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  Maimuna wanted to get rid of the belts strapped beneath her dress as soon as possible. They pinched and made her sweat, and they made her waist appear lumpy, if you knew to look. Had Mikael and Marcel noticed? The dress was loose at the waist—she had borrowed it from Ndeye, who was a little plump. Maimuna would have drowned in the dress if Ndeye hadn’t sewn a line of smocking under the breasts. As soon as she met Mister Mecanico at the Amanar restaurant and passed off the belts, she would be free. They could arrange a photo shoot and linger at the edge of the desert for a little longer, looking for the perfect dune to use as a backdrop. She would put on her other dress, which was turquoise and tight-fitting. Mikael was sure to agree. Why wouldn’t he?

  Mikael and Marcel weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere. They insisted that they wanted to go through Sévaré to Mopti, where there were more mosques, which they never seemed to tire of photographing, and a building devoted to earthen architecture. How they managed to be so excited about that she didn’t understand. Mikael and Marcel had slept well at the hotel. Nothing weighed them down, and nothing was wrapped around their stomachs that chafed and made them sweat. They could sleep stark naked under the hypnotic whopping of the ceiling fan, and now they eagerly pressed against her in the bouncing car. Each wanted to show her the pictures he had taken on their journey. Look, Maimuna!

  And she looked. She listened to Marcel’s soft, flowing French, and Mikael’s tentative, rougher French. She felt Mikael’s arm, clammy with sweat against her skin, and she felt Marcel’s arm, which was dry despite the heat.

  “Maimuna,” Mikael said, “do you know the Batammariba people of Benin and Togo?” Mikael showed her a photograph of a boy with long, thin scars lined up across his face and began to speak. Marcel came to his aid any time Mikael got stuck on a word. Maimuna sat obediently between the men. It was a very good camera. A professional camera. If she could just not ruin this . . .

  Maimuna?

  Maimuna, you must have heard of them, the Batammaribas, who as their name suggests are the real architects of the earth. They decorate their faces with scar tattoos in parallel lines like the walls of their mud houses. (No, she hadn’t heard of them.) Surely you must know about their unique houses. (She didn’t know.) They’re called takienta. The houses are three stories and built according to the architecture of the human mind. Every house has a bottom floor, the dark, animal subconscious, a middle floor for the ego, and round granary attics protected by hats made of straw for the superego. (She didn’t know, and she didn’t understand, but she nodded and smiled.) The houses not only have the psyche of a person but also all of a person’s body parts: eyes, nose, mouth, vagina, penis, anus . . . The buildings are constructed by the head village architect, the otammali, he-whoknows-how-to-build-from-earth. Here he is: such a happy man! We met him in the village we visited, and he allowed us to spend the night on the roof of his house . . . And now we’ve moved on to a Kassena village in Burkina Faso! Look at these amazing black and white geometric patterns. (She looked.) These triangles painted on the walls of the building represent broken gourds, which are a symbol of wealth. Another symbol of wealth are these cowry shells, which were once used as money. Look, Maimuna, at how the beautiful python design slithers around the wall of the chief’s house! (She looked and thought it was childish, clumsy, and pretentious.) The python is one of the Kassenas’ most important totem animals. The doors of their houses are like the openings of an igloo: round and very short. When you go inside, you have to bend down very low, maybe even crawl. Just imagine the problems I had with my long legs . . . (Mikael’s legs really were quite long and slender. Compared to Mikael, Marcel was as small as a Pygmy, as nimble as a gazelle, and as supple as rubber. They were perfect opposites, one lanky and blond, the other dark-haired and muscular. Which one would she choose if she had to pick? Tall Mikael or short Marcel?) Immediately inside, a visitor runs into a threshold about forty centimeters high. Can you imagine a better defense? Brilliant! If an enemy tries to crawl in, knocking him over the head in the darkness of the entryway would be easy. Light filters in from a hole above, making the dark room a holy place. Do you know what, Maimuna? Our whole trip we’ve been surrounded by everyday truths. We’ve come to understand something fundamental about the deep secrets of humanity! We talked about this for hours on the bus. The human subconscious is also sacred, and light can flow into it . . . Do you know, Maimuna, that a person’s head can literally open up during meditation? (No, she didn’t know. Swallowing a yawn, she acrobatically turned it into a smile and asked Mikael to give her a drink from a water bottle.) A year ago we were on the Bandiagara Escarpment in the Sahel region, an area inhabited by the Dogons. We found clay houses there too, each with a soul, with eyes, a nose, and a mouth . . . houses that are images of humanity . . . The whole courtyard was laid out according to the parts of the body: head, arms, knees, and womb, yes, a womb, which was the place where the women prepared the food . . . They served us this wonderful spicy chicken and millet porridge . . . (Of course she would take Mikael. They would have beautiful, tall, slender children who would be much lighter than her . . .) Marcel, I’ve been mulling over this crazy idea for a while. I’ve been thinking about building a summer cottage for my family following a similar principle, taking conditions in Finland into account, of course. We can tear down the old, run-down place to make room. Of course I’ll build it out of wood not mud. Reclaimed timber from Terijoki. I’ve heard there’s still wonderful wood to be found there. The timbers of the abandoned villas are prime quality . . . Our property is in the Inkoo archipelago. You should come visit. You should come to Finland. How about next summer? (Maimuna leaned her head against Mikael’s shoulder, utterly exhausted. They would be in Mopti soon, and she would stay by the car with Samballa to wait. She could nap in the shadow of a baobab tree. She would have a nice long rest, and then she would be a new person in Timbuktu . . .)

