You (36 page)

Dennis and Robbie jumped screeching over you into the water, and you followed their bare backsides as if they were light-buoys. Robbie was small and agile and incredibly quick. Every time you caught him, you heard one of his sayings.

“A few planks in the fireplace don’t make a forest.”

“Not every spirit is a bottle.”

“He who has lots in his head need not care about gravity.”

Dennis laughed at the sayings. At first. But when he was the hunter, and Robbie slipped away from him, Dennis slowly started losing his temper.

“Just shut your trap!” he yelled.

Robbie said, “Not every deep well has good water.”

You wanted to warn Robbie, you wanted to remind him that a snowman doesn’t pee on the fire, but you kept your mouth shut, because it was a game, it was fun, and you’d had a lot of trouble catching Robbie yourself. You liked the fact that Dennis was suffering a bit as well.

“One more saying and then—” he said and broke off.

“Then what?” Robbie asked in reply and psyched himself up at the edge of the pool, fists pressed to his side, chin jutting defiantly. His dick had shrunk from the cold and looked like a nut with a nose. You stood in front of him shivering. You could have gone on playing cockhunting all day, because the cold didn’t matter to you as long as you knew that warmth awaited you in the pool. The anticipation was better than the game itself.

“You want to know what comes next?” asked Dennis.

Robbie nodded.

“A punch in the face, that’s what comes next.”

“What a spoilsport you are,” said Robbie and jumped over Dennis in a high arc. He reemerged at the other end of the pool, long before Dennis had even reached the middle of the pool.

“What was that?” asked Robbie. “Did you even move?”

“Just shut your mouth,” Dennis called to him, “or I’ll stuff it for you, okay?”

Robbie stayed in the water. He spread his arms and rested them on either side of him, on the edge of the pool. He thought. He tried very hard, this one wasn’t off the cuff, he wanted to outdo all the sayings in the world.

“Four inches,” he said sagely. “Four inches is a short end.”

Dennis leans whimpering against the wall, hugging his elbow. You’re sitting on the sofa again, and everything’s set out. A splint, a bandage, and a few of the painkillers that your mother always takes when she has a particularly bad period.

“How … how could you … oh Christ, my … my fucking arm!”

Dennis is now younger than you. Weaker. He fears you. You hope that fear is going to keep growing.

“Not a word,” you say.

“You fucking …”

“Not a word,” you say again.

The rubber hammer lies on the coffee table between you. You see Dennis staring at it.

“If you like, I can break your other arm too,” you suggest, and Dennis bites his lower lip and goes on quietly whimpering.

He chased Robbie diagonally across the pool. Not pausing, not playing. As he did so, Dennis started climbing out of the water, completely ignoring the rules. But Robbie was still uncatchable. It could have gone on forever. When Robbie swam past you again, you finally grabbed him. It happened, it needed no explanation, your instinct told you:
Grab him
.

Dennis uttered a cry of triumph and came crawling over.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” said Robbie and tried to escape from your clutches.

“I want a saying,” you said.

Dennis came closer and closer.

Robbie started flailing with his fists.

You gripped him tighter.

“I don’t know any,” he said.

“Just one saying, Robbie,” you repeated and laughed, because
it was stupid, it was really stupid, and yet it was important to you to hear a saying right here, right now. Robbie was the wordmaster. It was a mystery to you how he could always have a ready saying on his lips. He never repeated himself. Once he claimed it was the Chinese blood in his veins. And he had crossed his fingers, because of course there were no Chinese people in his family.

“Come on,” you urged him. “A saying and I’ll let you go right away.”

Robbie closed his eyes, concentrated, and said, “If a cat was a horse …”

He got no further than that. Dennis caught up with you, and Dennis was furious.

“Say that again,” he demanded.

Robbie turned around.

“What?”

Dennis thumped him on the ear, there was a splash, water sprayed on your face, Robbie’s ear turned red.

“Say that again,” said Dennis.

“The one about the well?”

“The one about my cock, you moron.”

“I didn’t say—”

Another slap, water spraying up, Robbie pulled a face, your hands were still tightly gripping his upper arms. The snow was tattooing your face so that he had to narrow his eyes slightly.

“That’s enough,” said Robbie suddenly sober and looked at you. At you, as if you were the one who had hit him. You hadn’t. So you grinned and said, “Give me a saying first.”

“Let me go!”

“Say that again,” said Dennis and hit him again.

From that moment Robbie started seriously kicking out around him. You held him tight, Dennis ducked Robbie’s head under the water, let him come back up again, and said, “Four inches, hmm, did you say four inches?”

“Did I?”

“Four inches, I heard it, or didn’t I?”

“He who asks many questions,” Robbie panted, “has no sense of humor.”

You exploded with laughter, panic, and nerves. Your blood
was boiling. Dennis ducked Robbie’s head under the water again. Your excited blood made you sweat in the water. Robbie kicked out, caught you on the hip, and surfaced again. You couldn’t stop laughing.

“Just give me a saying,” you said, “one saying and you’re free.”

You liked this game much more than cockhunting. You liked it because you had a tight hold on Robbie and because you liked Dennis—in his rage and desperation. There were days when you liked Dennis more than Robbie. Days like this. Dennis never laughed when you had an orgasm and wouldn’t open your eyes. He understood that you were dreaming about girls. He always said:
Just shut your eyes, it’ll feel better
. And Robbie always said:
Just don’t come on my shirt, dude
.

