Berlin Syndrome

by Melanie Joosten

  ‘Clare, come on.’ He laughs. He is laughing at her. He seems incredulous at her reluctance.

  She feels a smirk’s ugliness creeping across her face. ‘You have already seen everything my body has to offer.’ She pauses. ‘And you are not the only one.’

  She does not know why she says this. She hears her voice coming to her ears as though it is someone else’s. She talks like him now. There is uncertainty in her words; she is speaking English as if it is her second language. She has lost her contractions.

  He moves to the bed. He reaches down and strips it of its sheets. As he bundles them up and tosses them to the floor, she cannot help but smile. Line-en. He always calls them line-en, rhyming line with mine. It makes sense yet it is wrong. He is wrong, and this gives her pleasure.

  ‘Take your clothes off.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I won’t wait.’

  She knows that he will. He will wait. He stares at her, but she does not move.

  ‘Clare.’ He thrusts his bottom lip out, a sulky child.

  ‘Fuck you, Andi.’

  Does she say it? She cannot be sure. Her disembodied voice is like a radio presenter’s. She stands, tries to catch his eye, but he won’t look at her. He lifts his hand, then pauses. He loosely holds his wrist, turning his hand this way and that. Is he going to slap her again? Is that what he is going to do? He holds his own hands, twisting them as though he cannot quite believe they are his. Or perhaps he is admiring them. It is difficult to tell.

  Her cheeks feel larger than her whole face. They seem to be the beginning and end of any sense of existence right now. She waits for him to slap her, and when he does not move, she pulls her singlet over her head, drops her underwear to the floor. She steps out of it and stands, naked, waiting. Her cheeks tingle.

  As he walks towards her, it is as though every sense she has ever known has returned. Her body picks up the vibrations of his footsteps; she clenches her cunt in anticipation. He lifts his hand, and she flinches. He cups her face in his warm palm and holds it there, inspecting her.

  When he lets go of her face, he reaches to the floor and picks up her discarded clothes. She sits on the edge of the bed and waits for him to push her back. He does not. She lies back and waits for him to kneel astride her. He does not. His footsteps walk away. She can hear clothes being bundled up. The buzz of a zip being drawn closed.

  ‘I’m going to the laundromat.’ He leaves the room.

  He had never expected to know obsession. It is something that other people are afflicted by. People who are not so strong, people who drift. Obsession is something to cling to when the ordinary world is not enough. And yet here he is, his mind full of her. The way she walks, the way everything she says sounds like a question. And what it’s like to fuck her. He is surprised by how much time he spends thinking about this. Sometimes he catches himself in the very act, her body moving beneath his own, and he wonders whether it is just an exquisitely vivid daydream. He knows her body so well, the way she arches to reach him, her desperation as she holds him inside her. And he finds himself wondering how to be sure he is not dreaming; he wants to pinch her and see whether she wakes up. When he runs his hands up her inner thighs, feels the welts under his fingers, that’s when he knows she is real.

  This obsession has rendered him useless. He is unable to think properly about work and about his day-to-day necessities. It has stripped him of all purpose. He is conscious, every moment of the day, of her waiting. Waiting for him to come home. To come to bed. To sit beside her. He feels like each individual minute is documented by his need for her. And hers for him. Look at her, curled up on the couch, her head resting on the arm. Look at her pale legs, shiny in the light, soft at the edges where her skin blends into the shadows. Look at her, pulling a strand of her hair, twisting it around her finger and letting it fall loose before picking it up again.

  The day he first saw her, he was alone, and she was alone in the same place. He thinks of her standing behind him in the bookstore. Walking home, her hand in his, and then drifting about his apartment as he cooked her dinner. And now they will never be alone again, on the same street, in the same store, in an apartment room. Here they are, months later, as familiar with each other as with their own reflections.

  He hates that he slapped her, frightened her. He does not want to do it again. He cannot pretend it was accidental: he did it twice and he thought about each one. What makes her think that her mother is any different from his? She isn’t going to come looking.

