More and more stars appeared in the sky above us. We lay on our backs and watched as the spaces between the stars filled with smaller stars, and then even tinier stars came into view between the smaller stars. The blackness kept retreating.
“It’s amazing,” said Tschick.
“Yeah,” I said. “It is amazing.”
“It’s way better than TV. Though TV’s good too. You ever seen Star Wars?”
“Of course.”
“You seen Starship Troopers?”
“Is that the one with the monkeys?”
“No, bugs.”
“And a brain bug at the end? A giant brain with — with slimy things sticking out of it?”
“Yeah!”
“That’s an amazing movie.”
“Yeah, it is amazing.”
“Can you imagine? Somewhere up there, on some star — that’s what’s happening! Actual bugs are taking over some planet, slaughtering all the inhabitants, and nobody even knows about it,” I said. “Except for us.”
“Right, except for us.”
“But we’re the only ones who realize it. And the bugs don’t know that we know.”
“Seriously? Do you really think so?” Tschick rose to his elbows and looked at me. “Do you think there really is something out there? I mean, not necessarily bugs. But something?”
“I don’t know. I heard one time that you can calculate the probability of there being other life in the universe. The chances are very slim, but since the universe is infinitely large, if you multiply even the slimmest odds by infinity you get a number — a number of planets where there’s probably life. It worked here, after all. So somewhere out there I guarantee there are giant bugs.”
“That’s exactly what I think, exactly what I think!” Tschick lay back down on his back and looked intensely at the sky. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, amazing.”
“It just blows me away.”
“And just imagine: The bugs go to the bug movies! They make movies on their planet and they’re sitting in some bug cinema watching a movie set on Earth — it’s about two kids who steal a car.”
“And it’s a horror film!” says Tschick. “The bugs think we’re disgusting because we’re not slimy.”
“But they all think it’s just science fiction, and that we don’t exist in reality. People and cars — what a load of crap! Nobody watching the movie thinks it could be true.”
“Except for two young bugs! They think it could be real. Two young school bugs who have just stolen an army helicopter. They’re flying around the bug planet thinking the same thing we are. They think we exist because we think they exist.”
“Crazy!”
“Yeah, crazy.”
I looked up at the stars extending out into incomprehensible infinity and was somehow frightened. I was moved and frightened at the same time. I thought about the bugs. I could almost see them up there in some flickering little galaxy. Then I turned to Tschick and he looked at me, looked me right in the eyes, and said that everything was amazing. And it was. It was truly amazing.
And the crickets chirped the entire night.
CHAPTER 24
When I woke up in the morning, I was alone. I looked around. There was a light fog clinging to the meadow and no sign of Tschick. But since his air mattress was still there I didn’t think much of it. I tried to go back to sleep, but at some point my uneasiness got the better of me. I went up to the observation platform and looked in every direction. I was the only person on the mountain. The snack stand wasn’t open yet. The sun looked like a red peach in a bowl of milk, and with the first beams of sunshine came a group of cyclists riding up the road. Not even ten minutes later, Tschick came tromping up the hill too. He had walked down to the sawmill to check on the Lada and see if it was still there. It was still there. We went back and forth for a while on what to do, and then decided that we would go back down now and drive on after all. Waiting around made no sense.
While we were talking, the group of bicyclists had spread out and sat down on a low wall near the observation deck — a dozen kids our age and one adult. They were eating breakfast and talking quietly among themselves, and there was something really weird about them. The group was too small to be a school class or summer camp, too big to be a family, and too well dressed to be from a loony bin or orphanage. Something was off about them. Their clothes were strange. They weren’t brand-name clothes, but they didn’t look cheap either. On the contrary. They looked expensive — but uncool. And they all had really clean faces. I don’t really know how to describe it, but their faces were somehow cleaner than normal. The weirdest one of all was the chaperone. He talked to them like he was their boss. Tschick asked one of the girls what institution they’d escaped from and she said, “We’re not from an institution. We’re Mobile Nobles. We’re riding from manor house to manor house.” She said it very seriously and very politely. Maybe she was putting us on and this was a bike tour organized by the local clown school.
“And you guys?” she said.
“What about us?”
“Are you also on a bicycle tour?”
“We’re motorists,” Tschick said.
The girl turned to the boy next to her and said, “You were wrong. They are motorists.”
“And you guys are what exactly? Mobile Nobles?”
“What’s so strange about that? Is motorist somehow less weird?”
“Yes, but mobile nobles?”
“And you guys are the proletariat in a chariot?”
Man, they were mean. Maybe the stash of cocaine had gone missing at the local clown school. We never figured out what those kids were really doing up there on the mountain, though we did come across them a little while later on the road. We passed them in the Lada and the girls waved and we waved back. Don’t know about the nobility, but at least the mobility was true. For some reason we felt unbelievably confident again from that point on. And Tschick also suggested that if we needed to use code names, he would be Count Tschickula and I would be Count Lada.
