it and I will never understand it, he thought resignedly.
In Berlin now, there are about a million and a half square meters of empty office space, and no one knows if that space will ever be used. Even in this case, he supposed that the construction must have been based on something like a study of the space needed. But either there had been a mistake right from the start or the evaluation had been slanted as “a favor to the banks”, as people now called it in this country. You could only be sure that someone had made a bundle from it, but what irritated him the most was the thought of that senseless waste. A waste of site, material, and work – quite apart from money. The only things that were ruthlessly economized on in this country were the wages and salaries of those doing the work.
There was a knock at the door.
“Ja, come in please,” said Bärger, surprised. A man in a gray parka with a thin briefcase under his arm entered the room. Bärger sat on the edge of the bed and waited. The man looked at him closely for a moment, and then finally said:
“Mühle. My name is Detective Mühle. I am from the police.”
Oh, really,” said Bärger bad-temperedly, and crossed his arms on his chest.
The man was unimpressed.
“The doctor told me that I could talk to you today. But if you’d rather not, I can come back tomorrow.”
Bärger felt suddenly tired.
“No, it’s OK,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me what happened,” said Herr Mühle.
Bärger didn’t have much to tell. He had only a vague memory of the guy who had poured the beer on his book. For the first time he heard that the tram driver had testified that, except for Bärger, there had been nobody in the car and at first they had thought that he was drunk.
“Would you recognize him?” asked the detective.
Bärger thought about it.
“He was dressed all in black, with a sweatshirt with white lettering, and wore boots with white laces. He had a red face, somewhat bloated. That’s about it. Do you have any suspects?”
Herr Mühle arranged his notes and smoothed out a wrinkled form.
“ If you wish to make out a complaint against a person or persons unknown, you must sign here.”
Bärger skimmed through his testimony and the report, then he signed the papers and gave them back to Herr Mühle, who put them in his thin briefcase. With a short goodbye, he went to the door and vanished noiselessly.
Meanwhile, it had grown dark outside.
Bärger turned on the lamp over his bed and listlessly picked up the monthly journal of the Architectural Council. The entire issue seemed to be devoted to the problem of housing space; he had never been really happy with that kind of planning assignment. This time, the article concerned town houses. The size of a lot for a medium sized house, he read, had now shrunk to 180 square meters.
Lothar lived in a medium sized town house. Bärger had been invited to the housewarming party, and he still was embarrassed to remember how little he had tried to hide his discomfort with this lifestyle. Lothar could hardly have missed it, and Bärger wasn’t sure if Lothar held it against him even now.
Nevertheless, it was evident that the economics of this floor plan, the ratio of living to traffic space, would be really hard to beat. But at what a price! The stairs changed direction twice and were so narrow that no normal piece of furniture could be taken up that way. Moving companies had long mobile cranes to lift cupboards and upholstered furniture through the windows into the apartments in such new buildings.
It was even unpleasant to remember the obligatory party with a grill in the newly laid out garden, where the edges of the rolls of turf had not yet grown together. If he had thought the apartment was small before, now it felt cramped. It was so close to the neighbors that it would take great self-control to endure it. There was no possibility of a pleasant drinking party among friends. It would have brought angry protests from neighbors on both sides. Stay professional, he told himself finally. It’s an alternative, and the bottom line is that it is a clear improvement over the Marzahn flats. He could trust Lothar to come to some arrangement with his neighbors. He had often demonstrated his ability to compromise as head of the Construction Commission. It was only for himself that Bärger was unwilling to accept this kind of housing.
Before his divorce, he too had lived in a duplex in a development from the thirties. Even then the lots only averaged 500 square meters, but at least there were a couple of old trees growing on his. Instead of a lawn, he had let a colorful meadow grow up, which he cut twice a year with a sickle. While lawnmowers were rattling all around him on the weekends, he sat quite happily on his terrace and watched the butterflies flying across the tall grass from flower to flower.
There was a compressed bale of straw next to the compost heap at the end of his garden. If you went back far enough into the narrow gangway between house and garage, you could shoot at the 30-meter distance. He had always shot at colored FITA targets on that straw backstop. Until two days ago, during his trip to the atomic power plant, it had been a very long time since he had seen those targets.
By then his marriage had become no more than a hollow shell, but he was unable to escape it. He didn’t understand why his wife was unwilling to leave him after the endless years in which she had become so indifferent to him. At first it had bothered him but then, with time, he had become indifferent to her. They had endured an increasingly dead relationship for far too many years. He had noticed the change in himself only from time to time, but his tolerance of the continuous humiliation had cost him the respect of his son.
When he finally decided to leave his wife, and filed for divorce, it had been a kind of release. Bärger had not expected that his son would be unable to understand this step, much less to accept it. His son had broken off any contact with him, and it had taken years for him to become resigned to that loss.
No, he was happy in his well-lighted apartment with its peculiar floor plan, the large bath, and the huge living room window that even saved him heating costs on sunny winter days. What he really missed was the garden where he could shoot in his bow whenever he wanted to.
And to the loss of his cellar, he corrected himself. Soon after the reunification it had become possible to install gas heat. He had painted the cellar white and had even put light gray lacquer on the floor to make it easier to keep clean. He had set up a small model builder’s workshop and provided it with everything that he needed to work with wood and plastic. Since then, he had often bitterly regretted the loss of his cellar workshop.
It had always been a good feeling to take the bow down from its hooks over the door of his room, take a half dozen arrows from the home-made rack next to it, and then go and shoot a few quick arrows at the straw bale at the end of his garden. Oh yes. That had been a good feeling.
Bärger got up slowly from his bed.
He took a deep breath and stood erect for a while in front of the open window. I am now really relaxed, he thought, and he let his arms hang and closed his eyes.
It is summer. I am standing under the old plum tree and I have my bow in my left hand. The wood is quite warm, and when I feel the shape of the grip, it is as if I am holding another hand – smooth, warm, solid, and reliable. There is a soft snap, when I place the nock of the arrow on the string. I
