by Martin Suter
Supposedly, Schoch was also the one who found Sumi when he snuffed it. He didn’t die from drinking, people said, but from having given up.
Schoch didn’t get close to anyone else afterwards. He kept a friendly distance and remained a mystery.
A young man he’d never seen here before, probably a rejected asylum-seeker needing to go underground, freed up the seat opposite. Within seconds Bolle had sat down. Rapping his knuckles on the table by way of a greeting, he said, ‘Shitty weather.’
Bolle was one of the loud ones. He always had something to say, but it wasn’t always new. Schoch normally avoided him, but in this situation all he could do was acknowledge Bolle’s presence. He shrugged and focused on his cup.
Bolle was blind in one eye, which looked like the white of an undercooked egg. Hence his nickname, Bolle, from the old Berlin folk song: ‘His right eye was missing,/His left one looked like slime./But Bolle being Bolle,/Still had a cracking time.’
Bolle tried to get the attention of the elderly lady, one of the many pious volunteers who helped out here. When she looked over at him, he called out, ‘Coffee schnapps, please!’ He was the only one who laughed; everyone else had heard the joke plenty of times before.
Or they didn’t understand him, like the African man sitting next to him, who said, ‘No German,’ when Bolle, still laughing, repeated, ‘Coffee schnapps,’ and grinned at him.
‘No alcohol,’ Bolle explained in English.
His neighbour replied, ‘No, thank you.’
Bolle now had a laughing fit. ‘No, thank you!’ he repeated. ‘No, thank you!’
When he’d composed himself he turned to Schoch and said, ‘They’ve got a new girl working at Sternen.’
Schoch’s cup was by his lips. Before he took a sip he said, ‘Aren’t you banned from there?’
‘I was,’ Bolle corrected him.
Schoch put his cup back on the table and said in the same dispassionate tone, ‘Because you’ve stopped begging the customers for beer?’
‘Because the new girl doesn’t care. It’s all revenue, she says. Earned, stolen or begged, money is money.’ Once again Bolle had a fit of coughing and laughter combined. ‘Earned, stolen or begged,’ he wheezed.
Schoch failed to react and Bolle tried to change the subject. ‘Ever seen white mice? Not real ones, but in your head.’
Schoch shook his head. Pink elephants, on the other hand, he thought …
‘I have,’ Bolle continued. ‘Last night.’ His bloated red face suddenly assumed a troubled expression. ‘Do you think that’s a bad sign?’
Schoch wasn’t listening. The memory of the tiny pink elephant had suddenly emerged from nowhere. Had he dreamed it? Or hallucinated?
‘Oi, are you listening?’
‘How do you know they don’t exist?’ Schoch said. He placed a franc on the table for his coffee, got up, rummaged on the rack for his yellow raincoat and left.
‘He’s right,’ Bolle mumbled. ‘How do I know they don’t exist?’
10
The same day
All the washing machines at Meeting Point were being used and all the showers were occupied. At most tables in the cafeteria people were waiting for seats to become free. Their clothes were damp and dirty, and their frozen bodies were longing for a hot shower. It might be hours before it was Schoch’s turn.
He knew most of the people waiting and nodded to some of them. Then he left.
The rain had eased up somewhat, but a spiteful little wind had picked up. Schoch pulled the coat around him more tightly and took longer strides.
After ten minutes he’d reached the shiny chrome WC container. It was occupied, but at least nobody was waiting outside. He put his heavy holdall down beside the door and sat on top of it.
Bolle was seeing white mice, and he was seeing pink elephants. Sumi had seen animals too: cockroaches. ‘The size of your fist!’ he’d claimed, clenching his tiny hand.
But that had been when Sumi was in withdrawal. Schoch wasn’t. And Bolle? Unlikely, judging by the state he’d been in at the Morning Sun. But he hadn’t said when he’d seen the white mice. Maybe it was yesterday. Maybe he’d tried to stay off the sauce and it had happened then. Schoch should have asked.
