An Honest Man

by Ben Fergusson

  ‘I didn’t realise you were here,’ I shouted through the glass. ‘I just recognised the sign.’

  He fumbled about for a key and pointed at his ears to indicate he hadn’t heard me. I heard his muffled, ‘Wait, wait. I’m coming.’ He tripped on a pile of newspapers and laughed, pointing at himself. ‘Clumsy!’ he shouted.

  ‘I should really go,’ I said.

  He pulled the door open. ‘You’re here.’

  I caught the lemony scent of him, but it was immediately overwhelmed by the shop’s musty breath, of old paper, pipe tobacco, cold cooking fat and dry spices.

  ‘I was out late with friends until like five and I was on my way home,’ I lied.

  ‘Coming down Eisenacher to get to Charlottenburg?’

  ‘We go to a bar nearby. I was wandering around before I headed home.’

  ‘And you just happened to come by the shop?’

  I don’t think I have ever felt shame more intensely in my life. It kept coming at me in waves, washing coldly through me, assaulting me in its white heat as Oz stood in front of me smiling sweetly. I had often felt it for a flash, when Tobias’s eyes had travelled up to our apartment windows as I watched him from the dark room, when my aunt had tried the door to her bathroom as I snooped through her medicine cabinet, but these disasters had always been avoided or easily excused. This, though, was irreparable. But I tried my best, stuttering, ‘I remembered Eisenacher Straße … Because you gave me your card. I was just passing and—’

  ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘I bought off your silence with literature!’ He laughed, and held the door open. ‘Please. Please. Come in.’

  ‘Oh, no. No, honestly. I should get home.’ My T-shirt clung to my back. ‘That’s not why … I didn’t know you’d be here. I didn’t mean for you to open up.’

  ‘Please come in,’ he said. ‘I always have to be here early for the newspaper delivery. I’m meant to reorder books for the two hours until we open up, but it takes ten minutes. There’s nothing to do. Honestly. You’ll be doing me a massive favour.’

  I gripped my head and squinted down the street. I could hear the distant whine of the U-Bahn train at Eisenacher Straße Station and I thought about running. He would think I was being ridiculous, but then I would be gone and if I ran hard enough I might be able to drown out the sound of him calling after me.

  ‘You can have some tea,’ he said. ‘Genuine Turkish tea from a genuine Turk.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, capitulating, ‘but just for five minutes.’

  *

  I could hear the kettle boiling and the clinking of glass from the back room. I wandered around the shop with my hands in my pockets, my mouth still tasting of toothpaste, and looked at the Turkish magazines with beautiful dark-haired men and women in heavily retouched, soft-focused photographs. I felt lightheaded from the abating shock. On the front pages of the newspapers there were pictures of Protestant hostages being held by an armed gang in Mindanao in the Philippines and a congressman from Texas who’d died in a plane crash in Ethiopia.

  Der Spiegel had a picture of refugees from East Germany with the headline ‘Will East Germany Implode? Mass Exodus from Honecker’s Socialism’. Since the Helsinki Accords, it had become easier to apply to leave the GDR, and more and more East Berliners were appearing tearfully on Platform B of Friedrichstraße Station. There were also sporadic bursts of refugees escaping through other Eastern Bloc countries. But these were things we saw on TV. West Berlin was not awash with East German refugees and we were used to dismissing this sort of apocalyptic sentiment. We’d been hearing it for years.

  The counter was like the counter of any Turkish corner shop: plastic racks filled with gum, chocolate bars and lighters. I picked up a cigarette that Oz had been smoking – an unfiltered Gitane – and I touched the damp end where his mouth had been. ‘You stupid fucking cunt,’ I said to myself, watching my trembling fingers. I was going to have to cycle to Grunewald with Maike in an hour having had next to no sleep and having to lie about why.

  Behind the counter there was a shelf of cigarettes and in the corner nearest the door, where the morning sun misted the dusty glass gold, was Oz’s German book section, with a smattering of classics and well-received contemporary novels. I smiled, because I had read so many. It looked like my bookshelf at home.

