You

by Zoran Drvenkar

  Is that what death stinks like? Can I smell his damned soul?

  You stood back up, took a deep breath of fresh air, and walked out.

  Perhaps walked isn’t the right word. Just as you instinctively reacted to your father’s presence with violence, now you instinctively took flight. There was no going back now. You had eleven marks and a few small coins in your wallet, nothing more. So you ran aimlessly through Bremen. You didn’t want to speak to anyone, you didn’t want to see anyone and suddenly you found yourself on a ramp leading up to the Autobahn. You didn’t care where the highway went, the only important thing was to make a start.

  Six hours later you got out of a car in Berlin. Your older cousin lived here, you didn’t know his address, you weren’t even sure if you wanted to look him up. He’d doubtless have been delighted to take in his uncle’s murderer.

  Berlin was a good start, 1981 a good year to move to the city, because everybody was talking about Berlin, the last refuge of the draft dodgers, the wild metropolis. You had your own romantic ideas too. For you, Berlin was the city of freedom, even though it was enclosed by walls. A city like my life. You liked the thought.

  You spent the first night in the Tiergarten. In the morning you walked through Berlin and the city tried in vain to please you. Everything inside you felt flat and dull. Your anger had taken a backseat and given way to helplessness, but you didn’t think about going home for a second.

  You had some french fries at a stand at Wittenbergplatz and looked at the people coming out of the subway, disappearing into the subway, hour after hour. There was no relationship. You were not one of them; they ignored you.

  Whenever your people talked about Berlin it was all about Kreuzberg, the alternative scene and the dream of being an anarchist. You asked the snack bar owner how to get to Kreuzberg.

  The U1 line took you to Kottbusser Tor. You left the station and knew at the sight of the street, the houses, and the people that this was the right place. At last the city reacted to you. It didn’t take a minute. A girl asked if you had a light for her cigarette. She became your first angel. There would be so many angels over the next few years that heaven had to close down for a while. Some of them disappeared completely from your life. You know that one angel became a prostitute, two became mothers, and one angel OD’d in Spain.

  Angel number 1 was called Natascha and she was a completely new experience for you. Not like the girls in Bremen. More energy, more zest. You thirstily drank her gestures and words, and you couldn’t even have said whether she was beautiful or not. It wasn’t about beauty, it was about this particular form of energy that hits you when you’re fifteen. You gave her a light and joked around, she laughed and listened to you and was so urbane that you felt like a village idiot with shit on his shoes.

  Side by side you walked through Kreuzberg, she showed you all the things you had to see. She gave you the feeling she was only there for you, and when she asked if you were looking for a place to stay, you looked down at her and thought: Am I that transparent? You didn’t want to tell her about the small town and the small life you’d fled. You worried that your problems would seem pathetic and childish. So you shrugged and your angel took you by the hand, really took you by the hand, and so the same day you found yourself in an old building with a view of Görlitzer Park and for the next eight years you were a squatter.

  “Ragnar?”

  You look up. David is pointing at the screen of his notebook. Fourteen minutes have passed since you left the boy alone. He isn’t sitting on the chair anymore. He’s walking along the swimming pool, back and forth. He reminds you of animals in the zoo, slowly going mad in their captivity. There’s a name for this behavior. Before it comes to your mind, Tanner says, “It’s rather sad. Give the little fucker a few minutes and he does what all little fuckers do.”

  You’ve left him his phone, it’s the oldest trick in the book. If a prisoner sees an open window, he climbs out. David turns the sound up. The boy is on the phone. Your brother has always insisted on high-quality products. You understand every word he says. It would be better if you didn’t have sound. You listen and you feel the rage. David turns red. No one says anything, because there’s nothing to say. The boy ends his call. David closes the notebook. You’ve heard everything. Tanner gets up from the table.

  “Shall we leave you alone?”

