“OK.” I put my hand on his arm. “Then let’s go now.”
We don’t need to take much with us. Passports, my phone, money. All of it will fit in my handbag.
The fact that Erik’s fears were justified becomes clear, if it wasn’t before, while I’m tying my shoelaces. Erik is already waiting for me at the open terrace door; that’s why he doesn’t hear the scratching and scraping at the entrance.
Someone is there, and they’re trying to get in.
I grab my bag and dash into the living room past Erik. And out into the open air.
He catches on without me even having to say a word. He pulls the door shut behind us and hurries me ahead to the fence, helps me over, then clambers up and over himself.
Then we run. Without looking back. Along the path, then the first right, then immediately left and inward, past a playground, into the adjacent park.
There, I stop for a moment, propping my hands on my knees, gasping for air.
Erik pulls me over to the side, into the shade of a small group of trees, and peers over in the direction we came from. We stayed on footpaths the whole time, avoiding the roads—so no one could have followed us in a car.
And it seems that no one followed us on foot either. We wait for three or four minutes, but there’s no sign of anyone.
“They didn’t see us running away,” says Erik. “And they didn’t expect you to be in the house anyway. Maybe the car on the street is starting to become too obvious, and they’re posting someone in the house, to welcome you when you get home.”
Yes, that sounds plausible. I ask myself whether they would go through all this trouble if they knew how little I understood of what was going on. How little I know.
The morning sun peeks out between the clouds and illuminates the colors of the autumn leaves. It must be just before eight o’clock. Too early for the airport still, but then we can’t stay here either.
I look at Erik from the side. “What do we do now?”
He blinks up at the sky, looks around him again in every direction, and then reaches for my hand. “I know a place we can go.”
38
We leave the park and turn right. I estimate that going by foot will take about twenty minutes. Joanna walks next to me in silence. She’s feeling just as anxious as I am, I’m sure. She rubs her arms. It’s quite cool outside, even with the sun appearing for a few brief moments every now and then. It’s already so low in the sky that some of its strength has ebbed away. But we’ll be in the warm soon.
Again and again I find myself looking around frantically. I think I see movement where there is none. The shadow of a small tree makes me jump in fright when the sun peeks out from behind the clouds for a few seconds.
You’re paranoid, a voice whispers to me.
You’re not paranoid, this is deadly serious, another one retorts.
Joanna’s looking around now too.
“Was something there?” she asks.
“No,” I reply tersely.
“How much farther is it? And where are we going, anyway?”
“Just come with me. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Fortunately, she seems satisfied with that answer. If I tell her now where we’re going, she’s going to ask me questions I’m really not in the mood for. We already discussed that particular topic some time ago, but of course she won’t remember that.
I push the thought aside, focus on my surroundings again. I keep a lookout for men hiding behind a corner or a wall, waiting to kill us. Kill us. My God, how can all of this be happening? A bombing at the central train station in Munich, and I was almost right in the middle of it. Men breaking into our house at night, trying to finish us off. It’s just impossible. That kind of story belongs in an action movie, not in my life.
And Nadine, too. She’s dead. That seems even more unreal than everything else. Ela said that apparently she jumped out of a window. Because she couldn’t deal with the news of my demise.
No. Not Nadine. I think, no, I know, that she loves … loved me in her own particular sort of way. But I know for sure there’s nothing that could make Nadine take her own life. Not even my death.
No, if she really fell from a window, somebody had a hand in it. The thought of how ruthless people can be sends a cold shiver down my back.
And in the middle of it all, my boss. The man who I’d always seen as the epitome of normality, of everyday life. I’d thought my life with Joanna to be the same. But none of that’s true anymore. Some sick twist of fate has torn me from my real life and dropped me in this poor, evil imitation of it. And from the way things look, there’s no way back.
We turn the next street corner, and we’re there. Only a few feet separate us from the large building. I stop and look up at the weathered facade.
“A church?” Joanna says next to me, as puzzled as I’d expected.
“Yes. It’s always open. It’s warmer inside, and I definitely don’t think they’ll look for us in there.”
She looks at me from the side. “Are you religious? I mean … do you believe in God?”
I take a deep breath. “No.” I nod toward the entrance. “Let’s go inside.”
As soon as I’ve closed the heavy door behind us, I stop for a moment and take in that distinctive atmosphere that abounds in nearly all Christian churches. Daylight falling through the colorful ornamentation of the stained-glass windows and bathing the interior in a unique kind of half light, the faint smell of frankincense, exalted silence in contrast to the exterior world with all its sounds … A seemingly tangible sense of spirituality. It slows the flow of time. It creates the space for a journey into our innermost being. Even without a god.
I came here often after my parents died. Not because I’d wanted to be close to some tacky, white-bearded god, but because of that particular atmosphere. Here I’d felt like I was close to them.
“Shall we sit?”
I jump, startled, then look at Joanna. “Yes, let’s go to the nave up front,” I whisper, without knowing why. “If anyone takes a look inside the church, they won’t see us up there right away.” We opt for the aisle on the left and sit down on one of the pews toward the back of the nave. Joanna takes a look around, contemplates the stone figure of a saint perched on a pedestal by one of the enormous columns.
“You’re right, they’re definitely not going to be looking for us in here.”
I don’t say anything, but instead wait for the question that will surely follow.
“Why don’t you believe in God?”
Oh, I know her so well.
“I do believe in something,” I say, looking at the nearly life-size likeness of Jesus on the cross behind the altar. “But not this type of god.” I decide to nip the whole conversation in the bud. “I like being in this church because I like the atmosphere. And because I can find a special peace in here. I don’t need a god to do that. I know that you’re not overly religious, but that you do believe in God. And that’s fine.”