Oneiron Read online

  This was precisely what Ulrich B. Zinnemann said to her after her shift, amending his proposition from the morning, suggesting that they enjoy their drink together after work some other day, with Anke-Marie along, all three of them.

  Ulrike had composed herself in a hundredth of a second. She had sung out a happy “OK!” and continued on her way as if she needed to rush. Then Ulrich had suddenly yelled to her, “Wait!” Ulrich had asked her to wait, and, heart pounding, she decided to turn to listen. “I can drive you to the bus station if you want. I can wait until your shift is done. I’m not in any rush.”

  Sometimes, when forced, you can arrange shreds of joy on your face even if your heart is rotting inside. Ulrike managed to reply lightly, even with a smile, “Thanks, Ulrich, but I don’t need a ride. I think I’ll walk today. Yes, I’ll walk.” Then she turned back to the kitchen and disappeared from Ulrich B. Zinnemann’s gaze.

  For the rest of the day, Ulrike remembers, she did her job without glancing around, as if any break in concentration could at any moment lay bare the feeling that pounded in her skull, protruding nastily in every direction.

  Ulrike remembers, unfortunately. She shakes her head, but it doesn’t help. It forces itself into her mind: lips rubbed raw by teeth. She had started descending from the Eagle’s Nest by foot. She hadn’t lied to Ulrich. She really intended to walk. From the parking lot she slid down to the gently inclined, paved walking path, and then she remembered: her lips.

  In a panic she took a few running steps and did three squat jumps, so deep that the fabric of her corduroys painfully rubbed her labia. The FACT didn’t give a hoot about that. It was practically overjoyed and began to do its worst. It tried to spread a burning heat through every nook and cranny of Ulrike’s body, because it was a vengeful, exceptionally nasty FACT that had once failed to receive its dues.

  It was a simple reality that on August 15, on the day of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven, the doors of the lift had opened at just the moment, around 13:20, when Ulrike had been walking from the kitchen toward the dining room. Ulrich B. Zinnemann stood behind the opening doors, mysterious and large, and their gazes met. After this Ulrike had spent the rest of the day biting her lips for good measure. In the back of the kitchen she had chafed her lips with dry paper towels and then broken the thin protective membrane with her teeth so they would swell, and then moistened them with her tongue. So they would be juicy and red on her pale doll’s face.

  The memory of that shame feels so terrible that Ulrike rolls on her back. She feels the need to roll down and down—if only there were a place you could say “down is that way”—that was where Ulrike wanted to roll now, away from the expectant gaze of other women, away from the tormenting thought: “U.B.Z. had begun to regret his suggestion” and the even more abhorrent corollary: “she had rubbed her lips raw”.

  Ulrike wants to destroy the whole Eagle’s Nest. She wants to think of home, or at least her home street, Alpenstraße. This stifling feeling that makes her ears burn needs a deep line scratched through it on the page: Ulrich B. Zinnemann.

  Ulrike does it many times in her mind. She does it to everything that rises steaming to the surface from it:

  Ulrich B. Zinnemann.

  Glass-eye-U.B.Z.!

  Volkswagen.

  ddddddd

  Auf der Alm da gibt’s ka Sünd

  Let’s keep this as a bit of fun

  This friendship of ours

  Benito ♥ Claretta

  BAM!

  Pier Paolo ♥ Ninetto

  ddddddddddddddddddddddd

  BAM! BAM! BAM!

  Aladobi! Goulash! Leberkäse!

  BAM!

  The elevator! Volkswagen?? The elevator!!!

  ddddddddddddddddd

  BAM!

  Apple strudel! Spätzle! Hüttenwurst!

  . . . I like you . . .

  . . . I like you . . .

  . . . Anke-Marie . . .

  BAM!

  BAM! BAM!

  BAM! ♥ BAM! ♥ BAM!

  ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

  Ulrike feels fingers on her temples. She opens her eyes and sees Maimuna sitting behind her head. Maimuna smiles at her sweetly, encouragingly, as if to say: You’ve arrived home, my dear. As if to ask: What happened to you there?

  And so finally Ulrike is safely on her home street. In gratitude she takes hold of Maimuna’s gaze and continues her journey. Had she walked in front of a car after she exited the bus because she was so tired? Or had she gone to see Hanno for some incomprehensible reason after her long workday? To suggest a split?

