by David Cohen
Where will it end? Does our government intend to – systematically, but so gradually they think no-one will notice – replace real bus stops with fakes, leaving unsuspecting commuters in every corner of the Federal Republic sitting waiting for buses that never arrive? No. We Germans – those of us still capable of remembering our own names – might be prepared to overlook a late bus, but we will always insist on, at the very least, a bus.
Any day now, in a moment of blinding clarity, the wanderers will see behind the Seniorenzentrum’s ruse. On that day, the powers that be will have no choice but to reassign me, and I will take my rightful place among the real stops, with actual buses, with genuine timetables, with authentic passengers travelling hither and yon. No longer an imposter; no longer an extra in the wanderers’ grainy memories.
But for now, come along, Gisela, take a seat. No need to fret – you’ll be home before you know it. Just in time, too: little Astrid will be wondering where on earth you’ve gotten to. Meanwhile, tell us all that story about how she corrected the teacher; it’s a real classic. Quickly now, before the bus comes.
COMMAND HOOKS
I’m taking Mum’s picture off the wall and thinking: I only stuck these hooks up here a couple of months ago – I didn’t think I’d have to move again so soon.
They’re handy things, though, these Command Hooks. Ray upstairs told me about them when he moved in. It’s funny, when I think about it, that Ray was the one who told me about Command Hooks – maybe not that funny, though. I was sitting just outside my front door, half watching while he and his wife were moving in to the flat upstairs. Ray stopped to chat with me but his wife kept going up and down the stairs, carrying things from a rented moving van up into the flat and then going back to get more things. She went up and down the stairs without looking at us much or saying much. Ray talked a lot and called me ‘bro’. His voice sounded metallic, like the drive-through speaker at the Hungry Jack’s down on Gympie Road.
I mentioned to Ray that I’d been wanting to hang something on my living-room wall. He said, ‘What thing?’ but I said the thing itself wasn’t important; it was just a thing. I didn’t tell him it was a picture of Mum. I wanted to hang the picture because it was the least I could do. I wouldn’t hang a picture of my father on the living-room wall or any other wall, but Mum was a different story; she always treated me well, even after I went away. But I didn’t want to lose my bond by screwing in a screw or nailing in a nail, because the agent’s very strict about doing that, or not doing that, and why take chances?
So Ray upstairs said, ‘Bro, if the agent’s going to be a dick about it, just use some Command Hooks.’ And he said that Command Hooks, unlike regular hooks, slide onto a plastic base you attach to the wall with an adhesive strip, so you don’t have to make a hole in the wall. And when you move out, you slide the hook off its base and peel the base off without damaging the paintwork.
‘Just like you were never there, eh, bro?’
Then Ray’s wife said, ‘Ray, could you come and give me a hand, please?’ Unlike Ray, who talked straight from the throat, she talked from the nose.
When Ray upstairs told me about Command Hooks, I thought: There’s a nice guy. I thought: He didn’t have to tell me about Command Hooks; he doesn’t know me from a bar of soap. Most people in the block hardly speak to me at all, and they know me from a bar of soap – more, at least, than Ray upstairs. They keep to themselves, inside their flats. When I see them around the place I smile and say hello, but they seem to shrink from me, as if they see into my head and know I’ve been away. Or maybe they’re just in the habit of shrinking from people. Either way, it doesn’t matter now; after tonight, I’ll be gone.
I’m removing other things I’ve hung on the wall, some additional pictures and things other than pictures, like my Broncos cap and my cork pinboard. I’m glad I haven’t got many things. Moving from place to place, you get rid of things as you go, sifting things, only keeping what’s important. I had a lot of things before I went away. Mum stored them for me in her house while I was gone, and even for a time after I came back, but then she had to go into a home. I kept them in a storage unit just off the M1 for a time, but I knew that I didn’t need all those things. Before I went away I thought they were important, but after I came back I could see they were just things. Now that I’m going to have to move again, I’m glad I got rid of them.
