CHAPTER 26
They all walked us to the gate to say good-bye, and they gave us a huge pumpkin to take with us. It was just sitting there, a huge pumpkin, and they said we should take it in case we got hungry. We took it but didn’t know what to say. They waved good-bye for a long time as we wandered off.
“Cool people,” said Tschick. I wasn’t sure whether he was serious or not. I didn’t think he could be serious since he’d made the twirling-finger this-kid-is-crazy sign when we’d walked in. But his facial expression made it clear he was serious. I guess he was serious about both things. He was serious that the kid was crazy and that he thought they were “cool people.” He was right too: They were cool, crazy people. They were nice and they were nuts, they made great food and knew a lot of stuff — just not the location of the supermarket. That they didn’t know.
But we finally found it anyway. Later, as we turned into the street where the Lada was parked, carrying two huge bags of groceries and a giant pumpkin, I put the pumpkin down on the curb and went behind a bush to take a piss. Tschick trudged on without turning around — I’m only describing all of this in such detail because it proved important.
When I came out of the bushes, Tschick was about a hundred meters ahead of me and just a few steps from the Lada. I picked up the pumpkin and at the same moment a man carrying a bicycle came out of a driveway between me and Tschick. He lifted the bike up, flipped it over, and put it down on its seat and handlebars. The man was wearing a yellow shirt, greenish pants, and clip-in shoes. On the bike rack was a white hat that fell off when he turned it upside down. It was only when I looked at the hat on the ground that I recognized it as a policeman’s cap. I also noticed something else we hadn’t seen when we’d parked on the street: On the little brick house in front of the barn was a sign hanging with the green and white logo of the police. It was the town sheriff’s place.
The town sheriff had yet to notice us. He cranked the pedals of his bike, pulled some tools out of his bag, and tried to wrestle his chain back on the sprocket wheel. He was having a hard time. He looked down at his dirty fingers and rubbed them together. Then he saw me. Fifty meters away: a boy with a giant pumpkin. What was I supposed to do? He could see that I was walking in his direction, so I just kept going. The pumpkin belonged to me, after all. My legs began to tremble, but it seemed to have been the right decision: The town sheriff’s gaze returned to his bike. Then he looked up again and saw Tschick. Tschick had just gotten to the car, had thrown his bag of groceries in the backseat, and was about to climb into the driver’s seat. The policeman stopped rubbing his hands together. He stared in Tschick’s direction, took a step toward the car, then stopped again. There’s nothing inherently suspicious about a boy getting into a car. Even when he opens the driver’s door. But if Tschick were to start the engine, I knew what would happen next. I had to do something. I lifted the pumpkin up above my head and yelled, “Don’t forget to bring the sleeping bag!”
I couldn’t think of anything better. The policeman turned back to me. Tschick turned to me too. “Dad says to bring the sleeping bag! The sleeping bag!” I yelled again. When the cop turned again toward Tschick, I gestured at my head and my hip — meant to be a policeman’s hat and gun — to try to telegraph the man’s profession to Tschick. Without his hat on, and in those green cycling pants, it wasn’t easy to tell. I must have looked like an idiot, but I couldn’t think of any other way to signal that it was a cop. Tschick seemed to understand what was going on. He disappeared into the car and came out again with a sleeping bag in his hands. Then he closed the door and pretended to lock it (Dad gave me the keys, I just had to grab something), and came back toward me and the policeman with the sleeping bag. But he stopped after about ten steps. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure why he stopped. But I think something in the cop’s facial expression must have given away the fact that our clever move wasn’t the greatest piece of acting he’d ever seen.
Tschick started backing up. Then he started to run. The policeman ran after him, but Tschick was already at the wheel. He backed onto the street at lighting speed and the policeman accelerated like a track star. Not because he could catch the car — there was no way he’d be able to do that — but so he could read the license plate number. Holy shit. A town sheriff who could run like a gold medalist. I stood there the whole time like an idiot, pumpkin in hand. As the Lada headed for the horizon, the sheriff finally turned back toward me. Don’t ask what I did next. Normally, with any thought at all, I would never have done it. But nothing was normal anymore, and maybe it wasn’t so stupid anyway. I ran to the cop’s bicycle. I threw the pumpkin down and ran to the bike. I was significantly closer to it than he was at this point. I flipped it right side up and climbed onto the seat. The cop yelled, but fortunately he was yelling from a fair distance. I stepped on the pedal. Up to that second it had all been a blur, but now it became a vivid nightmare. I stepped with all my might on the pedal and didn’t budge. It must have been in the highest gear, and I couldn’t find the shifter. His shouts were getting closer. I had tears in my eyes and my thighs felt as if they were going to explode. But just as it seemed he would be able to reach out and grab me, I got the bike going and sped away from him.
CHAPTER 27
I flew through the village on its cobblestone roads. It didn’t take me longer than a minute and a half to reach the town square, but I knew how risky it was since the cop had probably already gotten to a phone. If he wasn’t stupid — and he didn’t give any indication of being stupid — he would have called someone who could grab me as I sped through the center of town. Maybe there was more than one policeman in this village. I raced between gray houses and around corners and finally onto a path that led out into the fields.
