Korridorium

♫ Shiver Pol­icy ♫

101/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. It reeks hor­ri­bly of a zoo enclo​sure—no sur­prise, con­sid­er­ing I’m in a bear pit. The two res­i­dents, Maxi and Schnute, have been locked in the other side to give the homi­cide squad access.

“The bears did­n’t touch it. They actu­ally recoiled from it, accord­ing to the keeper,” Uwe Albo greets me, wear­ing his usual ill-fit­ting suit, his face deeply lined with worry. Here, the bears can step out­side on two sides to be admired by vis­i­tors, right in the mid­dle of Berlin in a small park between the Embassy of Angola and the Ger­man Psy­chol­o­gists’ Pub­lish­ing House. The cor­ri­dor inside the small bear quar­ters, sit­u­ated between the two fenced out­door areas sur­rounded by blue-tiled moats, sits in gloom.

“Another heart,” Albo says. He sounds exhausted. “And another fifty pages.”

“Déjà vu,” I say. My stom­ach turns. This was sup­posed to be a relax­ing long week­end.

Later, the detec­tive paces his office diag­o­nally in sup­pressed rage, back and forth, from the door to the cof­fee machine, from the cof­fee machine to the door. And back again. Tomor­row, Car­ni­val Mon­day parades will wind through Ger­man cities. But the Berlin homi­cide squad won’t have any rea­son to cel­e­brate or throw candy. “Now we’ve got two vic­tims. And a ser­ial killer we know noth­ing about, except that he’s sent us a hun­dred damn mes­sages we can’t make heads or tails of.”

That’s directed at me. I’ve only been able to skim through the new texts so far. To have some­thing to say, I respond with a counter-ques­tion – an old psy­chol­o­gist’s trick: “Why first the Siegessäule and then the Bären­zwinger? Berlin land­marks. He’s try­ing to sig­nal some­thing.”

Albo grabs the open door frame. “You tell me.” He gets inter­rupted, step­ping out of the room to talk to an offi­cer. Some­how, I already have a hunch what the news will be.

And sure enough: “No usable evi­dence. The guy prob­a­bly just climbed into the enclo­sure at night. Must have a death wish. Or he knows his way around bears. And the pages: another fifty type­writ­ers. The exact same fifty type­writ­ers. In the exact same order.”

I pic­ture a simul­ta­ne­ous chess player step­ping from table to table, mak­ing one move on each. Fifty tables, fifty chess­boards, fifty games. Advanc­ing one move at a time. I don’t men­tion any of this to Albo. Bad tim­ing. He’s tired and angry—a wounded bear that does­n’t know why every­one is hound­ing him or where to take cover.

Work is wait­ing for me. Read­ing. Think­ing. Fol­low­ing leads. Con­nect­ing the dots. I fig­ure it’s time to make myself scarce.

♫ O pium desiderium ♫

102/398

“I enter the cor­ri­dor,” I whis­per into the door­man’s ear. He nods and lets me through. The passphrase has been the same for years—​likely because the cus­tomers here, peo­ple like me whose mem­o­ries have become patchy and unre­li­able, can eas­ily remem­ber this watch­word, as it per­fectly describes the first moments when the effects kick in. There is also a cer­tain sense of voli­tion to it, a story we tell our­selves every time we make our way toward our divans and the long pipes.

♫ Kamelle! ♫

103/398

I enter ze cor­ri­dor … (The res­i­dents of Cologne we are talk­ing about here don’t speak gen­uine Ger­man either, and cer­tainly not dur­ing Car­ni­val, which may be due to alco­hol, but not only. Trans­la­tor’s note) … behind ze stage of ze Stunksitzung. Ze Funken­mariechen are gone, ze last lit­tle bou­quet has been thrown, ze last fan­fare has faded, all ze booze-casu­al­ties have been col­lected und handed in at ze coat check. (It’s the after­math of a big stage show dur­ing the car­ni­val, with young women danc­ing in tra­di­tional cos­tumes, while the cel­e­brat­ing Jecken remain bliss­fully obliv­i­ous to the inher­ent objec­ti­fi­ca­tion. Trans­la­tor’s note).

Ze rev­el­ers have vunce again really let rip: ze Cologne camar­illa, ze Euro mis­ery, ze stock mar­ket debahkull, ze cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe, all ze crises in ze Mid­dle und Far East simul­tanuh­sly, ze mil­lions of starv­ing tykes around ze vorld…

Boy, did ve laugh!

