An Honest Man

by Ben Fergusson

  She shook her head. ‘No, I just had to get away.’

  ‘You hadn’t planned it at all?’

  ‘I’d thought often about escaping again. The idea of swimming only came to me when I was on holiday in Stralsund for a few days. Before I went, I didn’t go near the water, because I was terrified that I would try and go, that I wouldn’t be able to resist it. Then one summer evening when the beaches were empty I just got in the water and swam.’

  ‘In the dark?’ Martin said.

  ‘Not when I set off.’

  ‘It must have been terrifying,’ I said.

  She fingered the stem of her prosecco glass. ‘Yes. But I wasn’t sure whether the terror was the swim or knowing that I was leaving. It was like suicide, the hopelessness of it. I mean, it’s what I imagine suicide would be like.’

  We had all stopped eating.

  ‘It must have got dark, though,’ Martin said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Beate, ‘though by then I was far out enough to see the lights at Gedser. But the current changes the further out you go, and I got disoriented. I was mostly terrified that I was going to climb out onto the beach and hear surprised East German voices; that I was just going to swim in a circle.’

  ‘Weren’t you exhausted?’ I said.

  ‘I’m a very good swimmer, but … Yes. I tried to take breaks by floating on my back, as best I could. The sea’s not very salty there, so it’s hard to stay afloat. Then I would just keep on swimming. I’ve never felt more exhausted or more alone. And then,’ she said, frowning, ‘I was overcome with this wonderful peace. I was on my back, listening to the sea, black and vast all around me. It was calm and bobbing me up and down and all I could see were stars. Stars like I’d never seen before, a carpet of them, like a meadow of flowers, filling my vision. Everywhere stars and water. And I thought, if I just give in to it I’ll dematerialise, I’ll just turn into nothing and everything and I’ll be free.’

  Her lips were parted and she looked lost in thought.

  ‘Then what happened?’ said Martin.

  ‘Then I slipped under the water and choked, and of course came up coughing and panicking.’

  We chuckled.

  ‘I kept swimming and just as dawn was coming and I thought I really was about to sink, a Danish fishing boat spotted me and hauled me out of the water.’

  ‘What an incredible story,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe I’ve never heard it.’

  Mum and Stefan sitting either side of her looked on proudly; proud too that they knew all about it when others didn’t.

  The buzzer went and we all looked at the door. Martin ran and picked up the receiver of the intercom, but came back disappointed.

  ‘Who was it?’ Mum said.

  ‘No one there,’ he said. He turned back to Beate. ‘You must’ve been so relieved,’ he said. ‘To make it, I mean.’

  Beate smiled. ‘I just sat there wrapped in a blanket that stank of fish, listening to them chatting in a language I didn’t understand, and watched the sun rise over the Baltic Sea. Then I cried and it was like … ’ she shook her head. ‘It was like vomiting. I’ve never cried like that in my life. I thought I was going to die.’

  ‘But you didn’t,’ Mum said, touching her hand.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  It was Stefan who heard the clicking.

  My brother ran back to the door and opened it. ‘Hello?’ he said.

  From the kitchen we could see Martin, but not who was waiting in the stairwell.

  ‘Light’s here,’ Martin said. He reached out and turned it on.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘Come in. Ralf’s here.’

  Through the door came Oz, wide-eyed and stooped, with a length of wire in his hand. His hair was greasy and his skin grey.

  I pushed my chair back. ‘Oz,’ I said, standing, elated that he was alive, but terrified about the way he looked.

  ‘Trying to pick the lock?’ said my brother, laughing.

  Oz threw the wire on the floor. ‘Of course not,’ he said, his voice hoarse. He smiled and my brother laughed. ‘It’s a joke,’ Oz said. ‘Click, click, click.’

  ‘Oz,’ said my mother, standing too. ‘How lovely. Come in. We’re eating. But join us. Will you eat something?’

  ‘Oh, it’s the friend,’ said Beate. ‘Come in, come in. Thank God you arrived. We’d just run out of good stories.’

  Oz crossed the room to me, carefully watching his feet as he went as if the floor was made of ice. He looked so helpless as he reached out and gripped my arm. ‘I’ll explain it all later. For now, let’s just be normal, like everyone else,’ he said, lowering his voice, but still speaking loud enough that everyone could hear him.

