Shorter Days (10 page)

Sometime later Mini-Marco was again sitting on the sofa, now washed, wearing a clean T-shirt, his hair freshly parted. Porno had run a wet comb over his head. “If you make so much as a peep to her, you're dead. Understood?” Mini-Marco had nodded and watched as Pornstar unpacked his gym bag and a brown fake leather suitcase and hung shoes, jackets, and shirts in the closet next to the television, right next to Anita's duds, in the empty hole where Eino's clothes had been. Mini-Marco sniffled softly and went to bed. Anita came back a little later, kissed Porno, and put away the shopping. She sounded quite cheerful: “Did you two get to know each other?” “Sure we did. But the boy has a lot to learn.” When she pulled the curtain aside, all she saw by the light of the hall lamp was his hair, a shock of blond streaks. His face was buried deep in the pillow. “He's already asleep, the little freak.”

Behind the curtain, Marco switches on the lamp. Micky Mouse grins, just like always. One of his ears is taped together, but he's still glowing there in greeting. Too bad he has to stay. Won't fit in the backpack. Micky throws a circle of yellow light on the mattress, on the light blue sheets, now full of holes and as easy to tear as toilet paper. Marco tosses his backpack in a corner and squats. The tiny windowless room smells only like him. Porno's stink hasn't crept in here yet. His heart starts to pound again, but in a different way than it had at the door to the apartment. He's nervous, but not in a bad way. He rummages through the box at the foot of the bed and pulls out his Game Boy. He plays a few rounds before he feels calm enough for the note. Marco's fingers poke around under the mattress and pull out a piece of paper that's been folded many times. Anita had thrown it in the trash, so it's stained and has a long tear running through it. Marco flattens it out so he can make out the words that are neatly inscribed in blue ballpoint: “I can't stand it here anymore. I'm going home to Eestimaa. Come join me, if you want.” Then a name and address that sound like a magic spell:
Eino Rännumees
,
Pedassaare
,
Rahu mois
,
Lääne-Virumaa
.
Eestimaa
.

“His fucking Estonia, he can stick it up his ass. I'll never go there, never!” Fat Anita bawled, mascara running down her face. She wiped black streaks across her cheeks with the back of her fists. “That stupid asshole! Some shithole at the end of the earth is more important to him than us. You can forget about that piece of garbage.” Marco had flipped: “He wanted us to come! Why didn't we go? It's all your fault! I would have gone in a heartbeat, I can already say a few things, Eino taught me everything:
palun
,
aitähh
,
kiisu
,
kurat
. We'll never get to see the ocean now!”

Eino couldn't stand being in Stuttgart anymore—he missed the ocean, the smell and the cranes that flew around on late summer nights. Eino had said they sounded like dogs barking. Dogs flying over the sea. Marco wanted to hear that. Eino had everything planned: “My
vanaema
has a house called
Rahu mois
. When you stand in the kitchen to do the dishes, you can see the ocean through the window, and the pine trees that grow all the way down to the beach. Japanese roses, too—there are bushes full of them, with flowers as big as your hands. My
vanaema
lives there all alone, and she's pretty old. The house isn't in great shape—the rain comes in through the roof and it needs to be painted, but that's a not a hard job. You could help me,
karu
. There's a garden and a greenhouse for tomatoes and cucumbers, and in the sea there are more fish than you can eat, and you can build traps in the woods for
jänes
or even shoot a
põder
. Out in the sea there's a rock, and the old timers say the
vanapagan
threw it there in a rage when a clever fisherman outsmarted him. After you swim out to it, you can lie there and stare into the sky. You can see the gulls and feel the wind and the sun. We'll make the house pretty. There's an old barn and a woodshed. I've thought it all through—we can expand them and put on new roofs, put in a few nice rugs and good beds. I've saved a little. And then we can rent them out to tourists. In the summer. That's when the Finns come, and the rich Russians, and now sometimes English people and Germans, too. Anita can do it, she's good at that kind of thing, and
vanaema
can cook
eesti toit
, and I'll take the people on tours of the moor and the woods. I'll go out fishing, and we'll sit by the fireplace and drink
kohv
in the winter, when everyone's gone.”

Anita and Mini-Marco both ended up bawling, standing across from each other over the table, with the crumpled note lying between them. Then Anita had redone her makeup and gone out and not come back until morning. Before slamming the door she yelled, “Whatever. It doesn't matter anyway. I can't live with a guy who says nothing for days on end. You never know what he's thinking.” Marco didn't understand. It was fine with him if Eino didn't run his mouth all the time. And besides, Eino did talk. To him, anyway.

The idea to run away to Estonia occurred to Marco recently. He doesn't even know why it suddenly came to him. Strange, really, since the note's been in the mattress forever. Probably Mini-Marco forgot, and was too distracted by his shit-your-pants terror. In any case, he'd gotten the important piece of paper to safety, hidden from Porno. And now everything has come back: Eino, Estonia, the sea, and the note. Like a door he hadn't noticed. A door that he just has to open—open and run away. It'll work this time, he knows it. Now that Hassan has told him the story of the chickpea can.

He needs money, lots of money. Once he's there, finding Eino's place will be no big deal. He's got this—he even knows what the Estonian flag looks like: blue like cornflowers, black like a swallow's wing, white like the chalk cliffs. You have to fly there or drive—by car it takes three days, across Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania, names that mean nothing to him, but he's heard all about it from Eino. You drive through the night and then suddenly everything looks different, smells different—maybe even like the sea.

