first seven minutes had been deemed unworthy of transmission. An informative ticker at the foot of the screen read, “Screening this video is not sensationalism. It is a vain attempt to come to terms with an incomprehensible human tragedy.”
Incredible, said Heinrich, plunging his hand in the bowl of peanuts. Eva chewed her nails and directed only occasional glances at the screen. My partner said she failed to understand why anyone would do such things, let alone film them, and why any TV station would show them. Heinrich shushed her and pointed at the screen, which was showing a patch of forest.
The camerawork was jerky. The cameraman was moving forward. We saw a clearing in which three children were racing around with sticks in their hands.
Cut. 0:15. A high-pitched, distorted voice—that of the cameraman—informed them that now one of them was his prisoner, he doubted the others would be rash enough to run away. Any such attempt would cost the lives, first of the remaining boy and
then, within a few hours at most, of the other two and all the members of their family.
He took them completely by surprise, said Heinrich.
The hog-tied brother came into the shot. He asked the man why he was doing this to them. The camera panned. The boy who was second in age repeated that he wanted to leave and the man should let them all go. Heinrich urged us to look at his expression, which was alternating between an uncertain smile and undisguised fear. He didn’t seem to fully grasp the situation or believe in its gravity. Only ten minutes earlier, Heinrich added, they had been romping around unsuspectingly, and even now, they probably thought they’d be playing tag again in another quarter of an hour.
The hoarse voice asked the youngest boy what he would think if he, the cameraman, slit open his hog-tied brother’s stomach to see if his innards smoked like the cigarettes the grown-ups smoked at home or steamed like food on the table. The cameraman said this was so, he knew it. It also smoked or steamed when you did a pee outside, if it was cold enough.
What’s he on about? Heinrich exclaimed.
The children didn’t answer.
The cameraman went on to describe several other ways of torturing someone. This speech, of which the children took note with unmistakable distaste, evoked exclamations of an indignant nature from all present in the living room.
The cameraman never stopped filming the children for an instant. This gave us an opportunity to study their changing expressions. They don’t have a clue, Heinrich exclaimed, not a clue.
The boy who was clearly the youngest of the three had already burst into tears some time ago. Whimpering and hopping up and down on the spot in a silly way—and, interestingly enough,
clutching his genitals—he requested the cameraman to release him and his brothers from their disagreeable predicament.
After that, the camera panned to the second of the three in age. His hair, which had not been cut for some time, hung down over his eyebrows. The camera voice asked him if it would give him pleasure to see the brains of his brothers or parents. To this, the boy replied in the negative. He also rejected the suggestion that he might like to thrust the whole of his hand into their backs or abdominal cavities.
The cameraman then said that, this being so, the brothers must at all costs comply with every one of his instructions. The least recalcitrance would compel him to take one of them and cut off his nose or a finger and put salt on the wound, thereby doing the boy in question harm.
By now, all three children were in tears. The cameraman’s remarks had also caused uproar in the living room. The gap between the seven-year-old’s front teeth was clearly visible in close-up. He never stopped crying. This prompted the man behind the camera to warn the boys that they must not interrupt the proceedings by indulging in exaggerated emotional outbursts. In particular, it was imperative that they answer his questions. Their replies must not be impaired by sobbing or vocal distortions occasioned by despair.
A cut ensued. The clock in the top right corner of the screen now showed 0:48.
Eva helped herself to a heaped handful of chips. Some of them escaped from her fingers and cascaded down her white T-shirt, which bore the legend, “Morning Star.” Heinrich called her a greedy pig. Eva greeted this jocular rebuke expressionlessly and without looking at anyone.
The cameraman was just instructing the gap-toothed brother to climb a tree.
Oh no, said Eva, here it comes.
The boy jibbed. He complied only when the camera voice explained that having his abdominal cavity slit open and then salted would be an extremely unpleasant experience for his hog-tied brother to undergo and that this would be promptly put into effect in the event of further resistance on his part. Bawling, he climbed the tree with the second brother’s assistance. The camera also recorded his ascent.
Once he had reached the top of the tree and the other boy had returned to the ground, the camera voice instructed him to jump when ordered to. The resulting cries of anguish and protest from the treetop were graphically illustrated by a close-up. Then the camera panned to the hog-tied boy. The man asked him how it felt to know that his brother was about to rejoin them in free fall and what his chances of survival would be after a descent from approximately forty-five feet.
The hog-tied boy wept. He referred to the possibility of vengeance on the part of his father, whom he claimed to be extremely tall and strong. The cameraman took note of this with evident interest. He asked exactly what his father would do on receiving news of his brother’s death, not forgetting to add that this question possessed only theoretical importance. Why? Because his father would meet an even more terrible fate unless the brothers obeyed every order given them by him, the cameraman, to his complete satisfaction.
He also asked the long-haired boy how it felt to be about to lose a brother.
It felt quite awful, was the reply. Wasn’t there any way of preventing this adverse development? There was one, the cameraman responded: The going rate for a brother’s life was one eye. The long-haired boy must poke out his hog-tied brother’s eye with a stick—not with a single thrust, but by drilling it out good
and proper. The boy thus addressed replied that he didn’t want to do this and made a renewed plea to be released from captivity, together with his brothers. This request was rejected.
The cameraman then asked the gap-toothed brother how he proposed to jump. Would he push off vigorously with his legs or simply fall? One should always opt for the elegant as opposed to the ungraceful, he said. Whimpers were the sole response.
