You (22 page)

She takes you under the armpits and struggles as she drags you down the stairs. She’s crying as she does so. Your strong girl is crying. Her plan isn’t the dignified departure from this world that you imagined. But it’s only temporary. That’s what you hope. And besides, she’s talking to you again. Her thoughts are one thing, her voice another.

“I don’t know what else to do. I … I don’t want them to come and get me. And … I don’t want you to … I can’t bury you either, Dad, I can’t …”

She clears out the chest freezer and piles up the frozen packets, fish and meat. A lot that you’ve hunted yourself, with Tanner by your side, early in the morning in the forest north of Berlin, the fairy-tale silence, branches breaking and then the shot. When Taja has made enough room, she heaves you into the freezer. If your body was still in a state of rigor mortis, it wouldn’t work. But you bend easily and she lifts you onto a bag of fish and you sit there almost in the same position as you were in on the sofa. When you topple slightly to the side, Taja wedges two packs of sirloin between your shoulder and the wall. That’s better, even though you’re leaning slightly backward and looking up. Taja tries to free the remote control from your hand. Nothing to be done, you won’t let go of it. She bends down to you in the freezer, strokes your head, and promises she’ll be back soon.

“I’ll be back soon.”

There’s a
whup
.

It’s dark.

You’re sitting in the cold.

Soon
is just a word.

And you sit in the cold. And you sit in the cold.

And you sit and sit in the cold.

The freezer opens, and there’s a scream. First one scream, then three, in the end it’s four screaming girls staring down at you. Their screams subside. You’re proud of your daughter for finally overcoming her stubbornness and calling her friends for help. You can tell them apart, even though you have to get their thoughts in order first. Stink​Ruth​Nessi​Schnappi. Taja used to give a pajama party every month. When she did, you left the house voluntarily. Any single father should respect his daughter’s wishes.

It would be nice if you could calm the girls down with a few words.
It’s not as bad as it looks like
, you would say, but of course
that doesn’t happen, only the cold from the freezer reacts, it rises into the warmth in threads of mist and settles on the girls’ faces as if your soul were stretching its fingers out to them. Feeling nothing has its advantages. After five days you’re a lump of deep-frozen meat.

“Is he really dead?” Schnappi asks.

“Do you think he’s sitting in there to cool himself down?” Stink asks irritably.

“That’s perverse,” says Nessi, and as she does so you know that she’s pregnant. You also know the name of the boy who deliberately didn’t put on a condom because he thought it would be okay without. Nessi trusted him.
Poor Nessi
, you think, and hear the unborn child’s heartbeat like whispered drumming. You know what it is going to be.

“Why did you just stick him in there?” Ruth asks. She’s the sensible one who always questions everything. Once she asked you if it wasn’t incredibly boring, squandering your talent like that. She thought jingles were commercial shit. If she hadn’t been your daughter’s friend, you’d probably have thrown her out on day one.

You concentrate on Taja. She’s completely wrecked. Her body is pulsing greedily for the heroin, it’s a dull, weary sound. Her heart’s racing, her lungs are sluggish, her jaw is trembling, and there’s a rotten taste in her mouth as soon as she thinks about heroin. And she thinks about it almost constantly.

Longing, she’s longing
.

Taja tells the girls about her fear of ending up with her relatives. She knows your brother will never take her in. She’s right to suspect as much. Ragnar has enough to do with his company. As soon as your death is official, your aunt will take care of Taja. Your little one is a minor, what say does she have? It would mean a new life in Dortmund. Her third life. Taja doesn’t want a third life.

“And how long were you planning on hiding him here?”

“I don’t know. I thought …”

Taja hunches her shoulders. Helpless and anxious.

“I really didn’t mean to kill him, I was just furious and all of a sudden …”

Silence. Stink’s snotty voice.

“What’s that crap all about?”

“What crap?”

“Who says you killed him?”

“But he
is
dead.”

Schnappi joins in.

“Just because you want someone to die, it doesn’t mean he dies because you wished for him to die. If that was the case half the city would be dead. Christ, Taja, he could have had a heart attack or one of those stroke things. The amount of drugs he did, it would hardly be a surprise.”

Thanks, Schnappi
.

Before Taja can process all that, Stink speaks again. Even though she’s got on your nerves more than once, you admire her at that moment. Because she never keeps her head down, because she always sees the funny side in every tragedy. Like now, when she says, “Maybe he’s just pretending.”

Her face suddenly appears in front of yours. Freckles and that little gap between her front teeth. She bats her eyelashes at you and says, “Hello?!”

Hello
.

“That’s not funny,” says Ruth.

Stink disappears from your field of vision. If you were sixteen again, you’d fall in love with her in an instant. Because she’s a mystery and nobody knows what she’s going to get up to next.

“Was that why you pumped yourself full with drugs?” she asks Taja, and doesn’t wait for the answer, but adds: “How stupid are you, by the way? We live in the same city, have you forgotten that? If you’ve got a problem, you come to us, you don’t get shitfaced.”

“I know,” Taja says in a small voice.

“Leave her be, this isn’t going to do any good,” Nessi cuts in. “We should be thinking about what to do next.”

They all look at you.

“The party is over,” says Stink.

She steps forward and slams the freezer shut.

Darkness, my old friend
.

They look at you in horror.

“What’s up? Did you want to look at him for longer?” you ask, and you’re glad the lid is closed. A corpse is bad enough, but a corpse sitting in a freezer like a popsicle, no, there are limits. Dead is dead.

“You could have closed the lid more gently,” says Nessi.

“Have I hurt your feelings?”

“Not mine, but maybe his.”

“Honey, he hasn’t got any feelings now.”

“That’s what you say.”

“It’s what I know.”

“Is that really true?”