♫ Tous les trente-six du mois ♫

104/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. And please, don’t think for a moment that it’s easy for me. Every damn time, it’s a strug­gle, an ordeal, another case of hav­ing to push past my own lim­its. Not know­ing what to expect. The agony of choice when doors branch off to the sides—​closed but not locked, unla­beled, and with­out a sin­gle hint as to where they lead. The sheer inner ten­sion, know­ing it could be a trap, or that new, unwrit­ten laws might apply—laws that could bring me death or worse, if I unknow­ingly break them. The cer­tainty that this won’t be the last cor­ri­dor and, no, it will prob­a­bly never get any eas­ier to enter them. On the con­trary. It gets harder every time.

I’m not cut out for cor­ri­dors. Let me enter the rain­for­est, send me to ter­raced rice fields, or ship me off to the desert for all I care! But cor­ri­dors? Always the​se—how many now? Over a hun​dred​?—nerve-wracking pas­sage­ways, hall­ways, end­less suites of rooms?!

Well, fine. It must be done. I enter the cor­ri­dor.

♫ Insom­nia ob omnia ♫

105/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. It’s sus­pi­ciously quiet behind the door to the detec­tive’s office. I knock​—​some​thing I never do. A kind of groan is my answer: Albo grunts as he pushes him­self up from his swivel chair, look­ing dis­ori­ented. “What time is it?”

“Too early, by the looks of it. Uwe, did you crash here?” Albo mas­sages one of his legs, which seems to have fallen asleep, too. “I need to hit the wash­room for a sec­ond.” He limps out of the room.

While he’s gone, I take another look at the copies of the mes­sages left by the killer. I’ve already spent the whole night por­ing over them. Albo usu­ally sits in his office at the crack of dawn, so I thought it’d be a good chance to see if the cops have any­thing new.

Albo comes back, hair wet and water splat­tered across his shirt. Does­n’t look like he keeps a razor here at the sta­tion.

“Num­ber 73″ he says, aim­lessly flip­ping through his copies with­out find­ing the one he’s look­ing for, “is a joke, right?”

The cof­fee tastes even more bit­ter than usual in the early morn­ing. I set the paper cup on Albo’s desk. He looks like he needs it. “The one about ‘joy every­where’? He’s mak­ing fun of us. But I think we can pin him down this time.”

“Out with it,” Albo prompts as he drops into his chair, which almost rolls right out from under his ass.

“I had the impres­sion from the start that this guy suf­fers from obses­sive-com­pul­sive dis­or­der. Text num­ber 95 speaks vol­umes. Plus we’ve got a child­hood trauma, a schizoid story with death threats, and the dead-end sit­u­a­tion.”

“Num­ber 54, you mean? That one’s too old. He worked his way past that a long time ago. Don’t for­get, he used the exact same type­writ­ers in the exact same order.” Albo takes a sip from the cup I put in front of him and coughs.

“He could’ve used them back­ward or scram­bled them up. But you’re right, Uwe, he won’t be stopped that eas­ily.”

“Schizo, you say? The one with the mir­ror-self.”

“That’s where he plants a bomb.”

“His Islamist sui­cide bomber wants to blow every­thing sky-high, too. So why does the guy kill with a knife him­self…?” Albo’s voice trails off. His thoughts are already some­where else—or maybe it’s just the sleep depri­va­tion catch­ing up to him.

“You should go home and hit the sack, Uwe. You look ter­ri­ble.”

“Thanks, same to you,” he retorts. “And don’t show your face back here until you’ve got some­thing use­ful.” His phone rings. With a sharp, shoo­ing wave of his hand, he kicks me out. Before I leave, I study the walls. We should put up one of those huge cork­boards some­where, like in Amer­i­can movies where they pin up all their evi­dence and con­nec­tions. We’d leave the mid­dle blank, and grad­u­ally, the image of the sus­pect would take shape right there. What was it again? Cory means “cav­ity”?

I decide to take my own advice, can­cel all my morn­ing appoint­ments, and crawl back into bed.

♫ The Stingy Thingy ♫

106/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, feel­ing for a niche in the wall with one of my ten­ta­cles and pulling my body in after me. By adopt­ing the color of the back­ground, I am now barely rec­og­niz­able to eyes that do not per­ceive ultra­vi­o­let light.

We came to the strangers’ ship to wel­come them to our planet. As the the­olo­gian of our del­e­ga­tion, I was meant to speak with them of uni­ver­sal mys­ti­cism and cos­mic love. Instead, they hunt us, culling us with­out mercy. Only my stu­dent and I remain.

