All the Lights (11 page)

‘How long have you been standing here now?’

‘For a while, quite a while, I’ve earned a packet, hey, I’ll get you a drink!’ He held the notes in front of my nose, but I batted his hand away.

‘Right, come on, we’re getting out of here!’ I dragged him to the exit, and it was about time because they were coming for him now, a couple of yards behind us, the first of the village idiots who’d noticed that the pills Blondie was selling didn’t make them go quite as mental as he’d promised. And even though they weren’t in any pain, they still wanted their money back and they wanted to inflict some pain on Blondie. Five or six guys, young lads waving their arms and pointing at us, or only at him but I’d decided – no, not decided, it had just happened, and I was with him, right in the thick of it, and I let it happen. ‘Come on, let’s go!’ Then we were outside, and they were still coming after us, five or six young lads, and there were more and more of them now. We walked towards the station, and then we ran, and I shouted, ‘You fucking idiot – painkillers!’ And he laughed as we ran, and suddenly I couldn’t help laughing either, and I got a stitch.

‘Painkillers, you halfwits bought Polish painkillers!’

Did he shout, did I shout? Did we both shout while the village idiots were coming after us? We laughed and ran.

He lay next to me in bed and I watched him sleeping. We were in a cheap dive and the bed was far too small for two. We’d stayed in good hotels a couple of times, separate beds, and one time we’d had a room each. But when I’d woken up early he was lying on the carpet next to my bed. He had a talent for opening doors, and I’d found a blanket and covered him over.

He looked pretty pale lying next to me in bed, asleep, his head shifting on the pillow now and then. He’d snorted something to help him sleep, probably heroin. He always made sure I didn’t watch him doing it, even though I’d never said anything, and I needed some of it myself some nights. We took trains from town to town, usually medium-sized towns, sometimes the big cities, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, he’d been almost everywhere and he knew where we could go on tour. I can’t remember exactly where we’d started it all, it was probably some kind of coincidence, happened without us thinking much about it, turned out that way while we were riding the rails and didn’t know where to go next. Sometimes I thought … No, I hardly ever thought about it, it was as if we belonged together, like brothers, I told myself, and when we were sitting on trains, sleeping in hotel rooms, walking through the towns, it was as if we had to keep moving, and everything else that was behind us, that lay before us, was strangely blurred. We didn’t care about it, we were riding the rails.

I saw them sometimes when I slept. They were usually older men, sometimes young ones too. I saw the fear on their faces, in their eyes. Usually I didn’t even have to touch them. One old man had started crying. He was wearing a bit of make up, blusher on his cheeks – a painted old man crying and turning to the wall while I went though his pockets.

‘Stop crying, you queen,’ said Blondie, and before I could stop him he slapped him across the face. ‘Leave it out,’ I said, but he just looked at his hand, stained with blusher and the old man’s tears. ‘Dirty bastard, you fucking dirty bastard!’ He wiped his hand clean on the old man’s jacket. ‘This fucking queen’s got me all dirty.’

‘Leave it,’ I said, taking a couple of notes out of the old man’s wallet. He was still crying and he’d started trembling. I put the wallet back in his jacket and the old man trembled and said, ‘Please don’t hurt me.’ That had been up on the coast, by the door to the basement in a house near where the rent boys stood at night.

‘You mustn’t ever leave me alone then,’ said Blondie. He’d woken up. His eyes were blue, dark blue. Up on the coast, we’d often stood by the sea together.

‘How d’you mean?’ I asked, turning my head to look at the ceiling. The light was on, a couple of flies perched around it.

‘When I go with them,’ he said, and I felt him moving his legs, ‘promise me you’ll never …’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘You know that, Stephan, you know I’ll be there then, you know I’ll always come. We’re raking it in, you and me, they’re all village idiots, even in Hamburg, even in Cologne, eh?’ I laughed, and for a moment it looked like the light was flickering.

‘Village idiots,’ he said. He was talking pretty quietly now. I could hardly understand him and I turned back to him. ‘We’re doing pretty good,’ he whispered.

‘Yeah, we are,’ I said, putting my hand down on the pillow next to him.

‘Better than back then,’ he whispered. ‘Better than …’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘better than back then.’

‘Can you get me something please?’

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘if you want.’

‘No,’ he whispered. ‘A glass of water’s fine.’

