The Sleep of the Righteous (16 page)

I could think of no reply, still staring at the curving cleft, which extended down a hand's breath from a little mound until it closed to a seam at whose end, hidden between swells, another opening appeared. My searching eyes returned to the slit that was like a sleeping mouth; its lips were closed, adhering as in breathless dryness. Only in time, in a patch of light, it seemed, that struck them from the window, did the lips grow suppler, an invisible melting that came from within, and parted by a few millimeters. Then the light illuminating
Marie's body from the window grew cooler; barely visible, merely imaginable tremors skimmed her skin. All that remained was one bright reflection, the tip of an arrow of light that pierced the hedge and clung to her body, fragile still, nothingness made visible, and as she moved a bit, growing restless, it darted across her lightning-quick and grazed her sex, now open, beginning to gleam in naked hues. — When this light is gone, then I'll go, I thought . . .

The image lingered before me when I woke in the evening: it was growing dark; the streetlamp across from the bedroom window had gone on; it was past mid-September, the days growing noticeably shorter; for a few moments I didn't know where I was, then I heard the television, volume muted, in my mother's living room. I went into the kitchen, took from my bag a postcard with a picture by Egon Schiele showing a woman with legs spread wide, put it in an envelope and addressed it to Marie in Leipzig; I didn't write a word on the postcard. — In the morning between four and five, I brought the card to the mailbox; all night I had clicked my way through the countless television programs and kept falling asleep in my armchair. . . not an image on the screen had the least thing to do with the truth or the reality of life. My mother, who kept nodding off in front of the TV as well, had soon gone to bed . . . we were two sleepers from a past time; time's tide had caught up with us and overtaken us; the hours of sleep were the only time we still struggled to hold . . .

Should I give you a light? I asked when, as though out of thin air, he appeared before me in the darkness by the mailbox.

No . . . he gave his soft, strained laugh, immediately stifled by a coughing fit, no, today I've got my own lighter. But you're right, let's have a smoke before we take our little stroll. — With the cigarette ready in the corner of his mouth, he let the lighter burn longer than necessary; he was still unshaven, we were both unshaven. — Did you recognize me? he asked. And then: Come on, he said, let's walk a ways. That same old way. . .

I don't have much time, I returned, not stirring from the spot. Actually, I don't have any time at all . . . did you bring the letters?

I thought you'd be in a hurry, you want to catch the early bus to Leipzig, right?

How could you know that . . .?

I figured it. You know, we've got plenty of time to think now, we've got much too much time, we don't even know what to do with our time. We spend the whole time thinking, and for me it makes sense that you'd go to Leipzig to visit our little lady friend. But you've got more than two hours left.

I'll spend my time as I please! And where are my letters?

I'll tell you . . .

You'll
tell
me? Are you trying to say you haven't brought them with you?

It would be pretty awkward for me if you were in Leipzig today and plunked the whole bundle down on the table . . . and if you told who you'd gotten the stuff from. Besides, this has its risks for me. Where I'm living now, you've got your hiding places, everyone has a hiding place for sensitive things. And you can't put things in or get them out at any time, in front of everyone.

I don't care about that, I just want my letters back. Now we're going to go to where you live, and you're going to give them to me. I'll wait until you've gotten them out. What your colleagues think doesn't interest me. Or what your superiors think . . . go get them out, and we can both close the file on this one. Or do you want to make a deal with the letters?

A deal? Not at all, don't give me any dumb ideas. I've got the letters in a safe place; I liked your letters, and I still like them. Besides, if we go there now it could end badly for me.

It's time something ended badly for you!

Oh, you're taking a hard line with me . . . and you think you've got a perfect right to. When I always went easy on you back then, in the old days. — He laughed as he lit his next cigarette; again and again he seemed about to fall into a stroll, his stroll around the block, once even reaching for my arm; I followed him just a short way down the side street, to the big gateway of the former bakery; there I tore myself away and stopped in my tracks.

