‘Hi,’ she mumbled, as she turned round and picked up her cigarette, ‘Silke.’
‘Ah,’ Fred raised his eyebrows, ‘a pretty name.’
The woman turned her head round slowly and gave Fred a filthy look.
‘May I?’ Fred plucked something invisible from her back, ‘By the way, I’m unemployed.’
‘Imagine that. Overqualified?’
The woman walked off, and Fred watched as her legs left the room, accompanied by other legs. He shrugged. In Berlin there were clearly different rules for flirting than in Dieburg. He’d get to grips with it yet.
He was alone with a couple who were sitting on the ground, kissing passionately. One of them was the cowboy. The only person Fred knew here, so to speak. Fred wanted to ask him where Annette was.
He went to the window and gazed at the dark treetops, then he turned towards the TV and examined the polaroids. He even bent down to the dogs and pretended to stroke them. But the snogging continued, and when nothing more occurred to Fred, he cleared his throat. The couple looked up, and only now did he realise that they were both cowboys. He let out a vodka-enhanced laugh. ‘And I thought balding women looked stupid.’
Words and laughter echoed round the walls and faded, while the cowboys stared at Fred, unmoved. He was struggling to withstand their gaze. Had they misunderstood him? Did the other cowboy object to the mention of his partial baldness? Types like that could be pretty vain. Fred backed off. ‘You can barely see it. From behind not at all. I mean, if I were to comb back my hair...’
Something in their faces caused him to shut up. He stood hesitantly in the middle of the room, fingering the seam of his trousers. One cowboy tutted, then he said: ‘Do it then. Go to the bathroom, comb your hair back, and in four to five hours you can show us how you look. Okay?’ Then he smiled in what Fred took to be friendly fashion.
‘Okay,’ Fred answered and smiled back, ‘if you fellows get a kick out of it.’ He waved at them and went to the hall.
Nice guys, he thought as he closed the door behind him and weaved his way down the bowling alleys. And funny. Berliners had a different sense of humour, more internal. And by and large he got on with them just fine. You had to approach things right. Annette would be amazed: after four years in the nick, there he would be with a load of super crazy, enormously gay cowboys in shades, draining bottles of vodka, cracking one joke after another - he’d have become Prince of Berlin within a few hours. Yeah, the Prince of Berlin, the Prince of Canada, the world was his oyster!
The first step in this direction was the search for more vodka. The next step along the hallway caused his head to smash against the wall.
As he staggered into the kitchen, six pairs of eyes looked up from a table laden with papers. Grinning, Fred raised his index finger, ‘Hi!’ and was greeted with general murmuring.
Over the table hung a large white piece of cardboard, on which was written in felt tip pen ‘WAGNER MILK’; there were arrows and little boxes containing text underneath.
As Fred opened the fridge and withdrew a bottle of vodka from the freezer compartment, one of the women said: ‘I think the decisive moment is when the bus driver starts to whistle something from Tristan and Isolde.’
They were discussing a film script: a Berlin theatre group flies to Africa in order to collect experiences and sense impressions for a modern performance of Wagner. The group gets lost in the desert and they are attacked by a gang of Bedouins, but they repulse them with tricks and stage magic and take a Bedouin boy prisoner. Some are of the opinion that he should be killed: he represented a danger, besides which it was the only way of not starving to death. Others were uncomfortable with the thought that they could be held guilty for such behaviour at a later date. And anyway, two young assistant directors find the boy quite cute. While they are arguing, the bus driver-cum-writer starts to look for a knife inside the car. As he does so, he is whistling a tune from a Wagner opera. The theatre ensemble are amazed when the Bedouin boy joins in whistling the melody, and it turns out that his mother is a wardrobe mistress and his father a technician at the Berlin opera and the boy was kidnapped many years ago by a slave trader during the summer holidays. The boy shows the group the way to a nearby oasis, and back in Berlin, his parents are given tickets for the premiere.
