Читать книгу Arrows In The Fog - Günther Bach - Страница 11

6

More from boredom than any real interest, Bärger opened his monthly journal again after he had returned his empty tray to the corridor.

While he automatically sipped the insipid herbal tea, his glance was arrested by the word “competition”.

Look at this, he thought. This is interesting. The Brandenburg district is offering a twolevel competition for ideas and plans for a juvenile detention facility.

They have to know, thought Bärger, that the existing capacity is no longer adequate, because more and more of these useless thugs are hitting other people over the head just for fun. Perhaps the quality and furnishings of the existing structures no longer meet the requirements of a modern prison – also understandable.

Was it really true that today these young criminals were sent to the Caribbean with their social workers to go surfing for the purpose of resocialization?

He had read that a while ago in a newspaper and wasn’t sure whether a couple of clever sociology students hadn’t just figured out a way to get a first class holiday at the taxpayers’ expense. He supposed that, as a rule, the victims of attacks such as he had experienced would never have enough money in their entire lives to spend a vacation in the Caribbean.

The bump on the side of his head began to throb, and Bärger rubbed the bald spot behind his ear with the flat of his hand.

In the newspapers he was constantly reading that the youth of today were increasingly prepared to use violence, as if this were a puzzling phenomenon. He didn’t like the expression “prepared to use violence”, probably thought up by some nutty psychotherapist who believed that a screwed-up childhood gave thugs the right to hit other people on the head.

Preparation was a word that expressed positive social behavior, a word such as sacrifice, help, or industry. He found it perverted to combine it with violence. That combination of words was fundamentally wrong, as it tied together two completely opposite concepts and lacked clarity.

Quite apart from the circumstance that the assailant was almost always under the influence of alcohol and outnumbered his prey or at least was stronger, the violence seemed to be almost an addiction. He doubted whether such an addiction could be treated successfully by vacations in the Caribbean.

The newspaper article had put it well. Accepted social work in many places had become a cover-up for indolence at the cost of the state. He had nothing to add to that.

A contest for the design of a juvenile jail? He would have to get the documentation. There must be specific legal requirements and insurance regulations, including guidelines for the materials to be used. But it was also presented as a competition for ideas, so they were looking for suggestions that departed from current standards as well.

Bärger had been paging through the journal at random when, on the last page, he came across a photograph of the interior of a building. At first glance, it looked like a typical German prison. Of course, he had never been in jail, and that was true for most of the people he knew. But he had seen that particular configuration in so many films that he immediately associated it with a German prison. It was exactly like the photo.

There was a long four-story room, seen in central perspective, with narrow galleries to the right and left and a wide shaft between them reaching from the bottom floor to the roof with daylight coming through a skylight at the top. There were uniformly painted rows of doors on both sides. Just like a prison.

Only in the films, the galleries were always steel and set with steel bars and steel plate. Bärger could almost hear the prisoners walking in lockstep on those steel plates and the clanging of a closing cell door echoing in the empty central chamber.

He was very surprised when he turned back to read the title of the article: “Prize Winning Administration Building for a Major Cosmetics Company”. Even so, he didn’t really think it was very funny. If someone could design an office building today on the pattern of a Prussian prison, what then should (what was the proper expression?) an institution for penal servitude look like?

That night, he slept badly.

He woke up several times, sweating in spite of the thin covers. Finally, he opened the windows as far as they would go just as the sky began to gray over the roofline.

When he eventually fell asleep toward morning, he had a remarkable dream that he was able to remember with knife-edge sharpness after he awoke.

He was standing in the middle of a gigantic cooling tower and was looking about for something to resist a swirling suction pulling him upward. He was tempted to give in to the suction, which was pulling him up into the light of the sun. But it wasn’t the right time yet. He had to wait for something; the right sign had to appear.

Then shadows grew from the triangular openings around the supporting intake ring, black silhouettes against a light background, vague as if they were illuminated from the outside. There were more and more of them until every opening had become a frame for human shadows which now slowly approached him, taking on form as they approached. He saw faces full of evil and malice, which grinned and bared their teeth. As they approached him, and as the ring around him grew tighter and cut him off, the triangular openings behind the shadows began to close slowly and silently. The black triangular surfaces closed from top and bottom into the openings like the sharp teeth in the jaws of a shark.

