You

by Zoran Drvenkar

  “Come on, be honest, Ruth, fifty grand is amazing! Just think! If it works you can buy all the books you want, and Taja can travel till she feels ill, and Schnappi can run away from home and never have to go to Vietnam, and our Nessi won’t need some idiot to support her, and she can have her baby in peace.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I’ll have my beauty salon.”

  “Sweetie, I think a salon costs a bit more than that.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Stink has her second brainstorm of the day.

  “Maybe you’ll give me your share.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” you say and you mean it, because you’re the only one whose parents are reasonably affluent. And you’ve got enough books.

  “Really?” Stink presses.

  “Really.”

  After a short pause you add: “I might even stay on at school.”

  It’s out now. It might have something to do with the darkness that safely envelops you. You have to say it eventually. The strangest moments are the ones you don’t predict. You tense up.

  Stink says everyone’s worked that one out ages ago.

  “What?”

  “Christ, Ruth, if anyone knows you, we do. You’re our professor. Of course you’re going to stay on at school. Your parents would disinherit you if you did some stupid apprenticeship. Don’t worry, we’ll still love you.”

  You’re lost for words, you’ve been racking your brain for months about how you’re going to tell your girls, and they’ve known all along.

  Who knows who here? you wonder.

  Stink glances at her phone.

  “I’m off, then.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m tough.”

  You laugh, draw her to you by the hand, and kiss her briefly on the mouth; your faces stay close for a second so that you can see the golden sprinkles in her irises.

  “Be careful,” you repeat, and this time Stink doesn’t make a joke, this time she just nods and puts on her sunglasses.

  You let her go.

  You hear the whoosh of Neue Kantstrasse, the night bus for Zoo rumbles past, then it’s silent again, and the only sound is Stink’s footsteps. She pauses on the bridge and looks down at you. You wave, she waves back, then you hear her whispering in your ear that it’s all going to be fine, before she walks on and the bushes block your view. The cell phone in your hand is wet with sweat. You see Stink walk across the bridge, a little way up Sundtstrasse, and then down the steps to the other side of the park. The football field is still deserted. No one has come, you can see everything, your eyes sting with the effort.

  The field is fenced in and looks like a big cage. The goals are a full-length metal pole without a net, the floor a hard rubber surface. Stink stops at the entrance and looks around. She’s puzzled. It’s five past two. In the distance, with the big sunglasses on her face, she reminds you of a beetle.

  Can she see anything?

  Stink waits outside the field for a moment before stepping through the entrance. She has promised to leave the cell phone turned on in her jacket. You see her back, she pauses after a few footsteps, you hear a throbbing sound in your ear and curse. Someone’s trying to call Stink on her cell phone, and of course she hasn’t turned off her call-waiting mode.

  Hang up! you think. Whoever you are, hang up!

  It doesn’t occur to you for a second that it might be Mirko. The throbbing stops, it’s quiet again, then you hear a man’s voice saying, “I thought you’d never come over.”

  Pause.

  “Who the hell are you?” asks Stink.

  “Wrong question,” the man’s voice replies. “The right question is: how does someone like you get hold of this amount of drugs?”

  Stink takes two steps back. You can’t see the man, there’s only darkness in front of your girl.

  “Are you a cop?” Stink asks.

  Silence. Then the man says, “We’re going to have a chat now, but first turn off your phone. Your friend’s heard enough. Take out the battery, just so that there are no misunderstandings.”

  When you hear that, you almost drop your cell phone. Stink hesitates, and you pray that she’ll turn around and run away, because the man’s voice scares you. Dry, all angles and corners. It’s not the voice of someone who’s going to put up with Stink’s wisecracks.

  There’s a rustling sound. Stink speaks right in your ear.

  “I’ll call you, okay?”

  “Stink, don’t—”

  That’s as far as you get, because she’s hung up. You narrow your eyes slightly to see more clearly. It doesn’t help. Stink has stepped forward and disappeared completely into the darkness.

  Who is this guy? You wonder and are about to get up and run over there when a hand settles on your shoulder. Silent as a shadow, heavy as a stone. You turn around.

  He looks like a wall with a little shaven head. Muscles on muscles and then that face. You recognize him right away. You’ve seen him on the street and in the clubs. Stink described him very well. His lower lip is slightly swollen and he has a plaster on his forehead. He really does look as if he’s half Rottweiler and half Mickey Rourke. Even if he’s related to Taja, there’s no family resemblance, you think, and you’re just about to ask him if he eats raw eggs in the morning, when he hits you. A flashlight explodes in your head. You fall sideways, but before you can roll down the slope, he’s grabbed you by the hair. His face is close to you. You smell his sweet-and-sour breath and see his eyes, the dilated pupils and the fury behind them. Your cheek glows with the blow, you still have your cell phone in your hand and smash it against the spot where the plaster sticks to his forehead. He lets go of you and clutches his face with surprise. The wound has opened up, his hand is covered with blood. He’s stunned. You start to crawl away, he grabs you by the leg, you kick out, hit him in the shoulder and try to pick yourself up, but the ground is too wet and you slide across the grass. You land on your belly and the air escapes you with a dull groan. He grabs your ankle and pulls you to him. Your fingers make furrows in the grass, his fist lands in the back of your knee, the pain paralyzes you, your fingers lose their grip and he drags and drags you along the grass to the bushes. Now you’re out of range, now he’s pressing the back of your head down so that the left half of your face disappears in the wet grass. You lie there, one eye shut, the other one open, your mouth is full of soil. You hear him say something and can’t make out a word because his hand is over your right ear.

