Kitabı oku: «You», sayfa 6

“What happened to your hands?”

You hide your filthy fingers behind your back.

“Your mother’s a good woman, you know that?”

“I know.”

Suddenly Uncle Runa explodes, as if you’d claimed the opposite.

“You never say a word against your mother, you hear me? Your mother’s an angel! Don’t you dare say anything against your mother! Your father is a son of a bitch! You can say whatever you like about him.”

“He’s also your brother—”

“That’s how come I know he is a son of a bitch!”

Uncle Runa falls silent again.

“How else do you think I know, eh?”

He looks over his shoulder at the clock. You know he has a thing going with your mother. The way he touches her and how they kiss when they meet, the way he’s sometimes sitting in your kitchen in the morning as if he’s been there all night. You’re sure your mother doesn’t hit the bathroom wall when Uncle Runa spends too much time in the shower. His dressing gown hangs on the inside of the door.

He’s probably glad my father disappeared.

Your uncle takes a deep breath as if to make an important decision. The Cadillac on his chest stretches. Someone starts a motorbike, a woman laughs.

“What am I to do with you, boy?”

You say nothing. Uncle Runa scratches his head and sighs. You know it’s all fine now.

“Get to work. Just get to work and we won’t mention it again.”

It’s fifteen minutes later and Uncle Runa raps on the back of your head as if someone lives there, and leaves you alone. You imagine him walking down the streets, nodding at the drunks, as if they were his very special guard dogs, climbing the stairs to the second floor and your mother opening the door to him, and then they’re both laughing like the woman earlier on—high and superior—because they know you’re busy for the next few hours, while they have all the time in the world to fuck each other’s brains out. Eventually they’ll pay for it. More than six euros an hour. You’re sure of that. The justice of the world will recognize you one day. You have no idea what kind of justice that will be, you don’t really think seriously about it either, because right now you’re glad to be alone behind the counter at last.

Alone.

It’s half-price Tuesday in the cinemas, the evening screenings will be over in half an hour, and this place’ll fill up. You get ready and pull the drinks to the front of the fridge until they’re lined up neatly, you cut vegetables and mix salad. Music whispers out of the radio, you turn it up, and no one tells you to turn it down. No one wants anything from you. Apart from the customers, but that’s okay, they’re supposed to want something from you.

While your uncle generally rolls the pizza bases out in advance, you prefer to make them fresh. The customer should see that you’re doing something for him. Tomato sauce, a bit of cheese, then the topping, then a bit more cheese. You love the sound when the baking tray slides into the oven. A glance at the customer, asking if he wants anything else. Always a smile, always content. You.

Yes, me.

“Me?”

“Yes, you, what are you staring at?”

It’s two o’clock in the morning, the wave of cinemagoers ebbed away at midnight, and after that you could count the customers on one hand. You’ve stopped counting the drunks a long time ago, because they’re not real customers, they’re alkies, gabbling away at you and loading up on one last drink before they roll onto some park bench and tick off another day in their lives.

“I … I’m not staring.”

You are wondering how long you’ve been staring at her. Her green eyes gleam like distant fires, her hair is such a dark red that it’s almost black. You can’t concentrate on her mouth at the moment, because it moves and says, “Where’s the guy who makes the pizza?”

“I’m the guy who makes the pizza.”

“You’re at best twelve years old.”

You don’t react, you turn sixteen in the spring but you keep it to yourself because you’re worried that she might be older. She must be older, arrogant and loud as she is. You can’t know that she’s playing with you. She knows who you are and that you hang out with Darian, she sees you at school every day and knows you’ve noticed her too. If you’d known all that at that very moment, everything would have been a lot easier for you. As it is you’re just startled and look nervously past her. She’s alone, it’s the first time you’ve seen her alone. Normally she hangs with a group of girls who buzz around her as if she were a source of light. You particularly like the little scar on her chin, it makes her look like she is truly fragile.

She snaps her fingers around in front of your face.

“Well?”

You don’t know what she means.

“How old are you now?”

“Fifteen.”

“Never.”

You shrug and wish the moment would stay like this. Hours, make it days. You wouldn’t even have to speak. You’d make her one pizza after another, give her free drinks and look at her the whole time. Nothing more than that.

It would be nice if she would laugh and say she was sorry that she thought you were twelve, you don’t look twelve at all. That would be really nice. Only now do you notice that her eyes are glassy. She’s either stoned or drunk.

