Twins

by Dirk Kurbjuweit

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  Dedication

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  For Marja

  1

  The night the girl fell from the sky, Ludwig became my friend. It was summer. The window was open and I lay awake listening. It was two in the morning. I saw that from the clock radio on the bedside table: illuminated yellow digits that clacked softly when they flipped over. Ludwig was asleep. When there were no cars driving over the bridge, I could hear him breathe. If a car came, I heard first a faint whistle, then a rushing sound, growing louder and ever louder, then softer and softer. Not many cars drove over the bridge at night. I strained my ears for the next whistle—I’d rather hear a car than Ludwig’s breathing and the soft clacking in the silence. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t sleep—or maybe because I was wondering whether Ludwig might be my friend. A truck passed over the bridge: a dark whistle, a powerful rushing, the underlying drone of the engine—with trucks you always heard the engine, but only with trucks. I wasn’t sure whether Ludwig was right for me. Then the girl fell from the sky.

  After school we’d gone to Ludwig’s house. It was the first time he’d asked me back. We cycled to the weir, then got a riverboat. It was only a quarter of an hour’s bike ride from our little town to Ludwig’s parents’ house, but he insisted on going down to the weir and taking one of the little boats that ran throughout the summer. We were the only passengers on the little white vessel as it glided, gently chugging, through the wide valley—green slopes to the right and left, fields and horse paddocks between them, and beneath us the river where we weren’t allowed to swim. Straight ahead was the bridge.

  To this day I don’t know how many pillars that bridge has, though I often tried to count them. I’d start on the left, letting my eyes move from pillar to pillar, and would soon reach six or seven, but then I wasn’t sure which one my eyes should fix on next, or which I had counted last. I’d start over again: six, seven, eight…Hang on, was it really eight—or still seven, or maybe even nine? It was enough to drive you mad. You had to stare so hard it made your head spin. I usually counted from the left, because counting from the right was even worse. All I can say is that there were fifteen, sixteen or seventeen pillars, pale concrete, sturdy but alarmingly narrow—too narrow for the wind, the big trucks, the four motorway lanes, resting on green steel.

  I couldn’t tell you how high the bridge was either, not exactly, though it was a question that preoccupied all of us boys a great deal. As high as the sky, we said when we were little, as high as Mount Everest, higher than a skyscraper. King Kong wouldn’t need to duck, we said, if he was chasing us under the bridge. At first we used to say it was a thousand metres, but it shrank as time went by. Fifty or sixty metres was where we stopped, but I don’t know if that’s actually correct. It’s hard to tell when you’re looking up into the sky. It’s high, the bridge, very high.

  I’d seen Ludwig for the first time two weeks before. In the middle of a German lesson, the door had suddenly opened and the headmaster came in, followed by a blond boy. The headmaster introduced him, saying that Ludwig had been sent by greater minds to help make something out of us. We grinned. We’d heard that line before. It was what the headmaster always said when a pupil from the school in the neighbouring town joined our class. The school had a reputation for being particularly demanding and the students who came to us had fallen short there. We never let them forget that they’d once given more cause for hope than we had.

  The day the headmaster brought Ludwig into our classroom it was raining. We were reading Schiller’s Hostage, but I wasn’t concentrating. I was looking at the rain, the heaviest that summer, running down the windows in broad sheets. You didn’t see drops, but curtains of water, and behind them a green shimmer—the chestnut trees in the yard. The windows were like lakes, I thought—vertical lakes, so clear that you could see the algae on the bottom, shimmering green. I was waiting for a fish. The doorhandle jerked, and we knew at once that the headmaster was coming, because he was the only one who gave the handle such a wrench that it jumped as if in alarm.

  We were used to seeing our new classmates standing awkwardly next to the headmaster, their faces red, their eyes sometimes moist. The headmaster would rest a hand on the unfortunate newcomer’s shoulder, and it always looked as if he was pressing them down to the floor. He was a heavy man.

