Lights Out in Wonderland

by DBC Pierre

  Specht takes on new proportions.

  I shiver.

  Rather than hike all the way to the gentleman or the check-in girl, I turn back to ask the men outside about the club. Then on my way through the lobby I spy a handful of empty bar tables to the right. They face a kiosk window which appears to be open. As I approach, a woman’s voice drones out:

  “Look at this one coming if you want a laugh.”

  Then another: “Pff—little Ludwig. Looks like he escaped from The Sound of Music.”

  Nearing the window, I see that it’s a tiny Imbiss, purveying the driest kinds of cakes and rolls and the least colorful confectioneries. Glass cabinets on each side of a cubbyhole feature soft drinks, beer, and curling souvenir stickers.

  A woman leans heavily at the back, arms folded. She’s dark-haired, in gaunt middle age, her features molded by inconvenience and bitter fate. After a moment a younger, smaller woman moves past into a back room.

  “Entschuldigung.” I ask the Frau: “Is the Pego Club here somewhere?”

  She looks me up and down without moving her face.

  “Someone said it might be here. Or a certain Herr Specht—is he known here?”

  “Hnf,” she grunts. “If we’re to list everyone who’s known here we won’t reach the letter B by Christmas. Better idea: you look and tell me if you see any Herren around.”

  “Well”—I glance up and down the lobby—“not just now, no.”

  “So, then.”

  “Hm.” Miserable cow. Remembering that there can be a certain sport to rudeness in Berlin, I bide a few moments, then try a different tack: “Do you have coffee?”

  She turns her back.

  “If not coffee, I’ll have—”

  “One?” she snaps over a shoulder.

  “One what?”

  “Coffee.”

  “Ah—yes, yes. Bitte.”

  “Then you’ll have to ask the attendant.” She disappears into the back room.

  Seeing ashtrays on the tables, I pull out a stool and light a cigarette, now fascinated with the woman’s insolence, which is on as grand a scale as the building itself. I hear sniggering from the back room, and a moment later the other figure emerges, which is a girl, also dark-haired, and stern in her face.

  “Mit Milch?” She goes to a push-button machine.

  “No, thank you very much.”

  “Pff,” she scoffs.

  Now some other nuance of my person has struck a wrong chord. I follow her with a frown: “Excuse me—did I say something wrong?”

  “I haven’t given you anything yet.”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t given you anything and you thank me. Is that how you are in Austria?”

  “I’m English.” I move to the window.

  “One euro forty.”

  Now vexed with the pair, who must be mentally deficient, I slap down the coins and take my coffee to the table. After a moment the older woman emerges from a door along the wall, clacking past me to the entrance. Through a window I follow her bobbing head down the steps outside. When I glance back to the kiosk I find the girl watching me. She drops her gaze and switches on a small transistor radio. Music echoes out from that evergreen wavelength only ever found by older drivers.

  After tidying behind the glass for a few moments, she finally looks up: “What business do you have with Herr Specht?”

  I gulp my coffee: “Do you know him? I’m an old friend.”

  “Friend?” She examines me. “I don’t think so.”

  “Look, can you just tell me—”

  “I haven’t seen him. He probably won’t come till after four.”

  “Four? This afternoon?”

  “Pff—did I say something else?”

  Whoosh. She vanishes into the back.

  Against all logic the news sends me to the restroom for a line. I set my teeth grinding with positive stress before heading to a phone booth on the street. While it’s too early to report the situation’s full potential to Smuts, and I caution myself to keep things low-key, still I’m excited to let him know I found our man.

  A different officer answers the phone in Tokyo. Then comes a lifeless monotone:

  “It’s late, Putain.”

  “Smuts—I found him.”

  “Yeah, listen, the fish tests came back, uh. Negligible toxin. They say I must’ve milked offal for weeks to get enough to hurt the old guy.”

  “Eh? Those fish were deadly. We tasted them ourselves.”

