Shorter Days (9 page)

Finally a stream of light yellow urine comes out. The fake red color of the drink doesn't change, but the former level is restored. He leaves the can in the sink, the spoon dripping a long trail of tomato sauce across the shining silver. He dumps out a few ravioli too—they look like something, eyes maybe. Pornstar will lose it. It's a shame Marco won't get to see his face, especially when he feels like knocking back some of his swill. Normally Marco would wipe up all of his mess, hide the can in the trash, secretly, like a rat, a pest. He's learned that over the years with Porno. The fact that it's all over now feels so strange that Marco just stands and stares into space, his torso slumped slightly, hands in his pockets. He has to think.

Before, when he was still Mini-Marco, he was obsessed with his hiding place: his clothes hiding place. It was a million times more important than learning vocabulary or math, or whatever the idiot president said they had to do. Mini-Marco always had to have clean pants. He was insanely careful, stopped playing soccer, stopped going to Wren House. Sometimes he even hid in the closet at school so the teachers wouldn't drag him out for fresh air. If he didn't watch out, something could always get on them. Then he would be “filthy,” as Pornstar liked to yell. He had a plastic bag with pants and a shirt. He folded everything as small as possible and stuck it behind the pipe in the far right cubicle of the boy's bathroom, the one against the wall. Mini-Marco was always checking to make sure everything was still there, that no janitor or workman had discovered it. Something like that could take up a lot of time for a little baby like Mini-Marco, not to mention all the time he spent thinking about the schnitzel hands and the vacuum cleaner pipe, and Skinny Anita, who didn't talk to Grandma Bine anymore and didn't call Marco “retard,” and instead didn't talk to him at all. There was no space for other thoughts—about himself, or about Eino and Estonia. That's why they're all flooding in now, crashing through his skull like wet rags tumbling around in the washing machine. He doesn't know what to focus on first. He has to be careful not to screw around, otherwise he'll never pull off getting out of here. For example, the way it all started, with Porno—that always comes back to him. He can't do anything about it, doesn't want to think about it, but it rattles around in his head anyway, and he has to look: Fourth grader Marco Knopp sat on the sofa watching the tube. It was some kid's show, that's right:
Spongebob
. Spongebob had accidentally taken Gary's snail medicine and turned into a snail himself; he started sliming around saying “Meow! Meow!” in a high, squeaky voice like Gary always did, and everything was slimy, totally gross, squish-squish. Mini-Marco thought that was hysterically funny. He was doubled over with laughter, sitting there on the couch. He loved
Spongebob
. A bag of marshmallows lay next to him, white and pink striped with coconut flakes, already half eaten. Grandma Bine had just brought them. Slime dripped from Spongebob's long nose. Mini-Marco reached into the bag, deep in among the soft balls. Just the smell of them still makes him puke. Suddenly the screen went black. Only the little red light at the bottom still glowed. He didn't move, and in the shiny black surface of the big screen he saw himself, saw the leaf pattern of the sofa—brown, yellow, purple—and the legs of his jeans on top of it and his dirty bare feet. He'd gone to Wren House after school to feed the greasy sheep and play catch with Stavros and the others. There was a big spot on his T-shirt, somewhere near his belly. Tomato-Paprika sauce, the school lunch. Mini-Marco's hair was bleached from the sun, the way it always got in the summer. Anita had to dye hers. “Look at him, he's so blond, with real highlights—it's not fair.” In the black glass of the screen, Mini-Marco saw the feeble palm tree with the string of heart-shaped lights and the table with four chairs. He saw the shelves with plates and glasses and Anita's stuffed animals sitting on top. He saw the clock and the wreath of plastic flowers from Grandma Bine and Anita's Sarah Connor poster next to it. He saw the brown doorframe with the Disney stickers that led to the hallway—to the kitchen, bathroom, and to his little room behind the curtain.

A man stood in the doorframe with the remote in his hand. He had his arms crossed in front of his chest and wore a muscle T-shirt, shorts, and basketball shoes. He completely filled the doorway, his left elbow on Micky, his right on Donald. His hair was cut short and stood up in spikes.

“Closing time, buddy.” His voice sounded funny to Marco. It came from the back of his throat—husky, as if he'd eaten something greasy. He sounded like he didn't come from around here. He spoke German, sure, but not the Swabian that Anita, Grandma Bine, and most of the kids in school spoke. Not like Eino, either, who rolled his r's and got his sentences twisted when he was tired, patching them up with Estonian words. Where could he be from?

