In the street below, I saw the man with the combover from above. He crossed the road to a gold-coloured Ford Cortina, touched the door handle and then looked up at me. For a second we were staring at each other, his black eyes fixed on my face and then moving along the roof as if he were searching for someone else. He let go of the door handle, walked around the car looking at it as if he was admiring it, then walked off towards Kreuzberg.
A skinny man with straight black hair brushed into curtains leant against the low wall beside me. He lit a cigarette. ‘Friend of yours?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I thought he was going to steal the car. He tried the door then wandered off.’
‘Did you lock it?’
‘Oh, it’s not mine. We came on bikes.’
He held out the cigarette packet. ‘Want one?’
‘Sure.’
We smoked together staring out over the Wall into East Berlin.
‘Do you think there are some communists right at this moment staring over the rooftops at us?’ I said through the clearing smoke.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But I think in the East we’re always more interested in ourselves than you think. Most East Germans care about East Germany, the politicians too. I don’t think anyone’s even that bothered about West Berlin. It’s just there, you know. But most of the time you’re not even thinking about it at all.’
‘You’re from the East?’ I said.
He nodded.
‘How did you get out?’
‘Just applied.’
I laughed. ‘Just applied?’
‘Well, I’m an artist. And not the kind they like.’
‘Political?’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Not what you’d call political. Like sculptures of birds, but made out of iron. Kind of shitty Arte Povera.’
‘I’m sure it’s not shitty.’
He grimaced and scratched the skin above his eye with the long nail of his little finger.
‘I thought you were Turkish,’ I said.
He raised his eyebrows and nodded as he sucked on his cigarette. ‘I get that a lot. My family’s actually from Yugoslavia. Pristina.’
I shrugged; it wasn’t a city people had heard of back then.
‘It’s a small town,’ he said. ‘We visited a few times, but actually I barely remember it. Maybe I’ll have a chance soon.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s all coming to pieces, I think. Tiananmen Square, Gorbachev in Bonn, Solidarność, the Love Parade. That Wall’s not going to last.’
‘You think?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Yes, mon,’ he said in English, imitating a Jamaican accent. ‘Were you at the Love Parade?’
I shook my head.
‘It was beautiful. We’re going to change the world, you know.’
‘Who?’
‘You and me,’ he said. ‘All of us. When we kill the pigs.’
‘Which pigs?’
‘The capitalist pigs.’
I thought about my dad behind the counter of his pharmacy in his neatly pressed shirt. ‘I thought you left East Germany because of the communists.’
‘Yeah, but they’re not real communists. They’re just dry old men in suits. What’s going on here, man. Braunmühl, Beckurts, you know? That’s action. That’s changing things. Because there are fascists, right? Everywhere. You know they didn’t find any fingerprints on the guns in Baader and Raspe’s cell?’ He was talking about the deaths of the Baader-Meinhof Gang in ’77. ‘And Ensslin’s chair was too far away from her body for her to have hanged herself. They were assassinated by the BND. By the West Germans. In a fucking “democracy”, excuse me.’
‘The West doesn’t kill people,’ I said, repeating what Oz had told me.
He laughed. ‘Alter,’ he said, ‘you need to get informed. Uwe Barschel. CDU prime minister in Schleswig-Holstein who’d been found dead in a hotel bath. You think that was a suicide?’
‘I … I don’t know. I know it was weird, but wasn’t it meant to be the Israelis or something?’
‘It was a West German Intelligence hit – trust me. All about oil, of course.’
I felt afraid for Tobias. But then Barschel was an important politician. And the Baader-Meinhof Gang were actually killing people. Tobias wasn’t that important; I was sure he wasn’t.
Joachim barged in between us and got his arm around me. I could feel the hair of his armpit damp on my shoulder. ‘You met Mo!’ He turned to Mo. ‘Ralf here’s got a new Turkish friend, called Oz.’
Mo nodded with scant interest; his gaze wandered back to the amber lights of East Berlin.
‘How do you know about Oz?’ I said.
