“Are you in competition for the Supermother of the Year medal?”
Janina’s wearing one of her flowered dresses. Her hair is carelessly, artfully pinned up, and she’s surrounded by all sorts of gear: a large picnic basket, a cooler, a colorful blanket, a child’s bicycle, sand-digging toys, and an umbrella, together with a backpack that probably contains sun hats, sunscreen, wet wipes, insect spray, and other useful accessories. Nobody can get past this accumulation of obstacles on the sidewalk, which is why Cora (on the picnic basket) and Knut (on the cooler) have made themselves comfortable.
Britta springs jauntily out of the VW bus while Richard electronically opens the side door and the tailgate and then runs around the car to greet their friend. Britta has entered into the spirit of the occasion by putting on gym shoes and a denim skirt, whose rough fabric feels daring against her legs. “Maybe an electric blanket too? A pressure cooker? A robovac? How long do we plan to stay? A week?”
Janina laughs, catches her in her arms, and hugs her tight. Today Britta not only tolerates the embrace, but she even returns it, and heartily.
“The people who make fun of picnic baskets are the same ones who eat the most chicken thighs afterward,” says Janina, and it occurs to Britta, not for the first time, that her friend, in spite of her mommy look, is as sly as a fox.
They roar merrily out of the city on the A 392, an autobahn spur. The multivan is relatively new and well equipped, with movable seats, individually adjustable air-conditioning, and a Bose sound system. Richard’s behind the steering wheel and Britta’s next to him, so that at any time she can put her hand on his knee and look at him from the side. They’re both wearing sunglasses. It feels good to be traveling along under the broad, bright sky with two high-spirited children and a couple of good friends in the rear seats; they go on a weekend outing all too seldom. It was Britta’s idea to make the house viewing a two-family excursion, and when Richard turns on some music and the soft piano sounds and subdued beat of “Suicide World” come trickling out of the speakers, Britta thinks that her idea was a damn good one.
In the back, Vera and Cora are enthroned on their raised seats, chattering and giggling without pause, while Knut and Janina have rotated their own seats so that they can look at the girls while traveling backward, as in a train compartment. The autobahn turns into Celler Heerstrasse, and Vera begins to rave about her first field hockey practice, where she—in her own opinion—was greeted like a superstar and subsequently streaked around the field like a fireball. Richard smiles broadly, observes his excited darling in the rearview mirror, and quotes a couple of remarks made by the coach, who proved to be quite taken with Vera’s talent.
“Have you heard,” Knut asks, “that the UN is going to be dissolved?”
“UNO? Why? It’s a super card game.”
“Not the game, sweetie,” Janina replies. “The UN, the United Nations. It’s an organization.”
“The U.S. and Russia are in agreement. France, Germany, the UK, Turkey, and a few others are invited to meet for consultations.”
“Well, the UN has already been invisible for a long time,” says Richard.
“The notion of international law sounds kind of twentieth-century anyway,” Janina opines.
“What are you working on at the moment, Knut?” Britta asks loudly.
Outside a billboard in the middle of a field flashes by. “You are you!” it says, without any reference to a product.
“Oh, an interesting project.” Knut sticks his smartphone back in his pocket and turns around in his seat so that he’s better able to speak forward. “Kind of like Handke’s play Offending the Audience.”
“Knut’s got this theory,” says Janina. “About the way people feel these days, about why they’re so miserable.”
“This will interest you, Britta,” says Knut. “In a certain sense, it concerns your line of work.”
Britta doubts this and wishes she’d chosen to change the subject with a question about Janina’s order situation instead.
“Modern man suffers from the claustrophobia of his cosmic inner space, of his place on the space-time continuum,” Janina announces.
“Huh?” says Richard, with a laugh.
“Globalization means there’s nowhere you can escape to anymore,” Janina explains. “Because everything’s already everywhere. So suicide becomes the last remaining emergency exit.”
“Actually, the important point is that capitalism of the body is ultimately communism of the soul.” Knut adds extra force to his voice, getting himself back into the conversation. “An actor stands on the edge of the stage and tells his life story in such a way that everyone in the audience thinks he’s talking about them.”
“Bam!” Vera screams. “Problem solved!”
“Dead!” Cora rejoices.
Mega-Melanie and a Glotzi have made it into the Volkswagen bus. Britta thinks that maybe a play could be made out of the Megas, an exciting theater piece, even though the word “theater” sounds rather twentieth-century too. Her good mood evaporates. She feels vaguely sad. The VW bus passes a long file of “Sport Is Public” participants on bicycles. Britta concentrates on the landscape, which looks wonderfully neat. The straight line of the horizon, the regular right angles of the fields. The polished, cloudless sky, the waving surface of young wheat.
“So it gets fairly intense in the end.” Janina’s sticking straws into little triangular containers of cherry juice. “The actor asks the audience to take him home with them.”