  Yes, that’s it: she had taken her bicycle and careened down the Hellbrunner Allee toward death. “The sensation is less of flying through the air, more of being picked up and hurled, and when she comes to rest on the roadside verge with her face against the wet pavement, her first instinct is to look for her bicycle, which has somehow disappeared from beneath her.” Is that how it happened? That’s the way the heroine of a certain blithe novel dies, right in the middle of the book. At the beginning of the summer, Ulrike had read it on the articulated bus. At the moment of the accident that takes her life, the heroine first “thinks very distinctly of two things” and then, in the final sentence of the chapter, “dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever”. And it wasn’t even true! There they were in the book, her important thoughts and unique emotions, running to hundreds of pages.

  Ulrike had spent the entire journey wondering about the author’s trick. So it’s that kind of death, is it? A real masterclass about death! Everything is left undone, just as it always is in life. And as a bonus, the dramatic, slow motion at the moment of death: the final thoughts of the dying. Let the reader gasp for oxygen in astonishment: Emma can’t die, dash it all, Emma can’t go and die! But Emma does die, and the book becomes a bestseller.

  Is this how it goes?

  No chance. Not like that.

  No bicycle, no flight through the air, no crash in the bushes at the side of the road, and especially none of this at the edge of the sidewalk. No bruises of any kind are visible on Ulrike. Instinctively Ulrike raises her hand and touches her head to be sure. The women nod, smiling. It’s fine, beautiful. Nina even flashes a thumbs-up and sighs: Ulrike, you are just lovely!

  So could she have been inside during her last moments after all? Yes, she had ridden to Rainerstraße 13 and suggested to Hanno that they should call it quits. It was a doomed relationship, a teen romance that should have ended after a few red-wine-fueled fucking sessions. And then . . . Crazy, sick with jealousy, Hanno shoves her down on her parents’ water bed . . . Because sometimes Hanno did shove. Sometimes Hanno became agitated and shoved her when they were walking on the street late at night having a fight. She staggered toward the wall of a building and hurt her hands. She screamed, I’LL REPORT YOU TO THE POLICE, and Hanno yelled, GO AHEAD. WHAT DO I CARE!

  So Hanno shoves her down on her back on the water bed and starts to press an enormous pillow against her face . . . so that she can’t breathe any more . . .

  And just as Ulrike reaches those words, reaches Hanno, jealousy, and the pillow . . . just as she is saying and so I couldn’t breathe and her listeners seem to hold their breaths in anticipation, just then she realizes: she isn’t breathing. No one is breathing. Breathing is impossible. Breathing doesn’t work, even when she stops talking and expands her chest and flares her nostrils, as she sometimes did on the overhangs of the Unterberg when the air was fresh with morning dew and dizzyingly full of oxygen, and in the distance mountains shone with dazzling white, and the clear waters of the Königssee—the cleanest water in Germany—sparkled at the foot of the hills. She still wanted to go there. She would suggest a picnic to Anke-Marie and Ulrich B. Zinnemann, and they would eat leftover hüttenwurst, leberkäse sandwiches, head cheese, and spätzle on a red-and-white checked tablecloth . . .

  Ulrike isn’t breathing.

  Ulrike hadn’t noticed she’d sto
pped breathing.

  Ulrike can speak.

  Ulrike can move.

  Ulrike can think.

  Five incompatible facts that require an immediate cessation of dying and a quick inquiry. This isn’t a game any more. Everything else can wait now. Please be so kind as to explain. For God’s sake do something!

  As she attempts to breathe, Ulrike’s body convulses hideously. Her eyes widen and widen. Nothing goes in, and nothing hurts. It isn’t suffocating, it isn’t drowning, and it definitely isn’t dying. It is pure terror that eventually distills into a whisper like a sob, completely impossible in a physical sense, but still that’s how it is, a real expression made by speech organs and audible to ears: I can’t breathe!

  A BRIEF LESSON ON BREATHING

  Breathing, also known as respiration, occurs as if by itself thanks to the respiratory center.Those unfortunates who suffer from Ondine’s Curse, more properly a mutation of the PHOX2B gene, represent an exception.They must breathe consciously or otherwise they die. But there are very few of them in the world.

  As we breathe, oxygen (O, oxygenium) moves with the air into the alveoli and from there through various molecular intermediaries to the cells. Carbon dioxide (CO2) moves from the cells back into the air.Think of a funny little red car that drives around the body transporting back and forth Mr. Oxygen and Mrs. Carbon Dioxide, who, according to the script, can’t decide where they want to be, inside or outside, because if they did that, decided and stopped inside or outside, then someone else would arrive—Death. Mr. Oxygen and Mrs. Carbon Dioxide also shouldn’t travel in the wrong direction. People who breathe carbon dioxide are in grave danger. There have even been reports of near-death experiences caused by carbon dioxide.