‘Or a whisky, what about a wee dram, Stephan, help you sleep …’

‘No thanks, a glass of water’s fine.’ We looked at each other and he smiled. I got up and went to the table with the bottles of water and whisky. I drank a slug of whisky out of the bottle and poured a glass of water for him. I looked over at him and had another drink and saw his eyes moving, looking at me now. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘sometimes …’

‘Yeah?’ I said, screwing the cap back on the whisky bottle. He didn’t answer, and I asked, ‘Shall I turn the light off?’ I took the glass of water over to the bed. He’d closed his eyes and I sat down on the edge of the bed. His forehead was soaked in sweat, and I raised my hand but just put it down on the pillow next to him. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘sometimes …’ I drank his water and pushed the empty glass under the bed.

I saw their faces sometimes when I slept. There was one man who put up a bit of a fight. He was already near-naked and Blondie had taken his shirt off as well. Pretty young lad he was, with glasses, maybe a student. He was pretty well-built too but he wore glasses with black frames and pretty thick lenses. I didn’t usually even have to touch them, but this young lad was in his room, his own little room, and he wanted to defend it, it wasn’t just some cheap hotel, some corridor, some dark corner where he’d got himself a quick blow job, it was his own little home that he’d taken Stephan back to, and I’d almost come too late because the door was closed. Blondie hadn’t managed to open the door for me. He’d been lying on the bed, the student on top of him, he was a pretty broad well-built lad, probably not a student at all, a queer builder or an office worker who lifted weights, and all I saw was Stephan’s arms on the sheet next to the guy. ‘You can tell the cops your story, eh, about picking up a rent boy. You hit him, eh? Did you force him?’ There was a bottle of whisky on the bedside table; I unscrewed the cap. ‘Maybe I’ll go to the cops and tell them you beat him up.’ I held his ID card in my hand and said, ‘I bet your parents are nice people, eh?’

‘I didn’t hit anyone,’ he said. His glasses were on the bedside table next to the bottle; one of the arms was broken. I drank a glug of the whisky and said something about compensation and was surprised he didn’t start crying like the old man had cried, outside the basement door up on the coast. He pressed a hand to his eye but there was no blood, and with the other eye he looked between me and Stephan, who was sitting at the table buttoning up his shirt. I said, ‘Stephan,’ and I threw him the whisky bottle, but he didn’t catch it and it fell on the floor and smashed. Was that the first time we went on tour?

I heard him breathing next to me and looked at the ceiling. The flies had gone.

We were sitting at a small table right by the huge window. It was night, and all the lights of the city lay twenty-seven floors below us. I don’t know whose idea it had been to come to Leipzig. We’d passed through a couple of villages around it, knocking off a load of dodgy pills. Then we’d picked up two guys in a dark park next to the ethnology museum, and now we were high above the city, five-star hotel, drinking kir royale and champagne and looking out across the lights on all the buildings, in the streets, eating starters and desserts, cod liver and prunes in bacon, cheese platters and turkey medallions, waving over the waiters who came trundling between the tables with little carts. ‘Would the gentlemen care for a choice pear brandy from the private distillery …?’

‘The gentlemen would,’ said Stephan, and the waiter fussed around, placing two little glasses on the table and filling them up with even more fuss.

‘Enjoy your drinks, gentlemen,’ he said with a slight bow of his torso, then trundled off with his cart.

‘Enjoy your drink, gentleman,’ I said as I raised my glass.

‘I will,’ said Stephan, and then we touched glasses. We downed the choice pear brandy from some private distillery in one. ‘What d’you reckon it costs?’

‘No idea,’ I said.

He nodded and tapped his breast pocket. ‘I’ve got it covered.’

‘And if not?’

