The guy I’d knocked down had a couple of business ventures going, and he gave me everything back. I’d known that too when I’d said ‘Let him go,’ because by that point I’d already punched him. And when he went down, Blondie’s hair between his fingers, I could already feel the fists on my back, my belly and my face.
‘Sorry,’ said Blondie.
‘Forget it.’ His name was Stephan. He was half-Polish but you couldn’t tell from looking. Now and then we stood side by side in the yard and he smoked a cigarette, although he didn’t usually.
‘Have you got a wife outside, I mean, is there a girl waiting for you?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but don’t get your hopes up, little brother.’
He grinned; no, he smiled. ‘You’re not my type anyway.’
‘What happened there?’ I pointed at his eye, almost touching his face with my finger, then withdrew it again. His eye was blue and green, swollen half-shut.
‘And you?’ I raised my swollen top lip and whistled through the new gap in my teeth. ‘I asked you, gayboy,’ I said, whistling two or three off notes.
‘Walked into a door,’ he said, still smiling.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘easily done, too many doors round here.’
He got out two months before me. We didn’t say goodbye. He’d told me once he’d be going to Halle. I was there now and then myself, and I kind of knew I’d see him again, that the story wasn’t over yet, hadn’t even really begun, in the corridor in Torgau where Blondie had lost a few hairs.
‘Your pussy gone now, is she? Bet you’re sad now with no one to fuck, huh?’
I didn’t hit out any more, didn’t pummel into the guys, didn’t try to beat the shit out of them any more. I just walked past them, walked down the corridors and round the yard on my own and felt time passing more and more slowly.
My sister had never written to me but I knew she was living in Köthen, that she had a kid with some guy who worked in some bar in Köthen.
My sister sat on the edge of the sandpit, next to her brightly-coloured sand moulds and little plastic spades, and in front of her the kid sat in the sand, digging a hole and putting the sand in a blue bucket. I stood between the trees and looked over at them. I didn’t know how long I’d been standing there, it was nearly evening. I didn’t even know if the kid was a boy or a girl. It had blond hair and a small round face with a large nose. But I was a long way off so maybe the nose wasn’t all that large, and maybe all little kids had large noses. Two, two and a half; I tried to work out how old it was, but then I gave up and walked back between the trees to the station. I had a room above a bar there, maybe it was even the bar where the kid’s father worked, I had no idea, I’d been away too long, but I didn’t really care anyway.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Fine, thanks. Nice of you to come by. It’s been a long time. This is your uncle.’ She picked up the kid and handed it to me. ‘Hello,’ I said, stroking the blond hair cautiously. Sometimes I imagined her making coffee and serving cake, some kind of cake, and then I started wondering what sort of cake it might be and if she might have made it herself and how many teeth little kids are supposed to have before they can eat cake, with apples or cherries on top, but with the stones taken out … I sat in my room and knew I’d leave again without visiting her, maybe back to Leipzig, maybe to Halle … The window was open and I looked outside, even though it was dark by now and all that was opposite was a derelict house.
There was a club not far from the station. I could hear the music at night, I could hear the trains as well, sometimes I heard women’s voices, or were they still girls? They were down on the street, probably going to the club. It must have been a pretty big place; I heard cars coming and driving off. I hadn’t been to a club for years now.
I stood at the bar, watching the dance floor. It was pretty full, Friday night. Most of the people here looked pretty young: eighteen, nineteen, early twenties. Two young women stood next to me at the bar, drinking white wine. They’d looked over at me a couple of times but I didn’t know what to do. I watched the people dancing and sipped at my beer.
I’d been with a woman I used to know in Leipzig for a couple of days. Actually I’d gone to visit her husband but she was divorced now and alone, and it hadn’t worked out. I’d been away too long and I’d forgotten everything, even though I’d dreamed almost every night of not being alone when I got out.
‘It’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘It’ll sort itself out,’ and she was probably right, but when we lay together and she stroked me and I stroked her the fear and the cold didn’t go away, and I left while she was asleep.
