The Center of the World

by Andreas Steinhöfel

  “There’s nothing I want from Kat.’’ I take another step toward Thomas. “Or any woman.”

  I place my hands on his shoulders and sense pounding, trembling heat. We’re practically the same height; I only need to raise my head very slightly. Thomas doesn’t resist. His lips are firm and warm. I can hear how unevenly time races, it has taken on the drumming pace of my heartbeat. Thomas doesn’t move. I persist, push myself closer against him, open his lips with my tongue, thrust against his teeth, and taste them. Hunger shoots through my body like a torrent. I could drown in Thomas, I could wound him. For the Hash of a second he thrusts his lower body toward me; maybe it’s just an instinctive movement, although I can feel …

  Then the moment passes.

  “D’you understand?” I whisper.

  Thomas pushes me away violently. I fall backward and bang my left hip against the teachers desk. Pain flashes through me.

  “You’ll pay for this, you filthy swine!”

  He stomps off furiously, knocking his shoulder against the door frame as he leaves the room. It’s as if all the colors from the pictures and posters hanging on the walls would drain away, flow together in pursuit of him. All that remains is black and white. Pain from my left hip travels in all directions in breaking waves. I wipe the back of my hand across my mouth and close my eyes. It should have been an end, but it feels like a beginning.

  As I open my eyes Wolf is standing in front of me. My heart takes a painful leap. It feels as if it’s beating backward, just this once. Just to remind me how vulnerable I am, that it can beat differently, that it can stop beating if it decides to do so. I can handle Thomas. But I’m afraid of Wolf.

  His face has become more striking in the passing years, the mouth more defined and the lips fuller than I remember. But otherwise nothing has changed. The wild straw-blond hair that I would so like to have stroked back then still doesn’t seem to be familiar with a brush to tame its beauty. The gray-blue eyes still lack any life or expression—they gleam neither cold nor warm, they hide everything yet don’t hold anything back. Those eyes that I saw weeping only once are nothing more than a combination of eyeball and pupil, iris and retina. That’s what makes them so sinister. Wolf has seen everything with these eyes.

  “I saw it all.”

  Oh, yes, that he did. He saw everything, everything. The sentence echoes in my ears. Wolf uttered it as a child would, uncertain, defiant, threateningly. Any minute now he’ll add, And I’m going to tell everything. And suddenly I feel laughter surging up inside, because I’m suddenly struck by the thought that I’m later going to have to repeat this performance over and over again. That all the boys in the school will line up in front of me to be kissed and be convinced, that the worst imaginable horror is no fantasy, no illusion, wafting up before them during wakeful overheated sorrowful nights, that they’ll use me as litmus paper in order to establish which Way they’re inclined when their saliva has mingled with mine and discover whether they too are misfits.

  “Did he hurt you, Phil?”

  “Yes.”

  Wolf raises one hand and strokes my chin. His breath smells of peppermint. There’s nothing to release me from his vacant gaze. No amount of violence from Thomas could have been worse than this cool, gentle touch.

  “Good,” says Wolf, smiling. “That’s good.”

  Kat has always been an enthusiastic advocate of the view that you don’t need any excuse for a celebration. Saturday evening finds her and Nicholas standing arm in arm on the doorstep of Visible. Kat has allowed three bulbous bottles of champagne to accompany her from her parents’ well-appointed cellar, one for each of us.

  “Cold in here,” Nicholas remarks in the entrance hall. His fingers slice through the small cloud of condensation his breath has left behind.

  “I know. You’d have to cut down half the forest to heat this place properly.”

  We’ve got Visible to ourselves. Glass has permitted Michael to talk her into spending the whole weekend at his place. For her, who’s never been away from Visible longer than one night at a time, preferring to have her men come to her, this is very much a first. For Michael, I can only hope that he knows what he’s let himself in for. Dianne bade me a very friendly goodbye before going off to spend the night with Kora. She was in such a good mood and so relaxed when she went that I toyed with the idea of calling out after her that it had turned too cold to swim in the river.