“Your name’s Mirko and you live on Seelingstrasse, right?”

“Above the falafel shop,” you say and feel as if she’s paid you a compliment. But how does she know all this? you wonder, as she says, “I’ve seen you coming out of your house a few times.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, ah.”

You look at each other, and as nothing better comes to your mind you show her your hand.

“I was in a fight today. I defended myself with a bicycle chain.”

She looks at your sore palm, looks at you, she doesn’t seem impressed. But she goes on talking to you. She says she urgently needs a phone. Her forefinger goes up in the air.

“Just one call, I swear.”

You don’t point to the phone booth behind her, you don’t ask what’s wrong with her phone. Girls always have a cell phone. Just don’t ask. Go to the back, reach into your backpack, and come back with your phone.

“Sure.”

You go to the back, reach into your rucksack, and come back with the phone. She doesn’t thank you, she takes two steps backward and taps away. You turn down the radio to hear her better.

“… no, I’m stuck here … Don’t … But I … I’ll give you ten euros, I promise. What? Please, Paul, come and fetch me … What? The what? You know what time it is? There are no buses around here. And I hate them anyway, you know that. What? Aunt Sissi can go and fuck herself.”

Suddenly she looks up, phone still to her ear, looks at you, caught you red-handed, you duck a bit but hold her gaze.

“Fuck this shit!” she says, and you are not sure if she’s talking to you.

She snaps the phone shut. You ask if there’s a problem.

“What do you know about problems?”

“I … I could take you home.”

“How are you going to take me home?”

“I can if I want.”

“But I’m not giving you ten euros.”

“That’s okay.”

You laugh, you really don’t know what you’re doing. Uncle Runa will strangle you if you shut the place for as much as a minute. But you’re making things even worse, because after Uncle Runa has strangled you he’ll cut you into pieces as soon as he finds out you’ve borrowed his old Vespa.

“On that thing?”

She has walked around the pizza stand. You pulled the tarpaulin off the bike like somebody performing a magic trick. She stands there as if she wants to buy the Vespa, then she kicks the back tire so that the bike nearly tips over. You flinch but don’t say anything. Uncle Runa drives around the block once a week to charge the battery. He got the Vespa from scrap and rebuilt it himself. He calls it Dragica.

“But I’m not wearing a helmet, just so we’re clear on that.”

She points to her piled-up hair. You nod: if she doesn’t want a helmet then she doesn’t want one. You untie the string of your apron and for a moment you smell her breath. Definitely drunk. The key to the Vespa hangs on a nail above the radio. You take it as if you do this every day. Perhaps you’ll drive along Seelingstrasse afterward and beep two times. Perhaps Uncle Runa will recognize the rattle of his Dragica and come running after you.

Once you’ve shut up shop you put on your uncle’s helmet. It’s too big, but it doesn’t matter. She stands there and holds out her hand.

“What is it?”

“Did you think I’d let you drive me?”

“But—”

“Come on, make a choice.”

You hand her the key and imagine what it’ll feel like sitting behind her. Her warmth, her presence. You’ll lean into the bends together and be like a single person. Not just you, not her—both of you. And just as you feel your excitement growing into an erection you quickly think of your mother gutting a chicken and at the same time the Vespa springs to life with a cough and bumps over the curbstone and zigzags along the street. A taxi beeps, then the lights of the Vespa come on and it disappears around the next corner.

Without you.

TAJA

You don’t exist anymore. When you move, the air around you is still. Not a breeze. You speak, and silence replies. You’re there, without being there. And even though you don’t believe it right now, it’s a pleasure to meet you at last. You’re always present in the thoughts of your girls, but we’ve learned as little about you so far as if you didn’t really exist.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to talk, you don’t need to think or, for a while, exist, we’ll find out everything about you anyway. Why you became a shadow, why you don’t want to exist anymore. Invisible. We’ll open a window into your life and let the light in, and we’ll shake you awake until you scream with fury. But there’s time for that, that comes later.

The table in front of you is vertical, but nothing’s falling off it. Not the glasses, not the magazines or the ripped bag of powder. Even the hand-knitted tea cozy doesn’t move. Every time you look at it you wonder where the teapot’s gone and how small you have to be to live in a tea cozy. Between sleeping and waking you see your phone vibrating, it quivers from left to right before freezing again. The walls stay horizontal, the light comes, the light goes.