You know, he said, you can hardly call it living, the place we've organized. It's just holing up. Everyone comes and goes as he pleases . . . or as he's forced to. Someone'll arrive, and then he disappears again, sometimes for weeks, before suddenly showing up again, and no one asks questions about anyone. It's all pretty crazy, it's chaos . . . it's probably just that we don't have a homeland now. Today I've still got a bed there, tomorrow I may not, or I'll have a different bed. It's a madhouse, not very cozy, if you know what I mean. No one knows anyone else, and no one wants to know, all kinds of hoodlums could be holing up there. Romanians, Russians, all
that scum, let me tell you. And soon the Cubans will come too . . . they'll come and go and run off with everything. How can you hide anything properly there?

You could carry it on you, on your person.

Oh, they'd even steal out of your ass in your sleep. And you sleep like a dead man there, I can tell you, because the only way to sleep in that commotion is with liquor and sleeping pills.

Then you've finally achieved your true lifestyle, life in the underground, I retorted. That's what you always wanted! And you really think no one would be surprised if someone suddenly failed to show up?

They'd even thank you for it, in absentia, so to speak. There are always too many people there, way too many people, it's a truly artistic existence. Totally Bohemian . . . as if we'd learned from you people.

He'd talked himself into a frenzy; his voice, barely skirting dialect now, vibrated with a strange enthusiasm. I had to interrupt him:

Let's get back to my letters already. . .

The letters . . . well, it's a special situation. Can't you see that they were a kind of identification for me, the proof that I'd belonged? As long as I had the letters in my hiding place, I enjoyed a kind of protection in the house. They wouldn't put me out on the street.

So there are more people who know about the letters?

Not what's in them . . . I hope. Only the official stamps were important, and the signature mattered. There were some people who'd stopped believing my alias.

Does that mean you don't have the letters anymore? I
took a step toward him; he leaned against the wooden gate of the bakery, rubbing his back against the slats and seeming to bend at the knees, while pulling his dark sweatpants up over his stomach:

I don't have them anymore . . . but I know where they are. I can easily get ahold of them again, with us nothing gets lost, not even now. . . I'll get ahold of them again, you can count on that. How much longer will you be here?. . . I can tell you more tomorrow morning, same place. I can even find out more today, in Leipzig, I could come with you to Leipzig, and while you're with your Marie, I'll get the letters. Tell me Marie's new address, I could come by, and I'd have some positive news for you.

So the letters are in Leipzig now? And you want to come along with me to Leipzig?

In Leipzig . . . they're not there yet, I'm sure of that. But I can meet certain people there!

This is getting to be too much, I said. And you really think I wouldn't mind your showing up at Marie's apartment?

Oh, he said, that's what I always wanted . . . not just to see the little cloud from below, not just to watch her fade away. You'd really do that, go to Leipzig with me? — All at once he seemed agitated; smoking nervously, he laid his free hand on my shoulder as though to clasp me in his arms:

And you'd pay for my bus ticket to Leipzig? The trip has gotten insanely expensive, it's not an easy thing for me . . . I'll have the letters in two days, you can count on it!

You're quite the poor bastard now, eh? I said.

Now, he said, now I am! You're right about that, but such is life. — He dropped his cigarette and wriggled adroitly out
of his tight spot, pressed against the bakery gate; as he did, he pivoted, and suddenly I was thrown against the gate's wooden slats. He thrust his face close to mine; I felt his stubble on my cheek:

And I'm telling you, I'll make sure the letters reach their addressee, once I know where she is.

