Lights Out in Wonderland

by DBC Pierre

  “Hm.” I set down the boxes. “I’m sorry, you know.”

  “I don’t say you’re not. It’s also typical of Gerd to panic over the party and close the shop down. I understand why he’s upset, he’s been planning it all year. But he could hold it somewhere else. Suddenly he’s territorial about the airport. Herr Pietsch is the same, hanging around like an old lover.” She looks up at me through clear green eyes. “I’m only worried in case Gerd sells his car or something stupid like that, trying to fight in the courts. He doesn’t have money for lawyers. He’s just exhausted after Gisela left, and now with this competition from the trailer. The airport ended before he expected it to, it was his only security in life. Gerd relies on strict routine.”

  The hiss of a jet threads a breeze from the airport. We pass by the tree where Gerd sat, searching the wagon up ahead for signs of him or Gottfried. But they don’t appear. As I pause to catch my breath, Anna sits herself under a porch in one of the service entrances, monitoring the street with a frown. I join her between worlds, between life and death on the one hand, tigers and bockwurst on the other.

  “I wish I could make things up to Gerd before I go,” I say.

  “You won’t find it easy, he’s a proud man and he hates debt. I shouldn’t tell you, after the trouble between him and Gisela—but Gerd is very fond of you, in case you didn’t know. He never had his own kids, couldn’t afford them. But he remembers you well from your childhood and defended you strongly against Gisela. So you paid him back in a small way just by coming around. He’s a man who values the people and things he’s known for a long time. I’m sure that’s how he tolerates Gisela—once the shock wore off, she was just always there, he grew accustomed.”

  “Hm, well, thanks. Touching that you mention it.”

  “Pff, don’t get excited—you’re still disgraceful.”

  Only silence can follow this, but when it does the tendrils begin to emerge that tie strangers together, barely smokelike at first, and probably growing to nothing more than cobwebs over the length of this pause. But I wonder, if I weren’t on my way to die, how long it would take this girl to inspire a household ivy of attachment, of the kind whose fronds flow curling off a mantelpiece. Perhaps not long.

  “Must admit, I didn’t expect you to open up,” I say.

  She ponders this for a moment, nodding. “It’s just strange that you show up without any visible reason, and then things start turning bad. I don’t want to see Gerd hurt, he has enough going on without your mysterious agendas.”

  “Hm. But honestly, I’m sorry about all that’s happened—and when I came I had no idea how things had ended between Gerd and my father.”

  “Pff—let me stop you before you turn it into some tender, innocent mistake.” She turns to scowl. “The issue which Gerd can’t see, but which I can, is that you came here to self-destruct. And I’ve seen self-destruction before. Berlin has seen it too. Coming from England you probably find us all so meek and quiet, you think we never tasted decadence. But did you ever ask why we might be this way? Because we tasted decadence like you’ve never tasted it. We tasted it so much that in the end Hitler seemed a welcome relief. And now you come with that same flavor on you, a smell that took us a century to wash out of our clothes. That smell of a vacuum, of a selfish chaos. Because what selfish people like you never realize is that self-destruction is a team sport, pulling everyone in. It’s not a cool game, and it’s not a game for the stupid. So forget about your father, forget about whatever you blame for your position in life—you are successfully achieving what you decided to achieve. And all I ask is that you don’t recruit us into the game, because we already had our turn. We don’t need your smell around to remind us what started it.”

  “Whoosh.” My gaze falls. “That’s pretty strong.”

  “Life is pretty strong.”

  “Hm—I guess I should take your frankness as a compliment.”

  “You should take it as a favor that I go so easy on you. If you weren’t an artist, as Gerd seems to think, I would have to put it in very plain language.”

  Whoosh, just look at her, friend, come in close—because here on the edge of death, oozing pain wherever I go—I still have to stifle a smile at this hard little nut beside me. God only knows why, after a hammering like that. Such is the cut of her razor that I have to clamp my lips shut to keep from giggling at the sheer force of her.

