Hemispheres

by Stephen Baker

His haggard face is lit sporadically by the headlights of passing traffic.

  He was on the Russian front, during the war, says Johann. Saw some terrible things. That’s what a wino of him made, right back in forty-five. He was before that a watchmaker.

  I was once a man, walking on the earth. When I stretch my feet out, down into the water, there is nothing. A yawning depth beneath me. Sleep is no longer sleep, just an endless, wakeful treading of water. I long for a pillow of sand beneath my cheek, moulding itself to the contours of my face. I long to lie on solid ground, on the fringes of some island.

  Cornelius, says Johann. You are a golem. Not a man.

  We are sitting on the U-Bahn platform at Ebertplatz, waiting for the transport police to throw us off for the night.

  What is a golem? I know I have somewhere of it heard, but I don’t remember me exactly.

  He snorts, slumps against the wall, momentarily losing consciousness. I shift my buttocks impatiently, where I’m starting to get pressure sores from cold concrete.

  Johann, I say, shaking him.

  What? Oh right. Well, a golem is an empty shell, a man without the soul. A magician in the Prague ghetto made the golem out of clay, and breathed life into it. He used it his bidding to do, secretly, for it would always its master obey, always to him return.

  I can see two policemen on the opposite platform, eyeing us up. It won’t be long now. Johann is looking at them too, his story in abeyance. They head up a stairway and he continues.

  You are an empty shell Cornelius. A man without a soul. A man without a story.

  You’re just jealous, I say. You drink your soul to kill. You drink your story to drown. I have it already done.

  You are my golem Cornelius, he says. I sculpted you from river mud. From the Rhine. And you will my bidding do.

  Come on gents. The two policemen are in front of us. You know the score. The fat one with the moustache shells a couple of cigarettes towards us, which Johann palms and pockets with practised ease. We haul ourselves to our feet and shamble towards the stairs, Johann stumb ling and leaning heavily against me.

  Cornelius, he says. You know, I am sick and tired of cold feet. Perhaps I will you command the tiny bird to kill.

  I sigh, thinking only of the cheap schnapps we have bought and the too-short oblivion it will bring.

  In the morning we shuffle past the department store where Franz Josef was incinerated. There are blue lights flashing, a police line taped across the store entrance. Staff and customers are huddled outside the barrier and we shamble over to join them, noticing how they edge away from the miasma of our stench. Johann bares his teeth at a group of young shop girls and they stare, revolted. After a few minutes, medics come out with a prone figure on a stretcher, red blanket drawn over the face and head. The crowd shudders. The back doors of the ambulance close behind the stretcher but the vehicle stays put, engine idling, blue lights firing limpidly. I recognize the two cops who regularly kick us off Ebertplatz.

  Hey boys, I croak. Have they another poor wino immolated?

  The fat one with the moustache looks at me. Disgust mingled with pity.

  Nah, he drawls, then lowers his voice. A skinhead bought it. Young lad.

  The other one is wiry and blond, face blotched maroon by the cold. He leans conspiratorially towards me and Johann.

  Ripped open from stem to stern, he murmurs with relish. Inside out turned, pretty much. The scary thing is, it looks like somebody with their bare hands did it. No sign that a weapon was used. Who would the strength have, to do such a thing?

  He shudders delightedly. The fat one looks more pensive.

  I won’t his face in a hurry forget, he says. Reminded me of my little ones at home. Just a little boy, big eyes like a puppy.

  He shakes his head slowly, the pale blue eyes moist. Johann and I shamble away, winding through the morning crowds. I look at Johann but he’s avoiding eye contact. Then he says it.

  You did it, golem.

  What?

  I look at him again, confused.

  Only a golem would have the strength to rip a man open with his bare hands. You, Cornelius, killed him. In retribution for Franz Josef.

  How could I have killed him? Been with you the whole time.

  You wander in the night Cornelius. When I fall asleep, you are wakeful. An empty shell.

  And you are full of shit, I tell him.

  The sun against my face like the hot muzzle of a shotgun, bullying me into consciousness.

  Cornelius, look. Cornelius. I’ve found him, shouts Johann excitedly. He is bouncing like a big stupid dog with a dark patch of piss at his groin. He shakes me by the arm.