  When he wakes in the night, he is immediately aware of Clare sleeping beside him. What comes next? This situation is not nice. It is not comfortable. When he is out in the world and not with her, he imagines Clare beside him. What would she make of that person’s odd outfit on the train? Would she choose the hard or the soft cheese at the deli? At school he is aware of talking about her too often. ‘When will we meet this mysterious Clare?’ his colleagues ask. What would she think of them? They of her? Her constant presence in the apartment is exhausting. His yearning for her when they are apart is more so.

  But he wishes he had not hit her. It felt so fucking good, that’s true, to make her understand, but that is not the person he is. He cannot think about that — it was a mistake. There is no need for her to be afraid of him. He has done everything possible to ensure they both know what to expect each day. That is what is so perfect about the situation: they each know where they stand.

  He gets up, and she goes back to sleep. He showers while she lies with her eyes closed, enjoying the warmth of the sheets, the knowledge that she has nothing to do today, no reason to get up. As her body stirs she draws herself from under the covers. Some mornings she joins him in the shower, others she does not. He takes her photograph, leaves. And then begins the waiting. She walks from room to room, trying to catch the sun moving, dangling her feet in its pools, hoping to spot something changing. She takes yesterday’s Polaroid photo and pins it to the wall. She cuts letters from the newspaper and assembles English words. She picks up the piano accordion and pulls and pushes it, emitting noise rather than tunes, mournful wails that match her mood. She plays to the plant and to the television tower. She never plays for Andi.

  For weeks the jigsaw, another gift, has stood untouched in a plastic bag by the bookshelf. She does not think she is the kind of person who makes jigsaws. When eventually she decides that perhaps she is, she closes her eyes and draws the box from the bag. Keeping her eyes closed, she opens the box and places the lid face down on the floor, next to the table. She does not want to know what the puzzle is of. She is so starved of intention that she needs an extra incentive to impel her to completion.

  She tips the pieces onto the table. Jigsaws are light, all cardboard and air. They are not a popular form of entertainment anymore — they just don’t offer enough. She suspects that jigsaws seem insubstantial in a world where everyone wants value for money; they want weight in their purchases, as though lightness is a flaw. But in people, weight is a flaw. She enjoys cataloguing the contradictory nature of humans. It’s comforting. She lifts her hand, and it stays aloft. She drops it back to the table. Her own hands seem to weigh nothing; neither does her head. She places her elbow on the table and rests her head in her palm, trying to release its weight from her neck and shift it to her hand. But it won’t be separated: it refuses to be heavy.

  Pushing her chair back from the table, she regards her legs. She lifts one and lets it drop and then lifts the other. They each hit the floor with a satisfying thump, but still they don’t feel as though they have any heft. She prods a thigh with her finger and when she removes it, the skin reluctantly shifts back. It does not spring; it is as though there is nothing beneath it. She is empty. She goes to the kitchen and takes a knife from the drawer. It feels heavy, as though it might be important, and she thinks of Chekhov’s advice. She wishes there was a gun on the wall, but there is not
, just this burden of a knife that she keeps returning to.

  She sits herself back in the chair. The jigsaw pieces crowd the edge of the table, and she wants to be rid of them. Knife in hand she scoops the pieces towards herself; they fall from the table edge like lemmings. Some of them land lifeless in the ditch between her legs, others rain to the floor. They weigh nothing; she can hardly tell that they are resting on her and she opens her legs and lets the pieces fall further. As she presses the knife into the skin near her knee, she expects to hear a sigh of air being expelled into the apartment, lifting her fringe as it pushes past. When Andi returns, she imagines he will find her hollowed-out skin draped over the chair like a deflated balloon.