‘Birth is truth, and nothing is more cynical than the truth,’ said one of the men at the table, as he looked round in a true and cynical manner.
Fred leaned on the windowsill, sipped at the vodka and observed how these people with their casual gestures talked about things of which he knew nothing. The Prince of Berlin...but how to conquer the kingdom? It would be better if he could see Annette first - prince or not. In any case he hadn’t eaten anything since the bean soup in the dining carriage, and he would have liked to go with her to one of those crazy restaurants he had noticed on the way over here: pink walls, plaster statues, waiters in leather shirts, painted underpants behind glass - in Dieburg just one of these would have been grounds for a citizen’s action committee.
Till then all he had was vodka. ‘Empty stomach makes you thinner - full glass, as good as dinner,’ his father had always said. But he could also have done it with: ‘Lots to eat, hunger gone for sure,’ and ended with, ‘gluttony’s the cure.’
One of the women turned to look at Fred. ‘Who is standing at my back the whole time?’
Fred removed the bottle hastily from his mouth and vodka splashed onto the ground. Before he could answer the woman said: ‘Do you belong to Carlo?’
Fred shook his head, ‘No, I...’
‘Are you involved in the neo-nazi documentary evidence?’ one of the men asked.
Fred shook his head again. ‘I...’
‘Or are you the cook for tomorrow’s party? But wasn’t that supposed to be a Thai?’
‘I know,’ said another, ‘he’s the driver for Sascha’s night scene, the one about the Jewish models in front of Hitler’s bunker, where they sing that forbidden song about hacked off and defiled children’s heads - you know the one.’
‘Ah. That one.’
They stopped talking and looked at Fred.
‘I’m a friend of Annette.’
‘Is that so?’ said one, and a second: ‘There’s a lot of those about,’ whereupon one of the women gave him a playful slap.
They continued to talk about the film, and so as not to stand at anyone’s back, Fred retreated to the sink. The brief conversation had given him some encouragement for his start in Berlin, and he waited for a suitable moment to continue it. Besides, with each slug of vodka he was getting smarter. He was definitely going to find a way to get through to them soon. For example he could save them time and money by explaining to them that nobody would watch their film. He knew about the movies: Eddie Murphy, Clint Eastwood, Julia Roberts, Christopher Walken - no problem. And that’s why he knew that these stories with the circle of wagons and half-breed Indians couldn’t have conjured ten marks out of anyone’s trouser pocket for at least the last fifty years.
The kitchen began to swim in front of Fred’s eyes.
‘Hey you! What’s your name?’
Fred looked up. Did they mean him? He wanted to reply, but something was preventing him. His lips suddenly became weirdly stuck together.
‘Your name,’ repeated the man.
Fred passed his hand over his mouth. ‘F-F-Fred,’ he tried to articulate.
‘Fine,’ said the man giving a rubbery smile, ‘well Fred: we have a small problem here. I’d like to hear from you as an outsider your concept of German culture.’
Fred let the empty bottle drop in the sink, and while he waved his arms in the air in an attempt to keep his balance, he took two steps in the direction of the table. He was cross-eyed with alcohol, and it took him a moment to establish who was talking to him.
‘ ’fcourse.’ Now even his tongue was letting him down. It was struggling to get out over the lower canine teeth. ‘German cu-ure,’ he repeated, and he knew precisely t
hat this was connected to a question.
‘Don’t think too long,’ said the man, ‘just come out with it.’
Fred nodded. Then he could feel a jolt in his chest, and it was as if his stomach were climbing. He noticed people staring at him. If only he could remember the question. He placed his hands on the edge of the table, leaned forward, and his lips formed the first letters of the request to repeat the question, when warmth suddenly filled his throat, and before he could close his mouth a colourful stream spewed over table, papers, and all present. As they leapt to their feet screaming, Fred closed his eyes, lurched forward and crashed unconscious into the chairs.
