Just Call Me Superhero (7 page)

Dirk piped up that he could do it, too. Take me to the station. I wondered what made him think he would be any more palatable to me as a chaperone than Claudia was. Then it became clear that he suspected I didn’t like feeling controlled by Claudia.

“Sure, you drive me to the station,” I generously permitted him. “My mother is always busy at the office at that time of day anyway.”

It was more complicated than I expected.

The night before, I’d already thrown everything into my suitcase, including six pairs of sunglasses in identical leather cases, when the phone rang. I figured it was Janne again or at least her mother wanting to reassure herself that I really would keep an eye out for Janne. But I was disappointed. It was Kevin on the phone, and he asked me in a friendly tone how I was planning to get to the station.

Like an idiot I told him the truth. He asked whether it would be too much trouble for us to pick him up. He lived practically around the corner and his boyfriend had to go to work. He gave me a street name I’d never heard of before. I didn’t really have any choice.

C
laudia said goodbye with a kiss on the cheek and a slap on the back—like I had dust on my back. I promised to send her a text as soon as I arrived. Then she was off, and I stared at the spot where she had just been standing.

Dirk drove a two-seater convertible. There was a backseat, but it wouldn’t have held anyone bigger than a munchkin and our gang of cripples didn’t include one of those. I squeezed my suitcase into the tiny trunk. Kevin would have to tie his to the back, I thought, and it would roll along behind us.

“We have to accompany a fellow traveler,” I said formally.

Dirk nodded, hemmed and hawed a bit, and finally asked what kind of disability the person had.

“I don’t know what you would call it,” I said. “He’s crazy. Apparently he went after somebody because he heard voices. And he’s also a poof; I don’t know how the two things are related.”

From that point on Dirk didn’t say anything more.

Kevin didn’t live anywhere near me but rather over at Gesundbrunnen, on the third floor of a yellow-painted concrete high-rise block. He waved out the window and something about his dark profile disturbed me. The door buzzed open even though I wasn’t planning to go upstairs. Dirk left the car in the middle of the street with the motor running and came up the stairs behind me. It obviously made him a little uncomfortable. He must have loved Claudia a whole lot given the things he did for her. An early version of approval germinated inside me.

My forebodings were confirmed as soon as I entered the apartment. Kevin had lined up several small bags in the hall, each decorated with a pearly luggage tag. Unfortunately he himself was completely naked.

“Are you not ready?” I yelled. “Do you think the train will wait for you?”

“I’m ready,” said Kevin.

I picked a T-shirt up from the floor and tossed it to him.

“Not that one,” he moaned, but then he glanced at me and back at the shirt and threw it on. Then, nearly unprompted, he set off searching for a pair of pants. I looked into the kitchen, which was small but spotless. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that Kevin supposedly lived here with a partner. At the end of the day I still felt like Claudia’s little mama’s boy—I’d only just learned how to run the washing machine. Yet I was only a little younger than Kevin.

“I’m ready,” Kevin repeated proudly. I nodded: this time he had jeans on. They were cut off just below the knee and a fringe hung playfully down.

I grabbed two bags, Kevin the other three. Dirk, whom I’d forgotten in the staircase, mumbled something about making himself useful. Kevin had just closed the door when he suddenly screamed shrilly.

“What now?!?” I shouted.

“I forgot,” he moaned, “I forgot about Kongo.”

He pulled a key, hanging on a cord around his neck, out from under his T-shirt, bent over, and unlocked the door without taking the cord off this neck. He raced inside; I followed him yelling threateningly. Kevin ran into the kitchen, snapped up from the floor a bowl filled with sticky jam-filled cookies, and emptied it into a waiting bag that was already half-full of the same cookies. Then he shook fresh ones into the bowl from a box and stood up smiling.

“Kongo smashes everything to bits if he doesn’t get fed.”

“Is Kongo a cat?” I asked weakly.

Kevin shook his head.

“A dog?”

Again he shook his head. I decided I didn’t really want to know.

“One last question, what’s that stuff?” I pointed to the bag where he’d just dumped the cookies that had already been in the bowl.

“Oh that,” said Kevin. “Kongo already ate that.”

At that point I just shut down.

