Berlin Syndrome

by Melanie Joosten

  When they fucked for the second time, she whispered fiercely in his ear, ‘Harder, Andi, harder. I want to come all over at once.’ He was wary at first, the simultaneous resistance and wielding of her body made him uneasy, but then he gave in, pushed harder and harder, wanted to do exactly as she said. He followed her directions.

  And now she waits at home for him. He buys Anna Karenina and leaves the store feeling light. He will go to the market, take his time to choose food she might like or that she may not have tried before. She is home, she is waiting for me.

  The bandage on her hand is clean and tight and, reluctantly, she admits that this makes her feel a little better. Hopeful. She hears the familiar sounds of Andi returning. The key shifting in the lock, the open and shut of the door, the key in the lock again. Precise and without ceremony. Andi’s footsteps coming down the hallway. She looks out the window. One, two; one, two. The lights on the television tower blink steadily. One, two; one, two. They don’t hesitate. She hears him coming up behind her. One, two; one, two. She imagines him doing a quickstep through the lounge room. Sweeping her into his arms, through the door and down the stairs into the courtyard, the leaves now brown and soggy beneath their feet. It feels like it has been months; it has only been a week.

  When he places a book in her lap, she instinctively picks it up and then wishes she had not. She wants to remain in control, but all the books in his apartment are in German — their content unavailable to her, they have become objects, more like building bricks than stories — and her eyes go straight to the book; she cannot help it.

  The greatest love story ever told, the cover declares, and she almost laughs: if that is the case every potential lover in the world should give up now. She wants to thank him, an automatic politeness, but she is not ready to speak. Her tongue feels heavy and useless in her mouth. It slouches against the crevices between her teeth. Why is he being so nice to her? He hates her; he is keeping her prisoner. As he sits himself beside her on the couch, her heart quickens. She wishes it didn’t, but it does. Why does her body keep betraying her like this? For it is not fear that she feels but anticipation. She knows because she waits for her stomach to begin its tricks, for the disgust to rise in her throat, but it does not. She feels like she is lying in a bathtub, her ears underwater, the noises amplified. She wants him to explain everything to her, and she wants to listen, to believe him and then to take her leave.

  ‘All happy families are alike …’ he says. He reaches out his hand to her as if to stroke her cheek, offers her a grimace of shared understanding.

  Surely he cannot be thinking this applies to them? Who the fuck is he? Her stomach leaps, and she follows it off the couch, throwing the book on the floor.

  ‘That’s love, Andi!’ She points at the book. ‘Not this. I’m not a character. You can’t make me be the person you want. Just let me go!’ She turns to face him where he is seated on the couch, one leg tucked beneath him, his hand drawn back as though he has been burned.

  ‘I want you to be happy, Clare.’

  ‘I am happy!’ It’s a sentence never made to be yelled, and in the silence that follows she thinks that this is it, he will let her go. But he says nothing, and she stretches to fill the quiet. ‘I was happy. I don’t want to be here, Andi. Can’t you understand that?’ Her voice shrinks as she ends the sentence — she has never felt so forlorn. But he does not understand. He has no idea.

  He gets up from the couch, offers her a shrug. ‘You came here, Clare. You could have left, a number of times, and yet you stayed. We have been so happy together. We will be so happy.’

  She wishes she had something to throw at him but instead she hurls herself, drumming at his chest with her fists, pain stabbing at her injured hand. She wants to hurt him, she wants to beat him down until he is nothing.

  ‘Just let me go, Andi! Let me go!’

  He grabs at her arms, tries to turn her from him, and she reaches for his face, wanting to scrape away that mouth, those eyes. But as his fingers squeeze at her arms she springs away — she cannot bear his hands on her.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ She faces him. Her chest is heaving.

  ‘Clare —’

  But she cuts him off, shakes her bandaged hand at him like a talisman, warning him to back away. ‘Don’t you say my name. Don’t say anything to me. I hate you for this, Andi. You disgust me.’

  His face crumples at her words, his slack hands pulling at his shoulders as if they were guy ropes. She runs from the room, but there is nowhere to go. She’s furious at herself for reacting; she’s back at square one, feels like she has missed a turn. She does not want him to make her feel like this; she does not want him to make her feel anything at all. She stands in the hallway, wanting to throw herself at the walls, to break something, to scream, but all she can do is stalk into the bathroom, slamming the door. Dropping to the floor she wants to sob, but the tears do not come.

  He opens the book to the title page: she didn’t even see the dedication. Liebe Clare, To romance and forever, Andi. Why does she not see he wants only what is best? Reading it now he realises how stupid it sounds, how inappropriate, and he tears the page from the binding, crumples it in his hand. What has he done?

  He can hear her crying in the bathroom. His chest contracts, and he locks the door behind him and charges down the stairs. In the courtyard he takes greedy breaths, free of her cigarette smoke that deadens the air. She hates him. How did it come to this?