  “Not the ones Tomo substituted. See where things are headed? They’re saying it had to be deliberate. The lawyer’s been here all day. This morning he was softening me up for an assault charge. Now he’s talking attempted murder and asking for a check.”

  “But wait—I witnessed the substitution.”

  “And I suppose you’ve got a fish to prove it. Without the original fish it’s immaterial, we’re two wasted tourists against a local institution. You wouldn’t believe the moves going on right now. Suddenly Tomo’s in Okinawa and can’t be reached, the boss is naming the new restaurant after the mayor, the Basque changed his trading name in Japan. Big fucking chess game going on right now.”

  “But Smuts—”

  “The Basque’s in a phone conference with the boss, then he’s calling me. And d’you know what I figured out, you there, Putain, full of coke because I can hear you sucking it down your throat? I figured this out: he’s deciding who to sacrifice. He’s talking to us both, then he can either stick with me and drop Yoshida in shit. Or he can go with Yoshida and fuck me off. And d’you know what? Yoshida buys a hundred covers of produce from him every week. And I buy none.”

  “But wait—who’s to say he won’t supply you here? I found the place, found the man. It might end up a better proposition than Japan. Look, in a few hours I’ll be—”

  “Wake up! I’ve just said it’s happening now! And nobody’s just strolling out of the way! Putainel! Cunts are running!”

  My hands twitch. Along with my nose and heart they go numb with a cold that squirts from inside. It’s a hallmark squeeze from the Master Limbo. Within a second I feel carefully guarded hopes rush up my throat:

  “Smuts—the place is over a kilometer long.”

  “Uh?” The line hushes to a crackle. “Fuck off—you went to an airport by mistake.”

  “It is an airport. Hitler’s airport from the thirties. Once the biggest building in the world. Most impressive chunk of architecture you’ll ever see. Virtually empty. Over three million square meters in the heart of Berlin. Planes fly to the door.”

  There follows a silence only broken in my mind by the sound of tumbling balls.

  “You wanted awesome,” I add, and as I say the words they echo through me like fireworks—because all I’ve just said is basically true, and all of it describes a venue more splendid than any since the fall of Rome.

  Here, my friend, is the place of my death.

  “Fuck,” Smuts eventually hisses. “Tell me again, I’ll write it down for Didi.” He repeats each detail in a whisper, jotting so hard that I actually hear his pencil striking paper: “A mile long, thousand clubs, district of—can’t spell that, can’t spell that—Berlin airlift, millions of meters, jets to the door.”

  With each scribbled hope I feel the Master Limbo throw a spell over us both, Smuts for his salvation and me for my demise.

  “Mate,” he says, “it looks sensational on paper. Putain, Gabriel. You sure about all this? Think of it in dining terms—how many tables fit into a kilometer? Jesus Christ. The Basque’ll cream himself. Listen, I’ll get off the phone, he’s about to call. But give me a number to reach you, I’ll put you down as the contact. Call me again later, uh? And Putainel—thanks. I mean it.”

  I hear him softl
y whistle as the line goes dead. Then I stand for a while with the phone pressed to my ear, boggling under a granite sky, teasing myself with glimpses of the building at a distance through trees.

  It seems the cone of this endeavor is at its point. Its end-play.

  The moment calls for many cigarettes lit one off the other.

  Because I must whip up great forces of nimbus.

  I must milk the mogul Specht.

  And then I must die.

  Whoosh.

  Hm.

  14

  Cocaine, tobacco, and daylight are an honest mix, three of very few honest things in nature,* and known to reset priorities in a realistic way.

  First of all, my clothes are wrong. My appearance should make Specht hope the bank is still open, not wonder how the lyrics go to “Edelweiss.” I hurry back down Mehringdamm to the clothes store, where I find a retro-stylish suit, a black one which gives me an older air; and as a decadent flourish I add a gray faux-fur overcoat, which also serves as a buffer against the object world. Thus insulated from horror, I wander the streets of Kreuzberg until four, setting off along Yorckstrasse with my swollen laundry bag. I think about eating, and actually enter three places to eat; but in the end only have coffee and lines, trying to sharpen myself to a lethal point. A hyper-genius is what I try to become, a cutting torch of reasoned determination; and strangely, although tremors and grinding of teeth attend it, I do soon possess a mercurial acumen and find myself winging decisions with ease.