  So the act of breathing requires i) a breather who is well equipped in the physiological sense and ii) oxygen, which is the most significant component of air after nitrogen. Other more minor constituents of air include krypton and argon, but none of these are visible to the naked eye. Fundamental to the breathing process is that a properly equipped breather need not wonder whether he or she will bother breathing again and again and again.

  As can be deduced from the preceding, suicide by holding one’s breath is practically impossible. Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of the Cynical school of philosophy, succeeded, as did Girolamo, who was hopelessly in love with Silvestra in the eighth story of the fourth day of the Decameron. Others have needed the assistance of a plastic bag.

  The diaphragm is located below the lungs. Shove your finger in there, and you might cause a cramp. Below the diaphragm are the liver and the stomach. During inhalation, the diaphragm contracts, descending and thus expanding the chest cavity in the direction of the belly. This creates negative pressure, and air begins to flow. As they contract, the external intercostal muscles spread the thoracic cavity forward and to the sides. Exhalation, on the other hand, happens more or less by itself as the aforementioned muscles cease contracting.

  It should be noted that if we were in a near-perfect vacuum, such as in space, we could not breathe. In space we also cannot speak without auxiliary instruments. Sound cannot travel through a vacuum because there is nothing to transmit it. Although to prove this one would need an ear and a mouth in space, because otherwise the question is completely theoretical.

  Let us return to respiration, or more precisely to the vital function called “lung ventilation”. Don’t bother thinking of an open door on a French balcony unless you can also think of a volume measurement gauge near the door. During a twenty-four hour period, a well-equipped breather breathes approximately ten thousand liters of air. The volume of a single breath is about one half liter. An experienced yogi can circulate as many as five liters through his body at once. So the air can be measured in liters, like strawberries or peas. This can be a little difficult to understand, but just try blowing in a plastic bag sometime.

  There are various opinions about how many times a breather who is sufficiently well equipped and in a state of rest breathes in the space of one minute. Some say fourteen to sixteen times, while others claim eight to eighteen times. This divergence of opinion stems from the fact that the concept of “state of rest” is very much open to interpretation, let alone how many matters of interpretation are involved when referring to “sufficiently well equipped” breathers. There is also reason to point out that when scholars utter figures, talking about liters or times, in their minds they picture the average adult male, not children, women, infants, the elderly, the sick, yogis, elite athletes, or wind instrumentalists.

  The pseudostratified epithelium covers the respiratory tract. The cilia of the pseudostratified epithelium sway in waves during respiration. Mucus moves around on them, among other things. The cells are covered in mucus. Now imagine a mucus car, perhaps also red, moving toward the throat. The swallowing reflex carries the mucus car to the stomach. Moving along the pseudostratified epithelium with quite a sense of direction, the mucus car carries microbes from the airways, but they meet a miserable end as they are broken down more or less completely in the stomach. As an aside, the air we breathe is never clean.

  HEART, OH HEART!

  Rosa Imaculada manages to calm Ulrike. Rosa Imaculada, who has a tendency to hysterical reactions, is as cool as a cucumber this time. Astutely, Rosa goes and sits next to Ulrike and wraps her arm around the girl. She is not even startled when she barely feels Ulrike’s slim figure as she hugs her. Ulrike is softer than cotton to her, and soon she won’t even be that, Rosa has finally realized. Soon she won’t be able to feel anyone. She won’t even be able to touch herself with so much as the brush of a feather.

  Then, as if some divine wisdom has descended in the form of a tiny fairy on the lips of that normally hot-headed woman, Rosa begins to explain, in cheerful Portuguese-laced English, an idea that she has obviously been bouncing around in her head for more than a few moments. The idea runs more or less along these lines: not breathing is just as normal here as breathing was there. While before we breathed and didn’t think about breathing, now we don’t breathe and we don’t think about not breathing. Cês entendem, né? This material around us, esta substância maldita, is some sort of cursed substance that influences us in a very strange way. If we could take a piece of it with us in the moment we’re snatched back to where we came from—at this point Rosa Imaculada gives a wink that assures victory—the learning of the entire earth would be overturned. All of science would have to be rewritten!