One of the things I’ve kept is a gun my father gave me ages ago, a Heckler & Koch. I didn’t really want it but I took it anyway, maybe because it was the only thing he’d ever given me that he thought was valuable. Maybe that’s why I haven’t gotten rid of it. It’s very black and feels good to hold if you close your eyes and pretend it isn’t a gun but just some nice smooth weight in your hand. I’ve kept it in a plastic bag, wrapped in a towel, with a little box of ammo in another plastic bag in another towel, under the sink, behind the laundry powder.
I used to think, One day I’ll have my own house, so I can bang or screw as many nails and screws into the wall as I want – walls full of nails and screws and holes if I want. I can hang things on them or, if I feel like it, not hang anything on them, leave them exposed. I’ll never have to remove them or plug up the holes. I’ll never have to worry about getting my bond back. I can stay there until the very end, pass away quietly, surrounded by walls of nails and screws and holes. But ever since I came back from being away, that wall dream has been fading. You need money to buy a house, and it’s not easy for someone like me to find a job, especially the sort of job that earns you house money. Now that I’m going to have to move again, the dream walls have even less chance of becoming actual walls.
Soon after Ray told me about Command Hooks, I’d gone to the hardware shop and bought a packet. I like having a mission: it gets me out but not for too long. It’s good to break up the routine, as long as I don’t break it up so much that it stops being a routine.
I followed the instructions on the packet carefully, removing the backing, sticking the adhesive base to the plaster wall, slipping the plastic hook over the base, hanging up Mum’s picture and the other hangable things.
Whenever I opened the door under the sink to get the laundry powder, I remembered that I still had the Heckler & Koch. Each time, I thought about taking it to a gun dealer. But I never did; I was always satisfied with just thinking about doing it, giving it some sort of shape as a project for the future. Now I half wish I’d done it rather than just thought about it.
One night, soon after Ray upstairs had told me about Command Hooks, I decided to go and knock on his door and say thanks, Ray, for the tip. But as I was about to knock on his door, I heard these noises coming from inside. I recognised Ray’s drive-through voice, but mainly I could hear Ray’s wife’s nasal voice. She was going on and on about something. I couldn’t make out much of what she was saying, but every now and then Ray would interrupt; while the volume of his wife’s voice remained more or less the same, his metallic throat voice kept getting louder, angrier. Then finally her voice got louder too, until they were both shouting. Then I heard the sound of something being broken or tipped over, and then what sounded like a sack of flour being thrown onto another sack of flour. I stood there a bit longer. Both voices had stopped now. A door inside the flat slammed, and then I heard the sound of weeping, or what sounded like weeping.
I went back to my flat, thinking: I’ll talk to Ray about the Command Hooks another time.
I’m taking my clothes and shoes out of the wardrobe and putting them in whatever carry bags I have. They don’t all fit so I’ll stuff the rest in bin liners. No matter how many things you throw out, there’s always more than you think when it comes time to pack up those things. I keep thinking, as I move about the flat, taking things out of cupboards and off shelves, that if I hadn’t gone away, I wouldn’t just have money to buy a house; I’d have work to keep me busy. Once upon a time I planned to study engineering – I wanted to get a job in aviation – but after I went away my life sort of
hit a wall, and all I could do, and all I can do, is sit in my flat, drive to the shop, go for a walk. I used to visit Mum but she’s no longer there to be visited, by me or anyone else. Now I have to break my routine again. At least I’m still alive; I suppose that’s something.
I’m leaving the Heckler & Koch under the sink until last. I wish my father had never given it to me. He was a collector, an enthusiast. When I was a kid, he’d take me hunting. Whenever I shot a rabbit or a duck, my father said, ‘Excellent work, Carl.’ I always felt bad about that duck or rabbit but I felt good about my father saying ‘Excellent work, Carl’. But I stopped going hunting; I was good at shooting things but my heart wasn’t in it. My father gave me the Heckler & Koch some years later for my birthday. I told him I didn’t like shooting things, even though I was good at it. ‘Take it out to the range, then,’ he said. ‘Do a bit of target practice.’ But what’s the point of target practice if you’re not eventually going to shoot something?
