How I Lose You

by Kate McNaughton

  They walk on in silence for a long while, lost in thoughts of the past.

  ‘I would like to show you my Berlin.’

  ‘Your Berlin?’

  ‘A piece of my Berlin. Would you like to see it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They turn off into another side street. Eva wondered what her London would be: the street she and Adam had lived on; Carmen’s flat; a few pubs. The various routes she had cycled to the office, to the Maudsley Hospital. You owned a city out of habit, and suddenly London felt like it was very far away; suddenly, it felt as though she might never have owned London at all. It was reassuring that Ulrich, at least, had his Berlin.

  ‘I lived here, just after the Wende.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. In this building.’

  They stopped. Ulrich studied the façade briefly, then pointed towards a row of windows, which were all indistinguishable from each other in the cold, grey concrete.

  ‘I was living in that flat. I moved in with a group of friends when I was a student. There were many empty flats here, so if you could find a way of getting in you could live there.’

  ‘What, so you were squatting?’

  He nods absent-mindedly. How little she knows about his life. About these memories that are him, that she has never heard – and which she might come to know, through confidences, childhood tales, but which will remain, nevertheless, a part of him – which will remain, nevertheless, foreign to her. She doesn’t know which window he means, and anyway, they all look the same.

  ‘Which window was it?’

  ‘That one – look.’

  He stands behind her, lifting her hand in his to point at it.

  ‘One, two, three up; one, two from the left.’

  She looks at the window. They start walking again.

  ‘Now all the buildings are – saniert.’

  ‘Renovated?’

  ‘Yes. Renovated. But then, here it was really fucked up. A lot of empty buildings, a lot of squats. A lot of illegal bars, they were very cool. Here …’

  He points at a glossy building, glass and steel glinting at them in the sunlight.

  ‘This has not been here before. When I lived here, it was a ruin, the building had been bombed in the Second World War. There was only one floor left, and also you could go down into the basement. So some guys made the basement into a bar, and I came here a lot.’

  ‘…’

  ‘We all felt so free. We were in the middle of these ruins, and we could do anything.’

  ‘I envy you that, you know. That you were a teenager here, at such an exciting time. In the middle of this insane upheaval. And that you were in East Germany as a kid – you’ve seen so much change. I feel like the world I grew up in was just so cosy and boring and monotonous …’

  ‘Yes, I feel lucky: the Wall fell at just the right time for my generation – we were young enough to adapt to the new system, but old enough to remember the old one and see what was good about it as well as what was bad. And, after all, it was all the destruction that came before that made Berlin such a fantastic place in the nineties. We were partying on bombsites.’

  ‘Did you think about that, back then?’

  ‘Not really. Or maybe, yes. Probably we thought we were aware, but were not really, you know? We didn’t think about the little Ruth Nelly Abraham, or at least not when we were partying.’

  ‘How could you? I mean, it’s a lot of history to take in all at once. You were living through a historical moment yourselves.’

  ‘We are always living through historical moments.’

  Eva looked up again at the shiny new building that had replaced the ruin of Ulrich’s youth.

  ‘Still. I wish I could have seen Berlin as you’ve seen it, all these transformations it’s been through.’

  Across the road from the stainless steel was a small patch of bare land, a mixture of earth and gravel and grass and bushes that seemed to be waiting for something.

  ‘This is what it was like. A lot more of Berlin was like this.’

  ‘…’

  ‘I remember, I showed Adam this place too, but then this new building was not finished, and most of the houses on the street were not renovated yet. It has changed so much, in just a few years.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He liked the building site – it was huge, with enormous cranes, and the structure was there, but just long steel – er – Stänge – nothing else. It looked like a ruin, too, a futuristic ruin. We bought some beers from the Späti and watched the workers build it. Adam was fascinated.’

  ‘Yes, he told me about the building sites, that it was one of the things he loved about Berlin.’

  ‘It was something we all loved. We maybe did not realize, I think, that one day these building sites would turn into this.’

  ‘You’d rather have kept the ruins?’

  Ulrich shrugged.

  ‘I know that is not possible. But I miss the ruins. They made you feel more free than all this money.’

  ‘WAIT, NO, HANG on, run that by me again – what has the loft extension got to do with anything?’

  ‘The point is, the loft extension should, they reckon, increase the value of the house enough that they can remortgage part of it and use that as a deposit.’

  ‘And why Spain?’

  ‘They like it there. And apparently it’s really easy to get a mortgage for places in Spain at the moment.’

  ‘Do you think it’s a good idea?’

  Adam shrugs.

  ‘I don’t really see what harm it can do. I think it would be good for them to have a new project with my dad retiring next year. Plus we’d get free holidays in Spain out of it.’

  ‘That’s a good point.’

  ‘And anyway, it’s their money.’

  ‘True also.’

  ‘Do you want another drink? I was thinking of trying out that Sazerac recipe Henry was talking about.’

  ‘Hit me with it.’

