Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F.

by Christiane F

  Then I got a boyfriend, and he definitely had a calming effect on me. I could really talk to him. And despite everything, he always seemed to be able to keep his priorities in order; he knew what mattered. He could dream, yet he could also find a practical solution for everything. And at the same time, he wasn't blind to all the real problems that surrounded us. But he believed that if you could achieve some success yourself, then you could make your own, better world—no matter how small. That would make a difference. His plan was to become a businessman and make a bunch of money and then afterward buy a log cabin in the Canadian woods and live there. Canada was his big dream, just like for Detlef.

  He was a student in the Gymnasium, the college preparatory track, and he got me excited about learning again. I realized that even the Hauptschule could offer me something as long as my goal was to actually learn—and not just get through the ridiculous, useless, moronic requirements for the Hauptschule diploma.

  I read a lot. I picked up books almost at random. Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, Hermann Hesse, and especially Erich Fromm.52 His book The Art of Loving became like a bible to me. I learned whole pages by heart, simply because I felt that I had to read them over and over again. I also copied passages from the book and taped them above my bed. Fromm really had the right perspective on things. He understood what really mattered. If you listened to his advice and actually followed it, then your life would be meaningful because then you'd be able to make it into what you wanted it to be. At the same time though, it's so difficult to live by his rules because no one else has to follow them with you; most people don't even know about them! I wish I could have a conversation with Erich Fromm about how he lives in this world while also following his principles. But in any event, I realized that the real world sometimes escapes the grasp of his essential principles.

  I thought that Fromm's book ought to have been the single most important book in our curriculum. But I never dared to bring it up in class because the others would've probably just turned it—and me—into a joke. Sometimes I took the book to school with me. Once, I was reading it during class because I thought I could find an answer in it to a question that had come up in class. The teacher saw that, looked at the title, and immediately took the book away from me. When I wanted to have it back at the end of class, he said, “So, the little miss likes to read pornography in class, does she? No, I'm sorry, this book will remain confiscated for the time being.” He actually said that to me. The name Fromm didn't mean anything to him. And the title just sounded like porn to his ignorant ears, I guess. What else could love be for these frustrated men, anyway? So he came to the natural conclusion that Christiane just wanted to corrupt the kids in his class after spending time in Berlin as a drug-addicted hooker.

  The next day, he gave me the book back and said it was okay. Still, he advised me not to bring it to school anymore because the title was misleading.

  There were a lot of things like that, and this thing with the Fromm book was really only the tip of the iceberg. Other things made me way more upset. Like once, I got in trouble with the principal. He was another one of those totally frustrated, insecure guys. He was completely incapable of taking control of anything, even though he was the principal. He tried to compensate for that with yelling and a lot of senseless exercises. When we had class with him in the morning, we had to sing a song and do some exercises before we did anything else. He said it was meant to help us wake up. You only got good grades in his class if you did exactly what he said.

  He was also our music teacher. And one time, he wanted to do us a favor (that at least was something new) and talk the about music that we cared about. He started by talking about “today's jazz music.” I had no idea what he meant by that. I thought that maybe he was referring to pop, and so I said, “What do you actually mean when you say, ‘today's jazz music’? If you're talking about pop and rock, that's not the word we use.” Maybe I said it in the wrong tone of voice again or something. I'm sure I probably started spouting off without first thinking about what I really wanted to convey. In any case, the principal went ballistic. He screamed like a lunatic and sent me out of the class.

  At the door, I turned around and tried to calm things down a bit. I said to him, “I think we must have misunderstood each other.” So he called me back in. But in the end, I couldn't go back, so I spent the rest of the class out in the hall. At least I was under control enough to stick around the building and not just take off for home.

  After class was over, I had to go to the principal's office. As soon as I walked in, I could see that he had my folder in his hand. He thumbed through the file and pretended to read it. Then he said that I wasn't in Berlin anymore. And incidentally, I was only a guest at his school anyway. And under these circumstances, he could kick me out at any time. So I better start appreciating his hospitality.

  I could feel myself losing it. I didn't want to go back to school at all. Even little things were still setting me off back then, and this was big. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't just shrug it off and tell myself that this idiot didn't really have any influence over my life. He did. But if he can only fight you with some paper files, then in a way he knows that he's already lost.

  I managed to keep my big mouth shut in his office, and after that incident I tried my best to be inconspicuous. Before this, my boyfriend had encouraged me to try and do well on my finals at the Hauptschule and then to try to get into a comprehensive school after that.

  But I knew how hard that would be, in real terms, as a student from the Hauptschule. And as things stood now, I didn't want to hear another word about school. I was sure that I wouldn't be able to hack it. The psychological fitness tests, the special permission from the superintendent, and all the other stuff you had to do if you wanted to get out of the Hauptschule were just too much. And I knew that my file from Berlin was always going to be one step ahead of me.