Your nose runs all the time, sometimes it’s blood, but mostly it’s just snot. You smell urine and the acrid smell of vomit. But that’s nothing compared to the stench coming from the kitchen. You shut the door because you thought it would help. Closed doors don’t keep out flies. They come through the cracks, they come from all around and make straight for the kitchen. They’re everywhere. You don’t want to think about it. You take a sip of water, and a few seconds later it’s as if you hadn’t drunk anything. You wish it would rain. Your mouth is so dry that you’re wishing it would rain in the middle of the room. You don’t have the strength to sit up, you can’t even stretch out your arm to reach for the edge of the table. You try, and you think you can hear the sinews in your arm creaking. Your fingertips touch the edge of the table. You give up exhausted, you pull back your arm and fall asleep again.

You believe in time. You pray to time and hope it hears you. Just a bit, go back just a bit, you think and know how absurd the idea is.

Still …

Sometimes you stare at the clock above the fireplace, at your dad’s awards. Platinum—gold—gold—platinum—gold. And in between the clock, like a special prize for …

Nothing?

You concentrate. Sometimes you manage to make the hand of the clock pause. It lingers. That’s all you can do, whatever you try, the hand never moves backward. It’s like arm-wrestling with the world champion arm wrestler. Eventually there’s no juice behind your will, and the hand unfreezes and ticks on a bit.

And another bit.

And another.

And time is time again and laughs at you in seconds and minutes and hours. You hate it for that. At the same time you yearn for it. You can’t be without it, and you want it to disappear forever.

Time is your new religion.

Sleep is traveling inside your head. No packing, no waiting, just being there. And that’s what your There looks like: a house on a cliff, water below you, sky above you. You’re sitting by a fjord. Even though you have no memory of the place, you know: I was born here. It’s a gray day. Snow falls and turns the valley walls into Japanese ink drawings. An icy wind scratches over the water. That’s where you are, that’s where you want to be. On a terrace, wrapped up in several blankets, on your right a table with a cup of tea, in the background the silence of the house. You pick up the cup, you feel the heat of the tea through the china, your palms warm up.

There’s nothing more, nothing more is needed.

You wake with your face buried in the sofa cushion and sneeze twice. Blood drifts down onto the pillow like a fine mist, you feel dizzy and lay your head back so that the blood flows down your throat like a gentle lava flow, feeding and warming you. Everything in your body hurts and throbs. Your thoughts are sore. Your hand claws onto the back of the sofa, you inch your way into a sitting position. The table turns horizontal, the walls vertical and your legs tremble, even though you’re not standing. You set your feet down on the floor and try to get the shaking under control. You stay like that for a while. Your face in your hands, the trembling in your legs. You look between your fingers at the powder and feel the stinging in your nose like far-off longing. You know what will ease the pain and let you sleep again. It’s as simple as that. As if the thought has reached your legs, they stop shaking. You lean forward, pick up the teaspoon, and stick it into the plastic bag. You scatter the powder on the tabletop and use one of the brightly colored straws. It doesn’t take long, it hurts and your senses greet the bitterness of the drug with jubilation, then you feel like retching, you fight it and fight it and sink back, draw your knees up to your chest and become a warm, pulsating ball.

… at last …

Sleep.

This time it’s a different There. You’re not at the fjord, you’re with your friends, time has been merciful and taken you along. In reverse. It’s right after school, you know the day and the year and it’s reassuring, because you also know what’s going to happen. It’s absolutely certain. And right now you would give your soul for a little certainty.

You’re in a freeze-frame. Your girlfriends are frozen in that moment that has already been and will never be again. You’re sitting in Ruth’s room. You know that Coldplay’s first CD is going to play through the speakers at any moment. Ruth has all their albums, but is only allowed to put on this one, because you’ve decided that Parachutes is authentic and everything else is just homespun pop for teenyboppers. Whatever you are, you’ve never been teenyboppers. Or as Nessi once put it: We’re far too old to be young.

You’re lying stretched out on the floor with your head in Schnappi’s lap. Above you is the moss-green ceiling that you painted together; sometimes flakes fall down on your heads because you had to go and apply the paint too thickly. Schnappi looks at you like a photograph that only comes to life when you let it.

Soon.

It’s autumn, it’s a good nine months ago. Your hair was long at the time, then before Christmas you went to the hairdresser and for the next few months your girls called you Frenchie. Yes, your hair has grown since then, but you keep it short because you’ve always thought it ridiculous that you’ve all got the same hairdo. Long, long, long.

