A man in baggy Levis and a yellow T-shirt attempted to impress onlookers with his dance routine. He seemed to spend most of the time spinning on the floor, flipping into the air, then repeating the exercise again. People cleared a space around him to watch, but, for me, the novelty began to fade almost instantly.
‘What’ll you have?’ I made a motion with my cupped hand. Linda shouted back, but I couldn’t hear. ‘Some what?’
‘Water!’ she yelled. ‘I’m going to stay here and dance.’
I brought the water to Linda and returned to the bar. I finished off another lager as I watched her move among the revellers, the human spinning top and the gang of youths who were dancing now, all the earlier menace drained away from them. I scanned the perimeter of the room, but Sylvie had disappeared.
I spotted the others at the bottom of the stairs and waved. Tunde walked towards me.
‘She wants to leave,’ he said, pointing his chin at Angelika. He didn’t sound as peeved as I would have expected him to be.
‘But it’s early. It’s not even midnight,’ I said. ‘What about you? You’ve hardly talked to Linda.’
He sighed and looked at her on the dance floor. B and Angelika joined us.
‘At least one more dance before we go,’ I said. ‘Don’t leave now. We’ve only just arrived.’ But I was only thinking of myself. Of how young the night was and how I needed to share it with someone.
‘Just one dance, dear,’ B said. Angelika looked from his face to the floor and back again.
‘I am not so fit,’ she complained. ‘I have not danced in years. If you want to go, it’s okay. I’ll wait.’ She held her handbag against her stomach and B remained where he was.
Then Linda appeared and grabbed Angelika’s hand. ‘Just one,’ she pleaded, inching back into the throng. In a moment both women were dancing. B and Tunde decided to join them. I watched for a while, then bought another drink. I figured it would be difficult for them to leave so soon now.
‘I’d swear you’re following us.’ Sylvie’s voice came from behind me.
I turned and there she was with her older friend and next to them stood Claudia. I wished I had listened to Angelika and left earlier. There was no escape now.
Claudia peered at her pointed red shoes, then at the dance floor, but she didn’t say anything. All three were wearing short denim skirts and sleeveless T-shirts, like a set of triplets.
‘Um … can I get you a drink or something?’ I asked.
Gudren’s eyes lit up. ‘Well, if you’re offering, another Bloody Mary.’
‘Same again,’ Sylvie said.
‘Claudia … you want anything?’
She shook her head. I bought her a pina colada anyway.
‘I see your friend’s found himself another girl,’ Sylvie sneered.
‘Yes, it looks like it,’ I said. ‘This is yours.’ I handed the cocktail to Claudia.
‘Thanks,’ she mumbled.
‘Ooh, this is a good one!’ Gudren shrilled, when Tarzan Boy began. ‘This calls for a boogie. Anyone for a boogie?’
‘Oh, all right then.’ Sylvie put her drink down and joined Gudren. Claudia raced to her friends without a word.
I felt foolish all over again, standing there while everyone else enjoyed themselves. I finished my drink and started to move my body. I was beyond tipsy now.
‘There you are,’ Linda shouted. She waved and beckoned me. ‘That was a long drink. I thought you’d left us.’
I shook my head. Angelika turned and smiled as she danced. I had been wrong about her; she moved fluidly, as if she had been dancing all her life. I gave her a wan smile in return and felt the music carry me away.
Tunde reached out for Linda and for a minute they danced in each other’s arms. She threw back her head and laughed. When I first met Lucille, we often went to clubs in London. She had that same manoeuvre – head thrown back, eyes wide with excitement. She had been a different person then – we both had – flush with the discovery of one another. I wondered what she was doing now on a Saturday night in London.
‘Come dance with me, Vincent.’ Angelika was in front of me. The old antipathy no longer seemed to matter. Michael Jackson’s Working Day and Night thundered out for the umpteenth time and we let ourselves go. She was a contradiction, Angelika; the frilly blouse buttoned up to the throat, the schoolteacher’s long grey skirt, the sensible shoes. She didn’t care what people thought.
