Lights Out in Wonderland

by DBC Pierre

  Righteous plans seem to summon the energies needed to carry them out. In this case I sweep up the stairs and onto the street, taking care not to be seen by Anna. Dialing Thomas from a phone booth, I ask for assistance in a low, secretive voice, without explaining why or for what. He responds well to this, and in the burning of a cigarette his Mercedes appears flashing through the traffic.

  Only Bettina is inside, hair drawn up inside a chauffeur’s cap, a vision so ravishing, so bold and modern, that I must pause at the door, my friend, and call you in close: step up with me, hear the throaty hiss of a perfect turbine, smell leather mix with musk, see this spotless maiden masquerade as a man, as a servant, toying with it, with us, flashing dimples and teeth and clear eyes, and admit with me:

  The Master Limbo gets some things rather right.

  I sink back into the seat as Berlin speeds past the window, as silent as a film, descending night painted purple and orange on coated glass. The car’s acceleration describes things to come. The beginnings of a whoosh. A final, decisive whoosh, because little is more proven than that the Master Limbo of modern capitalism makes things happen—and makes them happen yesterday.

  After three calls Bettina finds a locksmith prepared to open his shop. We race to an address and I climb out with the keys.

  “Hmm.” The locksmith scratches his whiskers when he sees them. “This red one we can’t do. You see? Nor this one, nor this one. Because they’re high-security keys.”

  Through the window I see Bettina leave the car.

  “But you see this one? With the sort of hollow leading edge? A different matter. We certainly can’t do it. You have to take it to the company that made it.”

  “I just need the green and the yellow, and this brass one here.”

  The man nods doubtfully. “They look like institutional keys. Some are very old, look at this one. And I mean, look at this here, see? Where are they from?”

  “Uh—my institute.”

  “Ah—the one up here, what’s it called?”

  “No—the other one.”

  His eyebrows poise for an answer, and I smile, blinking as if the German will be a problem to speak. But he waits. His fingers close around the keys.

  “Das Institut,” I finally say, looking up to jog my memory: “Das Institut zur Optimierung menschlicher Angelegenheiten.” I think I’ve just named the Institute for the Optimization of Human Angelhood. His brow hovers up, he stares at me.

  A bell tinkles as Bettina steps in.

  The locksmith shrugs. “And this other one here, well—I doubt anyone could do it.”

  “I only need the yellow, the green, and the brass ones.”

  “Hmm.” He strokes his chin again. “You need it for Tuesday—or can it be later?”

  Bettina barges up: “Why are you wasting our time? Cut the keys, we’re in a hurry!”

  “I beg your pardon? I’m only doing my job!”

  “Are you totally stupid?” She jabs her head: “Do you think we’d come onto the street on a Saturday night to leave a job for Tuesday?”

  The man recoils. “What? How can you speak to me like that? I’m doing you a favor even looking at the job! We do good work here, of course I have to examine the keys! As it is I’m inclined just to shut the door on you!”

  “I’m sure you’d love to shut the door!” She moves into his face: “You’re here taking jobs for Tuesday and certainly still meaning to charge the out-of-hours rate. Isn’t that right? Standing here pushing up the price by making it all look so difficult. Show me your trading license! Show me your license and tax documents while I call the police! Is there a family upstairs? In a trading premises? Get them down!”

  “Madam, it’s outrageous! Unbelievable, now! I’m doing my job correctly and you insult me in such a way? I should call the police on you! On you I should call them!” The man slinks away into a back room, muttering oaths.

  After a moment we hear the whirr of a grinder.

  “My guardian Berliner.” I give a smile of relief.

  “I’m from Hamburg. And he’s a Turk, he just fell into the rhythm. They must drive you insane. You’re so lucky in London, the shops here are barely starting to open on Saturday afternoons, never mind Sundays. Try finding a supermarket tonight in Berlin.”

  “Hm. There’s certainly a mellower pace of life.”

  “Fine pace for him,” she tuts. “Times like these you need things to happen. And the lives of people like us are made of times like these.”

