Tomorrow Berlin (5 page)

Armand enjoyed striking an attitude: alone, melancholy and devoted to his painting. He smoked roll-ups and cherished his feeling of restlessness as the only thing that couldn’t be taken away from him. He crumbled cheap resin in the palm of his hand and thought about his woes as he listened to singers with gravelly voices. He hung around in cafés, scribbling a few sketches in a moleskin notebook. He tried to catch girls’ eyes and look proud of his solitude. There were always men around but he didn’t talk to them, so he felt this artificial solitude permanently assailing him from outside. He thought about it and displayed it like a conquest. He portrayed himself as withdrawn from the world, a lonely, hungry painter.

Autumn arrived and soon it was November, the most beautiful month for melancholia. As a result of displaying his sadness, Armand came to believe in it. He lost his sense of humour.

During the day he worked as a supervisor in a high school, and in the evenings, since he was no longer painting, he drank beer and smoked weed.

He watched himself walk, so he thought,
the solitary path of his destiny
.

But he wasn’t really so isolated; he’d go walking
with his old friends, the fraternity he’d chosen, and they’d all smoke cheap resin and talk about their melancholia and the imaginary woman they’d like to fall in love with.

The little band of lost boys met at Armand’s place or in a bar, to smoke or drink, to do something, to talk, have a laugh.

At first, Armand enjoyed these affectations of despairing youth, but he quickly came to believe them to such an extent that they became banal. He wanted to escape them but couldn’t, the habit had got under his skin.

He read all day at his job at the school. Mid-century authors who, like him, had just one obsession: finding a place in the world, a role to play in life. He discovered Bove, Calet, Dabit and Hyvernaud, Guérin and Calaferte. But he loved Charles-Louis Philippe more than them all. Then, he imagined himself contracting syphilis at the start of last century – it was certainly classier than AIDS – falling for a tart from the boulevard Sébastopol, living a bohemian life in a brothel, as a small-time dealer in vague artistic desires. He felt nostalgic for an era he’d never known; he envied that type of poverty for being much more romantic than his little part-time job in a Catholic high school.

Yes, he worked in a Catholic high school; the ultimate anarcho-betrayal, a religious institution of the state that was authoritarian and repressive. But it earned him some money and all he did was read and smoke.

Sometimes he painted. Then he felt the return of the strength he’d been lacking. It would make him forget, stop him watching himself living. His thoughts exploded. Hunched over his canvases, he used his brush as though he were jabbing a wall – he was living for himself at last. He forgot his pose and found his inner self, so close to his gut that he could smell his own shit. He spewed forth his judgement.

From time to time, he screwed a pick-up from the bar. And then he felt calmer for a few days.

It was in mid-winter that Emma’s shadow came to haunt his vision. She cast a veil over his eyes, the pretty Dunhill blonde. Since he was tired of envying periods of history he had never known, he returned to his own past.

He’d been so happy when he was in love with her! He understood now that he wasn’t made to be alone. He needed to be entwined with a woman, specifically Emma.

He thought about seeing her again, but didn’t
call. Perhaps he was ashamed of his cowardice, of how he’d left her. When things went on too long, he couldn’t stop himself running away. He could have thought ‘fuck it’, but the memories of the mean things he’d done hit him like a big block of guilt.

He was ashamed, his body felt sick. To get rid of it, he ran away again.

Franz drank a lot in Mexico. And there were joints, crappy dancing, nights when you tried to forget yourself. There were conquests in bars, and then it was time to go home; the date printed on the plane ticket had come round already.

When he got back, he had an irresistible urge to see Martha. You don’t forget a woman you have loved after just a few glasses of warm beer.

The pastor was away, so Franz was able to visit Martha at home. He was touched by the sight of her childhood room, her serious soft toys, the little bed where she’d had her nightmares. They made love, hurriedly, as a sort of way of saying goodbye. Then Franz went back to his apartment, his life as a single man, the Günther and Co. files, the second-hand books, the whole thing.