One of them enters the cor­ri­dor. He is heav­ily armored and car­ries one of their deadly weapons. When he is very close, I ask the ques­tion, but I do not wait for the answer; instead, I imme­di­ately morph one of my ten­ta­cles into a sharp, hard stinger. I would have so liked to speak with him about God. Then it must be done this way.

Full of com­pas­sion and love, I strike…

♫ Kein Orm ♫

107/398

“I enter the cor­ri­dor” is writ­ten at the top of my note­book. Every­one else is writ­ing dili­gently. I stare at my scrawled let­ters. Ana comes to my desk. She’s our Ger­man teacher and wants us to call her by her first name, but I pre­fer “Ms. Ried.” Actu­ally, I’d rather say noth­ing at all, espe­cially when she’s so close that I can smell her – that fresh apple scent makes me feel strange, and my mouth goes all dry.

“Let your cre­ativ­ity run wild, just write what­ever comes to your mind,” she encour­ages me. I keep star­ing at my note­book because I know if I look at her, weird things will hap­pen. I’ll turn all red, and I’ll prob­a­bly start to stut­ter or some­thing.

“Come on now! ‘I enter the cor­ri­dor.’ And then just con­tinue with what­ever comes to your mind.”

I put the pen to paper. It trem­bles. Hope­fully, she does­n’t notice. I start to write. Ms. Ried turns away. I write and write. Always the same, always the same sen­tence.

“I enter the cor­ri­dor. I enter the cor­ri­dor. I enter the cor­ri­dor. I enter the cor­ri­dor. I enter the cor­ri­dor…”

♫ (Invis­i­ble Calls from the) Soar­ing Sirens ♫

108/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, guided by the red thread. I stum­bled across it by chance while wan­der­ing through this end­less, labyrinthine palace. There must be some­one else here! And if this some­one is lay­ing a thread, then it will either lead me to them—pro​vid​ing a wel­come change in my monot­o­nous diet—or it will lead to the entrance through which they came. And what is an entrance for them is an exit for me!

So I fol­low the thread through the labyrinth. And sure enough: day­light and the dis­tant roar of the sea. How I have missed the sun dur­ing these lonely years! At the end of the cor­ri­dor, I see blue sky. And a fig­ure. It is a woman. I have to blink. She looks famil­iar. “Sis­ter!” I say. My voice sounds strange and rusty—I haven’t used it in a long time.

“You have no place out here,” she replies. She has aged. Do I see streaks of gray in her hair?

“I fol­lowed the thread.”

“That was Daedalus’s design.” I might have guessed. She sees my gaze fall on her black arm­band. “Father…” she says, and swal­lows.

“Then I am king now.”

“Fat chance,” says a new voice behind me. A sharp pain shoots through my back, and I see the gleam­ing tip of a sword pro­trud­ing from my chest. I want to say some­thing, but my lungs refuse to fill with air. My legs buckle, and I sink to my knees.

From here, I can see the sun, now blind­ingly con­sum­ing the world that just moments ago stood open to me, until my sis­ter steps toward me, cast­ing her shadow over me as she leans down, and a mer­ci­ful, all-encom­pass­ing dark­ness embraces me.

♫ The Bias Switch ♫

109/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor between two incom­pat­i­ble state​ments—a men­tal exer­cise I’ve prac­ticed for years to make use of my morn­ing tooth-brush­ing rou­tine. Today: “Home­opa­thy is pseu­do­sci­en­tific non­sense” ver­sus “Like cures like, even in high dilu­tion.” At first glance, both state­ments appear irrec­on­cil­able, the­sis and antithe­sis; but upon closer exam­i­na­tion and reflec­tion, I begin to dis­cern con­nec­tions between these con­tra­dic­tions. A cor­ri­dor takes shape, one that I men­tally ven­ture into to explore fur­ther, at which point it usu­ally quickly expands, unfolds, and branches out…

Just as I con­tem­plate whether the human imag​i​na​tion—when reduced to the so-called placebo effec​t—might be crim­i­nally under­es­ti­mated, my four antin­omy-min­utes are already up. So, I place my elec­tric tooth­brush back on the shelf above the sink and turn my atten­tion to the press­ing ques­tions and chal­lenges of the day.

♫ Déjà vécu ♫

110/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor as the last of 110 and sit down to write my life on paper scrap​s—and wait until the clock runs out.