  Adam starts examining the drinks cabinet. Eva stretches out on the sofa, considers turning on the TV, decides not to. She has been feeling so – so content recently. Their flat is done at last, her job is going really well, Adam’s job is going really well, and they are happy and relaxed and comfortable together. There is something a little unsettling about this degree of contentedness, this lack of obstacles to overcome – it’s like they’ve been struggling up a steep slope for years, and now the open plateau stretches out before them, the going so easy. They have to readjust their limbs to not needing to climb any more.

  ‘Eve?’

  ‘Huh?’

  Adam laughs.

  ‘Did you not hear me just then?’

  ‘Huh? No, sorry, I was lost in thought – did you say something?’

  ‘I asked you what’s on your plate this week?’

  ‘Oh. Um. Bill wants me to file that story about Kamran Sheikh.’

  ‘You haven’t written that up already?’

  ‘No. I’m going to try and talk to some more of his former classmates – I still feel like there’s something I’m not managing to get to the bottom of.’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘Just: what is it that makes him capable of committing such a barbaric act – how can anyone bring themselves to slit someone’s throat, in the name of anything?’

  ‘Well, he’s probably a psychopath or something.’

  ‘I don’t think he is, Adam. I think he’s just a guy like you and me. There actually isn’t very much evidence that these guys are psychotic, or mentally ill in any other way.’

  ‘They must be.’

  ‘But they’re not.’

  ‘So what’s your explanation, then?’

  ‘I don’t know – that’s the problem. But I think … I think he starts from a point that we would all recognize. That there is injustice and violence in the world, and a lot of it is directed against Muslims.’

  ‘So, what – the answer to that violence is to slit someone’s throat?
I mean, come on, it’s revolting. And imagine doing that – you have to actually look the guy in the eye before you kill him.’

  ‘But isn’t the real problem that we so often don’t have to look people in the eye before we kill them? That war is becoming like a video game, where a guy can sit in a military base in Texas and fire missiles at Iraqi families, where people dying are referred to as “collateral damage”?’

  ‘That doesn’t make cutting someone’s head off any less horrible.’

  ‘No, and I’m as revolted by it as you are – but my point is that I feel like they’re two sides of the same coin, and not just because of the issues involved, but because of the way they operate. Terrorism is all about making the violent acts you commit as visible, as spectacular as possible, while our armies make their violence as concealed, as sanitized as possible. And not just our armies – our economies, our businesses. What about the kids who die sewing clothes for us in Bangladesh, or mining cobalt in the Congo so we can power our PlayStations?’

  ‘As I said, none of this makes beheading someone any less repulsive.’

  ‘I know, I agree! But I think the repulsion is the point. The repulsion is the only thing that will shake us out of our sense of security.’

  ‘So this guy is a monster out of tactical considerations?’

  ‘Well – no, not just. I mean, those tactical considerations are there, but you still have to make yourself be capable of killing someone. No, I think – it’s a way of defining yourself, I think. In a complex, confusing, unjust world. It gives you easy answers. And it gives your life meaning, to be fighting on the right side.’

  ‘…’

  ‘I mean, he was so convinced, Adam – it made him convincing, too. The power of what he believed, when you were talking to him …’

  ‘That’s exactly what Henry said about Carmen when she was psychotic.’

  ‘But this was different – nothing of what he said sounded crazy. He’d just drawn the wrong conclusions.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘It’s like – I think it’s an identity thing. All these guys like him I’ve spoken to, they’re all second- or third-generation immigrants. And it’s like this is a way of defining who they are.’

  ‘You’re a second-generation immigrant, and you’re not even interested in where you come from.’

  ‘But I’m less obviously an immigrant, and for the record, I am interested, I just … Anyway. My point is, these are young guys who feel they don’t belong anywhere, and being in a group fighting the jihad gives them a sense of belonging. Maybe.’

  Adam falls silent, distracted by his cocktail mixing. Eva’s mind stays with that young, angry man, his passion and fury, and the way he looked at her as though she was lost.

  Adam hands Eva a heavy tumbler.

  ‘Ooh, this looks nice.’

  ‘Well, try it first – it’s an untested recipe …’

  Adam sits down, and Eva tries to think about a way to explain to him what she means about the conundrum that is Kamran Sheikh, but she can’t seem to formulate it, and also it is hard to get Adam to understand the complexities of human nature sometimes. Because he is such a decent man – has lived his whole life sheltered from anything that might inflect his decency – he does not understand the darkness of other people.

  And then the strangest thing happens: sitting there lost in thought, Adam raises his hand to his lips in exactly the same pensive automatic gesture as the one Kamran had, when she was asking him a question he needed to think about before answering, and she remembers how disturbed she was by that gesture, and realizes now that the reason for this was that it made Kamran remind her of Adam, and, now, Adam remind her of Kamran. And she wonders what genetic mystery can be at the source of this uncanny mirroring.

  It makes Adam seem as remote from her now as Kamran was across that prison table.

  Eva searches for something to say, something that can reconnect her to Adam, to his voice, to the reality of him sitting there, being who he is.

  ‘Oh Ad – did you take down my mum’s samizdat from the bedroom wall?’

  ‘Yes – I thought it could do with reframing.’

