You’re lying on a barren piece of land that was once dense with fir trees, where wolf packs once gathered on winter nights, before your forefathers cleared the land to build a beach hotel without a beach. You feel nothing of the old times, and soon you will be part of this damned land if the sun goes on burning down on you like this. If you get heatstroke on top of your concussion, we’ll soon be able to leave you to the seagulls. But it’s looking good, something’s happening. There’s a shaking in your leg, and your fingers are twitching too. Your body’s waking up as if it had been frozen.
Like Oskar.
Your world has gotten out of joint. Your son denied you, two of your best friends are dead in the trunk of the car, and you’re seething with rage. It is diverted from your head to your belly, because you’re going to need all your wits about you to get out of this wretched situation. Whatever you do now, you should gather your strength for the finale, because you’re going to need a lot of strength.
The pain has faded, the nausea has gone, your stomach has calmed down. You’re slipping away into a healing unconsciousness, and for a while you disappear into a café in Bregenz with a view of Lake Constance that you visited years ago when one of your customers flew you in for the opening of the festival. You’re sitting by the window with Oskar and Tanner, the sun is shining in, everything is dazzlingly bright. Tanner raises his glass to you, you look up, Leo walks past outside, but he’s in a hurry and just waves at you in passing. You drink cold lemonade, Oskar eats his third piece of cake, and you’re amazed that he hasn’t put on an ounce over the years. Tanner pats his stomach. He’s almost always on a diet. And what good did that do? I’m not even breathing anymore, he says. Oskar nods, he knows the feeling. You look into your lemonade and can’t move. Now you know how I felt, says Oskar, nothing’s working anymore, the body is down. The waitress brings a plate with even more pieces of cake and says: These are from the boss. You look over at the bar; the boss is a boy in an apron with a hole in his forehead. You nod your thanks. He nods back. You don’t want to say it. Tanner says it: Isn’t that Mirko? Oskar says: At least he has a job. You take a sip of your lemonade and try not to laugh. The dead are all around you, and if you look up right now Ruth will come in and she’ll be holding hands with Marten, but that’s something you don’t really want to see at the moment. The darkness saves you. The sun disappears behind the night as if the night were a curtain. It becomes pleasantly cool, and when you open your eyes you’re no longer alone. A man is leaning over you, the sun lurks behind his shoulder, you can’t make his face out. The man asks, “Do you remember me?”
“What?”
“Do you remember who I am?”
You swallow, your tongue feels as if it’s three times its usual size. Your eyes have gotten used to the light. The man’s face is hovering clearly and distinctly above you. You can hardly hear yourself, your voice is so faint.
“I have no idea who you are.”
The man nods, he expected this.
“It’s on its way.”
“What is?”
“The memory. It sometimes gets lost.”
You try to keep him in focus. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a cross on it. He’s the same age as you. He says, “But I know who you are. You’re the man who gets his son to kill people. Because of you my son lay with his face in the dirt.”
You feel a quiver in your right hand and clench it. Wake up, you stupid fucking body, wake up and do something before this guy does me in! A muscle in your thigh twitches, your heel scrapes over the ground.
“Marten,” you say.
“Right, his name was Marten.”
Of course you could lie to him, but that wouldn’t be you. Ragnar Desche doesn’t lie. Ragnar Desche is honest and says, “It was his fault.”
“No.”
“He—”
“I said no. My son wasn’t guilty of anything. Whatever happened, I know he wasn’t to blame. But whose fault was it?”
You look at each other. He knows the answer and still wants to hear it from you. Your son Judas. It’s easy for you to betray him.
“It was my son.”
“Thank you.”
The man leans forward.
“This is definitely going to hurt.”
He pushes one hand under your back, the other under your leg, and lifts you up. It’s a bit like someone sticking a red-hot stake up your backside. The pain spreads, shoots up your spine, and you greet it like an old friend that you haven’t seen for ages. Pain means that there’s still hope, no paralysis, no life in a bed with a straw in your mouth. So the connections haven’t been cut yet. Your eyes fill with tears. A hundred-year-old man would have more dignity. Your head hangs down, your arms and legs don’t really exist, only your right hand clutches at the air, spittle trickles from your mouth, and after a few steps the pain’s too much even for your stubborn consciousness and you black out.
You blink. There’s a dirty glass of water in front of you. You’re sitting at a table, your head manages to move, your muscles work, your left arm doesn’t react, your right comes up slowly, your fingers grip the glass. Your arm trembles. You drink and look at the man. He’s sitting at the other end, his hands are flat on the table, he’s looking at you expectantly.
The glass is empty and you set it down again.
“My son will come back.”
“I don’t think so. Your son won’t come back any more than my son will come back. We’re fathers without sons now.”
For a moment you’re sure that the man must have captured Darian. Then you remember Darian speaking to you and leaving.
After the idiot had emptied the whole magazine at the hotel.
“We have plenty of time,” says the man.
“I don’t think so. As soon as my body’s working again, I’m out of here.”
He shakes his head.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” you ask.
“It means you aren’t leaving here. This is the place where you will die. This is the end of you.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
He smiles. Not cruel, not arrogant; kind.
You think you can feel time breathing down your neck. Of course it’s only the summer wind blowing through the broken windows. Of course the man in front of you is a comedian. You laugh and say exactly that.
“What are you? A comedian?”
“You know me, you know who I am.”
Your fist comes down on the table, the glass leaps into the air, rolls along the tabletop, and shatters on the floor. Your voice is a growl. Ragnar Desche slowly wakes up.
“You little fucker, what do you think you’re doing here? Do you think you can drag me around the place, sit down at this table, and tell me I’m going to die here? No one threatens me. No one, is that clear?”
“I haven’t threatened you.”
“What?”
“No one’s threatening you, these are just the facts.”
Your hand searches, the gun’s not in the belt holster anymore. The man picks your automatic from one of the chairs. He leans forward and pushes it into the middle of the table. The table is sixteen feet long. If you stand up now, you’ll be holding the gun in two seconds, and that’ll be that for this comedian. But what if he’s only trying to make you look ridiculous? What if he’s taken out the magazine? It could be an embarrassing moment.
“The gun’s loaded.”
The man isn’t just making you nervous, he’s reading your mind.
“What’s to stop me from grabbing it?” you ask.
“Your legs. You’ll have to wait a while before they work again.”
“Who says they don’t already?”
“If they worked, you’d have grabbed the gun long ago.”
He’s right, and you hate him being right.
“And what happens then?”
“As soon as you’ve got the gun, I’ll kill you.”
You look at him in disbelief.
“What with?”
He looks at his hands.
You look at his hands.
They’re lying flat on the tabletop.
You laugh.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Is that all you have to offer? Your fucking hands? Have you any idea who’s sitting here in front of you? You’re going to need more than those hands to finish me off.”
He doesn’t react. You go on, it’s always the same game with you. Wind up your adversary, see how far you can go.
“Do you think the table’s going to go flying up in the air if you take your hands away?”
The man thinks for a second before he says, “If I take my hands away, they will kill you.”
He smiles and adds, “That’s the kind of hands they are.”
There’s really nothing more to say on the matter. You feel a trembling in your legs. Wake up, damn it, just wake up! Even though you don’t want to, you have to ask, “Who the fuck are you?”