‘Stefan told me,’ Joachim said drunkenly. ‘You know your friends love you, right?’ he said, putting his hand flat to my chest. ‘You’re all they ever talk about, even since you dumped your girlfriend.’
‘She dumped me.’
‘Are you listening to me?’ Joachim said. ‘They really love you.’
I looked at the brick lip of the roof and sucked at my cigarette. ‘Yeah,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘Well, thank you for saying.’
‘Sicher,’ said Joachim, earnestly. ‘I’m going to get beer. Everyone wants more beer, right?’ he said, dancing off, his sandals scuffing on the worn bitumen.
Mo told me about a project he was working on about movement and history. I didn’t really understand if that meant he was an artist or a dancer, and the look he gave me when I asked implied that it was stupid to ask. The conversation died after that and the girl in dungarees appeared on the roof and dragged Mo and me to the DJ and his speakers, which were blasting out Talking Heads.
I danced for what felt like hours. Stefan, Joachim, Mo, Petra, the naked girl, the girl in the dungarees, Kurt – they all passed by, their hands raised in the air, holding cigarettes and bottles of beer. When Petra and I sang all the words to ‘Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann’ and danced like Kate Bush, Joachim laughed so hard that he had to sit in the middle of the dancers, who continued to move around him as he shrieked.
I smoked marijuana for the first time, taking a stinging gulp of it from a tall Dutchman called Pieter, who started crying when they played ‘Every Day is Like Sunday’ and told me and Petra that his mother had been killed in a gliding accident when he was ten. It made me and Petra cry too, but the naked girl was painting my nails with apricot-coloured varnish, so I couldn’t reach over and hug him.
Stefan hugged me though. He gripped me from behind and said, ‘Don’t be cross about Maike. She’ll come round, but you were a dick about things.’
‘Was I?’ I said.
Petra danced past and Stefan shouted, ‘Hey Petra, was Ralf a dick with Maike?’
She nodded. ‘Absolute cunt.’ She raised her hands above her head and moved them like a snake as she swung her hips to The Bangles. ‘Why were you such a cunt, Ralf?’
‘You don’t really think I’m a cunt,’ I said drunkenly.
Petra hugged me from the other side so that I was sandwiched between them, and Joachim joined in enthusiastically. ‘We’re all cunts, Ralf,’ Petra said hotly into my ear. ‘It was just your time to come into the fold.’
We fell over and rolled laughing together across the roof and our faces and hands were covered with cigarette ash and spots of melted tar, so that we were flecked and stained like chimney sweeps by the time we stumbled apart.
We danced and danced. I noticed the sun rising when the skin of my arms, high above my head, turned purple.
I wandered through the heaps of drunk and sleeping people on the sofas, on the floor, propped up against the chimney looking for Petra and Stefan, but I couldn’t find them. Blue cigarette smoke trickled into the sky and I felt like I was stumbling through a burnt-out village the morning after it had been pillaged by Vikings.
I wandered onto the staircase; it felt strange to be inside. I called their names, but the only answer came from the dungaree girl, whose cackle deep in the belly of the building rattled up the bare
plaster walls.
At the door to the bedroom floor, I heard snoring, but also giggling and the creaking of old springs in damp old mattresses. I wandered through the large rooms, smelling of smoke, stale beer and sleep, looking through the gaps in the hanging sheets to see if I could spot Petra or Stefan. The sleepers and lovers unfolded themselves as I passed, but I didn’t find either of my friends, just two amber eyes.
I stopped, startled. I reached out and slowly lifted the hanging blanket and there was Oz standing by an empty mattress, the sheets kicked into a dirty pile in one corner.
‘Oz!’ I said, dazed. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
Someone shushed me.
Oz pulled me into the pale space. I stumbled on the mattress and it gave off a stink of human hair and patchouli oil.
‘Ralf,’ Oz whispered. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve been here the whole time.’
‘Don’t worry?’ I said. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? Why are you here at all? How did you …? Were you following me around all day?’
