You (66 page)

We’ve got to let you go too now. You were our very special guest, stolen from another story, thrown into this chaos. Without you everything would have gone quite differently, without us no one would know how much you’ve changed. We’ve seen you grow and now it’s time to say goodbye. The beginning is like the ending. You’re sitting in the car, you’re on the road again. Your mother sleeps throughout the whole journey as if she knew what lay ahead, and that she needed strength for it. She didn’t believe you for a second when you said you wanted to take her for a quick drive into the countryside. And here you are now.

You drive, she sleeps, the landscape passes by.

Three hours later you stop on a side street off the Schlesisches Tor U-Bahn station and have lunch in an Indian restaurant. You talk about everything except what’s happening right now.

The apartment block is old, and the façade is under restoration. Your mother follows you up the stairs. Just once, she holds you tightly by the arm. You wait. She isn’t out of breath, she’s thinking.

“We can go on now,” she says.

You go on.

There’s no nameplate on the door, the wood around the lock is scratched and the letter box dented.

“It’s all exactly as I imagined,” says your mother.

“Okay?” you ask.

She nods.

You ring.

You wait.

The sound of footsteps.

The door opens.

You turn away and go downstairs.

“Richard,” you hear your mother say.

“Oh, Kristin,” you hear your father say, not surprised or disappointed; he says it like someone who’s been carrying around a chest full of thoughts on his shoulders and now at last he can set the chest down.

You leave them alone.

Outside the building you blink into the sunlight as if you’d only just woken up. You’re in Friedrichshain, the whole of Berlin is at your feet, and you don’t know what to do with yourself. Last time you were here, you ran into Stink. It feels like a decade ago, it’s like yesterday, it’s exactly four days ago. Nessi has left deep traces in your memory.

As if she’d been there forever and I’d never noticed her
.

The previous evening you tried to get through to the girls twice, but the phone was switched off. Who knows, maybe they’ve thrown it away, that would be better anyway. You also hope they were clever enough to get rid of the car.

You walk toward Alexanderplatz, buy yourself an ice cream, and take a look at the shop windows. You mingle among the people and wait for your mother’s phone call. What will your parents decide? Will they continue their lives together or not? You don’t really want to think about it, you’ve done what you could.

Two hours become three and then your phone rings. It isn’t your
mother. On the display you see your old phone number. You cautiously take the call.

“Neil?”

“Yes.”

“It’s me, Nessi.”

You stop, people push past you, you just stand there.

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you.”

“I … I just wanted to say we’re on the way back.”

“Good. That’s good. Are you okay?”

“We … I just wanted to ask if you … Can you … Will you be there?”

You say nothing, you know what she means, sometimes a few words can mean so much.
Will you be there?
And for a moment you’re sure that when she touched her hand to say goodbye that morning, she read your thoughts:
Stay here and I’ll look after you and the child, if you save my soul in return
. Your soul still wants to be saved. Now you just need to be there.

“I will be there,” you say.

“Thank you. That’s …”

She breaks off, you hear rustling, then Stink’s on the line and she says, “Holy fuck, she’s crying again now. I hope you said something nice?”

“It was nice.”

“Lucky for you, otherwise you’d have to deal with me.”

“I’d never do that.”

“Glad we’ve sorted that one out.”

You laugh, you’re standing in the middle of Berlin on the footpath and you burst out laughing. The people look at you crossly and push you aside like a leper. It feels as if your life has only just begun, and anyone who isn’t laughing doesn’t know what it means. You put your phone away and look into the sky, stretch your back, and feel four inches taller. Being a leper has never felt so good.

Two minutes later.

“What did you do?” Schnappi asks.

“I kept a promise, that’s all,” Nessi replies, wipes the tears away, and puts the car in gear. You speak up from the back. Your voice is quiet because you actually don’t want to hear what exactly happened in the hotel, but what must be must be. So speak louder, “And when are you going to tell us everything?”

“First let me drive a bit, please.”

You breathe out with relief. The car rolls down the road. It’s pleasantly quiet. Only the engine and the tires. Only your heads and the thoughts locked inside them.

“Sweetie, don’t cry again.”

Schnappi hands Nessi a tissue, she drops it, Schnappi picks it up again, leans over, and starts dabbing away the tears from Nessi’s right eye. Nessi laughs. You offer to do her left eye. Nessi warns you that she’s going to crash into the next tree if you don’t stop treating her like a baby. Schnappi decides it’s been quiet long enough and puts on a CD. You hear a guitar that sounds like waves coming closer and receding again, coming closer and receding again. Then Damien Rice sings
tiredness fuels empty thoughts
, and Ulvtannen disappears in the rearview mirror, and you know that Nessi will tell you everything after the song. You think the same during the next song and the one after that. You wait for her words. Words that don’t hurt. Words that will make everything better. Words that no one has yet pronounced.

