Crazy (9 page)

Chapter 11

I look out of the window again. The dark is lifting. The harsh lights of Rosenheim penetrate the glass. We’re almost there. A stray wind is gusting along the road, blowing leaves and branches into the traffic lanes. The trucks and tractor-trailors often hit their brakes. There must be a pop concert somewhere. Red laser beams are circling above the grimy town, meeting in the middle and then circling onward, crisscrossing one another. This has to be the time I find myself thinking about math. And Falkenstein, my teacher. He says he doesn’t see much hope for my future. I can just forget it. No need for extra tutoring. I’m too dumb. Maybe he’s right. Recently he’s been asking me a lot of questions in class. Because he knows I don’t understand any of it. It satisfies him somehow. It’s become real psychological warfare. But that’s what all of school’s like. It has nothing to do with boarding school.
School
is pure psychological warfare. It’s supposed to be tough. For a sixteen-year-old it’s pretty hard. You’re still quite young and you have the shit taken out of you accordingly by some guy who calls himself a teacher. Bavaria’s particularly bad. The only ones who count here are little programmed computer kids who stuff their heads from morning to night for school. They get the encouragement. The rest are just dropped.
Knowledge is not wisdom
carries no weight here. They’re all just jerk-offs like Falkenstein. On a perfectly normal day for being tested in class, he orders us to close our books. With eyes like knives he looks for a victim. By this point I’ve already had enough. He’s threatening to call on someone to answer. At the blackboard. In front of everybody. Heaven help anyone who can’t. Slowly he gets up from his chair. My forehead’s sweating. I don’t want to be called on to answer. Why doesn’t he say right away whose turn it is? Or why doesn’t he just give me a 6 right away? It would be simpler. Why does he have to torture me like this? I hate having to calculate in front of the whole class. I always make a fool of myself. I’m shaking with nerves. Falkenstein’s fussy fingers tap their way across Franzen’s desk. Franzi is as nervous as I am. This stuff is really difficult. And Falkenstein knows how to set the meanest exercises.

“So, Franzi?” he asks. “Are you well prepared?”

Franzi leans back and stretches his arms in front of him.

“Of course,” he says very quietly.
Of course
is good. If he’d said no, he’d have had it. If he’d said yes, it would probably have been as bad.
Of course
makes the danger pass by.

Falkenstein walks on. He toys with Melanie’s pen holder. Every kid in the class wants to shove the burden of answering test questions onto someone else. Once the name of the sacrificial victim has been spoken, everyone else can feel more or less spared. A sigh of relief goes the rounds, which makes it doubly hard for the sacrificial victim. All part of the plan, I’d say. Falkenstein looks up. I tremble. Don’t know one single thing anymore. The few scraps I’ve stored up from class are blown away by the tension. I’m ready to shit in my pants. My stomach is swelling up. My whole body has goosebumps. I’m going to be next. That’s what has to be. In a deep, reverberating voice, Falkenstein says, “Lebert! Show us what I’ve spent all this time talking about.” He always says it that way. I hate the way he says
Lebert.
As if he wants to shoot me. As if he’s hauling me to the gallows. Which is what he’s doing. I stand up in a sort of trance. Sweating. Empty. My mind whirls around, a blank. Only thing at its center is the piece of chalk that’s been shoved into my hand. The rest of the class exhales audibly. I swallow, playing with the chalk. It feels rough. Dry. I let it move against my palm. The color comes off. My fingers are already all white. I look at the blackboard. I do not like this blackboard. You’re supposed to remember everything that gets written on it. Forever. You’re not allowed to forget it. And everything you write on the blackboard during a test must have been written on it at least once before. Falkenstein states a couple of theorems. I write them out. Listen to the scratchy noise the chalk makes. Now I have to work them through. Why am I standing here at all? I have no idea. I draw a figure. Two. A circle. Falkenstein’s not happy. He sends me back to my seat. As I walk past the rest of the class, they look up at me and pull faces. A couple of them laugh. I glance back at my drawing on the blackboard. It looks terrible, like something out of fifth grade. I’m ashamed. Unfortunately, I can’t do better. The physiotherapist, the one I see all the time, says it’s because of my disability. I lack some logical function, or whatever; it’s not just a physical thing. Hence my 6 in math. But it can’t be that simple. I mean, everyone should be able to hack it in math, even a deadbeat like me. I’m frustrated. I pull a broken pencil out of my pencil case. It has BUILD YOUR OWN FUTURE stamped on it. Don’t make me laugh! I haven’t even started to build the scaffolding. So okay. I’m sixteen. Life is still ahead of me. Or that’s what they say. Falkenstein arrives after class. “You can forget the school-leaving certificate,” he says. “The way I see it, we should be happy if the Cultural Ministry doesn’t introduce an eight just for you.” He grins a great, broad grin, the corners of his mouth pulled wide almost to his ears. I’d love to smash him right in the grin. Just to see what the Cultural Ministry could really invent for me. Falkenstein leaves. I leave, too. We have a break now.

