Tiger Milk (3 page)

Jameelah says you can learn something from these guys, just like when you study medicine. First you cut up a frog, then corpses, and only at the end do you get to work on real, living people. That’s how you learn something. We need to practise, for later on, for real life, at some point we’ll need to know how it all works. We need to know everything so nobody can ever mess with us.

It’s still the middle of the day, meaning it’s a little too early to go to the planet, but going home now would be weird so we head toward Wilmersdorfer Strasse U-bahn station and wander through the pedestrian zone, into the mall, and then downstairs to the supermarket. We grab all kinds of stuff, Yum Yum noodles, marble cake, Pixy Stix, tubes of sweet Milchmädchen condensed milk, and butter rum flavour Riesen, which Nico likes so much. We pay with Jameelah’s fifty euro bill and then walk over to the planet.

The planet is a big ugly concrete ball right next to the mall at Wilmersdorfer station. There are a bunch of smaller planets or moons around the big one, all of them made out of concrete too. In summer, when it’s hot, foamy yellow water sometimes shoots out of the small planets, but most of the time the whole thing is dry. I have no idea who decided to put it here. I guess it’s supposed to be art but it just looks like shit. I think they wanted mothers to sit around the planet with their kids and eat ice cream and splash around in the fountain or whatever. But you never see mothers and children at the planet, only alcoholics and crazy people and us.

Nico says the city didn’t build it for mothers at all, he says it’s for us so that we have a place to meet after school and on weekends. There’s a phone booth next the planet. It’s an old yellow dinosaur and I’ve never seen anyone go in to use it except for Nico when he’s smoking up. But it’s actually in the perfect spot. It’s covered from top to bottom with writing. We leave each other messages on it about when we’re going to meet or where a party or concert is. It may be old fashioned but it’s cheaper than calling or texting and everyone who comes to the planet checks the phone booth for messages anyway and luckily for us the city cleans it as soon as every inch is covered with ink.

Kathi and Laura are sitting at the planet. Kathi is fussing around with Laura’s bangs with a razor blade, just like earlier today at school during the twenty minute morning break, when we were down in the basement in the bike storage area, where we always smoke, she was working on Laura’s hair too. She wants her bangs to be straight, perfectly straight, but to run at an angle from left to right and it’s not so easy to cut them at an angle and make the line perfectly straight.

So what’s going on today besides hair cutting, asks Jameelah.

S-bahn party I think, says Kathi, Nico was just here and said something about it.

Where is he anyway, I ask.

Under the railway bridge. You guys have anything to drink?

Jameelah pulls out the bottle of Tiger Milk and the bag of butter rum Riesen from her rucksack. Viovic are next to the phone booth. Viovic are always in the same outfit, all in black, with the same hair, dyed black and cropped at the chin, and when it rains they have the same black umbrellas, which is why we just call them Viovic, like it’s just a single entity, even though that’s not true, there are two of them, they’re twins. The only time you can tell them apart is when they are on stage, because Viktoria plays bass and Violetta plays guitar. Their band is called Viovic and they’re crap, everyone says so, not just me. I don’t understand why they are so bad since they have a rehearsal space in their parents’ basement, with egg boxes on the wall and everything, and they practise almost every day because there’s also a music room at the private school they go to, but maybe they don’t practise as much as they say they do.

Nini, Viktoria calls, do you have a sharpie?

I shake my head.

I do, says Kathi and tosses it over to Viktoria.

Violetta scrawls something on the phone booth.

You guys coming to the S-bahn party?

Viktoria and Violetta shake their heads.

We’re going to Rotor, they say.

I wonder to myself whether they practise saying everything simultaneously like that, it’s almost creepy.

Here comes Nadja, says Laura with her mouth full. She points toward the S-bahn tracks.

She looks awful, whispers Kathi.

She was already looking bad at school earlier, says Jameelah.

Hey, have you guys seen Tobi, asks Nadja as she walks up.

Is everything okay with you, asks Kathi.

Got my period, where’s Tobi?

He’s with the others under the railway bridge.

I look in the butter rum bag. Only one left.

This one’s for Nico.