  The first comes on Yorckstrasse, as I’m passing a video store whose storefront isn’t occupied by videos but by a golden Labrador snoozing on a beanbag. Hardly an embassy of the Master Limbo. The dog seems oblivious to profit and loss. I decide to find quieter residential places to roam, where capitalist spirit might be less brutally snubbed.

  Duly rounding the next corner, I find myself on Grossbeerenstrasse, a graceful street where decisions come as plentifully as leaves tumbling up her curbs. Here I decide to throw out the notion of reality-creep. Because in reality we have a kilometer-long venue. We have the debauchee Specht. Therefore things are bright. At worst I’ll forgive my father’s share in return for a month’s trial of decadently themed banquets, which Smuts would oversee. Didier Le Basque could provision them, and I could handle their publicity and front-of-house. Specht could hardly disagree. It’s a windfall for him, and finding clientele would be as easy as handing flyers to his patrons as they left the club in the small hours. Enticements could also appear on bar menus, drink coasters and the like. Masquerades, lobster tails.

  I stop as the truth blows in: my wishes are being delivered.

  The first banquet will be my farewell.

  Whoosh—the Enthusiasms. See how their cone spiraled to a point in the city of my free childhood, home of last innocence. What an end-play. And what a high note to leave on, seeing Smuts and Specht off on a grand new venture.

  Just look at all the symmetry.

  Grossbeerenstrasse is an everyday street, some of whose late nineteenth century buildings are unrefurbished. One is under a scaffold, and a couple of doors past it sits a bar: the Piratenburg. A sign in the window reads “Smoking,” and I duly step inside, where an affable West Berliner pours me brandy and coffee and lights my cigarette across the bar. A pair of older locals hunch alongside me, and after nodding to them I turn my hyper-acute mind to the question of the farewell banquet.

  Now, well: the artifact of my life is poor, let’s agree. Of dismal quality, ludicrous to celebrate. A wasted life. Still, and here’s the crux of my message to you across these strange days, these earnest pages, and the crux of my limbo itself:

  Inside me were unexpressed forces.

  Because surely self-respect comes not from what we do, but from what we feel we could do. It’s this reserve power, these unseen strengths that I will toast farewell. Forces within us like the gases of the sun, whose burn we occasionally feel, whose barbarous and perfect edge we sometimes see at play in a nimbus; whose wholesale unleashing might have led us anywhere but where we are.

  Forces weakly called potential when a child dies.

  Forces which are the only part of me I will miss.

  Because look at it, my friend: all that has ever been called love of life, is a love of things that won’t happen.

  A love of dreams.

  And so I will toast unspent forces in both of us. I will toast and shed a tear for all that we were not. For this reason, and not for simple exuberance, our farewell dinner should be as splendid as anything since the fall of Rome. A Feast of Trimalchio. A night of the Satyricon. A limbo that burns all restraint, a cone of nimbus so high and clear that stars are sucked inside it. There, last intimate comrade, we will live. There we will rise up, free for once from our cage, in honor of all that we were not.

  But could have been.

  I stifle a tear. It’s nearly four. Although the host isn’t looking my way, something draws him over to ask if I need more brandy. I take another quick glass and find that it has a parachute effect, cushioning my fall to composure. Then, maybe sensing that I came from nowhere in particular, and might be headed nowhere nearby, the man offers to mind my laundry bag while I wander. I thank him, and pull out a bottle of Symphony to carry in a pocket.

  “For a friend,” I explain.

  “Lucky friend,” he says.

