Armand has always liked the anonymity of big cities. In Paris he thought he had lost it at one point because he hung around the same districts, frequented the same bars. Here there’s not much risk of running into someone he knows; it’s the freedom of being abroad.
He doesn’t really know which way to go. The tower in Alexanderplatz is a good landmark. Wherever you are in Berlin, you can pick it out on the skyline. He walks towards the tower, so straight and so real that for a moment he has no sense of never having trod these pavements before. The wind is blowing. It isn’t cold; it’s a mild autumn.
Occasionally he crosses streets bordered by unlit waste ground. In the distance, he can see a petrol station, but he doesn’t come across any other pedestrians or cars. It feels like an industrial zone in the middle of the city. The discreet charm of industry.
Armand walks on towards the television tower. He can feel the little bottle of GHB in his pocket. He might be home within the hour.
XI
Tobias and Franz are looking for people to keep partying with. When they emerged from the Berghain as it was closing, Armand had gone. They hung around, waiting for the last people to leave. Someone was bound to organise an after.
Why would they stop? They aren’t hungry or tired.
You find the world’s dodgiest characters at these afters in apartments, so they always leave you with the sort of bitter taste that prickles your tongue, or stings your cheeks. They are like the smoke from badly tamped pipes.
They wound up at the place of some guy they knew vaguely, talking about nothing much.
They left.
Now they’re hungry. They aren’t that far from Otto’s. He’ll have bacon. Off they go.
XII
There were too many amphetamines still clogging his arteries, so Armand hasn’t slept well. Interrupted, troubled sleep, the sleep of pure exhaustion, which struggles with the narcotics that still intermittently trouble your guts.
When he got up, a cigarette in his mouth, he was touched to see Tobias and Franz sleeping like children on the living room sofa. Because they were still dressed, there couldn’t have been anything sexual in it.
Otto is up too. He shares some tea with Armand at the breakfast bar, a few metres from the sofa. They talk softly, indistinctly almost, so as not to wake them.
Armand mentions Sigrid. Otto smiles. Next time, maybe he’ll come along too.
XIII
Armand has found a watering hole he likes near the apartment. He goes there every day to work on his drawings, after sharing some bacon and scrambled eggs with his flatmates.
He likes the route he takes. Schönhauser Allee as far as Eberswalderstrasse, then Kastanienallee. The girls are prettier on Kastanienallee. Some streets are like that, as though you can almost smell their perfume. Armand likes to walk these streets, catch people’s eye, the hint of a smile in a flicker of an eyelid.
He’s used to his route. He already knows the shop windows. The hairdresser’s with the table football, the brown leather bike saddles made by Brooks, which make him drool but are much too expensive for him.
So first there are these shops, and then Kastanienallee and its blondes, the kebab shop on the corner, the clothes shop with dozens of T-shirts with Bolshevik designs hanging up outside.
Finally he reaches his bar. It’s a small room with green seats; it looks like a Russian living room. The light is beige, very different from the terrible white light from those economy lightbulbs that dazzle your eyes.
There’s a little marble table on the mezzanine, the only one where you can smoke. Armand sits there. The waitress recognises him. He gives his order in German the way Tobias has taught him.
‘Hallo, ein Espresso, ein Aschenbecher und ein Chococroissant, bitte.’
He’s proud of this sentence, of being able to utter it, and in German if you please. The waitress smiles at him. She thinks it’s cute, this French accent you could cut with a knife. She comes back shortly with a glass ashtray, a coffee and a chocolate croissant. She puts them on the table and slips in a simple ‘et voilà’ in French, with that accent that German girls have, tender and sensual.
The waitress is pretty. Brunette, quite tall. She’s sweet, best of all. It would be good to rest his head in the small of her back or between her breasts, on that firm, delicate skin. She has a calm sensuality that Armand likes in women. He can almost feel the skin of her belly, her thighs, her back, a few beauty spots. Her whole body sums up what Armand misses, the privations of a single man; care and caresses. She seems to be inviting him, smiling at him. Something happens between them when she comes to his table, carrying the little metal tray. It’s not just Armand who feels it; it’s mutual.
She puts down the ashtray, coffee and chocolate croissant.
‘Et voilà…’
Armand feels himself melt. They look at each other for a moment, sadly, as though inevitably aware it is not to be. She goes back to her work. Armand is drawing at the little marble table.
An hour later, they say goodbye in the way that a customer says goodbye to a waitress. Armand goes home; he doesn’t look at the blonde girls on Kastanienallee.
XIV
Tobias and Franz are in the S-Bahn, the S41, which encircles the city like a little yellow-gold chain. It’s 2 p.m., morning rush hour for the out-of-sync people.
Tobias lost his phone the previous week. He and Franz are going to see that guy Stein; Tobias lent another phone to him a few months back.
The S-Bahn stops at the next station. A couple of guys in trainers and unfashionable anoraks are chatting on the platform. When the doors open, they split up and each of them boards through a different carriage door.
