Tomorrow Berlin (10 page)

A few weeks have gone by. Armand is in his room, writing in his little grey notebook:

News from Tobias at last. Not very joyful but reassuring all the same (I thought he was dead). He’s in jail, at least till the twenty-third. Overdose in the underground + €2,000 worth of gear on him. He says he found it; I think Fritz probably gave it to him because he wanted to give up – his mate’s paralysed (he jumped out of a window on acid). His letter’s a bit confused. That’s all I have. Since Franz asked, I told him Tobias was in Paris; feel a bit bad about lying to him (we searched everywhere for him together, hoping he hadn’t killed himself – I think that’s what Franz was thinking too). I’d like to go and see him; he doesn’t want visitors, doesn’t give the address. I’d like to be able to do something.

This sentence at the end of the letter: ‘prison is hell’.

It’s the misfortune he lacked. Something of fate which has persecuted him; this feeling that in addition it is persecuting a small boy. I hope he knows
at
least that he can count on me. I feel as though I owe him something, that I owe it to him to help as much as I can. For the moment, there’s nothing I can do; but he is going to need me.

I’m holding myself back, as though I couldn’t let the sadness take hold of my body, for fear I would not recover.

Armand is in a photo booth, eyes wide open, looking into the darkness of the lens. There are four dazzling flashes in succession. He’s wearing a red cap and smoking. He gets up, opens the curtain and waits in the street by the machine for the strip of pictures. The photos drop. He looks at them, gives a little laugh and puts them in his coat. He goes off. The pavements on Kastanienallee are covered in brown snow.

Armand is on the escalator in a shopping centre. He’s listening to music on his headphones. His head is moving in rhythm, making jerky neck movements. He steps off and heads for the supermarket. He has a list in his hand. He looks lost.

In his room, Armand opens two little plastic sachets. He prepares a line of ketamine, then one of speed, on the mirror. He pops the earphones of his MP3 player in and does both lines. He paints for a while, on a board on the floor. But his creative efforts tire him. He dances, alone, attached to the cord of his MP3 player, as though he wanted to do something unproductive.

Armand arrives at the entrance to the Berghain. He looks a bit the worse for wear, as though sadness had slightly altered his features. The bouncer recognises him; he senses that Armand has lost his innocence. He’d like to say to him simply,
hey, son, go home. You can’t pull that hard or the rope will snap. It’s Sunday, it’s cold but the weather is nice. Go home, son, you’re better than this
. But he doesn’t say anything; it’s his job to see them all cross his threshold, one after the other.

Armand goes in. Hidden in his pants, he has a bottle of GHB, some speed and ketamine.

Astrid moved in with Franz.

They bicker a bit, laugh and kiss. He likes to feel
her body wriggle against his. They approach each other then separate, circle each other as though they wanted to combine their savours.

Astrid has three days off work, so they don’t get out of bed. They fall asleep sometimes, kiss, watch TV series on Astrid’s computer. They make love, out of reach, between two siestas. It’s their lovers’ hideaway as a means to discovery; they don’t get up unless they have to, to have a pee or get a glass of water. It feels so natural, protected there, smoking, eating, talking and caressing each other under the quilt. The world is so cold. They’re shutting themselves away and keeping each other warm. Just the two of them, outside time.

This burgeoning love, still completely unconstrained, is a rare happiness; spending hours on end together doing nothing, the best thing they’ve ever known. In a few hours, it’ll be time to face the world again, Astrid will go to work and Franz will do what Franz does; they’ll be separated, so best make the most of it, rest your head on her belly and wait, at peace.

Armand, alone with his notebook:

Haven’t managed to keep off them this week. Yesterday, open air; MDMA, GHB and speed. Need to cut myself off from the
druffis
who will never do me any good.

Some news from Tobias by text. Asking me to do strange things, such as getting out all the breakfast things on the kitchen table. I can’t get rid of the idea that it’s a trap. But I should trust him.

There’s a girl who’s pretty and interesting, though probably unpleasant, who I see on Kastanienallee. Black coat.

Saw her twenty minutes later, carrying a cardboard tube; I think there may be something.

I’ve begun; I’ve got the plan, the idea, everything I need in fact, but I don’t like it, I’m not painting well. And yet I’m applying myself seriously. Until it’s rejected, I can’t identify exactly what’s wrong with the last series. If it were accepted, would I stop painting? I don’t think so, but I’d continue doing the same shit.