Slowly he came closer and tossed the remote on the couch. Mini-Marco could smell the man's sickly-sweet deodorant and saw the big tattoos that sprawled across his biceps like a black rash. The man took the bag of marshmallows and twisted the top like he was trying to strangle it. “Hey!” said Mini-Marco. “Those are mine!” “You must be Marco. I'm Achim. I'm living with you from now on. It's all settled with your mother. Her and I, we go way back.” He breathed deeply. His fat lips shone as if he'd smeared them with something. “Cunthead,” Mini-Marco thought. And that's when it started. Achim flung the bag in his face. “Get rid of this crap, pronto. I don't want a mess in this room. Get it?” Of course Mini-Marco didn't get it. He was
karu
, even if Eino was gone. He'd just run off, months ago. All he'd left was a note. But Mini-Marco was still
karu
. And a
karu
might be slow, and not so quick with words, but he doesn't take any shit. A
karu
is stubborn. He says things like: “What's your deal? You can't tell me what to do!” Achim sat next to him on the couch. The cushions caved in. Anita had been sleeping here forever—first alone, then with Eino, and now alone again. Achim looked Marco in the eye. His eyes were small, blue, and watery. Totally different from Eino's. He'd had blue eyes too, but really blue, like Mini-Marco imagined the sea would look, even though he'd never seen it, the sea around the country that Eino came from, Estonia.
Eestimaa
, the place Eino talked about almost every time he opened his mouth. Achim's face, like his arms and legs, was very brown. Marco saw veins and muscles everywhere, but not a single hair. Everything gleamed like oil. “Pornstar,” thought Mini-Marco. Achim looked like one of those sweating, groaning guys that he'd seen on a DVD his buddy Didi made him watch. “It's totally sick, I got it out of my old man's nightstand. They fuck for real. Wanna watch?” They watched, and Mini-Marco found it boring and kind of gross. He couldn't quite believe that grown-ups really did that stuff and squealed and yodeled about it like Grandma Bine's folk music. He'd never heard or seen Eino and Flabby Anita at it, even though there was only a curtain between them.

Achim cleared his throat with a greasy croaking sound. What are you doing here, Pornstar? He turned Mini-Marco's chin toward him. His fingers stank of aftershave. “I don't like to talk much, so I'll only say it once, get it? I work long and hard. When I come home, I want peace and quiet. No TV, no crap lying around. The Russian who lived here before was probably OK with that—dirt on the furniture and a rude little brat with no respect and no manners. They don't know any better, Russians. They're all drunks. Just cause trouble. But that's over now, understand?” Mini-Marco did not understand why he left the room, went into the kitchen, and rummaged around, or why there was so much clattering. What was next? It was all very strange, and Anita was nowhere to be seen—she wasn't home yet, so probably she was hanging out in the city somewhere. Then Pornstar was back with the vacuum cleaner in his hand. Marco remembers exactly what Mini-Marco thought: “Oh, the crumbs—the coconut flakes from the marshmallows that fell on the sofa like little white worms, I'm going to have to clean them up now.” What a load of crap, Mini-Marco thought: Housecleaning with Pornstar, who doesn't even know that Eino's Estonian, not Russian. Eino would have laughed, but it wouldn't have been a real laugh. He didn't like to be mistaken for Russian. Something finally clicked for Mini-Marco when he noticed that Pornstar hadn't brought the whole vacuum cleaner, only the tube with the sucking part at one end.

The shiny thing flashed in his direction, thick as an arm. He tried to run, to get to the door. But Pornstar took care of that, pushing Mini-Marco against the wall,
No way
. He threw Mini-Marco to the floor. It was impossible to get up. Then Pornstar kneeled on his legs. Mini-Marco could feel his fat ass and the bony stalks with hard muscles twitching inside them like disgusting animals. The tube came down on him hard, and the more he screamed and tried to wriggle away, the worse it got.