“ ‘You’ve made me,’ ” says Knut, quoting himself. “ ‘Now take me with you. Dress me like a human being, set me in a chair, don’t let me stick anything in my eye.’ ”
Knut and Janina exchange a kiss, and then he too gets a little pack of cherry juice. Britta forces herself to make an appreciative sound. She knows that this time will be no different, that Knut’s play will not receive a spectacular premiere in a great playhouse, but at best a barely noticed mini-premiere in some artsy Austrian barn. Knut’s problem isn’t lack of talent or laziness, but simply the fact that he’s not a winner. He’s a guy whose friends inadvertently call him “Kurt” from time to time. Destiny has taken stock of him and decided it’s not interested.
“Hey, Britta,” Janina calls from the back. “Here’s a dilemma for you. A woman makes fun of her friend’s picnic basket. Does she still get a turkey sandwich?”
“By all means,” says Britta. “She even gets the biggest one as a reward for her critical awareness.”
Janina laughs and hands a wrapped sandwich forward. Britta gives Richard a bite and then takes one herself.
“Now it’s my turn,” Britta says with her mouth full. “A woman finds herself in a difficult position, but she already has a plan that she wants to put into action. Her best friend advises against it. What should the woman do? Should she do what she herself thinks is right, or should she yield to what her friend thinks?”
“Which of the two is smarter?” Janina asks.
“No idea.” Britta feels caught somehow. “The woman, I suppose.”
“Then she should listen to her friend. People who think they’re smart are usually wrong.”
Bam, Britta thinks.
“Are you having problems with Babak?” Richard asks, speaking so softly that she can pretend not to have heard him.
“More!” Vera screams.
“If you two keep this up, the picnic basket will be empty before we get there,” Janina says.
“The same as always,” says Richard, laughing as he flips on his right blinker to give the SUV that’s been crowding him room to pass. “Let me have another bite.”
Because Richard doesn’t turn his eyes away from his outside mirror, Britta has to lean far over toward him, sandwich in hand; mayonnaise runs down Richard’s chin.
“Is he going to pass or not?”
Knut and Janina look through the rear window; Britta turns around too. The SUV is so close on their tail that they’d be able to identify the driver’s eye color if half his face weren’t hidden by sunglasses, a visor cap, and an old-fashioned mustache.
“What does this guy want?”
“Just don’t hit the brakes.”
“I’m already driving faster than I like.”
“Such a jackass.”
“Why is he driving so close behind us, Mommy?”
“He’s after Knut.”
“Why after Daddy?”
“Why after me?”
“Because you’re writing a play full of social criticism. The CCC isn’t crazy about that sort of thing.”
“Richard’s only joking, Cora. The truth is, some drivers just aren’t playing with a full deck.”
“He’s playing cards?”
“Can you make out his license plate?”
“He doesn’t have one. At least, not in front.”
“When will self-driving cars finally be available?”
“Slow down,” says Britta.
“What?”
“Turn on your hazard lights and get off the gas.”
They’ve crossed under the A 2 and passed the turnoff for Hillerse, and they’re traveling on a two-lane highway, the B 214. There’s some oncoming traffic, not very heavy. As the multivan loses speed, the SUV falls back. “Now he’s calming down,” says Richard. He sounds relieved.
“Step on the brake. Stop.”
Richard gives Britta a sidelong glance she doesn’t return because she’s concentrating on looking behind them, and then he does what she said. The VW bus comes to a stop on the shoulder of the road. The SUV seems to hesitate; farther back, other cars start blowing their horns. Suddenly the SUV driver accelerates, taking advantage of a break in the oncoming traffic to surge past the unmoving Volkswagen.
“Eyes on the license number! Can anybody read it?”
“The plate’s completely dirty.”
“He wasn’t playing cards.”
“Sure, he doesn’t want to be lasered.”
“It was a pickup.”
“That’s just a figure of speech, sweetie.”
“What make?”
“Toyota, I’d say. White.”
“He’s way down the road now.”
“What a sociopath.”
“All right, let’s go on.”
Britta lets herself fall back into her seat. Her forehead is so tightly furrowed that it hurts. Her heart’s beating fast. She thinks about what Janina said. That the smart woman should have listened to her friend. Then she forbids herself any more thoughts on that subject and does some stomach breathing.
“Get a load of this! A thousand windmills!”
“Are we there yet?”
“Where are we going, actually? Denmark?”
“Since when is the chauffeur allowed to ask questions?”
“Think about this: every kilometer, the price per square meter goes down. Look around and watch the houses get cheaper.”
“Anybody want any more cherry juice?”