  She sees it, and her face grows even darker. “Pff, and now what?”

  “Hm.” I turn away. “You actually quite like me, don’t you?” The words hang for a moment, watching us; and then I look up and see her also struggling, in that state of a child being teased from a sulk against their will, squirming in the face.

  “Don’t try to escape. You admitted you have no likable qualities.”

  “But do you think so? Or why would you waste your breath?”

  “Because like all successful destroyers you have the heart and intellect enough to formulate an ethic based on your experience, which is clearly one of betrayal and pain. But you’ve formulated the wrong ethic. Nobody can like or respect that. And what I’m telling you is that while decadence might have come to your town, we’ve moved past that. Berlin isn’t at the end of a cycle, it’s at the beginning. You should get back on easyJet and go vomit with your friends.”

  “Whoosh,” I say, “that’s strong. EasyJet, eh? Sounds like something I needed to hear quite a while back. Like something I needed back at the very beginning.”

  She turns to snarl into my face, baring her sharp little teeth, shaking her head as one might at the filthiest of children.

  An old wish floods back to me. Ah, this limbo.

  Silence settles after this, there’s no answer, and it’s too late in my game to reach for her. Though I check her face for good humor now and then, my mind eventually sinks back to other matters. I set about scheming: I have a yellow diamond in my pocket. If I can make a reparation to Gerd for his losses I might die a vaguely redeemed man, not least in Anna’s estimation, which suddenly seems a valuable goal. It’s curious how people come to be admitted to one’s mental jury, that tribunal to which we plead and present our mitigations.

  My first thought is to cash the diamond; but I suspect Gerd is embarrassed by debt and would much rather forget it. Then it strikes me: if I give him the diamond itself, let him find it thrown somewhere—because after all, this new commotion around the airport makes it a plausible find—how could he refuse? And if I help to identify it, congratulate his good fortune, call witnesses—then surely it’s bingo.

  Going downstairs I roll the stone around my pocket.

  The air shudders when the security door swings open. Although we don’t venture far into the tunnel, I longingly peer up it and spy movement some distance away beside the tracks. Anna spots it too and we pause, craning to see. A pair of men in overalls appear pushing a cage on a trolley. Then as the lead man glimpses us, hastily throwing a blanket over the cage—we catch something buzzing around inside.

  What appear to be tiny hovering birds. Hummingbirds.

  Anna looks at me.

  I shrug and am about to make light of it when I’m saved by Gerd’s voice echoing down the stairwell: “Eh?” he calls. “Anna?”

  “We’re just dropping off the boxes,” she replies.

  “You took long enough.” His head appears on the landing.

  “Because your poet was vomiting.”

  “Thanks, Anna, for that.” I cough.

  “Frederick? Are you okay? Actually, I’m not feeling well myself—finish with the keys, Anna, and I’ll go home for a while. Enough for one day, bah.”

  “I’ll walk with you to the corner,” I say. “I’d best be going too.”

  I fondle the diamond in my pocket as Gerd and I amble away. Between the terminal entrance and the monumental garden sits a large bronze
of an eagle’s head on a plinth—apparently the remains of a whole Nazi eagle that once crowned the terminal building, until American forces dismantled it, shaving its head to resemble the bald eagle. Pausing to admire the bronze, I wait for a family to pass behind us; then, as Gerd points out where the eagle used to perch, I plant the stone on the pavement.

  “Gerd.” I point: “What does that look like to you?”

  “Eh—what?”

  “Down there. Like a diamond.”

  “Bah.” He reaches down. “Glass. How could a diamond be here?”

  The gem sparkles in the palm of his hand. We prod it.

  “First of all, it’s yellow,” he says. “Diamonds are white.”

  “No, there are yellow diamonds.”

  “Ach, but incredibly rare. This must be costume glass.”

  Nonetheless his fingers close around the stone, and we set off walking again. My mood lifts, as although there are no witnesses, on his way home he’ll surely stop at the Piratenburg where all-knowing pals might confirm the find.

