Kitabı oku: «You», sayfa 4

SCHNAPPI

Nessi looks down the street and avoids your eye. She doesn’t want to go to the playground, she doesn’t want to see the others, or speak, or do anything. The question is what do you want to do now? Your best friend is pregnant and you can’t just disappear and leave her alone, that’s not an option.

“Don’t tell anyone,” says Nessi.

“I’ll take you home,” you say, avoiding her request, which isn’t all that stupid, because you don’t know if you can keep your mouth shut. You’ve always had problems with secrets. They only exist to be shared.

“Thanks.”

Even though it’s not on your way, you take Nessi to Nollendorfplatz on your bike. It’s a funny image. A dwarf who can hardly reach the pedals with her feet, and behind her a giant, clinging onto the dwarf as if the faintest breeze might separate them.

You cut across the Kurfürstendamm, come off the road at the Gedächtniskirche and onto the sidewalk, getting yelled at by the tourists. On the way you talk about your mother in the bathroom, even though you don’t really know what your mother was doing. Your mouth is a machine gun, it never runs out of ammunition. Twice the word “abortion” slips sharp and jagged from your mouth and you bite your tongue to brake the onrush of words. Nessi doesn’t react. She clings to your hips and rests her head against your back. When you stop at Winterfeldtplatz she doesn’t move and you wait a minute and then another before you say you’ve arrived. Nessi straightens up, rubs her eyes and looks up at her block as if you’d dragged her to a gulag.

“Where are you actually going?”

You give a start. You look over your shoulder. Sorry, girl, but we’re starting to worry about you. Nessi is still sitting on the luggage rack and you’re still sitting on your bike and you feel her left breast warm against your back. Nessi asked you a good question. Where are you actually going? You’re not outside Nessi’s block, you’re not even anywhere near, you’re riding all the way through Charlottenburg in the wrong direction. More precisely you’re on Krumme Strasse; even more precisely than that, you’re on the way to Stuttgarter Platz.

At some point I’m going to be killed, you think, and try to calm the shaking in your arms.

The first time you had a blank, two years ago, it was when you were at school and the bell rang for break. You went outside to get a hot chocolate from the kiosk, and you talked to a guy you’ve always wanted to talk to. Stink brought you back to reality by kicking your chair from behind, and at that moment you were back in class and Stink was asking if you’d give her some chewing gum. You couldn’t work out what had happened. It felt so real you could taste the hot chocolate in your mouth.

The second time was a month later at a party. You spent almost the whole evening playing strip poker, and when that got boring you went downstairs to dance a bit. Two songs later you were sweating and happy and wanted to fetch a drink when Ruth tapped you on the forehead and said she’d like to see if you were bluffing or not, because anybody who sweats bucketloads like you were doing must be bluffing. You looked helplessly at the people around you. You were still playing poker, your cards were rubbish, and there was a memory of dancing and there were drops of sweat on your forehead.

Your girls don’t know anything about it. You’re worried they’ll think you’re crazy and have you put in an asylum right away. Probably you got it from your mother. She calls herself a shaman and says she can sense when dead people are walking past her. She also firmly believes that everyone has to cross an abyss before he becomes a real person. Whatever a real person is, your mother says a lot of things when she has time on her hands, like that she has to die in Vietnam and nowhere else, she won’t be persuaded otherwise. You’ve looked the word up, and you’re sure your mother isn’t a shaman, because she’s never used her abilities for the good of the community. Witch would be better.

Two years have passed since then, and during that time you’ve had blanks at least once a month. It’s your description for those daydreams that aren’t really just daydreams. It’s not a jump cut and it’s not exactly a blackout. Whatever it is, no one writes on the internet about it. It’s your very own illness. So you weren’t surprised for a second when you rode your bike half a mile through the Berlin traffic with Nessi on the luggage rack without getting under a car.

Practice makes perfect, you think, and you’d be grateful if your arms would finally stop shaking.

And there you are now and you wish you weren’t there. You made a mistake, you were supposed to bring Nessi home. Look at her: she’s not really in the now, she’s like one of those zombies who stare stupidly around the place and then go for your throat the minute you’re looking the other way.

Nessi leaves half of her pizza and drinks a whole beer, then takes a drag on a joint and holds her breath until the smoke has disappeared into her and only hot air comes out.

