Andi has always had responsibilities. When he was five years old, he had a hamster. A couple of cats, when he was ten. They mated, and had kittens. At 16, he had a dog. His first relationship came late: you’d want to be ready for it.
Back then he thought it would last forever, but now at 45 he is on his own. Not in order to avoid responsibility, quite the opposite, in fact. There just doesn't seem to be a lid for his pot, in the shallow world outside his window.
He is alone, but has rarely ever felt lonely. That is: until last year. His hunger for responsibility was one of the reasons why he joined the police at 22, and for the same reason, he had to quit the job at 44. Ground for dismissal: commitment to the Basic Law. They’ve sworn an oath to it, but unlike him, the others have apparently grown tired of theirs, which was why he got suspended.
It was the middle of the night. Completely dark: no moon, no stars. Or maybe there were. I should have been more attentive. Fog was everywhere. I felt the chill off it in every bone, and it hurt whenever I moved.I recognised him from my front door. It fell shut behind me: slowly, like in slow motion. The hinges squeaked, as if they were suffering, because the oil inside changes its viscosity in winter time. The door wasn’t yet closed, when my legs started running. Actually, I didn’t order them to run. I guess, it just happens as a reflex when the eyes detect distress on the horizon.Do you know what warm blood looks like in the freezing cold, when there's suddenly so much of it? Actually, you should, given your profession. It steams. A bit like manhole covers in winter, and if it’s pitch dark around you it looks like the
Life is dead. They don’t know that, yet, but the bridges have been burning for a year. Soon they will disintegrate to ashes. For it to blame is something out there. It first befell the flesh and afterwards: the hearts. Left is nothing, only fear. Of each other and of oneself: of all the things they might have to do, may want to do, are doing to one another.It's a year of longing. Every inch of the body yearns for something more. The limbs are caught in restless tremble, and soft sighs linger on desperate lovers’ lips. Like on Helen’s. In her life, she has loved many things, mostly trivia. Black coffee in the morning, smiling strangers in the park, and the sense of freedom that crashing waves on stormy shores would wash into your heart.What she’s always loved most: lost things that the rest of the world overlooks. Empty snai
It was the early morning of a freshly hatched winter’s day when it happened in the thick cloak of fog. Perhaps it would have been visible, if anyone had been beside her. With her, between blankets that smelled of loneliness, and suddenly damp of tears that kept dripping from her lashes, as if waking were the most horrible dream.Her heart was still beating when she opened her eyes. But how? She could feel it fade. It didn't fall apart like rotting branches, or splinter like bones that are weak. Instead, it atomised like a bomb in an explosion.Prior to this day, it had broken in every possible way. Slowly. Suddenly. Violently. Bluntly. Into two pieces and into ten, hundreds, thousands of them. Oftentimes it broke on its own, other times it had been shattered: through carelessness or cruelty, and thrown against the wall, it had left stains, alm
It all went wrong. Even weeks before a cold winter’s day atomised Helen’s heart, nothing was right.The streets looked dreary. Empty, depressing and gray. Not even ants where squares used to be busy. Silence where laughter used to waft from open windows, and in the centers, every third door was sealed.All of a sudden, cities were ghost towns. It felt like there was nothing and no one left in the world. Everywhere everyone was suddenly alone: lonely all the time, and it wasn't the kind of loneliness that you choose in order to find yourself. It was of the forced, commanded, unbearable sort, which you got lost in, as you couldn't leave it even when you desperately needed someone.Chosen solitude is a luxury. Very different from this one: a reclusion that held you captive in sarney
Two days after Helen’s heart atomised in a cold February night, its splinters felt ever heavier in her chest. She hadn’t really gotten sleep. At dawn, she had trudged past muddy hoofprints in empty donkey pastures.For the second day in a row, she was in front of the Brandtner house now, where the children were still playing in the garden. Where the blond widow was still empty-eyed: unlike yesterday, not on the patio, but in the spacious kitchen, next to water that kept boiling on the cooker and fogged up the window panes.It was cold. The firm grip of dawn kept shaking Helen’s limbs. Shivering, she'd been standing there for an hour, and was almost frozen to the spot. Not even her breath was warm any longer. Maybe she was no longer breathing at all, but only waiting to collapse beneath the first rays of the sun like a thawing snowman.
It was eight in the morning when Helen's doorbell screeched. The roads were covered in snow and the pointed peaks of the mountain tops on the far horizon looked like rolled in icing sugar overnight.In front of the house, clunky shoes had pushed down the snow, leaving slickness. The cold morning light reflected upon it, and with each passing second the way out became more dangerous.When the doorbell rings at eight, you are anticipating the worst. At this time only messengers would ring. Either to deliver parcels, or - if you haven’t ordered anything - bad news. Such as the policemen Helen suddenly came face to face with.‘We have a few questions about the night of the 25th.’They were wearing green masks and uniforms in the same color: as green as Anni
How did you damage your car? What happened to your face? Did you have an accident? Where were you at 3 am on Sunday morning? Were you under the influence? Drugs or alcohol? Have you ever been to Master Alley before?Flies took off. In breach of social distancing regulations and speed limits, they crashed in front of the tarnished windows. A fatal accident right above Tom’s window sill. Seconds later they were hailing down, dead, and Tom was wondering why no one cared about it. Neither one of the policemen outside his open door.Wouldn’t that be their job? Weren’t they supposed to take care of misfortunes? Such as the flies that had suddenly stopped flying?Tom didn't like change: not even the smallest. Disappointed, he kept staring at their suddenly useless wings, as silent as the gr
The past year shrunk the world. In the hot wash, and to be honest, washing it had been a bad idea, all along. It should have gotten trashed, instead, given the dirt it had accumulated.Especially Tom's world. It had been feeling rotten for as long as he could think, and it wasn't due to the rank kitchen, not to empty bottles in the hall, and neither to the floors that a cat which didn’t live for long had at some stage peed upon. It was due to himself.Sundays which were actually Mondays. Tuesdays which would feel like Fridays, and Wednesdays that could have just as well been Saturdays. They were all the same. Except for Thursdays. Thursday was usually different, because he would sometimes take responsibility then, and see his son.Except for that, nothing ever happened in his world. Only unimportant things tha