We run past the entrance of the U-bahn station and cross Stuttgarter Platz toward the raised S-bahn tracks. Apollo and Aslagon are squatting next to the underpass. It looks like Apollo is drawing something on the ground with his wooden sword. His Viking helmet is tossed to the side, lying in the dirt. Apollo believes he’s a Viking and Aslagon thinks all humans are divided between bird people and lizard people. I’m a bird person and so is Jameelah, he says, but he himself is a lizard person, just like the royal family of Saudi Arabia. Apollo and Aslagon only hang out with us at the planet during the summer because they spend winters in the Auguste Viktoria mental hospital.

What’s that supposed to be, asks Jameelah.

It’s Naglfar, says Apollo, the ship that has to be built out of human fingernails before the end of the world can finally come.

And that’s why you two can’t pass, says Aslagon, peering at us with his kohl-smeared eyes.

Why not?

Anyone who wishes to pass beneath the railway bridge must have their nails cut by Apollo, he says, so we can build the ship and bring on the apocalypse.

Why would you even want to bring on the apocalypse, asks Jameelah.

Yeah, says Nadja, maybe we don’t want the world to end.

God’s earth is rotten, says Apollo as he gestures at us with a rusty set of nail clippers.

Nadja rolls her eyes.

Fuck it, she says, taking the clippers and snipping one nail from each of us.

The walls of the underpass are covered with spray paint from floor to ceiling. The crappy graffiti is Tobi’s. Tobi tags his stuff
animaux
, which means animals in French. But for a graffiti tag
animaux
is too long, Nico explained it to me. It’s the last two letters that make it too long, you need to spray quickly and then get the hell out of there. Maybe that’s why Tobi gets caught all the time and maybe that’s why you see the tag
anima
all over the city.

The good stuff is Nico’s.
Sad
is his tag, written in English. Sometimes he writes
Sadist
. He writes it in soft funny-looking letters, like clouds. It’s comforting when I’m riding the bus around town and see a
Sad
Nico has tagged on some random wall. It’s like the sensation I get when I have a pebble in my shoe, in that moment when I see one of Nico’s
Sad
tags I’m not alone.

At the far end of the railway underpass, Tobi and Nico are standing around smoking. Nico’s leaning against the wall. He’s big. Everything about him is big actually, his hands, his blue eyes, his mouth, and his feet, which are always in the same pair of trainers which he throws into the washing machine just as often as he washes his clothing and hangs to dry along with the clothes. Even his shaved head is big and really the only small thing about him is the kiddie lunchbox he always carries around. It’s plastic, with bright stripes and on the side of it a clock that doesn’t work because it’s out of batteries. I used to have one just like it from when Nico and I were kids. We were at the carnival one day and the lunchboxes were on display on the top shelf of a raffle ticket booth. Nico and I wanted them so bad, one for each of us, but both of our mothers just wanted to keep moving. We began to cry and Nico’s father started buying raffle tickets, more tickets than anybody else. Nico’s mother cursed at him and the man at the booth laughed as he handed Nico’s father one ticket after the next, pulling them out of the clear wrappers like meal worms and shoving them at Nico’s father until he had enough points for two of the lunchboxes.

So that’s how we’re going to spend our money, Nico’s mother had said to his father pointing to the slips of coloured paper littering the ground, but she was just in a bad mood because Nico’s father was drunk and so were my Mama and Papa but she couldn’t drink because she was pregnant with Pepi then.

I don’t think it’s right either, my Mama had said to my Papa, say something, she said, but Papa just rolled his eyes.

Nico has carried that thing around with him ever since. He used to carry his matchbox cars back and forth to the playground in it but these days he keeps his pot in it and uses the smooth plastic face of the clock to blend the pot with tobacco. He even takes the lunchbox to Schulze-Sievert, where he’s doing his apprenticeship. Everybody jokes about Nico and his lunchbox, but he doesn’t care, he laughs right along with them. His lunchbox is his lunchbox. Mine got destroyed the same summer I got it. Dragan threw it against the wall of a car park after I told him the clock on it was shockproof.

Hey, says Nico, so did you let Aslagon cut your nails?

I nod.

Poor guy, says Jameelah as she reaches for the joint.

What do you mean?

I mean seriously, she says,
God’s earth is rotten
has got to be the saddest sentence I’ve heard in ages.

Nico spits on the ground.