Not fifteen minutes later, they reach the municipality of Müden an der Aller. Small villages zip past the windows—a lot of half-timbering, large roofs, planted front gardens. An even narrower road branches off the narrow road they’re on; the road sign for Wiebüttel is for the most part covered up by a lilac bush. The asphalt ends, and they follow a bumpy cobblestone road through a piece of woodland. Bright yellow shafts of sunlight pierce the foliage; Britta can practically see how it smells here: like rotting wood and earth and mushrooms and wild boars, and a little like childhood. How long has it been since the last time she was in a forest? Her parents used to take her with them on long hikes. They would gather fir cones and acorns and beechnuts and make animals out of them. At some point, the woods became too dirty for Britta, and from then on, she’d stay at home when her parents went hiking.
“That’s it,” Janina says reverently.
“What a dump!” Richard says merrily.
Britta slides off the passenger seat and stands on the broken pavement, gazing in bewilderment at the Object. It’s there, half-hidden behind an exuberant growth of trees, a squat brick building with dark brown wooden trim and melancholy shutters. Small bay window, clay pantiles, historic satellite dish. In front of the elevated entrance, a formerly paved and now half-overgrown entryway. There seem to be neighbors on only one side; the lot is located on the outskirts of the village. Britta takes a few steps and looks past the house into the garden, which is surrounded on three sides by an untrimmed hedge over two meters high. Still more trees, doghouses, an old rotary clothesline. The high grass says “ticks,” the loamy soil “tetanus.” It’s a nightmare of a house, escapism made stone, an outdated parody of the dream of an open fire, basket chairs, and bouquets of dried flowers. Not even Britta’s parents would have ever come up with the idea of moving into such a shack.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Janina asks.
“It’s beautiful,” says Britta, a little rattled to discover that she’s only half lying. Janina’s joyous beaming strengthens Britta’s wish to waste no time in getting the hell out of here. Embarrassed, she pulls out her cell phone as though checking her e-mail. However, as she never writes e-mails, she doesn’t receive any, not even from Babak. She finds, oddly enough, that her device has shut itself off and is currently in the process of powering up again; in the center of the screen, the flower-shaped symbol turns around and around. Irritated, Britta shoves the phone back in her bag.
The real estate agent comes, affable, crafty, in a big hurry. The children play in the garden, with much shrieking, as though they were performing in a Bullerby film set in Noisy Village; the grown-ups visit every room in the house. Britta takes deep breaths through her mouth and is careful not to touch anything. The whole place is incredibly filthy. Many windows are almost opaque. Masses of dead flies lie on the windowsills. The layer of dust on the floor is so thick that other potential buyers’ footprints can be seen. When they enter the kitchen, two cats sleeping in a patch of sunlight on the floor spring up, dart away, and disappear through the front door, which is standing open. Britta imagines spiders in the cellar and the color of water flowing through rusty pipes. She feels Richard’s sidelong glance and forces herself to smile. She tells herself that she’s encountering nothing that can’t be washed off and disinfected as soon as they get home.
Knut and Janina listen closely to the agent’s explanations, offer some invented expertise of their own, and act as if they are weighing pros and cons even though their decision has long been made. The price is low, and Janina’s in love. She’ll buy the house, and The Bridge will pay for it. No interest on the loan, no lease or leasehold—some legal arrangement will be reached. The agent gives them permission to spread their picnic blanket in the garden, locks up the house, reminds himself, yet again, that there are a great many other parties interested in the property, and drives away, heading back to the city.
During the picnic, Britta, in a surprise fit of hunger, consumes three cold chicken thighs, one after another, indifferent to her companions’ loud laughter. Vera and Cora climb trees, pick flowers, and throw sand at each other. Richard and Knut discuss a new Ego Adventure, which looks better and is more intelligently designed than ever before. Janina leans back on her elbows and gazes rapturously at the house. Britta knows exactly what she sees: a place where the rest of the world will definitely not matter anymore. Where she can raise her child and live a life moving from breakfasts in the garden to midday picnics to evening barbecues. Of course, Britta knows that’s a complete fiction. But she envies Janina her ability to believe in it.
She looks at her smartphone once again. Only now, when everything looks the way it always does—the home screen with Vera’s laughing face, and under it the seldom-used buttons for e-mails, text messages, and browsers—only now does the fear penetrate down to her bones. The telephone suddenly feels hot in her hand. She leaps to her feet, calls the children, and runs with them over the lawn to the property’s rear boundary, where a little brook is flowing, some very minor tributary of the Aller or the Oker, obliviously burbling along under the overhanging grass. There she shows the girls how to make little boats out of bits of wood and float them on the stream, just the way her parents had done with her. The girls run along the bank after the fleeing ships, and when Britta can be sure nobody’s watching her, she drops her phone into the water. Even as the device is sinking, she realizes what she should have done instead. She should have shut it off, stored it in the refrigerator overnight, and brought it in to Babak as soon as possible, so that he could check to see whether it had been hacked, and if so, by whom. Getting into a panic and destroying the thing was simply stupid. It’s not like her.
The brook carries the device along for a little way, but then it gets stuck on the bottom, glinting silver like a dead fish between the stones. Britta stands up and sneaks behind a raspberry bush to vomit.