Schnappi with her hair that’s like black silk, Ruth and her blond fringe with which she tries in vain to hide the pimples on her forehead, Stink who’s dyed her mane dark red as long as you’ve known her, and Nessi who looks like an angel and makes you sigh every time she piles up her golden hair and shows her neck. It was a good step on your part to change your hairstyle.

In a minute.

Ruth sits cross-legged on the bed with a magazine in her lap, she’s flicking through it, her tongue peeps out between her lips. Stink sits opposite her on the windowsill with a cigarette in her hand, even though smoking’s forbidden at Ruth’s house, but Stink can’t help it. You remember she actually squeezed out a tear when Ruth told her she couldn’t smoke. Stink is no smoker, but on the other hand she doesn’t like anyone telling her she can’t do something.

You know what she’s going to say next. She’s going to ask you what’s so funny about her not wanting to have anything more to do with that guy. You know your reaction, too. All thoughts and words are still frozen. Cigarette smoke floats like a charcoal line in the air.

You breathe out.

Now.

“… so funny about it?” Stink asks defiantly. “Axel’s an idiot, do I look like someone who wants to be with an idiot?”

“For three months now,” says Ruth.

“That was never three months!”

“Then a quarter of a year.”

You laugh, Stink rolls her eyes and asks what’s so funny about it. You think it is incredibly funny, and if Stink wasn’t in such a stinky mood she’d laugh too, but of course that’s not going to work, it would make the joke less funny.

A breeze drifts through the window and scatters the smoke around the room. You inhale the smell deeply and wish you were brave enough to have one too.

“Don’t even think about it,” Ruth says from the bed.

“I’ll think what I like,” you tell her.

Ruth holds up the magazine. You all look at it for a moment and shake your heads. You’re evaluating actresses. You’re cruel. Apart from a few exceptions you think they’re all bitches who make too much money. Nessi’s the only one who knows all their names.

“Cate Blanchett,” she says.

“Show me,” says Stink.

Ruth holds the magazine out toward her.

“That’s not Cate Blanchett.”

“That’s Kate Winslet,” says Schnappi.

Ruth looks at the magazine and reads, “Cate Blanchett.”

“Shit,” says Stink.

Nessi nods contentedly. She’s sitting on one of those idiotic seats that are filled with beans and every time you move it sounds like a drunk jogger running down a pebble beach.

“If you fart into it,” says Schnappi, “we’ll have chili tonight.”

You drink your Fanta. You’re waiting for Ruth to hold up the next photograph when the door flies open. Even though you knew Ruth’s mother was about to breeze in you give a start, just like you gave a start then. The memory is so fresh in your head that you want to call out to your girlfriends: I’ve been here before and want to stay here forever!

“I thought I smelled smoke.”

Ruth’s mother looks around. She’s thrown you out before, because the music was too loud. Stink makes eyes so big that she might as well hang up a sign. Her cigarette has disappeared, but of course Stink had to take one last drag and the smoke’s still in her lungs.

“I don’t understand you lot. You’re girls, aren’t you? What does this place look like?”

Typical Ruth’s mother. Can see perfectly well what it looks like, and asks what it looks like. You take a look around as if you’d only just gotten here. It doesn’t look great. All the scattered clothes and comics and pages from the school presentation that you really wanted to discuss but when that got boring Schnappi just dropped the pages on the floor. There’s the tray of scraped ice cream bowls and a sticky stain on the carpet where one of the spoons was dropped. And then of course the nachos. Ruth’s cat was desperate to get its head in the bag. Then it walked around for a while with the thing on its head, then it shook itself and the nachos flew all over the carpet.

“That was Freddie,” says Schnappi.

“Maybe we should put Freddie to sleep,” says Ruth’s mother.

“God, Mom,” sighs Ruth without looking up from the magazine.

“Don’t ‘God Mom’ me, Ruth, or I’m throwing you all out.”

Ruth pretends not to have heard anything and holds up the magazine. You shake your heads. No points. You’re TV series junkies and you’ve seen all the episodes of Lost at least twice; as far as you’re concerned the women have to look like Kate or nothing at all.

“Milla Jovovich,” says Nessi.

“Julie Delpy,” says Ruth’s mother.

“Minnie Driver,” says Schnappi.

You burst out laughing.

“Why are you laughing?” asks Schnappi.

“You wouldn’t recognize Minnie Driver if she sat on your lap.”

