I wasn’t interested in archery. On television I had seen men in wheelchairs who shot at targets in gyms. I regarded it as a sport for the disabled or for children, and I couldn’t imagine that anyone could take it seriously. It seemed to me to be a waste of time, but it fit my image of the island.
And I wanted to get to know the man who shot at the colorful target at night. And that was how it began, four years ago.
The wind picked up. It came in gusts across the bay and raised glistening clouds from the rose hedges, whose brown twigs stuck up from beneath the snow. I turned my back to the wind and pulled up the collar of my jacket. I was freezing.
Slowly I went back down the path I had taken. In the harbor inn I drank a grog, then another. Outside it had gotten dark. When I pressed my face close to the black windowpane, I could see the masts of the fishing boats sway. The halyards on the flagpole in front of the inn smacked against the wood in a broken rhythm. Fishermen drinking rye and beer sat at two tables next to the bar. When I had first come in, they had looked up at me silently. Then they began talking again. A group was playing skat at their usual table. Their black sailor caps lay on the chairs next to them. The only woman in the room was the tired looking barmaid, who was leaning on the counter behind the bar. Only the murmur of voices and the slap of the cards on the wooden table could be heard in the half-dark room.
With warmth came fatigue. I paid and went up to my room. I stood in the dark room, leaning next to the door. The light from the courtyard outside cast the tangled shadows of a tree against the ceiling above the window. In the sharply defined rectangle of light, the chaotic images of the twigs danced with the irregular gusts of wind. Waves crashed heavily against the breakwater of the mooring basin. The featherbed was damp and heavy. The room hadn’t been heated before afternoon. I got up once to put on some wool socks, which I took out of my traveling bag beside the bed. Then I went to sleep.
During the night, there was a change in the weather. I woke up when the rain began to beat against the window, and I thought of the house on the hill before I went back to sleep. The morning was overcast and gloomy. The wind had died down and it was raining. The view from the window reached only to the harbormaster’s house, then everything vanished into an ashy gray. A thick curtain of raindrops obscured the rain and the water in the harbor. I went back to bed and slept until about noon.
The dining room was empty when I left the inn. The snow was gone and black water shot gurgling out of the raingutters of the houses and ran through the gardens and across the washed-out path to collect in the ditches. I took the lane to the smith’s place and then turned off onto the narrow path from the village to the lighthouse. Then, in the valley where the path crossed the paved road to the Hermitage, I went back up through the dripping grass toward the hill. There was no one to be seen.
The cold water ran off my coat at about knee level, soaked my trousers, and filled my shoes until they made a squishing noise at each step. I was even colder than yesterday, and I would have preferred to turn back. Only the fact that there was no one watching me allowed me to keep going. I would have a chance to dry my feet at the house. A reserve pair of socks bulged one of my jacket pockets; my flashlight was stuck in the other.
It seemed like a long time before the roof came up over the edge of the hill. I climbed the slope and reached the hedge behind the yard without being seen. I found it hard to believe that just yesterday there had been snow lying where now last year’s yellow grass lay in withered bunches against the first green of the new year. The branches of the hedge blocked my way and sprayed my face with cold droplets as I pushed through them to get under the shed roof.
At that moment my reason for coming was no longer important. I wanted to get inside where it was dry before my fingers became too numb and stiff from the cold to open the lock. I felt behind the beam over the door and found the key in the knot-hole of the second rafter where it had always been.
The padlock had a thick film of light brown rust. When I put the key in and turned it, flecks of rust stuck to my hand. I wiped off the lock and opened the door.
The air in the shed seemed to be colder than outside. I put the open padlock back in its staple and pulled the door shut behind me until the hasp lay over the staple. From a distance it might look as if the lock was still on the door. There was nothing else I could do.
It was pitch black. When I turned on my flashlight, its beam fell on a rectangular basin nearly covered over by a gray, gritty sheet of ice which reflected the light dully. An area of some two by three meters had been excavated and the dirt piled up to form a wall around the hole. The hole was lined with a sheet of plastic and filled with water which occupied a narrow gap between the ice sheet and the edge of the basin and which reflected the beam of the flashlight.
A convex shell which looked like a bathtub lay in the rear of the empty shed. Four plastic containers, grease-proof paper, and a roll of fiberglass net lay in one corner. I didn’t understand it at all.
I took the grate off the light well of the cellar window, which had provided a little light to the cellar before the shed had been built. After I had hung up my coat on a nail next to the door, I let myself down into the light well. As I expected, the window sash wasn’t bolted, but just swollen from the damp. With some difficulty, I managed to get it open and shone my light inside. There were some dusty bottles on the shelf under the window, and I pushed them aside with my foot. I laid the flashlight on the shelf and jumped stiff-legged into the dark. A bottle rolled from the shelf and broke with a dull report.
I swore at my curiosity and for a moment had the feeling that I had fallen into a trap. Then I took the flashlight and went to the door. It was latched but unlocked, and the beam of the light led me to the cellar steps. The fuses had been taken out of the electric meter and lay on top of its black housing. Without looking around any more, I went up the steps and entered the hall.
Nothing was locked except for the front door. All the keys hung on the board next to the light switch for the cellar steps. There was a key in the lock of the door to the workshop. One after the other, I unscrewed all the light bulbs from the electric lights: in the living room, the floor lamps; in the kitchen, the wall lights over the stove; in the workshop; and finally in the room under the eaves. Then I went back into the cellar and screwed the fuses back in. When I pressed the light switch in the cellar, the light came on.
I shaded my eyes with my hand and sat down on the cellar steps. My feet burned. I pulled my shoes off, stripped the wet socks from my feet, and, after I had dried them off with a rag which I found under the steps, pulled on dry socks. Unwillingly, I stuck my feet back into the wet shoes.
I found the electric heater in the workshop under the tool bench. My morale rose. I took it up to the room under the eaves and plugged the extension cord into the wall outlet. The smell of burning dust reminded me of my cigarettes. The package was flattened, but it had stayed dry. I sat down with my back against the wall and pulled the heater over toward my feet. Only now, with the first drag from the cigarette, did I feel the tension which had already started to slacken.
Up to now, everything had gone smoothly, exactly as planned. I was in the house, and once here, I had lost that vague feeling of uneasiness, of doing something forbidden. At this point, I had clearly committed the crime of breaking and entering. If I were discovered, no one would believe that all I wanted was to find out what had happened to him. But I believed that he would have understood me.
The reflection of the glowing overhead heater shimmered in the varnish of the wooden floor, and as the room slowly warmed up I glanced around the familiar surroundings. On the windowsill I found an empty tin box to use as an ashtray. Water was running down the dirty windowpane. I could hear the muffled, steady sound of the falling drops on the thick thatched roof.
I felt secure and sheltered. There was still enough daylight to begin a search.
But really, what was I looking for?