  Overtaking the young family who passed us, I watch Gerd linger to smile at the parents. Then, in slow motion, he reaches to a little girl dangling off the mother’s arm:

  “Here, little one.” He presses the stone into her hand: “For a princess.”

  21

  So dawns the day before the banquet. I’ve done all I can—and can undo none of it. It’s my last morning. From my bed at the Adlon Kempinski, because there’s no seaside nearby, I resolve to walk into a lake and drown. I lie wondering whether to do this in daylight or darkness. Then the phone rings, and I flinch:

  “Gabriel—are you awake?” It’s Thomas.

  “Apparently.” I hear hubbub around him.

  “Do you know KaDeWe—Kaufhaus des Westens? Come upstairs to the oyster bar.”

  “I thought our business was concluded.” There’s no way to say this other than frostily. I recall the pain of vanishing dreams.

  “Don’t be like that,” says Thomas. “If it makes you feel any better, Didier and I won’t be banqueting either. It really is strictly closed, they don’t want we lowly caterers around. But we have a little proposal, do come.”

  After a shower I take a taxi to West Berlin and slump in the back trying to piece together my failure as a limbonaut. In finding a party venue for Smuts I’ve so far been instrumental in the collapse of a marriage, the destruction of a small business, and my exclusion from the party itself. Still, no more. Perhaps Thomas’s little proposal will be a lever for Smuts before I go. Beyond that, I’ll cast a last eye over the mother of all airports and over my curious friends there. And be gone.

  The view through the window distracts me slightly from my pain, as driving up Kurfürstendamm we seem to enter a different city, with glossy storefronts and flamboyant old buildings behind café awnings and trees. Trees, I muse, seem to prefer the affluent to the poor in cities. Still more evidence of God disliking the poor. As we pass these extravagances it’s clear what a thorn West Berlin must have been in the communist flesh. And I recall that this affluent enclave, for which John F. Kennedy declared himself a jelly doughnut, was the very one saved by the Tempelhof airlifts. The Soviets tried to starve her like a tumor, but hadn’t counted on the Master.

  KaDeWe is a lavish department store. I take the elevator up to its food hall, where the rudest, most pristine specimens of produce cram every inch of the view. Around a few corners I come upon a seafood section, and there find the oyster bar. Didier sits hunched over a table in conversation with Thomas, gesticulating wildly.

  Thomas nods me to a stool as I walk up. “We’re down to West of Ireland oysters on the menu.” Champagne quickly follows, but my body must have regrouped against me in the night because the first sip burns me like battery acid.

  “Impressive place, uh?” Didier nods a greeting. “For me the most incredible store in Europe. It also has the most restaurant seats of any venue in Germany, and the most oysters move over this bar. The only thing I could ask more is a bottle of Elgood’s Black Dog with the oysters. A beer from your country, uh—a little secret of connoisseurs.” As the next oysters arrive he turns back to Thomas, who explains:

  “Didier’s just reminding me about Pike, I hadn’t heard the end of that story.”

  “Ah,” says the Basque, “he has to tell you the ending himself.” And to me: “Thank you, by the way, for your bottle—that’s what started us on Pike.” Didier lines up an oyster and tips it into his mouth with all the solemnity of a burial at sea. “But I guess the rest of his history is known on the grapevine. I lived by the idea ever since: Pike was at the peak of his powers in Europe. He was with this one girl who was a model. And it turned out she had a sister who was even more beautiful. So he had her as well. And the moment came when he had to drive one of them to Monte Carlo—”

  “Was it in a Ghibli Spyder?” asks Thomas.

  “Yes. I even think I know where it is today. Worth a fortune now. Anyway, the other sister was already in Monaco, they would drive and join her. Of course, Pike was going to have them both that night. And so the moment came when he found himself on a winding road with a model next to him in a sports car, on their way to meet an even more beautiful model. The sea was blue, the sky stretched tight, the air was hot, and he could smell the girl, the leather, and the sea. Ecstasy was guaranteed. And at that moment he said to himself: ‘It doesn’t get any better than this.’ ”

  We hold our breath, oyster shells poised in midair.