  ‘Ah. Right.’

  ‘…’

  ‘You know, looking at that – it makes what I do seem so futile.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean – you know, my mother was putting her life on the line. Or, at the very least, her freedom. What she was writing – it mattered.’

  ‘What you write now matters.’

  ‘Not in the same way. Or at least, not at the same cost to me.’

  ‘…’

  ‘I mean, we can’t know, can we? How we would react in that situation. Whether we’d have the courage to do something like write pamphlets that could get us thrown in jail, or bumped off.’

  ‘No. But that’s not the situation we live in.’

  ‘Isn’t it, though? Isn’t there enough injustice in this world that we could be risking our lives to right it?’

  ‘You do risk your life. You fly out to warzones.’

  ‘But there’s very little risk, really. In the places I go to. It’s the soft version of warzones, nowhere near the front line.’

  ‘…’

  ‘I mean, my mother lost everything. She came here with nothing to her name but a pamphlet and a tea cup.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘It’s weird, you know, Eva.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense. That your mother wasn’t able to retrieve anything from your grandparents.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that. She must have been able to get someone to send her something.’

  ‘She couldn’t communicate with them, it was too dangerous. And then they died …’

  ‘But she must have been able to communicate with them. There were ways. I’ve talked to Ulrich about this. Even if you were worried about them being intercepted, you could find ways of getting letters through. And nobody was living in isolation – there will have been friends, parishioners she could have contacted …’

  ‘Well, so – what are you saying?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. Just that it can’t have been impossible for your mother to communicate with anyone from back home after she left. Ulrich was telling me about this cousin of his—’

  ‘Jesus, have you told this Ulrich guy my whole life story?’

  ‘What? No. We were just talking generally … Is that your phone?’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’

  ‘It’s all right, I’ll get it.’

  As Adam walks away, it strikes Eva that he doesn’t ask her to come to Berlin with him any more. He stopped, she can’t pinpoint when exactly, probably worn out by her constant fudging of the issue, and she feels disappointed that he doesn’t still ask, even though she knows her answer would probably still be the same.

  ‘Here you go. It’s Carmen.’

  ‘Thanks. Hey there.’

  ‘Hi, Eva.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Ah.’

  Carmen catches her breath, can’t quite get the words out.

  ‘Hey Carm, you OK?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m, er … Well no, not really.’

  ‘Shit. What’s the matter?’

  Adam raises an inquisitive eyebrow. She gives him a ‘not good’ look.

  ‘Carm? Can you talk?’

  ‘Yeah, I mean – I’m fine really, I just – I just had this weird … I’m not having a breakdown, though. I just had this – anxiety attack.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t need to go back to hospital, though. Really.’

  ‘What happened, Carm?’

  ‘I – I was in the kitchen and I was going to make some dinner and …’

  The words come out with difficulty, fighting as they must with tears and breaths and gulps.

  ‘And I took out this chopping knife and put it on the table while I went to get some vegetables out
of the fridge, and then when I turned round again, I don’t know …’

  ‘…’

  ‘It was … It was like I could see the knife, this huge chopping knife, and I could see the potential it had to slash through my throat, I don’t mean that I actually wanted to do it, I really didn’t, that’s why I was so scared, but I could see that that knife had the capacity for me to pick it up and plunge it into me, like it was something contained within it. And I couldn’t bear to look at it because it was like I could feel the hint of it across my throat, the shadow of it. So I just left the house. I had to leave the house.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘Just – walking. I’m close to my place.’

  ‘Do you want me to come get you?’

  ‘No, I’m fine, but – could I come over to yours? I just need to be with people, I think.’

  ‘Of course. You’re sure you don’t need fetching, though?’

  ‘No, no, honestly. I’ll come over now though.’

  ‘OK. Call back if you need anything.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. Thanks.’

  Adam sits down on the couch, wraps his arms tight around Eva.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘She’s had, like, a kind of freak-out.’

  ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘I mean, I don’t think – I don’t think it’s, like, a psychotic episode again. It sounded more like a panic attack. She, like – got freaked out by this knife, like it might hurt her.’

  ‘Hm. That sounds a bit psychotic to me.’

  ‘I don’t know, she seemed to me – to realize it wasn’t actually a real danger though, that the fear was coming from her.’

  ‘She’s coming over now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘…’

  ‘In fact, I imagine she won’t have eaten – the knife was because she was about to make dinner. I might go and see if there’s anything we can give her when she gets here.’

  In the kitchen, Eva pulls out each sharp knife from the block of wood they are stabbed into and studies their stainless steel blades. It is true, of course, that they have that violence contained within them. She takes out a tea towel and wraps the knives inside it, as though sheathing the blades in cotton will dull them, as though hiding them from view will reduce their power. Then she puts them in a drawer. She surveys the kitchen, looking for anything sharp, pointed, potentially harmful. There is nothing – just smooth, wooden surfaces, rounded edges. But she can’t stop thinking of the knives in the drawer, how Adam sharpens them regularly – he finds it soothing, he says – and how their razor edges could cut through flesh like butter.