Mexico had left a taste for adventure at the back of his throat. He wanted to resume his studies, fashion design, a school in Paris. His application was accepted; in two months he’d be off.

The plan was perfect. Escape. Except Franz had forgotten destiny, the old enemy who grabs you by the shoulder. Martha was pregnant. She wanted to keep this child, Franz’s child. Martha, Martha Krüll, the pastor’s daughter, would not have an abortion; that was out of the question.

For the first time, Tobias had arrived in a new city alone. He knew no one; he couldn’t use his mother’s or sister’s apartment as an anchor. There was only 72d on Schönhauser Allee, a little impersonal one-bedroom place, a testament to his solitude. But because he was truly alone, because the faces around him did not look at him, he didn’t experience it like that.

The simplest things had a particular appeal because he was doing them for the first time. His disorientation kept him busy. He didn’t know what to buy in the supermarket; he didn’t know what to do with underground tickets. It was as though he
were a stranger to the pact with the city; he had to discover its customs. So he walked around, eyes wide open, trying to understand, to blend into indifference. He developed a little repertoire of the ways things were done; people here didn’t cross when the red man was on or walk on cycle paths.

He rediscovered the language of his childhood more easily than he expected.

When he wasn’t working, he walked the streets and travelled the tunnels of the U-Bahn. He visited museums and monuments. Occasionally he went to the cinema.

He loved being in this state of discovery. He walked instinctively since he needed to understand, and above all create new habits. Maybe that’s why he started smoking again, so that he could go to the same kiosk every day, and the old Turkish man who ran it would reach for the packet of Blue Nile from behind him without Tobias even asking.

He didn’t worry about running into friends or lovers; he wanted to make a life for himself as a solitary man with his work, his cigarettes, his supermarket.

The work was unappealing; Tobias couldn’t have asked for better. He translated instruction
manuals for machines he’d never use. It was a world he didn’t need to think about, he just made his little contribution.

His apartment was coming together. He cut photos out of newspapers and stuck them on the walls; headlines, too, when he liked them. Titles in block capitals and funny little items of news: ‘72-year-old eaten by her cats’; ‘he smothered his grandmother because she confiscated his PlayStation’.

Sometimes he received a letter from his sister. Little Lucas signed at the bottom right in his shaky handwriting. The weeks went by uneventfully, between the instruction manuals and 72d, between his discoveries and the habits he was forming.

But there came a point when Tobias was no longer making discoveries; he had a season ticket for the underground, the old Turkish man instinctively handed him his packet of Blue Nile every morning, he knew the supermarket shelves.

The day he realised this, Tobias was struck by a great sense of sadness. He felt stunned. What was he to do now that he had his habits nicely arranged around him? Should he content himself with observing them, all these little independent actions, so independent that they functioned by
themselves, like motorised creatures that didn’t need anyone guiding them? He had polished them so well, held them so tight between his palms, that it was as though all these little everyday habits existed outside him. Enthusiasm for the ritual one has created can be destroyed by the sadness of the habit. And amid all these stale attractions, Tobias was getting bored.

He remembered a tract from the Lettrist movement which Jérôme had read to him one evening:
The adventurer is someone who makes adventures happen, rather than someone to whom adventures happen.

Perhaps Armand wanted to get away so that he could stop thinking about Emma and create a new personality for himself, far from his past.

He could choose a new character, escape the role he’d played with his friends. He would only be able to forget that role if he left them and went off to something entirely new.

Perhaps he’d go to Rome or Berlin; for now, he made do with talking about it. Departures
had style; he would be accountable to no one, he could live out his idiosyncrasies as he saw fit. He’d be free, he wouldn’t have the incessant gaze of those around him weighing him down. Since he could not free himself from them while they were around, he would escape.