But was it important? If these visions only occurred when you were in withdrawal – which Schoch certainly wasn’t – didn’t that mean the little pink elephant had been no hallucination?
Pink elephants? Come off it!
11
The same day
The electric door to the WC slid open and a young woman stepped out. Her blonde hair hung down in thick strands, some of which were coloured green. She’d reapplied her lipstick and the dark red stood out sharply from her pale face. Eyeing Schoch with tiny pupils, the woman pressed the large shoulder bag more tightly to her slender body and walked away with faltering steps.
Schoch stood up quickly and darted into the WC before the door slid shut again, to save himself the franc he would have had to put in the slot otherwise.
The WC was constructed out of plastic and stainless steel, without gaps and cracks so it could easily be hosed down. The floor around the loo was wet from the water that sluiced the toilet bowl and flooded it each time the door was opened.
Beside the toilet was the loo paper that the woman had used to cover the rim. The smell of patchouli oil hung in the air.
In the metal basin he found a syringe like the ones you could get from the vending machine twenty metres away. Schoch threw it in the bin. Then he undressed, went to the loo, took a flannel and soap from his holdall and washed himself.
In the mirror he saw a haggard-looking man with long hair and an unkempt beard, both blackish-brown and streaked with grey, just like his sparse chest hair.
He looked away and continued washing himself.
Had he drunk more yesterday than on other evenings? Or harder stuff than the litre cans of cheap beer from the supermarket? Where had he been anyway? With the dog lovers at the station as always? Followed by dinner at the soup kitchen? And a nightcap at Hauptplatz tram stop?
He couldn’t recall anything unusual. But was this really his recollection of yesterday? How did it differ from the day before, the day before that, and the day before the day before that? If yesterday had been different from the evenings before and he had no memory of it, wouldn’t the memory of the evening before that leap in to take its place?
Schoch had admitted to himself long ago that he was an alcoholic. But he was a disciplined alcoholic, he kept telling himself. He had his alcoholism under control. He could stop whenever he wanted, as he’d proved several times already. Stopped and, because he’d managed it, started again. He’d stop for good when there was a compelling reason to do so.
Was a pink elephant a compelling reason?
‘Are you sick?’ Giorgio asked.
Schoch had declined the beer he’d been offered. ‘Just not thirsty.’
‘Since when did you drink because you were thirsty?’
Schoch shrugged.
Giorgio was the down-and-out Schoch liked most. His sleeping place lay around one hundred metres upstream from Schoch’s. It was also a hollow eroded by the river, only a little roomier. Giorgio needed more space because he had three dogs. Obedient mongrels with colourful scarves around their necks. He would starve for these dogs and sometimes he did if there wasn’t enough for all four. His real name was Georg, but everyone called him Giorgio. It suited him for he had a moustache he spent a fair time looking after and he always wore a neckerchief like his dogs.
Giorgio was once an insurance salesman and he’d retained his verbosity from that time. Conversations between him and Schoch were very one-sided. But as Schoch liked listening to him – Giorgio was neither pushy, nor nosy, nor stupid – and Giorgio liked talking, this wasn’t a problem for either of them. That’s why Schoch enjoyed spending the hours before lunch with the dog lovers, even though he didn’t really like dogs. There was always beer to be had, even when he’d s
pent the 986 francs basic subsistence that each homeless person received from the state per month. And they had a cosy regular plot near the station and the wholesaler CONSU. By the river when the weather was good and in the tram shelter if it was raining.
The few seats were occupied so Schoch sat on the ground, leaning against the back of the shelter, listening to Giorgio and watching the passers-by. He knew a few of them by sight because he’d sat here so often as they walked past without paying attention to him or anyone else in his group. Very occasionally he would recognise someone from his former life too. Men in suits, mostly, but also a few women in suits. All older and all passing by without so much as a glance in his direction. Even if they had taken notice of Schoch they wouldn’t have recognised him, twelve kilos lighter, nine years older and with a beard.