  Rosa Imaculada’s eyes gleam. She sees the sparkle of flashbulbs and jostling crowds of reporters as they all, all seven, step back into the world. She sees it as clearly as if she were watching the television news. She sees them appear, one by one, on the surface of the earth like the thirty-two Chilean miners trapped in the San José copper-gold mine (along with one Bolivian), whose rescue operation she had watched unceasingly, as she lay in her bed awaiting death or salvation. In order to save those thirty-three legendary heroes, an unearthly, demanding drilling operation was carried out—and at this point Rosa Imaculada’s gaze suddenly begins to blur. Of course they wouldn’t be drilled out, since they weren’t below ground. Where would they come from then? And where in the world would they pop out?

  The beautiful picture begins to fade. The women, she along with the others, fade somewhere into the background like fluttering astral beings. In the foreground, a massive shuttle-shaped rescue capsule appears, which one by one disgorges dirty men stained by the dark underworld, to thunderous applause.

  Rosa strains to see the women coming back. Shoo, away, you miners! This welcome is for her and those six others! They would come one at a time, in order of arrival, a happy smile on their lips: first skeleton-thin Shlomith (not Florencio Ávalos), then one-shoed Polina (not Mario Sepúlveda), then she herself (not Juan Illanes), Nina with her baby belly (not Carlos Mamani), and after Nina, poor mute, bald Wlibgis (not Jimmy Sánchez). After Wlibgis, graceful Maimuna would appear (not Osmán Araya), and finally beautiful Ulrike (not José Oje
da).

  And they begin to come, and unfortunately, it looks ridiculous. They don’t glide smoothly to the ground, they fall headlong, collapsing on each other like rag dolls thrown angrily in the air. There are no hurrahs or clapping. Instead they are laughed at. Pictures are taken of them, and it will only be a matter of time before they are published on the cover of a tabloid.

  Rosa shakes her head in irritation: NOT LIKE THAT! Hesitancy begins to draw ugly creases in her face—how in the world will they come back to earth?

  But then, as if the tiny invisible fairy had whispered the answer in her ear, she understands: they will materialize! This insight shakes Rosa, and joy spreads across her face once more, the wrinkles smoothing and a glint returning to her eyes. Why didn’t she realize this before? There will be no flopping. They will simply appear. They will materialize out of thin air. That is exactly how they will return to the old world!

  Rosa already possesses an abundance of knowledge about these things. In a certain telenovela, there had been a medium who began excreting ectoplasm after a sitting. The clear goop took the shape of a hand that could write! The ectoplasm excreted by the medium covered an invisible hand that had an important message for a woman participating in the séance who had been crushed by grief. Thereza was her name, and her son had died from a police bullet in the previous episode. She wanted to tell her son, I love you, você tá no meu coração: you will always be in my heart. And so the medium’s ectoplasm hand wrote the son’s response: Go home, open the linen closet, and spread out the bottom sheet. And the woman did so. And in the folds of the sheet she found half a million in one hundred Brazilian real bills!

  Rosa Imaculada rocks Ulrike in her arms and forgets everything. She forgets the glare of the flashes and the reporters swarming around with their mouths opening with questions. She forgets the miners, the Florencios, the Marios, and the Juans, who at least had a place even if it was located seven hundred meters underground, a place they could come from and a place from which others wanted them to emerge. A place where supplies to meet their desires were sent. Well, not alcohol of course, but food, drink, medicine, tobacco, and all sorts of harmless entertainments. Amazing Chilean Babe Named Bianca Bends Over! Because the most important thing was that those industrious men stayed healthy and didn’t go crazy in that enclosed space. Every measure possible was taken to care for them during those months. Even underground they were able to be men. Chilean Girl Bianca Gets Done Right! Masculinity kept them together. Their desires were known. Those above knew that more than anything else they wanted to return to the surface to their wives and girlfriends and children and babies. Chilean Bianca Dagger Fucked Hard by Her Boss! That’s how life was. Men fought, beneath the earth and above. The whole world kept its eyes glued to the rescue operation, which dragged on for months, from the August Thursday collapse to the middle of October. Rosa Imaculada was there too, watching. At the time, in the fall of 2010, she was waiting for a brand new heart muscle to replace her worn out one. Like the entire world throbbing with tension, it pounded as best it was able on behalf of the miners. If they survive this, I will survive too, Rosa swore. I will get a new heart and survive it. Do we have an agreement, God? Can we shake on it, Lula?