Josef Haslinger

I was going too fast. I knew that. The darkness outside, the snowstorm, the road was not cleaned. Nobody left the house this early. There was no difference between asphalt and field. The windshield was a screensaver, starfield simulation with two hundred stars, the maximum a user can choose. They raced towards me from the darkness of the universe. I had to look very carefully to notice things, for example the sticks, which were put up to show the snow plow where the road was. They had reflectors on them, red ones on the left side, white ones on the right. Those are not flying objects, I told myself. I needed to think of something closer to the ground. So I imagined the white lights to be tanks coming my way, tanks ready to fire. All of a sudden they came out of the dark to mow down anything in their way. Now and then something flared up in the headlights, the corner of a danger sign, the rest of a signpost, not yet fully covered by snow. Or the groove of a guard rail polished by the wind. The many turns made it difficult to keep the car in the middle of the road. The tanks had a pretty good chance to get me. I should have slowed down. But I didn’t. I was on a mission and I wanted to live up to the challenge.

For years my main work had remained unnoticed by others. I don’t want to interfere with your life, my father always said and interfered with my life. He accused me of not doing anything else but play computer games all day. He had a point. Really, there was hardly a computer game I didn’t know. I watched their graphic effects. If I liked them, I tried to get into the files and uncover their digital innards. That was not easy, because they tried to hide their guts as carefully as any living creature. For relaxation I slaughtered my father.

Three millions, or I’ll kill you, I said.
Look, said my father. Whenever he got unpleasant he said: Look. Once it got to the point where he was nothing but unpleasant anymore, he told my mother the same thing, look. Look, he said, I explained this to you over and over again. I wouldn’t be doing you a favor.

Shame, I said, there is nothing I can do. Then I ran a knife into his stomach. His eyes got all big.

You know, I said, I wouldn’t be doing you a favor, if I let you live on. Sooner or later corrupt pigs like you have to get slaughtered.

I came up with hundreds of ways to kill my father. The one involving the knife was relatively harmless, kind of a calming thought at times.

A quick show down, man against man. After twenty minutes the blood would clot on the floor. Of course, I’d be wearing gloves. But I would not throw them away in the garden. I’d burn them in my little iron stove wearing the satisfied facial expression of a man who did what he had to do.

And so the years went by. But then Mimi called and I got in the car and left. However, I had asked for a few hours to think about it. However, there was nothing to really think about. I just didn’t want to give the impression that I had nothing else to do. I walked in a circle a few times and called her back. Much too fast. I couldn’t control myself.

It’s a good thing that I am independent now, I said. That way I can fix it in. It’s just the cat. I have to find a place for the cat.

Lenin is still alive?

No, Lenin is dead. His successor is called Alexandr, named after Lenin’s brother.

Lenin had a brother?

Alexandr was executed when Lenin was seventeen.

I had no idea.

Just this short sentence, then she was quiet. Maybe she was thinking about Lenin and his brother. Maybe she tried to imagine, what must go on inside a seventeen year old, when those in power execute his brother. The expensive long distance call had suddenly turned into a long distance silence.

I could ask my mother, I said, to continue the conversation.

That’s good. Go and ask your mother.

Then she was quiet again. Was she thinking she had asked the wrong person? We hadn’t seen each other in ages.

How much money will I need?

None.

I’m just asking because our banks are closing in a few minutes. You know how it is here. In the morning, when people go to work, the banks are closed. When they get home from work, they are closed, too. Real working people think of an ATM machine when they hear bank clerk. They never deal with a human.

Its not much different here, she answered. After a moment she said: let me worry about the money. You don’t have to bring anything. A few clothes, nothing else.

That was good. Surely, I would not have asked my father yet again to lend me some money. Get away from here. This works out well. Get the hell away from here.

On the immigration form, Mimi said, you will have to write an address. Don’t mention me. Give them some hotel.

Which one?

Not the Chelsea. Everybody, who doesn’t know a hotel writes “Chelsea hotel”. Its immediately suspicious.