9
Fred was looking for his left arm. He found it under his stomach. He dragged it out and checked the time. Half six. Wake up time in prison. He raised his head gingerly. He was lying fully clothed on a bare mattress, and pale, grey morning light streamed through the window. An old, discarded bar counter ran right across the room, with fifties-style bar stools around it. Film posters hung on the walls alongside photos of some cove who looked like he was spoiling for a duel.
Fred had an evil taste in his mouth. As he sat up he saw half-digested, dried bits of beans stuck to his overalls. The Prince of Berlin. The prince didn’t feel too good.
Fred stood up and padded along the dark hallway. Not a sound. Supporting himself on the walls, he arrived at the kitchen. Swabbed down and tidied, it lay bathed in morning light. Fred sighed. Quickly he turned to the fridge. He rummaged through the various compartments, but there was nothing edible other than mustard and some strange, rank roots. He took a bottle of orange juice, closed the door, turned round again, added a beer and went back to the room.
Seated at the counter, he emptied the bottle of orange juice and stared out of the window. Children with satchels and women with scarves and shopping bags filled the pavements. He watched a young man escorting two prettily dressed, laughing little girls over the street, and pensively scratched a bean from his overalls. Then he opened the bottle of beer on the edge of the counter and lay back down on the mattress. Soon he was asleep again.
‘A school friend from Nürnberg once visited me when I was living with Ralph. Man, was that embarrassing. In the evening we wanted to go to Fuck Off and what did she wear? Some kind of pink, body-hugging outfit with the slogan Enjoy Sex! I tell you, the people who knew me looked at me the whole evening as if they were saying goodbye. I had to phone around for three days to square the thing away.’
‘Fred has just spent four years in jail. It’s perfectly normal that he should have one too many.’
‘All right Annette, one! And that haircut.’
Suppressed laughter.
Fred squeezed his eyes open and saw two blurred pairs of legs at the counter. The window was open, and a cool breeze blew through the room. He brought his eyes into focus and saw jeans and rectangular shoes. Slowly he turned his head around. Two women. One was broad and dark with a mass of jangling chains and amulets from her from neckline to her hip. The other was blond and plump. Two chubby round buttocks spilled over the bar stool, and warm oil seemed to flood through Fred’s veins. His Annette. His plump little Annette.
‘Hey!’ he wheezed. Annette turned round, and he stared at a deathly white face. Fred was shocked.
But when she leapt off the stool and threw herself on him, laughing, he quickly got over it. And when they lay in each other’s arms and Fred touched those shoulders he had missed for so long and Annette said: ‘You stink like the doorway to a dosshouse.’ He closed his eyes and he was happy.
‘I got your card, and actually I wanted to go straight to Dieburg, but then...’
She really wanted to, and she really was glad to see Fred again, although she knew it wouldn’t be easy: her life had changed utterly over the last four years. Fred was Dieburg, and Dieburg was a long way away. Even the bank robbery - although it was the catalyst for the move to Berlin and gave her time to relax and plan the future - seldom came up in her thoughts, and when it did, it was as a foolish mistake which could have destroyed her life, and which it was better to forget. She was only dimly aware of the connection between this mistake and the money with which she had paid for board and lodging to this day. And now Fred! Whether he liked it or not, he had brought back the robbery, as if it had happened yesterday. And then there was his own peculiar manner. Annette was anything but sure that she would be able to cope with it these days. Previously he had been one of the most exciting guys in Dieburg, but there wasn’t much competition for a start, and besides Fred’s brutish charm was somewhat different at eighteen than it was today. Stuff like selling hash as expensive liquorice in the playground, or driving the greengrocer’s Mercedes to Frankfurt at night without a license seemed at best boring now. If she wanted to, she could snort coke from morning till night and cruise round in her boyfriend’s turquoise Chevrolet. But even that didn’t interest her any more. What was important were films - and the people who made them. Fred had never been a luminary in that area, and was scarcely about to become one in the next four years.
Yes, she was pleased, but it was an exhausting pleasure, mixed up with the prospect of wasted time.
‘How could I know you would come straight to Berlin? I thought you’d call first.’