More years later, when I went away, my father didn’t visit me, not once. It was like he thought he might catch something off me, even though I wasn’t sick. Even after I returned, he continued to not visit me and he didn’t want me to visit him, and then he remarried and moved to New Zealand. Mum was the one who visited me and looked after me when I returned. I can look after myself now.
A few days after going up to Ray’s flat, I saw him down in the car park, at the bottom of our building. He was checking some equipment in the back of his HiLux, which had the name of some cleaning company written on the side. He looked up as I was walking past to empty some rubbish into the skip. My car was parked at the other end of the row. I didn’t use it much.
‘Hey, bro,’ he said.
I said, ‘Hello’. I was going to say ‘bro’ as well, but I didn’t.
I watched him doing whatever he was doing with his cleaning equipment. Ray wasn’t a big man; he reminded me of those cardboard tubes you get from the post office, postal tubes of varying sizes, all stuck together in the shape of a man. He wasn’t big, but his wife wasn’t that big either.
‘What’s new?’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ I said. Then I said, ‘I got the hooks.’
He said, ‘What hooks?’
I said. ‘The Command Hooks.’
Ray laughed and held up a thumb and said, ‘Nice one, bro.’
I didn’t thank him, even though I was pleased with the hooks. I put my rubbish in the skip and returned to my flat.
The next night I heard it again, except this time I didn’t have to go outside and stand at Ray’s front door. I could hear it through the ceiling – not as clearly, but I could hear it well enough. And then I started to notice I was hearing it once or twice a week. It seemed to happen in the same way every time: Ray’s wife talking nasally on and on, Ray saying something drive-through here and there, and then getting louder and more metallic, and then his wife finally getting louder, and then both of them yelling, and then, sometimes something breaking, sometimes not, but always the thudding flour-sack noise. Sometimes I heard the door slamming, sometimes not. And finally, the soft weeping, or whimpering, although this final sound was often so faint I sometimes wondered if I’d imagined it, if I’d invented it so that the flour-sack noise wasn’t the last sound I heard. Other times I knew I definitely wasn’t inventing it, and at those times I stuffed wads of toilet paper in my ears.
Mum used to say that nobody is wholly good or wholly evil, but there are plenty who let themselves be guided by the evil instinct. She told me that the good and evil instincts are continually at war with one another for the possession of the soul, and you must always be vigilant and do the right thing to prevent evil gaining the upper hand. I had not been vigilant before I went away, and that’s why I had to go away, but since going away I have done my utmost to keep the evil instinct at bay, by sticking to my routine, by keeping to myself, by not getting involved in things I shouldn’t get involved with. Still, I began to wish I wasn’t living downstairs from Ray upstairs.
I wrote a note and put it in an envelope. Then I went down to the car park. Ray spent a lot of time down there in the back of his HiLux, fixing his cleaning gear, cleaning his cleaning gear, generally doing things to make it better and more efficient gear. But he wasn’t around then because it was late at night. I tucked the envelope under Ray’s windscreen wiper. The note was anonymous but it said things about the noises coming from his flat, just so he knew those noises were being heard by at least one person. Maybe other people had heard them too; maybe other people had left windscreen notes on Ray’s HiLux. Or maybe someone had told the police, but I hadn’t seen any police, and I was there most of the time; I only went out to go to the supermarket or buy Command Hooks or … I was going to say visit Mum, but I can’t do that anymore. And the noises from Ray’s flat had not stopped. I didn’t want to call the police, because since I went away they were high on the list of people I wanted nothing to do with.
The next time I passed Ray in the car park he stopped working on his cleaning gear and watched me as I emptied my rubbish into the skip.
He said, ‘What’s new, bro?’
‘There’s nothing new,’ I said. I stared at the rubbish in the skip.
He said, ‘Nothing at all?’
I said, ‘Nothing at all, Ray.’
I started to make my way out of the car park. Ray said, ‘Jeez, you must lead an interesting life!’
I said, ‘I keep to myself, you know?’
Ray said, ‘Sweet as, bro. Best policy.’
I turned around and said, ‘I’m not your brother.’ I really wanted to get back up to my flat, to be inside my flat.
He looked at me and then laughed a bit and said, ‘You’re an odd one.’ As I was walking off, I heard him say, ‘Bro.’
