Berlin Syndrome

by Melanie Joosten

  Bringing his lips to her hair, he feels her shoulders stiffen. He tightens his embrace, but she shakes him off, forcing him to take a step back. Released, her legs swing free from the window ledge, knocking the ashtray to the floor with a clatter. She grabs the sill fiercely as though to stop herself from attacking him.

  ‘Where was I going to go?’ She looks at him, accusing. ‘I was here because I wanted to be here. I wanted to be with you. But you can’t make me stay — you have to let me go.’

  She uses the past tense. His mind races. He was right — she would have left today if she could. He knows her, the way she works.

  ‘I just thought it would be easiest, Clare. I did not want you to get lost in the city. I was worried about you out there alone.’

  She looks at him as though she does not recognise him. As though he is an annoyance she wants to kick away. She launches herself from the windowsill, and he tenses, prepares for her to shove him. But she comes up short in front of him, and this is worse, this not touching. It is as though she has already removed herself from the room.

  ‘Andi, if you had left me the right key I would have gone out, I would have walked around the city, taken some photos and I would have come back. That’s all. But you have totally fucked it up.’

  But what if she had not come back? What if she hadn’t realised that this is where she is supposed to be? It was too big of a risk.

  ‘And now I have to leave.’ She shrugs. ‘Don’t you get it, Andi? I don’t even have a choice. You’ve ruined it.’

  She stands in front of him, waiting. She wants an apology, an explanation, and he is relieved. This he can do. She is still here; he can make it right.

  ‘Clare, I’m really sorry. I should not have done that. But you can’t leave. You need to be here. You need to stop running away from things.’

  ‘Running away? What have I ever run away from? You don’t know me at all!’

  ‘I’m just trying to help. I’m giving you a place just to be yourself. In the moment, not looking to the future. That’s what you said you wanted, isn’t it?’ He is doing this for her. Why can she not see that?

  ‘That was just talk, Andi! We had sex — people say all sorts of things when they go to bed together. But you can’t lock me up and tell me it’s what I want. You’re fucked up!’ She crosses the room to her backpack, which is leaning against the wall like a portly companion.

  She cannot leave. What they have is more than sex: he cannot believe she is denying this. Surely she doesn’t mean it? As she heaves her pack onto her back he has an undeniable urge to run across the room and push her over, to make her stop saying these things. But he won’t; he won’t hurt her.

  ‘Clare.’ He tries to keep his voice steady, reasonable. ‘You know this is not just about sex. We have more than that. You could have got on that train, but you stayed. Don’t leave now.’ He hears his words rushing together — he is starting to panic. What if she leaves him? What will he do then?

  ‘And wasn’t that a fucking mistake.’ She stumbles under the weight of her pack and grabs her camera bag. ‘You need to get help. You’re lucky I don’t report you to the police.’

  She storms out of the room, her shadow a stooped packhorse wobbling down the hallway wall behind her. He hears her try to open the door. He should unlock it. He should let her go.

  ‘Unlock the fucking door, Andi.’

  He can hear the terror in her voice.

  ‘Andi! Unlock the door!’

  He does not move. If he does not move, she does not leave.

  ‘What the fuck is your problem?’

  Her voice is cracking; he can hear the sobs crowding in her throat. His heart is beating loudly, and he swallows as though to placate it. He wants to comfort her, but still he does not move. If she did not try to leave, she would not be so upset. He is trying to make things better, but she is making it so much worse.

  ‘Andi!’ She strides back into the room, stops in front of him. Her face is red, and she is terrified. He has never seen such obvious fear in someone before.

  ‘Andi, please. I want to leave. I want to go now. I don’t want things to be like this. I just need to go.’

  She is crying. Her cheeks are wet, and he wants to reach out and touch them. He cannot let her go. He cannot let her leave in such a fragile state. He has caused this; he is the only one who can make it better.

  ‘Clare, I can’t let you go. I need you here. As soon as I met you, I knew that this was something important. You and me, this is what we are.’

  ‘This is not what we are! We’re strangers. We barely know each other. We slept together and that’s it. You have to let me go!’

  ‘But I can make you stay.’

  Her face falls. His words have had an immediate effect. He is impressed with the tangibility of them. They are still hanging in the air, and the fear, the despair, every emotion has dropped from her face.

  ‘No, you can’t.’ Her voice stumbles — she is beginning to understand. Andi watches the redness clawing up her neck. ‘You’re not allowed to do this.’

  ‘Clare, trust me. It will be okay. This means nothing is going to get in the way of what we have.’ He is pleased with how sensible he sounds.

  ‘But I don’t want this! I want to leave!’

  ‘No.’ It is easier than he thought it would be. He will not let her leave. He will keep the door locked, and she will stay. She does not need to go anywhere else.

  He watches her chest heave. She noisily draws in air through her nostrils, pushes it out in quick little bursts. She is shaking. He doesn’t like to think that he has frightened her, but perhaps he has.

