‘I brought it with me,’ I said.
She frowned, but I saw that she had a plastic cup on her desk, and said, ‘Look, it’s not even from here. Look at your cup – it’s plastic.’ I held up Oz’s glass as proof.
She waved me away, unconvinced, and I carefully tucked the glass into my rucksack.
*
Maike met me outside the clinic and we cycled to Grunewald. I was silent the whole way, thinking about Oz, thinking about his smallness in comparison to the powerful man I had met at Prinzenbad in his red swimming trunks.
We locked up our bikes at Grunewald station, walked through the woods and sat beneath swaying moor birches looking out over the quagmire at Barssee and Pechsee, two kettle-hole lakes surrounded by a rich peat bog. It was an unassuming strip of treeless land that was special to us, because it combined all of our passions.
Barsee and Pechsee are two perfectly round lakes that were formed when Berlin’s retreating glacier left behind balls of ice pressed into the ground that melted over centuries, long after the glacier had gone. I knew it was rare not to find them choked with sphagnum. For Maike, it was one of West Berlin’s few real wetlands, the landscape that would make her famous, speckled with the tiny unassuming plants she loved: white beak sedge and sea pink, elegant Kievan nettles. They in turn were home to Petra’s insects, and the swelling water had brought back the white-faced darter dragonfly and diving-bell spiders that lived in web-walled air bubbles under water. When Stefan was with us, his binoculars followed cormorants, black kites and Eurasian jays, which we call ‘acorn jays’ in Germany, because they hoard them like squirrels. And he’d tell us about the bitterlings, small silver fish that were once used to test if women were pregnant, their ovipositors shooting out when injected with hormone-rich urine.
Maike thought that she was pregnant once. If she had been, it was lost within a week in a crushingly painful period. I sometimes wondered about the child. She wouldn’t have had it, I supposed back then, though I didn’t feel sure about anything any more.
‘This Oz,’ Maike said. ‘Stefan said there was some kind of fight?’
The bruise around my eye had faded, leaving a bluish hue, like badly applied make-up.
‘The fight wasn’t with him,’ I said. ‘But he’s not very well. Mentally.’
‘It’s hard,’ she said, ‘loving people who are ill.’
I took her hand. She let me hold it for a few seconds, but then took it away, rubbing it as if it was sore. A breeze, which had a bite of autumn in it, tugged at the long strands of her brown hair and set the delicate leaves of the birches above us into shimmering, festive motion.
‘I really loved you,’ she said. ‘That’s why I couldn’t see you for a while.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I loved you too. I still love you.’
‘Ralf,’ she said.
‘It’s true.’
She tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘Like a sister?’
‘No, like a girlfriend. I’m not saying I didn’t … I don’t know, massively fuck up, but I loved you. I do love you.’
‘But now you love someone else more,’ she said.
It wasn’t that I didn’t think she’d be hurt by what I’d done, it was just that the inevitable revelation had seemed so distant, as if it belonged to another age.
‘Did Petra tell you?’
Her eyes were fixed on the toes of her trainers, where a line of grey-blue mud was gathered in the flap between the rubber sole and the nylon toe. On her wrist against her brown summer skin was a green and black friendship band that I’d never seen before. ‘She implied that … I’m assuming that Oz …’
Two dragonflies hovered iridescent blue in front of us, as if awaiting instruction, then swept off sideways.
‘You can love more than one person,’ I said.
All this truth, I thought, seems so inconsequential now that it’s finally been aired. But then she started crying. She cried into her closed fist and hit it against her forehead. She wouldn’t let me stop her, but she let me leave a hand on her back, as beetles popped from the mossy ground and her wailing echoed off the exposed trunks where the wood ended and the bog began.
Eventually she turned her head and looked at me, touching the back of her neck. A strip of red had formed from ear to ear across her eyes like a mask. ‘Be careful, Ralf.’
‘I think it’s too late for that.’
‘In life, I mean,’ she said. ‘Be careful.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Yeah, of course,’ and she started to cry again, her shoulders pulsating in desperate sobs.