The only ones who’d been accompanied to the station by their parents were Janne and Friedrich. Janne’s mother was talking to the guru. Even at a distance I could see that the guru was sweating. Instead of his usual hat he had on a baseball cap that out of nervousness he kept taking off. He was probably hoping right to the end that none of us would show up.

Friedrich’s father towered over everyone. His gray hair gleamed like a helmet on his head, and with his crest and his graying mustache he looked like an aged Hitler Youth member. I would never have taken this man for Friedrich’s father if Friedrich hadn’t fought his way over to me and introduced me to the Hitler-grandpa, whom he addressed as Papa.

Friedrich’s papa looked at me and not a single muscle moved in his ruggedly creased face. He shook my hand with a very firm grip but unlike Friedrich didn’t say much. Actually nothing at all. Together with Janne he was the second person in a short period of time who didn’t deem me worthy of a second glance. Maybe he used to work at a clinic for burn victims or as a military doctor. But then he would have done something about the basal cell carcinoma spreading across the left side of his forehead. Though maybe he wanted a natural death rather than having medications screw around with things.

The guru stood on his tiptoes and counted us. In an attack of generosity I had allowed Dirk to come with me to the platform after we’d dug Kevin out from under all his bags in the backseat. First and foremost because Dirk also wheeled my suitcase. He was also carrying some of Kevin’s luggage and it made him look unbearably gay to me. Kevin stumbled along behind with a smile on his face that seemed directed at nothing concrete and at the same time at everything.

Dirk’s gaze went from one person to the next, taking in the prosthetic, skipping over Friedrich, and paused quizzically on Marlon. And then it arrived at Janne. I saw how Dirk exhaled and I suddenly felt jealous. The way he gawked at her bothered me.

“Thanks a lot and
auf wiedersehen
,” I shook his hand stiffly before he hit on the idea to hug me.

“My pleasure,” he said. Suddenly I felt bad for him.

“Take good care of Claudia and feed my fish, Dirk,” I said.

He nodded, turned quickly, and left.

D
uring boarding there was some confusion concerning Janne. The guru had informed the rail authority about the guest with limited mobility. Now two beefy men in uniform had assembled in front of her, and Janne looked at them in such a way that left them afraid to do anything. Janne’s mother stood next to her and red splotches appeared on her cheeks.

“We’ve never traveled by train before,” she said as I went over to her.

Janne’s face twisted into a grimace. I was afraid she would start to cry. As supremely self-assured as she normally was, that’s how shatteringly helpless she now seemed. And before I knew what to do, Richard shoved past me. He squatted in front of Janne and asked her something quietly. She nodded and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Richard planted his feet, bent down, and effortlessly lifted Janne. She reclined in his arms like Snow White being taken out of her glass coffin. Friedrich’s father fiddled with the wheelchair in the meantime. It clicked and then the wheelchair was suddenly totally flat and looked quite light.

“Here,” said Hitler-grandpa, shoving it into my hands.

Nope, it wasn’t as light as it looked. I had a tough time holding it with one hand. I looked at my suitcase. Janne’s mother pulled it to the door for me. Janne’s voice came from up above us. She waved happily out of the open train window.

“Hurry, hurry,” the guru urged, and I got the wheelchair into the train and jumped back down to grab my suitcase.

With nothing to do, the uniformed station attendants carried Kevin’s bags aboard. I turned around. Marlon was standing on the platform as impassive as a Coke machine. Nobody seemed to have thought of the fact that he might also need help. His duffel bag lay at his feet.

For a second the thought shot through my mind that we could depart without him and he wouldn’t say a word, he’d just be left standing there. I reached for my suitcase with one hand and for Marlon’s elbow with the other. “Here’s the door,” I said.

He put his arm out and his fingers clenched my shoulder. His grip was strong and for a moment I panicked, thinking he might break my collarbone. The guru yelled from the railcar and Janne’s mother hurried over and grabbed my suitcase again.

“Quickly, quickly,” she said. I wondered whether she was really worried about us or only about Janne. Maybe she had realized what wonderful young people she had entrusted her precious daughter to.