  Mum brought him a stool and a plate and Martin got him a knife and fork.

  ‘Can I have something to drink?’ Oz said, adjusting the cutlery with his fingertips so that it was lined up perfectly. His jaw was working, as if he was grinding his teeth. Everyone was watching us. Stefan whispered something to Beate and Oz shot him a glance.

  ‘Of course,’ my dad said. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘What are you all drinking?’ he said, eyeing the glasses on the table.

  ‘We’re on prosecco, but we’ve got some red.’

  ‘Or Fanta,’ said Mum.

  ‘I want whatever’s open,’ Oz said. ‘I want it from the bottle you’re all drinking from.’

  ‘OK,’ Dad said.

  ‘This one here,’ Oz said, leaning over and taking the open prosecco bottle in the middle of the table. He clutched it to his chest protectively like a child with a doll, only releasing it when Dad placed a glass in front of him. He sniffed the glass and eyed my father, then poured the prosecco into it until it reached the rim.

  ‘I’ll keep the bottle here,’ he said, carefully placing it in front of his plate.

  ‘You know,’ Dad said, ‘my father – Ralf and Martin’s grandad – did the same. He once drank a bottle of champagne to himself, and—’

  Oz laughed loudly. My dad stopped, alarmed. ‘You know, your grandad stories are a joke,’ Oz said, and smiled at me. ‘Ralf said it was a joke. Everyone just laughs about it.’

  Ashen-faced, my dad sat down, trying to maintain his smile. Stefan held up the large spoon in the serving dish, offering to serve. Oz nodded his assent, keeping track of the spoon as it went to the dish, to his plate and back again.

  ‘Keep talking,’ he said to the table. ‘Don’t mind me.’

  There was a brief silence as everyone around the table tried to think of something to say.

  ‘Finished your university packing, Stefan?’ my dad managed.

  ‘Not even started,’ said Stefan.

  Oz forked a large lump of potato and lentils into his mouth, watching my father and Stefan back and forth like a tennis enthusiast following a match. He turned to me as he chewed, mashed potato on his chin, and began smiling. He swallowed and touched my face, stroking my cheek with his thumb. ‘This food is terrible,’ he said, and giggled. I took his hand from my face and put it into his lap. ‘What the fuck is this?’

  ‘It’s like a bake,’ I said, ‘but with lentils.’

  ‘They’re like lead shot,’ he said, giggling huskily, like Muttley.

  I stared down at the table.

  ‘There’s pudding,’ said my mum officiously.

  Oz turned to me and said, ‘We need to get out of here. They’re drugging me.’ His breath smelt sour, of old booze and cigarettes.

  ‘OK,’ I whispered. ‘Do you want to lie down first?’

  ‘Very much so,’ he said carefully. ‘But I have to stay awake. And you’ll need to come and watch the door. One of these ones may well be involved,’ he said, gesturing to the table. ‘But we know what they’re doing now, so they can’t hurt us any more.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, standing. ‘Let’s go and lie down then.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, standing up and following me. ‘I’m sorry about the food,’ he said to my mother. ‘It turned out horr
ible.’

  I didn’t look at the faces of my family as I guided Oz through the hall and into my bedroom.

  I went to turn the light on, but he stopped my hand and said, ‘No. They’re outside too. This is just a trick. We’re going to make your parents believe we’re asleep and then we’re going to leave in the night.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Will you lie down for a bit though.’

  ‘Only if you lie with me,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘of course.’

  He walked to the bed, but stumbled, falling to his knees. ‘They gave me these drugs. It’s like being very drunk. But I still know what’s happening. I know it seems bad, but it’s the drugs. Have they told you things about me? Don’t believe them. They’ll tell you lies to try and make you hate me.’

  ‘I’m never going to hate you, Oz,’ I said, helping him up. ‘Are you OK?’ I said, getting him onto the bed. ‘Your knee, I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, but he put his hand to it as if it hurt. ‘Lie with me.’

  I lay behind him, spooned up against him. His body relaxed. I kissed his neck and said, ‘It’s going to be OK. Can we try and sleep?’

