The Camera Killer by Thomas Glavinic Read Free Book Online Page A

we used to be better once upon a time, my partner retorted.
    Heinrich shrugged his shoulders and switched back to the murder video channel. It was still showing commercials, a fact on which Heinrich commented adversely. It was 11:52, he said; were they going to take all night about it and end by singing the praises of Gigantico’s Super-Duper, Lightning-Fast Vacuum Cleaner?
    Then he suggested filling in the time with another game of cards. My partner opposed this idea, citing our excessive nervoustension in expectation of the video. Heinrich bet me the video wouldn’t be shown before midnight. I accepted the bet and won.
    At 11:58 the plump anchorwoman reappeared. She announced that the video would now be screened. Approximately four hours’ material was available. The channel had edited it down and would transmit the crucial scenes, or scenes that encapsulated the entire course of events. Any children and adolescents under the age of sixteen now watching the screen should be sent out of the room by those responsible for their upbringing.
    Heinrich jokingly ordered his wife out of the room, but Eva didn’t consider this funny.
    From one moment to the next, the quality of the images on the screen changed. A digital clock was running in the top right corner of the picture. In the first scene, it showed 0:08. This signified that the first seven minutes had been deemed unworthy of transmission. An informative ticker at the foot of the screen read, “Screening this video is not sensationalism. It is a vain attempt to come to terms with an incomprehensible human tragedy.”
    Incredible, said Heinrich, plunging his hand in the bowl of peanuts. Eva chewed her nails and directed only occasional glances at the screen. My partner said she failed to understand why anyone would do such things, let alone film them, and why any TV station would show them. Heinrich shushed her and pointed at the screen, which was showing a patch of forest.
    The camerawork was jerky. The cameraman was moving forward. We saw a clearing in which three children were racing around with sticks in their hands.
    Cut. 0:15. A high-pitched, distorted voice—that of the cameraman—informed them that now one of them was his prisoner, he doubted the others would be rash enough to run away. Any such attempt would cost the lives, first of the remaining boy andthen, within a few hours at most, of the other two and all the members of their family.
    He took them completely by surprise, said Heinrich.
    The hog-tied brother came into the shot. He asked the man why he was doing this to them. The camera panned. The boy who was second in age repeated that he wanted to leave and the man should let them all go. Heinrich urged us to look at his expression, which was alternating between an uncertain smile and undisguised fear. He didn’t seem to fully grasp the situation or believe in its gravity. Only ten minutes earlier, Heinrich added, they had been romping around unsuspectingly, and even now, they probably thought they’d be playing tag again in another quarter of an hour.
    The hoarse voice asked the youngest boy what he would think if he, the cameraman, slit open his hog-tied brother’s stomach to see if his innards smoked like the cigarettes the grown-ups smoked at home or steamed like food on the table. The cameraman said this was so, he knew it. It also smoked or steamed when you did a pee outside, if it was cold enough.
    What’s he on about? Heinrich exclaimed.
    The children didn’t answer.
    The cameraman went on to describe several other ways of torturing someone. This speech, of which the children took note with unmistakable distaste, evoked exclamations of an indignant nature from all present in the living room.
    The cameraman never stopped filming the children for an instant. This gave us an opportunity to study their changing expressions. They don’t have a clue, Heinrich exclaimed, not a clue.
    The boy who was clearly the youngest of the three had already