Robbie spat in your face, and at last it was your turn to duck his head under.

It went back and forth, back and forth, and you drifted away from the edge of the pool. Robbie was getting weaker, his eyes rolled, he gasped for air. And when Dennis said that was enough, you asked for a saying for the thousandth time, and nothing occurred to Robbie, nothing at all, so you wrapped your legs around his hips and held him tightly in your arms.

And you went under like that.

And Dennis cleared off.

And Robbie and you, you went under.

Just like that.

Dennis doesn’t speak. His chin quivers, his eyes are glazed, he has taken three of the tablets. You wonder what his gaze would be like if you’d forced him to swallow them all.

“This stays strictly between us,” you say at the door.

Dennis can’t look at you. Tears are running down his cheeks. It isn’t because of the pain, and it isn’t because of Robbie. He’s crying out of fear, fear of you.

“Good,” you say and close the door.

After that you hid in the snow. You watched Robbie’s corpse drifting in the middle of the pool. His butt was paler than his back, his shoulder blades were like narrow hills, and his hair fanned around his head as if it had a life of its own. You were glad he was lying facedown in the water. The snow surrounded him like a raging curtain. Fine mist rose from his back. As if his body could only breathe through its skin now. As if his soul was dissolving into haze.

His mother’s car stopped with a crunch of gravel in the drive. She got out. Her footsteps on the way stirred the snow awake. She carried the shopping into the kitchen, and then her voice rang out. She called Robbie’s name. She couldn’t have known that she would never call his name again. And then she came to the big window that led down to the terrace, and spotted Robbie in the pool. You waited until she spotted him. It had to happen. You couldn’t just leave Robbie alone. And when his mother screamed, you hauled yourself up out of the snow and went home.

It’s the night after. After Robbie, after Dennis, after you. You crept off and climbed over the garden fence. The key hung on a hook beside the door to the terrace. You got undressed and put your clothes neatly on a chair. The water is lukewarm.

The roof slides open, the night is as wide as if your life had no beginning and no ending. You lie on your back and float. You’re naked and calm. After Robbie’s death you were sure that lots of things would come to an end. You thought there would never be another starry night. You were also sure the snow would cover the whole world and usher in a new ice age.

There are millions of stars shining above you, and it’s stopped snowing.

Every end is a beginning
.

You lie still and motionless in the water and stare into the sky above you. Robbie’s parents are asleep, your parents are asleep, the world has turned away from you. That’s as it should be. It feels as if your soul might break away from your body at any moment and
rise into the night. Like snow in reverse. Then your soul would meet Robbie’s soul up there. Robbie’s probably waiting for you. You move your arms very slightly. You have a thought, and the thought makes you smile.
He will have a long wait
, you think, and move your arms like an angel resting its wings for a while.

And that’s how it started.

Who thought we’d be seeing you again? Quite honestly, no one. But here you are again, three days later and still with a broken heart. You’re sitting completely overtired on a park bench on the shoreline of the Alster, watching the sun rising sluggishly over Hamburg as if it had been diving all night long after gold.

It’s half past eight on Friday morning, and you’d be happier if you were in bed. It was a rough night—a concert followed by a party, and you ended up with a woman you’d shared a taxi with. Tina or Gina or whatever. Women like you. You had sex for the first time on your fourteenth birthday after your best friend’s sister took you aside and told you she had something to show you. She was the first who left the hole inside you. Perhaps it’s a virus, perhaps you’re really cursed, at any rate since that day you’ve been searching tirelessly for your great love. You don’t know if the yearning gets more intense with age, and if it does you can understand why people slit their wrists or watch romantic comedies all day. That hole in your heart won’t leave you alone. You can wake up next to as many women as you like, it’s never the real thing. The soul is missing. That one soul. And sometimes you have to drive two hundred miles to discover that that one soul isn’t to be found in Berlin.

This morning you awoke drenched in sweat and your heart was racing. You’ve always found it hard sleeping in strange apartments. Tina or Gina or whatever didn’t wake up when you left her bed and crept into the corridor. Two of the doors were shut, the third was open. A man lay diagonally across a bed, snoring with his mouth
open, and opposite him a woman sat by the open window staring into the dawn. She was wearing only a T-shirt and smoking a cigarette. She didn’t notice you. A Saint Bernard came trotting out of the kitchen and looked at you reproachfully, as if you’d been neglecting him for years. He stopped in front of you with a snort and blocked your path. You pushed him aside and closed the apartment door behind you.

The party was in Eimsbüttel, but street signs don’t lie, you are definitely in Altona. For a while you walked through the area, wired and clueless. The night was still deep in your bones, every footstep felt as if you were moving through Jell-O. You bought a coffee and a croissant at the bakery. You sat at a bus stop and watched the city wake up. Sometimes these moments of exhaustion are like a drug. They make you feel as if you’re part of things, as if the people around you are props, the buildings are façades, and the weather is the perfect backdrop for another day in your life. Then there’s the soundtrack—footsteps on the pavement, front doors closing, and the dry clap of pigeons’ wings fluttering as a dog snaps at them. There was a permanent grin on your lips and not a single thought about the future in your head.