  ‘What’s your name again?’ Oz shouted from the back room.

  ‘Ralf!’

  ‘I’m Oz,’ he called.

  ‘I remember,’ I said, but felt instantly that it was the wrong thing to say.

  ‘Not many famous Ralfs,’ he said. His voice was suddenly in the room and I turned to find him standing in the doorway with a tray, holding a steaming metal teapot and two small glasses.

  ‘No. That’s why Mum picked it. She said it was for me to make famous.’

  ‘That sounds like a lot of pressure.’ He put the tray down on the counter top. ‘Are you going to be famous, then?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m going to study geology.’

  ‘And become a teacher?’

  ‘Probably do research.’

  ‘Ralf Regenbogen.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘He’s a famous Ralf. Footballer. Plays for Rot-Weiss-Essen. Used to be at Schalke.’

  I nodded. ‘I’m not into football enough to know all the names. I just watch a bit of Bundesliga with my brother and the national stuff when it’s on.’

  Oz smiled and let out a little laughing puff of air as if I’d said something clever.

  ‘So you work here?’ I said.

  He was wearing an ochre-and-blue lumberjack shirt, rolled up to the elbows. He poured out two glasses of honey-coloured tea and the shape of his hands, the strength in his bare lower arms, brushed with fine black hairs, and the delicacy of the gesture elicited in me a surge of desire so strong it felt like nausea. I grabbed the glass he offered me and took a quick sip; it burnt my tongue and the bottom of my lip. ‘It’s hot,’ I said, putting it back on the tray.

  ‘It’ll cool down quickly,’ he said, sucking the last out of his cigarette and putting it out in a full ashtray. We watched each other for a second too long.

  ‘I need to finish this,’ he said. He looked at the light above him and clicked at the switch behind the counter to show me. ‘My uncle leaves me all the broken and burnt out things to sort out.’ He picked up a fresh bulb and climbed onto an old office chair covered in red leatherette, its rips fixed with silver duct tape, standing up unsteadily as it rattled beneath him.

  ‘Is that a good idea?’ I said.

  ‘It’ll be fine.’

  He raised himself up like an acrobat at the top of a human pyramid, slowly reaching to the ceiling to unscrew the bulb, revealing his bare stomach and the soft dark hair crowding around his belly button.

  ‘Can you hold this,’ he said, slowly passing down the old bulb.

  I took it and the chair wobbled.

  ‘Scheiße!’ I said, thinking he was going to fall off, but he put his hand on the top of my head to steady himself.

  He laughed and said, ‘Fuck! Almost. Hold the chair, will you.’

  I held it, as he stretched up again, my face by his bared belly. I could smell his skin, his cheap shower gel and the faint scent of laundry detergent in his underpants.

  ‘Try it before I get down,’ he said and kept his fingers pressed into my skull as I turned and tried the light switch. The bulb flashed brightly above his head and he held out his hands like a magician. ‘Ta da!’

  He came down off the chair slowly, moving his hand to my shoulder, his thumb pushed up against my neck, until his feet were back on the ground.

  ‘I thought you were going to fall,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I never fall.’ His hand was still on my shoulder. He moved forward and I thought he was going to kiss me, so I automatically pulled away, hitting my elbow painfully on the edge of the counter.

  ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘I was just … ’

  ‘I know,’ I said, escaping around the coun
ter, seeing that he had been reaching past me to pick up the old light bulb, which he now tossed across the room, where it landed precisely in a stuffed bin in the corner. ‘I’m hungover, and jumpy. Jumpy, jumpy, jumpy,’ I said, bouncing up and down on the spot.

  He looked confused.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m not being very funny.’

  ‘Why do you need to be funny?’

  ‘People like funny people.’

  ‘You don’t have to funny to be liked.’

  ‘OK, Dr Freud.’ I was embarrassing myself and I felt ashamed. ‘Bet you’re sorry you asked me to come now.’

  ‘I’m not sorry.’

