He picked up his camera to get at least a two-dimensional image of this shape, but the field of view wasn’t wide enough to capture the entire picture. The thought that the size of this space would be beyond his ability to estimate reminded him of his laser range finder. As the side opposite to him lay in bright sunlight, Bärger took a couple of steps to one side, until he thought that he could make out the red reference dot in the tower’s own shadow on the other side. He whistled through his teeth. The display showed what his eyes could not – an exact measurement of 42.35 meters. He tried several times to measure the height, and finally decided to believe his third measurement, which indicated exactly 53 meters.
The height to the lower edge of the bell shaped wall, borne by the slanting struts, was close to four meters, far more than the usual height of a single story. He realized, surprised, that there was nothing else to measure, and that those dimensions would do nothing to help him come to grips with this space.
Even though he wasn’t sure why, he wrote down the measurements in his notebook, shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and began to pace around the edge of the cooling tower taking regular, equal strides. When he arrived back at his starting point, he had counted 220 paces, which roughly agreed with the measurement.
A small heap of gleaming, blue-black cinders, remnants from welding or more likely from cutting steel parts, lay in a small area of the smooth concrete, which formed a shallow basin inside the ring foundation. There were conspicuous places on the edges of the struts where they had been damaged by the removal of bulky pieces of cooling equipment. Aside from a broken wooden pallet and the mummified corpse of a rook, the gigantic space was empty.
Bärger walked slowly to the center, looked around in a circle and then up and suddenly had the feeling that the round hole up there leading into the sky was the real exit. A cloud passed over the edge of the tower and again he felt a slight dizziness, as he was unable to tell whether the cloud or the tower was moving. He positioned himself, standing where he thought the center point was, and lay down on his back staring up until his eyes hurt.
When he shut his eyes he heard the noise of the wind. He lay there long enough to become conscious of a new sensation. It seemed that he was becoming lighter and lighter, until he began to float. His body began to circle very slowly, while at the same time he rose higher and higher toward the opening into the light.
Bärger brought himself out of it. He shook his head vigorously and stood up bracing himself until the feeling of giddiness vanished. When he heard the sound of the car horn, repeated at short intervals, he realized what had brought him out of this peculiar waking dream. He had a feeling of relief as he walked slowly back toward the others already waiting by the cars, but just before the parking lot, he turned around again. The group of concrete giants stood against the blue sky so exactly angled from his position that the nearest tower completely concealed the one behind it, like an abstract symbol. What kind of symbol?
I’ll find out, said Bärger to himself, and raised the camera for the last time that day to find that he now could really capture all that he saw in the viewfinder. Then he walked quickly over to the group of four impatiently waiting for him.
“What was your name?” asked the investor with the Rolex when Bärger finally arrived at the group, sweaty and dirty.
“Bärger,” he said cheerfully, “Rolf Bärger.”
The investor said that he would be hearing from them and the two Daimlers drove off, one behind the other. Lothar said that they had still more to do, and the municipal councilor repeated that nobody, but really nobody, was interested in the cooling towers. That didn’t make a lot of sense, thought Bärger, but he preferred to keep that to himself.
He looked over at Lothar who shook his head unhappily, and then with a decisive “Well, let’s go!” settled himself behind the wheel and started the engine.
It would seem that the conference hadn’t been a real success, but Bärger wasn’t sure if Lothar’s bad mood was due to his unplanned detour to the cooling towers or to the result of the negotiations. He thought it best not to ask, and waited until Lothar himself began to talk about it.
“What did you think of that guy?” was Lothar’s first question after a while. He could only mean the investor.
“What should I think of a man I met today for the first time, and didn’t see for more than five minutes?” asked Bärger.
“But I suppose you’re right—somehow they’re all the same, developers as well as investors. You can never shake the feeling that they are playing poker and take great care never to reveal their real intentions. What is truly remarkable about them is that the clichés which describe them are mostly correct. What happened this time?”
“He is interested in the reactor chamber and the administration building, but naturally won’t say for what, and only wants a small piece of the land. He also wants a new evaluation of possible contamination where the reactor used to be. That’s really where the deal is going to fall through. I would like to know what it would cost to tear that down.”
“So, it’s another dud.”
Bärger looked out of the car window. The exit from the autobahn was already posted. This area was outside the usual ring development, but close to the autobahn – a strong plus.
How did that motto go that they used to recite? For real estate, there were three important things: first, - location; second – location; and third – location. What did they really have in mind here?
Bärger remembered his first job after the Berlin wall had come down, with a company which had emerged from one of the branches of the architectural institute and was looking for a leading architect. That had been a remarkably unstable and insecure period. You were foreign and felt foreign in what used to be familiar surroundings. Then he was introduced, to something that, against his will, he was forced to adopt as a principle of his professional life: mistrust, including the acceptance of the mistrust of others. That had been painful right from the start. Since he left school, he had regarded a trusting relationship between contractor and architect as an understood and unconditional basis for cooperation. He had believed that a building assignment could only be successfully carried out on such a basis. Things had been so different then, that often, words failed him in the company of his contractors.
As an architect, he found himself forced into the role of an unnecessary and far too expensive specialist, whose signature and stamp on various forms and papers were still required in order to obtain the necessary construction permits. He hadn’t been on a single job where he knew how his building would eventually look, not even the color of the glazed bricks nor the shape of the window latches.
After initial attempts to exercise influence on professional and site related questions, Bärger had given up trying to change impressions taken from magazines and catalogs.
It was tiresome enough to have to explain the relevant ordinances of the building code as requirements for a construction permit and to work them into the plans. It was especially costly when the role of the contractor became an object of contention between a married couple. He remembered the conversion of a small single-family house- one floor with an extended roof – for which he had finally prepared eight different plans, which really did differ substantially from one another. But except for this exploration of the possibilities for altering such a little house, the expenditure in relation to the pay had been remarkably high. Even after the agreement of his two contractors on the last version, they had changed it yet again, although he had already pointed out that doing so would void the already settled contract and the schedule. Bärger supposed that the head of construction had recognized this situation and made clever use of it.
No, it didn’t bother him anymore when someone accused him of – how nicely they phrased it – taking advantage