Freak City (13 page)

“I’m learning sign language, by the way,” I said quickly. “During the summer vacation. Monday through Friday, every afternoon. I wanted to tell you that, too, but I just didn’t manage somehow.”

Claudio nodded. “Any other details you’ve forgotten to tell me? Call me when you’re back to normal, Mika.”

He pushed the door open, and I heard him go down the stairs.

After the students had all disappeared outside, I went up to the board. Sabine wiped away the drawings with a stinky sponge. She looked bad, as if she had been crying again.

“Do you have Leah’s address?” I looked at her expectantly.

Sabine furrowed her brow. “No, why?”

Why, why. Because I wanted to see her again. Because a friendship could only develop if you put some effort into it. I hadn’t seen Leah since we had met at the pool eleven days earlier.

“I went to the pool with her a while ago and wanted to see her again. But she hasn’t gotten in touch. She doesn’t reply to my texts, or my e-mails.”

“It’s not a good idea to invade her home.” Sabine looked at me thoughtfully.

“I don’t want to invade anything,” I stuttered. “I want to visit her. I’ve made huge progress with sign language.”

Sabine smiled weakly. “Don’t exaggerate. Just because you can order yourself breakfast now doesn’t mean you can have a normal conversation yet, not by a long shot.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I know. But I’d really like to see her again.”

Sabine sighed. “She hates having people meet her family.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just know. She mentioned it once.” Sabine scribbled an address on a piece of paper for me.

“Is that where she lives?”

She shook her head. “No, that’s Tommek’s address. He definitely knows where she lives. But you have to know that she won’t exactly love you for doing this.” There was a deep furrow in Sabine’s forehead, and she looked worn out.

“Are you okay?” I looked at Sabine sympathetically.

She shook her head. “Men are pigs,” she replied. Then she turned around and continued erasing the board.

I stood forlorn in front of a rundown apartment building. The window on the second floor was open and loud percussion sounds came from inside. Someone on the fourth floor had hung a banner outside that said, “God is not dead. He’s just fallen asleep!” I didn’t get the joke. Was that supposed to be funny? I looked at the names next to the doorbells. Thomas Rautenbach. Tommek wasn’t his real name; that was a nickname. I pressed the buzzer.

Tommek’s red mop of hair appeared in a window. At first, he didn’t recognize me. But then it clicked. “Oh, it’s you! I hope you aren’t selling anything.”

I shook my head. The buzzer sounded, and I pushed the door open. The entire foyer was plastered with posters for concerts and demonstrations. Gay rights, gun control, and anti-racism.

On my way to the third floor, I found a poster for the Colored Pieces. I thought about Sandra, and my heart grew heavy. There was dead silence between us. She hadn’t even sent me a text message since that impersonal group e-mail two weeks ago. By now, it had been five weeks since we’d broken up.

“Come on in.” Tommek held the door open for me. The apartment smelled like overly strong curry powder. The entire foyer was wallpapered with newspaper clippings of strange events. “Indian girl married to a dog,” “Woman has wrong leg amputated,” “Average German has sex twice a week.”

Tommek grinned. “Our curiosity foyer. If you come across a really unbelievable article, you can give it to me.” We walked past a homemade table; on it, a few wilted flowers drooped from a vase. Tommek propelled me into his room. There were shelves filled with DVDs and videos everywhere. A video projector was mounted above the bed; a white sheet served as a screen.

“Wow!” I looked around, impressed.

“I’m a film buff, a real movie collector,” Tommek said, hunching his shoulders. “Especially independent movies and stuff. I love swap meets. If you ever want recommendations for movies, I can definitely help you! Leah has been here a couple times, too.”

Relieved, I looked at Tommek. “That’s why I’m here. Do you have Leah’s address?”

Tommek rubbed his forehead. Then he went to the desk, which was invisible under a mountain of notes and stacks of books and newspapers. The entire room looked like one of those hoarder apartments they show on TV. Everything was dusty; only the projector was new.