Berlin has plain-clothes ticket inspectors. Since there’s no turnstile to jump, they check tickets on the trains, working their way through the carriage from one end to the other. They don’t let you off, as they’re paid on commission. They’re often former fraudsters; it’s a rehabilitation scheme. You have to pay forty euros on the spot, in cash or with a bank card, otherwise you’re off to the police station and all that hassle.
Franz and Tobias are on the lookout; they don’t have a ticket and they can’t afford forty euros.
When they spotted the two guys on the platform at Landsberger Allee, they calmly got off. They’ll go on foot; it’s safer. Stein’s place isn’t far.
There’s an element of professionalism in their fraud. They are attentive; they couldn’t have missed those two wolves.
They’ve arrived outside Stein’s place. This is definitely it, Tobias remembers it. They don’t have the entry code for his building.
There’s no one they can call. Tobias doesn’t have a phone any more, and Franz sold his ages ago. In any case, they wouldn’t know what number to call. They wait outside the block for someone to go in or come out. Franz rolls a cigarette.
A guy goes in and they follow him. They knock on Stein’s door. A Turkish woman opens it. Stein moved a month ago; she doesn’t know how to find him.
‘You’re not the first people to come looking for him. I don’t know who this Stein is, but he doesn’t seem right to me. He left the apartment in a terrible state.’
Tobias and Franz take the S-Bahn home, the S42, which loops the city in the opposite direction. They’ll get something to eat at Otto’s.
XV
Armand bought a bike at the Gorlitzer Park flea market. It’s an old racer. The frame is grey; the handlebars, like rams horns, are wrapped in white tape. His hands grip them, and the tips of his shoes stick in the metal spikes on the pedals.
Armand has a feeling of security when he gets on his bike – he can’t slip off it, his slick tyres seem to float over the road surface, he’s following a clear route, making a necessary journey.
He rides his bike for several hours a day, going wherever his fancy takes him. He chooses streets he likes, follows them for a bit, then turns off. He gets lost, rides among the cars, among men, going slowly or quickly. It’s a game. He loses
his way and finds it again without ever asking for directions.
On his bike, he feels alone with the city; he talks to it, touches it. It’s an enormous pleasure when he’s lost and pedalling down streets where he doesn’t recognise anything, to find his way back, to realise exactly where he is thanks to a junction, a bar, an underground station or whatever. He knows at that moment that he’s beginning to master this city, that he has seduced it, that he holds all the cards and can penetrate the very depths of its being.
He’s won the battle. He hangs around for a bit on the streets or in a bar, snug in this tarmac cradle that belongs to him, this city where he’s no longer just a tourist.
As he rides, he practises pronouncing place-names. Schlesisches Tor, Schlesisches Tor. He stumbles over the language, tries again. He wants to know this city in the same way as knowing a girl. To feel her, taste her, and later remember the smell of her skin.
He hangs around on a café terrace on Oranienstrasse. He reads a bit, then goes back to his beer, rolls a cigarette and smokes it as he looks around.
He knows the way home. When he’s ready, he’ll go back. He’ll abandon the streets and the women passing by, return to his bed and wait for tomorrow.
PART THREE
Winter
I
When he wakes, his jaw hurts. He stretches out in his warm bed; the sheets are clammy. He glances at the window, or rather the sky, through the pane. It’s winter. It’s so cold outside.
The sky is mocking him. There is no sky. It’s like a big grey cloche over the city. You can’t see the sun or clouds, only this asphalt-coloured blanket, a sheet stretched between people and the heavens, a sheet that is holding back all hope. The dome of suffering.
Armand half-sits. He lights his first cigarette of the day. The cloud drifts upwards and disperses; he watches it rise to the ceiling like broken dreams. The grey smoke of a man alone, smoking and watching, slowly losing its form in the room. The smoke will coat the walls in the yellow of boredom, the colour of all the hours spent watching in vain for life to blossom.
It’s four months today since Armand arrived.
He gets up. A new day begins.
II
For several weeks, the street has lost its old appeal. Its heart is frozen, its surface covered in snow. They shovel the snow up in some places, on the roads, in front of shops, which then turn to mud, leaving a thin layer that your shoes slip on.
No one panics; people here are used to putting on boots, taking a shovel to clear their doorways. It’s as though a parallel life is activated: bikes and tables outside cafés are put away, hats and tights are taken out, daylight becomes unfamiliar, there are invitations to people’s flats for soup or a cup of tea. The out-of-sync people change their rhythm, too; it’s dark at 4 p.m., so it’s best to try not to get up too late. But it’s a time of celebration, the clubs are never busier than at these times, when everyone is seeking a bit of warmth.
Armand has got used to this life. He feels like he belongs to this scene. For the first time in his life, he feels as though he knows where his generation is at. He can already picture himself telling his children about the adventures and mistakes of his youth. Because even if Armand is living it fully and could live no other way at this point, he cannot imagine staying ten years, eventually dying beneath a glitter ball.
He doesn’t do drugs because he’s disgusted at life; it’s maybe more out of a love of life, since his sensations, his loves, his one-night stands, his joys and his pains are all so much more intense. It’s an adventure he’s instigated; it’s no less noble or real for that. The locations and the substances don’t matter, because those feelings are powerfully present within him.
