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THE TRAVELER

As much as we strive toward the light, we still want to be embraced by the shadow. The very same yearning that craves harmony, craves in a dark chamber of our heart chaos. We need that chaos in reasonable portions, because we don’t want to turn into barbarians. But barbarians are what we become as soon as our world falls apart. Chaos is only ever a blink away.

Never have thoughts made waves so fast. Stories are no longer passed on orally, they are transmitted to us at breakneck speed in kilobytes, so that we can’t turn our eyes away. And if it gets unbearable, we react as the barbarians did, and turn that chaos into myths.

One of those myths was created in the winter fourteen years ago, on the A4 between Bad Hersfeld and Eisenach. We won’t write down the exact date; anyone can do the research for themselves. And in any case, myths don’t stick to dates; they are timeless and become the Here and Now. We return to the past and make it Now.

It is November.

It is 1995.

It is night.

The traffic jam has been growing for an hour now, thinning into three lanes, then two, and finally one, before it comes to a standstill. The highway is blocked by snow for over twenty miles. You can only see a few yards ahead. The snowplows creep along the secondary roads toward the traffic jam, and get stuck themselves. The skies are raging. The headlights look like lights under water. It isn’t a night to be out and about. No one was prepared for this change in the weather.

People are stuck in their cars. At first they keep the engine running and search optimistically for a radio station to tell them that the traffic jam will soon be over. They search in vain. It’s one o’clock in the morning, there’s no sign for an exit, and if there was one it would be impassable anyway. Standstill. The headlights go out one after the other. Engines fall silent, the only sounds are the wind and the falling snow. Coats are pulled on, seats reclined. There is an inconsistent rhythm—the cars start up, the heating stays on for several minutes, before the engines fall silent once more.

You are one of many. You are alone and waiting. Your navigation system tells you you are an hour and fifty-seven minutes from your house. You can’t believe this is actually happening to you. That this can be happening to anyone in this country. A simple traffic jam and nothing goes.

You’re one of the few people letting their engines run uninterrupted. Not because you’re cold. You know that as soon as the silence envelops you, resignation will set in, and you’re not the kind of person to give up willingly. You even leave the satnav turned on and study the display, as if the distance from your destination might be reduced by some miracle. And the more you look at the screen, the more you wonder how something like this can happen to you.

One thousand one hundred and seventy-eight people are asking themselves the same question tonight. They’re sitting there uncomfortably and cursing their decision to set off so late. In the end they give up and come to terms with the situation. Not you. Your engine runs for two and a half hours before you turn the key and are engulfed in silence. Your gas is running low. The satnav turns off. No light, no radio. Every few minutes you turn on the windshield wiper to sweep away the snow. You want to see what’s going on out there.

And that’s why you see the first snowplow parting the snow on the opposite side of the road. It looks like a weary creature dragging the whole world slowly behind it. At the side of the road the snow makes waves that immediately freeze. If they’re clearing one side, then they’re bound to be working on ours too, you think, and study the snowplow in the side-view mirror until only the glimmer of the taillights can be seen. It’s only then that you close your eyes and take a deep breath.

Years ago, your sister gave you a yoga course as a present, and some of the exercises stayed with you. You go inside yourself and meditate. You become part of the silence and within a few minutes you fall asleep. An hour later your windows are white with snow, and a pale light fills the car, as if you were sitting inside an egg. The cold hurts your head. The windshield wipers have stopped moving. You rub your eyes and decide to get out. You want to free the windshield from snow and see if there’s any sign of a snowplow up ahead.

The disappointment is as keen as the cold. You stand next to your car, and in front of you there’s only darkness and behind you there’s only darkness. I’m a part of it, you think, and wait and hope for a gleam of light and suddenly you burst out laughing. Alone, I’m completely alone. Only the wind keeps you company. The wind, the snow, and the desperate peace of cars that are stuck. The laughter hurts your face; you should move, otherwise you’ll freeze.

You take your coat off the backseat. Needles of ice hammer down on you, snowflakes press against your lips. You put on gloves, take a deep breath, and feel surprisingly whole. As if your existence had been striving for that moment—you, getting out of the car; you, turning around and feeling the falling snow and smiling. It’s a good smile. It hurts less than laughing.

A truck creeps past in the opposite lane and flashes once as if to greet you. Its tailwind reaches you with full force seconds later. You don’t duck; you feel the wetness on your face, stumbling slightly and wondering why you can’t wipe this stupid grin off your face. The truck disappears, and you’re still there looking at the apparently endless snake of vehicles in front of you disappearing into the darkness. You turn around and look at the darkness behind you. Nineteen years, you think, it’s nineteen years since I felt like this. You wonder how so much time could pass, and decide not to wait another nineteen years before continuing your search.

I’m in the Here, and the Here is Now.

You can’t go forward, so you decide to go back.

In the months that follow, there were countless theories about what happened that night. Was it an argument? Was it drugs, revenge, or madness? Some people thought it had something to do with the moon, others quoted from the Bible—but there was no sign of the moon that night, and if there is a God, he was looking the other way. There were all kinds of conjectures, everyone had a theory, and that’s how the myth came about.

At first everyone agreed that several people must have been acting together. No human being could have done all that on his own. It was only over time that theories came to focus on an individual perpetrator, and the Traveler was born.

Some people thought it would never have come to an end if the snowfall hadn’t suddenly stopped. Others suspected there was a system behind it.

Many claimed the Traveler got tired.

Conjectures through and through.

