Bunker

by Andrea Maria Schenkel

  His fiftieth birthday was two weeks ago – he celebrated in a big way with all the staff. He really splashed out and invited us all to the Japanese restaurant. I have to admit it was fun. A buffet of cold food in tiny portions washed down with rice wine isn’t really to my taste, too chilly and slippery, but at least it was fish, it wasn’t meat. And the atmosphere was good, and since we were having a good time he wanted to go on to the disco with Lilli and me.

  On the way home he kept putting his hand on my knee. He was rather drunk. He got more outspoken when he said goodnight. ‘Call me Rüdiger, Monika, do.’ And then he made me a very explicit offer. I went bright red and could have sunk into the ground with shame. Not for the world!

  Sometimes he’s really repulsive. He’s the one who ought to be stuck here, not me. After all, it’s the boss who has the key to the safe, and here I am in the shit.

  Hans wanted me to give him the key when he attacked me at the garage. Is he still after the money? You bet he is. He didn’t just want his revenge on me, he wanted the money from the safe as well.

  The money from the safe. Why not? Why not nick it? The boss has been exploiting me for years, messing me about. I’d only be taking the proper salary he didn’t pay me. And giving him a bit of a fright into the bargain. I’ll have him grovelling on the floor and whining. ‘Please, please don’t hurt me.’ I like that thought. I can already see the red patches he always gets on his face when he’s worked up. Could there be a better chance than this of paying him out?

  Hans can do the dirty work and I’ll get the money. Hans will play along, I’m sure he will. He’ll do anything to get his hands on the cash. He doesn’t want his revenge on me any more, or he’d have taken it long ago, I’m sure of that too. He’s looking after me, he’s concerned for me. He was always easy to manage, why wouldn’t I be able to handle him now? What’s to stop me? With him in tow I’m unbeatable. He’s my tool, my weapon.

  ‘Think about it, Monika, and if you’d like to, well, give me a call.’ Those were my boss’s parting remarks in the car when we said goodnight. Well, I have thought about it. I’m going to call you, Rüdiger darling!

  Hans comes upstairs. He’s carrying a tray with two mugs of coffee, a carton of milk, and some cheese sandwiches. The coffee smells good. Exactly what I need now. I sit up on the bed.

  ‘Coffee?’

  She gets off the bed, sits down at the table with me. I push one of the mugs of coffee her way, put her cheese sandwich down beside it. I’ve cut it into little pieces, the way my mother always cut things up for me when I was little. She cut bread into fingers, and each finger was a train ready to drive into the station, and the station was my mouth.

  ‘Like me to feed you?’ She nods, smiles at me.

  I pick up finger after finger of the cheese sandwich and put it in her mouth. She chews, and starts talking even with her mouth full. ‘Suppose we get the money from that safe together?’

  At first I don’t understand, I’ve no idea what she’s talking about. The money? But she doesn’t have the key. I searched her clothes.

  She goes on smiling at me.

  Tilting her head slightly, she looks at me. I sit there, I don’t say a word. After a while she asks, ‘Why haven’t you taken me back?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wanted you to stay here.’ I look at her, look into her eyes.

  We sit there in silence, and I feed her with fingers of cheese sandwich and help her to sip the hot coffee.

  ‘So what do you think, shall we go and get the key now? And then get the money out of the safe?’

  Well, why not? This whole thing has gone off course from the start, but if she can help me to lay my hands on the money now…and after that we’ll see. I wait another minute, keep her guessing, then I say, ‘How are you going to get hold of the key?’ I’m curious to know what she’s thought up.

  ‘My boss always keeps the key in the inside pocket of his jacket.’

  ‘And how do we get at his jacket?’

  ‘He fancies me, I know that. I’ll call him and tell him to come here. Then I’ll distract his attention, you can knock him down and take the key. We’ll do it today, then we’ll have all night to empty the safe and clear out.’

  I sit there listening to her plan. It’s rather vague, but I don’t have a better one, so why not? I’ve nothing to lose. I rub my chin, think it over. ‘You think that will work?’

  ‘Let’s just try it. Then we’ll know if it works or not.’