Not good, not good at all.

You wish the boys would clear off, then you could talk. The boys are Indi, Eric, and Jasper. They could equally well be called Karl, Tommi, and Frank. It makes no difference. A year ago it made a big difference. Something has changed. As if your girls had switched off the interest when school ended. Ruth is the only exception. She’s flirting with the three lads, and you could bet that at least one of them has a boner. You slide across to Nessi and can’t help thinking of Taja. Alone you’re nothing, together you’re strong. First Taja disappears, then Stink. Blood sisters never leave each other in the lurch. That’s what you’d love to whisper to Nessi, but Nessi would immediately think she’s the one leaving you in the lurch, so you just shut up.

There are two beeps; Nessi fishes her phone out of her jacket. Let it not be Henrik, you think. Let it be anyone else, just not Henrik. You know a lot of idiots, but Henrik’s right up at the top of the list. No one should be made pregnant by somebody like him. You know what you’re talking about. You hooked up a few times with him and he dumped you when you wouldn’t sleep with him. Henrik is like an advertisement on TV that everybody thinks is funny and then they forget all about it because there are so many advertisements that are just as funny.

Ruth points over your shoulder.

“Look who’s coming!”

You turn around. Stink is getting out of a hot set of wheels. She sticks her hands in her back pockets and comes strolling over to you. The relief floods over you with such force that you explode with stupid laughter.

Now everything’s going to be okay again.

“Hey, where have you been?” Ruth asks.

“Where do you think I was?” Stink asks back and doesn’t even turn around as the red Jaguar drives off. “I took a trip. First Tenerife, then Malibu.”

The crowd whistles and laughs, Nessi looks up from her phone and smiles wearily. Stink says she needs some chow, right now or even sooner. She is like quicksilver, nothing can hold her. Off she goes to the pizza stand. Ruth has the same idea as you and goes running after her. Nessi is forgotten for a moment. You want to know what Stink got up to with the guy in the Jag.

“I can hardly walk,” she says, “it was that hot.”

Ruth and you screech, even though you don’t want to, the screech just slips out of you. You immediately hold your hand in front of your mouth and your eyes glitter with envy. If you rubbed them now, it would probably rain stardust.

“No way!” says Ruth.

“Yes way.”

“Tell us it’s not true!” you demand.

“But it is true.”

“So what would you like?”

The pizza guy grins at you. He’s in his mid-forties, he’s wearing a stupid T-shirt, and his hair’s so greasy he looks as if his head has spent all week in the food fryer. Stink ignores him and studies the menu, even though she always orders the same pizza.

“Who is he?” asks Ruth.

“Who’s who?”

“The guy with the Jag.”

“Oh …”

Stink pulls a face as if she’s got a toothache.

“What’s up?” you want to know.

“Hey, hot mama, what’s up?” asks Ruth.

Even the pizza guy leans in curiously as if he knows what you’re talking about.

“I forgot to ask him his name,” Stink says, making the sort of big innocent eyes that people can only make if they know that innocence is a load of lies that would drop its pants for a measly slice of pizza.

You all walk down to the Lietzensee. The guys want to go to the park because they think that if the moon’s shining and you’re all sitting by the water it’ll be romantic and they might cop a feel. You let them believe that, because then they’ll shut their traps and try to behave properly.

By the shore you make a dip in the grass, scrunch up some paper, and lay dry twigs over it. Indi rolls the second joint of the evening, and then you are sitting there, blowing smoke at the mosquitoes and talking quietly as if you didn’t want to disturb the night. Jasper is playing some kind of racket through his phone, a dog barks from the opposite bank, and now it would be good if you could shut your eyes and go off on one of your blanks, because you don’t really want what’s going to happen next.

One of the guys spots it first.

“What’s up with Nessi?”

You look around. Nessi isn’t sitting with the rest of you anymore, she’s squatting down by the shore. And as you are looking, she slides silently into the water. Fully dressed, of course. The guys burst out laughing. You try to get up. Eric holds you back and asks if you’re about to go for a swim too, or what.

“Nessi!”