We were shushed again and from the far side of the room someone let out a deep orgasmic groan.
‘Listen,’ he whispered. ‘I know this seems weird, but I think someone’s on to us.’
‘What? Why?’
‘When I got back yesterday, all of the bulbs in my flat had blown. And someone had swapped round all of my cutlery in the cutlery tray.’
I stared at him astonished. ‘Why does that matter?’ I hissed.
‘It’s gaslighting. It’s what the Stasi do. They try and make you think you’ve gone crazy.’
‘This seems pretty crazy to me at the moment,’ I said.
‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t’ve come. But I was scared. I was scared that they’d somehow find out about you and follow you. I wanted to be nearby in case anything happened.’
His eyes were large and beautiful and he looked incredibly sad. It was hard not to touch him, and I put my hand on his chest. ‘You really freaked me out.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. It was dumb.’
I sighed. ‘Do you want to get out of here? Go back to yours?’
‘I think we should keep away from the flat for the next twenty-four hours. And I think it’d be best if we stuck together.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I want to make sure you’re safe. If you’ve got stuff to do, I can just keep an eye on you, like tonight. You won’t notice me.’
‘You can’t follow me around, Oz. It’s creepy. And it’s my mum’s birthday tomorrow.’
‘I could come.’
‘What, and disguise yourself as a waiter?’
He looked put out. ‘You don’t want me to meet your family?’
Someone shifted behind the hanging blanket and five grubby toes appeared by my foot. ‘Of course. I mean, yes, at some point. I just wasn’t expecting it to be like this.’
‘It won’t be weird. I’ll be on best behaviour. I just want to be close to you. We’ll just say I’m a new friend.’
‘OK,’ I said unenthusiastically.
‘Can I see you home?’
‘I’ve got my bike.’
‘I’ll follow in the car.’
‘That’s also really weird, Oz,’ I said.
‘I don’t want to take any chances,’ he said. He kissed me and pulled me out through the blankets.
I crossed the road gingerly and unlocked my bike, sensing that Oz’s appearance was going to seem much more odd to me once I was sober. Someone had parked very close to the gold-coloured Ford that the man with the combover had looked at, and with gritted teeth I unsteadily pushed my bike through the gap, the pedal scratching along the car’s corner, above the bumper. With my face pulled into a guilty grimace, I touched the scratched paint and some of the gold flakes came off on my fingertips. I looked up and down the street and, seeing no one, cycled swayingly back home through the waking city, the sound of Oz’s ancient green Mercedes grumbling along behind me.
The streets were almost completely devoid of vehicles, except for delivery trucks and an empty yellow bus that overtook us at Kottbusser Tor. Otherwise, the city belonged to me and my escort and a smattering of drunks and revellers sloping back home in their high-waisted jeans, cigarettes hanging from their lips.
On Windscheidstraße, I heard him pull in and lifted my hand in a wave. He beeped his horn. In my room, I opened the window and lay on my bed and from the bakery that backed onto the courtyard I could smell Sunday rolls being baked. The day was already too warm for sheets, and I fell anxiously asleep on top of them, still wearing my clothes.
Twenty-Five
Oz had gone back to his dad’s to get changed, and I purposefully took too long to get showered and dressed so that Mum, Dad and Martin would go on ahead without me to the party and I could meet Oz back at his car and drive over with him. I’d mentioned that he was coming as casually as possible, and Mum and Dad seemed pleased that I’d made a friend outside of the nature group.
When I found Oz leaning against the car, he was wearing chinos and a sky-blue shirt and looked very handsome. I still felt disturbed about him following me to the party the night before, but when I got into the passenger seat, he got in beside me and held my hand. ‘Ralf,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry about last night. It was really weird. This lightbulb thing got me really paranoid, but I didn’t want to spoil your evening. And then when you came down the stairs at the squat, I just thought the best thing to do was to hide, which I can see now was really odd.’
‘It was really odd,’ I said. ‘How did you even know I was there?’