  He walks the streets trying to keep up with his thoughts. He should let her go; it was a stupid idea; what was he thinking? But if he lets her go, he won’t be able to make it right. She will be lost to him, and he will be without. She is so obviously alone in the world. She needs him. She has put him in an impossible situation.

  He thinks of Peter and Jana, the way they fight and taunt each other. He remembers Ulrike: how desperate he was for her to leave each morning; how he would sit in the bathroom with the shower running for half an hour, hoping that by the time he came out she would be gone. When it was finally over he had gathered her belongings, squeezed her clothes into a duffle bag and stacked her books into boxes he had pilfered from the grocery store across the street. Glad of something practical to do, he had gone through the rooms, taking down anything that was hers and packing up their shared memories — the requisite holiday photographs, gifts she bestowed upon him. It was all neatly lined up in the hallway when she returned, climbing slow-footed up the stairs, and he had retired to the couch with a beer. He heard the door open, waited for Ulrike to appear.

  He remembers making out the low hum of voices, the scuffling of boxes being lifted, the footsteps in the stairwell. He thought she must be packing her car first, would come in to say a final goodbye when she was done. He would give her room, let her move at her own pace. It was only when the door closed the second time that he realised she was leaving; she must not have known he was in the living room, waiting for her. He ran to the stairs, could hear her down below.

  ‘Ulrike?’ His call did not even bother to echo. It dropped down into the centre of the stairwell, where it must have reached her ears, for her footsteps paused.

  ‘Ulrike? Aren’t we going to say goodbye?’

  Her footsteps had resumed. He heard the outer door swing open then shut.

  ‘Ulrike?’ He called out her name again as though her real self might be wavering, waiting behind as her ventriloquist footsteps continued their journey.

  But there was no response. She had not even thanked him for packing, and he was genuinely surprised by this — it was not like her. He was the one who had done the right thing. He had realised the relationship was going nowhere and he had let her go, let both of them free.

  Walking faster now, he finds his thoughts swinging back to Clare. To let her go would be to put their relationship on the same level as what he’d had with Ulrike. The way Clare stood so closely
by him in the bookstore, how she patiently waited on the platform for him to arrive: it is no accident that they met. This relationship is like nothing he has ever known. But knowing this truth does not make it any easier.

  When she leaves the bathroom, the apartment is empty, and the front door is locked. When Andi has not returned by midnight, and desperate for the kind of enveloping sleep that the couch denies, she considers sleeping in his bed. But she does not want to be there when he comes back. Surely he will come back.

  The springs of the couch make themselves known as she rolls from one side to the other. The morning light, as insipid as it is, offers her a new day, and she watches the darkness lift and form the shapes of the various pieces of furniture that will accompany her through this day as they have each one before.

  ‘Andi?’ She creeps from the couch, stepping quietly so as not to wake him.

  His bed is empty. It has not been slept in. She does not know what to think about this — her mind refuses to engage. She tries the door. Locked. She eats some cereal, the only food she seems to be able to keep down at the moment. Quickly spooning the flakes into her mouth, before they become soggy, she can feel the milk trickling down her chin. She doesn’t wipe it away. It will drip to her t-shirt, just as it did yesterday, where it will dry into a cloud shape, nestled like a pendant between her breasts. In the lounge room, she puts on a record. Edith Piaf’s voice is familiar enough to buoy her against her surrounds, but it is not right; it makes her think of summer nights, iced tea with gin, and other forms of restless happiness. Instead she puts on an album by Air — the thin music says nothing to her — and she rolls a cigarette and waits. But Andi does not return.

  She does not want to see him again yet she is on tenterhooks for the sound of his key in the door. What will happen if he never comes back? I want him, I want him not. How is it possible to desire something she does not want? For him to never return, while dreading that he will not.

  If he does not come back, she will die. She surprises herself with feeling nothing for this outcome, and she prods the thought repeatedly as though to assure herself she is actually thinking it. Does she not feel anything because she does not believe it? Or because she knows she cannot do anything about it? Or — and this notion interests her more than those of death — is her body tired of reacting to her feelings, insulted by her recent ignoring of its alerts? She feels physically ill when she sees Andi, yet she longs for him to come home. Perhaps her body has given up on her, is refusing to play the necessary charades with her mind to interpret her emotions. She tries again to reflect on whether she feels anything at the thought of dying. Her body is silent, and she taunts it with details, trying to get a rise. How long will it take? Three weeks? Four? Because if he does not return, it will happen. There is no way out of this apartment, no one to hear her calls, no way of reaching the outside world. She will starve to death.

  Will she allow herself to do this? She imagines her body might refuse. Why should it be so punished by her decision to accompany Andi home in the first place? It just came along, it participated, but it did not lead. But even if her body refuses to die, it could not continue living, not under the circumstances. She suspects that at some stage she would break a window and drop herself from it. Not having eaten, her body would lightly drift to the ground, swinging from side to side on stray gusts of wind, her mind following like a parachute.

