Free Indigo by Clemens J. Setz Page B

fam.
    Glockenhofweg 1
    8910 Gillingen
    The woman’s eyes went blank, then became alert, then she seemed to relax again. Information was being retrieved. Maybe the name means nothing to her , I thought. Unlikely, but possible . When she began to speak, I could tell that I had just turned into something scary in her eyes.
    â€“ So you’re best off going out right here, outside the building, okay? Well, no, let me start over, you exit the building, okay? And then take a right, walk up the street until you get to the hill, and then take a left, so going up the whole time . . . uphill, that should actually . . .
    She placed a hand on the key, pushed it toward me.
    â€“ Thank you, I said.
    â€“ They live pretty far out, she said.
    It sounded a little like a warning, so I said:
    â€“ I’m sure I’ll make it. What do you think?
    â€“ I’m sorry?
    â€“ I mean, walking there. That’s doable, walking, right?
    â€“ Yeah, sure, it’s all doable. At the very top of the hill. Just keep going uphill and . . .
    I held her gaze and pretended I had to store the important information she had given me. When the bird in its cage made a rasping noise, the woman started violently.
    â€“ Thanks, I said, and went to the elevator.
    While I waited, I looked over to the woman again. She extended a finger through the open cage door toward the bird, but it wasn’t paying attention to her.
    â€“ Hey, you, I heard her saying softly. Got frightened, huh?
    The key hung on a small piece of wood with the word Jenga on it. I imagined someone, frustrated after the collapse of his Jenga tower, throwing the blocks across the room and deciding to turn them all into key fobs.
    The room was small and smelled minty.
    The light switch in the bathroom activated, along with two flickering fluorescent tubes over the mirror, a vent, the sound of which was somewhat reminiscent of the buzz of leaf blowers in autumn. In the sink was a flower vase, half filled with water.
    As always when I was alone in a hotel room in the evening, I turned on the television. Harmless voices, people, and events that had nothing to do with me made the room a bit warmer. Only then could I close the curtains without being seized by a slight panic in the face of my solitude.
    I sat down in the broad armchair in front of the window and looked out into the area in the evening light. That feeling when you gaze from some distance at a landscape or a town in which you assume the presence of a particular person. The peculiar hue, like the quality, reminiscent of underwater photos, of television pictures from the seventies with their blending colors, their rounded corners, and the bright, unnaturally flickering orange into which ordinary sunlight is transformed. The certainty: In one of these houses, on one of these streets. Prominent architectural elements begin to beckon, dark spots send signals. Trees stand still as if for a group photo. Gillingen: a church spire, a few houses, a handful of shops. Wooded hills in the vicinity. So this was the hometown of Christoph Stennitzer, fourteen years old, profoundly affected by Indigo syndrome since the first year of his life. His mother owned a medium-sized paper mill, or rather, a few years earlier she had sold it in several steps, when Christoph’s condition had been getting worse and worse.
    Those were the words Gudrun Stennitzer had used in the e-mail she had sent me: When C’s condition was getting worse and worse. Of course, Christoph was a healthy, outwardly inconspicuous kid. Once he had had the measles, another time a severe flu with mild pneumonia, as a result of which he had to be hospitalized for a week, but apart from that everything with him was fine. If you saw him in a video, you wouldn’t notice the slightest difference from other children. The problem, the condition , lay elsewhere.
    Christoph lived in his own roughly four-hundred-square-foot house, which had a bathroom and