That’s exactly what had happened to me five years prior. I didn’t even know the address of the Chelsea hotel and was kept at the airport for four hours. I didn’t tell her about it. I didn’t want to dish up my failures as a first sign of life after all these years.

Can you recommend a hotel that would be suitable?

Do you have an e-mail address?
R as in Rupert, then Kramer, but without a dot in between, at, then Vienna, dot, at for Austria.

Hold on. Why Rupert? Your name is Helmut.

Just don’t write Helmut. Otherwise my father will get it.

I see, she said. Then she fell silent again. Did she still doubt her decision?

How are you? I asked. But instead of giving me an answer she said: I can trust you, right?

You can trust me.

I hadn’t seen this woman in fourteen years. Just now and then I’d heard her voice on the radio. And here I tell her: you can trust me. At least this reminded me to ask her what this was all about.

You painted our place back then, remember, she said.

In Brigitte’s apartment? That was a long time ago.

Yes, that was a long time ago. Can you build walls?

Build walls?

I mean part rooms, install insulation for temperature and noise, things like that.

I imagined a new apartment in a red brick building, with fire escapes in front of the windows.

At your place in New York?

In a house on Long Island.

Ah. Is it a wooden house?
Yes.

Then I can do it. I’ve never done it, but I think I can do it.

Great. Then get here as soon as you can.

What do you mean, as soon as I can?

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow?

Yes, can you do it tomorrow?

She had gone through the flights on the internet. She knew that all direct flights from Vienna to New York were booked for the next eleven days. She knewthat during the next week no flight from Munich to New York was to be had either. And she also knew that there were some seats available from Frankfurt the next day, on Pakistan Airlines. She had even made reservations on that flight. She gave me the ticket number. It would wait for me at the Pakistan Airlines check in counter in Frankfurt. There was only one problem. All flights from Vienna to Frankfurt were unfortunately booked, too. I’d have to take the train to Frankfurt.

Ten minutes later the mail icon blinked at the bottom of my computer screen. The brief message contained the address of the Paramount hotel on 46th Street. A short paragraph followed:

My behavior must seem strange to you. But I can’t explain in such a short time. You won’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Love Mimi. And please delete the file.

Then I walked around in circles again. Just a moment ago it seemed that I was supposed to help build a wall, part a room, insulate against noise, things like that. And now this sentence: You won’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. What did she expect from me to think that I might not want to do it? Why all this mystery? Who shouldn’t know that she was parting a room? Perhaps, I wondered, Mimi had already been to court so many times with her landlordthat she thought him capable of confiscating computers overseas just to proof that the mason had been secretly hired in Europe.

Trusting me also meant not to tell my mother about the reasons for my trip. I didn’t want to lie to my mother. She’d heard enough lies in her life. Lying to her would put me on the same level with my father, this superfluous remainder of a human being. I had to leave my mother in the dark about the purpose of my journey. Shouldn’t be difficult, as I myself did not really know its purpose.

Walking in circles was useless. I sat down in front of the computer and slaughtered my father to relax. I pulled his neck, tied off his waist, kicked his skull off his rump. All of that happened much too fast. I needed something more elaborate. In his living room my father had installed a seven foot statue. It was a blown up copy of Phillippe Starck’s lemon squeezer. I placed my father on the press and with gusto squeezed him out. I gathered the mix of his juices and filled it into different preserving jars and herb glasses in the kitchen. I carefully labeled them as “master's choice”. The skin rag that was left over I scrubbed with detergent. I took his expensive cream, which was supposed to conceal his decay, greased him from head to toe with it and sprayed some cologne on him. I fixed his hair and placed him in front of the disgusting king-size bed with its built-in stereo system, which he now shared with his bimbo. There he was, a bedside rug, is head upright like a trophy from a safari. I wrote “Friendship, Comrade” at the bottom of the image and marveled at my creation. Then I clicked back to the mail program.