  Maybe that’s what Andi is doing right now, sourcing something to kill her with. What would he use? An axe? A gun? The words are too small for the horror of the required action. And the whole possibility seems too messy to be probable. How would he dispose of her body? The difficulty of this task gives her hope. Because the body is never properly disposed of: it is always found. And if they find the body they find out who did it — this is a truth of modern science. But by then it would be too late to save her. So why is she not more afraid?

  She leaves her cereal bowl in the sink. Andi will wash the dishes; he does them every night. And for this reason it seems unlikely that he will not return, or that when he does, he will kill her. He is a normal person: he does the dishes every day. What to do next? She should take a shower, but then she would feel like she is preparing to go somewhere, so she does not.

  Sitting on the windowsill she wonders whether many people use the binoculars on the observation deck of the television tower. Can they see her? She waves. She could make an SOS message, a tale of despair written on a bedsheet and hung in the window. But she doubts any of the tourists up there would take any notice — she is too far away. She certainly didn’t. She was too busy cracking witty one-liners, lavishing Andi with charm and being thankful that he did not let her get on that train.

  How did she let it come to this? She made him fall for her: why has she not made him change his mind? She hears the arrogance of this belief, but recognises its accuracy. She did not force him to be captivated by her, but she did set out to beguile. It is like a game, that first attraction, and she knows how to play. She fed off his enthralment and made a conscious decision to win him over. To place all of the blame on Andi for this situation would be disingenuous. Staring out at the building opposite, she plays this thought back through her mind again, reconsidering each of its parts. Yes, she wanted him to want her. And now here she is, wanting him not to, wanting only to be away.

  So why has she not yet made him despise her? She puts those earlier thoughts aside and picks up this one, shaking it out. It is like trying to fold a fitted sheet. First, she has to find the corners and then she must wind the thought over on itself. And if it comes out too lumpy to be shelved, she must shake it out and begin again. Why has she not made him let her go? She has gone about this the wrong way. She should have been wailing and complaining for hours on end, making her entrapment as uncomfortable as possible for him. But she has been silent. As though she does not want to bother him. Is it because she harbours hope that this cannot continue for much longer? Or that she does not quite believe that this is happening? But she knows these are not the reasons. It is because she cannot purge herself of the knowledge that she is partly responsible for being here and something in her feels obliged to see it out. And with this, her body finally unites with her mind. Her stomach churns; she is disgusted with herself.

  Darkness has settled long before she hears the key in the lock, and her trembles involuntarily begin. She draws her knees to her chest and seizes her ankles, futilely trying to smother her bodily quake. Her body’s every reaction is so prominent, as though to remind her of its renewed presence. And yet, still it feels as though it belongs to someone else, that it is on loan to provide her company through her static days. She hugs herself and knows: this is when it is going to happen. Either way this will be the end, and she braces herself for the horror that is to come.

  ‘Are you still up?’ Andi sticks his head through the living-room doorway.

  She freezes in her armoured pose, waits for his steady steps across the room, waits for a blow, for pain to spread from a point of impact and to encompass every part of her. But his footsteps retreat, the bedroom door closes, and she lets herself go. Her legs splay and drop towards the floor, her arms flop at her side, and her whole body quivers, a soundless harp.

  When Clare finally speaks, her voice falls out into the quiet of the apartment. ‘What are we going to do?’

  It takes him a moment to find her in the room. He is so used to her silence he is not sure where her voice is coming from. Then he sees her feet hanging over the end of the couch, and when he doesn’t give her an answer her head lifts from the cushions. She sounds just as he remembers but she looks different. Different from what? From how he sees her in his mind, he answers his own inquisition. From the real Clare.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ She repeats the question. She is facing him but she is looking above him, addressing some part of him that is standing behind, and so he stands.

  ‘What do
you mean?’

  In response, she sighs. Her hair looks greasy and squashed to her head. He is ashamed that he has not been paying her more attention. He feels cheated. Why did she not tell him that she would change if he was not looking closely enough? She has become like an indifferent house pet, not noticing when he comes or goes. It wasn’t how he expected things to be, but he found comfort in the quietness of each day. It never seemed necessary to make a decision about the future.

  Since her outburst when he gave her the book, she has said nothing. More than two weeks. That night, he had stayed at his father’s apartment, half-heartedly trying to return to his childhood and fervently wishing his present was not happening. Why had he locked the door? Why could he not unlock it now? He had hoped that when he returned to the apartment the next day things would be different, had even hoped that she might have somehow escaped, leaving him miserable yet relieved. But everything remained the same. She went back to not speaking to him, not doing anything when he was in the room. The last fortnight has been an uninterrupted collection of Clare’s silence and his own pleading monologues, both tinged with the dullness of familiarity.

  But when she speaks, she is anything but familiar, and he waits, breath held and not wanting to put a foot wrong, for her next words.

  ‘Well, what next? Now that we’re here, what’s going to happen next?’

  There will be a next. Faced with this revelation, he realises he has no idea. He has given no thought to how this will be. ‘Nothing will happen. This is enough, isn’t it?’