  Maimuna clutched the pouch in her lap. A beautiful dress was waiting for her there, turquoise as the morning sky. It revealed her shoulders. She would pull it on as soon as she escaped her cargo, as soon as Mister Mecanico took the belts, as soon as she was free. Liya Kebede, Alek Wek, Waris Dirie, Iman – and soon Maimuna Mimi Mbegue, age twenty.

  She had truckloads full of courage.

  ULRIKE PLAYS DEAD

  Let’s play Dying! Shlomith yells excitedly, almost impatiently, now that they finally have a new playmate. Her voice has gone shrill like a child just about to receive permission from her parents to dive into the amusement park ball pit, or into the sea, into the frothing waves under a watchful eye, into turquoise water, which is warm and clear. Soon her tiny body would tremble from head to toe with the pleasure of it. And this excitement begins spreading to the other women too. What will happen now? No one has a clue yet about Ulrike’s story. Shlomith, Nina, Polina, Maimuna, Wlibgis, and Rosa Imaculada all realize together that they are finally faced with something new, that for a moment they will no longer need to ladle the same thrice-reheated meal into their mouths. Ratatouille, moqueca, ceebu jën, bacon mashed potatoes, chicken soup with dumplings, stroganoff. Finally they will be served a surprise menu made from all fresh ingredients, and this makes them realize they are hungry, so terribly hungry. How long has it been since the last time? An eternity? One second? Maimuna was arrival number six, so they must have gone on her journey last. Yes, they have been in the desert, in Timbuktu. They have closed their eyes and each imagined as best she could dying with Maimuna in a hail of bullets. But how long has it been since then?

  Shlomith can’t wait any longer. She claps her hands. (Her fleshless hands slapping together makes a very strange, loud and splintering sound, which disappears without an echo almost as soon as it begins: whim-whim-whim. It is like a whip that never hits anything. It just swings and then the sound disappears.) Let’s play Dying! Lightly Shlomith touches the girl’s shoulder. Ulrike, what happened before you woke up here? What happened before our first meeting? What is your last memory? Try to remember!<
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  Ulrike takes a contemplative position, sitting, legs crossed. She has already spent a few moments considering this question herself; for instance, when her legs finally found the furious, hacking rhythm she was able to use to move in the emptiness. The rhythm, which demanded focus and calm, began to fill her mind with a cloudy substance unfit as raw material for words, emotional states that briefly illuminated images, possible flashes of memory: a mountain, a home, a ravine, a conductor’s purse, a flower, mother, father, an elevator, Hanno, a mountain, Ulrich B. Zinnemann’s glass eye, a home, a ravine.

  But the images soon went dark. No story stuck to them or bore them up. From the edges of the images, terrible flapping black tatters have sprouted, leading—no, practically tugging toward an all-consuming black hole that causes pain to even think about. So much pain that she has to seek safety in words after all, no matter how trivial what she spits out of her mouth might be.