  Nicholas hands me a plastic bag. “Here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tea lights.” He laughs, brushing the hair back from his forehead with one hand. “A hundred.”

  “Wow!”

  “Where are the champagne flutes?” asks Kat.

  “Very funny.”

  We take former mustard jars from the kitchen and bring them upstairs to my room. There we put the tea lights inside them and place them along the window ledges, distribute them along the walls, and group them in small islands on the parquet floor. They have the pleasant bonus effect of heating the room and so relieving me of the task of having to bother with the erratic old-fashioned tiled stove. November is hurrying toward its melancholy misty end; at night the temperature drops to below freezing. In the morning my first glance on waking is directed to the ice flowers blooming on the inside of my windows.

  In the news an early freezing winter is predicted.

  Kat claps her hands in delight like a little child once all the tea lights are lit. The flickering of the candles is reflected in the windows, and the room resembles a shimmering, waving sea of light. Nicholas looks about him inquiringly.

  “Don’t you ever listen to music here?”

  “Only the radio, in the kitchen during breakfast.”

  “I could have brought my violin,” Kat giggles.

  “You play the violin?” asks Nicholas respectfully. “I’m impressed. You must know the Brahms second violin concerto. It’s …”

  I run downstairs to the kitchen and fetch the radio—cassette recorder. I don’t waste time switching on the stair light; on the way back I simply follow the sound of Kat’s laughter. So I only just miss tripping on the stairs. If I stopped for a moment, I’d probably start to think why I’m rushing. And needlessly rushing at that, because my thoughts catch up with me.

  I’m jealous of Kat.

  There’s no point in denying it. I don’t like the intimacy that’s grown up between her and Nicholas, plainly evident in the way the two of them were standing arm in arm in front of the door. I don’t like the way Kat’s laughing either, for the simple reason that Nicholas responds so uninhibitedly. It crosses my mind how often she’s been laughing recently when the three of us have been together. I dismiss the thought as stupid, only to have it wash over me even more strongly as I enter my room and see the two of them sitting side by side on the mattress. Kat is saying something about one of our classmates—no doubt she’s been prying again in her father’s confidential files—and Nicholas is listening. Not just listening, but watching her with this fine, barely perceptible mixture of reserve, amusement, and the tiniest element of arrogance. I ask myself whether Kat has also told him about his own file.

  “The radio,’’ I say feebly. “D’you want me to find a classical station or maybe—”

  “Plug it in and turn it on!’’ commands Kat, and I can’t for the life of me see what’s so funny, making them roll over the mattress with laughter.

  Then the first cork pops and thunders against the ceiling, foam and bubbles rush out of the bottle, our glasses clink. All my suspicions vanish under the influence of the champagne. We empty the first bottle in praise of Kat’s father, the noble unwitting donor, the second in praise of us all, life, and the inventor of the minute tingling bubbles in the champagne. With the third bottle I’m filled with happiness, and a strange numb feeling sinks into my lips and gradually spreads over the whole of my face, then travels downward from my neck, spreading through my arms into my hands, which suddenly don’t know what they’re doing anymore.<
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  “Winter holidays,” says Kat at one point. “This time you’ll never guess—the shitty old Aps!”

  “The Alps!”

  The radio plays, we sing along at the top of our voices with the latest summer hits, and sadly with the ones each us has known forever and ever without knowing where or when we first heard them. At some point it switches over to commercials.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking,” murmurs Kat, clutching the last champagne bottle, long since emptied, in her hand. “Anyway, I’m going to dye my hair. I’m fed up with being blond!”

  She grins. Her mouth seems bigger than usual, but maybe I’m mistaken and it’s her eyes that may be too small—but her hair color seems quite OK to me.

  “But blond suits you.”

  “I want to go black.”

  “You’ll look like Paleiko.”

  “My hair, you idiot, it’s only my hair I want to color, not my whole, you know, body or something… . Where is the old doll, anyway?”

