When Jürgen began to talk, at first he seemed to be searching for words.
“All the time, I had the feeling that you saw the finished picture in front of you before you painted the first line.”
“That’s more or less so,” Bärger nodded in confirmation. “But when the first line is drawn, the process runs by itself and each additional step influences the next one. It is as if the picture has a life of its own, as if it grows by itself, and I’m just there to help it along.”
“Help it along,” repeated Jürgen. “I suppose you could call it that. Why ever did you become an architect?”
Bärger was surprised.
“Because I like geometry,” he said. “Maybe because in my home town I messed about too much as a child in brick Gothic churches and wanted to find out how they were built. At the time, I didn’t know anything about Chinese ink painting, if that’s what you mean.”
“You shouldn’t do anything else,” said Jürgen. “It’s absolutely perfect, and I believe that you enjoy it.”
“Oh, yes,” Bärger laughed softly. “Guess why I do something else.”
They looked at each other. Then they both laughed and said at the same time, “It doesn’t pay.”
The new catch phrase. A different catch phrase. Always the same catchphrase. It was clear that Jürgen wanted to know what Bärger was working on now.
He shrugged his shoulders in resignation.
“Not only does it not pay – all the rest doesn’t mean anything. I mean that what I do for a living doesn’t really matter. It’s enough to keep my head above water financially but it is nothing I really want to do. Maybe that’s too much to ask for.”
Jürgen pointed at the black mailing tube Bärger had brought up from his cellar four days earlier with the bow case.
“Is there a new project in there?” he asked.
“Not really. It’s a very old one,” laughed Bärger and shook the roll so the arrows in it rattled. He unscrewed the lid to let the dozen shiny arrows slide out into his hand, and a small amount of fine sand poured out onto the blue rug.
Bärger paused for a moment, struck by the memory it evoked. “Do you know where that comes from?” He pointed at the little mound next to his foot.
“It’s from an island, from Hiddensee. And if I’m right, then that’s the last time that I did something that mattered.”
He balanced the bundle of arrows in his hand. “Maybe I should go back there again.”
“When was the last time you were there?” asked Jürgen.
“A long time ago,” Bärger looked out the window. “Maybe ten, twelve years.”
“Leave it alone,” said Jürgen. “It would be better. I went there last year and I didn’t recognize it. If you want to go somewhere on the Baltic, you’re better off going to Sweden, or even easier, to Denmark. If you avoid the vacation spots, you can still find undisturbed nature without crowds of tourists.”
Bärger nodded thoughtfully and put the arrows back in their tube.
“Perhaps you’re right. I really shouldn’t wait much longer.”
He pointed out of the window. A milky veil had thickened around the poles of the street lamps, and patches of thin mist floated above the street.
The next day began with streaming sunshine. Bärger sat at his computer and sent an email to the Regional Construction Office, in which he requested the contest rules for the – he had to look it up again – juvenile detention facility. At the same time, he transferred the required registration fee. Maybe I would have been better off drinking up the money, he thought when he did it. It would have lasted quite a while.
He took the tram to the hospital to get his stitches taken out. Unexpectedly, it went quickly and painlessly. The antiseptic they put on it afterward only caused a slight burning sensation.
He went back outside as quickly as possible to get away from the smell of the hospital. On the way home, he stopped and picked up the photographs he had taken during the trip to the atomic power plant.
At the place where he had his film developed, the photographer asked if he wanted to take a look at them. Bärger tore open the envelope, leafed rapidly through the prints, and then held the last one in his hand for a bit.
“Interesting subject,” said the photographer, looking over Bärger’s shoulder.
It was the picture of the four cooling towers. The four towers stood like a pictogram, white against a blue background, sharply diagonal and greatly foreshortened by the steep perspective.
Something went “click” in Bärger’s head and he felt he ought to remember where he had seen something like that, but it didn’t come to him.
He paid, stuck the envelope in his jacket pocket and walked slowly home.
In his study, he looked carefully for a long time at the now thoroughly dry ink picture that he had called Bamboos in the Morning Wind.
Then he nodded, satisfied, rolled up the felt mat, and put ink, rubbing disk, and brush back in the mobile cabinet. He rolled up the picture loosely and put it on the bookcase where he could see it.
After clearing off the table, he put the magazine on it where he had found the description of the contest. Instead of reading it again, however, he first picked up the envelope with the photographs to go over them again in peace. Most of them he put quickly to one side. They were documentation for a professional job; they had no artistic merit, merely expressing his intent to show a real situation with as little distortion and misunderstanding as possible.
The last picture was quite different. It wasn’t any less real, but the choice of angle and the lighting gave it a monumental quality that didn’t just come from a lack of human dimension. This stark diagonal view of a group of four cooling towers seemed to merge into a threatening symbol.
The picture wasn’t necessary to document his description of the condition of the buildings, so he placed it in the open magazine as a bookmark.
In retrospect, it seemed to him that at that moment the wheels in his head started to turn. At first they mixed together a series of pictures from dream and reality, and gradually putting them in order, finally stopped at a new picture.
Bärger had had a vision.
Absurd, he thought, completely absurd, but the idea wouldn’t leave him alone. He picked up a stack of copy paper next to his printer, looked for a pencil with a soft lead and began to sketch.
First he tried to show the dimension of the towers in cross section on the paper. Then he remembered that he had measured the tower dimensions with his laser. He took out his notebook, entered the height on the vertical axis and drew a freehand hyperbola to approximate the line of the cooling tower’s outside surface.
As he brought the line of the cooling tower down to the ground, the idea of something like an arena really began to take shape.
Bärger tried to control the flood of images that threatened to overwhelm him.
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