How would he live? He didn’t have the slightest idea. Never mind, he’d always managed somehow. That sort of detail wasn’t worth getting hung up on. He’d put a bit of money aside; he’d be frugal for a few months. Then what? Then, time would tell. He got a job in the bar downstairs from his flat.

He worked there in the evenings; during the day he was a school supervisor. Now, when Armand thinks back on that time, he remembers the lack of sleep and the smell of the metro. He got exhausted going from one job to another, and meanwhile he was thinking about his departure.

Before he left, he wanted to see Emma again. They spent the night in his little bare room, as he had already packed away all his things in a friend’s cellar. They did some coke, and slept on the little mattress he used as a bed. He smelled her skin on the thin mattress and he swore he would leave and never come back.

It was summer. Armand chose Berlin. He bought a budget ticket. It was so strange buying it just one-way!

A few days later, he set off to live his new life. He was twenty.

He was so preoccupied by tiny details of style that he forgot to feel afraid. He didn’t know where he was going to sleep; he had a bit of money in his pocket and a bag with a few things.

Franz abandoned his thoughts of adventure. He took a job in a bar in the evenings in addition to his hack work in the office. He needed space, and money for little Juli, who was on the way.

Franz could no longer read his books with the yellowing pages. Fate had caught up with him and he had to march to its tune.

Juli was born. Juli Riepler. It was a joyful moment for them all, for Martha, for Pastor Krüll, and Franz too.

Life was organised with confidence. They created a warm, pink room for Juli at the pastor’s house. Martha took care of it, along with the nappies and the feeds. Franz worked, he paid his
share, and as soon as he was free, he picked Juli up in his arms, thanking that friend, Fate, whom he had hated a few months earlier, when he had grabbed him by the shoulder.

In the bar where he worked, Franz was often asked if he knew someone to buy from. He didn’t understand at first. Buy what from? Drugs, of course.

Months went by; sometimes he took them. Then, he made some good contacts. Juli was getting bigger; he needed more money. Franz became a dealer on the side to earn a bit more. Ecstasy and amphetamines made a good profit. It was a far cry from the nine-to-five.

Business flourished; Franz got bigger. People liked him because he didn’t cut the product too much.

Those were the salad days, of plenty of money and freedom. He had come a long way from Günther and Co. and the cocktail bar. He was his own boss; he sold to nightclub dealers who came to his apartment every week to stock up. Little Juli, raised on drug money. Every line done in a nightclub toilet, every pill swallowed meant a bit of comfort for Juli, money for her education, a new teddy.

Then, as always in these stories, Franz got caught. Police. House search. Clink.

Tobias tried to see things outside so-called normal life. He went to sex bars and
druffi
nightclubs. He went back to the life he managed best wherever he was, the drug addict. He became friends with his neighbour on the second floor who offered him his couch. He gave up the instruction manuals and the apartment that went with them.

The eternal return. His life resumed its original cycle. For him, this was normal life.

Two years in prison leaves its traces on a man’s face: marks of submission, fear and humiliation. Franz did two years, since he was unable to hold out and grassed up his suppliers, some Poles, who were much bigger fish than him.

When he got out, he wanted to work. No one would take him on; his face was puffy with the marks of jail. Juli no longer recognised him; he
couldn’t buy her a new teddy any more. He was done.

He did a few jobs on a rehabilitation programme, scraping posters off walls, checking tickets on the U-Bahn. He gambled the money he made in slot machines. Most of the time he won. He doubled his stakes, tiny amounts.

He was able to see Juli, Martha and Pastor Krüll again. He tried putting make-up on the lines on his face. What would Katherine, Sir and Madam have thought if they’d seen him in this state? The Institute’s uniform was falling to pieces, it no longer covered his body.

Franz partied on. At least in that world no one asked him questions about the lines on his face. At parties that went on for days, that existed outside time, his past didn’t matter.

The
druffis
welcomed him. They gave him tobacco and put him up. They were his family now.