CHAPTER 25
The problem we had that morning, however, was that we had nothing to eat.
We’d brought some cans of stuff but no can opener. There were a couple crackers but nothing to put on them. And the six frozen pizzas were thawed and absolutely inedible. I tried to use a lighter to grill a piece of one of them, but it didn’t work. In the end, six Frisbees flew out of the Lada like UFOs fleeing the burning death star.
Relief came a few kilometers down the road. A sign pointed left to a little village, and on the same signpost was an ad for a supermarket one kilometer away. We took the left and you could see the huge store from a long way off, sitting there like a shoe box plopped down in the landscape.
The adjacent village was tiny. We drove through and parked by a big barn, where nobody would see us, and then walked back into town. Even though the entire village consisted of maybe ten streets that all met at a fountain in the town square, we couldn’t figure out which direction we needed to go to get to the supermarket. Tschick thought we needed to go left. I thought we should go straight. And there was nobody on the street to ask. We wandered through totally empty village streets until finally a boy on a bike appeared. It was a wooden balance bike with no pedals. He had to move his legs like he was running in order to push the thing along. He was probably twelve, meaning he was about ten years too old for the bike. His knees dragged on the ground. He stopped right in front of us and gaped at us with huge eyes — like a mutated frog or something.
Tschick asked him where the supermarket was and the kid smiled — a smile that said that he was either confident or clueless. He had huge gums.
“We don’t shop at the supermarket,” he said decisively.
“Interesting. But where is it?”
&nb
sp; “We shop at Froehlich’s market.”
“Aha, at Froehlich’s.” Tschick nodded at the kid like a cowboy who didn’t want to have to hurt another cowboy. “What we’re really interested in is how to get to the supermarket.”
The boy nodded eagerly, lifted a hand to his head as if he was going to scratch himself, and then motioned indistinctly with the other hand. Finally he stuck out his pointer finger and aimed it between two houses. There, on the horizon, was a farmstead set among tall poplar trees. “There’s Froehlich’s! That’s where we always shop.”
“Fantastic,” said Tschick. “And now, one more time, where is the supermarket?”
His gums made it clear that we probably weren’t going to get an answer. But there was nobody else on the street we could ask.
“What do you guys want to do there?”
“What do we want to do there? Mike, Mikey — what do we want to do at the supermarket again?”
“Do you want to get stuff or just have a look around?” asked the boy.
“Look around? Do you go to the supermarket to look around?”
“Come on, let’s go,” I said. “We’ll find it.” And to the boy, “We want to buy some food.”
There was no point in making fun of the boy with the frog eyes.
Just then a tall, very pale woman stepped out of a house and called, “Friedemann! Come inside, Friedemann, it’s noon!”
“I’m coming,” answered the boy, and his voice had changed. He had taken on the same singsong tone as his mother.
“Why do you want to buy food?” he asked. Tschick had already walked over to the woman to ask the way to the supermarket.
“To the what?”
“The supermarket,” said Friedemann.
“Oh, the big store,” said the woman. She had a strange-looking face. Emaciated but not unhealthy looking. She said, “We don’t shop there. We shop at Froehlich’s.”
“So we’ve heard.” Tschick put on his most polite smile. He was good at it. Though I had the feeling he overdid it a little sometimes. Still, the fact that he looked like a Mongolian invader balanced things back out.
“Why would you want to go there?”
Oh, Christ, was the entire family like this? Didn’t any of them know what you do at a supermarket?
“Go shopping,” I said.
“Shopping,” said the woman, drawing her arms to her chest as if to keep herself from accidentally pointing the way to the supermarket.
“Food! They want to buy food,” squealed Friedemann.
The woman looked at us suspiciously and then asked if we were from around here and what we wanted here. Tschick told her a story about a bicycle tour, crossing East Germany, and the woman looked up and down the street. Not a bike in sight.
“And we have a flat,” I said and, like Friedemann, gestured vaguely in no particular direction. “But we really need to do some shopping because we haven’t had breakfast. . . .”
Nothing in her facial expression or her manner changed, but she said, “We have lunch at noon and you are very welcome to join us, you young men from Berlin. You will be our guests.”
Then she showed her gums too — not quite as much as Friedemann, but a lot. Friedemann spun his balance bike around and shot toward the house, letting out a sound that was apparently a scream of excitement. There were now three or four smaller children standing at the door to the house all staring at us with big frog eyes.
I didn’t know what to say, and Tschick didn’t know either.
“What’s for lunch?” he finally said. They were having something called Risi Bisi. Whatever that was. I scratched my head and Tschick went for a grand finale. He opened his eyes wide, bowed slightly, and said, “That sounds fantastic, ma’am.”
Oh, Christ, I couldn’t believe it. That must have been lesson two from the German classes they give to immigrants.
“Why did you do that?” I whispered as we headed inside behind the woman. Tschick waved his arms as if to say, “What else was I supposed to do?”