‘It’s late.’ Tunde slapped his watch.
B looked over at Angelika. ‘What do you think?’
‘Just a bit longer,’ she pleaded.
Linda did not look as if she was willing to leave. Tunde stood still for a moment, then whispered in her ear. In a moment he was pushing through the bodies. I knew he would not return. Ten minutes later, I excused myself and went to the washrooms. Sure enough, he wasn’t there. I walked to the upper floor where we had first sat. As I approached the staircase I saw his face. Sylvie was standing in front of him and he was nodding at her. I was about to interrupt when they leaned in towards each other and kissed. I veered abruptly to the side to avoid being noticed, and crashed into someone.
‘You again.’ Claudia rubbed her forehead.
‘We must be stalking each other,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. Does it hurt?’
‘No. I’m all right,’ she laughed.
‘Let’s move nearer the light.’ I drew her away from the stairs.
She tried to peer over my shoulder. ‘Who’s that with Sylvie?’ she asked.
‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘You do?’ The anxiety in her eyes was unexpected. It gave me no time to think.
‘Well … yes,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we go over there.’
‘No, tell me now,’ she said.
‘Oh, okay … well, then … what it involves is this.’ I paused. ‘Remember the other day on the beach, when you and Sylvie were, well, when Sylvie was having a go at us?’
‘How could I forget.’
‘Well, I thought that I’d been careless …I thought I should make things up to you.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes, well … yes.’
‘Make things up how?’
‘I don’t know. I was thinking of dinner. We could go to an exhibition or a film. Something to eat?’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That’s not what I thought you were going to say.’
‘It’s not? What did you think?’
‘I don’t know. Not that anyway.’ The tension had left her face as she contemplated the offer. I hoped she would turn me down.
‘What are you two gossiping about?’ Sylvie interrupted.
I looked round, but there was no sign of Tunde.
‘We’re going to an exhibition,’ Claudia said. ‘Who was that man?’
‘An exhibition!’ Sylvie exclaimed. ‘That’s not your thing, is it? What kind of exhibition?’ She was aglow after the stolen kiss. Whatever was being discussed didn’t matter to her.
‘It’s … it’s at the Andreas Grob … gallery,’ I said.
Sylvie looked nonplussed.
‘An Italian exhibition,’ I said, remembering what I had read in the press pack. ‘Very avant-garde. You might like it.’ It was work, but it was the first thing I could think of.
‘Who, me? I don’t think so,’ Sylvie said. ‘Life’s too short for that kind of thing. I’m not a stare-at-a-painting kind of girl. I like movement. Dancing. Passion.’
‘Where’s Gudren?’ Claudia asked.
Sylvie shook her head. ‘Search me.’ Then she drifted into the crowd.
‘Why do you hang around with people like that?’ I asked.
‘Like what? Sylvie? … What’s wrong with Sylvie? She’s no worse than your gigolo friend,’ she said. ‘Besides, she loves me. And I love her. We’ve been friends since school.’
‘I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ve drunk too much.’
Claudia smil
ed and pinched her nose.
‘I should go now. It’s late.’ I couldn’t understand how I had got into this predicament in the first place. I had wasted precious moments protecting Tunde instead of staying on the dance floor. Now I had an unwanted date and no one to spend the night with. I was more than angry with myself.
‘How do I get to the exhibition?’ Claudia asked. ‘You haven’t got my number.’ She rummaged through her bag for a pen and paper. ‘Oh dear. I’ve nothing to write on.’ She glanced at me.
I tried to smile, but I was tired and my face was set. I stared at the revellers on the dance floor.
She made another search in her bag, then looked at me again. ‘You don’t want to go, do you? To the exhibition? Why did you ask me if you weren’t interested?’ Her eyes were wide and wavering. I felt like a scoundrel all over again.
‘No, I do. Really, I do,’ I said. ‘I’m drunk, that’s all. Here, give me the pen.’ I pulled a ten mark note from my pocket and wrote down her number as she recited it. ‘Now we can both get in touch. Agreed?’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Just don’t forget.’ She half smiled again. She was like a flower that bloomed or wilted depending on the gardener. I feared for her in the care of my clumsiness.