Thirty-Three
Maike and I separated at Sophie-Charlotte-Platz and I cycled down Windscheidstraße unable to keep my eyes off the cars, thinking about Oz in his green Mercedes at the start of summer. When I wheeled my bike into the courtyard I found Tobias under the horse chestnut inspecting his shirt, his viola case lying abandoned on the ground by his foot. I had been so caught up in Oz that I’d barely thought about him, and realised now that the revelation of Oz’s lies meant that Tobias was going nowhere. He wasn’t a spy. He was never going to be arrested. We were going to live opposite Mum’s one-time lover until the day I moved out.
‘Oh, Ralf,’ he said mournfully, oblivious of the extent of the true role he had played in my short life. ‘A pigeon shat on me.’ When I didn’t respond, he added, ‘I don’t know whether to go back and change the shirt.’
The shirt was white linen and had only been caught by the dropping. The greyish mark was barely noticeable, but it was shit after all. I would’ve gone and changed it, but I still didn’t want to offer him any help, however banal.
He smiled. I tried to push the bike past him, but he said, ‘Ralf, is your mum OK?’
For a second the question numbed me, and I stared at the concrete floor at his feet, which was studded with split, spiked conker shells and their mahogany seeds.
‘Why did you do it? The affair.’
‘Ralf, I didn’t mean to …’ He trailed off, and when I looked up at him he was staring at the stain on his shirt, fingering it like a child.
‘What does that mean?’ I said. ‘We were your friends. At least, I thought we were.’
‘Of course,’ he said quietly but insistently. ‘But it’s over now. We should all just … It’s time we all forgot about it.’
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll never forget about it.’
‘Ralf,’ he began to say.
‘Excuse me, do you know if Frau von Hildendorf’s in? I’ve tried her bell, but … ’ We turned to find a blonde woman standing in the courtyard. She was older than Mum, but her curling hair was so perfectly set, her blouse and pleated skirt so white and so perfectly pressed, that she seemed ageless.
‘If she didn’t answer her bell, she’s probably not in. She always answers,’ I said, feeling Tobias’s presence beside me like a pain.
‘Oh,’ the woman said, disappointed. She took off her large orange sunglasses, revealing huge blue eyes.
‘You’re not …?’ Tobias said.
She smiled patiently; she was the sort of woman who was used to this question.
‘You’re not Eve Harris, are you?’
She nodded shyly.
He laughed in disbelief. ‘She always said you were coming.’
‘And now she’s not here,’ Eve said. She looked up to the top floor where the smallest flat was. ‘I always promised to come. But I used to know someone who lived here, a good friend who died recently, and I just couldn’t bear it. But now I’m here … It’s funny with places, isn’t it? They don’t quite hold their sentimental promise. You always think you’ll feel more.’
Her German was idiomatic, but there was something awkward about it, as if she hadn’t spoken it in a long time.
‘I always thought you were American,’ Tobias said, ‘because of your name.’
‘No, I was born Eva Hirsch,’ she said, ‘but I had to change it. German names weren’t terribly popular back then. And there
was Eva Braun of course.’
‘Of course,’ Tobias said.
She looked back up at the top-floor flat again. ‘Now I’m here, I wouldn’t mind taking a look at it.’
‘I’d take you up, if it wasn’t for my leg,’ Tobias said. He limped forward to expose his awkward gait.
‘My father had polio,’ she said, but corrected herself. ‘You’re probably too young for that.’
Tobias nodded. ‘I fell off a balcony when I was a child and broke my hip.’
‘How awful for you.’
I stared down at his leg. Poor Tobias. ‘I thought it was polio too,’ I said weakly, thinking of Oz’s red-haired agent, feeling the last vestiges of his lies crumbling away. I could never forgive Tobias for the affair, but it was awful imagining all the terrible things that Oz and I might have instigated with our witch-hunt.
‘Most people do,’ Tobias said. ‘But they’d wiped it out in East Germany by sixty-one. Mass vaccinations are one of the few advantages of communism. My older brother had it, and my mum, but they were fine.’
‘Daddy had a bad hand,’ said Eve. ‘But his brother had it and he was fine.’