School days aren’t that easy.

We’re driving into Rosenheim. Traffic is heavy. Lines of cars and people everywhere. I turn to Janosch. Thoughts of our last day of tests melt away at the sight of his face. He’s grinning.

“Do you think they’re looking for us already?”

“I expect so,” says Janosch. “They’ve probably just notified our parents.”

“Do you think your parents are mad?”

“My parents are always mad at me,” says Janosch. “But I think this isn’t exactly anarchy. I already told my father one time that if I ever disappeared, I’d probably be with my friends.”

“And how did he react?”

“He beat the shit out of me,” says Janosch.

“He beat you? And you’re still running away? I would never have believed it.”

“You’d better believe it. Otherwise you won’t get anywhere in life. What’s that poem? ‘As long as you escape both death and birth / You are a mournful ghost on a dark earth.’ ”

“Since when have you been interested in poetry?” I ask.

“I’m not. My brother once said it was good for picking up girls.”

“You’ve got a brother? How old is he?”

“Twenty,” says Janosch. “He lives in the States— he emigrated, or whatever. Anyhow, I like him a lot.”

“Did it work?”

“Did what work?”

“The stuff with the poetry and the women?”

“Oh, that—no,” says Janosch. “The girl I recited the lines to said poetry didn’t do a thing for her. So unfortunately things got no farther than a milk-shake.”

I look out the window again. The main station, our last stop, is already visible in the distance. What will my parents say to all this? My mother must have had a panic attack. Maybe she’s even driven to Neuseelen to look for me. She always gets anxious very quickly. Particularly when it’s about me. She wants to protect me, never leave me on my own. I’m too vulnerable for that, in her view. If it was up to her, I’d never be in boarding school; she prefers me to be at home. With her. Where nothing terrible can happen to me. I feel so bad for her. She’s probably sitting in the car right now. My father certainly has no idea about what’s going on. How could he? He’s living in a hotel. Recovering. Leaving is always easy, I think. But being left somehow isn’t. I should be mad at him. My sister said something about there being another woman. A twenty-year-old. With big tits and long legs. If I ever meet her, I’ll smack her really personally right in the mouth. I’m not too soft for that. You keep reading about that stuff in the tabloids:

Female Youth Kindles the Fires of Old Age
How Aging Husbands Regain Their Joie de Vivre

Usually there’s a picture of some old granddad with a titty monster. But it can’t be true. It doesn’t happen in real life—just in these supermarket rags. And certainly not to me. To us. To my family. I don’t want to lose them. I belong to them. What would I be without them? A piece of something? A part? Does everyone have to lose their family in order to become a person? I think I’m overthinking this. I should be making sure that I just keep going. Right now I’m somewhere in Rosenheim. The bus stops. The jolt pushes me down in my seat. I stand up. My left leg is hurting. Janosch can tell by my eyes. It’s okay if I hold on to him for support, and we climb down out of the bus together. Sambraus, Florian, and the others are waiting on the sidewalk. There’s a lot of activity, thousands of people walking past. They look happy. So do Florian, the two Felixes, Troy, and Sambraus. Their faces are twitching with excitement.

