Lights Out in Wonderland

by DBC Pierre

  “Uh?” The brainatelle loads a ball. “Well, did he say what the plan was? If it’s about me it’d be fucking amazing to hear what it is before I go down for murder on Monday.”

  A chill soaks through me. “Smuts—I heard that everything was under control. They’re over here organizing the banquet.”

  “Well, I guess that’s something, at least he’s still hooked on our place. Thank fuck for that! Did he mention me in connection with the menu? The only good thing about here: I’ve had time to sketch up some seriously plush menus.”

  “Hm, well—he’s hardly going to discuss any of that with me.” An icy glimmer still spreads through me, the room even starts to pixilate—not from what I’ve heard, but for what I sense is to come. It’s a slow dawning on a cataclysmic scale. “All I’ve heard thus far is that they may possibly get their hands on a small tiger.”

  “Uh? Tiger? Bad move, that surprises me—cats are crap.”

  “I think he said they weren’t going too haute cuisine, they were looking more for symbols. Simple, full-flavored produce.”

  “Putain, if it’s a cat we might only be able to work with the tail. Unless it’s a cub, a milk-fed cub—is it a cub? If it’s a cub tell him to start milk-feeding right away, it’ll need eight to ten weeks at least, I reckon. The quicker I can get on to it, the better—tell him to hold back on the menu for now. What’s their proposed date?”

  “Hm—quite soon, I think.” I fall back, feeling sick inside.

  “Okay, listen, Putainel—if they’re that fired up about the venue, and already thinking ahead to the menu, then the trick now is to close the deal. Close it today if you can, it’s getting scary over here. But remember who you’re dealing with, play it cool. And whatever you do, for fuck’s sake don’t give them too much access to the place! Not until we see things start to happen over here! Uh? This is our only move left in the world, don’t blow it. The power rests with us—but only as long as we control the keys.”

  Whoosh. Thus in earnest, showing unarguable, even perfect reason, Smuts delivers what must be the end-play of them all—the finale in a tome of finales, the terminus of a sphinx and of all hapless enough to cross his ill-omened path—for I have given, as give all small persons who would woo the Master, the keys to salvation in return for a patch of sunlight on linen, a feather pillow, and my breakfast in bed.

  Only one message can come from it: go the way of all earth. Embrace the pale priest of the mute people, yield the ghost, find the Stygian shore, answer the final summons, pay the debt we must all pay, put out to sea—fuck off and die.

  The ensuing night sees me finish off all remaining substances, empty the minibar, and weep till my ducts stick shut. And come Wednesday, in the wake of this solitary binge, I step out to face the world a last time. A different world than before. Now it’s the Master’s world, trod by parasites, usurpers, and sundry germs.

  I step out feeling like the primary source of this infection.

  When I reach Tempelhof I find it swarming. Massive service doors sit open along its length while trucks with flashing lights beep urgently up and down, attended by pods of men on missions unknown. In the midst of it all the kitchen wagon sits pumping modern beats—and there at the counter stands a figure dressed in black.

  He wears his collar up like a film-noir spy, almost touching a rakishly dipped homburg, and rocks gently on his heels to the rhythm.

  Drawing level, from a distance, I see it’s Gottfried Pietsch.

  My physical state is equal to that of any person undergoing their last day of breath after a long illness; one leg has turned stiff and tries to drag, my arms have become stuck to my ribs at the elbows, and my hands curl inwards like claws. I try to pass the wagon without being seen, and feel I’ve succeeded until a voice behind me grunts: “Englander—if you’re looking for Specht, he’s not inside.” Gottfried hasn’t turned, but rather sniped me through the back of his head. I approach him at the wagon.

  After I’ve watched his beer glass tip to his lips, its elegant paper cravat spinning on the stem, then watched him land it back on the bar, he says, still without turning: “Would you know something about a film production happening here?”

  “Hm.” I cough. “Can’t say I would, no.”