You go to the car behind you and get in on the passenger side. The windows are covered with snow. You don’t have to look. You know what you’re doing and leave the car three minutes later.

You leave the second car after four minutes.

You skip the fourth and fifth cars because there’s more than one person in them. How can you tell when the passenger seat is empty? Perhaps it’s instinct, perhaps it’s luck. Two men are asleep in the fourth car, and in the fifth there’s a family with a dog. The dog is the only one awake, and sees you passing the window like a shadow. It starts whimpering and pees on the seat.

In car number ten you encounter your first problem.

A woman sits wrapped up at the steering wheel. She can’t sleep, she’s absolutely freezing because she’s too stingy to turn on the engine even for a moment. She’s wearing three pullovers and her coat over the top. Her car windows are damp on the inside, the drops of condensation are frozen. The woman’s face is sore with cold. Her hands are claws. She regrets not bringing any drugs along. A sleeping tablet or two and it would all be more bearable.

The woman gives a start when the passenger door opens. For a moment she thinks it’s the emergency services bringing her blankets and a thermos. She’s about to complain because it’s taken so long.

“Don’t panic,” you say and close the door behind you.

You smell her body, the fading deodorant. You smell her weariness and frustration, it is clammy and sour and leaves her mouth with every breath. She asks who you are. She tries to shrink away from you. Her eyes are wide. Her throat feels brittle under your hand. The inside light goes off. You press the woman against the driver’s door, you put your whole weight into the movement—your left arm stretched out as if to keep her at a distance. You don’t take your eyes off her for a second, feeling her blows against your arm, against your shoulder, watching her hands change from claws to panicked, fluttering birds. She gasps, she chokes, then her right hand finds the ignition key and starts the engine. You weren’t expecting that. In car number six the driver tried to climb onto the backseat. In car number eight the driver repeatedly banged his head against the window to draw attention. None of them tried to drive away.

The woman puts her foot on the accelerator; the car’s set to Park. The engine roars and nothing else happens. She hits the horn; the honking sounds like the bleating of a lost sheep. You clench your right hand and strike the woman in the face. Again and again. Her jaw breaks, her face slips to the left and she slumps in on herself. You lower your fist, but you keep the other hand on her throat. You feel her bones shifting under your strength. You feel the life escaping from her. That is the moment you let go of her and turn off the engine. It took less than four minutes.

The Traveler moves on.

In car number seventeen an old man is waiting for you. He’s belted in and sitting upright as if the journey is going to continue at any moment. There’s classical music on the radio.

“I was waiting,” the old man said.

You close the door behind you; the old man goes on talking.

“I saw you. A truck went past. The headlights shone through the windows of the car in front of me. I saw you through the snow. And now you’re here. And I’m not scared.”

“Thank you,” you tell him.

The old man unbuckles his seat belt. He shuts his eyes and lets his head fall onto the steering wheel as if he wants to go to sleep. The back of his neck is exposed. You see a gold chain cutting through his tensed skin like a thin thread. You put your hands around the old man’s head. A jerk, a rough crack, a sigh escapes from the old man. You leave your hands on his head for a while, as if you could catch his fleeing thoughts. It’s a perfect moment of peace.

The next day on the news they talk about an organization. The police were trying to make a connection between the twenty-six victims. The families were grieving, everywhere in the country flags were flown at half mast. They were talking about terrorists and the Russian mafia. They were thinking about a cult; the subject of sects was given prominence once again. Only the gun lobby didn’t get involved, because no guns had been used. Whatever was said, whatever people conjectured, no one dared to use the phrase “mass murder.” It never takes long. Eventually a tabloid newspaper put it in great big letters on the front page.

MASS MURDER ON THE A4.

It was a dark winter for Germany.

The big question on everyone’s mind was what made the Traveler get out of the twenty-sixth car and think, Enough’s enough. Did he really think that? Did he hear a voice, did demons speak to him, or did he get bored? Whatever the answer, it had nothing to do with the snowfall, because the snow went on falling till dawn. No, the truth isn’t complicated, it’s relatively simple.

You leave the twenty-sixth car and don’t think anything at all. You feel the wind and you feel the cold and you feel safe and you’re moving to the next car when you notice a glimmer on the horizon. Perhaps the snowfall is reflecting a light in the far distance. Whatever it is, it makes you turn around and set off back to your car. You follow your own overblown track and it is opening up like an old wound. At your car you wipe the windshield free of snow and sit down behind the steering wheel. You take a deep breath, put thumb and index finger around the ignition key, and wait. You wait for the right moment. When you start the engine, the cars in front of you come to life, and the headlights of over a hundred vehicles light the blocked motorway with a pale light. After exactly four hours the traffic jam gets moving again, because the Traveler was waiting for the right moment.

You put the car in gear and you’re very pleased with yourself. The pain and throbbing in your hands are insignificant. Later you will discover that you’ve broken two fingers on your right hand, and in spite of your gloves the knuckles on both hands are swollen and beaten bloody. Your shoulders ache from the uncomfortable posture you assumed in the cars, but none of that matters, because there’s this indescribable contentment within you. There’s also a sweet taste in your mouth that you can’t explain. The taste prompts a memory. The memory is nineteen years old. Glorious, dazzling, sweet. You know what it all means. You thought the search was over, but it had only taken a breather. It’s the start of a new era. Or in other words—the beginning of the end of civilization as you know it.

In retrospect you still like that thought best.

No beginning without an end. A man gets out of his car, a man gets back into his car, and the traffic jam in front of him slowly starts to move. The Traveler travels on.