  But at least I had my sensible boyfriend, and I was developing some friendships with the teenagers in the town who in their own way really appealed to me. They were pretty different from what I was used to, but they were way better than all the assholes from the club and the other town nearby. There was a real community spirit among them. There weren't any alpha males or hotshots among them. Everything had a sort of old-fashioned order, even if the boys did get drunk every now and then. And most of them accepted me, despite how unusual I must have seemed to them.

  For a while, I thought I could be like them. I thought I could live a life like my boyfriend had. But I couldn't make it last. I broke up with my boyfriend as soon as he started pushing for sex. I just couldn't do it. I simply couldn't imagine sleeping with anyone besides Detlef.

  So I guess I still loved Detlef. I thought a lot about him, even though I didn't want to. Sometimes I wrote him letters, which I intended to send to Rolf—the last person he'd lived with. But at least I still had enough sense left not to send the letters.

  I heard that Detlef had wound up in jail again. Stella was there, too. I thought a lot about both of them. I missed them. But there were a lot of people around me now who I really liked, too. I felt much closer to them than I ever had to the kids in the village where I first grew up. They were easy to talk to, and we could talk about anything—including my problems. I felt accepted by them and didn't have to worry that they'd find out about my past. They saw the world like I saw it. I didn't have to pretend or adapt. We were on the same wavelength. Despite that, I was worried about getting any closer with them. Because at the time, they were all experimenting with drugs.

  My mom, my aunt, and I, we all thought I'd landed in a corner of Germany that had been untouched by drugs—or at least by hard drugs. When the papers reported anything about heroin, it had happened in Berlin or Frankfurt. I looked at things the same way myself. I figured I had to be the only ex-junkie for miles around.

  However, I grew to know better right after one of our first shopping expeditions. Early in 1978, we drove to Norderstedt �
��a kind of dormitory suburb of Hamburg, comprised of all-new high-rises—to go shopping. As I always did when we went on these road trips, I kept an eye on people who seemed like they were stoned. I'd been watching a couple of guys, and I was thinking to myself, Are they shooting up? Smoking pot? Or maybe they're just students?

  Before I got my answer, we went into a snack bar to get a hot dog. At one table, there were a few poor foreigners hanging around together. Two of them suddenly got up and moved to another table. I didn't know why, but I immediately had the feeling that heroin was involved. I made my aunt hurry up and leave without telling her about my suspicions.

  Just a hundred yards further on, in front of a jeans shop, we walked right into the center of the Norderstedt heroin scene. There were junkies everywhere. Then I imagined that they were all looking at me. And that they had immediately recognized me as one of their own. I started freaking out. Heading for an all-out panic. I grabbed my aunt by the arm and told her that I had to leave immediately. She could kind of tell what was going on and said, “But why? You aren't involved with that sort of thing anymore.” I said, “Just drop it. I'm not ready for this yet.”

  At that point, I already knew that I was done running. And when I knew that, I knew that I'd be able to stay away from heroin for the rest of my life if I wanted to. It shocked me that, despite my new resolve, they still had recognized me. So when I got home, I peeled off my clothes right away and scrubbed the makeup off my face. My high-heeled boots were fired—effective immediately. From that day, on I tried to look like the girls in my class.

  But while at the club, I now hung out more frequently with the people who smoked pot and went tripping. Sometimes I smoked a pipe right along with them, and occasionally I “just said no.” I really liked these kids. Most of them were apprentices somewhere and came from the surrounding villages. They all had brains and were interested in using them—so they were nothing like the helplessly defeated students at the Hauptschule. They thought about things, about politics and issues. When I had a conversation with any of them, I usually left excited, almost inspired. They were just good people. No one fought. The violence was elsewhere. This was a totally peaceful group.

  One time—but only once—I asked some of them why we couldn't do what we were doing now without getting high. They blew me off. They said it was a stupid question. After all the shit that happens in the course of a day, how else were you supposed to relax?

  They were all disappointed with their jobs. The one guy who wasn't was in a union and was working as an apprentices' ombudsman, he found meaning in his daily work. He looked after the interests of the other young people in that business, and that gave him satisfaction. He was also of the opinion that our society could be changed. He was on a pretty even keel. He didn't smoke at all, and when he drank it was usually just a glass of red wine.

  The others didn't see any meaning in what they were doing. They were constantly talking about quitting. The only thing was, they didn't know what to do next. When they got off work, they were frustrated, bitter, and angry. When we got together, one of them always started talking about how he hated his boss or about how something had gone horribly wrong, until someone else would finally interrupt, “Enough about work!” Then a pipe would be passed around, and their postwork lives would begin.

  I felt like in a way I was still better off than them. Sometimes I actually had some fun in school. On the other hand, I was just like them. There wasn't really any grand purpose behind all this studying and stress. By that time, it had become clear to me that I'd never be able to take my college exams or get into the Realschule. And I also knew that as a former addict, I wasn't eligible for a lot of the jobs I might be interested in later—no matter how well I did on my finals at the Hauptschule.