“So this is it,” says Fat Felix. “Off to the big city. At last the Magnificently Maddest Six of the Century are ready. Time to start for Munich.”

“Do you think they’ve sent the police after us?” asks Janosch. His eyes are cool. He betrays no anxiety, puts an arm around me, and looks at me, almost as if he knows what I’ve been thinking.

“I don’t believe it,” says Fat Felix. “Why would they send police here of all places? They’re looking for us in Neuseelen. We’ll make the train with no problem at all. And then we’re almost halfway home. Sambraus will get seven tickets at the ticket office out front. Nobody will pay any attention. We’ll wait on the platform—I think it’s number two. So we’ll meet there in exactly ten minutes. Don’t talk to any officials! You never know.”

With these words Fat Felix and the others race off into the station, the door slamming behind them with a ringing echo. It’s made of glass. The four of them go running through the entrance hall, followed by Sambraus, who walks wearily straight to the ticket booth. I look over at Janosch. He looks at my left leg.

“The usual?” he asks.

“The usual.”

“You’re not allowed to give up, Benni!” he says. “A man’s not allowed to give up. He can be destroyed, but he’s not allowed to give up.”

“Not even if it’s sometimes easier to give up?” I ask.

“Not even,” says Janosch firmly.

“But I want to give up,” I tell him. “It’s all getting too complicated. Too big. And I don’t know why. I don’t see the point of it, Janosch, or any end to it. I keep thinking about my parents. And my father’s girlfriend. And my left leg hurts like hell. A lame leg doesn’t go very well with the maddest journey of the century. A lame leg goes well with sleeping a lot and resting. I’m tired, Janosch, really tired.”

“Benjamin Lebert—you’re a hero,” says Janosch in a deep voice. There’s a glint in his eyes. He slowly pulls me a step farther.

“A hero? Cripples are heroes?”

“Not cripples—
you.
”

“Why?”

“Because life speaks through you.”

“Through me?”

“Through you.”

“What speaks through me is all crap.”

“No—it’s exciting!” Janosch says exultantly, full of delight. “Life’s exciting—there’s always something new.”

“Is that what we want?”

“Of course it’s what we want,” Janosch shouts. “Otherwise it would be boring. We must always be searching for—what did Felix call it?—the thread. That’s it, the thread. You have to keep searching for the thread. Youth is nothing but one long thread hunt. Come on, Benni! Let’s find it! With luck it’ll be on the train to Munich.”

And with that he pushes me into the train station.

Chapter 12

Inside there’s a big hall, with ticket booths and information desks in the middle. Big blue letters hang above them, spelling out directions. A despairing voice echoes from the loudspeaker, “Number twenty-seven-D, please come to booth A.” Janosch looks up and laughs. I wonder who poor number 27-D is. The walls are covered in advertising posters. Mostly ads for daily newspapers. I look for my uncle’s and find it all the way over to the right, close to the ceiling. The type glows down at us. You can see the tracks in the distance. Our train leaves from platform 2. It’s already posted:

1C 134 to Karlsruhe. Intermediate stops at
Munich, Pasing, Stuttgart. Estimated time
of departure: 8:45 P.M.

I look up at the clock. It’s 8:32. There’s still time. Janosch runs to one of the tobacconists that line the hall. More of a tobacco kiosk, really. A short, pale man peers out through an open window, above which hangs a neon sign, shaped like a cigarette, that says MONSIEUR DE TABAC.

“What d’you want?” I ask Janosch as he heads for the little window.

“Two cigars.”

“Two cigars? What for?”

“For us,” says Janosch. “To smoke.”

“Us? Why?”