“What do you want that for?” He searched in the chaos, threw a few catalogs promoting international peace service on the floor, and felt for the desk drawer.

“I want to go see her.”

Tommek looked at me in astonishment. “A surprise visit?”

I nodded. He had found the paper he was looking for and handed it to me. “I shouldn’t really be giving you this at all.”

“Why not?” I sat down on a beanbag chair and nearly sank to the ground.

“Well, who knows if she wants to see you.”

“But I want to see her,” I clarified.

He nodded but didn’t say anything else. “Take this movie to her!” Tommek finally said and handed me the case. In it was a brand-new bootleg copy.

I read the title.
The Dreamers
. “What’s it about?”

Tommek moved a stack of papers from his desk and sat down on it. “Love. Obsession. Movie magic. Hard to explain.”

Movie magic. Hearing that expression immediately made me think of Sandra again. She said that sometimes. For stories that were ultra romantic. “That was movie magic between Dave and Lisa.” Or, “What a night. Movie magic, if you ask me!” I had always liked it, that saying. Now it made me sad in a strange way.

I stuck the film in my bag.

“Leah loves French films.” Tommek let his legs swing. “In fact, she’s completely crazy about them.
The Lovers on the Bridge, Swimming Pool, Three Colors: Blue
. . . I lent her all of them.”

None of those titles meant anything to me. Had I ever seen a French film? Why did she love French films when she couldn’t even understand the language?

“Heavy stuff,” Tommek said. “Those movies definitely aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. But at least they all have subtitles. You know, it’s kind of bizarre, but the German series and films hardly ever have closed captions. On TV you can forget it, but even most DVDs don’t. So Leah really doesn’t have any choice but to concentrate on foreign films!”

Heavy stuff. I wouldn’t even like Leah’s movies. I had a better grasp of Sandra’s taste in films.
The Holiday, Runaway Bride, You’ve Got Mail.
It had never been hard for me to pick out the right movie for her. Chick flicks.

“Do you want to take something with, too?” Tommek looked at me expectantly. I shrugged my shoulders, not knowing how to respond. Tommek jumped down from the desk and scanned his shelves. Then he nodded. “This is for you. Guaranteed.”

He tossed me an original case.
Children of a Lesser God
. Won an Oscar in 1987. I stuck it in my bag with the other film. The title didn’t mean anything to me.

“How are you doing with the sign language?” Tommek leaned against a shelf that swayed dangerously.

“Good.” I looked down at my hands. “We’ve already made it to food vocabulary.”

“Honest? Can you already make a few whole sentences?”

I nodded. Tommek looked at me thoughtfully. “You know, I don’t want to rob you of your illusions. But I’m telling you this because I think you’re a nice guy.” The room suddenly became very quiet. The musician in the apartment below us pounded monotonously on his drums. It sounded like he had gotten stuck in that mode. Bumbumbumbum.

“It’s not enough to just master the language.”

I had absolutely no idea what Tommek wanted to tell me.

“Being deaf, it’s a world apart.” Tommek looked past me and his gaze caught the poster next to the door. A movie poster from the 1970s. Aliens were attacking a human. “The deaf have their own culture. How you relate to each other, the education in the schools, what you do in your free time. The language is just one tiny part of their life.”

Bumbumbumbum.

I still didn’t understand what Tommek meant. I slowly stood up from the beanbag chair. “Thanks. For the address and the movies. I’ll get them back to you soon.”

He nodded. “On August 31st I’m putting on an outdoor movie presentation. Maybe you two could come, you and Leah. I’ll be sure to show a film with subtitles, just in case.”

“Okay.” The drummer below us had found a different rhythm. It sounded as if the same sound were being produced by a giant, soulless machine, over and over again.

The woman at the door looked nice. She was older than my mom and had a conservative hairstyle, like the moderators of the folk music programs on TV. Her hands were covered in dirt; apparently, she had been working in the garden.

“I’d like to see your daughter,” I said.

