You (17 page)

“Christ, boy,” he said, and took a step backward.

Perhaps it was an invitation, perhaps it wasn’t, but anyway you marched past him into the apartment. Shoulders hunched, fists clenched. The door fell shut. The sound of bare feet on the wooden floor. He touched your shoulder. His words were brittle.

“This must come as a bit of a surprise.”

He’s nervous
, you thought, and wanted to ask so many questions, wanted to fire so many accusations at him, but you couldn’t do it, because your instincts took over. His hand on your shoulder.
Danger
. You didn’t even turn around. Your elbow slammed into his side. When your father doubled up, you grabbed him by the hair and threw him down the hallway. He crashed against one of the cupboards. Two of the doors flew open, some games fell out, a yellow tennis ball rolled over the floor. Your father was gasping. Before he could get up again, you twisted his right arm behind his back. You were your father’s son, he had drilled you, you knew what needed to be done. A bit of pressure was all it took and he was standing on tiptoes, his feet squeaked on the floorboards as you pushed him into the living room. Big sofa with matching armchairs,
a television set with the sound turned down, a balcony. You wanted to throw him over the balcony. You wanted to hit him with the television. You had so many questions.

You let go of him.

He fell and lay on the floor, he held his arm and didn’t say a word as you stood over him and still couldn’t look him in the eye. Your breathing didn’t quicken, you weren’t even nervous, only one mad question made you uneasy.

What if this is his real life and I don’t really exist?

His eyes tirelessly sought your gaze, while you had been staring at his chest, the way it rose and fell as he breathed heavily in and out. You wanted to reach in and tear out his rotten heart and ask him how he could do that to you all. He knew what you were thinking, he said, “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I don’t
want
to understand,” you heard yourself saying, and as you said it you knew it was the truth. Sometimes any explanations are unnecessary, you learned that day. Since then the following thought has stayed with you:

Some actions are inexcusable
.

Then your father attacked you.

You can afford quiet moments of naïveté when you’re lying in bed at seventy-five being spoiled by a twenty-year-old girl. Then you can be naïve and unprotected. Then you can close your eyes and believe in the good in people. Then. But not in front of your father. Not there.

He was so quick on his feet that you had no time to register that his weakness was put on to make you drop your guard. One hand grabbed you by the throat, the other arm came across your chest at an angle. He rammed you against the wall like that, once, twice, one of the pictures fell down and shattered on the floor. Your father’s eyes were slits. You knew and feared that look. Your ego shrank away, your legs turned to jelly and wouldn’t hold you upright.

What had you been thinking? Were you trying to be a judge? So your father led another life, he cheated on your mother and lived in an apartment that was ten times better furnished than yours was. So what? Have you forgotten who this is? Father and teacher and
tormentor. He can do as he pleases. He is God, he is the world, he is the air, and if he wants he can take your breath and snuff you out.

He grinned into your face and your fear went up in flames and all those years under your father’s fist flowed into that single moment. He shouldn’t have grinned. Your knee came up and thumped into his belly. You knocked his hand away, your fist met his Adam’s apple. He staggered backward, unable to breathe, but he didn’t let go of you, he tried to drag you to the ground.
If he goes down, he’s taking me with him
. You kicked his legs away, his grip loosened, he slid along the wall and landed on his back. The sound of the impact echoed noisily around the room. Your father’s face turned crimson. He was looking at you the whole time, and there was this surprised expression on his face. It was the same look you would see years later after you’d lifted Oscar’s eyelid. The same question after the why. There was something in your father’s eyes, a very particular depth that you hadn’t noticed before. A heavy, rattling breath left his chest and he lay still. You kept your distance and looked at him. Anything was possible. That he was bluffing again; that he was no longer alive.

That he knows what I’m thinking?

Even that.

You bent carefully over him, again there was that rattling breath, then silence. Your father’s mouth gaped open and stayed open. You waited for his next breath.

Nothing.

You brought your face close to his, something looked up at you from the darkness of his eyes, something moved toward you. You held his gaze, you weren’t afraid—not of the darkness, not of your father. Then that something disappeared, your father’s gaze broke and dimmed. His last breath hit you.

Coffee, dust, something rotten, something sour.

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 home. 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.