Berlin Syndrome

by Melanie Joosten

  ‘It’s delicious,’ he says, running his tongue over his lips. ‘I’ve never tasted anything like it.’

  ‘It’s just so particular, it’s —’ She searches for the right word but he cuts her off, his lips pressed against hers.

  She should pull away; she knows that she should. She feels as though the Andi she first met has come back, that the door isn’t locked. It’s like that very first night before everything went so horribly wrong.

  ‘I can’t do this.’ She pushes him away, wanting only to pull him back towards her. Instead she directs her words to the teaspoon in her hand.

  ‘Do what? What do you mean?’

  ‘This. I can’t … This is all wrong, I shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘But where else would you be?’ He puts the tin on the table and takes both of her hands, his eyes imploring. ‘It’s just me, Clare. It’s always been me.’

  And because she wants to believe him she kisses him back. Because maybe if she gives him everything he wants, he will set her free. And maybe it will stop her feeling so terrible, as though she is going to cry at any moment. Within minutes they’re on the couch, his hands under her clothes. And she tells herself to stop, that she is doing the wrong thing. She cannot have sex with a man who is keeping her prisoner. But she doesn’t stop; she is just so thankful that something is finally happening to make this day different from all of the others. And as he feeds his hungry hands all over her body, it feels to Clare just like before, which is exactly where she wants to be.

  He crouches down, one hand on the floor to keep his balance. Clare has taken each of the Polaroids he has discarded and pinned them to the wall. They trail each other, Monday to Friday, along the skirting board. He is surprised to realise that he can remember taking each one. The one where she is sipping from a yellow mug was a Thursday. He was teaching senior students that day; he remembers looking at her photo as they role-played job interviews. There is one where she is in profile — the coffee pot had started steaming on the stove just as he took the photo, and she had looked to see it wasn’t boiling dry. The thought of all the photos that will follow the ones already here pleases him.

  He stands and goes to the safe to retrieve his phone and the key. He does not want to go to work; he never wants to go now that she has come back to him. Her body is something new every day — he cannot get enough of it. He is still surprised every time she lets him near her, every time she draws him in. He takes the Polaroid camera from the shelf. She is still sleeping, but he needs his photo.

  Usually he would wake her to stare bleary-eyed into the lens, but this morning he turns on the bedside lamp, lies down next to her in bed with the camera between their two faces, and takes the photo. She does not wake. He stands by the bed, waving the square of film as it develops. The photo is dark, and one eye is lost to the pillow, but it is still unmistakably her. He puts the photo in his pocket and takes hold of the sheet, pulling it to her ankles. She sleeps on her side, one knee bent to her chest, the other leg trailing as though she is skipping. There are red lines down her thigh, and he bends to look more closely. When they had started to sleep together again, there were no lines. He is sure about this: he drank in every part of her, everything he had missed. They have appeared sometime since, straight cuts on both legs, skimming the surface of her skin but deep enough to bleed.

  He does not know what to say to her about them. He mentioned them once, and she said they were scratches from her nails — that she gets itchy in her sleep. He did not believe her, but could not figure out what else would have caused them. He is certain they are deliberate. There are five of them, each one a different length. Somehow, he feels responsible even though that is ridiculous: she has done this to herself. He reaches out to touch them but does not. He knows how they feel — like impostors, they do not belong to her skin. Is she trying to make herself unattractive to him? He covers her with the sheet, switches off the lamp.

  Clare is not the person she thought she would be. She is not her real self; she has become some other being. Her camera bag in the corner reminds her of what she was like before: in charge and confident. Capturing the world and putting it away. Now she spends her days in an apartment, dressed in a t-shirt that smells of this new self, tired knickers and a pair of woolly socks. There is no reason to wear more, to put clothes on only to take them off again. She turns the heating up and does star jumps to keep warm, huddles beneath blankets on the couch or sits on the floor, back against the radiator, wondering if it is possible to cook her insides.

  How long since he locked the door? How long since she gave up on her silence? She endeavours to continue her soft approach. Don’t mention the war, she repeats to herself as she waits in the apartment each day. Don’t mention the door.

  She is surprised by the audacity of her own body. It slips through the days, barely seeming to change, but then when she looks at herself in the mirror, she sees she is different. Her finger healed long ago; no hint of bruise remains, though sometimes when she tries to play the accordion, her hand held to attention for too long, she feels a stiffness in its joints. She instructs her body through her yoga exercises, and it complies without argument. The lines on her legs appear and change with each day, the only reminder that she is real, and she waits for Andi to take issue with them.

  When she doesn’t think about the walls closing in, she feels as he tells her to — she feels okay. They have had nights of mayhem, sitting up until sunrise, passing joints and drinking wine. Standing tall in the apartment, up on the couch as if it was a soapbox, telling long stories, making speeches about the state of the world. They talk with fondness about the past, about how they met and who they used to be. They do not talk about the future. They talk about music and films and food. At night his warm body is a comforting antidote to the days of loneliness. She thinks about leaving, in the manner of going places, but not about escaping. There is never enough time to think about it all properly before it is tomorrow and the next day and the next, and soon it will be the day that Andi relents. He will reward her fidelity, realise that he has nothing to fear and that he can unlock the door.

