Read Online Night Work by Thomas Glavinic - Free Book Online Page A

happening because the control booth had no windows, but the sound told him all he needed to know.
    He continued to turn the regulator until it would go no further, however much pressure he applied. Then he grabbed his gun and dashed to the lift.
    He made for the car without glancing up. He didn’t look back until he’d driven a few hundred metres. The café was rotating with the banner fluttering from it. The inscription, legible from afar, read:
    UMIROM.

6
    Next morning he found a Polaroid photo tucked between the bread bin and the coffee grinder. It showed him asleep.
    He couldn’t remember seeing it before. When and where had it been taken? He had no idea why it should be there. The likeliest answer was that Marie had left it there, intentionally or not.
    Except that he’d never owned a Polaroid camera. Nor had Marie.
    *
    Jonas arrived at his parents’ old flat in Hollandstrasse armed with the biggest axe from the DIY store. He went round the rooms, picturing what he wanted. Dumping bulky refuse in the street outside the building wasn’t a good idea because he wanted to keep the access clear. He didn’t need the backyard, on the other hand, so he decided to use it as a rubbish dump.
    Anything that wouldn’t go through the kitchen window had to be chopped up small. To make room, he began by pitching upright chairs and other manageable objects through the window into the yard. Then he set to work on the three-piece suite. Having removed the cushions and ripped off the upholstery with the aid of a carpet knife,he began to dismember the frames. He hacked away so vigorously that the axe went through a chair leg and into the floor. He was rather more restrained after that.
    It was the bookshelves’ turn after the three-piece suite. Then came a massive linen cupboard, a chaise longue, a display cabinet, and a chest of drawers. His T-shirt was clinging to him by the time he tossed the last bits of debris out of the window, and he was breathing heavily.
    He sat down on the floor, which was littered with shavings and sawdust, and surveyed the living room. Bare though it was, it made a warmer impression than before.
    *
    Jonas had stopped worrying about red lights and one-way streets long ago. He drove down the wrong side of the ring road at high speed, turned off into Babenberger Strasse, and came out on Mariahilfer Strasse.
    Vienna’s main shopping area had never appealed to him. He disliked hustle and bustle. When he pulled up outside a shopping centre, the only sound to be heard was the ticking under the bonnet. The only moving object in sight was a scrap of paper scudding across the asphalt at the next intersection, blown by the wind. It was hot. He made his way over to the entrance. The revolving door activated itself.
    Armed with two suitcases taken from a boutique on the first floor, he rode the escalator up to a shop selling electrical goods. It was so stuffy he could hardly breathe. The sun had been beating down on the glass roof for days, and every window in the building was shut.
    In the electrical shop he went behind the counter and opened his suitcases. Further along the aisle he found a digital video camera he knew how to operate. The cabinet contained eight boxed examples of the same model. Eight would be enough. He stowed them in one of the suitcases.
    The tripods were harder to find. He could only lay hands on three. He put them in the second suitcase together with two small radio cassette recorders, an answerphone and some blank audio tapes and videotapes. Then he shut the suitcase and tested the weight. No problem.
    In the radio section it took him some time to locate the most powerful short-wave receivers. He also helped himself to a Polaroid camera, plus another as a spare. He remembered the Polaroid films last of all.
    The air was so stale he couldn’t wait to leave. He stretched. He had a stiff back from carrying the suitcases around and from the hard work in his parents’ former flat. It made him