  Within twenty minutes of this poignant truth we purr back into the airport, where one lonely figure stands outlined at the main doors. I see that it’s Anna, checking her watch. As we approach, another, much larger shape emerges—Gottfried. It’s too late to halt the car. We coast up to the steps, where Bettina jumps out to open my door, pausing to salute me with a cheeky laugh, the peak of her cap flashing under lamplight. Only now does Anna recognize me. I see her face harden, though she says nothing, turning instead to bid Gottfried good night as he trudges off.

  “I’ll collect you tomorrow for brunch,” chirps Bettina. “Here or the hotel?”

  “Hotel’s fine,” I quietly say. “I’ll leave you this bottle to give to Thomas.”

  The car roars off and I turn to Anna and Gottfried, fumbling out the keys. Gottfried nods without a word and steps away into the night. Anna stays watching me on the step below her. “Pff, well, well,” she says after a withering pause.

  “Sorry—bumped into an old friend on the way back up.”

  “You certainly did, so I see.”

  “It’s not like that.” I hand her Gerd’s keys.

  “But it’s like something. You must at least be a spy. Gabriel Bond, and they sent your orders. To vomit on the airport. To bleed on Iran.”

  I look at her, catch her eyes briefly sparkling. We stand for a moment in silence.

  Then: “Pff—bye-bye,” and she walks away.

  I take the train back to Kastanienallee, lolling in a trance as girders and lights flash by. As I turn over the day’s equations, it occurs to me that I’m not as happy as I ought to be. A bottle of Symposium and ten cigarettes in bed help me sift through the facts: I have keys to Wonderland, the Basque and Smuts are conspiring his release from prison, the banquet of my death is set to take place within a week. My new ally of capitalism does nothing but throw solutions and comforts my way. Like Smuts I feel that life proceeds in dog years, I feel nailed to the wheel of Fortune.

  And maybe it does have the clacker thing.

  But still there’s discomfort deep inside, and as the last tram whines past the window I wonder if it’s this: I’ve stepped between worlds all week, comfortable in each, with friends in both, but the scene on the steps this evening felt like a door slamming shut on one of them. Though I know little about Anna or Gottfried, a part of me identifies with them, and felt the knowing in their looks as a goodbye. Particularly Anna, who strangely, even disturbingly, seems prettier every time I see her, and extracts more respect with her cool, sphinxlike stance. My arrival in a limousine might’ve unlocked the heart, or at least the legs, of many a girl back home—but with Anna it felt like a betrayal, not only of her but of myself. Has so much nuance passed between us that she can now deliver such truths without a word? And if so, what other intricacies might be passing through her gaze? Do I also detect a new coquet, a twinkle as these discomforts find me out? Has she found my measure, across so brief a time? Why would she want my measure at all, and what judgments had she made that I can now even betray?

  Pff, who knows what? For now I put it down to fatigue and the imaginings of a guilty mind. Perhaps also a realization that she’s someone who in my previous life might have excited my interest. Another irony from a limbo.

  However it is, by early morning I feel the affair as another disconnection, a kind of iPod in each
ear, and I fall asleep long after the dawn, waking again with just enough time to throw on my clothes and meet the car outside. Only one synapse is active: the one that tells me I’m today joining capitalism’s world.

  Reaching the city center, I find that world waiting like a bride, with a welcome buffet that explodes through a corner of the Adlon Kempinski toward the Brandenburg Gate. Iranian Imperial caviar glisters between oysters, sweetwater crayfish, buckwheat blinis, Maine lobsters, king prawns, chanterelles, duck livers, truffles, stingray wings, pigeons, artichokes, frogs’ legs, muscat grapes, fig mustard, passionfruits, and rabbits, while thickets of tarts, puddings, petits fours, pastries, and cakes gesticulate using the same shameless devices as rare birds peddling sex in the wild.

  “Do you have peanuts?” Thomas asks the waiter. “Unless”—he turns to me—“you’d prefer to join me in some champagne and strawberries?”

  “Beer’s fine.” I rub my face. “If not just some sleep.”

