You (2 page)

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.

I’m in the Here, and the Here is Now
.

You can’t go forward, so you decide to go back.

In the months that follow, there were countless theories about what happened that night. Was it an argument? Was it drugs, revenge, or madness? Some people thought it had something to do with the moon, others quoted from the Bible—but there was no sign of the moon that night, and if there is a God, he was looking the other way. There were all kinds of conjectures, everyone had a theory, and that’s how the myth came about.

At first everyone agreed that several people must have been acting together. No human being could have done all that on his own. It was only over time that theories came to focus on an individual perpetrator, and the Traveler was born.

Some people thought it would never have come to an end if the snowfall hadn’t suddenly stopped. Others suspected there was a system behind it.

Many claimed the Traveler got tired.

Conjectures through and through.

You go to the car behind you and get in on the passenger side. The windows are covered with snow. You don’t have to look. You know what you’re doing and leave the car three minutes later.

You leave the second car after four minutes.

You skip the fourth and fifth cars because there’s more than one person in them. How can you tell when the passenger seat is empty? Perhaps it’s instinct, perhaps it’s luck. Two men are asleep in the fourth car, and in the fifth there’s a family with a dog. The dog is the only one awake, and sees you passing the window like a shadow. It starts whimpering and pees on the seat.

In car number ten you encounter your first problem.

A woman sits wrapped up at the steering wheel. She can’t sleep, she’s absolutely freezing because she’s too stingy to turn on the engine even for a moment. She’s wearing three pullovers and her coat over the top. Her car windows are damp on the inside, the drops of condensation are frozen. The woman’s face is sore with cold. Her hands are claws. She regrets not bringing any drugs along. A sleeping tablet or two and it would all be more bearable.

The woman gives a start when the passenger door opens. For a moment she thinks it’s the emergency services bringing her blankets and a thermos. She’s about to complain because it’s taken so long.

“Don’t panic,” you say and close the door behind you.

You smell her body, the fading deodorant. You smell her weariness and frustration, it is clammy and sour and leaves her mouth with every breath. She asks who you are. She tries to shrink away from you. Her eyes are wide. Her throat feels brittle under your hand. The inside light goes off. You press the woman against the driver’s door, you put your whole weight into the movement—your left arm stretched out as if to keep her at a distance. You don’t take your eyes off her for a second, feeling her blows against your arm, against your shoulder, watching her hands change from claws to panicked, fluttering birds. She gasps, she chokes, then her right hand finds the ignition key and starts the engine. You weren’t expecting that. In car number six the driver tried to climb onto the backseat. In car number eight the driver repeatedly banged his head against the window to draw attention. None of them tried to drive away.

The woman puts her foot on the accelerator; the car’s set to Park. The engine roars and nothing else happens. She hits the horn; the honking sounds like the bleating of a lost sheep. You clench your right hand and strike the woman in the face. Again and again. Her jaw breaks, her face slips to the left and she slumps in on herself. You lower your fist, but you keep the other hand on her throat. You feel her bones shifting under your strength. You feel the life escaping from her. That is the moment you let go of her and turn off the engine. It took less than four minutes.

The Traveler moves on.

In car number seventeen an old man is waiting for you. He’s belted in and sitting upright as if the journey is going to continue at any moment. There’s classical music on the radio.

“I was waiting,” the old man said.

You close the door behind you; the old man goes on talking.

“I saw you. A truck went past. The headlights shone through the windows of the car in front of me. I saw you through the snow. And now you’re here. And I’m not scared.”

“Thank you,” you tell him.

The old man unbuckles his seat belt. He shuts his eyes and lets his head fall onto the steering wheel as if he wants to go to sleep. The back of his neck is exposed. You see a gold chain cutting through his tensed skin like a thin thread. You put your hands around the old man’s head. A jerk, a rough crack, a sigh escapes from the old man. You leave your hands on his head for a while, as if you could catch his fleeing thoughts. It’s a perfect moment of peace.

The next day on the news they talk about an organization. The police were trying to make a connection between the twenty-six victims. The families were grieving, everywhere in the country flags were flown at half mast. They were talking about terrorists and the Russian mafia. They were thinking about a cult; the subject of sects was given prominence once again. Only the gun lobby didn’t get involved, because no guns had been used. Whatever was said, whatever people conjectured, no one dared to use the phrase “mass murder.” It never takes long. Eventually a tabloid newspaper put it in great big letters on the front page.