  ‘Why did you ask me?’ I said it as if he was at fault. I felt hot and angry. Because he shouldn’t’ve talked to me at the pool and he shouldn’t’ve invited me to his bookshop. It was weird.

  ‘Ralf,’ Oz said. ‘I asked you … ’ I flushed red, my face burned, because I thought he was going to say ‘because I like you’ and I was terrified and excited, but he said, ‘ … because of Tobias Rode.’

  The heat fell away. It was about his father’s flats.

  ‘Tobias can’t be subletting,’ I said, trying to sound indifferent. Oz had folded his arms and one hand had found its way to his chin. I stared at the tender pinkness of his nails. ‘His flat’s not big enough and we can see into every room, except the bathroom and the bedroom. If he was subletting to someone I’d’ve seen something.’

  He was concentrating very hard on my face.

  ‘Ralf, did you talk to him or your mum about what I said to you? About my dad’s flat and the subletting?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘That’s good. That’s really good. Because I think you’ve probably realised this is about more than just flats.’

  I felt the good schoolboy’s pleasure at having done something right, but this was quickly overwhelmed by a sense of the world peeling away around me.

  ‘I don’t know what this is about at all,’ I said.

  ‘You’re British–West German – that’s right, isn’t it? So West Berlin must be very important to you. For your family it’s everything, when you think about it.’

  In the dusky back of the airless shop, his eyes were the colour of turning leaves.

  ‘No, I don’t think about it,’ I said, uncomfortable about being coerced, but also telling the truth: I really didn’t think about it at all.

  He tipped his head and tried a different tack. ‘If you can see into that much of his flat, you must also notice things. Notice if he has visitors. Or does anything odd.’

  I thought of the notebooks I had filled with Tobias’s movements. But I couldn’t give him up, whatever this man thought he’d done. Not Tobias.

  ‘He’s just a viola player,’ I said.

  ‘We’re all more than our jobs,’ said Oz. ‘We’re all lots of complicated things, sometimes contradictory things. Even good people, people we like, can do things that we don’t like or that we know are wrong. And then it’s our job to decide what’s important. A friendly neighbour or our country.’

  ‘Our country?’ I said. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Oz softened instantly. ‘I’m sorry, Ralf. I’m going in too hard.’ He laughed to himself.

  ‘Is something going to happen to Tobias?’

  He held up his hands as if surrendering. ‘Listen, I’ve just been asked to keep an eye on him. No one’s getting into any trouble – the opposite. This is about doing something good for your country. For both of your countries.’

  ‘What, are you a spy or something?’ I said, laughing nervously.

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing as grand as that.’

  ‘But you’re working for the government?’

  He picked up his glass, knocked back his tea and, not taking his eyes off me, held it up offering me more.

  I shook my head. This wasn’t a conversation with a friendly bookseller, this wasn’t a new acquaintance I could desire from afar. Every word I uttered in his presence had grown heavy and dangerous.

  I put down my glass and walked to the door. He dodged around the stacked papers, pulling the door open a crack and then holding it. ‘What were you actually doing here at five in the morning?’

  ‘I was out with friends at a bar.’

  ‘The ones from the pool?’

  ‘Yup. And …’

  ‘Your girlfriend? The tall one?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘There isn’t a “but”. She is my girlfriend.’

  ‘But … what, you don’t have sex with each other?’

  I looked up at him, genuinely shocked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just got the sense that … I don’t know what I thought. Sorry.’

  I nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we have sex.’

  He looked down at my feet, as if I’d wounded him, then pulled the door wide open. The sun on his face highlighted the dark freckles that peppered his cheeks.

  ‘I’m sorry about coming,’ I said. ‘I really didn’t think you’d be here. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve completely got the wrong end of the stick.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you came.’

  I smiled weakly and stepped down onto the pavement.

  ‘Ralf,’ he said, squinting at me.

  I turned back.

  ‘Your neighbour, Tobias – if he does ever do anything suspicious, or if you just want to talk, you know where I am.’

  ‘Yes,’ I muttered.

