The Girl Who Wasn't There by Ferdinand von Schirach Page B

head.
    ‘That was too soon,’ she said, and kissed him.
    He felt awkward and stupid.
    The old woman with the shopping trolley stopped. She spat on the ground.
    Eschburg searched his pocket for cigarettes. Sofia said she was hungry. They went to a restaurant that she knew in the Calle Toledo. Pictures of Spanish film stars hung on the first floor. They ate green peppers in hot olive oil, with coarse sea salt.
     
    In their hotel, the dry heat of the city came in through the open windows.
    ‘You’re never entirely with me,’ she said. ‘There’s always only part of you here, while another part is somewhere else.’
    They had undressed, and were lying on the bed.
    ‘I like it that you’re different, but I often think part of you is missing. You’re not in a good way,’ she said.
    ‘You must help me,’ he replied.
    ‘What with?’ she asked.
    ‘Everything,’ he said, not knowing what else to say.
    He couldn’t explain that he thought in images and colours, not in words. He couldn’t tell her about the gunshot in the house by the lake, or the knife cutting into the belly of the deer. Not yet.
    ‘What are you looking for, Sebastian? Can you tell me?’ she asked.
    He shook his head. No one can understand another person, he reflected.
    ‘You’re difficult to live with,’ she said wearily.
    Suddenly he felt sure that it would be all right with her. A time would come when she did understand it all: the mists, the void, the deafness. Next moment he wanted to be alone, waiting until things rearranged themselves and calmed down.
    They heard the tourists in the square outside the hotel. She was lying on his arm, which had gone to sleep, but Eschburg didn’t trust himself to move. He felt her skin on his, and thought of the colour of hollyhocks. She was full of life, and he was a stranger to himself. He no longer knew whether what he was seeing was real.
     
    All he knew was that he would hurt her.

17
    Sofia and Eschburg had lost their way and arrived a quarter of an hour late. The description of the route to take wasn’t particularly complicated, but there were no signposted roads there any more, only footpaths and forest tracks. They were close to the old house by the lake.
    The house they were visiting was small and square. It was right at the top of a hill, surrounded by forest, and the trees were taller than the house.
     
    The man had been waiting for them. He came down the steps past shrubs and bushes. He was wearing a black leather jacket and black-framed sunglasses, none of which suited the house. He was a porn producer, and looked the part. But when he took his sunglasses off, he was just an old man with grey eyes.
     
    As they climbed the steps to the house, the porn producer said that in winter you could get there only with snow chains on your tyres or in a Unimog, and his nearest neighbour was fifteen kilometres away. He showed Sofia and Eschburg into the living room, where they sat down on the sofa. The porn producer went into the kitchen to make coffee. The house had low ceilings and smelled of damp earth. Photographs of exotic birds, sandwiched between unframed sheets of glass, hung on the living room walls. Under the photos were captions: ‘Japurá, 6.35 hours’, ‘Mantaro, 20.49 hours’, ‘Juruá, 14.17 hours’, and so forth. After a while the porn producer came back with a tray. The cups were thin and clinked against each other. Eschburg wondered on what principle the photos were arranged.
     
    ‘I don’t understand why you want to get these photographs taken,’ said the porn producer, once he was installed in the only armchair. ‘I don’t think you’ll like my studio. Twenty years ago things were different, but there are no screenplays for these films nowadays. One of my scriptwriters has switched to television and is writing serial hospital dramas. Anyone can make a film today. Every housewife who needs money for the rent has her own website and camera. If you want to survive as a