  Ludwig grinned, and I forgot about the rain. The headmaster gave us his spiel about greater minds and Ludwig kept right on grinning. ‘Hello, little minds,’ he said, and then he laughed. He laughed long and loud and bright. We didn’t stir. We heard the rain and Ludwig’s laugh. We were afraid, the way you are when someone else does something wrong but everyone is going to get punished.

  Ludwig was about as tall as me, which meant medium-sized. He had a massive head, but you couldn’t tell whether it really was big, or only seemed big because it was covered in such thick hair—hair so blond that it was almost white. A shade too white, I felt—almost as white as my cousin’s rabbit. Ludwig’s hair hung over his ears and was really very thick indeed, making him look as if he was wearing one of those Russian caps with the big flaps at the sides. But the Russians’ caps are dark, and Ludwig’s was white. He had a round face, rather a flat nose, thin lips and barely any eyebrows—or perhaps they were just too pale to show up against his pale skin.

  He was still laughing. He stood slightly lopsided, like everyone the headmaster brought in. That hand must have weighed pretty heavy on Ludwig’s shoulder. It was only then that I saw he was dripping. He hadn’t taken off his rain jacket—a thin jacket, the kind we all wore, with a hood. His was red. He was laughing so much that he was shaking, drops of water flying off his jacket in all directions. I saw one drop land on the headmaster’s black shoe and felt even more afraid. Ludwig just stood there in a puddle of water. The headmaster looked at his shoe, and we all held our breath. Then he snatched his hand from Ludwig’s shoulder, strode to the door, jerked down the handle and vanished. It was some time before we began to breathe again.

  The teacher sent Ludwig to an empty desk in the second row, and we went back to reading The Hostage. It was quieter than before.

  Back then I was in desperate need of a friend. Having friends was all we cared about. Doing things with your parents had become embarrassing, and I didn’t like being alone then the way I do today. If you couldn’t tell somebody about something, it wasn’t real. Friends were like mirrors, and we only existed as reflections. The longer your list of telephone numbers, the more important you felt. We asked everyone we met for their number and were eager to give ours. Then we waited for the phone to ring. It was better to be rung than to ring someone else. No one wanted to be the first to call, so we were all caught in the same trap. Despite all those numbers in our notebooks, our homes were very quiet. We waited. In the evenings, we counted how many calls we’d received. The more often you talked about your experiences, the more real they were. We wanted to multiply ourselves in order to be somebody.

  Or maybe that’s just how I felt. I don’t know if the others felt the same. At the time I was convinced they did—to think anything else would have been unbearable. A friend was someone you could ring three times in a row, or even after every thought, every time you’d ridden your bike around the block. Only a friend could give you the uninterrupted feeling that you were there, that you mattered. And how wonderful it would be to be rung up three times in a row. I longed for it. I somehow hadn’t managed to find a friend so far. I would circle the block several times and then ask my mother when I got back if anyone had rung. She would shake her head. I joined a rowing club—I liked the river. Swimming wasn’t allo
wed.

  Whistling, rushing. People drove very fast at night. Ludwig had fallen asleep at half past eleven. Since then I’d been lying in silence on his blow-up mattress. I thought of all that had happened on my first day with him. His parents’ house was directly beneath the bridge, or maybe not directly—maybe ten metres away. It stood by the last of the big pillars—after that came two shorter ones, because the slopes of the valley began to rise. It took us two minutes to reach the house from the pier. We’d leant our bikes against the fence and I stared up at the bridge. I’d often thrown my head back and stared up at the bridge like that before, but now I knew that there were people who lived right under such bridges, and one of them was standing next to me.

  ‘A hundred metres, the highest bridge in the world,’ said Ludwig, opening the garden gate. ‘Did you know,’ he said, ‘that there’s someone inside one of those pillars?’ He pointed to the pillar closest to his parents’ house. ‘A builder fell in the concrete just as it was setting. They couldn’t pull him out in time. Now he’s stuck there forever.’ He grinned.