Before we could follow her into the house she nodded to Friedemann, who took us by the hands and led us around the side of the house into the backyard. I didn’t like the situation. It also made me uneasy that, when Friedemann looked away for a second, Tschick made a sign with his finger that Friedemann was crazy.
In the backyard was a big white wooden table with ten chairs around it. Four of them were already taken by Friedemann’s siblings. The oldest one was a girl who was maybe nine, and the youngest was a boy of about six. And all of them looked alike. The mother brought out the food in a huge pot. Apparently this was Risi Bisi: rice in a yellowish goop, with little chunks and green herbs floating in it. The mother served everyone a bowl with a soup ladle, but nobody touched their food. Instead, they all lifted their arms as if on command and joined hands. And since the entire family was looking at us now, we also lifted our hands. I linked hands with Tschick and Friedemann, and the mother lowered her head and said, “Okay, maybe we don’t necessarily have to do this today. We welcome our guests, who have traveled from far away, to the day’s festivities and give thanks for everything that is bestowed upon us. Guten Appetit.”
Then everyone shook hands and we ate. Say what you will, but the goopy rice tasted fantastic.
When we were finished, Tschick pushed his empty bowl away with both hands and, in the woman’s direction, said that it had been a scrumtrulescent meal. The woman reacted by furrowing her brow. I scratched my head and added that it had been ages since I had eaten so well. Then Tschick said it had been super scrumtrulescent. The woman showed a little of her gums and cleared her throat in her fist, and Friedemann looked at us with his big frog eyes. And then came dessert. Holy crap.
I’d rather not even tell the next part. But I will anyway. Florentine, the nine-year-old, brought the dessert out on a tray. It was something foamy and white topped with raspberries. There were eight individual bowls of it. Eight different-sized bowls. I figured there’d be a fight over the biggest bowl. But I was wrong.
The eight bowls sat huddled together in the middle of the table and nobody touched them. Everyone just shifted in their chairs and looked at the woman.
“Quickly, quickly!” said Friedemann.
“First I have to think,” she said and closed her eyes for a moment. “Okay, I have it.” She cast a friendly look at me and Tschick and then looked around the table again. “What did Merope Gaunt get for Slytherin’s locket when she . . .”
“Twelve galleons!” shouted Friedemann, jumping in his seat and shaking the table.
“Ten galleons,” said all the others.
The mother pensively rocked from side to side and then smiled. “I believe Elisabeth was first.”
Elisabeth coolly grabbed the biggest bowl with the most raspberries. Florentine protested because she thought she’d shouted the answer at the same time, and Friedemann pounded on the table shouting, “Ten! I’m an idiot! Ten!”
Tschick kicked me under the table. I shrugged. Slytherin? Galleons?
“You’ve never read Harry Potter?” asked the mother. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter. We’re changing subjects now.”
She thought for another moment and while she did, Elisabeth took a little spoonful of her dessert, held it to her lips, and waited. She waited until Friedemann looked at her; then she slowly put the spoon into her mouth.
“Geography and science,” said the mother. “What was the name of the research vessel Alexander von Humboldt . . .”
“Pizarro!” cried Friedemann as his chair fell backward. He immediately took the second biggest bowl, put his nose to the rim, and whispered, “Ten, ten. How did I ever come up with twelve?”
“That’s not fair,” said Florentine. “I knew the answer too. It’s just because he yelled.”
Next the mothe
r asked what was celebrated on Pentecost. I probably don’t have to tell you how the game played out. When the two smallest bowls were left, the mother asked who had been the first president of the Federal Republic of Germany. I said Adenauer and Tschick said Helmut Kohl. The mother wanted to give us our desserts anyway, but Florentine was against that. And so were the rest of the children. I would happily have forfeited my dessert at that point. Jonas, the youngest of all the children, about six years old, rattled off the names of all the presidents of the Federal Republic of Germany, starting with the correct answer, Theodor Heuss, and then took charge of the game himself. He asked us what the capital of Germany was.
“Uh, I would say Berlin,” I said.
“That’s what I would have said, as well,” said Tschick, nodding earnestly.
Say what you will, but the dish once again was fantastic. I swear I’ve never tasted such delicious foam with raspberries.
Afterward we thanked the family for the excellent meal and were about to leave when Tschick said, “I have a question for you. How do you figure out which way is north with a watch when it’s . . .”
“You aim the hour hand at the sun! Then you wind the minute hand to twelve and it is pointing south!” yelled Friedemann.
“Correct,” said Tschick, pushing him his bowl with the last few raspberries in it.
“I knew that too,” said Florentine. “It’s just because he always yells.”
“I might have gotten that,” said Jonas, sticking his finger in his ear. “But maybe I wouldn’t really have known that. I’m not sure. Would I have known that?” He looked quizzically at his mother, and his mother patted his head lovingly and nodded as if to say he would surely have known the answer.
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