  When he brings gifts, mostly she feigns appreciation. Often the item is useless: a knitted scarf, a moisturiser mixed with sunscreen. One time he brings home strawberries, but she does not touch them. They rot and sink into each other in their punnet, their fermenting smell evidence of their demise, and eventually Andi throws them in the bin. Everything is back to normal, but for the door, which remains locked.

  She composes a polite unsendable letter to her publisher explaining why she will be late with the book.

  Dear Daniel,

  I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing to let you know I have, unfortunately, been delayed in Berlin. A young man I met on a street corner captured my heart (and later the rest of me), and I am afraid I may not be able to keep to our agreed schedule.

  I have taken many interesting photographs that I think you will approve of. The concrete-block housing in Warsaw and on the outskirts of Riga were fine examples of modernism stripped bare of illusion, but my imagination has really been fired up by the television towers, those undeniably phallic salutes to the possibilities of communication. While Berlin’s own will be familiar to many, the most beautiful was definitely the Jested tower in the Czech Republic. It shoots right out of the mountain top, as though it might blast off at any moment. There are even glass ‘meteorites’ set into the building’s concrete core, as though the whole thing just crashed to Earth.

  Anyway, please excuse my tardiness. I really am very sorry that I won’t be able to meet our agreed deadline. I would like to reschedule for the future, but I’m not sure that would be feasible either.

  Best wishes,

  Clare

  To her mother she composes apologetic emails:

  Hi Mum,

  How are you? I am well. Well, not really. I suppose I a
m okay (I would hate for you to worry), but I’ve kind of gotten myself into a situation and I am hoping you can help. You see I met a boy, well, a man really, and things happened (I’m sure you can imagine what), and now I seem to be stuck in his apartment — he won’t let me leave.

  I did ask him for some sort of compromise: we have talked about it at length and tried to make it work but we just seem to disagree on fundamental things. I know you think I can be too picky but I promise you this is not one of those times. I should never have gone home with him in the first place and I promise I won’t do anything as stupid again, but if you could send someone to come and get me out I would really appreciate it.

  Hopefully I will hear from you soon,

  Clare xx

  Clare imagines what Andi writes in his emails impersonating her and she tries to think of ways she can hijack these, tell him what to include and use them to alert someone to her situation. But whenever she tries to clarify what exactly her situation is, her thoughts get muddy, petering out amongst the daydreams.

  She spends her listless days wishing she knew where she went wrong but knowing that she would do it all again; she cannot imagine a life without him, a life where strawberries were not her favourite fruit. And so she admonishes herself for these daydreams — the unsent emails and the playing out of the moment of her emancipation — because they are a pointless exercise. He has tied up all the ends so completely that until he changes his mind, there is only this particular life.

  And there is relief in this. She lets her thoughts travel in this direction, too jaded to chase them back to sense. There is some liberation in this being tucked away, not partaking in the world. Her mind is able to wheel free, not preoccupied with trying to frame the next photograph or look for the least obvious shot.

  Some of the lines on her thighs have healed, and she traces their silvery tracks with her fingers. They remind her of raindrops racing down windows, traces of their very selves left behind. She wishes that she was made of glass, that anything could run so easily across her surfaces. To be so fragile, though, would be like leading a life very hung-over. Unsure of the weight of things. She would have to be careful not to land too hard, not to be startled. Yet if she is glass then perhaps her scars are cobwebs, not raindrops. Forgotten threads crisscrossing over her legs, holding her knees to her hips like puppet strings. But she dismisses the thought: she is tired of her mind hiding truths from her. For the scars are not whimsical metaphors or veiled landscapes; they aren’t like anything at all.

  ‘Lie down on the bed.’

  He likes the way her words are clipped and authoritative. It is as though she has cleansed herself of all emotion, left it piled in the back of the wardrobe to be rummaged through when she is after something special. Emotions for all sorts of occasions.

  He lies on his back and waits. She takes a sip of wine and puts the glass on the bedside table, and he catches her hand in his own, pulls her to him. She kisses him with her eyes open. They stare at each other, too close to see anything. She lifts one leg over his stomach — she tastes of red wine — and when she pulls away from him, he feels the cool air rush in between them. He tugs her back down, and they fuck as if it is a fight. She claws at him. He groans. He wants to throw her from him and pin her down all at once. The wine makes the whole world seem soft. He does not feel like he will ever come.

  And then it is over. The sweat lifts and cools from his body, and he rolls over to look at her. She flinches. He does not know why. He reaches for her, his hand on her thigh, and he can feel the welts that run up her legs. ‘I told you to stop doing that.’

  She tries to pull away from him, but he holds firm.

  ‘You should not do it, Clare. It’s not right.’

