wet faces in the mirror with mixed feelings and toweling their damp hair. The time of day could lead Sebastian to believe that he has just gotten up and is getting ready for a perfectly normal Tuesday at the university. His exhaustion has evaporated. From the moment he changed his clothes in the car and tossed them—along with the steel cable and clamping equipment—into a trash can standing ready to be emptied, his head has felt light, as if he were about to rise to the ceiling like ahelium balloon. He has bought bread rolls, parked the car, and brought the newspaper up to his apartment with him. He takes a summer suit out of the wardrobe and dresses as if for a celebration, head to toe in the colors of innocence. The parquet feels good under his bare feet and the freshly brewed coffee smells wonderful. Standing at the open balcony door, Sebastian is filled with a blessed certainty: his son is alive. A morning so bathed and clothed in breeze and filled with birdsong might be missing a crude creature like Dabbelink, but certainly not a little miracle like Liam. The same sunlight that is warming Sebastian’s face must be caressing the hair of the sleeping child somewhere not too far away. A hint of the air that Sebastian breathes, Liam is also drawing into his lungs. Sebastian even feels his son’s heart beating in his fingertips as he touches a spray of wisteria.
He pours coffee, out of habit not making any unnecessary noise, and sits down at the table with the newspaper. For a moment he allows himself the illusion that it is Sunday morning, and that Maike and Liam are still asleep in bed while he has woken too early once again and is relishing the gift of two whole hours to himself. The smell of the bananas in the fruit bowl is intense, as though they were planning their return to South America. Sebastian just wants to sit there and read the paper until he hears the pitter-pat of Liam’s feet approaching in the hall. That would probably be the best, perhaps the only sensible way to get his son back—were he not lacking the last shred of belief. When a mayfly drowns in the coffee, he is almost distraught by its death until it occurs to him that these tiny flies are so similar and so numerous that they must surely be reincarnated, if only for practical reasons.
He carries a plate of cheese rolls and more coffee with him into the living room. He presses the remote control, feeling like he is waiting for his favorite film to come on while he has a picnic on the sofa. When he does not manage to interest himself in a program on the river flowing through his hometown, he switches from the regional channel to Channel One. He turns the volume up high to keep himself awake. After an hour, he switches on the radio as well. The coffee has growncold and the bread rolls are practically untouched. Sebastian switches between channels and programs constantly; screaming voices intermingle. When the hospital scandal is mentioned, he listens. Some expert or other explains that the pharmaceutical industry makes no bones about testing drugs on human beings: new blood-clotting agents, for example, that are tested on heart patients during operations. But mostly in Africa until now, not in Baden-Württemberg. Apart from that, the mass media is filled with reports on seals in Canada, cancer research in Asia, and bands from Scandinavia, all without mention of a bizarre murder that has taken place in the immediate vicinity of the broadcast region. Images of war in the Middle East are punctuated by bad pop music from the radio. A woman reads out the stock prices to scenes from an American family sitcom. Everything has something to do with everything else; everything is connected. Only one thing is missing in the great web of connections—the news that a senior registrar at the university hospital has met his maker in mysterious circumstances.
Sebastian’s rage at the unreliability of TV and radio programs is exceeded only by irritation at his
He pours coffee, out of habit not making any unnecessary noise, and sits down at the table with the newspaper. For a moment he allows himself the illusion that it is Sunday morning, and that Maike and Liam are still asleep in bed while he has woken too early once again and is relishing the gift of two whole hours to himself. The smell of the bananas in the fruit bowl is intense, as though they were planning their return to South America. Sebastian just wants to sit there and read the paper until he hears the pitter-pat of Liam’s feet approaching in the hall. That would probably be the best, perhaps the only sensible way to get his son back—were he not lacking the last shred of belief. When a mayfly drowns in the coffee, he is almost distraught by its death until it occurs to him that these tiny flies are so similar and so numerous that they must surely be reincarnated, if only for practical reasons.
He carries a plate of cheese rolls and more coffee with him into the living room. He presses the remote control, feeling like he is waiting for his favorite film to come on while he has a picnic on the sofa. When he does not manage to interest himself in a program on the river flowing through his hometown, he switches from the regional channel to Channel One. He turns the volume up high to keep himself awake. After an hour, he switches on the radio as well. The coffee has growncold and the bread rolls are practically untouched. Sebastian switches between channels and programs constantly; screaming voices intermingle. When the hospital scandal is mentioned, he listens. Some expert or other explains that the pharmaceutical industry makes no bones about testing drugs on human beings: new blood-clotting agents, for example, that are tested on heart patients during operations. But mostly in Africa until now, not in Baden-Württemberg. Apart from that, the mass media is filled with reports on seals in Canada, cancer research in Asia, and bands from Scandinavia, all without mention of a bizarre murder that has taken place in the immediate vicinity of the broadcast region. Images of war in the Middle East are punctuated by bad pop music from the radio. A woman reads out the stock prices to scenes from an American family sitcom. Everything has something to do with everything else; everything is connected. Only one thing is missing in the great web of connections—the news that a senior registrar at the university hospital has met his maker in mysterious circumstances.
Sebastian’s rage at the unreliability of TV and radio programs is exceeded only by irritation at his
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