I drank shots with my beer, and after four shots I noticed I needed to dance. The music was pretty good, sounded like George Michael, I’d liked him as a kid, but I’d even have danced to Beethoven. I wanted to move in among the dancers, shut my eyes and feel them, feel them close and hear only the music. I downed another shot. The girls next to me had disappeared, and I went over to the dance floor, wanting to disappear too, closed my eyes and started moving slowly. I was a bit scared I might have forgotten how to do that as well, but once I moved my feet to the rhythm my shoulders started relaxing, my arms still dangling on either side, but then I raised them slightly, moving them at chest level. Someone nudged me in the back, pretty hard, but it didn’t bother me, I was dancing and forgetting everything, not thinking of Blondie and the long corridors any more, not thinking of my sister living a few streets away with her kid and her man, and at that moment, in among all the people touching me and nudging me now and then, at that moment I thought there must be something like happiness, somewhere out there, and the fear and the cold I’d been dragging around with me since I’d got out were gone. I’d never have thought our trip would start here, but maybe, probably, it had already begun long before that, inside, on the corridor, when he’d lost a bushel of hair.
The girl was pretty far gone but so was I. We’d been dancing together, or not really together, just facing each other, but on some songs we held hands and looked at each other, our faces up close. I saw she had on a pretty thick layer of make up, with sweat running down over it. And she smelled strongly of alcohol, something sickly-sweet, but that didn’t bother me when she suddenly leant towards me and leaned her forehead against mine and I had to kiss her. We danced. We danced for a long time, we danced until we sweated and the sweat ran down our faces, and then we staggered to the exit.
‘What are you doing here, Stephan?’ I asked, holding onto the girl as she tried to drag me on towards the exit and then clung onto me.
‘Pretty little girlfriend,’ he said. A few minutes back, when we could hardly dance any more and I’d laid my head on the girl’s shoulder, I’d had a feeling I’d seen his blond hair somewhere in the crowd. But there were plenty of blond guys out there and he’d never told me he did business in Köthen. And he was doing business, I could tell straight away, even though the girl was tugging at me and wanting to leave and I had to concentrate to stop Blondie from swaying and whirling. Some guy palmed him a note, and he pressed something into his hand. The guy clenched his fist, opened it again for a moment and looked at his hand, then grinned, turned away and headed for the toilets. ‘It’ll take a while,’ Blondie called after him, ‘but then you’ll go mental.’
‘What’s all this crap?’ I said, shoving him in the chest. The girl let go of me and stumbled against the wall. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, turning her face to me. Her eyes opened and closed, but it was just the sweat running down her face.
‘Just a minute,’ I said. ‘Just a bit. Wait a minute, sweetheart.’ But she didn’t want to be my sweetheart any more, and I watched her swaying to the exit, raising both hands and saying something I didn’t understand.
‘Don’t you want to go after her?’ Blondie put his hand on my shoulder.
‘What are you doing in Köthen, Stephan? If they catch you here – Christ, you’re not even being careful!’ I took the note out of his other hand and sh
oved it into his jacket pocket.
‘Don’t worry, little brother,’ he patted my shoulder a couple of times. ‘They’re all village idiots here, they’ve got no idea, they won’t even notice.’ He winked at me and smiled. There it was again, his smile; he looked as innocent as a child. You wanted to help him, even though he might not even need any help, like a child you couldn’t help being fond of. Even if he’d done something really bad all he had to do was smile and you’d stroke his hair and everything would be all right again. I stumbled and held onto the wall where the girl had just been leaning. I looked towards the exit but she’d disappeared.
‘And you know what the best bit is?’ I closed my eyes, but he was right by my ear. ‘Painkillers. You get it, painkillers. I’m ripping these village idiots off and they don’t even notice!’ He laughed, and then I heard him rummaging in his pockets. ‘No one knows the brand; they’re from Poland with this little star on them. Like a pill, like ecstasy.’ I opened my eyes and saw the little white pill right in front of me, saw the star in the middle as well, and then there were two guys, they gave him two notes, and he gave them the pill and got another pill out of a little bag that he put back in his jacket pocket afterwards. ‘And be careful, lads, they’re …’ But they were gone. I gave myself a shake and tried to clear my head. I’d need a clear head soon enough, I was sure of that.