  ‘I’m sorry, Clare. One day you want to stay and the next you want to leave.’ He keeps his voice even, soothing. His thoughts are making sense now; he can see the way they’re heading as though their route is marked on a map. ‘You are inconsistent. You don’t know what you want. But I just want the same thing, the same thing every day. You. And in time you will understand, I promise. You will want to stay.’

  It is so clear to him. They will make their world here in his apartment; they will not be affected by the decisions of others. They will be very still in their own moment, and there will be nobody else to make things different. No one can enter. No one can leave. And no one can tear down the walls and push them out. It is so obvious: he doesn’t know why it has never occurred to him before. It is easier than he thought to take control. It must be because he did not know Clare before. She gave him this.

  ‘Andi, this is madness. Unlock the door. You can’t do this. You can’t keep me prisoner. Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll just walk away, you’ll never hear from me again.’

  ‘I can’t let you go, Clare. I’m doing this for you. For us. You know that, don’t you? That is why you did not get on that train. It’s why you came up to me in the bookstore. You knew.’

  He steps forward and lifts her bag from her shoulders. She does not protest, and he lowers it to the floor where it sways for a moment and then topples. He almost expects it to spring back up like a weighted children’s toy. He embraces her rigid body, and she does not hug him back — but she does not break away.

  ‘It will be okay,’ he says.

  ‘It will be okay,’ he tells her.

  His arms are tight around her, and she squirms, wrenching herself free. She wants to wipe the smile from his face, quite literally. To reach up and smear it aside, leaving nothing but a bristly expanse. Instead she reaches for the handle of her bag and drags it along the hallway to the front door, which she tries to open again. Locked. Without a key she is going nowhere. She props the bag against the wall and slumps down beside it, her head in her hands. This is fucked. This cannot be happening. She hears Andi’s footsteps fade, listens to the sound of domestic banality as he moves about the kitchen and begins to coo
k dinner. This is happening.

  No one is expecting her to arrive anywhere. No one will come looking for her. She closes her eyes and counts her breaths. Tries to breathe in strict time, as though the imposition of order on this one act will bring everything else into line. One, two, three, four. She inhales. One, two, three, four. She exhales. And nothing has changed. Three, four, locked door. She tries to ignore the rhyme, but it will not go away.

  Where is everyone she knows? How can she tell them she is here? Isn’t the world supposed to have shrunk with the glut of instant communication? But her phone is useless, and she has no online profile to be neglected. She has successfully cleared the decks of her life, and now she is quite alone. Andi goes about his evening as though nothing is amiss. She sits in the hallway, her arse numb against the floor, disbelieving that time is allowed to pass under these circumstances.

  ‘Do you want something to eat, Clare?’ He appears at the end of the hallway, a tea towel in hand.

  She tries to look into his eyes but he is in shadow, his face a smudge. She does not reply.

  She listens to his cutlery tap out his presence as he eats. He moves back to the kitchen and washes the dishes. Then a series of noises she cannot identify. She hears him walk across the living room and wonders what record he will put on, holding her breath in anticipation as though he might offer her a clue. But no music eventuates.

  She does not leave her plot by the door. She doesn’t know what she is waiting for, but what else can she do? She leans against her backpack, her legs across the hallway. He must open the door soon. It’s some weird fucking power trip, but he will have to realise how ridiculous it is. This can’t go on forever.

  ‘Are you coming to bed, Clare?’ He crouches down to speak to her as people do to toddlers.

  He is going to bed? As though this day is ready to end? He looks concerned, his eyes brimming with care. She does not answer, yet he stays staring at her, swaying on his unsteady feet. What is going on? She wants to scream at him, to cut through whatever this is and find Andi underneath, but the words don’t come, refusing to believe that they are needed.

  With a pneumatic sigh he lifts himself and goes into the bathroom. She hears him use the toilet, brush his teeth. Such normal things. He comes out and pauses in the doorway. His shadow stretches towards her. A chain glints around his neck and from it hangs a key. He reaches for it, drops it inside his t-shirt. They look at each other, and he goes into the bedroom.

  Fuck. She still cannot believe this is happening. But she must. She has to stop thinking about how unlikely, how impossible it is, and just concentrate on getting out. She needs to steal the key while he sleeps. But how? He will wake if she tries to remove it, surely? She will have to knock him out. With what? A book? A frying pan? But it all seems so laughable. She has never actually hurt anyone before. How would she do it? How would she bring that weight down upon his sleeping head? What if she killed him? Even in her mind it all seems like an overreaction, let alone carrying it out. Surely this whole thing is a misunderstanding. If she hurts him, it will become real.

  Her legs aching from inactivity, she pulls herself up from the floor and tries the handle of the door. Locked. She walks into the living room and stands there, making out the shapes of the furniture in the dark. There is nothing she can do; she cannot bear the thought of doing anything. She takes her shoes off and lies down on the couch. She wants to sleep, for all of this to go away. To be able to think clearly, for something to happen next.