  ‘They kept me awake for days,’ he said. ‘It makes you crazy. They drugged me.’

  ‘But you’re here now,’ I said, stroking the back of his hand. ‘Now you can sleep. I’ll stay awake and look after you.’

  ‘You’re the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me,’ he said. ‘Do you know that?’

  ‘That’s nice to hear,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll think it’s the drugs and the not sleeping, but that isn’t it. Life was so grey before you, Ralf. I was lonely. You’re a remarkable person. Kind, loyal, beautiful. You’re so beautiful, Ralf. I knew the moment you talked to me at Prinzenbad. I thought, that’s it Oz, you’re lost. That’s you done now. You know what, it actually hurts when I’m not with you, physically. Sometimes I can’t bear it.’

  I squeezed him. ‘But you’re with me now.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said drowsily. ‘I’m with you now.’ He jerked and said, ‘Can I see your eye? Is it OK again? I wanted to kill my brother, but … ’ His voice became weak again. His body relaxed and tensed. He muttered my name.

  When he eventually began to snore lightly, I got off the bed and went out into the hallway, shutting the door gently behind me. My mum was waiting for me, everyone else was standing at the kitchen door. There were two other men in the hall, young men wearing brown trousers and white shirts.

  ‘I called the Park Klinik,’ Mum said.

  I looked at the men. They seemed friendly. One of them smiled at me.

  ‘What will they do?’ I said.

  ‘It’s a nice clinic. You’ll be able to visit him.’

  ‘They won’t hurt him?’

  ‘We won’t hurt him,’ one of the men said. ‘We’ll just talk to him.’

  ‘What if he won’t go with you?’

  ‘That’s rare,’ the smiling man said. ‘But we can deal with that. We won’t hurt him.’

  ‘Can I come with him?’ I said. ‘To the clinic.’

  ‘You can meet us there if you want, but only family will be able to visit him until he’s been assessed.’

  ‘That won’t take long,’ said my mum. ‘Then we’ll go and visit.’

  ‘Ralf!’ Oz called, awake. ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Yes,’ I shouted, ‘I’m here. I’m coming. Just a moment.’

  My mum held out her arms for me. ‘They won’t hurt him. He’ll be happier. You’ll see. They’ll get him back on his medication and he can get some rest.’

  She kissed the side of my head, as the men went into my room and started to talk gently to Oz, who kept calling my name, frightened because I wasn’t there.

  Thirty

  The next morning, I went down to our section of the cellar and retrieved the ladder. I’d planned to go and buy paint, but found four half-used tins of white paint stacked in front of the caretaker’s room. Upstairs, I bent the tip of a butter knife prising the speckled lids open to find that half the paint had separated into opaque white circles sunk into amber grease. I stirred it all vigorously with the knife, which I threw into the bin in the bathroom when I couldn’t wash off the paint, glued to it like sticky double cream.

  I stripped all of the posters and pictures off the walls, took down the lampshade and peeled the stickers off my wardrobe mirrors. Kneeling on a mosaic of ripped magazines, torn caves and stalagmites, ragged volcanoes and Stromboli sprays, halved bullet ants, goliath frogs and titan beetles, I used Mum’s nail-varnish remover and a fifty-pfennig piece to scrape the last of the papery remains off the mirror. I pulled my mattress out of the room, along with my boxes and books and all of my furniture, except the bed frame and wardrobe. Then I painted everything white.

  I got paint on my jeans, on my face and hair, on the glass of the wardrobe. I dug out one of my watercolour brushes and painted a wild white zigzag border to cover the mark on the glass, then did the same on the glass of the window.

  ‘Jesus,’ Martin shouted from the door. ‘The flat fucking stinks, Ralf. What the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘What’s it look like I’m doing?’

  ‘Moving out?’

  I gave him the finger.

  He peered about the room and said, ‘You know that half of this is gloss and the other half’s emulsion.’

  Holding the paintbrush, I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my wrist and looked at the shining paint covering two walls. I’d thought that the paint near the window was just drying slower, but of course that made no sense. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘That’s the point.’

  ‘Mum’s visiting a client in hospital,’ he said. ‘She’ll be back in the flat at two.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So she’ll probably be pissed off about this.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Ralf, darling,’ he said, mimicking her voice, ‘all your lovely old things are gone. You’re still my baby. Oh, but you made that lamp yourself, my darling Ralf.’