  After a stony pause he swivels to stare into my face. I manage to withstand a moment or two of his ice-blue rays, which have the same effect as looking into the sun—then I squint, and drop my gaze. After another moment’s silence he makes a small ceremony of removing a fat cigar from his breast pocket and pointing with it up Columbiadamm, where two figures sit on the curb under a tree. One is Gerd, head in hands, with a phone to his ear. I thank Gottfried and wander up to find Anna sitting beside him, tracing spirals on the ground with a twig.

  “Bah! What?” Gerd’s voice quavers out as I draw near. “But they also killed the kiosk, and that’s not a matter of who has the most money, it’s a matter of fair practice in the territory of a small business. Eh? Well, I know it’s the airport’s business too, but you tell me if giving fair warning isn’t a part of their duty to tenants.”

  Anna rises, brushing off the bottom of her jeans: “What do you want?” she hisses. “This is a bad time, they’re trying to cancel Gerd’s farewell party.”

  “Oh, no, I’m sorry—who’s trying to cancel it? How can they?”

  “Some last-minute event hired the terminal. Gerd’s closing down the kiosk early. Things are bad enough today without you here prowling for cakes.”

  “But surely they can’t stop you from trading? I thought the terminal space could only be hired after hours, for special events.”

  She narrows her gaze. “That’s true—but whether we open or not, the van over there is giving food away, so what’s the point? And how do you know about terminal policy?”

  I stand quietly swaying, finally stepping up to the nearest tree, where I prop myself like a tripod. “Hm, well—I must’ve heard it around the place.”

  “And,” she goes on, “because of the events we’re not even allowed into the building on Friday night. Gerd’s talking to a lawyer, it’s just not right.”

  I nod and look away, trying to fight this welling pain. Here’s the Master Limbo of capitalism, a firestorm, not only consuming all in its path but sucking oxygen from the world around to feed its ravening vacuum, even draining lungs far and wide of its estates. A van reverses nearby, beeping insistently, and in its beep I hear the voice of that limbo crowing: “I win, you lose.”

  “Ach, Frederick”—Gerd looks over—“did Anna tell you? They’re trying to stop the party, but I haven’t finished fighting yet. No, sir. Not as long as there’s air in my lungs.” He nods to himself for a moment before looking at the wagon. “Did you see Gottfried? Someone told him they’re making a film—haa.”

  After this spike of levity his face falls into a state of determined mourning, and he fixes a stare across the avenue. Anna checks her watch and turns to him:

  “I’ll go now,” she says. “Shall I get the same as before?”

  “Ja, the cheapest.” Gerd nods. “Maybe the poet can help you carry them.”

  “Pff.” Anna looks me up and down. “Poet? That explains something. Though maybe I end up having to carry him.” She turns to me: “Are you fit for a walk?”

  “Yes,” I say, “if I can be helpful.” And frankly I’m glad to get away, with everything around here beeping and buzzing like predators swarming in for a kill.

  Anna’s éclair-sized bag hangs from her shoulder, and I find myself wishing it contained the éclair it was designed for. Instead she pulls out a tissue and hands it to me. Blood starts to poke from one of my nostrils; I dab it.

  “And where should I leave them?” she asks Gerd.

  “Put them down in the store—here, take the keys.”

  We set off on this mission for Gerd, who knows where
to or for what, but it’s the least I can do for him, and anyway it can only be to a less taunting place than here. A walk might even stabilize my condition enough to summon wisdom, because traipsing behind Anna, watching her buttocks locomote in denim, I’m reminded that life is behind me. Only death stands ahead, where nothing locomotes. I scrape along as a wraith, and as the airport’s clamor fades behind us I know I must use the calm of these hours, use the space of Berlin’s broad, pragmatic streets, the lack of intrusion by profiteering limbos, to plot a swift death—one without a banquet.

  Anna is quiet until the traffic lights on Schönberger Strasse.

  “Were you always this way?” she asks. “Or did Gerd’s ‘special party’ ruin you?”

  “We missed you at the ‘special party,’ ” I say.

  “Pff—I cried my eyes out not to be there.”

  “Hm. I felt that way about my family’s parties.”