Stink runs to the shore, suddenly everybody’s at the shore and you’re alone sitting in the grass like a parcel that someone’s forgotten to send, and when you catch up with your girls at last, you see Nessi drifting in the middle of the lake with her arms spread. She’s just lying there playing dead, and the guys are calling out and calling her Loch Nessi, and you call her to come back, even from the hotel opposite someone calls out of a window, but Nessi doesn’t react.

“She’ll come back,” says Stink and points into the grass where Nessi has left her wallet and phone. “Someone who doesn’t want her phone to get wet is always going to come back.”

“I’m not going to collect her,” says Indi and spits into the water.

“I’d have been surprised,” says Stink.

The guys are sitting around the fire again. They’re only interested in whatever’s actually happening, and nothing’s happening on the Lietzensee right now. You girls keep standing by the shore and Ruth says Nessi must have had a row with Henrik, and you say Henrik’s an idiot, and Stink says what else is new, and adds, “The way Nessi’s behaving, she must be knocked up.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Your girls look at you in surprise.

“I really didn’t say that,” you add quickly.

“Oh, shit,” says Ruth.

“Oh, shit,” says Stink.

No one needs to point out that you’re one of the worst secret-keepers in the world.

“I really didn’t say that,” you repeat, and it sounds so lame that you can’t think of anything else to say for a while. You just stare at the Lietzensee and hope that Nessi will stay in the water for a bit longer.

II

so you lost your trust,

and you never should have

Coldplay SEE YOU SOON

THE TRAVELER

The country heard nothing more about you for two years. You hadn’t disappeared, and you hadn’t gone into hiding. You’re not one of those people who have a second identity. Jekyll and Hyde are a nonsense as far as you’re concerned. You’ve returned to your life. Silently. There were eight hours omitted, eight hours when no one missed you.

Your life took its course.

In the morning you woke up and had breakfast. You were reliable at work. You had lunch with your colleagues and chatted. No shadow haunted your thoughts. You were you. On the weekends you did your family duties and visited your six-year-old son for a few hours. Your wife made lunch for you both and then tacitly handed you the bills. You parted in peace, no one mentioned divorce because no one wanted to take the last step. So every weekend you put the bills in your pocket, kissed the boy goodbye on the top of his head, and then drove back to your three-room apartment.

Some evenings you met friends or sat alone in front of the television and watched the world spinning increasingly out of control. You went on vacation, you set money aside and had two operations on your knee. You never thought about the winter two years ago and the traffic jam on the A4. You saw the reports and listened to the features on the radio. When there was a report on TV, you switched channels uninterested. You know what you’ve done. There’s no reason to go on worrying about it. You’re you. And after two years the Traveler is coming back.

It is October.

It is 1997.

It is night.

We’re in mid-autumn, and you can’t shake off the feeling that summer is refusing to go. The weather is mild. Storms rage on the weekend and it’s only at night that the temperature falls to below ten degrees. It feels like the last exhalation of summer.

You’ve been on the road for four hours and you want to stop at a rest area, but all the parking lots are full of semi-trailers so you drive on and turn on the indicator at the next gas station. Here again there’s hardly a free space. The semis with their trailers remind you of abandoned houses rolling across the country, never coming to rest. It’s still a hundred and twenty miles to your apartment. You aren’t one of those people who go to the edge and then collapse with exhaustion. Not you.

After you’ve driven past the gas pumps, you park in the shade of a trailer, get out and stretch. For a few minutes you stand motionless in the darkness listening to the ticking of the engine. In the distance there are footsteps, the click of nozzles, engines are started, the rushing sound of the highway. Then there’s a croak. You look around. On the other side of the parking lot a row of bare trees looms up into the night sky. A crow sits on one of the branches. It bobs up and down as if to draw attention to itself. At that moment you become aware that you’ve never seen a crow at night before. Seagulls, owls, sometimes even a hawk on a road sign, but never a crow. You tilt your head. The crow does the same and then looks to the side. You follow its gaze. Three hundred yards from the gas station there’s a motel. A red neon sign hangs over the entrance. A woman steps out. She walks to her car, gets in, and drives off.

You remember exactly what you were thinking.

You were thinking: Now there’s a free space.

Seven cameras at the gas station and about eight hundred cars that fit the time frame. The police checked all the number plates. A special commission was set up, and over the years that followed it was dealing only with this case. Overtime, frustration, suspicions, and a lot of idiots claiming it was them. The papers went mad, all other news paled. And they had nothing to offer the reader. Except the dead.

