Free Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki

have forgotten how a sentence had begun by the time she reached the end of it – her brain was a labyrinth of blind alleys, what she said was surprising, sometimes amusing, but above all a strain on the listener, or at least on a listener like Schepp, who doubted and even despaired of her mind when she talked to him. Until the image of a mobile hanging from the ceiling occurred to him. Yes, he said to himself, that may be how her mind functions, each thought fitted separately to make up a constantly circling structure, moved forwards by the slightest breath of air, next moment backwards or upwards, downwards, something that seemed puzzlingly fickle and unpredictable, but in reality was nothing but a natural process, the outcome of a change in air current rather than thought process.
    Soon there was no resisting Dana’s erratic way of conversing. It was something of a borderline experience for the honest scholar he had been all his life: he understood that when he talked to her it wasn’t the meaning but the sound of the words that mattered. From then on he stopped speaking logically to her, no more arguing, insisting, deploying his brilliance; instead he indulged in a sweet buzz of sound, rhetorically dressing up an absence of meaning. Dana would sometimes smile at him with her big, empty eyes, a reward worth more than any international recognition he had ever received.
    He, number one in his field of study, spent an entire spring, almost an entire summer with her, smoking, agreeing with nearly all of her mysteriously wayward remarks as if he had finally found someone who understood his innermost mind. He was entirely absorbed in his new life. Doro at most wrinkled her nose and said nothing. There was nothing worth talking about, was there? The fact that Schepp had discovered the life of bars and red wine and smoking, all in moderation, of course, who could blame him? Certainly not Doro with her gentle sympathy. ‘If you ever stop loving me I shall notice at once,’ she had assured him when they married, when he had asked her what she expected from their life together and without stopping to think she had replied, ‘Nothing.’ All she wanted was to be happy. But suppose one day she wasn’t? She’d know what to do, she said.
    Oh, Doro trusted her feelings, she would feel it when he stopped loving her whether his clothes smelled of stale smoke or not. He did still love her just as he always had done. At times, however, he surprised himself, even if Doro didn’t; he was sometimes oppressed by guilt in the afternoon, in broad daylight, although he hadn’t done anything to be ashamed of. Luckily such feelings became much less distinct at dusk, dissipating entirely once night fell and he took his hat and went out again.
    So it could probably have gone on for years. Then Dana suddenly disappeared. Apparently because a considerable sum of money had gone missing from the till when the drinks bought were reckoned up against the takings. Paulus had obviously only just checked the figures, promptly blaming his waitress for the discrepancy. Although of course she protested her innocence. Her, innocent? Paulus asked across the bar as he polished a glass to sparkling radiance, and he was sure of the nods all round. When customers nevertheless threatened to go off and drink wherever Dana turned up to wait if he didn’t take her back, he assured them that he’d rather go bust.
    Schepp listened calmly to all this, sitting at his usual place beneath the wooden vault and working his way, sip by sip, towards a decision. It was no good, you had to bow to the unrelenting nature of existence, you had to reconcile yourself to whatever happened and would happen, you had to accept your fate or be dashed to pieces against it – this, or something like it, is how Schepp was thinking as he picked his way through the situation. And thought that if it turned out badly for him, at least he’d know the right place to attack, indeed to