Marc stared at him. ‘What do you mean?
‘You said that day destroyed a lot of things. It’s true, of course. Cruel as it may sound, though, it granted you another three years of happiness together.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Sandra was going to leave you, Marc.’
‘What?’
Marc shivered, hunching his shoulders like someone expecting an ice cube to land on the back of his neck at any moment.
‘I’m not sure, but I think that was why she was staying with us out at Sakrow. She wanted a word with me as soon as I came home from the clinic.’ Constantin was breathing heavily now. ‘She called me – said it was about your relationship and another man she’d met recently.’
‘That can’t be so,’ said Marc, although he had every reason to believe his father-in-law. Dismal old memories elbowed their way into the forefront of his mind. He had tried to suppress them back then, attributing Sandra’s behaviour to hormonally governed mood swings during pregnancy. At first she had simply been distrait and silent, but she became steadily more withdrawn until it seemed that her self-absorption had given way to depression. He offered to cancel all his commitments and stay at home with her until the birth, but Sandra wouldn’t have it. She went walking by herself for hours, even in neighbourhoods she normally steered clear of. One day, when he had been visiting the parents of a notorious truant in Neukölln, he caught sight of her emerging from a seedy café and getting into a taxi, lost in thought. When he raised the subject that evening she flew off the handle and ‘refused to testify, Counsellor’.
‘Who was the other man?’ Marc asked. It was the question that had tormented him at the time.
Constantin shrugged. ‘I really have no idea. We never got a chance to clear the air. When she came round after the emergency op she wouldn’t say another word on the subject. All she wanted was to see you.’
Marc felt a touch of cramp in his calf and struggled to his feet. For some strange reason he was involuntarily reminded, at this of all times, of a tired old joke his father had told him: You can always recognize men of fifty or over by the way they groan whenever they sit down or get to their feet. By that measure he himself had aged eighteen years in a single day.
‘Why tell me this now?’ Marc demanded. He picked up the empty plastic mug Constantin had drained and deposited on the coffee table. He had to go to the bathroom, dunk his head in the basin and take some medication at last.
Constantin didn’t reply until he’d already shut the bathroom door behind him. ‘Because you asked me just now why I still regard you as my son. A tragedy can form a tremendous bond between people who love each other.’
‘Fine, then let me know when you can’t stand me any more and I’ll kill someone else…’
Marc propped both forearms on the washbasin, staring at the place on the wall that should really have been occupied by a mirror. He was glad he hadn’t bothered to put one up. It spared him the sight of his own haggard face.
‘Stop hiding behind your sense of humour,’ Constantin called, his voice muffled by the door between them. ‘It’s just self-pity.’
‘That’s the second time in twenty-four hours I’ve been told something of the kind,’ Marc muttered, reaching for the tap. He was about to turn it on and run cold water over the inside of his wrists when his eye lighted on the crack between the plug and the plughole.
What on earth…?
He bent down and extracted the chrome-plated plug. It came away with a faint plop.
It can’t be…
Dangling from the black rubber gasket was a single human hair. It was about fifteen centimetres long and curly at the lower end like a treble clef. Involuntarily, he clutched the back of his head, which he hadn’t shaved for four days.
‘Constantin,’ he called hoarsely. No answer, so he called again, louder this time.
So I was right after all.
He stared as if mesmerized at the blonde hair draped over his forefinger, which certainly wasn’t his. His hand trembled as he put it to his nose. He couldn’t smell anything, of course, but he was quite sure.
Sandra…
The flat had been renovated before he took it over. The washbasin was brand-new and he’d no guests.
This proves it. She was here.
He shut his eyes, clasped one trembling hand with the other and drew a deep breath. Then, clutching the hair in his fist like a child clutching a coin en route for a sweet shop, he hurried out of the bathroom.
‘Constantin? I haven’t gone mad, this proves it!’ he called. On his way back to the living room he barked his shin on the leg of a metal stool protruding from a half-open packing case, but the pain was blotted out by sheer consternation when he came hobbling in. The window was wide open.
The living room in which he’d just been sitting on the sofa with his father-in-law was deserted. Constantin had vanished. So had the tumbler and the ring of moisture on the coffee table.
32
‘Hello?’
Marc had lost all sense of time. He didn’t know how long he’d stood staring out into the dark, rainy night. Up here on the third floor there was no fire escape or ledge, no scaffolding or window cleaner’s cradle anyone could have used to leave the flat by.
‘Constantin?’
His father-in-law had disappeared into thin air.
He shut the window, tottered out into the hallway and tried to turn the overhead light on, but nothing happened. He saw, when he looked again, that the bulb was missing.
‘Hey, where are you?’
His voice re-echoed from the pictureless walls of the small hallway.
Please let me wake up. Please let this all be just a dream.
Turning to look at the front door, he flinched when he saw that the safety chain was on.
‘Where have you got to?’ he whispered to himself, as if he already guessed what he would find in the bedroom after checking the kitchen: nothing.
Nothing apart from a double mattress and another box with a cheap bedside light standing on it. He left this on every morning so he didn’t have to fumble around in the pitch black for the little switch when he came home at night.
But he was wrong – so wrong that it redoubled his doubts about his sanity: the bedside light had disappeared.
Like Constantin. Like Sandra. Like my life.
Yet the room wasn’t dark, because faint rays of pale-blue light were seeping through the cracks in the box.
This is impossible.
He went over to the mattress, suddenly overcome by an almost irresistible urge to flop down on it, pull the bedclothes over his head and sink into an everlasting, dreamless sleep. But the dim light exerted a hypnotic attraction on him. At the same time, he remembered a conversation he’d had with Sandra years ago.
‘Hey, what’s the matter? Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Promise me…’
‘What?’
‘Promise you’ll always leave a light on?’
He opened the box, parted the flaps with trembling hands… and found his surreal vision confirmed.
‘What do you think?’
‘Hm… I’d call it, well… an acquired taste?’
‘Utterly hideous, more like.’
He shut his eyes, but the memories refused to fade.
‘What is it? Are you crying?’
‘Look, I know it sounds a bit weird, but I’d like us to make a deal.’
‘Okay.’
‘If one of us dies – no, please hear me out – the first of us to go must give the other one a sign.’
When he opened his eyes the hideous, battery-powered, baby-blue dolphin bedside light was still in the box.
And it was on for the first time in its existence.
I’m coming to find you if it takes me all night
Can’t stand here like this any more
For always and ever is always for you
I want it to be perfect like before.
Ohohoho… I want to change it all.
‘A Night Like This’, The Cure