“Because we’re men. And men smoke cigars,” he replies. “Didn’t you ever see
Independence Day
?”

“Sure. But those guys saved the world from extraterrestrials. We’re not there yet.”

“No, we’re not there yet,” says Janosch, “but we’ve done something sort of the same.”

“Just what, may I ask?”

“We broke out of school, which was just as hard for us as saving the world from extraterrestrials. You have to see things in their proper perspective.”

“You really think so?”

“Sure,” says Janosch. “Besides, we’ve earned a cigar.
Basta.
”

So saying, he steps up to the short pale man in the window.

“Guys! Can anyone tell me why I let myself be schlepped along?” asks Fat Felix as we’re standing on the platform. It’s 8:42. The train will be here any minute.

“Maybe because we’re friends,” is Janosch’s explanation.

“Friends?” croaks Fat Felix. “So what’s friendship?”

Janosch thinks. “Friendship is something inside you,” he says finally. “You can’t see it, but it’s there all the same.”

“Yes, it’s there all the same,” interjects Skinny Felix. “Just the way a day is.”

“A day?” asks Fat Felix. “If friendship is supposed to be like a day, what the hell does that make the sun?”

“Us, of course,” says Skinny Felix. “We’re the sun.”

“We’re the sun?” asks Janosch. “So what revolves around us?”

“Friendship,” says Skinny Felix. “At least that’s my view.”

“And who casts the light?” asks Janosch. “Am I the one who casts the light?”

“We all cast the light,” says Skinny Felix. “We all cast our light into our friendship.”

“I don’t get it,” says Florian a.k.a. Girl. “So does anyone see our light?”

“We see it,” says Glob, “and that’s enough.”

“Nobody else?” asks Florian.

“Depends on how big the friendship is,” says Skinny Felix. “Sometimes other people see it too. But we’re the ones who have to see it first. Because a thing has to be lit up before you can see it. That’s what this is about: friendship is something like lighting things up.”

“All this stuff about lighting things and not lighting things is a crock of shit,” says Janosch. “Our friendship is crazy, that’s all. And besides, it’s what brought us here.”

“Just friendship?” asks Florian.

“Well, maybe Glob’s roast pork too,” says Janosch. “But apart from that it was our friendship—I mean, it has to have been something. Does anyone feel like swearing blood brotherhood? I’ve got some sort of thumbtack in my pants pocket. That would do.”

“I don’t know,” says Fat Felix. “We’re not doing Robin Hood here. Besides, we’ve done enough insane things for one evening already. Let’s lay off.”

“You can never do enough insane things,” says Janosch. “You have to drink life.”

“Drink it?” asks Florian a.k.a. Girl. “Does that mean life’s a river?”

“Something like that,” says Skinny Felix.

“Are you guys out of your skulls?” asks Janosch. “We’re the sun? Life’s a river? Friendship revolves around us? Enough already! Life is life. A river is a river. And if I didn’t know better, I’d say friendship is just friendship. Why do we keep trying to explain all that in pictures? Why do we always have to understand everything? Does God even want us to understand things? I think God really just wants us to get on and live.”

“Have you suddenly got religion?” Fat Felix turns to Janosch.

“Sort of, yes,” says Janosch. “It’s Lebert’s fault. All that yammering on about life. And yes, I’d absolutely believe in God before I believed that life is a river. Life is an attempt.”

“And what are we attempting?” asks Florian.

“We’re attempting to attempt everything,” says Janosch. “That’s the attempt. So now let’s attempt to become blood brothers. Girl, you’re first!”

Florian steps forward, looking doubtful. He sticks out a finger.

“Do any of you have AIDS?” he asks.

“Me, of course,” says Fat Felix. “Didn’t you know?”

“Cut the crap,” says Florian. “This thumbtack’s going to hurt.”