  Nicholas points to the shelf. He’s wearing a white sweater, and as he moves his arms through the air, a light streak remains behind. I’m wondering whether I ever told him about Paleiko, which makes me feel very tired and takes up a lot of time, because in my next wakeful moment I already see Kat singing and whirling through the room with Paleiko in her arm.

  “Dance, little doll, dance … !”

  “Don’t drop him, Kat.”

  “Why are you—”

  “Careful, right?”

  “Why are you actually named—”

  “Kat!”

  “—Paleiko?”

  One minute Paleiko is still clutched to Kat’s breast as she dances, pressed to her like a defenseless sleeping child, and the next he’s sailing through the air, does a single somersault, and smashes into a thousand pieces on the floor.

  “Too late,” says Nicholas beside me.

  For her ninth birthday Tereza gave Dianne a doll that could pee and had long blond hair that you could comb. I got a football. I didn’t even try to hide my disappointment. A football was by far the stupidest, most useless present that I could imagine. For a time I hoped that Tereza had reversed the presents by mistake, for I would have loved a doll. But the allocation remained as it was. I was quivering with suppressed anger and indignation. Even the sight of the birthday cake, a miraculous confection that Tereza covered with hundreds and thousands of sprinkles like a spray of meteors, couldn’t soothe me. I refused to blow out my nine candles.

  For weeks if not months before the birthday I felt I was under Glass’s increasingly watchful eye. Sometimes I felt her gaze weighing on me like a delicate but noticeable weight. I became aware that Glass watched me only in certain situations—when I set the table in the kitchen, when I tidied Dianne’s and my room, as it always seemed untidy to me, or when I would tie the same shoe twenty times, until both bows were exactly the same size. All these situations must have had something in common that escaped me. The fact that there were other things I could do without attracting the telltale gleam from my mother’s eyes made it all the more confusing for me.

  And now, thanks to Tereza and her useless present, I had a new problem.

  In the days following my birthday Glass appeared to be concerned with only one thing—that I should at least try out my new toy.

  “Don’t you want to play with your new ball, darling?”

  I shook my head.

  “But why not? Tereza spent an awful lot of money on it. And it’s such a beautiful ball, Phil!”

  “No!”

  I had no intention of struggling with this ball, either kicking it around on the grass or fooling around with it somewhere the way I saw other boys doing in games lessons or during recess at school. And with the best will in the world I really couldn’t see anything beautiful in this thing consisting of a honeycomb of black and white leather pieces sewn together, apart from the shape, which I liked because it reminded me of soap bubbles and Christmas tree baubles. As soon as Glass stopped nagging me to use the football, it ended up in some forgotten corner of Visible. For the first time I was grateful that the house possessed so many hidden nooks and crannies. On hot summer days thin flies would eat their way into the rotten timbers of Visible with lightning speed in order to lay their eggs there. I hoped there was some insect species whose larvae were programmed to feed on leather.

  One fine summer’s day when Dianne and I came home from school, there was the leather horror in all its ugliness suddenly lying on my bed, as if it had fallen out of the clear sky. Three months had passed since my birthday, and all the rather ungrateful wishes for its destruction had long since been forgotten. But now there it was again, fat and round and conspicuous. Glass had found it. At first I believed she had just placed it on my bed the way you put a lost toy back in its place as a joyful surprise for the owner. Without a moment’s hesitation I stuffed it out of sight under my bed. I had no way of knowing that returning the football was the prelude to a comedy stage-managed by Glass and Tereza, which, contrary to their expectations, I really didn’t find at all funny.

  The following Saturday Tereza came to visit us. The weather had been glorious for the past week, and although it was only halfway through July, the heat had already begun to build up at Visible. A picnic basket was packed, Dianne stuffed her doll and all sorts of bits and pieces in a bag of her own, and we all set off for the meadow by the river, which held an uncomfortable, fateful memory for me. I instinctively put my hands over my ears as we got there, to make sure they hadn’t reverted to their original shape.