  “I don’t have a problem with them.” She scowls. “Except they’re in Dresden.”

  “Ah, sorry. I assumed Gerd was—”

  “I’m a distant cousin of Gisela’s. Incredibly distant.”

  Crossing the road, she takes pains to keep a space between us. Only when a massive building looms ahead do I think to ask about our mission.

  “Storage trunks,” she says. “To pack away the kiosk.”

  My gut heaves.

  What looms up ahead is IKEA.

  The place is monstrous, it’s a Flughafen of commerce. The parking lot alone seems to take us hours to cross. My heart beats thinly as the building’s shadow falls over us, and dialogue fizzles out as I search for exits and places to run. Left of the entrance a bank of checkout tills stretches to infinity like an international border, where hordes of antlike shoppers bob with their goods. Traffic only passes out. Doors to the right give onto a lobby with an elevator going up one short level. Anna takes me to the elevator, and upstairs we pass into a marked channel that twists into the distance through waves of furniture and chattels. A cold sweat breaks over me. The path cuts through shallows, tides, and drifts of basic furnishings, past ladles and shelves, pots, cushions, sofas, and tables.

  There’s only one direction of travel. I come to feel unwell.

  “I might just duck out for a cigarette.” I stop in a cluster of bathroom solutions, a sort of backwater out of the tidal flow. A couple of other shoppers eddy here briefly, but are soon swept out into deeper furniture. I watch them whisked away on a flotsam of cup holders, soap dishes, and waste bins.

  “What’s wrong with you?” tuts Anna.

  “We seem to have walked miles.”

  “Pff—we’re not even halfway.”

  My persona faints dead inside me.

  Prongs of icy panic set the scene spinning until finally I turn and flee, back past ladles, past bookshelves and sofas, arms flailing in a headlong fall toward the elevator.

  But its doors are shut.

  There’s no button down.

  Over the railing I can see the world through the window, see people wandering in freedom, chattering, smoking.

  But there’s no escape for me.

  The store has been made escape-proof.

  I catch my breath. A Swede has trapped me in a store. With a hangover. Somewhere at a distance a vicious, cashmere-clad agent of the Master Limbo has perfected a trap for humans. We’re rats to him, mere units of profit, of such low intrinsic worth as to need a one-way elevator in case better judgment stops our passage through a maze to his tills.

  It’s a laboratory of shopping. A vivarium of human weakness.

  The work of forces who’ll stop at nothing in their lust for gain.

  And in Berlin! Town of the People! The pain is too much. If it has reached here, this infection—it must have reached everywhere.

  I glance around for bodies. Surely not every rat had the fiber to get through. Then I bolt back through the store, flash past mile after mile of Nordic pine, slowly mastering corners until the ground floor opens out before me like a harbor mouth. Ahead on the shore goods trolleys roam a chaotic dock, and I aim for a bank of tills behind them. The power of miracles propels me there, strides lengthening, arms thrusting like pistons, gaze darting across queues to judge the shortest one.

  But there is no shortest one.

  The tills are jammed with walking wounded.

  I flit this way and that, but my hands are empty, consumers can’t understand my lack of products, it’s a club for those who have them, they’re bonded by them, I’m a heretic, a rogue cell, and in that way of organisms meeting deviants they mass together to obstruct and repel me. My abduction is complete, it’s a scene from Orwell’s worst nightmare, of rats stupefied and milling with goods that aren’t even fucking built.

  The Swede has even calculated the immune system effect of crowds!

  In terror for my life, through a flak of exclamations and jostling, I finally burst through a loosely packed queue and vault an old lady’s trolley to freedom.

  Sometime later Anna finds me twitching beside a hot-dog van in the parking lot. “Don’t tell me.” She sets down her boxes. “A man who doesn’t like shopping.”

  “It’s unlawful detention, remote-control sodomy.”

  “Pff.” She tosses a gaze to the sky. “Without IKEA Berlin would be sleeping on the floor. It’s perfect for here—simple, inexpensive, and cool. It’s the people’s store.”

  “They must’ve gotten a taste for mass rape.”