‘How long have you been standing here now?’
‘For a while, quite a while, I’ve earned a packet, hey, I’ll get you a drink!’ He held the notes in front of my nose, but I batted his hand away.
‘Right, come on, we’re getting out of here!’ I dragged him to the exit, and it was about time because they were coming for him now, a couple of yards behind us, the first of the village idiots who’d noticed that the pills Blondie was selling didn’t make them go quite as mental as he’d promised. And even though they weren’t in any pain, they still wanted their money back and they wanted to inflict some pain on Blondie. Five or six guys, young lads waving their arms and pointing at us, or only at him but I’d decided – no, not decided, it had just happened, and I was with him, right in the thick of it, and I let it happen. ‘Come on, let’s go!’ Then we were outside, and they were still coming after us, five or six young lads, and there were more and more of them now. We walked towards the station, and then we ran, and I shouted, ‘You fucking idiot – painkillers!’ And he laughed as we ran, and suddenly I couldn’t help laughing either, and I got a stitch.
‘Painkillers, you halfwits bought Polish painkillers!’
Did he shout, did I shout? Did we both shout while the village idiots were coming after us? We laughed and ran.
He lay next to me in bed and I watched him sleeping. We were in a cheap dive and the bed was far too small for two. We’d stayed in good hotels a couple of times, separate beds, and one time we’d had a room each. But when I’d woken up early he was lying on the carpet next to my bed. He had a talent for opening doors, and I’d found a blanket and covered him over.
He looked pretty pale lying next to me in bed, asleep, his head shifting on the pillow now and then. He’d snorted something to help him sleep, probably heroin. He always made sure I didn’t watch him doing it, even though I’d never said anything, and I needed some of it myself some nights. We took trains from town to town, usually medium-sized towns, sometimes the big cities, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, he’d been almost everywhere and he knew where we could go on tour. I can’t remember exactly where we’d started it all, it was probably some kind of coincidence, happened without us thinking much about it, turned out that way while we were riding the rails and didn’t know where to go next. Sometimes I thought … No, I hardly ever thought about it, it was as if we belonged together, like brothers, I told myself, and when we were sitting on trains, sleeping in hotel rooms, walking through the towns, it was as if we had to keep moving, and everything else that was behind us, that lay before us, was strangely blurred. We didn’t care about it, we were riding the rails.
I saw them sometimes when I slept. They were usually older men, sometimes young ones too. I saw the fear on their faces, in their eyes. Usually I didn’t even have to touch them. One old man had started crying. He was wearing a bit of make up, blusher on his cheeks – a painted old man crying and turning to the wall while I went though his pockets.
‘Stop crying, you queen,’ said Blondie, and before I could stop him he slapped him across the face. ‘Leave it out,’ I said, but he just looked at his hand, stained with blusher and the old man’s tears. ‘Dirty bastard, you fucking dirty bastard!’ He wiped his hand clean on the old man’s jacket. ‘This fucking queen’s got me all dirty.’
‘Leave it,’ I said, taking a couple of notes out of the old man’s wallet. He was still crying and he’d started trembling. I put the wallet back in his jacket and the old man trembled and said, ‘Please don’t hurt me.’ That had been up on the coast, by the door to the basement in a house near where the rent boys stood at night.
‘You mustn’t ever leave me alone then,’ said Blondie. He’d woken up. His eyes were blue, dark blue. Up on the coast, we’d often stood by the sea together.
‘How d’you mean?’ I asked, turning my head to look at the ceiling. The light was on, a couple of flies perched around it.
‘When I go with them,’ he said, and I felt him moving his legs, ‘promise me you’ll never …’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘You know that, Stephan, you know I’ll be there then, you know I’ll always come. We’re raking it in, you and me, they’re all village idiots, even in Hamburg, even in Cologne, eh?’ I laughed, and for a moment it looked like the light was flickering.