The cameraman inquired about (a) the view from the tree and (b) the prospect of leaping to one’s death. For the umpteenth time, the boy up the tree screamed that he was feeling ill and would rather not jump. The man commanded him to do so and instructed him to perform a telemark, like a ski jumper.
Eva rose, saying she couldn’t watch this. Her statement was registered in silence by the rest of those present. She set off in the direction of the kitchen. A moment later, we heard the sound of running water.
Weeping, the gap-toothed brother shook his head. This the cameraman took as an occasion to mention the knife in his hand (it was not visible), compel the hog-tied brother to bare his stomach, and call to the boy in the tree that the unpleasant operation was imminent and the salt ready and that today would demand exceptional efforts on the cameraman’s part because, if the gap-toothed boy persisted in his refusal, he would have to operate on his mother’s stomach and spine as well.
After the order to jump had been repeated several times, a scream was heard from one of the children on the ground. The camera voice croaked that the operation would commence in ten seconds, so he must jump. Nothing would happen to him. If he didn’t, he would render everything still worse and more painful.
Five, four, three, two, one, counted the man.
Then we saw a shiny red sports car. After a moment’s surprise, we realized we were being treated to a commercial break.
I don’t believe this, Heinrich muttered.
My partner sighed and reached for the Soletti without a word.
We stared, unspeaking, at the screen for a good ten minutes. Eva came in and asked if it was over. On being told that the program would resume after the commercial break, she returned to the kitchen.
At last, we were back in the clearing. The man was counting: Five, four, three, two, one... On zero, the gap-toothed boy jumped, accompanied by the camera and his brothers’ cries of horror.
Suddenly, the screen went black. A dull thud was heard.
Some of those present in the living room groaned when the picture reappeared. The camera approached the gap-toothed boy, who was lying motionless on the ground. Before it went into close-up, there was another fade-out.
In the next scene, the clock in the corner of the screen said 1:31. The channel once more informed us by ticker that screening this video was not sensationalism, but a vain attempt to come to terms with an incomprehensible human tragedy.
The surviving boys were interviewed about their thoughts and feelings in respect of their brother’s demise. They did, however, display total passive resistance. This prompted Heinrich to remark that they might have been prepared to speak but were too traumatized to do so. My partner endorsed this view by slowly inclining her head.
We witnessed the long-haired brother vomiting.
My partner rose, saying she’d had quite enough of what we had seen so far and would sooner keep Eva company in the kitchen. She was feeling sick, she declared, and incapable of continuing to watch what was happening on the screen.
After she had left the room, Heinrich hurried over to some wooden shelves whose highest point was a half inch short of
the ceiling and took out a videocassette. This he inserted in the appropriate video recorder, which was beneath the television set. He said he thought it fitting to respect the women’s sensitivity. Interested though he was in the subsequent course of events, he couldn’t disregard their desire for de-escalation. He would therefore record the rest of the program and we would watch it at a later stage, possibly with Eva and my partner, should they have recovered their mental equilibrium by then. I concurred with his assessment of the situation and expressed my approval of his course of action.
Once Heinrich had set the requisite controls, he turned the video machine on (the long-haired brother was still being sick) and the television off. I followed him into the kitchen. There he put his arms around Eva, who was crying. I took a green-and-red apple from the dresser and cut it in two. One half I sank my teeth in, the other I handed to my partner, who took my offering without a word. She directed some consoling remarks at Eva, then silence fell.
Heinrich broke it by suggesting a doubles at table tennis in order to steer our thoughts into different channels. Eva objected that she wasn’t currently capable of amusing herself in such a fashion. This prompted Heinrich to demand, in a peremptory tone of voice, that she cease to get worked up about the frightful things we’d seen and look on the bright side of life. My partner backed him up. After further influence had been brought to bear on Eva, whose nerves were shattered, she agreed to spend a few minutes in the table tennis room, whether in an active or passive capacity.
My partner went into the living room. There she placed the essentials (four glasses plus bottles of wine, beer, lemonade, cigarettes, lighter, ashtray, and chips) on the tray that had been used previously. With care, putting one foot slowly before the other, she carried everything up the steep stairs to the second floor.
Since my partner and Eva still had a few chores to do in the table tennis room (wiping the table in the corner, unloading the tray, shutting the windows, fetching cleaning rags or putting them away), Heinrich and I picked up the table tennis paddles. We started an informal rally without scoring. In the course of this, we remarked how refreshed we felt by this renewed opportunity to engage in physical activity. We struck the ball vigorously, heedless of the consequent fact that many of our shots missed and we had to go looking for it elsewhere in the room.
My partner drew our attention to the sound of the rain, which was no less thunderous than before. This led Heinrich to surmise that we were getting a whole month’s rain in advance. Eva recalled a child’s rhyme to the effect that the fourth month of the year is a law unto itself.
Heinrich exhorted the women to play, and we embarked on a mixed doubles. I once more found myself paired with Eva versus my partner and Heinrich. Eva is a good table tennis player, but her game displayed inaccuracies and even gross errors. Although he wasn’t her partner, Heinrich reprimanded her for this. Eva flung her paddle down and went to sit in the corner at the card table, on which the drinks had been deposited. Looking tense, she informed us that she simply wasn’t in the mood and couldn’t do full justice to her talents, so we must finish the game on our own.
Heinrich said that two against one at table tennis was an unfair arrangement—unfair for the two. His efforts to persuade Eva to return bore no fruit, and an apology proved equally unsuccessful. With the score at 11:11, my partner announced that she too wanted to quit and would watch us—Heinrich and me—from the card table. Ignoring our protests, she sat down beside Eva. Heinrich and I had no choice but to play on by ourselves.