You walk over to the motel and step inside the foyer. You aren’t surprised that there is no one at reception. It’s late. Above the reception there is a black sign with a white arrow pointing to a bell. On the sign it says: Please ring.

You don’t ring.

A television flickers from a back room. You go into the room. A woman is sleeping on a fold-out sofa. She is covered to the neck by a woolen blanket. On the table in front of her there’s a plastic bowl containing a ready meal. The remains of peas and mashed potato. A bit of meat. And beside it a half-empty bottle of Fanta and an empty glass. You sit down in the armchair opposite the woman and relax. The murmur from the television, the sleep of the woman, the silence of the night. As you leave the room, you don’t turn the television off. The blanket has slipped; you lay it carefully around the woman’s body and tuck it in at the ends.

The motel has two upper floors, each with sixteen rooms; there are ten rooms on the first floor. You look at the plan. Under the counter at reception you find a box. There are three skeleton keys in the box.

You go up the stairs.

On the second floor you open the first door and go in. You stop in the anteroom and go back out again. You leave the second room after a few seconds as well. Children. The smell of children. After you’ve gone into the third room, you take a deep breath, a single breath replies. You pull the door closed. The darkness embraces you.

This is the right place.

If you drove past the gas station today, you’d see a closed-down motel. The sight of it would remind you of the night twelve years ago—no light in the windows, motionless curtains, stillness. The flickering neon sign above the entrance is broken. And even though the rest area is always full, nobody parks in front of the motel. Cursed, they say. Weeds have fought their way through the cracks, they press against the building as though to support the façade. No one lays flowers outside anymore. The grave candles have disappeared. There’s only an ugly yellow graffito on the front door: Forever Yang.

Almost two years after the A4 you’ve set off on your travels again, and everyone recognized your signature. The papers called you The Avenging Angel. On the internet you were The Traveler, sometimes The German Nightmare or The Big Bad Wolf. Fanatics called you The Scourge of God. By now the police knew you were acting alone. The clues were everywhere, and the clues didn’t lie. You were aware of that. Clues mean you’ve been there. Honesty is important to you. There’s nothing you want to hide. Everyone should know you exist. Of course your fingerprints were no help to the police. No previous convictions. You exist only in your own world.

Your myth grew beyond the borders of Germany, you made waves all around Europe. In England a bank cashier ran amok, in the Czech Republic it was a customer in a supermarket and in Italy a woman who said she couldn’t stand the pressure anymore. Events began to accumulate. In Sweden a man killed his family and wandered through his apartment block with bloody hands until a Doberman went for his throat. In the Netherlands a boy put explosives in a McDonald’s, joined the queue, and set off the explosives when his turn came. A television evangelist spoke of the Day of Judgment, studies were produced, prognoses filled the commercial breaks. Humanity seemed to be walking toward self-destruction with its arms spread wide open. None of it had anything to do with you.

Not rage, not despair, not self-destruction or revenge.

Not hate, not love, not religion or politics.

You’re in no hurry. You go into the rooms one after the other and sit down on the edge of the bed. You watch them sleeping, the way you would watch a patient who has a fever and needs a cooling hand. You wonder what’s happening to you. The Here, the Now, and you on the edge of a stranger’s bed. With your hands around their neck and your fists in their face. You. Not hesitating for a moment. And they. Defending themselves and then giving up. And there’s always this feeling of sympathy. As if they knew why you’re doing it. As if at that brief moment of dying they understood. At least that’s how it feels to you. As if they understood: that you’re on a quest, that you have to explore the darkness. Because the darkness is always there. And in the darkness there’s nothing to find.

That night you go into forty-two rooms and leave thirty-six corpses. After that you put the skeleton key back in the box and step out into the night like someone who has rested and can now continue on his journey.

The crow has vanished from the tree, the neon sign above the entrance still flickers. Three hours have passed. The traffic moves tirelessly in both directions. The world outside the motel has hardly changed.

On the journey home you look at your hands on the wheel. This time you didn’t wear gloves. Your hands are bruised, the knuckles bloody, the pain feels good. I am, I exist. You’re aware that you’ve left lots of clues. It feels right and good.