David clicks back one. You see the garage. Tanner exhales noisily.
“I think we’ve got a new problem.”
You see what he means.
“Where are his cars?” you ask, surprised.
“The Mercedes is in the workshop,” says David. “Oskar dropped it off last week, he said the electronics had gone nuts.”
“And the Range Rover?”
Nobody answers. You stare at the deserted garage.
“People, where’s the fucking Range Rover?”
“I don’t know,” says David.
“Call the workshop and find out.”
David starts to get up, he’s overzealous.
“What are you doing?” Tanner asks him.
“I thought—”
“Sit down and let’s have breakfast. The boy is more important right now.”
David sits down again and pushes the notebook to the end of the table so that he can keep an eye on it. Leo asks if anybody wants the croissant. Tanner shares it with him. You try to concentrate on the food. You can’t get your brother’s face out of your head. His frozen gaze. You know that gaze. You’d recognize it anywhere.
He looked so surprised.
“Any idea why Oskar is sitting frozen in the basement with a stupid remote control in his hand?”
Of course no one knows what’s happened here. It makes you uneasy. If the boy weren’t in the basement, you would immediately check the recordings from the last few days yourself. It’s your job to know everything, to have everything under control. What did you miss? You assumed the girl would listen to you. You should have been able to predict all possible deviations. Right now the boy in the basement is your only hope of shedding some light on this mystery.
You look at your watch.
The boy has only nineteen minutes left.
Time has always been important to you. For years time was a barbed-wire fence put up by your father, which enclosed your family on five days out of seven and separated you from the outside world. The fence opened at weekends, and normal life returned. In this normal life you met your father after eight unsuspecting years.
Do you remember what it was like running through the streets at fifteen? Do you remember how everything felt transient and how you lived with the fear that there would be nothing afterward? That only the Now existed, and everything had to be savored before it was too late?
You lived for the weekends, because those two days meant freedom. No one talked about where your father disappeared to during that time. Oskar asked once, and your mother pressed her forefinger to her lips as if that answered all the questions. You saw the sadness in her eyes and understood that she was no different from you—your mother endured everything too, and didn’t know what was going on around her. Over the years your pity turned into raw rage. A mother has no right to be unsuspecting. She should protect her children. She should know what happened.
On the weekends you disappeared from home without explanation, just like your father. You were fifteen and no longer believed that he was accomplishing secret missions or working for the army. You tried to think about him as little as possible. You spent the night with friends in Bremen and existed in another reality. You drank, you smoked weed, you watched a load of bad videos and just waited to be eighteen so that you could disappear entirely from your old life.
And then he crossed your path.
How surprised you must have been when you were standing in line at the baker’s one Sunday morning after partying all night and you saw your father walking past the window. Your reaction was spontaneous. You charged out of the bakery and stared after him. There was nothing special about your father walking past you. Not even in Bremen, had it not been for the little boy on his right-hand side and the woman on his left. The boy was holding your father’s hand, the woman had linked arms with him.
Not your mother, not your brother.
It was only when they had disappeared around the corner that you set off running, you followed them four streets to an apartment block. You saw them going down the hall to the backyard. The boy ran ahead, the woman followed your father. You stood in the yard and watched their silhouettes moving up the stairs to the third floor.
The following week was like all weeks. The nightmare of your lives didn’t change, although that was exactly what you had expected. You were sure your father would see through you.
Nothing happened.
For five days you gritted your teeth.
On Friday night you left the apartment, on Saturday morning you were on hold, watching the windows of the apartment block.
The boy, the woman, your father.
You just wanted to catch a glimpse of the three of them together. You lied ruthlessly to yourself on this point, but that was okay, because the situation was unfamiliar. If something is unfamiliar you have to observe it, your father taught you. You didn’t know what you wanted, you just knew it would hurt in the end.
When they left the house, you were standing on the opposite side of the street. Your father was so different. You saw him laughing, you saw him stroking the boy’s head, then kissing the woman. Lovingly.
Your father wasn’t your father.
You had to look away.
Outside the cinema and opposite Burger King, outside a bookshop, a flower shop, outside the supermarket and the butcher’s. You followed them everywhere and all the way back to the block. You were starving and thirsty, but you didn’t drink or eat. You knew it would distract you. From your fury and helplessness, which raged inside you like competing forces, sending out waves of darkness.
Hour after hour.
Only when midnight approached and all the lights went out on the third floor did you turn away and run to a friend. You slept fitfully, and took up your post again at seven o’clock on Sunday morning.
The apartment block was waking up.
You knew they would be having breakfast and talking now, that the radio was on and the toaster was spitting out toast. One more Sunday in your life. You were so lonely that you started crying.
At half past twelve the woman left the house with the boy.
You retreated to the street. You didn’t want them to see you in the courtyard. As they walked past you the boy said, “And what if we have the ice cream first?”
The woman laughed and walked on with the boy.
The hall smelled of fresh paint and sisal. On every landing there was a rubber tree, the windows were clean, nothing looked threadbare. You climbed the three flights of stairs and had a choice of two doors.
On the left lived F. Hommer. On the right, in curly letters on a brass plate, was the name Desche. You ran your fingers over your surname and thought: So this is where I live.
It took you ten minutes before you could ring the bell.
He was wearing a white shirt and blue linen trousers. He was barefoot and looked like someone who had just come from the beach. You had never seen your father barefoot before. In one hand he held a newspaper, in the other a ballpoint pen. You couldn’t look him in the eye. You studied him as if he were a headless creature. The way his toes contracted for a moment. The way the newspaper in his hand trembled. You noticed the wedding ring and you imagined him taking his old ring off every time he left you, and swapping it for this one. You wondered how easy it must be for him to switch from one family to the other. And why? That was the question that wouldn’t let you go.
Why?
“Ragnar?”