  “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

  He takes his hand away and puts it around your throat.

  “One more word and I’ll finish you off, okay?”

  You nod, his hand disappears, you prop yourself up and spit soil and see from the corners of your eyes that he’s crouching next to you like some fucking toad.

  “Didn’t think of this, did you? You thought a backup was a good idea. I’m backup too. We could be a team.”

  Your knee feels as if someone’s constantly pumping it full of air. You wipe the dirt out of your face.

  “Can I get up?”

  “Sit yes, stand no.”

  You sit up and spit out blades of grass.

  “We’re waiting now,” he says and looks across to the opposite bank as if you weren’t there. There’s a stupid grin on his lips. You don’t know what he’s doing here. Why isn’t he over there, buying the drugs from Stink? If he’s here, who’s that on the other side? Five minutes pass, then his phone rings. He listens for a moment and then says: No, there’s nothing here, before he puts the phone back in his pocket, takes a deep breath and speaks without looking at you.

  “This is really going to hurt.”

  The man sits leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Dark linen pants, black shirt, sleeves rolled up. He could be about your father’s age. You wish you had a better view of his eyes. Eyes reveal everything. His are black puddles. After you’ve taken the battery out of your phone, he pats the
bench beside him and says, “I’ve heard about your offer. Take a seat.”

  “I’d rather stand.”

  You feel his gaze on you. He’s turning your Tic Tac box over and over in his right hand. Gradually it dawns on you that this wasn’t such a great idea. He’s going to wait until you’re sitting next to him. You sit down. He sets the Tic Tac box on his thigh and looks across the football field as if he could make something out in the darkness.

  “You’re fifteen? Sixteen?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Take the sunglasses off, it’s just us.”

  You take the sunglasses off, and at last you can see better. Every wrinkle in his face, the color of his eyes. His mouth is mocking you with a smile as if he knows everything about you.

  “You’re aware that your age is irrelevant. You could be ten years old and I wouldn’t care, because at the moment we share the same problem, and that’s all that matters.”

  He looks at you again.

  “Do you know how drugs get tested? Some people just need to taste them. They swear they can define the differences in quality and how much the drugs are cut by tasting them. You follow me? Of course it’s all nonsense. No one can establish quality like that. You know what this is?”

  He taps the Tic Tac box with his index finger. You don’t react.

  “I thought you didn’t. You probably think this is cocaine or speed. A forgivable mistake. The ordinary citizen doesn’t often get to see white heroin. At school I’m sure they’ve told you that heroin’s brown. That’s correct as well. Normal heroin is brown and reaches the streets with a purity of twenty percent, and that means it’s good gear. Ten percent and below is normal. The more it’s cut, the more additives are mixed in with it, usually bitter-tasting materials so as to maintain the supposed authenticity. Have you ever tried heroin?”

  You shake your head.

  “It’s really bitter shit. But let’s get back to the problem at hand. People who work seriously with drugs test their product in the laboratory. I have a chemist who’s responsible for nothing but that. Can you guess what he discovered an hour ago?”

  “That my stuff is crap?”

  “No, that your stuff is actually my stuff.”

  You freeze, he smiles.

  “You know what I’m trying to say? What we have here is eighty-eight percent pure heroin. Five kilos of it. We’re talking about a market value of two and a half million euros. And this is all in your possession. On a day like today? In a year like this one? You’ll have realized that there are no more misunderstandings.”

  You don’t know how he did it, but his arm is around your shoulders now, he’s scarily close and speaking into your ear.

  “That kind of thing doesn’t happen twice in a city like Berlin. Not in these amounts, not with this quality. The question is, how on earth does someone like you get hold of drugs that my little brother is storing?”

  His question hangs in the air. You had anticipated everything. You were even sure for a long time that he was really a cop, and that you’d soon be spending three hundred hours doing social work. But this has taken you completely by surprise. Little brother? Storing? The equation is quite a simple one. Taja’s uncle is sitting next to me and his little brother is Oskar, who’s lying in a freezer right now, and by the way I’m really fucked. You quickly dismiss all those thoughts as if Taja’s uncle could see inside your head, and start calculating your chances. You’ve always been good at that. Your mind works best under stress, as if you need trouble to function right. What now? If you react right away, you might manage it. A forward jab, catch him in the face with your forehead, and while he’s spitting out his teeth, you run off and disappear down Neue Kantstrasse to join Ruth on the opposite bank and—

  “Don’t even think about it,” he interrupts your thoughts. “I could break your neck so fast you wouldn’t even notice.”