Watched a film by M on the internet a few times; pretty great and exemplifies in a way what I’m
experiencing
here. I lack images; it did me good to see some again; should I be taking photos, making films? It wouldn’t come instinctively to me; but I like watching them. I like taking advantage of other people’s.

Gave myself some more tattoos (that makes five); dots on my hand, an A on my foot. Compared to the three others, of course, they’re not up to much but these new ones have a kind of homemade charm, from the knowledge that I did them myself, with a needle and India ink.

Dany is celebrating his first year on drugs at the fusion festival.

Needle plus joint (face numb).

Pretty blonde waitress at the Haliflor.

Want to get my soul back. I’ve done myself enough harm.

Deep disgust for GHB; remember this state if I’m tempted to start taking too much again.

Need something else – refocus myself on painting (because I think that that, after all, is the best thing life can offer me), stop trying to treat my suffering with poison; that suffering makes me paint. I don’t want to lose that. Not to mention the fact I’m
wrecking
my brain; a pianist chopping off his own fingers.

I think about my childhood, my adolescence (am I an adult?). I’ve got a nasty taste in my mouth.

Fortunately words get me out of that state.

There’s something too confining about life. I aspire to more than life (this passion, drugs, creation).

Boredom and sadness, at the root of it all?

Going down, the desire for aphorisms. They seem to sound good. Reread tomorrow.

I smoke cigarettes one after the other and never grow tired of them.

I always have to be consuming something.

I’ve partied; I don’t feel dirty though; no, it was a necessary purge.

Sleep soundly tonight, and tomorrow, painting.

I love this city, and this life.

Otto and Claudia have gone to do some work in northern Germany. Armand is alone in the apartment.

I don’t go out, I observe.

I look at my body, the neighbours, the kitchen walls. I’m home alone; not talking. It’s going pretty well, I think about my little problems, do the
washing-up
, take baths. I listen to music, the lights are on. I walk about as much as I can. I need to work my muscles before they disappear.

Sometimes I do a few push-ups.

I don’t really think about it, this is my life now. I have rituals. Perhaps they save me, they’re always the same.

But sometimes the strangeness of my life jumps out at me like some unpleasant bug.

Generally this happens when I switch off the light or the music; those artificial presences no longer protect me and I dream, sadly, about my loneliness, the void that surrounds me and is devouring me. Most of the time, though, I’m not aware of this void; it floats around me like a friend, the inoffensive companion of my pain.

The days fly past without me remembering them. They’re too similar to tell them apart.

It’s been several days since I last washed. My skin is a bit sticky, particularly around the joints and behind my elbows and knees. Little bodily secretions come out when I scratch. I won’t mention my cock; it’s not pretty. And what interests me is not the ugliness. At least not of the cock. You can probably imagine or, if you have one, try the experiment for yourself. We’ll see what happens after a week
or
two of normal climatic conditions; it’s not nice to look at; no, you wouldn’t slip this cock in your mouth.

It’s a question of priorities; sometimes I like to feel dirty; it goes for the soul as well as the body. At some moments I like them to be greasy, and others dry and polished like the pieces of glass you pick up on the seashore. I imagine little hands caressing me. They’ll put me at the bottom of a jar or an aquarium with lots of other bits of inoffensive glass, which, like me, will not cut any more but will decorate some bathroom or bedroom in a rented house, and now stationary, end their long maritime epic.

I’m rambling a bit. It’s time to take a break, have a cigarette.

It’s good stuff, this tobacco that burns your throat. And the paper that burns slowly. It can’t be said often enough, the paper makes all the difference. I prefer it white and thick like drawing paper. The other stuff, the transparent type, goes out. And as a result a cigarette loses one of its most precious qualities, it ceases to be the moment, the moment which one devotes to smoking it, this metaphorical, I’d even say poetic, reminder of the passage of time, of life flowing away – whether you drag on it or not
– until death burns your fingers, burns your lips. I love that way of sending life up in blue smoke, like in the cinema, which seems to rise from the cigarette’s tip to the ceiling.

My beloved cigarettes, which are criticised more and more.

The smoke that brings us closer to the heavens, to death; and the pleasure of the taste, the act of smoking, unequalled.

People are accused of starting smoking as an affectation of style. ‘The style is the man’: the saying is so well known, it’s a bit shocking to quote it; schoolboy essay.