You’re lying on a barren piece of land that was once dense with fir trees, where wolf packs once gathered on winter nights, before your forefathers cleared the land to build a beach hotel without a beach. You feel nothing of the old times, and soon you will be part of this damned land if the sun goes on burning down on you like this. If you get heatstroke on top of your concussion, we’ll soon be able to leave you to the seagulls. But it’s looking good, something’s happening. There’s a shaking in your leg, and your fingers are twitching too. Your body’s waking up as if it had been frozen.

Like Oskar
.

Your world has gotten out of joint. Your son denied you, two of your best friends are dead in the trunk of the car, and you’re seething with rage. It is diverted from your head to your belly, because you’re going to need all your wits about you to get out of this wretched situation. Whatever you do now, you should gather your strength for the finale, because you’re going to need a lot of strength.

The pain has faded, the nausea has gone, your stomach has calmed down. You’re slipping away into a healing unconsciousness, and for a while you disappear into a café in Bregenz with a view of Lake Constance that you visited years ago when one of your customers flew you in for the opening of the festival. You’re sitting by the window with Oskar and Tanner, the sun is shining in, everything is dazzlingly bright. Tanner raises his glass to you, you look up, Leo walks past outside, but he’s in a hurry and just waves at you
in passing. You drink cold lemonade, Oskar eats his third piece of cake, and you’re amazed that he hasn’t put on an ounce over the years. Tanner pats his stomach. He’s almost always on a diet.
And what good did that do? I’m not even breathing anymore
, he says. Oskar nods, he knows the feeling. You look into your lemonade and can’t move.
Now you know how I felt
, says Oskar,
nothing’s working anymore, the body is down
. The waitress brings a plate with even more pieces of cake and says:
These are from the boss
. You look over at the bar; the boss is a boy in an apron with a hole in his forehead. You nod your thanks. He nods back. You don’t want to say it. Tanner says it:
Isn’t that Mirko?
Oskar says:
At least he has a job
. You take a sip of your lemonade and try not to laugh. The dead are all around you, and if you look up right now Ruth will come in and she’ll be holding hands with Marten, but that’s something you don’t really want to see at the moment. The darkness saves you. The sun disappears behind the night as if the night were a curtain. It becomes pleasantly cool, and when you open your eyes you’re no longer alone. A man is leaning over you, the sun lurks behind his shoulder, you can’t make his face out. The man asks, “Do you remember me?”

“What?”

“Do you remember who I am?”

You swallow, your tongue feels as if it’s three times its usual size. Your eyes have gotten used to the light. The man’s face is hovering clearly and distinctly above you. You can hardly hear yourself, your voice is so faint.

“I have no idea who you are.”

The man nods, he expected this.

“It’s on its way.”

“What is?”

“The memory. It sometimes gets lost.”

You try to keep him in focus. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a cross on it. He’s the same age as you. He says, “But I know who you are. You’re the man who gets his son to kill people. Because of you my son lay with his face in the dirt.”

You feel a quiver in your right hand and clench it. Wake up, you stupid fucking body, wake up and do something before this guy does
me in!
A muscle in your thigh twitches, your heel scrapes over the ground.

“Marten,” you say.

“Right, his name was Marten.”

Of course you could lie to him, but that wouldn’t be you. Ragnar Desche doesn’t lie. Ragnar Desche is honest and says, “It was his fault.”

“No.”

“He—”

“I said no. My son wasn’t guilty of anything. Whatever happened, I know he wasn’t to blame. But whose fault was it?”

You look at each other. He knows the answer and still wants to hear it from you. Your son Judas. It’s easy for you to betray him.

“It was my son.”

“Thank you.”

The man leans forward.

“This is definitely going to hurt.”

He pushes one hand under your back, the other under your leg, and lifts you up. It’s a bit like someone sticking a red-hot stake up your backside. The pain spreads, shoots up your spine, and you greet it like an old friend that you haven’t seen for ages. Pain means that there’s still hope, no paralysis, no life in a bed with a straw in your mouth. So the connections haven’t been cut yet. Your eyes fill with tears. A hundred-year-old man would have more dignity. Your head hangs down, your arms and legs don’t really exist, only your right hand clutches at the air, spittle trickles from your mouth, and after a few steps the pain’s too much even for your stubborn consciousness and you black out.

You blink. There’s a dirty glass of water in front of you. You’re sitting at a table, your head manages to move, your muscles work, your left arm doesn’t react, your right comes up slowly, your fingers grip the glass. Your arm trembles. You drink and look at the man. He’s sitting at the other end, his hands are flat on the table, he’s looking at you expectantly.

The glass is empty and you set it down again.