As it started to get dark, I lay in the woods alone, wheezing and anxious. The policeman’s bike was hidden under some dense brush. I wracked my brain as I waited. I was more and more unsure of what to do. I was a hundred or maybe two hundred kilometers south or southeast of Berlin in some forest, while Tschick was driving around somewhere in a light blue Lada with Munich plates on it, a car every cop in the area was on the lookout for, and I had no idea how we were going to find each other. Normally I guess you’d try to meet up where you’d lost each other. But that wouldn’t work in this case — it was right in front of the town sheriff’s place.
Another possibility would have been to go to Friedemann’s house and leave a message for Tschick. Or hope that he had left one for me. But for whatever reason, it seemed highly unlikely that he would have done that. The village was small, the people all knew each other, and Tschick would never have driven through town again in the Lada. The only chance was that he would try to sneak into town after nightfall, but even that was risky given the probability that everyone there had already heard about the whole thing. It also seemed unlikely to me because all of a sudden I thought of something much more likely.
If you couldn’t meet where you’d last seen each other, you could still meet in the last safe place you’d been together — the observation platform, the snack stand, and the spot hidden by the elderberry bush.
It seemed somehow logical. At least it seemed logical as I lay there with my face in the muck. It was the easiest solution, and the more I thought about it the more convinced I was that it would occur to Tschick too. Because it occurred to me. And besides, the platform was in a good location — far enough away from town but close enough for me to reach by bike. Tschick must have seen me take off on the bike. So I cowered in the bushes through the night and then started off at first light. I rode way out around the village, going through the woods and fields. It wasn’t hard to find my way, but it was much farther than I’d thought. I could see the ridgeline shrouded in fog in the distance, but it never seemed to get any closer. It didn’t take long before I was extremely thirsty. And hungry. Off to the right of the field I was in, there were a few houses clustered around a little brick c
hurch, so I headed that way. The “village” consisted of three houses and a bus stop. The street signs were in a foreign language and I thought for a second I was already in the Czech Republic. But that was impossible. I hadn’t seen anything like a border.
There was a funny little shop, but it was closed and didn’t look like it was going to open up anytime soon. The shop windows were so dirty that they were practically opaque, but inside I could see half a loaf of bread and a faded pack of gum on a table, and behind that a shelf stacked with East German laundry detergent.
There was a crazy guy standing at the bus stop. He was pissing in the middle of the street, tottering around with his dick in his hand like he was having a grand old time. There was nobody else around, and the angled rays of the morning sun made the cobblestones of the road look as if they were coated with red enamel. I thought about ringing one of the doorbells and asking whoever answered to sell me something. But once I actually rang the bell at a house where a light was on — the name on the door was Lentz, I remember that clearly — I lost my nerve and just asked the man who opened the door if I could have a glass of water. The man was half-naked. He was wearing gym shorts and was sweating. He was young and clearly worked out, and had bandages on his wrists. “A glass of water!” he bellowed. He stared at me for a second and then pointed to a faucet on the side of the house. As I drank from the faucet he asked if I was okay. I told him I was doing a bike tour. He laughed and shook his head and asked again if everything was okay. I pointed to his bandages and asked if everything was okay with him. He suddenly got very serious, nodded, and the conversation was over.
When I arrived at the observation platform, I was alone atop the mountain and it was still early in the morning. Behind the sawmill I’d seen only a lone black car, and the snack stand up here was still covered by a locked grate. I walked down to the elderberry bush. Our garbage was still on the ground, but there was no sign of Tschick. I was incredibly disappointed.
For hour after hour, I sat up there and waited. And I got more and more distraught. People came and went, and tour buses came and went, but the Lada never appeared. It didn’t seem like a good idea to ride anywhere else. If Tschick was driving around, he needed to be able to find me someplace. If we both ended up driving around, we’d never find each other. At some point I became convinced they must have caught him, and I resigned myself to spending the night under the elderberry bush. But then my gaze fell on a garbage can. It was filled with candy bar wrappers, empty beer bottles, and wine corks, and it occurred to me that we too had thrown away all of our trash in that very garbage can. We hadn’t left anything under the elderberry bush. I ran like a madman back down to the bush — and found an empty Coke bottle. Looking at it more closely, I discovered a rolled-up note crammed into the neck of the bottle. I pulled it out and it read, I’m in the bakery where we ran into Heckel. Come at six. — T But that had been crossed out and another message was written beneath it: Count Tschickula is working at the sawmill. Stay here and I’ll pick you up at sunset.
I sat happily at the observation platform until evening. Then I got more and more upset. Because Tschick didn’t show up. There were no more tourists either, just a black car driving around in circles at the back of the parking lot. It had been there since dusk, and I’m not sure how blind you can be — because it wasn’t until the car pulled right up to the platform and a man with a Hitler mustache opened the door that I realized it was a Lada. Our Lada.
I hugged Tschick, then punched him, then hugged him again. I couldn’t calm down.
“Man!” I shouted. “Man, oh, man!”
“How do you like the color?” Tschick asked. Then we barreled down the hill with the pedal to the metal.