She looked at me, surprised. Then she turned around. “Cindy?”

I cleared my throat. “No, not Cindy. I’m here to see your daughter, Leah.” For a moment, I wondered whether Tommek had maybe given me the wrong address.

The girl named Cindy came galloping down the stairs. “What’s up?”

I looked her over. Leah had said some snide things about her sister at the pool. But in real life, she looked like a nice person, like an older version of Leah. She was about twenty, and her curls were parted on the side and held at the back of her head with a big clip. Her clothes were fancy: black pants, blouse, and a jacket. She must work at a bank.

“Wrong one,” Leah’s mom murmured toward the young woman. “He . . . ” she looked at me suspiciously, “wants to see Leah.”

“Ah.” Cindy ran a finger along the outline of her mouth. She must have just put on fresh lipstick, because a tiny bit of red stuck to the tip of her finger. It looked like she had dipped it in red paint.

It was a funny scene, the mom with her dirty hands, next to her daughter with the red fingers, and both of them staring at me.

“Leah isn’t home yet. But you’re welcome to stay for lunch. We’ll be eating in fifteen minutes.” The mom smiled encouragingly.

Feeling somewhat trapped, I stepped into the house. Suddenly, my idea to visit Leah at home didn’t seem like such a hot one anymore. What would she think when she found me here, in the midst of her family? But her mom had already gently taken hold of my shoulder and was directing me toward the kitchen.

“You can stir the ratatouille,” she ordered in a friendly way. “I have to plant my orchid, but I’ll be right back.”

Curious, I looked around. The kitchen looked cozy, as did the whole house. A nice, comfortable atmosphere. I truly wondered why Leah had talked about her family so negatively.

“And, how’s it coming along?” Cindy had come up behind me. She smelled strongly of perfume, an expensive scent that reminded me of Sandra. She took the wooden spoon out of my hand and took over the stirring. “Where did you meet my little sister?” She tore off a piece of bread and dipped it into the steaming pot.

“In a café. It’s called Freak City.”

“Aha. Didn’t even know the little one hangs out in cafés!” Cindy winked at me.

“She always has lunch there,” I informed her.

“Really?” Cindy raised an eyebrow. “I thought she ate something at school. I still come home during the break. I’m in a training program at a bank, by the way.”

I nodded. That’s exactly what I had feared.

“And you? Already finished with school?” This was slowly beginning to feel like a cross-examination.

I shook my head. “I have another year of high school ahead of me.”

Cindy dipped another piece of bread in the pot. If she kept that up, there wouldn’t be anything left by the time we sat down to eat. Now she had burned her tongue. She cursed under her breath.

“Leah will be finished in one more year, too.” She looked at me with her big green eyes. The same eyes as Leah, the same intense look. “My father has already arranged a job and training program for her. That’s a great thing. I know so many people who are out of work! I had to find my job all by myself.”

I bit my tongue. “She actually wants to go to college,” I said. “Hasn’t she said anything about it?”

Cindy straightened her shoulders. “Come on, honestly, how should that work? First, because she’s deaf she has to earn the college entrance certification after high school, and that’s only possible at four schools in Germany. Then she would need a whole army of interpreters who would accompany her at college. But there aren’t enough of them, and it’s incredibly complicated. And what would happen afterward? I mean, who would hire her? A deaf psychologist! It’s important for Leah to learn to be independent, earn her own money, and build a life for herself. She should be happy. You know what I mean?”

It sounded plausible, somehow, what Cindy said. On the other side, no one expected her to hang up her fancy suit and spend the rest of her life in a plastics factory.

The doorbell rang, and above us, a harsh light flashed. At the same time, someone put a key in the lock. I looked at the ceiling with irritation.

“That’s the signal system,” Cindy explained. “Leah can’t hear when someone is at the door. When someone rings the bell, the light signals flash all over the house. We’ve gotten used to ringing the bell every time we come home so she knows there’s someone else in the house.”