  I think for a moment longer, and then I bring the flat of my hand down on the table.

  ‘Right, then let’s try it, darling.’

  She looks at me with a mixture of disbelief and astonishment. You can positively see her thinking feverishly. There, my love, you weren’t expecting me to be so easily persuaded to go along with your plan!

  Darling…?

  ‘Do you have thirty pfennigs? We can drive to the nearest telephone box.’

  I’m not your darling. You’ve got my brother on your conscience, you bastard. You’re going to help me grab that money and get my boss off my back, that’s all. Payback time!

  ‘Let’s go!’

  He goes ahead. I follow him. Of my own free will! I keep my hands stretched out in front of me so as not to catch myself on the thorns.

  It’s a tight fit in the phone box. He gives me a kiss on the shoulder. At least I think he kissed my shoulder. I felt his lips, anyway. Oh, drop that!

  ‘Dial 68 75 99, then you can hold the receiver to my ear.’ Hans does everything I tell him.

  ‘Hello, Rüdiger, it’s me. Moni.’

  And then I start talking. I’ve been thinking about us a lot these last few days, I say, about him and me. I thought it all through again. I lay the charm on thick. I tell him it was wrong of me to say no, but he has to understand that I simply didn’t trust myself. I go on soft-soaping him over the phone. I say I’d like our relationship to be something really special. Something that belongs just to us. I talk and talk, carry on about being careful because after all he has a wife and children, and I wouldn’t like there to be any gossip among our colleagues. But in the last few days I haven’t been able to think of anything else, only him. That’s why I’ve plucked up all my courage and I’m calling him now. I ramble on and on. My voice sounds totally strange to me, I’m cooing, I’m all lovey-dovey. I hear myself asking if he couldn’t come and meet me. ‘I mean now, before my courage deserts me again.’ I tell him I’ve found a little place hidden away – ‘All for you and me.’ It would be the ideal place, no one would ever find out about it. We’d be all alone there, just the two of us. I chat him up, I flirt, in the end I almost forget to tell him where to go. ‘Oh yes, the address…wait a minute, do you have a pen there?’ I describe the way, explaining very patiently where he has to turn off the road and follow the track through the forest until he can’t drive any further. I tell him he can leave his car behind a Fiesta that he’ll see there, and I tell him the way past the pond and over to the mill. I’d be waiting for him there, I say. ‘Oh and please don’t be alarmed. I’ve bandaged my hands up because I fell off my bike,’ I say, but I can tell him that story later, when he’s with me.

  At a sign from me, Hans hangs up.

  Right. Now for Part Two of the plan.

  Hans smelt my hair when I came out of the phone box. I must stink pretty bad by now, but he seems to like the smell of me.

  Keep him on the boil, you still need him. The game is just beginning, and I’m almost enjoying it.

  I push down the door handle to the phone box, hold the door open, let her go in first. She couldn’t have managed the door herself with her bandaged hands. Coming out, she presses close to me. Her hair comes close to my face. I’d never have thought you could pull that trick off with your boss so well, girlie! Hats off to you, still waters run deep. I was standing beside her while she rabbited on and on, talking like a waterfall. She really chatted up that guy at the other end of the line. Turned him on. I could see she was enjoying all
this more and more. Talking herself into a fine state.

  But back at the mill, she can hardly bear the pain. I noticed in the car how the painkilling effect was gradually wearing off. Now I can see it in her face. She is turning paler all the time, her features are more and more convulsed.

  ‘My hands hurt again. You must give me another injection!’

  ‘Better not. Your head won’t be clear, you could mess this whole thing up!’

  ‘Please! It hurts horribly. I can’t stand it. Please do something, help me!’

  Reluctantly, I fill a syringe and pull the plunger up, because with the pain she’s no use to me either. The way she looks now, that guy wouldn’t fancy her at all. It takes exactly the right dose to control the pain. Well, she doesn’t have to seduce him, just entice him here and then distract his attention, that’ll do. I’ll deal with the rest, because her boss will never fall into her honey-trap, not the way she looks. I have to think up some idea or we might as well say goodbye to the whole plan. Slowly, I press the plunger down in the syringe. I hope she’s not had too much.