I’ve emptied the bathroom, and now I’m emptying the kitchen drawers and cupboards. For some reason I have a lot of forks. How many forks does a man need when there’s nobody else to eat off those forks but him? I throw all but two of them in the bin and put those two survivors in a cardboard fruit box, along with the knives and spoons and glasses and tea towels. I have another box for food from the cupboard. The things in the fridge can stay here with the fridge, which belongs to the flat. So does most of the furniture: lumpy armchairs and a lumpy single bed; I swear I can still feel the body of the previous tenant, and probably the next tenant will feel mine.
I’d always thought that if I couldn’t have my own house, with nobody above me and nobody below and maybe nobody on either side, I could at least have my own furniture, but the only things I’ve ever bought are a swivel chair and a shelving unit. I won’t be able to fit them in my car so they can stay behind with the other furniture, and future tenants can sit on the chair and put things in the shelves. I’ve taken my TV and my lamp and my books.
I’ve got everything pretty much packed up, and now I’m going to carry it down to the car, stuff it all in quickly. Even though I’m moving out sooner than I ever intended, I’m thinking that I’ve had enough of living like this anyway – alone, even though there are people above me and below me and to either side, and we’re only separated by walls or floor or ceiling. I’m even thinking it would be better to go away again, go back to where I was. It was lonely there, but somehow not this lonely. And when you’re away, at least you can look forward to coming back.
One day I saw Ray’s wife through my screen door as she was coming up the stairs. I was surprised because I’d hardly seen her since the day they moved in. She was carrying shopping bags. Her nose was bandaged and she wore sunglasses, even though the sun had just gone down.
When she reached the landing I opened my door, poked my head out and said, ‘Can I give you a hand?’
Ray’s wife looked at me, and then she looked down over the stair railing. She kind of shrugged and shook her head, and started climbing the next flight of stairs.
It was a hot night so I stepped out onto the landing, where the air was moving a bit more than the air i
nside my flat. Ray came up the stairs a minute later, stopping when he saw me. We heard a door slam above. Ray looked up and said, ‘Had a bit of a car accident yesterday, didn’t she? Looks worse than it is, though, thank fuck. When the bandage comes off she’ll be good as new, bro.’
I said, ‘Which is your other car?’
Ray said, ‘Eh?’
I said, ‘I thought you only had the one car – the HiLux, I mean. I saw it down in the car park half an hour ago and it looked fine. She must have been driving your other car, yeah?’
Ray started drumming his finger and thumb on the metal stair railing, tapping out a tune only he could hear, looking at me the whole time. After a little while he took his drum hand from the railing and rested it on my shoulder. It made me think of my father; he used to do that sometimes – the hand-on-the-shoulder part. My father had a heavy hand and so did Ray.
Ray said, ‘Don’t be a smart-arse, bro. I like you, but don’t be a smart-arse.’ Then he reached into the pocket of his shorts, pulled out a scrunched-up piece of paper and handed it to me. It was my windscreen note. He patted my shoulder and said, ‘Sweet as,’ and walked up the stairs.
I went back inside and sat on my swivel chair and started swivelling left and right, left and right. I could feel the evil instinct getting the upper hand, but at the same time I wondered if it was actually the good instinct dressed up as the evil instinct, or was it the evil instinct dressed up as the good instinct? It was no longer so clear, not like the last time, before I went away. On that occasion, the evil instinct beat the shit out of the good instinct. This time around I didn’t know what was beating the shit out of what.
I got off my swivel chair and went over to the kitchen table, where I wrote another note: Ray, meet me down in the car park at 11 p.m. tonight. I have something very important to talk to you about. I put my name on it this time.
I’m taking a last look around, making sure I’ve removed everything, down to the Command Hooks, which I’ve just peeled off the walls and put in my backpack. Ray was right, they really work: the walls look just as hookless as they did before. And soon the whole flat will look like I was never there. One thing I learned when I was away was that nothing in this world, not even your own house, lasts forever. One day, unexpectedly, you might just have to up and leave, take everything off the walls, hooks and all, and move out in a hurry, leaving little or none of yourself.