  But there is no air, only a bright bead of blood that builds and builds as she pushes the knife down. It looks as though it will hold its spherical shape forever, then it bursts and rushes down the side of her thigh. She pulls the knife towards her and the stream increases. She is careful to cut straight: she does not want to run into any of the other lines, already permanent. It feels like a paper cut; the pain sings up her body, becoming an itch in the tips of her fingers. But no, she lies, it doesn’t really feel like anything at all. The blood drips onto the jigsaw pieces. It is exactly the same temperature as her skin. She may not be heavy anymore, but at least she knows she is warm.

  She wonders what would happen if —. But she stops herself. Andi does not couch his comments in perhapses and what-ifs, and she wants to be as certain. Maybe it is a language thing, this directness, but even so, it is refreshing when considered next to the over-analytical and fatuitous speeches of so many people she knows, including herself. (Knew, she corrects herself. People she knew.) The unfinished sentences, the misuse of prepositions, the nouns lazily disguised as verbs. She longs for complete sentences, for direction and narrative advancement.

  Her days and nights feel more real than any have before. Here, in Andi’s apartment, she is living a distillation of her former life. She is, for the first time, living in the present because there is nowhere else to be. Her past and future are far from her reach; she is free from their obligations.

  She waits for the blood to congeal, marvelling at the way it copes with being out in this new world, and then she puts the knife back on the table and begins picking up puzzle pieces from the floor and laying them out.

  From now on, whenever she takes out the puzzle, she also takes out the knife — it lies on the table as she shuffles the puzzle pieces about. The pieces catch at each other, and she breaks them apart. She siphons off the edge pieces, hunts for the four corners. The puzzle is a palette of indigos and blues; bright oranges and yellows gleam from the pieces’ surfaces. In time she discovers that it is a picture of the Sydney skyline, a view she is not as familiar with as Andi might have supposed when he bought it for her. It is the tiles of the Opera House sails that give it away. She should keep a diary of such moments of recognition. The moment when a place feels like home, when a song becomes familiar, when a lover becomes known, moments that cannot be had again.

  The cuts remind her of how, in the space where her blood meets the air, her body still belongs to herself; that Andi may be in charge, but he has not seen her body do this. She stalks about the apartment half-dressed, her legs bare so that she can keep an eye on each line she has made, make sure they are healing in order. She pulls on jeans before he comes home, and if he feels the lines beneath his hands in bed at night, he does not say a word.

  In the quiet of the apartment, putting the puzzle together, she is satisfied with the dull cardboard click of the pieces fitting in place, their edges feathered from use. When Andi is due to return, she breaks the puzzle apart, puts it back in the box. She does not want to leave it out, to have him chart her progress or idly shuffle the pieces about of an evening. She does not want to finish the puzzle. What would she want then?

  ‘I was the age you are now when you were born,’ his father calls up to him. Andi is standing on the kitchen table, taking down the lampshade, and his father is on his hands and knees, looking for one of the screws that has fallen out. The last one refuses to be released. No matter how much Andi rattles it and tries to manoeuvre the shade free, it sticks fast. His arms are burning with fatigue, and he does not answer his father.

  ‘We hadn’t really discussed having children. Your mother was so much younger than I — there was so much time. So, really, you were quite the surprise.’ His hands brush in wide swathes across the lino floor as though he is feeding chickens.

  Andi gives a grunt of acknowledgement and watches his father inch across the kitchen, a blind man looking for the point of his story. Turning his attention back to the ceiling, Andi sharply nudges the lampshade with the heel of his hand. The third screw lands with a tinkle on the floor, and his father pounces on it.

  ‘A good surprise, I hope?’ He drops his arms, and blood rushes back into his fingers. He waits for his father to clamber to his feet before passing him the lampshade.

  ‘Of course.’ His father holds the shade in both hands like an offering. ‘I always wanted a child, you know, ever since I was young. I think it came from not having any brothers or sisters. Do you feel the same, Andreas?’

  ‘No.’ He reaches up to unscrew the light bulb. He had always wanted a sister, a miniature version of his own mother. When other boys would run home from school, leaving their sisters to dawdle along in packs behind, he imagined that he and his sister would walk in step, sharing everything. She would be his shadow; they would be a full-sized family.