  I knew the story, but I’d thought the pillar with the builder in it was on the other side of the river. That’s what I’d heard.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ Ludwig said. ‘When you think there’s someone stuck there, it’s as if the pillar was alive somehow, because there’s someone in there.’

  ‘But he’s dead,’ I said quickly.

  Ludwig shrugged.

  A living pillar, I thought, staring at the digits on the clock. It was good to have a bit of light. Sometimes the bridge looked as if it might move. It wasn’t built straight but wound its way through the valley, a slight bend in the motorway. Something that’s bent always looks as if it could be straightened out, or bent even further. If Ludwig had already been my friend, I’d have woken him now and made him reassure me that the bridge couldn’t move. But he wasn’t yet my friend, and I wasn’t sure that he’d have given me that reassurance. After all, he was the one who’d said he sometimes thought the bridge was alive. The digits clacked. I wanted to go home. I wanted to get out of that room, onto my bike, away from the bridge, until I was home, in my own bedroom, next to my parents’ room—leaving the door slightly ajar.

  When there were no cars driving over the bridge, it was very quiet here, quieter than at home, where there was always a TV on or a door slamming in the neighbours’ flats. A little before one o’clock I heard footsteps, creaking floorboards. Somebody was walking around the house. The footsteps stopped outside Ludwig’s room, continued to the room next door, where his sister slept, stopped again, crossed the landing, went back downstairs.

  I stared at the clock and tried not to breathe. It was twelve fifty-eight. I stared at the digits, waiting for them to click over to one. At one it’ll be over, I thought—it has to be. My mother had told me that some American Indian tribes believe the dead return at night to retrace the paths they walked when they were alive—that was why you often heard the dead walking about in houses. But never after one in the morning, I prayed that night—not that my mother had said any such thing. It was an old house. A lot of the people who’ve lived here are already dead, I thought, trying not to breathe.

  Soon after one, it really was over. Footsteps on the stairs again, then silence. I heard a motorbike in the distance. Later I heard a toilet flush, a kettle boiling. I remembered that Ludwig’s mother worked late shifts. She’d probably come home and listened at the doors to make sure her children were asleep.

  Like everyone else, I’d been quick to get hold of Ludwig’s phone number, so I could give him mine in return. We didn’t remind him that he had once given more cause for hope than we had. We were overawed. No one had ever managed to make the headmaster leave the classroom in silence—and no one had come to us from the neighbouring town who hadn’t spent the first two weeks skulking in the corridors, ashamed at having fallen short of greater minds. From the first day, Ludwig ran and shouted like the rest of us. Perhaps he even ran more wildly and shouted more loudly. His white head shone out wherever the biggest scrimmage or the worst fight was underway. But often, too, there was a great calm about him. I soon noticed that everyone went quiet when he spoke, which was unusual for us. I don’t know what he said. I was keeping my distance, trying not to seem too keen. I wanted a friend, but one who came to me, not one I had to go to. I think that most of the time I looked slightly aggrieved.

  I remember how hard I found it back then to accept that games had to come to an end. I didn’t want to play football for an hour or two—I wanted to play forever. My enemies were the boys who soon ran out of steam or lost enthusiasm, but my greatest enemy was the dark. I even hated dusk, because it was then I had to start protesting, had to say that you could still see the ball perfectly well, that the way home was brightly lit, that our parents definitely wouldn’t be cross—though mine were always cross when I got home after dark. I didn’t want any old friend—I wanted one I could play with forever.

  At home in the evenings, I didn’t give my parents the chance to get to the telephone before me. I could jump up from my bed in an instant and take the two corners in the hall at a sprint. At the second ring I’d have the receiver in my hand.

  ‘It’s Ludwig,’ he said, the first time he rang. That was two weeks after he’d arrived in our classroom, dripping wet. ‘Seven trucks in a row just drove over the bridge—that’s a record,’ he said, slightly breathless, as if he had run to the phone. I didn’t know what to say. ‘Hang on,’ said Ludwig, ‘I think there’s another one. Listen.’ I heard a rushing sound. ‘Eight,’ he said. ‘Eight in a row—that’s amazing.’