At the last moment, just as the last opening shut and the ring had become completely dark, the suction began to pull him up, higher and higher toward the bright circle of the tower opening. With out-stretched arms he floated upwards until, blinded by the glaring light, he had to close his eyes.

He awoke as the morning sun glared in his eyes.

Bärger was released from the hospital on the morning of the fourth day after he had been admitted. The nurse gave him his shirt and jacket in a plastic bag. They looked and smelled as they had on that evening when he was brought in unconscious from the streetcar. He threw the bag into a trash container in the hospital courtyard.

The thought that he would have to come back the next day to get his stitches taken out spoiled his joy in the late summer weather. Unhappily he shuffled through the yellow linden leaves under the trees to the tram stop.

When the tram arrived, he hesitated a moment to cast an eye over the passengers before climbing in. Shaking his head, he got on. Never again would he be able to use a streetcar without this uneasy feeling. The bump over his ear throbbed and Bärger rubbed the hard lump on his head with the flat of his hand.

When he arrived home, he took the mail from his mailbox and opened the window. Then he took a long shower, soaping himself twice and sniffing his wrist suspiciously, as he thought he could still smell the hospital on his skin. Finally he turned the water off, put on his Japanese robe, the yakuta with the bamboo pattern, and sat out on the balcony in the sun.

He could hear the shouts of the school children playing ball in the high school yard across the street.

The school possessed two large gymnasiums. Sometimes in the evening from his balcony, he watched the various sport teams while they trained.

Training, thought Bärger. In the winter, we always trained with the bow in a gymnasium. Where could I really train now, if I wanted to begin again?

Interesting question, he admitted to himself.

Through the open door, he heard the telephone ring.

He waited until after his message, recognized the voice of the caller, hesitated a moment, and then finally went back inside to pick up the receiver.

“Hallo Jürgen,” said Bärger, “Still snowed under with work?”

“I’m glad you’re there,” said the voice on the telephone.

“Right now I’m on my way home from the construction site, and I thought I might drop by and see you. Weren’t you supposed to be somewhere in Japan now?”

Bärger looked out the window. That question was going to be around for a while: Weren’t you supposed to be in Japan? Did you have an accident? What are you going to do now?

I don’t want to deal with those questions, thought Bärger, in any case, not now. But then he said aloud, “Come on over, and I’ll tell you all abut it.” He hesitated a moment, “I missed the flight”.

They sat together and he made a pot of the Frisian tea mixture, which was also Jürgen’s favorite. They took the cups out onto the balcony and Bärger told him what had happened.

“You ought to get away for a while,” said Jürgen after a bit.

“Go somewhere where there is no cultural program to attend, no hotel, and no tourist group. Somewhere where you like it, I mean where you used to like it. Feel the fresh sea breeze in your face until your head is clear again. Right now, you’re good for nothing.”

“What do you mean?” Bärger was surprised by the urgency he detected in Jürgen’s words.

You’ve changed completely,” said Jürgen. “I don’t really know you any more. In the shape you’re in, you’re not going to be able to finish anything properly no matter what you start. I tell you again. Pack a suitcase and get out. Disappear for a couple of weeks, and leave your cell-phone at home.”

“But I don’t have a cell-phone,” said Bärger.

“So much the better,” replied Jürgen, and they grinned at each other.

“Is it too early for red wine?” asked Bärger.

“It’s never too early for red wine,” replied Jürgen. “Well, let’s say that depends on what kind.”

It was a light California red wine that he took out of the drawer under the refrigerator. It tasted of vanilla and black currants. At first, they thought that it was a little too warm, but they agreed that that only intensified the bouquet. After the second glass, neither had anything against either the temperature or the bouquet.

Instead they talked about holidays.

Bärger recalled vacations in Spain and Provence. Jürgen talked about Sweden, Norway, and Brittany.

The sun had dropped low in the hazy sky. Bärger leaned back with his hands on his neck and stared into the deepening twilight. No cloud reflected the shining evening red on the skyline. Instead, the straight contrails of two crossing jets began to shine brightly as intersecting straight lines.

“Technology inscribes its symbols over the city,” said Bärger. “Even in the heavens.”

Jürgen looked at him uncomprehendingly. Bärger pointed at the slowly blurring light streaks and they watched them a while in silence.

“I wonder why no one ever got the idea of making clouds rectangular for advertisements?”

“I can tell you,” Jürgen grinned and held his wine glass up in the last rays of the dying sun. “It wouldn’t pay.”