  You shake your head. Even though no one can see it, a steep slope has appeared in front of you. Your legs carry you, your heart pumps, and your brain is switched off. You can’t stand still. Yield to the pace and hope you don’t stumble and fall. You hate having no choice.

  “David, find out how far back the CCTV recordings go and where the Range Rover went. And contact that pathologist at the Humboldt Clinic. What’s his name again?”

  “Fischer.”

  “Right. We need a death certificate for Oskar and the death registration from the registry. I want those papers on the table today.” David nods and gets up. It’s time for you to send him away. He doesn’t need to see everything. You wait till he’s gone, and only then do you set off for the basement. You yield to the pace. The end of the slope is waiting. You’re still breathing calmly.

  The boy sits again on the chair and stares into the pool with great concentration. He’s a bad bluffer, his shoulders give him away. He turns around as you step through the door.

  “I’ve only known the girl since Tuesday night,” he says hastily, as if he’s been practicing the sentence and is relieved to say it at last.

  “That’s a start. So you’ve known her for three days. Excellent. Where can I find her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m going to ask again. Where can I find her?”

  “I said, I don’t know.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “I said, I’ve only known her since Tuesday night.”

  “I haven’t known you for half an hour and I know so much about you it gives me a headache.”

  The boy stares at the floor. You stare into the pool and think enough’s enough, and say to Tanner, “Give me your gun.”

  Tanner takes the automatic out of its shoulder holster and hands it to you. You hear the uneasy scrape of Leo’s feet. It’s a habit he’s developed over the past few weeks and he’s going to have to lose it soon, because his unease is getting on your nerves. You release the safety catch and press the barrel to the boy’s head.

  “Stand up.”

  He gets to his feet, his knees are trembling.

  “One last time. Where is she?”

  The boy doesn’t dare turn his head toward you.

  “Look at me.”

  He swivels his eyes to get you in range. And then you spot it. Inconspicuous, almost invisible. But you spot it. He’s smiling. Hidden in there amid all the fear and panic is a little smile. Even if you can’t grasp it, the guy standing in front of you is a goddamn martyr.

  How does a normal boy turn into a martyr within only two days? It starts with the boy standing helplessly in the middle of the night on a street in Berlin, with a helmet on his head. He isn’t really furious, even though a girl he doesn’t know has just driven off on his uncle’s Vespa. There’s a nervous flutter in his chest, like a bird moving its wings for the first time; there’s a longing, even though he doesn’t even know the girl’s name, and if someone were to tell him now that the girl was called Stink, he would even find something romantic about that. He’s happy. She talked to him, she looked at him, she stood beside him. Call it trashy or dazzled, call it dense or call it love. Whatever you call it, the girl has got you hook, line, and sinker. But that doesn’t make you a martyr, does it?

  The next morning Uncle Runa is sitting at your breakfast table reading the Slovenian sports newspaper Ekipa. He gets it from a kiosk on Kaiserdamm that takes deliveries from bus drivers who drive from Zagreb to Berlin and stop over in Slovenia. The paper is often over a week old, but that doesn’t bother Uncle Runa. He says he needs the contact with ho
me. You think if he needs contact, then he should go back to Slovenia. The sight of your uncle sitting at the table with the sports newspaper in his hand is a depressing one, because your father did exactly the same thing before he disappeared. Morning after morning.

  “How did it go yesterday?” asks Uncle Runa without looking up.

  “Same as always,” you reply, and think of the Vespa. If your uncle finds out that it has disappeared, you’ll just have to act the innocent and you’ll get away with it. Uncle Runa gets away with spending every other night at your place, after all. Your mother says he hasn’t got anybody else to have breakfast with. The loneliest people in the world are the lousiest liars.

  You pour yourself a cup. The coffee tastes burnt. You add some condensed milk, the toast jumps from the toaster, you put it on your plate and spread it with butter. Uncle Runa snorts, clears his throat, and goes on reading. You look out of the window and suppress a yawn. That’s your life, and there’s nothing in it to suggest that you’ll soon be a martyr.