  Lick me on the arse Johann, I say. I need to sleep.

  I turn over. The weather is warmer now and sleep more comfortable. He shakes me again, this time angrily.

  Golem, he booms. Awake. Your master commands you.

  I stand abruptly and grab him by the mouth.

  Enough of this golem shit, I snap, looking into his big stupid blue eyes. He shakes himself free, grins crookedly.

  Come and look, he says.

  We push between the big buddleia bushes which are scribbling purple prose all over the wasteland, shooting out these long and rampant spires of doggerel. The other side of the bushes, down a little slope, a burnt-out lorry is slowly rusting. Looks like it has been here for years, everything of value – wheels, upholstery, engine – stripped away. A slowly subsiding island in a ragged sea of brambles.

  Shhh. Johann has his finger to his lips. Through a tunnel of thorn we can see the back end of the lorry. I follow his pointing finger and squint into the darkness underneath. A bird flits up and perches on the back axle, silhouetted against green vegetation. It gives a twitch of the head, a flick of the tail, and there’s a high-pitched churring like a matchbox full of crickets. The bird jumps to one end of the axle and I realize there must be a nest there against the corroded wheel arch, the adult stuffing insects into the lurid gapes of the young.

  It’s them, Johann breathes, excitedly. The fire-stealers.

  The adult bird hops out from the darkness onto a pile of breezeblocks and his body blends in with the soft greys of the rubble but his russet tail is flaming like a Japanese maple with the light blazing through. The little black eye darts around and the bird flickers away in search of insects. Johann touches my arm.

  I’m going to do it. The chicks are there. The new year’s birds. I will them stop, now, before they grow and my fire next winter thieve away. I will them in my mouth pop, one by one, and the bones crunch.

  His large, slug-like tongue crawls slowly across his lips and a candle of slobber dangles from his chin. He starts to move forward and I grab his arm.

  Johann, you cannot eat them, I say, urgently. You are not a magpie, or Königin Victoria in black mourning.

  His face twists into an ugly snarl.

  Get you filthy hands off me Engländer.

  He pushes me back and I slump into a confusion of brambles which clutch at my clothes and hair. Johann bounds towards the back of the lorry and suddenly there’s magma rising to my throat. I thrash myself clear of the brambles, globes of blood like tiny red chillies at my forearms and on my face. He’s stooping like a crane beneath the back bumper and I run at him, pulling him away so that he turns, arms flailing and his face purple and engorged.

  You are with them in league, he roars, slamming a knee expertly into my groin. I collapse, winded, in front of him.

  First I have with you to deal, he whines. You fucking firescreen, you sapsucker.

  He pulls a full bottle of Canadian rotgut whisky from the inside pocket of his overcoat and tears off the top and wrenches my head back by the hair so that I fear being scalped. Instead he turns me over and plunges the bottle into my mouth.

  Have a drink Herr Cornelius, he shouts.

  The neck of the bottle almost down my throat, Johann on my chest, pinning my upper arms with his knees. I’m forced to swallow, and swallow, and sw
allow, bubbles of my life wriggling upwards through the golden fluid, until half of it’s gone and replaced by my breath. Queen Victoria puts the bottle down carefully on the ground, her jowls quivering. She reaches inside her black organza cleavage and a huge knife like a flatfish jumps into her hand.

  You killed Albert you whore, she spits, the piggy eyes incandescent with rage, raises the glittering flatfish into the air above my throat.

  I’m going to rip you, she murmurs, with some relish. And then I’m going to gobble them fledglings.

  As she says this, jet earrings a-quiver, one of her dumpy knees lifts just a little from my bruised upper arm. Just enough for me to wrench the arm free with a brutal effort and smash my fist into her face. She topples backwards and spits broken teeth, black blood dribbling onto the ground. Twist myself to my feet just as she flies at me with the giant blade, catching me on the chin and tearing off a flap of skin.

  By royal commission, this, she laughs, waving the knife above her head, black skirts billowing and hair coming astray. She points to the royal crest on the blade.

  That’s me sonny. VR. Read ’em and weep motherfucker.