You'll know, you can count on it, I said; and now I embraced him as well. I pulled him to my chest and reached for the knife tucked away behind my back, beneath my jacket and under my belt. With both fists I drove the blade home beneath the left shoulder blade. It was a long, narrow bread knife, and slipped almost without resistance through the jogging suit into his body; he lifted his head and gazed at me in astonishment. It was like something in a movie; when he opened his mouth, bloody foam welled over his lips instead of a sound. I kept holding him in my embrace, kept him from collapsing. Through the little side gate I led him into the bakery yard and opened the door to the former administrative entrance I knew from my childhood. The door stuck, and I had to push it with my knee. He followed me willingly, with tiny, shuffling steps; I set him down on the dusty wooden stairs in the narrow vestibule. He was still gazing at me wide-eyed; I waited until his head fell against the wall beside the stairs. I dragged the grating door shut behind me, picked up the glowing cigarette butts from the pavement outside, and went home. On my way I tossed the butts through a storm drain into the sewer. I made a short detour along a brook, and dropped the knife into the milky, murky water. I saw not a soul the whole way, it was Saturday or Sunday, suddenly I
couldn't have said which; the jobless were sleeping away the morning, but it was only just growing light.

Mother was delighted when I told her I'd stay a day longer. I pleaded a headache as my excuse . . . I'm not feeling so great, I said, it must be the weather. — Yes, what kind of weather is this, so hot and humid, she said. We aren't getting a proper autumn. But tonight it'll rain for sure, I can feel it in every joint. — I'll fetch you some coal from the cellar just in case, I said.

Mother's rheumatism had not deceived her; when I got up—with the help of two sleeping pills, I'd slept like a stone—it was windy and rainy; well past midnight, when the old woman had long since gone to bed, the showers seemed to let up. As I left the house at last, the pavement gleamed in the light of the few streetlights as though it had been washed. — It was quite easy to find a suitable conveyance in the bakery's spacious yard; I didn't even need the flashlight, with the moonlight that broke now and then through the tattered clouds. Several so-called sack trucks—used in the old days to transport flour sacks—were lying or standing in a corner. I picked out the best one: it would have to move almost silently; the rubber tires of the two small wheels still had to be well inflated. Outside the administrative entrance I laid the sack truck flat on the ground and arranged his body on it, upside-down, his head on the bottom steel ledge; I bent his knees over the truck's upper crossbar, lodging his feet under the two steel struts that formed an X extending to the lower crossbar, then I stuffed his hands under the waistband of his jogging pants, which seemed tight enough.
In his pants pockets I found an ID—not bothering to read the name in the darkness, with the moon behind the clouds once more—a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a key ring with two safety keys; I stuffed the things back into the pants pockets, which could be zipped shut. Finally, I covered his face—his eyes, I saw in the beam of the flashlight, were still open wide, but the pupils were now sightless—and part of his torso with several tattered pieces of plastic sheeting the wind had blown across the yard. Instead of carting him down the main street, I took a detour, which cost me a good quarter of an hour, but here, years after the changing of the system, there were still no streetlights to speak of. I reached the wall that separated a sprawling factory complex from the streets at the edge of town: I knew all the tricks for getting through sections of fence that slid open and shut, back doors in the depths of the factory halls that no one ever locked because no one knew about them, through junk rooms, through never-used showers, through twisting passageways in a wing that had last been used before the war, until I reached the old boiler house where I had once worked as a stoker. We used to smuggle alcohol onto the premises through this labyrinth; I was probably the only person in town who still knew the secret route. It wasn't easy to steer the sack truck down the winding passages, across thresholds, over rubble heaps, upstairs and downstairs all the way to the boiler room, as the load seemed heavier and heavier; it was especially difficult, with the flashlight between my teeth, to climb the narrow iron stairs to the top deck of the three boilers, where the coal chutes were. Having reached the top, I had good reason to take a breather; I smoked a cigarette and looked around in
the light of the flashlight: except that everything was rotted, rusted, begrimed, and hung with cobwebs, that the table and chairs lay broken in the dust at the foot of the boilers, nothing here had changed . . . As I opened the chute of the middle boiler—I had to force it—I saw that the fire grates and the ash channels hadn't been cleaned. — How could I describe the strange feeling that seized me at this moment? — Here I'd put in part of my so-called youth; here, somehow, I'd been at home. Indeed, it was a
sense of home
that came to me here, for in this place—and nowhere else, it seemed—I had once been needed . . .