  Still, when the time came, I did do well on my exams and got really good grades before I left. It didn't earn me an apprenticeship, but I did get a temporary job (thanks to some law meant to keep unemployed young people off the streets). I haven't used heroin for almost a year. But I'm aware, of course, that it takes a couple of years before you're completely clean. And at the moment there are no big problems.

  At night when we sit together, my friends and I, drinking wine and smoking, then all those small daily problems have a tendency to disappear. We talk about the books we're reading. We talk about the news and mysticism and whatever else comes up. We're all into Buddhism right now. We're looking for people who see the world in a different way than we do, so that we can learn from them. So far our own lives haven't proved to be quite what we'd hoped.

  A girl in our clique is doing an apprenticeship as a nurse, and she brought some pills back one day. For a while, I was back on Valium. I won't touch acid, though, because I'm afraid to go on a horror trip. The others all seem to enjoy it.

  There aren't any hard drugs in our small town. If anyone wants to get into that scene, they have to go to Hamburg. No one around has any H, so that makes it easy to avoid temptation. It's not like Berlin or Hamburg or even Norderstedt.

  But if you're desperate to score, it's not really that hard. There are guys with connections. And sometimes a dealer passes through who has a real arsenal. If you ask somebody like that if he's got something to get high on, he'd most likely ask, What do you want? Valium, methadone, pot, acid, coke, or dope?

  All the people that I hang out with these days believe they have the drug thing under control. There are definitely a few things that are different here than they were back at Gropiusstadt with all my old friends.

  This new group is looking for something entirely different when they use drugs. It's not about getting away from ourselves now or numbing ourselves with pounding music and dancing. Infact, for these guys, the atmosphere at The Sound would be like torture. It would be the opposite of a high. We all hate the city. We're into nature now. On weekends, we drive all over Schleswig-Holstein, and then we just park the car and start walking until we find a good spot. Often we end up on the moors, in places where nobody else would ever think to go.

  But the best place of all—the place we all really love—is the limestone quarry. It's an enormous crater right smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. More than half-a-mile long, two hundred yards wide, a hundred yards deep. The walls of the quarry are almost entirely vertical. It's warm at the bottom. No wind. There are plants growing down there—plants like we've never seen anywhere else. Incredibly clear streamlets flow through this crazy valley. Waterfalls come right out of the walls. The water turns the walls a rusty red. Everywhere you look you can see these bizarrely shaped white rocks, some of which look like the bones of ancient animals—maybe even mammoths. The gigantic excavator and the conveyor belts—which made so much noise during the week—on weekends looked like they'd been hibernating underground for centuries. The limestone covered them all in a blanket of white.

  When we go there, we're all alone. All alone in this crazy magical hole. The rest of the world is kept at bay by the steep, vertical limestone walls. There's no noise that can reach us from the outside. All we can hear is the water cascading down the quarry walls.

  We always imagine that someday we'll buy this quarry, once the mining operation is closed down. We want to build our log cabins down here, put in a huge garden, tend to our pets, and make sure we'd have whatever we need to live on. Then we'd blow up the only path out of the quarry.

  We wouldn't ever want to come up again anyway.

  _____________

  2. Berlin-Kreuzberg was a neighborhood in West Berlin. Today it is an urban district within Berlin that was combined with Berlin-Friedrichshain to form Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.

  3. Gropiusstadt is a subsection of Berlin devoted almost entirely to public housing. It was named after Walter Gropius, the architect who first envisioned the complex.

  4. DDR stands for Deutsche Demokratische Republik—although most English speakers know this country more familiarly as East Germany. East Germany was dissolved and joined with West Germany in the German reuni
fication on October 3, 1990—not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

  5. One German pfennig was worth a little less than one US penny.

  6. The Berlin Wall, which divided East Berlin from West Berlin from 1961 to 1989.

  7. After sixth grade, students in Germany are divided into different schools, or tracks, depending on their performance up through sixth grade. The least difficult of these is known as Hauptschule; the intermediate track is called Realschule; and the most advanced college preparatory track is Gymnasium.

  8. In the 1970s, the comprehensive school (called Gesamtschule in German) system was created as an alternative to the traditional three-way division of schools into Hauptschule, Realschule, and Gymnasium. In this single system, students could study different subjects at different levels of difficulty.

  9. College entrance exams (called Abitur in German) are taken at the end of twelfth grade and are required for attending university. Completing twelfth grade in Germany is roughly the academic equivalent of having completed approximately two years of college in the United States.

  10. “Kessi” stems from the German word kess, which means someone who is brash and has a tendency to talk back.

  11. A British glam rock band.

  12. At the time, one German mark was equal to about $1.50–$2.00 US

  13. The German student movement was a protest movement in the late 1960s in West Germany. German students had been largely conservative until the '60s, but protest movements across the world encouraged them to rise up against the perceived authoritarianism and hypocrisy of the German government, and the poor living conditions of students.

  14. Hess is a state in Germany.