  She comes at me again with a Miss Piggy squeal, but this time I manage to sidestep and grab the chunky gold chain holding the pendant round her neck. She jerks back like a hanged man reaching the end of the rope and I force her to the ground while she slashes at me behind her back with the knife. Little mouths open and gape in my flesh, and I begin to leak onto the floor, but I twist the gold chain tight and hold on, praying it doesn’t break. I twist the gold chain while her quaking dewlaps turn purple and then blue, tongue protruding from the twisted mouth. I hold on until she is finished, and the knife stops dipping its beak into me and falls to the ground. Then I sit down and watch the adult redstarts shyly observing me, alarm calls ticking and autumn tails nervously beating. They come closer, among the glowing buddleia leaves and flakes of blue sky, and I can see the bundles of tiny insects clamped in the needle-sharp beaks. Then, courage restored, they flit back beneath the lorry and I hear the rasping cries of the brood.

  Evening is growing and the air-raid sirens beginning to wail by the time I drag the old woman’s body deep under cover, at the centre of a thicket. I take her velvet cloak to cover my bloodstains. Bombers are beginning to drone overhead as I hurry back to the rusting lorry. The bottle is there, where she left it, perched primly on the ground, the raw gold beckoning within. Searchlights are clutching at the night sky over the city, revealing flocks of bombers like black bats hanging upside down from heaven. Guano begins to drip from the blunt bodies. I tilt the bottle where a small sun has been left brewing, and swallow it down whole, hydrogen and helium and sunspots and solar flares and all. The crump of high explosive echoes from the edges of the city and I lie down in the middle of the wasteland and wait for it to come.

  So, you’re healed now, she says, from the other side of her desk. At least, your body is healed. The knife wounds, you know.

  Her English is good, the voice calm and assured. Antiseptic, like the hospital smell of her little white office.

  How long? I stammer, uncomfortable on the plastic chair.

  You’ve been in hospital five weeks, she says. Lucky to be here. You lost a lot of blood.

  I reach a hand up to my scalp. It’s naked, brutally shaved.

  Sorry, she says. The locks had to go. You were quite badly infested.

  And then I look at her. A white face with a long clean jawline, a lascivious turn to the upper lip. Coarse black hair swept away and gathered at the back. She’s wearing a sleeveless top and I can’t help staring at her arms which are thin and bare and white as a pelagic bird. And bluegreen snakes coiling around from wrist to shoulder in whorls and vertices like a double helix.

  Caroline Baumann, she says. Everybody calls me Cally. I’m the alcohol project worker. There’s no compulsion, of course. You can go back on the streets if you wish. But we can offer counselling and support –

  Her voice tails off. My eyes rove over her white skin, the elaborate tattoos, then snap, embarrassed, back to her face.

  I got them done in Kreuzberg, she says. After a colossal acid trip.

  She stretches a thumb and middle finger round the broadest extent of her slender bicep, slides it down towards the elbow.

  So why the snakes? I ask her.

  I don’t know. I’ve always been fascinated by them. I love their skin, the patterns on it are so intricate. Like an engraving by Escher.

  She pulls herself upright. So Mr Cornelius, shall we begin?

  It’s not Cornelius, I tell her. The passport, it’s fake.

  So what is your name?

  I try to rub the creases out of my forehead with my palms.

  That’s the thing. It’s gone. I need to get it back.

  Your memory will come back, eventually. That’s what happens in almost every case. Let’s start at the beginning.

  I sigh deeply, lean back in the chair, put my hands behind my head. Fix her with my eyes.

  To be honest Miss Baumann. Cally. I’d rather talk about snakes.

  *

  Four days later I wake up in her apartment, bathed in sweat. The tenor bell of the cathedral has a deep penetrative note which vibrates through the building each time it sounds the hour. She’s next to me, twisted in the bed.

  It’s okay, she says. You must have been dreaming.

  Yeah. I grin uncertainly. Dreaming about the sea.

  You have to rest, she says. Get some of that strength back. No time for worrying.

  You know, I… I think I had a kid. A wife. Years since I saw them. How many? I don’t even know what year it is now.