  The cuts on her legs have been multiplying. She had told him she did it to measure her pain threshold, as though it was a normal thing to do. Why would she want to be bringing more pain onto herself? The situation is difficult enough for both of them as it is.

  ‘If you do it again, I’m going to have to punish you.’

  She snorts air through her nose, dismissing him.

  ‘I won’t buy you any more tobacco.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  But she offers the expletive without feeling, and he knows that he has won. She won’t cut herself again. Almost as much as the cutting, he hates that she smokes. It reminds him of his mother, that same smell enveloping her person as if she has come from somewhere more exciting, that there is somewhere else she would rather be. The fragrance clings to Clare’s fingers; it follows him wherever he goes.

  ‘What is the worst thing I could do to you, Clare?’ He props himself on his elbow, head in his hand. He uses his other hand to untangle her hair. A length of it is trying to creep into her mouth; some strands are ensnared in the intersection where her top and bottom lips meet, and he tugs them free. What a beautiful place to be.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I would never do it. Whatever it is, I will never do that to you, Clare.’

  She moves her head as though to nod, but the action is stunted, swallowed by her pillow.

  ‘This is perfect,’ he says. She turns away from him, reaches for her wineglass. ‘This. Us,’ he continues, answering her unasked questions.

  The room is imbued with Clare. The whole apartment bears the mark of her, deliberate and accidental. Her books discarded on the floor. The Polaroid gallery. The marks on the wall, like river pebbles, that he could not understand until she told him she had been doing handstands, her feet propped against the wall. He pictures her like this, upside down, face red and buckled like a root vegetable, arms shaking.

  ‘It’s incredible, Clare. Our entire world is here, in this space between you and me.’

  He is everything to her. She could not be without him. Out there the world is fractured and multiple, but here it is singular. He feels steady, like he has finally stopped striving for something.

  Years before, when he was living in London, he would call his father late at night, and the silences they had always shared would hang between them over the darkened continent.

  ‘You should travel some more, Andreas,’ his father had said, when Andi told him he would be returning home at the end of the academic year. He could hear the turn of a page, the distracted pause as his father marked his place. ‘There are so many places I would have loved to go at your age.’

  ‘So go now,’ he retorted, but his father simply laughed, incredulous. His father’s life was amongst his books these days; he travelled in the manner he always had, through stories. It was as though the borders had never been opened, and Andi wanted to reach down the phone line, rip the book from his father’s hand and throw it far enough away that he would have to at least leave his armchair to chase it down. Little chance — he could not even chase his own wife.

  But Andi had not wanted to travel either, longing only for the emptiness of Berlin’s streets. He had always thought his city was as bustling as any other, until he went to London to practise his English and soften his accent. There the chain stores volleyed people about as though they were trapped in a pinball machine, bumping them from one high street to the next. Every surface seemed to be covered with a price, the curled elegance of the pound sign semaphoring from every bit of advertising. He was relieved to return to Berlin; the familiarity soothed him.

  Berlin was the only place he felt at peace, the only city where he knew there was no chance of a serendipitous encounter with his mother. He could never understand why, when she left, she opted for somewhere entirely new, a world so different from what she knew. But as he could never understand why his father let her leave, her destination was irrelevant.

  ‘Are you glad you stayed, Clare?’

  She finally looks at him, and he passes her a smile.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Am I glad?’ She a
sks his question, repeats it. ‘Am I glad?’

  He holds his breath, waits even though he knows the answer. She looks so different from when she first arrived. Her hair is longer, and her skin more pale. Her freckles have relented, leaving her face ashen.

  ‘What else could I have done?’ She arches her eyebrows with this question, and his mouth pops open, expelling his held breath.

  ‘Anything. You could have … gone somewhere else.’ He suggests this alternative delicately, unsure what mood she is in today.

  ‘I suppose,’ she agrees. This is a good sign. ‘I could have gone home?’ Her rising intonation incorrectly tacks a question mark to her statement. Like a Get Well Soon helium balloon it lifts the sentence, sets it free.

  ‘But you didn’t have a home,’ he reminds her, offering ballast. ‘You just had a storage unit.’

  ‘True.’ As she ponders this, he begins to wonder whether he should have just stayed quiet. It is a conversation performed on pointe, and the strain of getting to the end is causing him anxiety. ‘But I could have gone back to Australia.’

  He pictures Australia as an immense sports field ringed with burning trees. In the middle, its sails catching the sun, is the Sydney Opera House, and on its steps stands his mother. She waves at him, takes a bow. She is everywhere that he is not.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you did not go, Clare. I would have been lonely without you.’

  She raises her glass. ‘And I, you.’

  ‘To remaining,’ he toasts.

  ‘Remains,’ she returns.

  ‘Take off your clothes,’ he says.

  ‘No.’

  He seems surprised. She is a little herself. It would be easier to just do what he asks and not think about it. How much does he want it? She wants a measure — what kind of currency are they dealing in here?