  Afternoon sun lights the town outside, and I walk to the end of the street where a waterfall tumbles down a storybook parkland hill. A languid society dots the space between trees, chirruping and clapping that distant soundtrack of all parks, where hybrid dogs with bandannas meet apartment dogs straining to escape from huffing Fraus, and one lonely hippie with a bongo shows the world why he’s lonely. On top of the hill stands an impressive monument like a church spire, and I climb to it, not wanting to meet Specht too early and seem too keen. As I climb I ponder why I’m suddenly so full of nourishing feelings. So full, perhaps, of life. I have every reason to fret, and crucial tasks to perform; but instead I wander in a limbo before them, knowing they can’t yet touch me. Yes—it’s a limbo before them. A moment before them. How sweet life would be if all its moments were like this.

  Putting it down to brandy and sunshine, I wander over Mehringdamm to Bergmannstrasse, where Berlin, so routinely gashed by history, leaks antiques from certain basements like blood from dripping punctures in her flesh. Centuries of furniture, rugs, furs, chandeliers, bronzes, china, books, music, and jewelry flow up to the street through doorways, a perpetual flea market that leaves me whirling with possibilities for the banquet. Because I’m savoring these, the walk to Tempelhof seems quicker than this morning, the neighborhood more familiar and friendlier, full of new potential.

  I dab myself with Jicky as the airport looms, deciding not to hunt the Pego by myself, as poking around a kilometer of empty monolith might look suspicious. Instead I’ll take some coffee with Hard-Faced Frau or the girl, and maybe if one of them softens, as Berliners can suddenly do, they might point me to the venue.

  The Frau is there examining her nails when I arrive. A customer sits reading a paper, the radio crackles weather reports for the Baltic coast.

  “Ein Kaffee, bitte?” I ask at the counter.

  Frau looks up slowly, halting her gaze on my suit. In any other person this would come with a comment, a raised eyebrow. But she just stops and stares. It’s a subtle attachment of scorn. I already quite dislike Hard-Faced Frau.

  “Mit Milch?” She eventually slumps to the coffee machine.

  “Nein, Danke.”

  I take an empty table and feel a jolt of nerves. The mission now reaches its point. Milch Specht. I’m glad to pause for a few moments, composing myself before the kill. Even Sauer-Frau is a minor comfort, a sort of human base camp before my ascent to Gerd Specht. Over a cigarette I’m also heartened to see that I’m not her least favorite person, as a
n approaching local makes her grunt and disappear at the sight of him. It makes me feel sorry for the man, a rustic, slightly moth-eaten character who would appear more at home carving marionettes by candlelight.

  He turns to click his tongue at me. I tut back in sympathy. We’re in a club now, of Sauer-Frau victims. Still, he waits patiently at the cubbyhole, in his late middle age, resigned, as if the kiosk itself had leeched his youth away.

  “If you’re lucky there’s another girl in there,” I venture.

  “I hope so,” he says, “or else we might as well go home.”

  Moments pass, and I reflect on the things that sap a life, here embodied in this mustard cardigan of a man with his long face, his furry ears, and scrubbing-brush mustache. Floes of skin under his eyes seem to gather weight by the minute, until finally the Frau reemerges, handing an envelope over the counter. With that she grabs her coat and leaves the kiosk, clattering past in a swirl of scent.

  And so my moment comes. Seeing that she didn’t soften, and before my club-mate shuffles away, I finish my coffee and turn to him for directions:

  “Excuse me—would you happen to know of the Pego Club?”

  “Eh? What?” He flinches.

  “Pe-go. Pego Club.”

  The man stiffens, leaning in to squint at my face: “Who’s this? Mein Gott!—it can’t be little Gabriel?”

  Whoosh. I turn to stone. “Herr Specht?”

  His hands wave around like a minstrel. “Anna! Anna!” he calls. “Is this who came this morning? How can you say he looks Austrian? Fetch coffee!”

  The girl shows herself at the counter. I suffer a passing away into nothingness, a reeling, as Specht takes my arm and settles me back at the table, sitting himself opposite.

  “Haa.” A reedy little whine escapes his throat. “Kleiner Dichter—little poet! Remember? And what was the name of that rat?”