  “So he stopped the car, got out, walked away—and never came back.”

  “What?” Thomas recoils. “Not sure I could’ve done it.”

  “He discovered the power band of pleasure lies in the moment before. He realized there is no present tense, things don’t exist until captured by memory. Pleasure can only die in a past, however recent or far it is. When he stopped at that moment, he captured a perfect future.” We sit suspended with the implications until Didier shrugs: “By these discoveries you learn to truly live.”

  “Remarkable,” says Thomas. “Except for—”

  “Uff, Jesus Christ—now you’re going to ask me what it actually means? It means that your best moment isn’t with the twentieth beer, but with the first beer in front of you. It’s not on your hundred millionth dollar, but on your nine hundred and ninety-ninth. It means that human pleasure comes from opening a door, not from walking through it.”

  “So it’s a philosophy of restraint? Acceptance?”

  “A philosophy of adulthood. Only babies reach for everything. Pike spent his youth drinking Europe dry of fine wines—then came the moment he went to grow it instead.”

  “Ironic to serve his wine, then—the idea goes against all the banquet guests stand for.”

  “Naturally it’s way over the head of the guests,” scoffs Didier. “But then money by itself has no pleasure attached, they just eat it like sharks eat fish, without feeling.”

  “And there’s still a punch line to the story?”

  “Oh, yes.” Didier grins. “Ask him yourself one day. Now we should talk with our comrade, in case he feels bad.” He turns to me.

  “Well,” I say, “only that Smuts is still in prison, with a court date in four days’ time. He feels we’ve forgotten him.”

  At this Didier’s brow descends to his nose. His eyes turn to slits and he leans back, spreading out his arms, baring his chest; he scowls at me like this for a moment, then folds himself back to the table, gliding his face toward mine. “Do you doubt my word when I tell you we have the case under control?”

  “But you must admit: time’s slipping away.”

  He watches me, motionless for another long moment: “Please appreciate that the question here is to make Smuts’s hands clean without getting our hands dirty. Uh? And only one thing will do that. Tomorrow we’ll see.”

&nb
sp; “But tomorrow’s the last workday this week.”

  “Bon.” He thumps the table and rises. “Thank you, gentlemen, I must go. Thomas, see if you can make a proposal to Gabriel for me—and I see you both tomorrow. Big day, uh?”

  With that he vanishes into a maze of produce.

  Thomas and I spend a minute adjusting to life without the Basque’s electrical pull. Then, after a sip of champagne, Thomas leans in: “Are you familiar with the position of pursuivant at these events? Technically the alarum pursuivant?”

  “Can’t say I am, no.”

  “Very important. The position of pursuivant addresses one of the forgotten arts of a party, which is the beginning and end. The greatest event will be damaged if at the end the guests are allowed to drift away—so a perfect event starts and ends precisely. It must end slightly earlier than guests would like—in this way it stays freshly picked in their memory, keeps the excitement of unused potential, as well as the necessary drop of regret. These elements together make the heart of what we look for in pleasure—just like Pike’s story, now that I think about it. The job of the alarum pursuivant is to signal the beginning and end. We’d like you to consider accepting that role for tomorrow night. You know the alarum will be posted outside the banquet hall with a starting pistol, as a first warning. And the pursuivant is the agent who traditionally delivers the guests safely to and from him—so it involves meeting the guests at the aircraft, leading them in; and at midnight signaling the end of the event by putting the lights out in the venue and leading the guests to the alarum, who will cover their exit back to the plane. You will be masked and wear a cape, which will be waiting in the administration trailer before the event. Didier and I will be behind the scenes too, monitoring.”

  Thomas pauses to finish his champagne, then leans closer, lowering his voice. “We feel you would be particularly useful in the role, not only because you’re familiar with the complex, and of course discreet—but also because of this: you must be acquainted with some of the locals from the airport?”