In Free Fall Read Online Free Page B

was loud and resonant, but Little Red Riding Hood was too deep in thought to reply.
    “Physics is for lovers.”
    If Little Red Riding Hood made any retort, it was drowned out by the laughter and unrest that had broken out in the room. The sound of chalk breaking between Sebastian’s fingers was also obscured. While Oskar drank in the admiration for their work of art, Sebastian was still standing in front of the blackboard looking thoughtful. He finally pulled on his jacket and left the lecture theater, unnoticed by his friend. What had shaken him was the certainty with which Oskar had stepped to the right-hand side of the blackboard while pointing him toward the left.
    The knowledge that Oskar had in no way meant to overshadow him did not make it any easier for Sebastian. The feeling of his own unfairness mingled with his foolish sense of humiliation. Oskar reveled in the spectacle and the exhilaration of pulling off a performance together, but Sebastian wanted to be a good physicist more than anything else in the world. For Oskar, being right was never any effort—it was the natural state of things. He had simply assumed that, unlike himself, Sebastian would be unable to write the mathematical derivation from back to front. The worst thing was—he was right. The moment their hands met in the middle of the blackboard was a onesided victory, and Sebastian felt the urge to punish Oskar for this. Only Oskar saw it as a celebration of their friendship and their brilliance. Sebastian saw it as proof of his own inferiority.
    From that moment on, Sebastian froze in Oskar’s presence. He was not able to explain to his friend why the laws that governed their friendship had suddenly lost all validity. When they argued, his rejoindersgrew sharper, and he found less and less time for shared research. Oskar did not fight against any of this. His calm gaze beneath half-closed eyes followed Sebastian into his sleep. His friend’s refusal to defend himself against this new aggressiveness made Sebastian even colder. In Oskar’s room, he shouted and raged against narrow walls and limited worldviews until one evening Oskar told him quietly and calmly that he was a man devoid of aesthetic sense. That night, Sebastian walked through the streets punching lampposts and declaring to them that something was not right with the world, that there must be other universes in which things went differently. In which it would be impossible for a man like him to throw away his own happiness despite knowing better. In which he and Oskar would never lose each other.
    When they were defending their PhD theses, they no longer met on the bank of the Dreisam, but only for the occasional whiskey, sitting on lumpy stools at a bar. They were no longer of one mind on anything, except when it came to which one of them was the better physicist. It was Oskar; and after this conviction of theirs was confirmed by Oskar’s summa cum laude, Sebastian exchanged his morning jacket for jeans and a shirt, and got married.
    The guests at the wedding whispered behind raised hands about the best man, who slid along the walls at the function room and whose presence seemed to be personally responsible for the shadows in the corners. From the expression on his face, it appeared that he had never been so amused about anything in his life. Instead of a veil, he told the painfully embarrassed guests, Sebastian should have put a green light on top of his bride’s head. All emergency exits had them.

 
     
    [4]
    “I’LL BET A CASE OF BRUNELLO,” Oskar says, “that they only asked for your article because of that time-machine murder.”
    Sebastian is silent. That this is the case is clear as daylight. It is even in the description on the contents page: “Freiburg professor explains the theories of the time-machine murderer.” In his article, Sebastian has even tried to express certain things from the point of view of the murderer. After killing five people, the young man had