‘Got a fag?’ Lilly’s high-pitched whine tore him from his thoughts. Schoch took a packet from his pocket, tapped out a cigarette, but rather than offer it to Lilly, slid it out himself and passed it to her. He didn’t want her jittery, filthy fingers touching the filters of the other cigarettes.
Lilly had appeared out of the blue five years ago as the girlfriend of Marco, a young junkie. She couldn’t have been older than twenty at the time, pretty but prone to abrupt mood swings, and determined to get Marco off the needle. Soon she was addicted herself and when he died of an overdose she was four months pregnant.
The underweight boy she gave birth to was given up for adoption as soon as he’d completed his withdrawal treatment. Lilly stayed with the dog lovers, started selling her body to buy drugs, increased her doses and fell into increasing self-neglect. Now she looked about forty and with her thin, punctured arms and poor teeth couldn’t find punters any more.
Schoch offered Lilly a light.
‘I’ll give her one thing.’ Giorgio grinned. ‘She’s loyal to her brand. Only ever smokes Other People’s.’
‘Very funny,’ Lilly grumbled, going over to the dogs.
Just after twelve Schoch headed for the soup kitchen. His stomach could cope with something to eat now.
12
The same day
Perhaps the macaroni cheese was too stiff a challenge for his stomach; the noodles were swimming in the fat of sweated onions, cream and melted cheese. Nor did the odours of the people sitting next to him help, or the smells drifting over from the kitchen. Schoch let some liquid drip from the baked pasta on his fork, then forced himself to eat a couple of mouthfuls.
The soup kitchen wasn’t renowned for its cuisine, but the food was free. In Meeting Point the food cost four francs – for that you could get four litre-cans of 5.4 per cent beer at CONSU.
But seeing as he was dry at the moment, he could have shelled out the four francs, it occurred to him.
He speared three macaroni on his fork and watched the fat drip off, the process slightly accelerated by his trembling hand. ‘Do you know why I drink?’ Bolle used to yell. ‘To stop my hands shaking!’ Around this time of day Schoch’s trembling had usually stopped. But apart from this, going without alcohol was – as expected – all right. It was just boring.
The rain looked as if it had set in for the day. Schoch walked close to the houses to avoid being splashed by the cars zooming past. Apart from him there was just an old woman and her dog on Blechwalzenstrasse. She was having a tussle with her umbrella, her large handbag and her overweight pet, who was mobilising all four of his skinny legs to resist this sodden outing.
Schoch went into the Salvation Army hostel, took off his wet coat and hung it on the rack. Behind the glass of the reception booth an elderly man looked up from his free newspaper. ‘Is Furrer here?’ Schoch asked.
The man nodded. ‘In the office.’
Schoch went up to the door marked ‘Management’, knocked and went in.
Furrer was a shaven-headed man with a five-day beard. He was probably about fifty, wore jeans, a checked shirt and a corduroy jacket. ‘Take a seat,’ he said, pointing to one of the visitors’ chairs from the junk shop.
Schoch sat down.
‘I’ll get us a coffee.’ Furrer went out and returned with two large cups.
Schoch took a sip. Black with lots of sugar, just how he liked it.
He didn’t know why Furrer was so friendly to him. He had been ever since his first day as manager of the hostel. For a short while Schoch thought it was because Furrer was gay. But a single glance in one of the few mirrors he came across was sufficient to eliminate this possibility. So he’d asked him, ‘How come I get such preferential treatment?’
‘You remind me of someone.’
‘Who?’
‘Don’t know, but it’ll come to me.’
After that he’d avoided Furrer, just to be on the safe side. But one evening Furrer intercepted Schoch outside Sixty-Eight and surprised him with the question, ‘I’ve got a room free, do you want it?’
Schoch shook his head.
‘Why ever not? Winter’s on its way. Opportunities like this don’t crop up every day.’
Schoch spent a moment searching for an answer, then shook his head obdurately. ‘Homeless people don’t have bedrooms.’