I accord a lot of importance to ashtrays. I hate putting my butts in glasses, or beer cans and bottles. I like stubbing them out, not in bottle tops or any old piece of stone, but in an ashtray that I’ve carefully selected. It’s about the whole nature of the contact I have with these objects. I feel the material through the fag end; I caress them a bit when, as I press with the end of my index finger, making it turn firmly, I extinguish the ashy stub, the last piece of burning tobacco.

Of all the ashtrays I own, my favourite is the one I call the little gold one. It’s round and palm-sized, and looks like it was made to rest in the palm
of
your
hand. It’s golden, a bit dented; it must often have been bashed on the floor, on walls and faces. It feels as though it’s been through a lot, a terrible daily history of arguments and domestic dramas. It’s old and time-blackened in places, particularly on the back of the little lid that snaps shut. That’s what I like about it; when the lid is open it gives you somewhere to rest your burning cigarette, and when it’s closed, it seals off its inner part, the container for ash and butts. When the cigarette is burning, it doesn’t touch the container, doesn’t set light to the ends in it and more important – and this means this ashtray, as far as I can remember, has always had a place by my bed – you can close the lid, which blocks the horrible smell of stale tobacco, that nasty smell that prickles your nostrils.

It’s the only object I took when I fled; when I went to live with Emma.

I really loved her. She haunts me.

Armand is in the bar when Tobias rings.

‘Hey, I’m glad you called. You OK?’

‘Yeah, the hearing’s over. They’re sending me to detox. It can’t be worse than prison. You know,
I tried to do myself in. With the Russians in my cell, we tore up the sheets to try and hang ourselves. But there was this screw who busted us. Funnily enough, I think that did me a favour. At the hearing, they said I was an addict; that I needed treatment. I’m going to be in detox for a month. I miss you, Loulou. You OK? You having fun?’

‘Yeah, too much. I want to take a break.’

‘Why?’

‘Last Sunday when I got to the Pano, ten people said to me, “Shit, Armand, you were so funny last week, when you had your shirt off in the toilets and were jumping around”. Shit, I don’t remember a thing. I don’t remember thirty-six hours of partying. That’s fucked up.’

‘But when I get out, you’ll still come with me?’

‘Yes, but I’ll have to go easy. Look at the shit that it gets us into.’

‘We’re a good team all the same.’

‘It’s true, it’s cool. Can’t I come and see you?’

‘I don’t want you to see me like this. Anyway, I’ll be out in a month.’

‘Call me before then.’

‘Have the others been asking about me?’

‘Yeah, I told them you were in Paris.’

‘Thanks, Loulou. OK, I have to go. Hugs.’

Armand hangs up. There’s something touching about hearing a voice from so far away. Things are pretty fucked up for Tobias, Armand thinks, pretty fucked up for us both. And all for what? To dance together with your arms in the air. Yes, all this to raise your arms to the sky, feel a bit stronger and fuck in a toilet cubicle. For the first time, Armand sees the limits of this life. He’s getting spots on the side of his face. It’s not worth it if you do yourself so much harm, he thinks, just for a synthetic, manufactured pleasure. Tobias is in prison because he wanted to raise his arms to the sky, because he wanted to go on dancing for longer, and be stronger too. Too strong, too long. There’s a sort of injustice to it. The unfortunate ones are punished because they don’t know how to cope with their lives. The disorientated get downgraded. They rot like vermin, in little stinking cells, cells with rapists and snitches; they get treated like those bastards, the conspirators, the wicked. But they’re not like them at all, they’re not bad guys; they just wanted a bit of affection, a place in the world, an armchair or just a bench, a flip-down seat where they can sit with a bit of dignity. If all the useless people, all the losers and the parasites formed an army… if they formed an army, that would make some noise. More than
people might think. They’d travel through towns and country; they’d march tirelessly to conquer a new order. A limping army, a bit fucked up, all the losers on the planet in a single regiment. Rogues, fuck-ups, artists and waitresses, tramps, the disinherited, cleaning women, night porters, party animals, plumbers and pen-pushers, all walking in sync, to create the place for themselves that they’ve never been given. They’d advance, with their improvised weapons, scaffolding tubes, bamboo poles and pepper sprays. Hide! They’re coming; the forgotten people are rebelling. Postal workers, long-term unemployed, road sweepers, they’re advancing towards this unnamable power, the power that imprisons lads like Tobias. They don’t know where to strike; they’ll burn everything. The humiliation has gone on too long. From the embers they’ll build something new. They’re angry, they’ll burn everything. Piles of ashes, piles of ashes where they can sit down. Armand thinks about it. He smiles and cries. He goes home.