“Yes, it’s really true, I’m an expert on dead people.”

You grin at Nessi, Nessi grins back, and then you remember what you’re actually doing here, and you look at Taja. Her lower lip is trembling, her eyes are wide. Her father is lying in that awful chest freezer and you’re messing around with Nessi. Well done.

Yes, but her father’s in there because it’s where she put him
.

It is a good thing you keep your mouth shut. Schnappi flips you the finger. Ruth puts an arm around Taja and says, “Come on, let’s go back up.”

Taja feels ill again and goes off to the bathroom on the first floor. Your girls are sitting outside and totally exhausted. You feel like that guy in
Clockwork Orange
when he has his eyelids pinned back
and has to watch movies for hours and hours. Cramped, alert, and totally hyped. Every time you pull a face, it takes a while before your expression is back to normal.

It’s eight o’clock in the morning and the night is still in your limbs. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t sleep now. Your head is wired, your thoughts won’t rest, and then there’s this weather—the sunbeams stretch over the hedge and scratch their way across the terrace like a lunatic who hasn’t cut his fingernails. It’s a dazzling day, which doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. It should be stormy and raining. Dazzling days put you in a good mood, and the mood among you girls is anything but dazzling.

“We need to sleep,” says Nessi.

Schnappi yawns so hard that her jaw clicks. She rubs her cheek, and has a tear in the corner of her eye.

“Girls, I can’t sleep in daylight. Don’t look at me like this, I’ve never been able to. I can only get my eyes shut when it’s dark outside.”

You’re about to tell her you haven’t heard such nonsense for a very long time, when you’re interrupted by a loud retching noise from the guest bathroom. Nessi immediately gets up, Ruth joins her, and you tag along too, only Schnappi leaves her small ass where it is and says too many cooks spoil the soup.

Taja sits on the toilet seat and can’t stand up.

“My legs aren’t working properly.”

You all help her up. She doesn’t want to go back to bed, she wants to be with the rest of you. So you take her outside. Of course Schnappi has gone to sleep, mouth open, like a baby waiting to be fed. Nessi fetches water from the kitchen, while you cushion one of the deck chairs with blankets. Taja’s forehead is coated in a greasy film of sweat, her upper arms are patchy and red, and although she washed an hour ago, she’s giving off a tangy smell. Nessi comes with the water, Taja drinks greedily. Ruth sets the bag of drugs down on the end of the table.

“Since when have you been taking this stuff?”

The answer is so quiet that you have to lean forward to understand Taja.

“For a few days.”

“And how many times a day?”

“Now and again.”

“Taja, look at me. How often?”

They look at each other. Taja holds the eye contact for two seconds, then she stares at her hands and admits that she’s been living on nothing but the powder for the last five days. Nessi pulls a face and narrows her eyes, which would have looked funny on any other day. You are watching Taja.
How on earth could it come to this? And why didn’t she call us?
That’s the thing that pisses you off the most.
We were there, after all
. Taja says, “After my father … died, at first I did nothing but drink. And then … then I discovered that stuff.” She tilts her chin toward the plastic bag. The tip of her tongue darts over her lips, and she gulps as if she has something in her mouth. Nessi tops up her glass. She drinks gratefully.

“It really helped, you know? I calmed down and I could sleep again, and when I was awake I took some more. It helped me, it turned me …”

She shrugs her shoulders, lets them slump.

“… good again.”

You pull the bag over to you and take a look at the powder.

“What is this stuff?”

“Coke or something,” says Taja.

Ruth thinks she’s misheard.

“You don’t even know
what
it is?”

Taja lowers her head. You want to put yourself between them. Ruth can kill with words. Perhaps she should become a lawyer. That would fit. And then one day if you end up in court Ruth will be standing there in a business suit, defending you, and in the end you’ll be sitting on a terrace, smoking cigars and laughing at the law. “When did you last take the stuff?” she asks.

“Before I sent you that text.”

Ruth looks at her cell phone.

“So, five hours ago. Who knows, maybe you’re feeling so shitty because you’re suffering withdrawal symptoms.”

Taja laughs weakly.

“That’s stupid, I’m not a junkie.”

You all just look at her. Even though you have barely any experience
of hard drugs, it was the only topic at school that you really listened to. Pure self-defense, because you can never know what’s going to cross your path.

Schnappi suddenly wakes up and sits upright on the deck chair as if she’s been struck by lightning. She looks confusedly around and says, “Girls, I thought I was in a war.”

“What sort of war?” you ask.

“I don’t know. War is war. We were all trapped. We were in this run-down house, pretty much of a dump, and we couldn’t get out.”

She points at Nessi and you.

“You and you. We were standing in an ancient kitchen and there was this zombie or something. But not the kind that bites you, it wanted something. And there was blood flowing down one of the walls, it was really steaming, it was so hot. And you …”

She points at Taja.

“… hid yourself. Why did you hide? In the dream it drove me half nuts not knowing where you were. Do you have any idea why it should be me dreaming that kind of shit?”

She points at the water.

“And I’m thirsty.”

Nessi passes her the bottle. Schnappi drinks and notices Taja’s chalk-white face and asks if she’s missed anything. Ruth gives it to her straight.

“Taja’s a junkie.”

“Crap, I’m not a junkie!”

“How full was that bag before you got going on it?”

“I don’t know.”

Schnappi looks around, confused.

“What’s the problem? Her father’s dead, let her be a junkie for a few days.”

“Thanks,” says Taja, and seriously believes she is off the hook. That means she doesn’t know Schnappi very well. Miss Saigon nods contentedly and performs one of those elegant lane changes that you’ll never quite get used to.

“Be honest, what’s up with your mother?”

Taja looks at you, appealing for help, as if one of you could put the brakes on Schnappi. No one can.