  ‘Not bad,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, that last one was only a car,’ he said. ‘Oh well, eight’s a new record.’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘bye then,’ and hung up. I went back to my room, lay down on my bed and picked up the computer game I’d been playing. Or perhaps I read—I can’t remember. But I think I had trouble concentrating. Why had Ludwig rung me? Why was he so keen to tell me about the trucks? I hadn’t thought much further about it before the phone rang again. I dashed out into the hall. ‘It’s me again, Ludwig,’ he said. ‘Four motorbikes. That’s rare too. Funny day today.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I said.

  ‘Kind of funny, anyway…’ said Ludwig. Then we were silent. Silence on the telephone is strange. These days I can sit with someone in silence, but for a long time I found it impossible. I’d end up telling the stupidest or most intimate stories just to have something to say, and often made a fool of myself. I stopped as soon as I realised. Let others do the work—I no longer mind thinking my own thoughts when I’m in company. For years now, they’ve often been thoughts of Ludwig. But I’ve never been able to deal with silences on the phone, and that hasn’t changed. I suppose it’s to do with having a receiver in your hand. It’s pointless holding it to your ear if you’re not talking—ridiculous, even—and I always feel compelled to leap in with something immediately. But that day it was Ludwig who kept up the conversation. ‘Do you think I’m an albino?’ he asked.

  I was quite taken aback, though I had, of course, wondered—I knew from my cousin that some rabbits are white with red eyes and you call them albinos. Before I could reply, Ludwig said he wasn’t an albino, even if he looked a bit like one, because of his white hair and all. ‘Definitely not,’ I said. Then we both hung up and I went back to my bed and lay there, thinking even harder.

  Half an hour later, the phone rang again. This time he didn’t say his name, just asked straight off whether I wanted to go to his place after school the next day. I could stay the night as well, he said. It wasn’t easy to convince my mother that there was nothing wrong with sleeping over at someone’s house the first time you visit them, but I told her we’d become very good friends in a short space of time. ‘Do you think he’d ring up three times in a row if we weren’t?’ I said. When she finally agreed, I was very excited. Overnight sounded almost lik
e forever.

  When we arrived, we went straight to the workshop. It was actually only a shed of wooden planks covered with a flat roof. The door was open and I could see a single-track hydraulic lift inside with a motorbike perched on top. A man was driving screws into the gearbox. Next to him, a girl sat on a stool, stroking a cat lying on her lap. I saw tools on the wall, a welding torch, a gas cylinder, a big barrel, a shelf full of cardboard boxes, a coal-burning stove. At the back were two more motorbikes, one of them without an engine, the other with a bent front fork.

  When we entered the workshop, the man turned round and I saw straight away that it was Ludwig’s father. His hair was grey, not blond, but it lay on his head just like a cap too. He had a thick, grey moustache with corners that curved down and framed his chin. He was holding a spanner in his right hand and gave an embarrassed smile. He said hello and then nothing else. I didn’t understand—I was the one who was supposed to be uncomfortable, meeting a grown-up I didn’t know.

  ‘This is Johann,’ said Ludwig. His father scrutinised the spanner. He was wearing torn overalls. I caught a glimpse of his underpants. He had a belly, but his legs were very thin. ‘The cat’s called Otto,’ said Ludwig, and the girl introduced herself as Vera.

  ‘I’ll get back to work, then,’ said Ludwig’s father, turning to his motorbike.

  I’ve forgotten my first impression of Ludwig’s sister. I think I saw the cat rather than her. Vera was only a girl, a year younger than Ludwig and me. A cat, too, is only a cat for a boy of eleven, but I noticed this one, because it was filthier than any I’d ever seen before. Its fur was matted, and though it must once have been black and white, it was now black and grey. It had a greasy sheen—not at all like the shine cats have when they’ve just cleaned their fur. It lay on Vera’s lap and purred, licking its paws while Vera stroked it.