  “What are you saying? Did they point a gun at you? It’s just a shop! You get your things and come out! If you don’t want to come, then don’t come!” She chases her words with a stare, then looks halfheartedly around, as if someone else might walk her home.

  “You don’t like me, do you?” I light a cigarette.

  “Do you have any likable qualities?”

  “I think so.”

  “What are they?”

  “Well.” I take a long drag, blow a trumpet of smoke.

  She waits till my silence becomes an answer. I look up and see her small, sharp teeth smiling down, her hair hung over her forehead in strands.

  “Hm,” I say, “then I suppose we agree on something.”

  “Ha ha, yes. You’re dreadful, and completely self-indulgent.”

  I have to laugh at such breathtaking effrontery. “Ha ha, well,” I say, “you’re judgmental and rude. Miserable German girl.”

  “Dankeschön.” She gives a scornful curtsy.

  We can’t help but laugh again, a laugh ringing with the relief that comes after truth, and I muse how little truth has graced my life, also wondering what gives her the front to grace it now. Maybe she’s the opening act of my life flashing before my eyes, a precursor to admitting my sins, to meeting my Maker. It would be consistent with the Enthusiasms to send someone like this and, come to think of it, to send me on this Ghost of Christmas Future shopping tour, to witness the vibrant human world reduced to a maze of milling rats. Death is surely near, then, and when I look up at the girl I find her watching me, as if making sure that her truths have hit home. I can’t recall ever having such a frank exchange with a stranger, and feel it as a slap.

  “You’re a mess,” she finally says. “Do you need some pommes with mayonnaise?”

  “Thank you, if it won’t harm your opinion any further.”

  “Ha ha.” She makes for the van. “Nothing could do that.”

  One euro buys a little tray of fries, which confirms to me that the van must be sent by a charity to this place where it knows innocent victims will gather. A cloud rises off the fries into my face, and the tubes and nozzles of my body sweetly ache as they slide down. I eat watching a stream of hostages gurgle out of the store with their loads while birds loiter nearby, threatening our food. It truly seems that between nature, the Nordic date-r
apist, and the despicable sphinx, all modern life is here in its horror.

  “I don’t think Gisela’s very fond of me either,” I muse.

  “Fond of you? Gisela really hates you. Loathes you.”

  “Oh? Hm.”

  “You haven’t worked that out? That’s why she went away! Huge fight between her and Gerd. After you came to the party they started fighting, she didn’t think they should pay to feed you. All Gerd could say was, ‘He brought the best wine—Gabriel brought the best wine,’ but the fight never stopped, it went all the way back to his club-owning days in Prenzlauer Berg. Did your father once steal from him?”

  “Well—according to Gerd, at least. I was only a child.”

  “Ah, then that’s why.” She pauses for a moment, staring. “So your father steals from honest men, and you turn out quite awful and self-indulgent.”

  “Don’t you ever lie even just slightly, out of politeness?”

  “What, you mean like this: maybe there’s hope for you.”

  “Ha ha ha.” My head tumbles into my lap.

  She bursts out laughing as well, watching it all hit home.

  “Ha ha ha.” I stumble to a trash can, lift its lid, and hose it with a froth of fries.

  Anna turns away, nodding confirmation to herself. When I’ve finally composed myself, I lug her boxes back up to the airport, my day unraveled, my body ruined, my character reduced to what it is, i.e., apparently nothing.

  “That was fun, then,” I puff as the airport appears.

  “For you maybe. You seem to have time to wander around bleeding and breaking up marriages. Why are you really here?”

  “I could ask the same of you. You’re not an obvious choice to staff a kiosk. Are you a sort of truth patrol? A free-range blunt instrument?”

  “Pff, I do what I can. I’m saving up for a vacation.”

  “In the next millennium, then, if the kiosk’s paying.”

  “I’m just helping Gerd before I go. I’ve been working at Potsdamer Platz for the last year. When the airport’s closure was finally announced, Gerd was sure these last weeks would bring a boom. He bought a mountain of stock.”