  All the other women already know that the final memories preceding the white space are not so simple to grasp. You have to lure them out, and group pressure strangely seems to help. Staring at Wlibgis’s wig also has an effect that improves concentration now that it isn’t on poor Wlibgis’s head, now that her head isn’t detracting from the brilliance of the artificial fibers any more. Polina has just crouched to fluff the fire, to straighten the fibers with her fingers, so the wig forms a complete and unbroken, calming circle. When she has finished she straightens her back and looks at Ulrike encouragingly.

  In the name of truth, it must be said that all of the gazes focused on Ulrike are not equally encouraging. Some of the women stare at the girl meditating in the lotus position with unvarnished greed in their eyes, each observing something different: one the trembling of the girl’s lips, another her deepening frown, a third the motion of her eyelids. (Ulrike has her own gaze fixed on the wig.) Some of them clearly expect somewhere in the recesses of their minds, hidden even from themselves, that the young, beautiful girl from Salzburg will begin to cry. No tears will fall from her eyes any more, but perhaps she will still make the face? Any strong emotion, even fear or sorrow, would be a pleasure to watch . . . And if she cries, they might be able to manage a sympathetic thought. Now it is difficult, since she seems so proud, almost impertinent. She shouldn’t have any reason to show contempt for them. She is young. But what does that matter? They were all young once. Doesn’t she realize she is the one who has lost more than anyone else here? She had her whole life ahead of her . . . unlike Maimuna, for example, who only had disease and misfortune to look forward to.

  But Ulrike doesn’t notice their gazes. She is struggling to think. Her thoughts keep unraveling. The transition from her previous state to this wasn’t something that can be described, like giving a report of a bicycle trip, which would include departing home (around 10:30) and arriving at a destination, for example downtown Salzburg, perhaps the apartment building located at Rainerstraße 13 (around 11:05). Such an account might also include some description of what one might have thought along the way; the landscapes, and the moment when the industrial ugliness of the suburbs gives way to the beauty of the old world, Alpenstraße to Hellbrunnerstraße, and the Salzach River appears. The moment when you can abandon the dust and noise of the motorway and turn toward the river, onto the bicycle and pedestrian path, when you can momentarily switch to the hardest gear. When you can accelerate on the gentle downhill as fast as you’ve ever gone!

  Ulrike rings her bell in irritation, cursing aloud: some moron is in her way again. And this is her way. The left bank of the Salzach, where she can see the familiar fussy cream-cake landscape that stinks of the time when they still lived on Herbert-von-Karajan Platz, before her father’s clothing company went bankrupt. Where, on a hot summer day, horse shit assaults your nose. The shit of the horses that pull the carriages of tourists around. Shit ground into the asphalt, which the horse shit cleaners brush onto shit platforms welded to the front frames of their bicycles. Such positions did indeed exist in Salzburg: the professional guild of horse-drawn-carriage-following bicycle horse-shit cleaners.

  But there is more in cream-cake Salzburg, especially on the left bank of the Salzach. There are windows with glass cases filled with bottles of Champagne seasoned with nuggets of twenty-three karat gold. And then there’s the Mozart Santa Claus. He’s the real one. There are chocolate Mozartkugel balls in enormous violin-shaped packages. There are Mozart masks. Mozart magnetic buttons. Mozart wigs. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: the powdered-wig freak Ulrike feared more than anything else as a child. Buskers dressed as Mozart terrified her. And of course this became a family joke that always made Ulrike cry. Be good or Mozart will come and get you! Be good or Mozart will come and play the “Turkish Rondo” over and over! Ulrike simply can’t help riding along the left bank of the Salzach. Her entire classical Viennese childhood is there, a bright frenzied time kept moving by the wheels of wealth. Coins spin, bills crinkle, the bank card swishes, howls, and whines. A new fur muff for the winter for Mother, a posh car for Dad. Ulrike gets almost anything she can think of to want, until the bankruptcy comes, until they move away from Herbert-von-Karajan Platz.

  Ulrike always rides to the Makartsteg. The bridge is covered with love locks, including Ulrike and Hanno’s: Ulrike ♥ Hanno 16.8.2012. Together, hand in hand, they flung the key into the mud at the bottom of the Salzach, and then only a few months later Ulrike learned that she was a traitorous whore.