I highlighted the address and printed it out. I deleted the file and deleted it again in the folder for deleted files. Alexandr sauntered around my legs and snuggled his gray and white fur against my feet. He wanted to say goodbye. Perhaps he just wanted me to spare him the cat-cab. He always new ahead, when I’d go on a trip. Maybe he understood my telephone conversations. Maybe I always walked in circles before I got rid of him. I didn’t need to know.

When I left my mother’s house the next morning the world was covered with snow. Somewhere down in the village a snow shovel scraped on asphalt. Its metallic scratching was the only audible sound. Snowfall was so heavythat I could not make out the cemetery next door. Usually, at this time of year (it was November 2nd, All Soul’s day) a candle burned on every grave. They put them in wrought iron lanterns. The snow couldn’t have extinguished them. Last evening there had been a sea of candle lights. But now not a single one was visible. It wasn’t cold. Around thirty. It had been colder the days before. My car was a flat white hemisphere. Good thing I remembered from which direction I came when I parked it, otherwise there would have been no way of telling where front and back was. I started cleaning it with a hand brush. To avoid blocking the driveway, I tried to hurl the snow from the roof as far as I could. But I had to bridle my enthusiam. My head ached. Gusts of wind pressed my eyes shut. The snowflakes stuck to my eyelashes and made me squint. When I finally finished cleaning the back window, the windshield was already covered with snow again.

I drank too much wine the night before. That was no big deal. But I made the same mistake I often made those days when drinking wine: at the end I had washed down a few glasses of schnapps. If I can sleep in the next day, I have no problem. This time I had to pay for it. I threw the hand brush towards the front door. It landed bristles up. In a few moments it would be invisible. I liked this thick snowfall. I started the car and turned the knob of the heating on the symbol for windshield. Then I went into the house once more and took two aspirin. Before I left I glanced at my mother’s bedroom window. The curtains weren’t drawn, the light was on, but my mother was nowhere to be seen. Most probably she was still sleeping. I contemplated going back in and turning the lights off. But I already had put the car in second gear and moved with slipping clutch through the deep snow on the driveway, which in turn went out to the road passing the cemetery. At first I drove very carefully. But then I realized how late I was running and stepped on the gas. I wasn’t scared of the untouched landscape outside. I knew my way around. First a right turn, now a village, soon I’ll go uphill and then through the forest. But suddenly I lost my orientation. I couldn’t associate anything anymore with what little I saw. Only the sound of the motor told me whether I was gong uphill or downhill. A tree, a forest, a hard left turn. Then street lamps, walls, a town. But which one? I hadn’t noticed any place name sign and I didn’t see one when the streetlamps vanished again. It was, as if I had ended up in a foreign landscape. Finnland, I tought. I slipped through a hole and landed in wintry Finnland. I waited for street signs in Finnish. Huoltoasema. I once saw a show on TV, where some confused literary critic had been kidnapped and brought to a movie set that looked like a Finnish village. He stared at a sign on which was written: Huoltoasema. The guy at the gas station couldn’t help him. He only spoke Finnish.

Okay, I said, you can turn the lights back on, turn off the snow canons and put away the set. You did it.

Obviously, no one was listening to me.

Turn it off, I yelled. You win. You did it.

It was pointless. The snowfall was so heavythat I could no longer make out the road by the reflectors. The lights were gone. I had a hard time seeing the sticks for the plow. At that point I lost the image of the road. It was no longer a ribbon winding its way somewhere. I saw a white plane, cut out of a deep darkness by my headlights. I saw a few spots of light in the thick whirl of snowflakes. Those lights, I told myself, had to be to my left. Those were the lights of the bad tanks coming my way. The others, the red lights had to be to my right. Those were the rear lights of the good tanks. I was passing their convoy. There is the next white flash, here the next white flash. That is how I groped my way. When I turned on my brights, it seemed as though I had landed in an interference on TV, in some objectless, whirring room. I turned the brights back off, and looked for my points of reference. Here a red light, there a white one. A friendly tank, an enemy.