  ‘I suppose when you meet the right person, then you might want children. Are you seeing anyone?’

  Andi and his father swap light bulbs, old for new. Should he tell him about Clare? His father would like her; he would see that there is something different about her. He would ask questions about her travels and where she comes from, and he would listen attentively, more questions at the ready. Andi pictures them deep in conversation, food untouched, while his own cutlery taps out a lone jig on his plate.

  ‘No, I’m not seeing anyone.’ He screws the new light bulb in place and sticks his hand out for the lampshade. In a way, he regards children as a public shame. Left behind as a reminder of broken marriages, their faces are a jumble of borrowed expressions, serving only to haunt parents with memories of the partners they could no longer tolerate. If Andi had not existed, it would seem distasteful that his father had never quite managed to let go of the memory of his mother — an unhealthy obsession with the past. But Andi’s existence makes it okay for his father to hoard a junk room of her belongings, to eagerly anticipate her letters and, now, to unabashedly look forward to her visit.

  ‘Well, I’m sure you will find someone soon enough. These things happen when you least expect it.’ His father offers up two of the screws, pinched between the thumb and index finger of each hand like miniature maracas. ‘But I have one piece of advice for you, Andreas.’ He holds on to the screws, not letting go of them until Andi looks him in the eye. ‘When you find her, don’t let her go.’

  ‘I won’t, Papa.’ He directs his assurance to the lampshade as he twists the screws back into position. His father has become so sentimental in his old age; perhaps his mother has, too. He puts his hand out for the final screw.

  ‘Especially, if you do have children. That’s when you really need to hold on.’ His father passes him the screw and looks at the spent light bulb in his hand as if unsure of how it got there.

  Lampshade secure, Andi jumps down from the table, landing beside his father. He has an urge to enclose him in a hug, but as he lifts his arms to do so it seems ridiculous, and he pats him on the shoulder instead. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he says, and they both look at the cloudy light bulb, wondering what to do next.

  As her eyes adjust to the darkness, Clare can make out the grey square of window on the wall. In this light it impersonates a blackboard — she wants to practise her handwriting on
it, form cursive letters that swoop and join without grace. The wardrobe squats to one side of the room, resentful of the bed taking centrestage. A collection of mugs and glasses huddle on the bedside table, refugees from the kitchen.

  ‘Clare?’

  She directs her gaze towards his voice but cannot make out his face in the dark. Glancing back to the window she catches the shine of his eyes and the outline of his tousled hair in her peripheral vision. She looks towards him again, and he disappears, her eyes unable to coax his shape from the night. She looks away, and he returns, head propped up by his hand. This elusiveness does not concern her: he always makes more sense when she is not considering him directly.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Are you awake?’

  He must know that she is. His night vision is better than hers. He can probably make out the features of her face. Without trying to alter it, she wonders what expression she is wearing. She cannot feel her lips straining — she must not be smiling. Her top and bottom teeth are touching; perhaps she is pouting. Lately she has been more wary of him, unwilling to incite his temper and hesitant to make her presence felt. But he was so remorseful, and so attentive with his apologies, that she has lowered her guard a little, her resolve has weakened. In short, she does not know how to feel, does not know how to behave. What is someone supposed to do in this situation? She is sure she is getting it wrong.

  ‘Yes. Are you?’

  ‘Yes.’ He drops his head back to the pillow. ‘I cannot sleep.’

  A gust of air escapes the sheet and passes over her face. It travels so fast. Doesn’t it know there is nowhere to go?

  They lie on their backs, staring at the ceiling. She can make out the light globe now, hanging like a ripe fruit on an oversized stalk. Glühbirne. Glow pear. It makes so much sense that she grins. It seems a shame that he isn’t looking at her to notice. He likes to see her happy.

  ‘Me neither.’