  Perhaps, she says. But you can’t go looking now. You’ve been through a lot. Got to eat, like John Wayne said, get off your horse and drink your milk. Good for the bones.

  She pads through the small flat in the half-light, to the kitchen. I hear the fridge pop open, see the flood of light. Back to the bedroom with a glass of milk and a slice of black bread. Ghostly light outside, not quite dawn, the city still asleep. I drink hungrily, thick milk smeared across my stubble. Cally giggles.

  Du Ferkel! You need a – Lätzchen – I don’t know the word in English – for a baby.

  A nappy, I offer, smirking.

  I know a lot of English men like that sort of thing, but no, I know a nappy is for shit, huh? This thing goes around your neck.

  You, I say, smiling.

  And she twists her head from side to side on the pillow as I move above her, in the bed in the half-lit room beneath the deep tenor bell of the cathedral, in the lost room deep in the dark heart of Europe. Her arms with the snake tattoos are around me, raking my back, cupping my buttocks, rubbing at the stubble on the back of my head. Her thin legs are moving around my thighs, knees jutting out an angle like bent coathangers. She imprisons me with the thin bars of her limbs, limiting me to this one simple movement of the buttocks, ploughing backwards and forwards. When she comes and cries out harshly she clasps me fiercely with her arms, the white arms with the coiled tattoos, constricting my chest so that I can hardly breathe, holding me fast so that I can’t escape, so that I’m pouring out my life into her.

  And days go by. Weeks. When Cally is at work I sit slumped on the sofa. There’s a fog outside, soft and absorbent, the gothic bulk of the cathedral sensed rather than seen. The television is beginning to occupy more and more of my days, as I get fitter and more mobile, bright moving pictures and sounds occupying the front part of my brain. Like a group of vacuous and noisy squatters, chatty but ultimately pointless. But they stop the real heavies moving in, the ones I don’t want to meet.

  The key turns in the outer door. Has she been locking me in? I’ve never checked, never yet felt strong enough to venture outside. But the thought of being locked in troubles me. It’s like a pond, this apartment. Comfortable and warm, but too murky. I think of going across Roncalliplatz to the cathedral, climbing up into that tower until my knees are jelly. Climbing up a
bove the fog, above the booming of great bells in the murk.

  Where have you been? I missed you.

  Have to earn us some bread, she says. I have clients who need me. Not just you.

  Plenty of alcoholics in the world, I say. You know, I used to have these migraines – a blur would move slowly across my vision, like a sunspot swimming across the sun. Eventually it would drop over the rim and I could see again. But right then I’d get a blinding headache, like I’d been hit with a hammer. It’s like that now. Everything’s blurred, but I can feel the blur moving. I want to see again.

  When that happens you might have to put up with a big headache, she says.

  A few days later she gives me a key. It winks on the string like a fish.

  Had this cut today, she said. For you. You can go explore when I’m at work. I take the key and put it in my pocket. It feels light, almost weightless.

  Fresh air, she says. You need to build up the strength in your muscles.

  Yes, I tell her. Walking is good. Walking is fine.

  We’re sitting in the living room of the flat, bars of sunlight jutting through the diaphanous curtains. The television is babbling. When she’s gone out, I close the flat door behind me, lean against the outside. Sweat prickling on my scalp, dark patches welling like tears in my armpits. Look down the dark stairwell. It reminds me of others. Wooden banisters worn smooth by the passage of hands. Whitewashed steps leading up. Snow blowing through slats.

  Take a step down, heart accelerating wildly, knocking in your ears. Both hands braced against the walls. Focus on the street door at the bottom, mail lying haphazard on the floor, flyers for restaurants and bars. Focus on the bright flags of paper and make yourself walk. The sweat patches have swollen, become dark moons. Walk to the bottom.

  I grasp the brass latch of the street door, open it a crack. A sliver of sunlight, with a hot breath of coffee and pastries and dusty pavements. I open the door a little more, scrutinize the passers-by. A tall man, slightly stooped, wearing a black leather jacket. Greying hair, slicked back. I’m straining to see his face, but he ducks into an alleyway. And then there’s a younger man, well-muscled, hair close-cropped like suede and a sleeveless tee showing off his upper arms. Their names are on the tip of my tongue.