  The Makartsteg Bridge is full of people. Ulrike walks her bike to the other side of the river, climbs back on the saddle and heads for the riding path. The newly serviced gears shift so well! And the man with the beard who fixed it a couple of days ago was so nice. He even gave her a little bag of valve stem caps for free. Not boring black ones, raucous red and white like polka dots . . . It’s hot . . . her shirt is wet . . . her back is covered in sweat . . . She has to get in the shower, but Hanno wants to fuck . . . goddamn it, in the shower . . . Hanno wants to come in the shower with her . . . Hanno wants to fuck of all places in the bathroom with the orchid-patterned tiles . . . now, when her parents are away . . . otherwise he wouldn’t dare . . . He can’t get it up if her mother is running water in the kitchen . . . if her father is rustling the Salzburger Nachrichten in the living room . . . He wants to fuck standing up in the shower, even though it’s so uncomfortable . . . Ulrike braces against the wall, rising on her tiptoes so their genitals will be almost at the same level . . . just so Hanno can calm down and get it over with . . . Damn it . . . Ulrike is slipping . . . Can Hanno hold her up if she falls, if her feet slip out from under her? . . . Is she falling? Is she hitting her head on the tile floor? . . . Is she breaking her neck . . . in the middle of fucking?!

  Ulrike unfolds her legs from the lotus position and switches to sitting on her knees. She shakes Hanno and the apartment at Rainerstraße 13 out of her head, banishing from her mind the bathroom with the orchid tiles, and the water. Not like that. She didn’t die like that! She’d spent so little time with Hanno lately. They’d tried to arrange a meeting, but had anything come of it? Not likely. If she inspected the situation from a probability standpoint, she had probably come here from Kehlsteinhaus, from her summer job in the Eagle’s Nest, not from Salzburg, where nowadays she mostly only went to sleep away what was left of each night. Every morning she climbed onto articulated bus number 840 on Alpenstraße and, after finding a seat, closed her eyes for the next half hour. Almost always.

  Ulrike closes her eyes.

  She shifts her weight onto the floor and collapses on her side. Polina tries to help. She pushes her fingers into Ulrike’s hair and touches her scalp: if only her thoughts would start moving.

  If only she could remember her last moments!

  Ulrike begins to relax. She feels drowsy, woken up too early, yet again. With her eyes closed she turns on her iPod, and the first song on the album, her favorite song, starts to play: Scott Walker’s ‘Farmer in the City’. Today is the Assumption of Mary, Thursday the fifteenth of August,
2013, the day when Ulrike dies, which of course Ulrike doesn’t know yet. Mariä Aufnahme in den Himmel. People cram into their cars and buses and trains, each wanting a moment away from the noise of the city. They reserve a hotel room or a whole house in the countryside. For example, in Berchtesgaden. They want to roam the mountains, swim in the lakes, and enjoy the susurrations of history. That means more work for Ulrike, as she is forced to jog around the dining room at the Kehlsteinhaus restaurant from ten in the morning until six in the evening. But so what? It just means more money.

  Ulrike slips into a torpor at about Sankt Leonhard. The articulated bus trundles along with hisses and squeals, a mechanical female voice announcing the stops, but Ulrike doesn’t hear. She hears other words, a story she doesn’t understand but loves nonetheless, which she wants to hear over and over again. She is enchanted in turn by each individual word Scott Walker’s fateful voice gives form to. Every word is overwhelming, full in itself; each syllable passing Scott’s vocal chords is worthy of singing, overflowing with emotion that grabs you and pushes you into a sweet darkness you have no desire to leave. Ulrich B. Zinnemann introduced her to this album. The song is based on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s poem “Uno dei Tanti Epiloghi”—“One of Many Epilogues”; U.B.Z. told her this during a smoke break in July when they were finally starting to get to know each other. The music led them from one sentence to another, from question to answer, from cigarette to cigarette. Ulrike learned new things, information that fitted into a framework that was light years away from Hanno’s infantile thoughts. Such as this: Pasolini dedicated his poem to the amateur actor Ninetto Davoli, his protégé, with whom the director began a love affair when Ninetto was fifteen years old. Pier Paolo wrote the poem around the time Ninetto entered the army at age twenty-one, after which he was quickly returned to civilian life for being too nonconformist.