Mini-Marco could handle a little knocking around, but this wasn't like that. Of course Eino scolded him sometimes. “
Karu
, you're too loud! Shut up,
karu
.” When he got too crazy, Eino would grip the back of his neck so hard Mini-Marco felt like he was in a vise, and he wouldn't be able to turn his head for hours afterward. “Had enough?” Eino would ask, his voice quiet and angry, and Mini-Marco would yelp out his yes, since he couldn't nod in Eino's huge clamping hand. Besides Eino's special grip, he was familiar with Anita's slaps, which made a cracking sound and left fingerprints, and with being snapped with piss-sheets. Or there were Grandma Bine's bare-handed spankings, which stopped as soon as her hand began to hurt. Grandma Bine would also smack him “upside the head” or give him a “clip ‘round the ear,” which Mini-Marco thought of the same way he thought of the chewy candies she'd stuff in his pockets when he left, or the soft yellow cookies with the orange filling that he only got at her house.

He roared when the tube came down on him, shrieked for help—for Anita, who refused to appear. He called for Oma Bine, for Eino, and finally he called out his own name—not Marco, but
karu
,
karu
,
karu
—against the terrible, cold, cutting blows of the tube. But everything was drowned by the drone of Pornstar's voice: “Shut your face you little Russian rat, I'll kill you! I'll show you so you'll never do it again. You hear me now? Stop your whining, shut your filthy mouth, stop!” Mini-Marco grew still and felt the hard, hurried beats of his heart driving blood through his body. He heard a high whistling, like the sound of an animal, which he only later realized was his own breath, and a soft, drawn-out moan that came from his mouth, mixed with blood, spit, and snot. He rolled under the sofa. There were crumbs and a yellow plastic thing from a Kinder Surprise. Fat Anita wasn't big on cleaning. There were dust bunnies and little nests, some as big as Mini-Marco's fist. They crept around his face, wandered sluggishly in front of his half-closed eyes. He watched them scurry about. One came close to him, and he reached out his index finger to touch it. It just sat there, and he felt how soft it was, how it breathed and moved.

Mini-Marco smelled the greasy copper smell of his blood. It smelled just like the rabbit Eino had caught one morning during summer vacation. They got up crazy early and took the subway to Türlenstraße. It was still only partly light out. There were barely any cars on Heilbronner Straße. Birds were chirping everywhere, but you couldn't see them yet. Marco remembered how Mini-Marco had tried to drag Eino to the closed motorbike store on the other side of the road. But Eino had grabbed him by the collar and pushed him in through a hole in the fence that surrounded a construction site. They went down some rickety metal stairs and came to a giant prairie right in the middle of the city. Bushes, scrub, and small trees, taller than Mini-Marco, grew wild on a flat stretch of land that never seemed to end—it just trailed off into mist. Mini-Marco saw the TV tower lancing through the gray clouds, he saw high-rises and the tower of the main train station, the wooded hills that surrounded the city. “This is a construction site that will never be finished. Doesn't seem like the German way. You have to be very quiet now,
karu
.” With quick, barely audible steps, Eino had forged a path through the shrubbery. His strong arms pushed back twigs, and a small clearing overgrown with scrubby grass and flowers came into view. A big grayish-brown rabbit was wriggling in a structure made of packaging twine and carefully trimmed branches. Its white belly gleamed. Its shiny yellowish eyes seemed to dart in every direction at once. In the blink of an eye, Eino slit the rabbit's throat with his knife. He talked to the rabbit, broke off a twig, and stuck it behind its strong front teeth. “
Jänes
's last meal. It's only right—it's what a good hunter always does.” Eino hung the dead rabbit from the branch of a tall bush. The long, fluffy ears with delicate blue veins swung in the morning breeze. He made cuts all the way around the tops of the long paws with their leathery pads, slid the knife between flesh and fur, and cut down the inside of the legs all the way to the hairy ball sack and prick, which he cut off. He cut the pelt off the thighs as if opening a pack of butter, and then peeled the whole skin off the body like a tiny suit. “We can't take it back home. Your mother wouldn't like it.” They built a fire pit from nearby stones and gathered dry grass and twigs. They roasted the rabbit on a stick and ate it with a mixture of salt and pepper, which Eino had brought in a little paper bag in his jacket. Tiny brown birds rose from the grass into the bright sky. It smelled of smoke and hay. “A real hunter needs only a good knife and some twine. You don't have to shoot, you just have to think like the
jänes
. I found his droppings and built this trap. He only comes when he feels completely safe.” Carefully, they buried skin, head, and guts—a bloody little pile of intertwined tubes. The
jänes
, stringy and tough, was just enough for the two of them. Eino had also brought bread, which they used to sop up the juice. Afterward they lay on the feathery grass and let the constant, hot sun warm them. Traffic behind the fence grew louder, the streetcars squealed. There was no one around.