  “We’re going to play a game, Phil,” announced Tereza as soon as she’d emptied out the picnic basket.

  “What kind of game?”

  “A funny one. It’s a kind of test,” she declared. “Well, actually, they’re three tests. But if you pass them, you get a present.”

  At the word present Dianne looked up hopefully. Her blond, eternally peeing doll was obviously not enough for her.

  “This is a game we can play only with Phil, OK?” said Tereza in her direction.

  Dianne nodded, and that was all. Loud protests were not her way. But I had suddenly grown suspicious. Another present didn’t interest me in the slightest, no matter how beautiful it might be. Glass had also referred to the football as beautiful, so clearly there were concepts of beauty that lay miles apart. On the other hand, my curiosity was aroused— but only until, to my horror, Glass extracted the football from the basket. She handed it to Tereza, who smiled at me.

  “Don’t be afraid, Phil. It’s really just a game.”

  She clamped the football under her arm. I began to see my chance.

  “Ready?”

  I nodded.

  “First test,” said Tereza quietly. “Whistle with your fingers.”

  “What?”

  “Whistle between two fingers. It’s not very difficult. Look, I’ll show you how.”

  She let the ball fall on the grass and showed me. It was impressive. Her whistle was so deafening and piercing that I thought I could see tiny, frightened waves leaping over the river, glittering in the sun.

  “Wow!” said Glass. She was sitting cross-legged on the blanket spread out on the grass, fiddling about with a thick, cone-shaped cigarette.

  “Now you,” ordered Tereza.

  I hesitated briefly. Then I stuck both index fingers and thumbs in my mouth and puffed, but all that came out was a slightly loud breath. I repeated the performance following Tereza’s instructions. Patiently she showed me how to place the fingertips against the teeth and press the tongue against the fingertips. This time spit sprayed out of my mouth and ran down my chin over my T-shirt. I ended up by shoving nearly my whole hand down my throat, but apart from making me feel like throwing up, this attempt too did not produce the desired result.

  “Don’t look so embarrassed. You did very well!” Tereza lifted my chin up, smiled, and ruffled my hair with one hand. Then she sat down on the blanket next to Glass. “Time for a short break.�
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  Did very well? I’d failed!

  Glass lit the cone-shaped cigarette, took two puffs, and handed it on to Tereza. Gray-blue clouds of smoke wafted like little misty animals through the still air across the meadow. The smell was pleasantly sweet in my nostrils—damp hay with sugar frosting. It must have been this nice smell and not, as I’d secretly feared, my poor performance that caused the two women to keep on giggling stupidly. It was something of a consolation, if only a weak one. So long as they were giggling, they weren’t thinking about my failure.

  “Second test,” announced Tereza merrily when the cigarette had gone out. She got up from the blanket, swayed a little, and pointed to the football, whose black and white leather gleamed evilly. “Throw the ball!”

  “I’ve had enough.”

  “Do it for me, darling,” wheedled Glass. “Please!”

  I looked at Dianne for help, a little envious. She was happily sitting in the grass, combing her doll’s hair and making her pee for the hundredth time. The pee was refilled from a bottle dragged along for the purpose, and filled up every few minutes with fresh water from the river. The weird tests I was being subjected to didn’t seem to interest her in the slightest. Then I turned back to Glass, who was still looking at me pleadingly.

  So throw the ball it had to be.

  Couldn’t be that hard.

  Twice the ball simply slid out of my hands and plopped onto the grass. Once I threw it straight up, so that it almost fell on my head. The last attempt twirled it right in the middle of the picnic china, where it made a cup handle bite the dust with a protesting crack.

  “Oh, well. Who was it said breaking crockery brings good luck, Phil?” said Tereza with a broad grin.

  I laughed back bravely and hoped that she didn’t notice how my lower lip was beginning to tremble. An almost intolerable burning crept up behind my eyes.