“Would too.”

Ruth looks at the magazine. Of course Nessi’s right. Ruth’s mother curses, she could have sworn that was Julie Delpy. Stink coughs out the smoke.

“What’s the matter with you?” asks Ruth’s mother.

“Cancer,” says Stink and thumps her chest.

“You don’t make jokes about that.”

“Tell that to my doctor.”

You all giggle, Ruth’s mother narrows her eyes slightly. Dangerous.

“Isabell, I don’t want you to smoke in our living room. How many times—”

“God, Mom,” Ruth butts in and lowers the magazine. “Really, that’s enough. Please shut the door behind you. Take a look …”

She points around her, as if her mother hadn’t noticed where she was.

“—this is a girls’ meeting.”

For a moment you think Ruth has gone too far. You’re the only one grinning, because you know how Ruth’s mother will react. My daughter, she will say and smile.

“My daughter,” she says and smiles.

“My mom,” Ruth replies and smiles back and disappears into her magazine again as if her mother had left the room ages ago.

Schnappi strokes your head, you stretch and purr like you were Freddie. Nessi shifts her backside on the beanbag and says: This is going to be a delicious chili. You all snort with laughter, and when you’ve calmed down you notice that Ruth’s mother is still standing in the doorway.

“You’re such a bunch of bitches,” she says.

Stink doesn’t contradict her.

“We might be bitches,” she says, “but we’re sweet bitches.”

Schnappi raises her thumb, Ruth raises her thumb, and you raise your left leg. Nessi just shrugs and says, “When Stink’s right, she’s right.”

Ruth’s mother leans forward, her mouth moves, no words come out, but you’re used to reading her lips. Whether it’s Get out or Shut up. You know the nuances. You’re familiar with this one too. I hate you. It’s meant nicely. No one hates you, you are loved. The door closes, and at that very moment Parachutes comes to an end, the last song fades away, and you know what that means—there’ll be a little pause, followed by the song that Ruth found on the internet. A rarity that doesn’t appear on any Coldplay album. At any moment a guitar will come in and you’ll sing along the way you always do.

You taste the first lines in your mouth and realize why time has dragged you here—this song belongs to what has been, and it belongs to the Taja who will lie nine months later completely wasted on the sofa in her father’s living room and lose her connection with reality.

But your hair’s still long, your girlfriends are still with you, and you’re not yet the loneliest person in the world. The song brings everything together. You wait, the pause ends, the guitar sounds and you take a breath and Stink says, “Don’t imagine it’ll be as easy as that.”

You look at her with surprise. These are the wrong words. You’re singing now, it’s got to happen, but the music has fallen silent, no one’s singing.

Wrong, you think, that’s wrong.

“We’ll sing along later,” says Ruth and lowers the remote control.

“Did you really think you could avoid us?” Schnappi asks.

You sit up and slide away from her on your butt, a few nachos crumble under your hand, the girls look at you.

“We’re waiting,” says Stink.

“For … for what?”

You go quiet, you’re just bluffing, because you know very well what they’re waiting for. Nessi rummages in her jeans and throws you her phone.

“I’ve tried to contact you thirty-six times. Check, if you don’t believe me.”

“And I’ve tried just as many times,” says Schnappi.

“I hate your voicemail more than I hate the fucking Simpsons,” says Ruth.

Stink slips from the windowsill and crouches in front of you.

“Now will you tell us what’s up with you?”

You smell her breath. Cigarettes and lemon ice cream. Stink takes your hand in hers. And the way she’s looking at you, the way all your girls are looking at you, you tell them the truth.

“I’m not really here. I’m from the future.”

Ruth crouches down next to Stink.

“Christ, Taja, we know that already.”

“Do you think we haven’t known that?” Schnappi asks behind you.

“But that doesn’t explain anything,” says Nessi. “Or do you think it does?”

You know it doesn’t explain anything, you curse time and its little games and close your eyes tight as if you were in a dream, and when you open them again you’re lying alone on the sofa in your father’s living room and your mouth is dry as dust and your cheeks are wet with tears. Where are you all? you think longingly and grip the edge of the table and pull it across the carpet until it’s right in front of you. Your hand seeks, your hand finds. You press your phone tightly to your chest and breathe out with relief.

Now everything’s going to be fine.

You push your face back into the sofa cushion until you can’t breathe anymore and that’s a good way to vanish into merciful darkness.