  I laughed despite myself. ‘It’s only paint,’ I said.

  ‘Looks like a sanatorium.’ His eyes widened. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Ralf, I didn’t mean … ’

  ‘No, I know,’ I said.

  He forced a tight-lipped smile and left the room.

  The wall I’d painted in emulsion was dry enough in a couple of hours for me to put up Buckland’s large geological cross-section that Oz had given me. I didn’t want anything else on my walls.

  By the time my mother came home, I had packed away my old posters and left them in an old apple box in the cellar, not quite able to throw them away. I was lying on my mattress on the floor, waiting for the paint on the furniture to dry, reading the end of Homo Faber. Mum stood at the door, with her huge blue leather handbag still slung over her shoulder and a postcard in her hand. She looked about the room open-mouthed like someone who’d returned home to discover the ceiling had fallen in.

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ she said.

  ‘I just repainted,’ I said nonchalantly.

  ‘I can see that,’ she said. ‘You know you’ve mixed up gloss and emulsion?’

  ‘That’s the point,’ I said.

  My mother nodded, unconvinced. ‘Are you just going to have the bare bulb like that? It’s a bit … oppressive.’

  I looked up at it hanging prison-like above me. I hadn’t really thought about the bulb.

  ‘And what about the curtains?’ Mum said.

  I’d considered painting those, like the curtains at the squat that Joachim had taken us to, but had lost my nerve after the emulsion–gloss mix-up.

  ‘I was going to make new ones,’ I lied.

  ‘Right,’ Mum said.

  She walked over to the mattress and squatted down beside me, her knees clicking beneath her black tights. I stared at a ladder rising up from the rim of her electric-blue high heels.

  ‘Look,’ Mum said, ‘I’ve got to run some errands at KaDeWe. T
hen I’m going to watch When Harry Met Sally with Beate at the Zoo Palast. Why don’t you come along?’ She stroked my hair, tucking a strand behind my ear. ‘A little respite?’

  ‘I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘A bit of relief.’

  ‘No, the film.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a comedy. Meg Ryan.’

  I closed my eyes and turned my face to the mattress, saying in a muffled voice, ‘Is it the one where she has an orgasm in a restaurant?’

  ‘Beate said it’s very good.’

  ‘Why would I want to go and sit in a cinema with you watching a film about a woman coming?’

  ‘It’s not a film about a woman coming. It’s a funny American film.’

  ‘I told you, I hate dubbed films.’

  ‘It’s original. With subtitles. You can ignore them.’

  ‘It’s boiling. Why would we go to the cinema?’

  ‘Beate’s asking Stefan too. Us four used to love going to the cinema together.’ When I didn’t answer, she added, ‘What are you going to do instead? You can’t sit in here all day; you’ll get sick with all these fumes. And that gloss won’t dry for twenty-four hours.’

  I didn’t answer. I pushed my face into the mattress and covered my head with my arms.

  ‘I like the map,’ she said.

  ‘It’s from Oz,’ I said, because I wanted to hear his name.

  ‘How good he was to you,’ Mum said.

  Something hot covered my arms and my face. The mattress shook beneath me and I realised that I was crying. I was appalled, but I couldn’t stop it, and she stroked my hair as I wailed into the pinging springs.

  Thirty-One

  I cycled past the graveyard on Monumentenstraße where the Brothers Grimm are buried then over the bridge between Schöneberg and Kreuzberg. I looked up towards Potsdamer Platz as I crossed, over the ruined railway that used to lead up to Anhalter Bahnhof, but now led to its ruins and, beyond that, the Wall. Bathed in pink light, it was an insignificant strip between pastel-coloured foliage, the old train tracks a beautiful burgundy in the dusk.

  I turned back to the road that led to the hill of Viktoria Park, which I rounded, hearing the blustery fountain and screams of playing children and the thick beats of hi-fis accompanying break dancers. I cycled on to Arndtstraße, where Beate and Stefan lived in a rundown street by the park, the high buildings covered in peeling brown plaster and the balconies filled with green potted plants and drying clothes.