  She wakes shivering, reaching for the bedclothes before remembering where she is, that there are none. She stands stiffly from the couch and, without switching on the light, finds her way through the apartment to the bedroom. She pushes the door open, and the darkness rolls out towards her. When she switches on the hall light, she can make him out in the bed. He looks the same as before — the Andi she knows. In small steps, wishing she was anywhere but here, she approaches the bed, seeks out the chain from around his neck. She will just yank it off; even if he wakes, it will take him a moment to react. And he will realise, won’t he, how ridiculous this is? She will run; she will be out the door, and this will all be over. The chain is warm from his skin; it sits lightly across her fingers. She tugs it.

  It doesn’t come free. The pull is made sluggish by Andi’s weight, and as the chain jerks back his eyes open. Her hand retracts as though burned. She should have pulled harder. She knew it even as she did it. But she couldn’t; she couldn’t quite believe what she was having to do.

  ‘Clare?’ He reaches out his hand and grabs her wrist. His touch is warm. ‘Come to bed.’

  She looks at the space beside him; her pulse is beating loudly in her head. Three, four, locked door. She just wants to sleep. She wants it all to be over, to be normal again. He lifts the covers, shuffles aside to make room for her. His breathing is regular; he is unperturbed, as though this is just a little disagreement and he forgives her if only she will stop sulking. And when she slips into the bed, his heavy limbs envelop her. One, two, three, four. She breathes in. One, two, three, four. She breathes out.

  It wasn’t as though he planned it outright; he wasn’t trying to trap her — he’s not like that. Clare rolls over in her sleep, and Andi loosens his hold. When she has settled, he slides his hand around her waist, interlaces his fingers with hers. She does need him, she keeps coming back to him: that much is clear. The bookstore, the train station. The first time he had locked the door it was an accident. Habit ruled his life; every morning as he left the apartment he pulled the door closed behind him and turned the key in the second lock. It was a near-empty building: he dreaded coming home to find his apartment burgled, his stereo gone.

  As he battled through his classes that first day, his hangover washing over him in waves, he had been certain that Clare would have woken and left, a breezy note on the kitchen table all that would remain. His despondency had trailed him home where he found her, an unintentional prisoner. She was not meant to leave him, not yet. He believes in fate. How impossible not to.

  The other night, after the fun park, he could not quite believe how lucky he was to have met her. Still damp with the evening’s rain, she lolled against him in the booth of the bar. She seemed too real. As though her body took up more space than his own. Her presence seemed to push the air about, to increase the pressure so that he could feel each moment pushed up against him. She made him feel immediate, and he did not want it to end.

  As they drank and talked their way through the night, he had watched Clare closely. Stay with me, he wanted to say. But he knew too well the effect of those words. The way they would mute her desire, replace it with a skittishness that would let her eyes slip from his face to the door. The women he had known were always too willing to leave. The moment they discovered his need for them, the depth of his want, they started making excuses. Watching Clare’s large laughing mouth, her shadow-puppet hands, he knew that he could not say the words, but he could make her stay.

  It is not such a big thing, to lock a door. The turn of a key, that is all. He has been locking the door every morning when he leaves for work, and when he returns it is as though his time outside the apartment has not happened. Clare is still there, just as he left her. He doesn’t want to keep her captive forever; he’s not cruel. He just wants to limit her options so she can see that what they have is something unique — nothing from the outside world can compare.

  He had gotten a spare key cut for her. But when he kissed her goodbye and went to leave the key on the bedside table, he just could not do it. The thought of her posting the key back under the door as she left, never to return, disabled him. He slipped the key into his pocket, walked down the hallway and out the front door, locking it behind him. He would deal with it when he returned; he would explain everything. It was all so normal. He knew he was crossing a line, but it didn’t feel wrong. Not in the way that coming home to an empty apartment
would feel wrong. The wanderlust that had brought her to him would eventually take her away, he knew that. But not just yet.

  Clare turns over in her sleep again, moves away from him to the edge of the bed. He shuffles his body a little closer, takes a handful of her hair. He wants to wake her, show her how he feels, how much he adores her. But he will not; he will let her sleep. He will let her do whatever she wants.

  When he had returned to the apartment that evening, she did not hear him unlock the door — the music was too loud. In the bedroom he slid a key from his key ring and put it in the drawer of the bedside table. He convinced her it had been there all day, that she had not looked hard enough. And when he left the apartment this morning, he knew she would not be going anywhere. He had left the wrong key.

  He has spent the day thinking through all the possibilities for their future, and the result is always the same. If she has the option, eventually she will leave. If she doesn’t have the option, she will stay. He sat at his desk after teaching his last class, and listed all the pros and cons on a sheet of paper. But it is far simpler than that. He can keep her here, or he can let her go. He moves closer to her, mimics her body with his own.

  She tries to go back to sleep; she cannot. She opens her eyes and lets the grey static of the morning scramble into position and assume the shape of Andi’s bedroom.

  She gets out of the bed. Her clothes belong to yesterday and feel hostile, angry at her for wearing them all night. She walks down the hallway to the door and tries to open it.

  Locked.

  ‘Is that you, Clare?’

  His voice floats in from the kitchen, and her heart flips: familiarity or apprehension? How can she not know?

  ‘Who else would it be?’ She follows his voice to where he stands in front of the open fridge, regarding its contents.