  What a boring day. You keep an eye out for the girl at school, but there’s no sign of her. In the afternoon you meet your crowd. Darian doesn’t mention last night’s fiasco. His lower lip is much better, and the cut over his eye has scabbed over. He tells the guys one of the weights came off and nearly took off his head. The guys believe everything, but that isn’t much use to you, because Darian keeps you at a distance. You fucked up yesterday, and he’s making you pay for it. After school he asks why you didn’t call him back this morning, and it’s only then that you realize your phone is gone.

  “Get yourself a new one,” says Darian. “Only tramps don’t have phones.”

  He wants to play billiards, so you go and play billiards. The day slips away, Darian disappears at nine with Marco and Gerd, they want to trudge around the clubs; even though Wednesday’s a lame day, it’s better than just hanging around doing nothing. Their lives are parting company with your life here, like an Autobahn from a minor road. You head off to work at the pizza stand, agitated and nervous and, for the first time, curious about your night behind the counter.

  “Well, on time for once,” Uncle Runa greets you.

  You take off your jacket and put on the ridiculous apron with the grinning cook on it. Uncle Runa leans against the stack of beer crates and shoos the mosquitoes away with his breath. Since summer began he’s been smoking cigarillos, and the stench always reminds you of used diapers that have been left too long in the sun. Your uncle hasn’t the faintest idea that the Vespa behind him isn’t a Vespa. The bike was parked outside the station, so rusty that the lock fell off the first time you kicked it. No one will miss it. You covered it with the tarpaulin. It looks like the Vespa, just a bit slimmer.

  After an hour Uncle Runa leaves you alone at last. The waiting begins. She will come, you know that, she will come and give you the Vespa back and you will find out her name.

  You believe that until three o’clock.

  The next morning Uncle Runa is sitting at the breakfast table in your flat again, reading the same edition of Ekipa.

  “How did it go yesterday?”

  “Same as always.”

  You pour yourself a cup. The coffee tastes burnt. You add some condensed milk and spread butter on your toast. It’s half past nine, you have two free periods first thing and you’re in no hurry. Uncle Runa holds his cup out to you, you top it up, he snorts and goes on reading. Every day is like every other day if you don’t catch sight of the girl of your dreams. You look out the window and wish you knew her name.

  Ten minutes later you’re spitting foam into the basin and wondering why toothpaste has to foam quite so much, when your mother hammers against the wall.

  “What is it this time?!” you yell.

  She’s sitting in the living room, cigarette in her hand, feet on the footstool. Between her toes there are wads of pale blue cotton wool, the freshly applied nail polish gleams damply. The smell makes you feel nauseous, this mixture of chemistry and cigarette smoke in the morning is too much for you. There are already six cigarette butts in the ashtray, but you keep your mouth shut and say nothing about it. Your mother hands you the telephone as if it were a pair of dirty underpants that she found under your bed. She hates it when your friends call on the landline. You should use your cell phone, the line has to stay free. Since your father ran off with another woman, your mother has been waiting for him to call every day. She doesn’t want to hear how he is or what he’s doing. She just wants to yell at him. Or as she once told you: I want to tell the swine what I think of him, then I can die in peace.

  “Yes?” you say into the receiver.

  “Why didn’t you jump on the back?”

  You know right away that it’s her. You turn away from your mother and go into your room. Your heart is racing and you wonder where she got the number. Your mother calls out that you’re going to be late for school. Yeah, fuck you very much, you think, shut the bedroom door behind you, and press the receiver harder against your ear.

  “Can’t you talk, or what?”

  “I … I can talk. But that Vespa you swiped isn’t mine. It belongs to my uncle.”

  “Oh, poor uncle.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t shit your pants, you’ll get the thing back, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “If you help me.”

  “What?”

  “We have a problem here. My girls and me. We need some medicine. I mean, I can’t really go into a pharmacy and just ask for prescription drugs, can I? And you, well, you know your way around.”