‘I’d followed you all day. I know,’ he said. ‘It’s really weird. I’m sorry. Honestly.’
‘It’s so weird,’ I said.
He laughed his big laugh. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about this “Axel” thing, and when it’s all over, I’m going to stop doing it.’
‘The spying?’
‘Yeah. It’s making me mental. I’ve been thinking about doing this booksellers’ training. I can get a loan for it. And it’ll make Dad happy.’
I smiled, picturing Oz’s bookshop and me pushing open a glass door with his name on it.
‘Are we OK?’ he said.
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘Good,’ he said, letting go of my hand to start the engine, ‘Now, let’s go to a middle-aged woman’s birthday party.’
We both whooped and he pulled away.
As we drove towards the restaurant, I refined my introduction to Oz that would evoke the heterosexual brotherliness of our relationship and how unsurprising it was that we were friends. The approach I had landed upon was to briefly imply I had forgotten he was there, to greet my mother, father, Martin or my friends, and then to say, ‘Oh yeah, this is Osman, by the way.’ Then I was going to turn to Oz and say, ‘Or Oz?’ implying that I wasn’t completely sure what he liked to go by, and thus that we weren’t all that close. Then, as Oz shook their hands, I was going to slap both of his shoulders in a way that showed that I was physically, but not sexually, comfortable with him.
All of this came to naught when my dad spotted us coming down the street and waited smiling by the door. ‘You must be Ralf’s new friend,’ he called out as we drew near, before I’d had time to start my practised routine.
Oz pushed ahead, gave him his hand and said, ‘Nice to meet you, Herr Dörsam.’
‘Call me Dietmar,’ my dad said, ‘please.’
‘Osman,’ Oz said.
‘Wonderful to meet you. Come in, come in. Pat’s going to be so happy you came.’
Mum had booked out the whole of Fellini’s for the evening. They had changed the lighting for the party, dimming the spotlights so that the candles glimmered in the sheen of the shiny brick walls, making unfamiliar shadows of the dusty baskets, pots and fishing nets hung from the ceiling.
‘Who’s this?’ Mum said, emerging from a gaggle of friends and colleagues. She was swaying, clutching a small g
lass of red wine that had already drawn a blue line on the inside edge of her lips.
I made a face of slight confusion, as if I didn’t know who she was talking about, but she didn’t look at me and my dad slapped Oz on the back and said, ‘This is Osman.’
‘Oh, how nice you came,’ said Mum, blushing with genuine pleasure and offering up her little hand.
Oz took it and said, ‘I’m so sorry to gatecrash, but Ralf insisted.’
‘He’s very persistent,’ she said, stumbling on her high heels and putting her hand on Dad’s arm to steady herself. He smiled and touched the hand. ‘How do you know Ralf again?’ she said.
‘He comes to my bookshop sometimes.’
‘You have a bookshop!’ said Mum. ‘How nice. I love reading. Ralf loves reading.’
‘I know,’ said Oz. He put his hands in his pockets. ‘It’s really just a newsagent, my dad’s.’
‘But you like to read!’ Mum said with too much enthusiasm.
‘Yes,’ Oz said. ‘I read a lot. And you’re a psychiatrist, is that right?’
‘Psychologist.’
Oz offered her the perfect expression: smiling, self-critical amusement at his own lack of knowledge. ‘I’m afraid I don’t really know the difference.’
‘Oh, no one does,’ Mum said, waving away the comment. ‘I’m more talking, the other one’s more pills.’
‘And you’re English?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Your German’s incredible.’
‘And yours too.’
‘He is German, Mum,’ I said.
Mum’s smile wavered and she offered a stuttering apology.
‘Don’t, please,’ he said.
I looked at my mother’s wounded expression and felt terrible.
‘My mother actually came across when she was pregnant, so technically I started off in Turkey.’
Mum laughed. ‘I thought Ralf said you were Greek.’
‘Greek! Mein Gott!’ Oz said with faux rage. ‘Ralf, how could you?’
An Honest Man Page 19