I took my suitcase from her and climbed onto the train with Marlon in tow. “Watch it, steps,” I said too late, when Marlon was already cursing and had let go of me for a second. Janne’s mother hoisted Marlon’s fallen duffel bag. I turned around: apparently she was trying to decide whether she dared to give Marlon a push from behind. Luckily she decided against it.

We stood panting in the railcar and the door snapped shut in our faces. I waved to Janne’s mother. Her smile was pained and relieved at the same time. She crumpled a tissue in her hand. Friedrich’s Hitler-grandpa went over to her quickly, taking broad strides, and patted her elbow. Then the platform disappeared from view.

I pushed open the door to the compartment. It was already full. Janne was sitting next to Richard. Friedrich and Kevin had taken the seats opposite her. The last free seats had luggage on them. Janne looked at us and I could see in her eyes that she would like to have swapped us for some of the people sitting near her. But maybe it was only Marlon she wanted to swap in.

He was lucky he hadn’t seen how easily Richard had lifted Janne on the platform. After I had such difficulty handling the wheelchair, I looked at Richard differently. And it was clear that Janne must have as well. There’s no way I could have lifted a girl up and into a train with my own two legs. I looked skeptically at Richard’s upper arm, but there wasn’t much to see under his loose-fitting checkered sleeves.

She probably didn’t weigh much, I decided. Maybe her legs didn’t weigh anything. Legs must make up a significant portion of a person’s weight. I just needed to exercise a bit more and I’d be able to carry her.

The guru waved from the next compartment.

Marlon stood there like a statue that someone had accidently unveiled in the wrong place. His face didn’t show any emotion. I said to him, “It’s full here. The guru is waving to us from the next compartment,” so he wouldn’t wonder why we still hadn’t sat down and were just standing around like idiots. I wondered how Marlon got around the city and whether he ever went to areas he didn’t know. Maybe a cane or a dog would really have come in handy. I’d had all sorts of impressions of Marlon—but that he was helpless had never occurred to me.

We sat down with the guru after I stowed my suitcase and Marlon’s duffel bag on the luggage rack. It suddenly hit me that I was the least impaired person in the group. Though I was still the ugliest.

The guru had put his cap in his lap and was flipping through a stack of documents. Between nondescript slips of paper were ticket printouts and entire sheets of handwritten notes. I craned my neck because I thought I recognized Claudia’s handwriting on one of the sheets.

The guru had two deep lines running across his forehead. His face was flushed.

“Problem?” I asked. Marlon sat casually next to me, facing the window as if watching the landscape fly past.

The guru shrugged his shoulders. “Depends on how you see it.”

“Where’s the camera?” I asked.

“What camera? Oh.” He pointed to a blue bag in the luggage rack.

“May I?”

He obviously didn’t have the slightest desire to give me his camera, but he stood up anyway and reached for the bag and pulled the camera out with both hands and handed it to me. I turned it all around. It looked cheap.

“Can you really work with something like this?” I asked. “Can you make a real movie on it?”

“Of course,” said the guru without looking up at me. “Should I show you how it works?”

“I can figure it out,” I said, testing a few buttons.

Marlon still hadn’t moved. I turned on the camera, started recording, and pointed the lens at Marlon. No idea what he picked up on but all of a sudden he said, “I’m going to punch you in the face.” He’ll have to find my face first, I thought, somewhere in his perpetual darkness, but I didn’t say it. I also didn’t say that I could have left him standing there on the platform earlier. I took the camera out into the hall and started shooting the little gardens passing by.

They were laughing in the other compartment. I couldn’t understand it. In our compartment the atmosphere was like a funeral and here they were laughing like they were on a school field trip. I pointed the camera at the door to the compartment. They had drawn the curtain. No chance to get a candid shot. I felt locked out and knocked on the door.

The laughing stopped. I pushed open the door and pulled the curtain aside. Friedrich’s chuckles were the last to die down. They looked at me as if I was the ghost of their dead aunt. I looked at them through the viewfinder. They were playing cards. A bag of gummi bears was being passed around.

I pointed the camera at Janne. She was shuffling the cards and looking at her hands as she did. I had the impression that she was trembling slightly. Maybe it was just the vibrations of the old train. Her wheelchair was folded up and propped between the seat bench and the door.