I smiled as pleasantly as I could, being too young to add to these reminiscences. I locked up my bike and headed for the front building, hoping that the conversation with the actress would stop Tobias from following me. But he shouted, ‘Ralf!’
I looked back. His face looked pale and afraid. Eve Harris stood behind him, a peach-coloured clutch held between her fingers. I knew that he was stuck with her, too polite to desert her and come after me, so I turned and ran up the stairs.
*
The call came on Sunday evening during Tatort, which was a strange time for someone to be phoning. It was Duisburg Tatort, and I was the only person in the family who didn’t like Commissar Schimanski, so I pushed myself off the sofa when the phone started to ring, wandered to the kitchen and picked it up.
‘Dörsam,’ I said.
‘Ralf Dörsam?’ It was a woman’s voice.
‘Yes,’ I said, surprised that the caller was asking for me.
‘My name is Topal – Aslı Topal.’
The mention of a Turkish name frightened me.
‘OK,’ I said.
‘I’m calling about Osman Özemir. His father said I should call. That I might … ’ She sighed and said, ‘Listen – Osman and I are engaged. I’ve heard he’s a friend of yours and I thought … I don’t know, I thought maybe I could answer some questions you might have. About how he’s behaved. I heard you got caught up in things.’
I didn’t answer. What would I have said? Instead, I rested my forehead against the cold wall and closed my eyes.
‘I don’t know if he talked about me.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘he didn’t. But he’s not been very well.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s looking better though.’
I opened my eyes. ‘You’ve visited him?’
She paused. ‘Of course.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘He’s a good man—’
‘So everyone tells me.’
‘He is telling the truth when he talks about his feelings. But other things are a bit …’
‘Did he send you the photographs too?’ I said.
She hung up the phone.
I dialled the Park Klinik and, taking a chance on their ignorance about the gender of Turkish names, said, ‘Hi, it’s Aslı Topal. You couldn’t help, could you? It’s so dumb, but I’ve lost my wallet and I’m trying to retrace my steps. The last time I remember having it was at the clinic when I visited Osman Özemir, but I can’t for the life of me remember which day it was. You couldn’t just check what day it was I came in last week?’
I thought that the trick hadn’t worked. The pause was too long, but then I heard the sound of pages being turned. ‘We have Aslı Topal down every day. And the week before. Is that wrong?’
I crossed my arm over my eyes to stop my tears and said, ‘No, that’s right. I thought I’d missed a day. Well, thanks.’
I cried into a dishcloth for as long as it took to calm down. Then I washed my face in the sink and went back to the living room.
‘Everything all right?’ my father said, reaching out for my hand, but luckily not turning his eyes from the television to see my face streaked red. I took his and made a vague noise of agreement – ‘Mm.’ I waited a second so that he didn’t think I was pulling away, then sat on the floor and watched the rest of the drama from the rug.
*
The next day, instead of cycling to the clinic, I cycled to Stefan’s. When he answered the door I was shaking as if I were cold. ‘It’s over, I think.’
Stefan held the door open for me to come in.
‘It’s all fucked up,’ I said. ‘And now you’re all going, and I’ve got nothing.’
Stefan’s big brown eyes looked sad, but not surprised. ‘That’s pretty dramatic, Ralfi.’
‘I’ve fucked up my life and everyone else’s.’
‘Ralf, you’re eighteen. You haven’t fucked up your life. You haven’t had a life.’
I heard male laughter coming from the kitchen. ‘A fresh catch,’ Stefan said, and steered me towards his bedroom.
*
We lay side by side on Stefan’s floor staring up at a ceiling filled with papier-mâché insects that we had crafted in Beate’s studio when we were twelve. That summer, goaded on by Beate, we became wildly excited by the project, creating plump bees, leggy grasshoppers, cruel-looking wasps, ungainly spiders and daddy longlegs, fleas, flies, mosquitoes and midges. Their brightly painted tissue skins over coat-hanger frames gave them a rough angular charm, but six years gathering dust and the meagre glow of Stefan’s nightlight made them look like the lumpen residents of an amateur haunted house.