Yeah, maybe it is sad, he says, looking up at the sky. Sad but true.

All of a sudden there’s a commotion at the planet. A bunch of skaters are riding around the fountain, shouting and clapping as they fall down and hop back up and their boards smack loudly against the concrete. It looks like the diagram Herr Wittner shows us in physics class, with the planet as the nucleus of an atom and the skaters whizzing around the nucleus like electrons, everything is made out of atoms, says Herr Wittner, the whole universe.

It starts to drizzle. We sit down next to the fountain. Just for a laugh, Kathi and Laura start asking people for spare change. The nearly empty container of Tiger Milk sits between me and Jameelah. I wrap my arms around my knees as the summer rain falls around us and soaks into the parched concrete, giving off that unique smell.

I’m pretty wasted, I whisper.

Jameelah nods.

Me too, she says, I was already completely wasted at that guy’s place, she says and then she reaches into her shoe, pulls out my fifty euro note, and hands it to me.

It was a good fucking laugh today, eh?

Yeah, I say, stashing the money, but it was fucking cross, too.

I look up at the sky, which presses down on us with that eerie yellow colour it gets before a big storm, like it’s trying to scare us.

Look, I say, it really looks like the apocalypse is coming.

I guess the ship must be finished, says Jameelah.

That was quick.

Yeah. Maybe God’s earth really is rotten. Maybe there really is a God and maybe his earth really is rotten. I’d believe it.

Wait, why? I thought you said it was the saddest thing you’d ever heard?

Yeah, but sad things are usually true, says Jameelah, Nico’s right about that.

She closes her eyes, opens her mouth, and catches the raindrops on her tongue. Beyond the S-bahn tracks there’s a flash of lightning, then we hear the thunder and a few seconds later the rain starts to pour down as hard as in a rainforest. Laura and Kathi come running over and grab their backpacks, which are on the ground next to ours.

Fucking global warming, shouts Laura and we all hold hands and run for cover shrieking but by the time we reach an awning we’re all soaking wet. Jameelah puts her hand on my shoulder and braces herself as she pulls down the wet stockings that are clinging to her legs. Her hand is warm and I close my eyes and listen to the rain, the way it falls out of the sky, the way it plunks into the gathering puddles, the way it drips from the awning and soaks into my shoe and joins the pebble. I’m tired and drunk, I think, and I still have to go shopping, bread, Leberwurst, noodles, ketchup, but then Jameelah’s long nails dig into my shoulder. I open my eyes and am about to complain when I see him. He’s coming toward us. His dark hair is all wet and drops of rain hang from his long eyelashes, and beneath the lashes his dark Bambi eyes and pale face, so pale it looks like he’s suffering from some elegant disease. It’s Lukas. In his right hand he has a bottle of wine and a tattered book is sticking out of his jacket pocket, which is just one of the million things Jameelah loves about him. I can’t understand why anyone would read so much, I don’t see what’s so great about it, I think it’s somehow abnormal.

Hello, he says, staring at Jameelah as she stands there barefoot with her wet stockings in her hand. I crack a smile and think to myself, either he thinks she’s incredible or he thinks she’s disgusting, but that’s how it always is with Jameelah. As if in slow motion she stuffs the stockings into her backpack, gently, purposefully, every movement carefully considered, like a hunter trying to position herself without scaring off a wild animal. She slips back into her red Chucks and smiles.

I have to tell you something, she says looking at Lukas, I dreamed about you, I dreamt that you captured some kind of mythical beast, it was see-through with two heads. It was like a cross between a dragon and a kangaroo but it lived in the water and could purr like a cat.

Lukas laughs.

You should write that down, he says, that’s really poetic imagery.

I already did, says Jameelah.

He is really good looking somehow, at least when he’s listening to Jameelah tell him something, though maybe we all look nice when she is telling us something. Lukas wants to say something but two hands come from behind him and cover his Bambi eyes. The hands belong to Anna-Lena, Anna-Lena whose hair is always freshly washed – only freshly washed hair moves like Anna-Lena’s.

There you are, she says and kisses Lukas on the cheek. Anna-Lena who always smells like flowery perfume and writes
Love you my angel
on everybody’s rucksack but doesn’t really mean it. You can’t say I love you if you don’t actually mean it, that’s against the rules.