  You look at each other. There’s an affinity, and the affinity repels you. He’s got a deep tan, he’s clean-shaven. His mouth smiles amicably, no more mockery, as though he could be nice if he wanted. But it’s deceptive, it’s all deceptive when you look at those eyes. Metal. Those eyes don’t intend to be nice. On his left cheek there’s a small sickle-shaped scar, the skin’s lighter there. You automatically want to touch your own skin where Taja’s elbow caught you. The skin has turned purple there. What does this asshole see when he looks at me? you wonder, and find the answer in his eyes.

  Nothing, absolutely nothing, because I don’t really exist for him.

  His hand rests flat on your back, it gives off an unpleasant kind of heat. As if a fire were creeping up your spine.

  “Let go of me,” you hiss at him.

  The hand disappears. You get to your feet. He sits where he is. His voice is still calm, you wish he would show more emotion.

  “It’s up to you now. Whatever you promise me in the next minute, I’ll take you at your word. And if you break your word, I will hunt you down. Have I made myself understood?”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “You should be afraid, girl, you should be shitting yourself in fear.”

  He gets up. He’s a head taller than you. You try to resist looking up at him. You look up. He wants to know what your plan was.

  “You turn up without my merchandise, and then?”

  “I’ve got it all in a bag. I’ll fetch it once I’ve got the money.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It’s exactly so.”

  You and your plans. When you got out with Ruth at the station Kaiserdamm, you explained that you didn’t trust anyone, and you put the sports bag in a safe-deposit box. Your plan was to swap the key to the box for the money. You were of the opinion that that’s what professionals do.

  At this moment a professional should look different. Not so surprised. Standing facing Taja’s uncle, you understand that it would be the end of the line for you here if you’d brought the drugs. It is a feeling as if someone is standing by your grave waiting for you to lie down in it.

  He’d never have let me go.

  “Good plan,” says Taja’s uncle. “In your place I wouldn’t have trusted my son either. You can go now. You and I are done.”

  He looks at his watch.

  “I give you till tomorrow morning. You bring my goods back to where you stole them. I don’t want to know how you managed to rob my brother. I’ll drive out to see him tomorrow morning, and when I ask him where the heroin is, he’ll open his metal case and the heroin will be in there and I’ll slap him happily on the shoulder and have breakfast with him. After breakfast I’ll have forgotten that you and your friend over there ever existed. Have you got all that?”

  You grip the safe-deposit box key in your right hand and nod, you’ve got it, no problem, that’s exactly what you’ll do. You’re almost about to thank him, when your brain processes what he’s just said. After breakfast I’ll have forgotten that you and your friend over there ever existed. You look across to the shore of the Lietzensee. How does he know that Ruth’s over there?

  “… involved?”

  “What?”

  He repeats his question patiently, he’s not in any hurry.

  “Is Taja involved?”

  You hesitate for a moment too long, that’s answer enough for him.

  “I’ve never liked that kid,” he admits, and turns away from you. He has said what he wanted to say, you can go. You leave the football field. As you’re going up the steps to the street, you cast one last glance through the fence—Taja’s uncle has his phone to his ear, and is standing with his back to you, legs spread like a footballer defending his goal. He has already forgotten about me, you think and then you hear him say, “Hurt her.”

  He snaps his cell phone shut, turns around and looks at you.

  “Run,” he says.

  And you run as you have never run before.

  The new day exists for two hours, nineteen minutes, and forty-eight seconds, and no one in the world seems to be interes
ted. You sit wearily on the terrace and wait for Ruth to come back with Stink. You rather regret not having been on Ruth’s side. But fifty grand is fifty grand, and if no one gets hurt, then it’s a present that shouldn’t be tossed aside.

  Schnappi is sleeping beside you in the deck chair. Everything is calm. At the moment you don’t even need to worry about Taja, she’s completely knocked out by the medication. You looked in on her ten minutes ago. She’d kicked the blanket off and pulled her knees up to her chest, as if she wanted to disappear into herself.

  It’s so sultry that even the mosquitoes are taking time out. There’s a storm in the air, the hairs on your arms are standing up. You’re on your own and you’re pregnant on your own and you feel melancholic. You want to be the soppily romantic girl you were before you fell pregnant. One of those girls who dream of the rural life and a pony in the paddock.

  You lean your head back and stare into the night. A nervous starry sky quivers above you, a point of light makes its way toward Tegel Airport, then there’s a quick flash of lightning and the sky goes negative for a few seconds. As you gaze up, you’re surprised by that overwhelming peace that you always feel when everything stops making sense. Like that summer four years ago. You were standing on the ten-meter board, and behind you was a line of noisy children. At that moment you understood that there was no turning back, because there was no way they were ever going to let you go back down again. So you stepped out onto the springboard and looked down into the pool and knew very well that you would never survive it, that much was certain. This is the end of me. And while you were thinking it, that calm swept over you for the first time. The calm of the desperate. Whatever happens now, it’s going to happen, you thought, and let yourself fall.

  The ringing of your cell phone brings the silence to an end. You don’t give a start. Something had to happen, and now it has happened. Schnappi, on the other hand, sits up with a jerk and glares at you.