  The wave runs through my body again, there’s a tingling in my stomach, it’s nice. The pain ebbs away bit by bit, from wrist to fingers. Finally it reaches somewhere in the region of my fingertips and then disappears entirely.

  I’m ready now, he can come now, my little boss. I lie on the bed in readiness. I don’t have to wait long. Footsteps on the lower floor. That can only be darling Rüdiger. He’s in a real hurry to get here.

  Hans has hidden outside and is waiting for my signal. Rüdiger enters the room behind the metal door. It’s so quiet that I can hear every one of his footsteps. Now he’s on the stairs below me. The first step creaks. I feel rather queasy. Pull yourself together, no going back now, only forward.

  At each of his steps the wooden stairs creak and groan. Then a pause. The noise they make probably scares him. He must be looking around, maybe he feels a bit unsure of himself.

  ‘Rüdiger, I’m up here, waiting for you.’

  That works. He comes trudging up. First his face appears. Greasy hair combed back. I feel I weigh very little, I could grin and giggle the whole time. I hope I don’t muck this up.

  With difficulty, he makes his way up through the trapdoor. Oops – on the last step he seems to stumble, catches himself just in time. I put my bandaged hand in front of my mouth. Mustn’t burst out laughing now!

  Rüdiger turns to look for me. It’s not a human head on his massive body now, he looks like a fat pig. With a snout in the middle of his face. Curious, surprised, I stand up and stare at him. This can’t be true! He comes towards me, and as he comes closer his face keeps changing all the time. He looks at me out of two little round piggy eyes. His lower jaw is jutting, he seems to be grinning, and two mighty tusks come into sight. The little piggy eyes wander restlessly back and forth, searching the room. Searching it for a rival.

  ‘There’s no one here, only you and me.’

  The pig snuffles in my direction, the hair on the back of its neck standing up. It comes towards me, its head rocking this way and that. Coming closer and closer. Pigs don’t see well, they rely on their snuffling noses to explore their surroundings. Its nose is right in front of my face. That snout is almost black, wet and shining, moving all the time. The pig breathes in deeply, then breathes out with a loud snort, a disgusting smell of carrion surrounds me.

  I think the animal’s very excited. To soothe it, I run my thickly padded hand gently over the bristly hairs on the back of its neck. They look like thin black wires. I can’t feel the bristles through the thick bandaging, I can only see that they’re standing up, and they hardly give way at all under the pressure of my hand.

  The pig’s little eyes sparkle at me. It snorts. The curving, dagger-like tusks are much too big for its mouth. They push the top lip up. The pig looks as if it is baring its teeth.

  I’m afraid of the animal. The pig snorts several times in succession. It grabs me. I fight it off as well as I can. It stares angrily at me. I’m so frightened I can’t move. Hell, where on earth is Hans? The animal stops for a moment, seems sorry for me. Then it flings its massive body against the table. The table shoots to one side and crashes into the wardrobe.

  The pig stands in front of me now, getting bigger, more than a head taller than me. I’m still standing there, I can’t do anything but stare at its great tusks. It’s foaming at the mouth. A slimy thread of saliva hangs down, gradually lengthening, comes loose and drops to the floor. Time seems to stand still.

  I cautiously take a small step back. The pig puts its head slightly on one side. I must get out of here, I must get away from this beast, quick! Another step back. The bed is right behind me, I collide with it, can’t keep on my feet, I fall full length on the mattress.

  The pig flings itself on me. I close my eyes, feel its weight on me, its hot breath on my neck. Its damp slobber drops on my cheek, runs on to my lips.

  I can hardly move, it’s like a ton weight on top of me. I turn my head aside, open my eyes. Hans’s head appears in the opening of the trapdoor. I gasp for air, the body is so heavy lying on me. I shout as loud as I can. ‘Do something, this pig is raping me!’

  The head disappears again.

  ‘No, no, you can’t go away. Help me, stick this pig!’