Sumi was still alive at the time and Schoch didn’t have a fixed sleeping place. So he was happy to accept Furrer’s offer to store his belongings at the hostel. And later, when he inherited the River Bed, he kept them there. They wouldn’t have been safe in his cave.
Schoch wasn’t the only one for whom Furrer put in safekeeping a few ‘personal effects’, as he called them. Schoch suspected that this allowed him to stay in contact with those homeless people who, like himself, wouldn’t be domesticated. The lockers were in Furrer’s office and it was difficult to access them without bumping into him.
Furrer asked the inevitable question, ‘How are you?’
And Schoch gave the routine answer, ‘Good.’
‘You don’t look it.’
‘I haven’t looked good since I was nineteen.’
‘What about the shakes?’
‘Didn’t have them then either.’
Furrer laughed and shook his head. Then he turned serious. ‘Dr Senn is coming at eight tomorrow morning. Shall I put your name down?’
Dr Senn was the GP who held a surgery once a week in the hostel for those who couldn’t bring themselves to seek out a doctor in their practice.
Schoch shook his head. ‘He’s not going to make me any prettier.’
‘Why don’t you join the group?’
‘The alky group?’ Schoch said with a grimace.
‘Hasn’t hurt anyone yet.’
‘If I want to stop, I’ll stop.’
Furrer nodded thoughtfully. ‘Well, that’s good.’
Schoch stood up and went over to his locker. ‘But if I do stop,’ he said, more to himself than to Furrer, ‘what will I do instead of drinking?’
The question was not meant as ironically as it sounded. When Schoch stepped out of the Salvation Army hostel, he didn’t know where to go. Normally he would have headed straight for CONSU, the wholesaler with the cheapest beer, and bought himself a six-pack. If the weather was good, he would have then gone to Freiland Park and sat on a bench or joined the other homeless people, depending on who was there. In poor weather he might have taken the six-pack to the tram stop at the station and shared it with the dog lovers. And with today’s weather as bad as it was he’d have taken himself off to the AlcOven, where it was warm and dry at least.
But without any beer? Without that spark of happiness that only ever lasted for two or three cans, then was replaced by something that might not have been satisfaction, but was at least its little sister, indifference? How was he going to kill the afternoons and evenings now?
Should he, as Furrer kept suggesting, register as a street vendor for Gassenblatt, the homeless newspaper? ‘It gives you a structured day, your own income and you meet normal people,’ he said. And you can’t drink, Schoch thought. For him, those were precisely the ‘advantages’ that militated against it.
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He’d tried it once. Furrer had lent him sixty francs, which had allowed him to buy twenty copies of the paper and keep 100 per cent of the income from these.
But after a short spell beside the escalator of the pedestrian underpass he’d had enough. He felt silly in the light-blue coat and matching baseball cap, and found it so embarrassing trying to talk to people. He recalled how he’d given the vendors a wide berth when he was one of those passers-by.
In almost two hours Schoch had sold a single paper, to an old lady who looked as if she needed the money just as much as him, and he sold the remaining nineteen copies to another vendor at half price. He invested his thirty-four francs in beer and cigarettes and still owed Furrer the sixty francs to this day.
Schoch stood indecisively beneath the porch of the hostel, staring at the pouring rain. He plumped for the closest option.
13
The same day
To begin with he thought the old man next to him was talking to the guy opposite, but then Schoch realised that both of them were talking to themselves. One he knew by sight, the other even by name: Ormalinger. He used to be with the dog lovers. He’d owned a large, shaggy mongrel, a ‘Giant Schnauzer-Alsatian’, as he used to call it. One evening during Carnival the animal had bitten a five-year-old dressed as Darth Vader, who’d threatened it with a light sabre. The injury was only slight, but the ‘Giant Schnauzer-Alsatian’ had been impounded and put down, which turned the alcoholic into a severe alcoholic. Schoch hadn’t realised, however, that Ormalinger had now reached the stage of chatting away to himself unintelligibly.