I told him everything that had happened to me since we’d lost each other. But what Tschick had to tell was much more interesting. As he was fleeing the scene he had accidentally come across the bakery where we’d met Heckel and had parked the car not far from there. He figured it was too risky to keep driving around. He sat in front of the bakery for the entire day and had seen nothing but police cars go by.
Then he’d walked to the observation platform, which was only a few kilometers away. He had waited for me there. But since I didn’t show up — as I was sleeping in the woods — he left the note in the bottle about the bakery and went back to the car. On the way he’d passed a home improvement store and stolen masking tape and a case of spray cans. Since he hadn’t seen any more cops on the street, he had put the spray paint in the car and driven back to the observation platform. But I still wasn’t there, so he left the second note and parked the car at the sawmill and painted it. He had thought of everything: The car had new license plates now too.
When I told Tschick about the man with the bandages and the other one pissing in the street, he said he’d noticed that there were a lot of crazy people out here. As for the signs written in another language, he didn’t know what the story was.
“It certainly isn’t Russian,” he said as we looked at a strange sign lit up by the first few streetlights to blink on.
CHAPTER 28
The next day we were back on the autobahn. And this time not by accident. We were feeling confident, we wanted to make headway, and we did. For about fifty kilometers. Then Tschick pointed to the fuel gauge, which was already well into the red.
“Shit,” he said.
We hadn’t thought about the fact that we would need to get gas. At first it didn’t seem like a huge problem. There was a rest stop two kilometers up the road and we had money. But then I realized that two eighth graders in a car might not look right to the gas station employees. I should have realized that before.
“Here’s fifty, keep the change!” said Tschick, laughing hysterically.
We pulled off at the rest stop anyway. It was shortly before noon and the place was jammed. Tschick pulled past the diesel pumps and parked between two tractor-trailers where nobody could see us. We looked around sadly. Tschick said we’d never be able to get gas there, and I suggested we use the tennis ball to grab a different car.
“Too many people around,” said Tschick.
“We’ll just wait until it’s less busy.”
“Let’s just wait until evening,” he said. “Then one of us can go to the farthest pump and get it all ready, and the other can pull the Lada around on the outside — fill it up and go. That way we’ll save money too.”
Tschick thought it was a brilliant plan — as good as Hannibal marching over the Alps. And I might have agreed with him if I had known how a gas pump worked. But I’d never held a gas pump in my hand, and eventually I realized that he never had either. There’s not only a trigger in the handle of the pump but some other lever to lock it or something. I’d seen my father do it a million times, but I never paid close attention.
We bought ice cream bars at the rest-stop shop, sat down on the curb opposite the pumps, and watched people fill up their tanks. It didn’t look so difficult. It just took forever to fill up. And there were always people standing around, and an attendant watching everything from the panoramic window of his booth. Of course, we could have just put a few liters in and sped off, but then we’d be in the same jam by the time we reached the next rest stop.
“Don’t you still have the tennis ball?” I asked. I pointed at the parking lot — so many nice cars.
“We can’t steal a new car every time we run out of gas.”
“But you still have the ball, right?” I looked at Tschick. He had his arms wrapped around his knees and his head buried.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said. But he said that we wanted to take the Lada back, and that we couldn’t steal a hundred cars one after the next. I found this all very enlightening. But what if it meant the end of our trip?
A red Porsche pulled up to a gas pump and a young woman with sleek blond hair got out and grabbed the handle with pink-polished finge
rnails. And that’s when it hit me — I knew how we could get gas. We just had to siphon it out of another car! It was easy, I told Tschick. All we needed was a hose. You stick that in the gas tank, suck on it for a second, and the gas flows right out. I’d seen it in a book I got as a present when I started school. It was a book that explained the entire world — for six-year-olds. Obviously six-year-olds aren’t taught how to steal gasoline. But I remembered an illustration of a bucket on top of a table. There was water in the bucket, and the water was flowing smoothly up and out of the rim of the bucket in a hose. It works because of some physics principle.
“What are you telling me? That the water flows up?”
“You have to suck on it to get it started.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of gravity? It won’t flow up.”
“It runs down once it gets started. Overall it’s flowing downward.”
“But the gas doesn’t know that it will eventually be flowing downward.”
“It’s a law of physics. There’s a name for it. Something with force and tube. The something-force rule.”
“Bullcrap,” said Tschick. “The bullcrap-sandwich rule, more like.”
“Haven’t you ever seen it in a movie?”
“Yeah, but that’s in a movie.”
“I know it from a book,” I said. I didn’t say it was a book for six-year-olds. “I think the name is something with a C — like capital force or whatever.”
“Capital crap, man.”
“No, wait, that’s not it. I know! Capillary! Capillary action is the name of the principle.”
Tschick didn’t say anything for a moment. He still didn’t believe it. But the fact that I’d thought of the name of the force had taken the wind out of his sails. I told him that capillary action was strong enough to allow liquids to flow against gravity and all that. Mostly I kept at it just to make an effort — and because I didn’t want our trip to be over. I mean, I’d never actually seen anyone do the trick with the hose.
Why We Took the Car Page 11