12
WE TOOK A taxi from Zwickauer Damm to Ezmîr’s building. I stared out of the window at the bleak horizon, punctuated by intermittent green, wondering why the hostel was situated so far from anywhere.
‘There!’ Arî pointed, directing the driver.
We drew up to a large grey building that looked more like an office block or a warehouse than a home.
Ezmîr met us at the main door and ushered us through the entrance. The security guard attempted to glance up as we hurried by. He squinted slightly, but did not quite manage to break away from a well-thumbed paperback. We jogged up several flights of stairs and it occurred to me that what Ezmîr had planned might be, according to the rules of the hostel, quite illegal. I glanced at the patch over his right eye and wondered at the horror story that lay behind the cloth.
We walked through a set of double doors on the fourth floor, along a blue echoing hallway, past several individual doors. Ezmîr stopped outside a room, knocked and entered, then motioned for us to follow. Inside was a kind of makeshift dormitory with five or six interspersed bunk beds. Even though the windows had been flung wide open, the atmosphere inside was stifling.
On the lower half of some of the beds were several African men – in sitting positions, some lying down. They were all, without exception, smoking. I wondered why they weren’t outside. Ezmîr slapped the hand of one of them, and gestured to Arî and myself.
‘You’re welcome,’ the man on the end bed greeted in English.
I shook his outstretched hand. He leaned out to an ashtray on the floor, tapped his cigarette, and lay back. He stared up at me for a moment through spiralling smoke. Rivulets of sweat trickled down the sides of his face. I began to greet the other men. Arî waved to them and I wondered whether he was a regular here. Ezmîr glanced at his watch and spoke to Arî.
‘After five, no more visit,’ Arî translated. ‘We must go. Five o’clock!’
I nodded.
‘Where are you from?’ I asked the man whose hand I had shaken. ‘From which country?’
He exhaled slowly, watching the smoke plume out of his mouth until I thought he wouldn’t answer. ‘Ghana,’ he said eventually, enunciating carefully as if he were afraid I might not hear. ‘All of us,’ he continued. ‘And you, you want to take our photo, eh?’
‘You don’t need to move,’ I said. ‘Just relax. Ignore me.’
‘What!’ exclaimed another man, grinning widely. ‘You’re joking, surely?’
‘Not joking,’ I replied, setting myself up. The others laughed.
‘And you, you’re from where?’ asked a man leaning against the windowsill.
‘Nigeria,’ I replied.
‘Ah, you’re our brother then.’
‘But your people don’t welcome us,’ another man said, ‘so we come here instead.’
There was a tension; I didn’t know the history of it and I could not respond. I remembered Uncle Raymond’s wife, Aunt Ama, who had been born in Ghana. ‘My aunt, she’s from Bimbilla. Ama,’ I said.
‘Okay, okay,’ said the man whose hand I had shaken. ‘I know it – my brother-in-law is from there.’
The cell filled with the sun-dappled haze of cigarette smoke. Ezmîr was explaining something to Arî in Kurdish. A minor disagreement ensued among the men to which I paid scant attention. Occasionally someone would look up, not completely at ease as I made my way about the room, but towards the end of the time there, I was ignored.
‘So soon?’ the joker asked when I announced I had finished.
‘More?’ I laughed. ‘You want more?’
The joker frowned. ‘But you’re not in the photo. You need to be in the photo,’ he said.
‘No, I don’t. I’m the photographer.’
He snapped his fingers impatiently for the camera.
The joker asked everyone to move to one side of the room so we would all be in a single frame. He took one photograph, then asked someone else to act as cameraman so he too could be included.
Afterwards Ezmîr led me to the end of the corridor, to a tiny room where his friend Sediq and his wife lived.
‘Sediq,’ Ezmîr announced. ‘Afghanistan.’
We remained with them for only a short time while I photographed Sediq. He wouldn’t allow his wife to sit for the camera and I did not try to persuade him.