They both laughed.

“I just recalled something,” said Jürgen after a while and looked at the row of four scroll paintings that Bärger had hung close together over his slip-covered sofa bed.

“A good contractor shouldn’t have a problem with recalls,” said Bärger earnestly.

“You used to be funnier. Do you remember that you promised me an ink painting a long time ago? How long ago was that?”

“A long time,” said Bärger, “far too long. Do you have some idea of what you want?”

He looked at the narrow paintings, each the same size, mounted on silver-gray, matt silk, displaying the classical theme of the “four nobles”, along with the plants that represented the four seasons in China. The sequence began with a twig of flowering winter plum. Spring was represented by an orchid next to a bizarrely shaped stone. Bamboo represented summer, with needle sharp leaves motionless and stiff in the midday heat. The last picture in the series, which stood for autumn, was of chrysanthemum blossoms, heavy and full among irregularly shaped leaves.

“Aside from the fact that we don’t have any flowering winter plum trees here in the winter, I really think it’s right to begin the year with winter,” said Jürgen.

Bärger nodded. Spring, summer, fall, and winter – this series of seasons was the biological sequence of birth and death. But was it really necessary to impose a beginning and end on an eternal cycle?

“Bamboo,” said Jürgen. “ I would really like to have a picture of bamboo.”

Bärger emptied his glass.

He looked at Jürgen for a while, who seemed to be sunk in a reverie looking at the scroll painting of the bamboo and stone.

They had known each other for a long time.

They had been students at the same university at the same time, but they hadn’t met there. They both liked early jazz from the twenties –Jürgen played the trumpet, Bärger the banjo and drums. They had both been active in the martial arts, karate for Jürgen and Judo for him. Jürgen had a black belt, but Bärger had never taken it that far.

That was long ago.

Long ago once again? Why did things keep occurring to him that were over? Gone, over, never again – was that it? Were his thoughts beginning to run backwards? If so, then the pictures of his past would become stronger than promises for the future. Bärger was startled. Was this what happened when you got old?

Jürgen leaned back. Seated there with his left leg over the arm of the chair with his shock of graying hair, disheveled as usual, and his large nose, he always reminded Bärger of the famous photo of Einstein sticking out his tongue.

“How much time do you have?” asked Bärger. Jürgen never had any time. Every telephone conversation ended with a promise that they really had to get together for a long uninterrupted conversation.

Against expectation, Jürgen didn’t look at his watch.

“It depends on what you have in mind – the day is almost over anyway.”

“If you want, I’ll paint your bamboo for you.”

Jürgen looked at him dubiously. “Now? How long will it take?”

Bärger shrugged his shoulders. “A half hour. Maybe not that long – if we don’t count the preparation of the paper and the ink.”

“Then why did you make your second-best friend wait for it for over a year?”

“Do you know the story of how a famous painter made the emperor of China wait for more than a year for a picture of a rooster?”

They went into the next room and, while Bärger began his preparations, he told the story of the painter who had made the emperor of China wait.

The emperor of China, they say, had heard of the master’s great skill. At that time, it was a special honor to receive a commission for a picture from the emperor. The emperor expected that his commission, which wasn’t very different from an imperial order, would be carried out immediately. That didn’t happen. After several weeks, the emperor sent one of his officials to demand the delivery of the picture, but the painter informed him that he needed more time.

When the painting hadn’t been completed after several months, the emperor sent one his ministers to emphasize the urgency of his imperial wishes. Once again, the painter said that he needed more time.

After half a year, the emperor was so angry with the painter that he ordered him to be brought before him to be executed.

This time, the painter invited the emperor’s messenger into his studio, placed a piece of rice paper on a table, prepared his ink, and right before the messenger’s eyes, painted a picture of a rooster in a few minutes that was so life-like, the messenger almost expected to hear it crow.

The emperor’s messenger rolled up the painting that the painter handed him and, as a few minutes no longer mattered, they drank a cup of tea together.

Then the messenger asked why the painter had made the emperor wait half a year for a painting that he could do in a couple of minutes.

The painter answered that he had never had so little time for a painting.

From morning to night, he had done nothing but watch roosters; how they moved when they crowed, when they ate and drank, when they fought, and when they slept.

He did this, he said, until he understood the essence of a rooster as thoroughly as if he had been one himself. Only then, and not one minute sooner, was he able to paint a picture of a rooster worthy of an emperor.