‘Then you’ll have to box us out of here,’ he said, patting my hand for a moment. ‘When we’re on tour together, you know, I’m never scared.’ He patted my hand again, and when I went to take it away again he held onto it, and first I pulled a bit and then my arm went suddenly slack, and he lifted up my hand. ‘Your hands are so small though,’ he said, ‘almost smaller than mine, see?’ He was still holding onto my hand and now he put his other hand up against it. ‘Doesn’t it hurt when you punch them?’ I leant back with a jerk, wrenching my arm away so that his hands fell on the table. He was sitting bent over the table, and for a tiny moment it looked as though he was going to lay his face on his hands. He still had a trace of lipstick on, although he’d wiped his lips with a tissue. He’d used black mascara on his lashes and eyebrows. We’d taken the money straight to the restaurant. ‘A table for two!’ And the waiters had given us a funny look, ‘right by the window, if possible!’ And the people at the other tables had turned around, maybe because I’d turned my sleeve up a bit and they could see the lizard. I took the champagne out of the cooler and filled our glasses. He drank a sip and said, ‘You know, I’ve never drunk champagne before.’ He’d leaned back as well; his face was in the shade now, not looking so pale any more. He smiled.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Why not?’ He drank another sip, then he took a piece of bread from the basket full of all different, probably exquisite slices of bread from some private bakery. ‘You reckon just because I’m queer I ought to know all about champagne and that?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘you know I didn’t mean it like that, you know I …’ I picked up my champagne and tried to down it in one, but the stuff fizzed so hard in my nose that I put it back down on the table halfway through.

‘Yes,’he said, ‘I know. I didn’t mean it like that.’ He dipped the piece of bread in the remains of his cod-liver paté. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we, we’re almost like …’ He ate the bread and cod-liver paté and I picked up my glass. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we are.’ We drank and looked out at the city again. There seemed to be more and more lights down there, red lights and yellow and white, lights that flickered, lights that moved around and disappeared again. We were silent for a long while until one of the waiters came trundling up again with his cart. ‘Would you care for a cigar, gentlemen?’

‘You choose two for us,’ I told him. ‘Two good ones.’ Stephan nudged my leg under the table. ‘We fancy a really good cigar, don’t we Stephan?’

And then we smoked and the waiter trundled off with his cart. It had taken him ages to choose two cigars, present them to us and then prepare them. We smoked, smoked hectically and quickly, I hadn’t smoked a cigar for years, and Stephan can’t have done either, and the smoke hung between us in dense swathes.

‘Do you think they’re looking for us?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘don’t you worry, Stephan. Those guys would never go to the cops.’

‘Even if they do,’ he sucked at his cigar and thought for a moment, ‘it doesn’t make any difference.’ He smiled, breathing out smoke.

‘No,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t make any difference.’

‘Remember back in Torgau …’

‘Not now,’ I said, and he said, ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s all right. Do you want a dessert?’

‘Sure, why not?’

Looking out of the window, I could see the big bridge. A couple of ships in front of it, but it was almost dark. I was drinking whisky, my watch next to my glass.

‘He’s a pretty dodgy guy,’ Stephan had said. ‘Does all sorts of stuff. Sex toys and bondage and that. Picks up boys on the street, he’s into picking them up off the street. I know where, and I know how. It’s worth it, he’s loaded.’

‘How d’you know about him?’

‘From a friend.’

‘You’re not as young as you used to be, Stephan.’

‘Hey, come on.’ He’d smiled, and then he’d added, ‘Young enough for him, as long as I play along.’

‘Play along?’

‘You know, everything he wants. Even if it hurts.’

‘If it hurts,’ I’d said, and he’d kept on smiling.

‘And your friend?’

‘That lad in Berlin, you remember …’

‘Yeah.’ He’d been there for a while, while I’d been working in a bar with an old mate I knew from inside, serving customers, keeping the peace and whatever came up.

‘I need a holiday,’ he’d said.

‘Sure, you take a bit of a rest.’ He’d been there a couple of weeks, with his ‘lad’, while I was in the bar every night and couldn’t sleep in the day, a bed in the back room, far too small for two, and I’d left the light on, but now we were riding the rails again.

‘Come by around ten. His flat’s out by the harbour, I’ll write the address down for you.’

‘No, I want to see it before. It’s safer that way. Then I’ll stay close by.’

And I was close by. I was drinking whisky and looking at the big bridge and the ships disappearing slowly in the darkness. There was one very large ship, with several decks one above the other. I ordered another whisky, then another. I looked at the hands of my watch.

There was a woman next to me at the bar, drinking as well, a large cocktail. I’d ordered it for her. ‘Are you waiting for someone?’ asked the woman. She’d asked me a couple of things before but I’d just answered yes or no and then ordered her the cocktail. It had been a long time since a woman had asked me to get her a drink.