We walked to different levels of the building, along endless corridors – into the refectory, Ezmîr’s own dormitory, the recreation room behind the reception – meeting his ephemeral companions. As the deadline drew near, he started to become agitated.
‘He cannot see one family. From Somali,’ Arî explained.
‘It’s not important,’ I said. ‘Tell him I have enough material already. More than enough. Tell him not to worry.’
But Ezmîr wasn’t satisfied and he left us for several minutes while he searched for his friends. He returned moments later with a giggling East African boy of no more than five or six.
‘Come,’ Ezmîr said in English, holding the boy’s hand.
We made our way to the second floor, to the end of a hallway, into a secluded kitchen area. The boy ran ahead of us and hugged the covered legs of a thickset woman standing in front of a stove.
‘Ahhh!’ she sang out, raising a free hand to her mouth. ‘Ezmîr!’ With a deft movement, she drew her child away from the cooking area.
Ezmîr smiled broadly and made the introductions. I noticed, sitting on a chair beside the kitchen table, a slender man I took to be the child’s father. Something about him seemed familiar.
The boy moved to the man, clutched him possessively, turned to peer at the strangers, then buried his face into his father’s side once more. His father laughed and I realized where I had seen him before – in my photograph: the man in the run-down café with the sombre face. He had been in Kreuzberg on the day of Henkelmann’s rally, the man I assumed was Ethiopian. I wondered what he had been doing there, alone, away from his family. His face betrayed no sign of recognition. He looked altered in some way, perhaps because he was here, within the warmth of his family. I was forced to recall the day all over again: the muted pinball machines, the enormous woman at the cash till, the Turkish boy on Henkelmann’s shoulder, the butterball butcher, the murder ringing in my ears.
I took several photographs of the family as we had found them – the mother frenetic over the stove, the boy charging between his parents – then set up the tripod for their portrait. The woman was swathed in a traditional aquamarine gown, the material draped over her head, her shoulders, in the blue heat of the day. The boy fidgeted while his father attempted to calm him.
I peered through the lens then and I could see my mother and father, Matty, myself. I glanced up. There was the Somali family stand
ing patiently, waiting for release. I could hear the Kurdish chatter of Ezmîr and Arî from the corridor.
‘Okay!’ I waved. ‘Ready?’
The boy laughed, scratched the side of his head, held on to his father’s hand.
I looked through the lens and this time it did not come as a surprise. I saw my mother’s dimpled face, my father grinning at something Matty had said, my pink sandy tongue held out to the camera, like a gift. I saw their faces clearly, each feature, as if time had not dulled my memory. I released the shutter and everything seemed to decelerate.
In the car, Papa informed us that Grandma had been overjoyed to see us after such a long time. ‘You have made her so very happy,’ he said, turning to us in the back. Our mother added something in collusion and then they began to have their own private conversation. I felt smug, but uneasily so, as I felt Matty and I had done nothing to deserve praise. We had simply agreed to visit our grandmother in her village, hundreds of miles from Lagos.
The car sped through the humid atmosphere, the road mantled in the sepia tint of early evening. Matty held his arm out of the window, angling wind to his face. I tried to imitate him, but our mother noticed and told us to wind up our windows. I sighed and Matty glowered; I had ruined his fun yet again. In a moment the first drops of moisture grazed the windscreen, and before long rain was falling steadily in sheets across the landscape.
There was silence as we listened to the music of the shower, the gentle drumming. The conversation started up again in the front and I felt the pull of rain-induced sleep, tinged a little with boredom. I looked across at Matty and he seemed lost in thought as he stared out of the window.
‘But who will look after her?’ our father asked. ‘Where will she live?’
Mama was quiet for a moment. She said, ‘We can manage somehow. It would not be so difficult, you know. Besides, it is only a suggestion. There is always Raymond; it does not have to be us. I am only suggesting, that’s all.’
‘Yes,’ Papa exhaled. ‘I know.’ And then they seemed to have the argument all over again, going over the same ground.
‘Your brother … ’ Papa said.
Goodbye Lucille Page 11