  The aristocrat settles back, smiling across the table. After a minute he reaches out to make space on the linen for drinks, strawberries, and mixed nuts. We toast, and he bites the tip off a plump strawberry. “Thanks for the wine, I’ll send it to the Basque’s room. He arrives tomorrow, so be prepared for things to pick up speed after that. And here’s a proposal: I trade you the key to a junior suite upstairs for your keys to the complex. We need to get the ball rolling, time’s incredibly tight.”

  “Sounds a bad deal.” I swig beer. “History’s largest wine cellar in return for a cupboard here. Where will I land my plane?”

  Thomas laughs and reaches into his pocket. “As you put it like that—” He motions me to open my hand under the table, and drops something into my palm. I peer under the tablecloth and see that it’s a brilliant yellow diamond.

  “A small thank-you.” He leans close: “You’ll know that no cash, plastic, or electronic instruments can pass between any of us from now on. The hotel tab is safe, but only use your Christian name, don’t put your usual signature, and stick to room service.” His gaze flicks around before he adds: “At the corner of Kreuzbergstrasse and Mehringdamm is an exchange if you need to cash the stone.”

  “Second time in a day I’ve felt like James Bond.”

  “I know it’s theatrical, but think about it, it’s perfect currency. Travels easily, trades well across the world, has a single exchange rate. Bewitches everyone who sees it, bails you out of situations on the street. Hides in your mouth or up your ass. A fraction of the weight of gold. A cigar tube holds a fresh start in life.”

  “Do you think they could fetch one of those cake stands to the table?” I nod at the tumbling mass of tarts, flans, and pastries.

  “I’ll have it sent to your room—I can see I’m losing you. Get some sleep, it’s all in good hands. We’ll start creating a presence at the venue.”

  “Hm—a presence?”

  “Legitimate covers around the building. Too much suspicious activity goes into setting up, we need locals to get used to us gradually. By the night of the event we shouldn’t raise an eyebrow. You didn’t think we’d just turn up and throw a party?” Thomas stays looking at me, and a smile grows on his face: “Sometimes I think you don’t grasp the scale of this.” He presses a key into my hand: “Other times I think you’re cool as ice. Though you can drop the disguise now.”

  I look down at my matted fur. “What disguise?”

  “Don’t crack me up. Get to bed.”

  I sketch a map to the bunkers and hand over only the green and brass keys, as the yellow is for the kiosk store with my last hoard of Marius in it. After agreeing to meet tomorrow evening to collect the Basque, I cross the hotel lobby in a heavenly light, one that gives the glow of childhood back to the skin, turns eyeballs to ivory, lights collars the white of fresh snow. Thence to my suite to collapse.

  The sight of pillows makes me quake with fatigue. As a cake stand arrives with champagne I survey the room’s woods, its chaise longue, its desk, sofa, minibar, and king-sized bed. I take off my clothes and lay my tubular white body down. It’s pearly under the light, translucent to a short depth, sort of marbled. Here it is already cadaverous, this body, ravaged by ill-advised life. A reticulated maggot lolls halfway down in a shrub of coppery hair.

  A last glum witness, wondering why.

  Sunlight is gray and cold through the window when I stir on Monday. The sky doesn’t swirl or flow, it just hangs. The morning brings starkness. The frameworks and casings of my body have come untethered from my skin in the night. Now I scrape and rattle, and my heart wobbles as if suspended in a sac of fluid. Just look at nature. The device she assigned to deal with a simple drive to the airport is the fight-or-flight mechanism, a one-size-fits-all panic button assigned to deal with everything from shopping to imminent death. I’m crushed by our rudimentariness. No amount of intellect, no cut of clothes can disguise how ill-conceived we really are.

  Seeing the flacon of Jicky poking from a coat pocket, I snatch it up and take a swig. Whoosh: it defibrillates me, leaves me gasping, and, curiously, after a moment I even find it quite palatable. I splash some over myself, just as a commando will fry and eat the tail of the scorpion that stung him—then take another sip. The effect is even more harmonious, shocking my senses with fragrance. After this, a few cigarettes and some German television; and finally I’m ready for the day.

