She yelled for awhile. She cursed him and made threats and then even ended up crying. But because it was Ralf, finally, who had unleashed this chaos, Ebling didn’t have to feel guilty. Heart thumping, he listened to her. He had never been so close to the very heart of an exciting woman.
“Pull yourself together!” he cut in. “There was no way it was going to work, you know that!”
After she’d hung up, he stood there for a time, feeling a little faint, listening to the silence, as if Carla’s sobs were still echoing somewhere.
When he encountered Elke in the kitchen, he was so astonished he felt rooted to the spot. For a moment, he’d believed she came from another life, or a dream that had no connection with reality. That night he pulled her close again, and this time too she gave in to him reluctantly, and all the while he imagined Carla, swept away by passion.
Next day he was alone at home, and called one of the numbers for the first time. “It’s me. Just checking everything’s okay.”
“What’s this?” a man’s voice asked.
“Ralf!”
“Which Ralf?”
Ebling hastily hit the disconnect button, then tried again with another of the numbers.
“Ralf, my God! I tried you yesterday … I … I …”
“Easy!” said Ebling, disappointed that again it wasn’t a woman. “What’s up?”
“I can’t go on like this.”
“Then stop.”
“There’s no way out.”
“There’s always a way out.” Ebling couldn’t stop yawning.
“Ralf, are you telling me I … finally have to take the consequences? That I have to go all the way?”
Ebling went channel-surfing. But he was out of luck, there seemed to be nothing around but folk music and carpenters doing things with planks, and repeats of old series from the eighties: the whole afternoon-TV gloom. How was he even seeing all this, why was he at home and not at work? He had no idea. Was it possible he’d simply forgotten to go in?
“I’m going to swallow the whole container.”
“Go right ahead.” Ebling reached for the book that was lying on the table. The Way of the Self to the Self, by Miguel Auristos Blanco. The sun’s disk on the jacket. It was Elke’s. He pushed it away with the tips of his fingers.
“Everything comes to you just like that, Ralf. You get it all on a platter. You have no idea what it’s like always coming second. Being one in a crowd, always someone’s last choice. You have no idea!”
“That’s true.”
“I’m going to do it—I mean it!”
Ebling switched off, just in case this pathetic person tried to call him back.
That night he dreamed about hares. They were large, there was nothing cute about them, they emerged from dense thickets, they looked more like filthy beasts than the charming little creatures from animated films, and they stared at him with eyes that glowed red. Behind him there was a cracking sound in the bushes, he swung round, but his movement shook everything loose, reality melted away, and he heard Elke saying it was unendurable, how could anyone breathe that loudly, enough was enough and she wanted her own bedroom.
Starting the next morning, the phone was silent. He waited and listened, but it didn’t ring. When it finally did so in the early afternoon, it was his boss wanting to know why he hadn’t come in the last two days, if he was feeling ill, and if his doctor’s certificate had somehow got mislaid. Ebling apologized and coughed for good measure, and when his boss said it wasn’t serious, these things happened, no reason to get excited, he was a good worker and everyone knew his worth, he felt tears of rage in his eyes.
The next day he sabotaged three computers and installed a hard drive in such a way that all the data on it would erase themselves exactly one month later. His telephone was silent.
He came close a few times to calling one of the numbers. His thumb was on the call-back button and he imagined that only a second separated him from hearing one of the voices. If he’d had more courage, he’d have pressed it. Or started a fire somewhere. Or gone in search of Carla.
At least there was Wiener schnitzel for lunch. Twice in one week—a rare treat. Rogler sat opposite him, chewing religiously. “The new E14,” he said with his mouth full. “It’s enough to drive you crazy. There isn’t a damn thing inside it that works. Anyone who buys it has only himself to blame.”
Ebling nodded.
“But what are we supposed to do?” Rogler was getting loud. “It’s new. I want it too! There’s nothing else on the market.”
“True,” said Ebling. “There’s nothing else.”
“Hey,” said Rogler. “Stop staring at your phone.”
Ebling twitched and put it in his pocket.
“Not so long ago you didn’t want anything to do with one, and now you don’t budge an inch without it. Just relax—nothing can be that urgent.” Rogler hesitated for a moment. He swallowed, then stuck another piece of schnitzel in his mouth. “Please don’t take this the wrong way. But who would be calling you anyhow?”
In Danger
A novel without a protagonist! Do you get it? A structure, the connections, a narrative arc, but no main character, no hero advancing throughout.”
“Interesting,” said Elisabeth wearily.
He looked at his watch. “Why are we running late again? It was the same thing yesterday, what are they doing, why does it keep happening?”
“Because stuff happens.”
“Did you notice the man over there, he looks like a dog on its hind legs! But what causes those delays, why can’t they experiment just once, just like that, and try taking off on time?”
She sighed. There were more than two hundred people in the departure lounge. Many of them were asleep, a few others were reading crudely printed newspapers. The portrait of some bearded politician grinned down off the wall under a gaudy flag. A kiosk offered magazines, detective novels, spiritual self-help books by Miguel Auristos Blanco, and cigarettes.
“Do you think these airplanes are safe? I mean, they’re really ancient equipment sold on by the Europeans. With us, they’d never even be allowed to take off, it’s no secret, right?”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s no secret.”
Leo massaged his forehead, cleared his throat, opened and shut his mouth, and blew his nose at considerable length, then looked at her with watering eyes. “Was that a joke?”
She didn’t reply.
“They should have told me up front, they shouldn’t have invited me, I mean, where are the rules? They can’t invite me if it’s unsafe! Did you see the woman over there, she’s writing something down. Why? What’s she writing? Say, you were joking, weren’t you, about these planes—they’re not really dangerous?”
“No, no,” she said, “don’t worry.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better!”
She closed her eyes.
“I knew it. I can tell. See over there! If we were in a story, we’d be part of this group, and they’d forget us before we even took off. Who knows how that could develop!”
“Why should anything develop? We’d catch the next plane.”
“If there is one!”
Elisabeth said nothing. She wished she could sleep, it was still early, but she knew he would never allow it until after they’d landed. She would have to spend the entire flight explaining to him that flying was perfectly safe and there was no need to worry about a crash. After that she’d have to take care of the luggage and in the hotel it would be her job to speak to the receptionist and arrange for room service to send something up that Leo would agree to eat, given his juvenile tastes in food. And in the late afternoon she’d have to make sure that Leo was ready when they came to collect him for his lecture.