“It’s not going to hurt at all,” says Janosch. “And besides, you’re a man.” And he sticks the thumbtack into his own forefinger. The blood bubbles up. Then he does the same to Florian, who winces. They rub their forefingers together. Janosch makes the rounds. He sticks the pin in Troy, then in Glob and Felix. Then in me. A little stab goes through my body. I can’t stand the sight of blood. It makes me queasy. I turn away as Janosch presses our fingers together. Once we’re all done, we put our hands on one another’s. Blood brothers.

The train is five minutes late. The first sign of it is a piercing whistle that comes rolling at us out of the distance. Then the train pulls into the Rosenheim station. It’s an ordinary red intercity express. I don’t see many people through the windows. Most of them are standing by the doors, ready to get out. The train hisses to a stop. The doors slide open slowly. Lots of tourists get out onto the platform.

Sambraus pulls the tickets from his raincoat and gives them to us. We’re in luck. Our train car is number 29 and we’re standing at car number 22. Glob, Troy, Florian, and Felix go first, with Janosch, Sambraus, and me behind. Janosch is holding me up. I’m worn out, somehow. We’ve barely reached number 29 when a black-uniformed conductor pulls us onto the train. He’s a little man with a terrific mop of white hair. The door closes and the train slowly starts to move.

“Friends, huh?” says the conductor as he notices Janosch holding me up.

“Yes, friends,” says Janosch and pushes me into the compartment where the other five are sitting. Troy has already made himself comfortable, still wearing the rain cape. His eyes are closed and he’s breathing heavily. Maybe he’s dreaming of a better world. Opposite him is Sambraus, who’s pulled a book out of his pocket: Paul Auster’s
Leviathan.
A paperback with the head of the Statue of Liberty on the front. As far as I can tell, Sambraus is about halfway through. I don’t know the book. I don’t know the author either. Only his name is familiar to me. Paul Auster. One of the handful of great authors or something. But there are thousands of those already. Next to Sambraus is Florian, staring out the window. His face looks tired; his mind must be far away. Maybe with his dead parents. Or his grand-mother. Now he’s looking at the floor. He stretches his arms out in front of him uneasily. On his right is Skinny Felix. His chest is heaving, and his nostrils are pinched. He keeps running his left hand over his right forefinger. He’s trying to rub the blood away. His finger’s all sticky and doesn’t look so good, sort of like he was having a nosebleed or something. Glob is right at the end. He’s parked his big ass squarely on the seat and is busy with his backpack of goodies. Gummi Bears come into view. Yellow, red, purple. In all their multicolored glory they follow one another into Glob’s hamster cheeks, where they get worked into porridge. Now and then his greedy tongue pops out of his mouth. It’s bright pink from the candy. Janosch and I sit down on the right of the car next to Troy. I get to take the window seat again, which I like. Black night outside. Only the moon shines down on us from up there. Occasionally a few fir trees loom up in the darkness. Otherwise a great barren plain. You can see almost nothing.