  I ran to my bike as he shouted, ‘You didn’t pick a book!’ from the door.

  I cycled off, not turning, pounding so hard on the pedals that my thighs were shaking when I climbed up to our apartment. Maike was already there sitting on the stairs in front of our door waiting for me. She was asleep, slumped against the cold chipped-plaster wall, her rucksack tipped over, her red thermos half rolled out. One long, bare leg was stretched out down the stairs, ending in thick bark-coloured socks and her battered walking boots. Sunlight filled with golden dust fell across it and lit the golden hairs above her tanned knees. I knelt on the steps below her and kissed her calf. She woke, inhaling deeply, her head swinging to life.

  ‘I love you,’ I said.

  She smiled wearily and said, ‘I know.’

  Nine

  That final summer was hot and humid from June through to September. Berlin sits at the centre of the Northern European Plain scraped flat by the Weichselian, Saale and Elster glaciations, and the weather migrates slowly over it in heavy masses, enveloping the city for days on end. No one waits out the weather in Berlin. When rain comes, it comes for days, when snow falls, it lies on the ground for months, when the heat comes, it stays, immune to rain, clouds, wind, stoically stripping Berliners of their clothes and sending them out to the lakes and into the parks, desperate to escape the humid air if only for the briefest moment. And when the thunderstorms come, they don’t clear the air, but throw down water like water thrown on the stones of a sauna, making the air impossibly damp and hot.

  So a week after the bookshop, my T-shirt was already damp when I unlocked my bike and wheeled it into the hall to find Tobias standing in front of his open mailbox. I wiped my forehead with my arm, and watched him lean on his good leg and retrieve a battered envelope.

  I had only seen him one other time since Stefan and I had caught him staring up at our kitchen window. He had been sitting in his narrow kitchen eating bright orange soup, staring. I desperately hoped that he would do nothing to confirm the vague suspicions that Oz had hinted at. But how could I not wonder what the meaning of the bowl was, of the spoon, of the curtainless kitchen window. Was someone watching him? Was he watching someone else? Was the cactus on the windowsill a message? Was the John Coltrane album on his living-room floor a message? Were his white socks discarded by the fridge a message?

  At his mailbox, Tobias touched the handwriting on the envelope and smiled tenderly.
I considered the soft, milky curve of his neck that sloped down into his ancient T-shirt. I studied the way his straight hair stopped dead, the beautiful skin below unencumbered by the curling fluff that covered the back of my father’s neck. It was impossible to believe that he was endangering anyone.

  Tobias ripped the envelope open. His head tipped and, aware that I was about to come into his field of vision, I opened my mouth to call out, ‘Something nice?’ But he took a watch out of the envelope. A watch with a white face and a brown strap, and before I could consciously connect the watch with the one on the floor of my mother’s bedroom I reacted physically, my skin heating then cooling, my knees giving way, so that I had to lean onto my bike, making the tyres squeak on the tiled floor.

  Tobias turned. His smile faltered, but he managed to lift it and to cry out, ‘Ralf!’ in his blustery, joyous way.

  He saw me staring at the watch, so he held it up and said, ‘I thought I’d lost it on the U-Bahn but someone must have sent it back.’

  This lie enraged me and, in an unpleasantly high and trembling voice, I said, ‘How did they know it was yours?’

  ‘I called them. The BVG.’

  ‘I didn’t know they posted things like that back.’

  ‘I know,’ Tobias said. ‘Neither did I. It’s wonderful.’

  I wheeled my bike closer, my eyes fixed on the watch held between his thumb and forefinger, hoping not to read ‘Ruhla’, hoping not to read ‘15 jewels’. But I did read them, and for a second, in that oppressive heat, I was terrified I was going to throw up.

  ‘Sometimes people surprise you,’ Tobias said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, see you later.’

  I stood propped up on my bike, hearing him limp across the courtyard and go up the back stairs to his apartment. I stared for a while at a crack in the glass of the heavy wooden doors to the block. It reflected the white of the sun and drew it across the vista of the street beyond. People passed by.