Tretjak by Max Landorff Page B

difficulty despite the fact that this had been over 20 years ago. The lectures had taken place in the southern wing of Munich’s Technical University, a concrete building which had been razed in the meantime. At that point he had owned a dark blue racing bike, a Montarino with ten gears, a Dunlop Maxplay squash racket, and he had inhabited a student pad in Freimann. He had a girlfriend at the time, Helen, an English girl from Bristol – and a best friend. Gabriel, a guy who had showed up at a lecture on theoretical physics one day, who looked foreign somehow – you would not be surprised to see him at a PKK rally – but who had opened his mouth and spoken with a broad South Tyrolean accent.
    He was not a student of the Technical University, but was reading psychology and philosophy at the other Munich university, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. But he was interested in the theory of relativity– the expansion of time, the curvature of space – and quantum mechanics. At some point they happened to be sitting next to each other and immediately started arguing. ‘If I move much faster than you,’ Tretjak had said, alluding to the phenomenon of the theory of relativity, ‘then my time passes more slowly than yours and you age faster. Does that also apply if I think faster than you?’ It was now clear to Joseph Lichtinger that this particular discussion had never ended: throughout the following two years, it had continued during lectures, in cafes, at nightly parties, while walking along the Isar river... it had not even been interrupted when the two had not been together because they had only used the breaks to gather new ammunition: questions, phenomena, theses. Fundamentally, it had all been about two questions. Can one predict the future if one knows all the facts, the premises? And on the other side of the same coin: how fundamentally can one alter the course of matters, redirect them, if one alters these facts?
    They had incorporated every discipline of science into their discussions: like junkies constantly needing a new fix they had read biochemistry, the newest discoveries about the brain, research into human communication... They had placed bets. Can we succeed in manipulating the couple at the window over there into having a flaming row? In most cases it was Tretjak who bet on something like that, carefully observing them first and then taking action. For example, he knocked over a glass of wine, which emptied itself over the dress of an already fidgety woman. Another time he pressured a shy man into a conversation, which annoyed the woman... Then they just sat back and watched.
    They had played games. At one point Tretjak had hired a private detective to have him, Lichtinger, watched. They had such fun watching the guy despair because they stage-managed the whole thing, mixing in a bit of quantum mechanics. Tretjak donned a blond wig and the appropriate clothes, turning himself into a copy of Lichtinger, and he arranged for the detective to observe Lichtinger getting off his bike and walking towards the entrance of a building. But at the same time the exact opposite would take place as well: Lichtinger leaving the building and getting on his bike. Tretjak was mainly interested in the end of the game, namely the report of the detective. He was fascinated by how the human brain could rearrange what it had perceived until it appeared logical, until it fitted its own way of looking at the world.
    â€˜You can challenge anything,’ Lichtinger had once said, ‘except the laws of physics.’
    â€˜That’s what Newton said as well,’ Tretjak had laughed, ‘and along came Einstein. And then Einstein said the same thing. But then Heisenberg shows up.’
    Following a sudden impulse, Lichtinger got up, stepped behind the altar and took a book of matches and two big, white altar candles from a wooden box. He placed them on the altar and lit them. Two candles