That is the essential difference between Armand and Tobias; for Armand, these are extraordinary sensations and for Tobias they are normal.
Tobias had to leave Otto’s place. Five months is a long time to sleep on the same sofa. He moved in with Franz, at the apartment he’s been lent. They did a deal; Tobias pays the electricity and gets the second bedroom. It’s in Neukölln, the last Turkish district in the south of the city.
III
There’s this girl, Sarah, that Armand snogs every Sunday at the Panorama. He’s never had sex with her in the toilets – that’s not her style. Sarah doesn’t do drugs. But she’s there every week, dancing with the rest of them. Sarah’s a graphic designer; just about everyone here is. She comes on her own, without friends or drugs; she just comes, since she feels at ease with herself.
This evening, Armand has arranged to meet Sarah for a drink, away from the Berghain, at Kottbusser Tor. He’s excited at the thought of seeing her, but a little anxious too. It feels a bit like he’s falling for her.
It’s the first time this has happened since he arrived; he sleeps with two, three, four, even five girls a week. He’s confident, everyone’s high, and it’s easy, direct, brutal sex in the toilet cubicles; standing up, unprotected, a few thrusts of the pelvis as an intermission between dances. The girl pulls her knickers up and they leave the toilets without kissing. Most of the time, he can hardly remember them; they are just hazy encounters with anonymous girls.
But this one’s different. He’s going to meet Sarah to have a drink and talk. Normally, he turns down this sort of invitation, he’s not keen on seeing them again, the Berghain girls; he’s gone down on them in the toilet cubicles, he’s taken them from behind, without restraint, and that’s quite enough. But this time something is impelling him. Perhaps Sarah is the one after all.
They meet outside the underground. It’s snowing. Sarah isn’t that pretty to be honest; not that great a body either, not the sort he’d dream about. And yet he desires her more than any other, because every time they’ve kissed, there’s been electricity between them, a dark prickle of desire.
They kiss on the cheek like friends. They walk for a bit. Let’s go in here, this bar’s quite trendy.
They have a few beers. Armand tells some stories that make her laugh. He feels strong when he’s talking to her; she listens to him wide-eyed; Armand’s reflection sparkles at the edge of her pupils. When he runs out of things to say, he kisses her. He feels her melt, feels her body yielding to him entirely after a kiss.
They go to her place.
He begins undressing her on the stairs. They’re in a hurry. She’s laughing. Armand slips his hand up her skirt while she’s opening the door. He feels her little thighs tremble, her slit open. They throw themselves on the bed; they get rid of their clothes as best they can, kiss again, lick each other, or rather taste each other, and fuck, eagerly.
When he takes her, Armand understands why he wanted to see her again. She looks like his ex, Emma, the only one he loved. That’s not apparent from her features or the shape of her breasts. No, it’s deeper than that. She has the same taste, her skin, her body has the same smell, the same flavour.
He realises this as he comes, violently, in Sarah.
IV
The apartment seems spacious, but Tobias and Armand only ever see the crummy little kitchen. That’s where Fritz receives them.
Fritz is Swiss. He claims he’s an artist. He puts up the kind of installation you see everywhere, piles of wood or polystyrene.
They talk a bit to be polite, to try to make it a bit less uncivil, but all three of them know that that’s not why they’re there.
After a while, Fritz says what they’ve been waiting to hear: ‘How much do you want?’
Fritz supplies small nightclub dealers. His speed is strong; he sells at a ludicrous price, around three euros a gram, because he shifts it in quantity.
Tobias and Armand buy as much as they can; they spend all the money they have left. It won’t be a wasted investment; speed sells fast in club toilets, and for more than three times what they paid.
When they go back to Armand’s place, it’s always the same routine; they divide up their treasure.
Armand enjoys this activity, filling the little bags with a gram – always
a little less, business is business – using his electronic scales. The calculations are looking good. We spent sixty euros; we’ll earn 240 and three grams left over for us. It’s going to be a good weekend, yeah, it’s going to be a good one. Club tickets, juice, cigarettes and sandwiches, they can pay for the lot.
They put the speed in the fridge to keep it fresh. Yeah, it’s going to be a good one.
V
Juli is ten. She’s long understood what kind of a man her father is. She realises that she can never rely on him, that he can’t cope with other people any more than with himself.
Franz is elegant; something about his appearance would never make you suspect he leads the life he does. But Juli is too familiar with his unwillingness to meet your eye, his look of shame, to be taken in. She knows that if he comes to see them – her and her mother, Juli and Martha Krüll, the pastor’s granddaughter and daughter – it’s because he’s hungry and has lost everything, because he always ends up losing everything.
When Franz knocks on the door, they know it’s him even before they open. The hours he keeps are like no one else’s, not the postman, not Mum’s friends.
Martha always gets a bit emotional when Franz visits. It doesn’t matter what state he’s in, she’s always glad to see him. And perhaps he’ll have changed, who knows? It’s been so long since he last came.
Tomorrow Berlin Page 8