  Her words echo in your ears.

  You know your way around.

  She must know that you’re friends with Darian.

  Damn.

  “Where did you get my number?”

  “Guess.”

  She’s confusing you, she’s making you nervous, you want to laugh out loud, you want to tell her that you spent minute after minute last night waiting for her at the pizza stand and that you forgive her everything. Just keep your mouth shut.

  “The number’s stored on your phone under Mom. And you look like somebody who lives with his mom …”

  She says nothing more, you can figure out the rest. Now she hasn’t just got your uncle’s Vespa, she’s got your cell phone as well. And she’s insulted you.

  So what?

  “And the Vespa isn’t stolen,” she adds, “it’s borrowed. You’ll get your phone back too.”

  “When?” you say far too quickly.

  You hear a honk and walk to the window. Another honk. You look down at the street. She’s sitting on the Vespa, grinning, her long hair in a ponytail, a pair of those sunglasses with outsized lenses on her nose, so that her face practically disappears behind them. She reminds you of a Mafia bride from one of those ’70s movies. She looks up at you, she talks into your cell phone.

  “Surprised?” you hear her saying into your ear, and then she makes the engine rattle and you burst out laughing and can’t stop. Perhaps it’s hysteria. Perhaps you’re just happy. You’d like to shout down that she’s mad, that she’s really and totally mad, when you hear someone roaring.

  “HEY, YOU CUNT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON MY VESPA?”

  You look to the right. Uncle Runa is leaning out of the kitchen window. His face is bright red, he’s shaking a fist.

  “GET OFF RIGHT NOW OR I’LL KILL YOU!”

  The girl does what anyone would do, Mafia bride or not. She puts her foot down and rattles away comfortably. Her red ponytail is a banner waving behind her.

  You can forget about school for now, and you should ignore your uncle’s outburst as well.

  “Did you see that? Was that my Vespa, or what?”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Mirko, what do you mean by bullshit? I’d recognize my Dragica anywhere. How the hell did that bitch get her hands on my Vespa?”

  “Uncle Runa, that wasn’t your Vespa,” you reassure him and murmur that you have to get to school now. You gr
ab your backpack and run from the apartment before he can ask you any more questions. You expect to see the girl in the street. The street is deserted. Two kids come toward you, kicking a cardboard cup back and forth.

  “Have you seen a girl on a Vespa?”

  “Hey, I’m still asleep,” says one of the boys and dodges you, while the other one dribbles around you as if you were a lamppost. You walk around the block. She needs your help, she called you, she won’t just disappear.

  Please, not again.

  You spit. Since she mentioned Darian, there’s been an unpleasant taste in your mouth. Bitter as envy, salty as regret. Your friend’s not happy with you. Why did this have to happen right now? Why not two days ago? You were still thick as thieves then, and there was no coward who had crept under a car.

  Two corners further on she’s sitting on the Vespa at the side of the street.

  “I knew you’d come,” she says and hands you your cell phone. “And the Vespa?”

  “Will you help me?”

  “I’ll help you, but I need the Vespa back.”

  She gets off, puts the Vespa on its kickstand, and hands you the key and a piece of paper.

  “This is the list.”

  You unfold the paper.

  Oxazepam. Tilidine. Naloxone. Nemexin. Clomethiazole.

  “Wow, what’s the plan, are you opening a pharmacy or something?”

  She doesn’t smile. She puts her sunglasses up on her forehead, the skin under her left eye is swollen.

  “Who did that?”

  “Not the issue.”

  “Did someone hit you?”

  “Calm down, it was an accident.”

  She flicks the paper in your hand.

  “Can you get me some of this stuff?”

  You look at the list again. You don’t know what kind of drugs they are and how you would get hold of them, but you keep that to yourself. She could ask you for uranium and you’d find some for her.

  “I’m sure I can get some of it,” you assure her, and look at her almost pleadingly. “Is that all?”