Fred heard the bell ring and the door close. His hands slid under Annette’s T-shirt.
‘You didn’t even have the address.’
‘I found it out,’ mumbled Fred. He could feel her skin, her hips, her breasts. His brain felt scrambled. Four years and nineteen days. Any moment he would go crazy…
But Annette suddenly raised her head, smiled at him and rolled to one side. Fred felt he was falling into icy water.
‘I can’t begin to know how to thank you.’ She reached for a packet of cigarettes.
‘Well…’ Fred grinned distracted, then he spread his arms clumsily, ‘I’ve got an idea.’
But Annette just laughed. ‘You won’t believe how often I’ve thought about what you did for us. Nobody else would have been like that.’ She plucked a cigarette from the packet and lit it. ‘And I couldn’t even boast,’ she blew smoke at the ceiling and gave a sly wink, ‘of having a true hero for a friend.’
‘Never mind the hero.’ Fred looked up at her breasts, which were raised against the tight T-shirt. He reached for her arm and attempted to pull her back onto the mattress. But again Annette just laughed and stayed where she was. ‘I’m so happy that it’s over, that you’re out at last.’
‘Yes.’ Fred scratched his head, then he remembered the vomit-stained overalls, and glancing down, he too had to laugh. ‘I understand. It looks really revolting’
‘I’ve brought you a change of clothes.’ Annette pointed to the window seat, ‘How about you have a shower, and I’ll rustle up a nice breakfast?’
‘With a nice bottle of champagne?’
‘If you want.’
‘I’ve got a lot to catch up on.’
They stood up, and while Fred removed the overalls, Annette put a towel on the mattress and went to the counter and took her purse. She asked over her shoulder: ‘Would you like anything in particular? Bacon, cornflakes, bread rolls?’
Fred came up behind her and wrapped his arms round her upper body, so that his hands landed on her breasts. In a tone that was meant to be comic, he said: ‘Peaches.’
This time Annette didn’t laugh. Annoyed, she shrugged him off. Fred was shocked.
‘Hey, it’s me, Fred - the one with the bad jokes.’ Fred smiled cautiously. So bad they were good. Used to be his trademark.
‘I must have forgotten.’ Annette smiled back, but it was clearly an effort.
‘Let me show you the bath. The water is sometimes fairly cold here…’ and then conciliatory, ‘but a cold shower is supposed to be good for you every now and again.’
While Fred sprayed lukewarm water on his head, his mind was racing. Was Annette offended? He had certainly been a little shameless, but no more so than before. Had his smell pu
t her off him? Or the guy in the photos… ? Somehow things weren’t running to plan. Was he thinking wrong or was it going wrong? Or was he just going at a different pace? Probably. Annette simply needed time to come around. And when they’d had breakfast and talked a little bit… It was important to talk, everyone knew that.
He turned the water off, draped a towel round himself and went to a shelf containing countless bottles of aftershave and perfume. Normally he didn’t use such things. Now and again he took scissors to his wispy beard, and perfume reminded him of dark-haired old women with dyed blonde hair. But today was a special day, and he had some ground to make up, as far as his odour was concerned.
He sniffed at various bottles and decided on something sweet and flowery, like pudding and roses - in for a penny. Unused to the dosage, he tipped almost half a bottle over himself. If this didn’t make Annette crazy for him. And he added a quick splash between his legs.
He went back into the room with his towel round his hips. Annette was still out shopping. He put on the clothes she had left out for him: brown corduroy trousers and a brightly checked shirt. He had a quick look at his reflection in the windowpane and thought he looked like one of those prison psychologists who always addressed him with ‘Freddie, man’.
Then he sat down at the counter and lit a cigarette. Wait, he said to himself, wait and deal with it as it comes. What happened happened, and after that it was up to him.
Annette placed the shopping bags on the counter and turned around sniffing. ‘Did something die in here?’
‘Not me,’ thought Fred, but he didn’t have the nerve for such comments at the moment.
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