The tracks that race parallel to ours curve away to the left, ending our shared journey to Munich. I slide down deeper and deeper in my seat. It’s comfortable; you could go to sleep in it. There’s a picture hanging above every seat. Most are of some scene in the history of railroads. Mine is an advertisement for an English-language course. TALK THE WORDS RIGHT OUT OF YOUR SOUL or some such. I look over at Janosch. His eyes are hidden. Something’s going on in him. His hands jerk unpredictably on the armrests. They’re delicate: you can see almost every vein forking. A few blond hairs glint on their backs. The dim light in the compartment shows up every one. Janosch’s fingers move over his black polo shirt. A look of freedom flickers on his face. He’s looking forward to Munich. I look out of the window again. Out on the dark horizon someone’s flying a plane, red lights blinking. Where is he taking his passengers? Closer, by the tracks, four kids have made a fire and are sitting comfortably on a rise, smoking. We race past them. I find myself thinking about my last school and the people I got to know there, who always called me Crookfoot because I walked so funny, with my left foot always dragging behind. They didn’t like that. Sometimes they’d stick out a leg and laugh when I fell on my face. And sometimes they waited for me outside school, to take the sandwich I’d brought for my break. Made by my mother, especially for me, with lots of cheese and sausage. It made me feel bad for her. I didn’t want to hand over the sandwich, ever. But I had to; they were stronger than I am. Matthias Bochow was the ringleader. A heavy-set guy with huge shoulders and brown curly hair, no more than five foot eight. He’d been on earth for seventeen years already, and there wasn’t a thing on it that he smelled, saw, or felt that he liked. And whatever he didn’t like, the rest of them didn’t like either. He was the leader, the bellwether. His will was law, and the law was hard. The other five kids were only hangers-on. Peter Trimolt was seventeen; Michael Wiesbeck, eighteen; Stephan Genessius, seventeen; Claudio Bertram, seventeen; and Karim Derwert, sixteen. They did Matthias’s dirty work. Whatever he wanted was carried out. They got him women, got him through eleventh grade, and got the dipshits out of his way. Dipshits like me—Crookfoot. One time they tied me to a tree after school, a beech. With some old vine cording they’d stolen from the caretaker. Left me to survive until early evening, when my mother came running into the school yard in tears, beside herself. She didn’t let me go back to school for two weeks. It was great—at least I could get myself together again. Read a little. I think Matthias Bochow’s still around somewhere. I sometimes see him down in the subway with some hot chick. But he doesn’t notice me.

I reach for my backpack and get a bar of chocolate and my book. There are a couple of stars visible outside. The airplane has disappeared. I hold the book in both hands and run my thumbs over it. The cover feels smooth and good to the touch. I love just running my hand over books—it gives you such a calming feeling, a feeling that there really is something in the world you can hold on to, even though everything’s racing by so fast. I get this feeling particularly with new books. And this is a new book. My father gave it to me. It’s a paperback. He says it’s the best book anyone’s ever written about life. The receipt is still sticking out of the back—7.90 deutsche marks.
Thank you for your purchase. Lehmkuhl, your book-seller.
My father got it for me the last time I was home for the weekend. It still smells quite new. Nice smell. It has a red cover, and on it there’s an old man with his arm around a little kid, and there’s a big bar jutting into the picture from one side that says
Nobel
Prize.
The book must have got an award—no idea if it’s a big one or not, but so what. Over on the right, in cramped white letters, it says
The Old Man and
the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway.
Great title. You know immediately there’s something going on, and you want to start reading right away. Which is what I do. I open the book slowly, holding it in my right hand, because my left hand’s no use anyway; it’s thin and looks awful and slips into its usual spasm. I begin to read. Take a quick check on the time: 9:19. We’ve got about seventy minutes to go. Time enough. I keep reading. The letters and sentences fly at me. It’s a wonderful book. Every phrase, every observation strike home. It’s not long before there are tears in my eyes. Which is the way it is with me. Give me a good book and I start to howl. I howled my way through
Treasure Island
and now I’m howling my way through
The Old Man and the Sea.
It’s the way I’m made. The story’s pretty simple; it’s only fifty pages. It’s about this old fisherman who’s on his last legs and just can’t seem to catch any more fish. He goes hungry. Everyone’s laughing at him. The only one on his side is a small boy who always used to go out fishing with him, but now he’s not supposed to anymore because his parents won’t let him. The old man doesn’t catch enough, so the old man has to go out alone. And one day he gets this huge fish on his line. But he struggles to land it until he’s exhausted, and he loses the catch of his life to the sea and the sharks. It’s a really fabulous book. I’m only a quarter of the way into it and I’m in tears already. I’m so moved I’m clutching the book to my chest. I thank my father for buying it for me. And I thank Ernest Hemingway for being able to tell a story like that. I blow my nose in a handkerchief.

Janosch looks over at me and he’s laughing.

“That’s the way Lebert is, when you get right down to it,” he explains, turning to Sambraus. “A bit on the sensitive side.

“So what were you reading?” Janosch asks.

“The Old Man and the Sea.”