  My first task is to call the lawyer Satou and have him give Smuts my new number. With some excitement I wonder if I might see him again. The thought propels me under the shower and, after making a note to collect my things from the Kastanienhof, sets me off to find Gerd, another friend, I suppose, which is important in a person’s last days. Yes, another friend, because I look forward to seeing him, am glad to go to the kiosk, and only wish I could share these crazy times with him, tell tales from a limbo like a pal just back from vacation.

  I find Gerd alone in the kiosk when I arrive. Although the terminal mills with passengers and staff, the kiosk backwater is deserted. Sadness comes with seeing Gerd. He’s a man whose ambitions come at no cost to anyone. How perfect if the banquet left him a gift. It seems set to go ahead, this event, so all that’s needed is a redistribution of wealth that doesn’t foul his pride. I watch him before he sees me. He moves things under the counter, seals lids, shuts boxes, as if preparing to close.

  “Frederick!” He brightens.

  “Are you closing already?”

  “Ach, nobody came all day. I don’t know what it is, not even our usual taxi drivers came by.” He spins away to fuss with something at the back. “And Gisela went to her sister in Stuttgart. She really needed that, it’s great. Trading new recipes with her sister. Gisela’s a great cook, did you ever try Berliner Kartoffelsalat?”

  I’m too taken with watching to answer. After a moment he shows his head at the window: “On Friday is our farewell party, eh? Then you’ll try it.”

  “On Friday? This Friday, the twenty-fourth?”

  “Ja, of course—it’s the last weekend of the airport. Serious food and drinks, and also fireworks. You’d better start training—haa.”

  Now comes the inner plummeting so central to a limbo. Ah, this workload. All I can think to reply is: “And where’s Anna today?”

  “Anna? Getting vaccinated for South America. She’s so excited to see the giant turtles. I guess they’re really something—the famous one, Lonely George, is supposed to be nearly a hundred, and bigger than a desk.”

  “Bigger than a desk? Gosh.” After helping Gerd lower the kiosk shutter, I walk outside with him, scanning for a taxi.

  “Which way are you going?” he asks. “Maybe we’ve time for a beer at Piratenburg?”

  “Thanks, I’m moving my room. I’ll take a cab from here.”

  “Bah, rich man,” he says, squinting across the parking lot. I follow his gaze and spy a familiar shape at the other
end, beside Columbiadamm. Gerd ambles a few steps up the pavement, craning to see. Then he stops, looks at me, and we squint ahead together.

  Gottfried’s lumpen form slides into view.

  He sits perched with some other men at the bar of an impressive catering trailer, all white Duco and gleaming steel. It has music and bistro lighting, and is watched over by stylish young attendants who chatter and giggle with patrons. Aromas of grilling meat and fresh-ground coffee sweeten our approach.

  “Gottfried?” Gerd steps through a portal of palms at the curb.

  “Ahh.” Gottfried turns stiffly. “I was now coming to see you.”

  “Coming to see me when?” Gerd’s face falls. “What’s all this?”

  “Oh, Gott,” says a policeman. “Four beers ago he was coming.”

  “Gunnar? I saved you a wurst all day! What’s going on here?”

  “Well, I didn’t want to bother you. Anyway, here has schnitzel.”

  “Eh? What?” Gerd takes in the scene like a man arriving home to a burglary. “Schnitzel will cost you. We’ll always heat you a nice wiener, you know we will, compliments of the house. Or even a nice bockwurst, if you prefer.”

  “Actually, here is free.” Gunnar sips froth off a stiff cappuccino.

  One of the attendants, a pretty girl in a powder-blue uniform, leans over the dazzling counter to beam at Gerd: “Everything’s free today for friends of the airport. What can I get you? The special is Wiener schnitzel with warm erdapfelsalat and lemon-thyme salsa, and the soup is a seafood bisque with baby dumplings and dill.”

  “This is Laura.” Gottfried points with his beer. “From Leipzig.”

  Gerd stands looking around, fingers twitching beside him.

  “Lovely Laura from Leipzig.” Gottfried chuckles.

  “So sweet!” the girl pinches an imaginary cheek.

  “Don’t forget intelligent. Sweet and intelligent.”

  “I want to take him home!” squeaks the girl.

  “It can be arranged.”