‘Village idiots,’ he said. He was talking pretty quietly now. I could hardly understand him and I turned back to him. ‘We’re doing pretty good,’ he whispered.
‘Yeah, we are,’ I said, putting my hand down on the pillow next to him.
‘Better than back then,’ he whispered. ‘Better than …’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘better than back then.’
‘Can you get me something please?’
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘if you want.’
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘A glass of water’s fine.’
‘Or a whisky, what about a wee dram, Stephan, help you sleep …’
‘No thanks, a glass of water’s fine.’ We looked at each other and he smiled. I got up and went to the table with the bottles of water and whisky. I drank a slug of whisky out of the bottle and poured a glass of water for him. I looked over at him and had another drink and saw his eyes moving, looking at me now. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘sometimes …’
‘Yeah?’ I said, screwing the cap back on the whisky bottle. He didn’t answer, and I asked, ‘Shall I turn the light off?’ I took the glass of water over to the bed. He’d closed his eyes and I sat down on the edge of the bed. His forehead was soaked in sweat, and I raised my hand but just put it down on the pillow next to him. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘sometimes …’ I drank his water and pushed the empty glass under the bed.
I saw their faces sometimes when I slept. There was one man who put up a bit of a fight. He was already near-naked and Blondie had taken his shirt off as well. Pretty young lad he was, with glasses, maybe a student. He was pretty well-built too but he wore glasses with black frames and pretty thick lenses. I didn’t usually even have to touch them, but this young lad was in his room, his own little room, and he wanted to defend it, it wasn’t just some cheap hotel, some corridor, some dark corner where he’d got himself a quick blow job, it was his own little home that he’d taken Stephan back to, and I’d almost come too late because the door was closed. Blondie hadn’t managed to open the door for me. He’d been lying on the bed, the student on top of him, he was a pretty broad well-built lad, probably not a student at all, a queer builder or an office worker who lifted weights, and all I saw was Stephan’s arms on the sheet next to the guy. ‘You can tell the cops your story, eh, about picking up a rent boy. You hit him, eh? Did you force
him?’ There was a bottle of whisky on the bedside table; I unscrewed the cap. ‘Maybe I’ll go to the cops and tell them you beat him up.’ I held his ID card in my hand and said, ‘I bet your parents are nice people, eh?’
‘I didn’t hit anyone,’ he said. His glasses were on the bedside table next to the bottle; one of the arms was broken. I drank a glug of the whisky and said something about compensation and was surprised he didn’t start crying like the old man had cried, outside the basement door up on the coast. He pressed a hand to his eye but there was no blood, and with the other eye he looked between me and Stephan, who was sitting at the table buttoning up his shirt. I said, ‘Stephan,’ and I threw him the whisky bottle, but he didn’t catch it and it fell on the floor and smashed. Was that the first time we went on tour?
I heard him breathing next to me and looked at the ceiling. The flies had gone.
We were sitting at a small table right by the huge window. It was night, and all the lights of the city lay twenty-seven floors below us. I don’t know whose idea it had been to come to Leipzig. We’d passed through a couple of villages around it, knocking off a load of dodgy pills. Then we’d picked up two guys in a dark park next to the ethnology museum, and now we were high above the city, five-star hotel, drinking kir royale and champagne and looking out across the lights on all the buildings, in the streets, eating starters and desserts, cod liver and prunes in bacon, cheese platters and turkey medallions, waving over the waiters who came trundling between the tables with little carts. ‘Would the gentlemen care for a choice pear brandy from the private distillery …?’
‘The gentlemen would,’ said Stephan, and the waiter fussed around, placing two little glasses on the table and filling them up with even more fuss.
‘Enjoy your drinks, gentlemen,’ he said with a slight bow of his torso, then trundled off with his cart.
‘Enjoy your drink, gentleman,’ I said as I raised my glass.
All the Lights Page 10