‘They’re pretty creepy.’
‘The insects?’ said Stefan.
I nodded.
‘I don’t even notice them any more. If the window’s open and Mum goes out into the courtyard they knock about as if they’re alive, and cover everything in dust.’
‘That’s horrible,’ I said.
The largest insect was the flea, its great springing legs, made from tights stuffed with balled newspaper, hanging down below it.
‘What time is it?’
Stefan turned to the boxy Braun alarm clock on his bedside table. ‘Five,’ he said. It was visiting time.
‘Then I’ve abandoned him,’ I said, closing my eyes and picturing Oz alone on the bench in his dressing gown.
‘I’m sorry, Ralf. What a shitty summer.’
‘It wasn’t shit,’ I said.
We heard the high whine of a reversing car out on the street.
‘Look,’ Stefan said. ‘I’m meeting up with Petra and Maike tomorrow night. We’re going to have a barbecue at Schlachtensee. Come along.’
‘Why didn’t anyone invite me?’
‘I didn’t know how the rapprochement with Maike was going to go. And, anyway, I’m inviting you now.’
‘She didn’t say anything to me about it when I saw her. I think she still hates me.’
‘She doesn’t hate you. And she’s leaving for university next week, me and Petra too. It’ll be the last time we’re all together until Christmas.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. I pushed myself up on one elbow. ‘Do you think I’m being an arsehole not visiting Oz?’
‘No,’ Stefan said.
‘I think I am,’ I said, my eyes stinging. ‘I think I’m an arsehole.’
‘I think maybe we’re all arseholes.’
‘Not you. Not Maike and Petra.’
‘Petra? Are you kidding me? And Maike got fingered on a boat in Sweden while you were dating, so she’s as big a dick as anyone.’
‘Does everyone know about that?’ I said.
‘Only because Petra told me.’
‘Fuck,’ I said.
He sat up. ‘Do you want to get wasted on schnapps?’
I nodded.
&n
bsp; ‘Come on then,’ he said, slapping my cheek. ‘We’ve only got pear and it’s surprisingly disgusting.’
Thirty-Four
I sat at my desk. I’d written to Durham to ask if I could start university that academic year after all, but a few weeks later than everyone else. In anticipation of a yes I’d started reading a few texts mentioned on the geology page in the prospectus. I was pleased to have work to do, but my head had found its way to my folded arms and I was staring at Oz’s lip mark on the glass I’d stolen from the clinic, filled with brushes and pens, so that no one would clear it away and wash off the last trace I had of him.
‘It’s Dörsam, sir,’ Dad said, pretending to be a butler, a running joke whenever he came into our rooms to gather up discarded clothes from the floor for the washing. ‘May I offer you a coffee, sir?’
‘No, Dörsam,’ I said smiling, playing along. ‘No coffee today.’
He mimed tipping his hat to me, one arm filled with pants and socks and the chequered polyester shirt I had to wear at the beer garden. He looked unusually exhausted and I was worried he’d found out about Mum and Tobias. ‘You all right?’ I said. ‘You look tired.’
‘Oh, fine,’ he said. ‘Bit of back ache. And I ended up watching Tagesthemen, so was in bed late. If I don’t get my eight hours … ’ He yawned.
‘Anything exciting?’
‘Protests in Leipzig. I don’t think it’ll really lead to anything.’ He seemed sad, his eyes red-rimmed, but then they landed on Oz’s glass and he smiled. ‘Where did you dig that out from?’
I shrugged; I didn’t want to say.
He laughed to himself.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Well, it’s an apple-wine glass. From Hessen.’
‘How d’you know?’ I said.
‘The diamonds. Makes me feel all nostalgic. Splash of sweet or sour?’
‘What?’
‘That’s what they ask you in Frankfurt apple-wine pubs. You get your Bembel jug of apple wine with either lemonade or fizzy water – “splash of sweet or sour”. And it comes in those glasses with the diamonds on. It probably found its way out of the back of the cupboard or the cellar. Your Opa had hundreds of them.’ He looked proud.
An Honest Man Page 25