It was a dark winter for Germany.

The big question on everyone’s mind was what made the Traveler get out of the twenty-sixth car and think, Enough’s enough. Did he really think that? Did he hear a voice, did demons speak to him, or did he get bored? Whatever the answer, it had nothing to do with the snowfall, because the snow went on falling till dawn. No, the truth isn’t complicated, it’s relatively simple.

You leave the twenty-sixth car and don’t think anything at all. You feel the wind and you feel the cold and you feel safe and you’re moving to the next car when you notice a glimmer on the horizon. Perhaps the snowfall is reflecting a light in the far distance. Whatever
it is, it makes you turn around and set off back to your car. You follow your own overblown track and it is opening up like an old wound. At your car you wipe the windshield free of snow and sit down behind the steering wheel. You take a deep breath, put thumb and index finger around the ignition key, and wait. You wait for the right moment. When you start the engine, the cars in front of you come to life, and the headlights of over a hundred vehicles light the blocked motorway with a pale light. After exactly four hours the traffic jam gets moving again, because the Traveler was waiting for the right moment.

You put the car in gear and you’re very pleased with yourself. The pain and throbbing in your hands are insignificant. Later you will discover that you’ve broken two fingers on your right hand, and in spite of your gloves the knuckles on both hands are swollen and beaten bloody. Your shoulders ache from the uncomfortable posture you assumed in the cars, but none of that matters, because there’s this indescribable contentment within you. There’s also a sweet taste in your mouth that you can’t explain. The taste prompts a memory. The memory is nineteen years old. Glorious, dazzling, sweet. You know what it all means. You thought the search was over, but it had only taken a breather. It’s the start of a new era. Or in other words—the beginning of the end of civilization as you know it.

In retrospect you still like that thought best.

No beginning without an end
. A man gets out of his car, a man gets back into his car, and the traffic jam in front of him slowly starts to move. The Traveler travels on.

This isn’t the end, and a beginning looks different. This is the moment in between, when everything still looks possible. Retreat or attack. We’re in the present. It’s eight o’clock in the morning. The spotlights are turned on you, because this Friday morning you’re making a decision that will change all your lives, as you are standing at the edge of the pool unable to believe your eyes. The light gleams blue and cold up at you. What you are seeing is a soundless nightmare. Not one of you dares to break the silence.

You wish you were far, far away.

Leo has moved back a step; he is waiting for your reaction. His hands are deep in the pockets of his jacket and he’s struggling to stay still. David is standing on the other side of the pool, rubbing the back of his head. He’s only been working for you for three months, and you’re still not sure what to make of him. He’s young, he’s ambitious, and he’s one of Tanner’s many grandchildren. Family means nothing to you. You wanted to give the boy a chance, because Tanner is putting his hand in the fire for him. It’s the only kind of family bond that you respect.

You take a deep breath. The air is warm and clean, the air-conditioning system is working without a sound. Oskar had the arched basement dug out four years ago. Walls and ceiling are new and covered with terra-cotta tiles. They don’t just reflect the light; every breath is clearly audible and echoes in the silence like the panting of dogs. Your hands tingle. You want to hit something, a bag of sand or just the wall. Something.

How could she?

You rub your eyes before you look again. You still don’t believe it. Leo shifts uneasily from one leg to the other; he knows there’s going to be trouble soon. A whole lot of trouble.

“I don’t believe it,” you say.

“Maybe—”

You raise your hand, Leo falls silent, you turn to David.

“What do you think how much is it?”

“Thirty, maybe forty kilos, it’s hard to say.”

Footsteps can be heard from the floor above, none of you is looking up, you are standing motionlessly around the pool. On the surface of the water you can see your elongated reflections quiver slightly. Maybe there’s an underground line nearby, or else one of those massive great trucks is dragging itself along a side street and sending its vibrations far underground. Your faces look like the faces of ghosts that have seen everything and are tired of being ghosts.
Tired is exactly the right word
, you think, because you’re seriously tired of all this bullshit. You felt something dark coming your way, you should have been prepared, but who expects something like this?