  The pig is trying to force my thighs apart. I resist with all my might, I tense my buttocks. I don’t want this. It can’t do this, it’s an animal, it can’t do this.

  Slobber runs along my neck, down to my breasts. I feel that moist snout everywhere, on my face, in my hair.

  ‘Hans, stick the pig, stick the pig!’

  I see Hans coming up through the trapdoor with a long, silvery, gleaming knife in his hand.

  The pig howls. The pressure between my thighs relaxes. Why doesn’t Hans help me to push the pig off? I turn, trying to wriggle out from under it.

  The pig falls, turns on its own axis as it falls and crashes to the wooden floor. There’s blood everywhere, spurting and pumping out of the opened body. Guts spill out of the belly, fall squelching to the floor, spread there. I feel sick. Everything’s white and blurred, everything’s floating in the air.

  I open my eyes and see that wooden ceiling again. I’m used to it by now. And to the sickness. It must be something to do with the injection.

  I’m afraid to sit up. The dead pig must be lying beside the bed. Half human, half animal. I look round, everything’s the same as usual. A dream? There are gleaming dark patches on the floor, someone’s been using a wet mop on it. Is it real, then? The pig was here and Hans got rid of it?

  Nonsense, there’s no such thing as a half-human, half-animal hybrid.

  I stand up, climb down the wooden stairs. It’s difficult without any help. I can’t hold on to anything with my thick mittens of bandaging.

  Hans is just coming up the steps from the cellar.

  ‘What happened, Hans?’

  Bloody hell, I knew it, the whole thing went wrong. The way she was, I might have known she had no idea what she was doing. I chucked the body down the stairs. He was bleeding like a pig. Blood everywhere. What else could I have done? She was in the process of botching it all up. She wasn’t capable of reasonable action any more. I’d hidden downstairs. The guy wasn’t up the stairs yet before I heard her shrill, hysterical laughter from above. I stole up the stairs after him and found the poor fellow standing in front of her, baffled, trying to soothe her somehow. Then, when he tried to take hold of her, she went right round the bend. Screaming her head off. Yelling the whole time. And then it all happened very fast. The guy turned round. When he saw me he realized what was going on. Understood at once that he’d been lured into a trap. He didn’t hang about, he went straight for me. Grabbed hold of me. He was at least a head taller than me, a real colossus. What was I to do? I had no choice, I simply stuck the knife into him without stopping to think.

  It was like back then with Father.

  How Father yelled at me, flung himself on m
e. He’d been boozing. The old man wanted to kill me. He was dead drunk, he didn’t even know I was his son. Didn’t know he was going for his own flesh and blood.

  So I stabbed, twice, three times. I can’t remember any more. My old man survived the whole thing. They saved his rotten life with an emergency operation. And they locked me up. What happened to my old man I’ve no idea, couldn’t care less. He’ll have drunk himself to death, what else?

  But no emergency operation is going to help that great bag of lard now. No one can do anything for him. I dragged him down to the bunker. Threw his keys and valuables on the bed. Put the guy himself in a plastic sack and then cleaned everything up.

  I’m on my way up from the bunker when she comes downstairs. Looks terrible, white as a sheet. Somehow she manages to support herself on the stairs with her bandaged hands. Swaying alarmingly at every step. She stares at me as if I am death in person.

  ‘What happened, Hans?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  I don’t feel like explanations now. There’s no time, either. Doesn’t she realize we have to get away? Now we’ve done that we’re really in the shit.

  ‘What happened, Hans?’

  Why does she keep banging on about this Hans?

  ‘My name’s Dimitri, not Hans!’

  ‘Why not Hans? But you are Hans.’

  Why on earth would I be Hans? She’s looking at me incredulously.

  ‘But what you did when you…’

  What does she mean? What am I supposed to have done?

  ‘But surely you’re…Where did you live as a child?’

  Can’t the silly cow get it into her head that this is no time for playing games? Keep calm. Shouting at her does no good.

  ‘If you must know, I was born in Naila, we lived here, there and everywhere. My mother died, I spent time in homes, my father was a jailbird and a drunk. Satisfied now?’