Marco won't be as dumb as he was the first time. Mini-Marco, the little idiot, had tried to run away just after his tenth birthday. He'd wanted to go to Grandma's in Marbach. Easy. He'd gone almost every weekend with Fat Anita. After school he got on the subway at Olgaeck and rode to the main train station. Then he took the S4, the dark blue commuter line, to the last stop. Mini-Marco never paid the fare, and never got caught. But he didn't make it to Schubertstraße this time because there, in the parking lot in front of the station, where the crowds from the train were dispersing, following signs with bunches of arrows that pointed in every direction, scurrying through the little park with the fountain, walking to the kiosk, there stood Porno, leaning on an open car door, huge and terrible. Mini-Marco's jeans were suddenly wet, the pee ran down into his sneakers. He wanted to run but couldn't, he just stood there like a retard. Porno grabbed him by the wrists and pulled him to the car. “Where do you think you're going, little fucker? We're not good enough for you? I can find you anywhere. I'll always catch you—remember that. Take off your clothes, I just cleaned the car yesterday, you little pisser.” Porno had pulled down his pants and kicked him. It was a beautiful April afternoon—blue sky and sun. Green and silver metal gleamed from the surrounding parking spaces, throwing shadows on Mini-Marco, who lay screaming on the ground. But not one single son of a bitch came to help him. Porno had thrown him in the trunk with a carton of low-fat milk and a pair of old sneakers. When he finally opened the metal coffin in a lonely parking lot on a country road, he grabbed Mini-Marco again and whispered in his ear: “If you come near your Grandma again, if you call her or try to come here, do you know what I'll do? I'll drive to Marbach and wait in front of her house. And when she comes out, I'll floor it and run her over. Old women can't see very well, they're a hazard to drivers. A little accident, no one will even notice. Is that what you want? No? OK—you've been warned.”

No, he won't be such a fool this time. Later Grandma Bine will get a postcard with a picture of the house—Eino's house by the sea. Mini-Marco never got why Skinny Anita stopped going to Schubertstraße. He wondered if something had happened to her: an accident, or a strange illness that had suddenly changed her completely. Mini-Marco had theories about that. Marco laughs about them now, but to Mini-Marco they'd made total sense. There was a movie about a father who drinks a can of skunky beer and turns into a monster. Mini-Marco seriously wondered if something like that had happened to Fat Anita. Maybe a monster could sneak into a human body like a burglar into a house. Because his mother had totally disappeared. Now there's only Skinny Anita, who spends most of her time hiding behind the giant figure with the tube. At the very beginning she would come behind the curtain at night and whisper: “Don't get so upset—be good, Marco. If you're good, everything will be ok. He doesn't really mean it. You have to try, Marco.” But after a while these visits stopped. She didn't seem to even see things anymore. She went to work, went to the gym with Porno, and sometimes she even forgot to set a plate for Marco at dinner. So maybe that was really it: this woman who walked around the house, ate, slept, and went to the toilet, wasn't his mother after all.

Just as Fat Anita had transformed, Marco himself has also changed. Mini-Marco had always hidden himself away like a mouse, had tried to be invisible, tried to do everything right. But since Marco's not Mini-Marco anymore, he's realized there are things he can do. He can say what's what, he can show his teeth. Hair on his chest, rage in his belly. With Murat, Hassan, and Ufuk, it was easy. They stuck together, and no one messed with them.

Marco didn't remember exactly when and how it had started. Suddenly they were just there. Probably they'd met in front of the school. They all hung around as long as possible, since no one wanted to go home. He already knew Ufuk from Jakobschule, the primary school. They lived in the same high-rise. Murat and Hassan came later. No one in their grade hung out with them. Just the three of them was enough—they didn't let anyone else get close, and they didn't let anyone mess with them. Marco didn't care. He managed to get in with them. They were tougher than everyone else, and somehow more like him. He'd never really be one of them—just about everything they did made that obvious. But their fathers beat them, just like Porno, and then there were the cousins and older brothers. Hell, they came down on anything that moved: even mothers and sisters. Still, the guys would always say: “You don't understand, they have to do that. It's about respect, about honor. You Germans don't get it.” Bullshit. But it was better not to get into it. “We-Muslims-you-pig-eaters” conversations could end badly. There was enough trouble at home. Outside, he wanted to be someone else: Tokyo-Hotel-Georg, maybe, who the girls giggled at and bumped into, who the cowards obeyed and who the really cool guys wanted to follow, recognizing him as one of their own.

When he did this thing it would be over with them, he knew that, and it made him sad. But if he caved now, he'd crack, sooner or later. You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Another one of Grandma Bine's sayings, but that's the way it was. He was going to make an omelette today, for all he was worth, and the shells, the crap that got thrown in the trash when the party was over—this time it wouldn't be him, not Marco. It would be the others: Hassan, Murat, Ufuk, and Uncle Nâzim—especially him. If it worked, what he'd been planning. Where there were gunshots or smoke, it always fell on the Turks. And today there was going to be smoke, that was for sure. And then he could run away with his pockets stuffed full, because he had a killer plan that would get him more than going through Porno's pathetic wallet or nabbing shit from younger kids on the way to school.

The story Hassan let slip while they were roaming Constantinstraße on the way to Nâzim's shop had given him the idea: “Murat has to work there now. His father's making him because he sucks at school anyway. His uncle Nâzim is a successful businessman. He's really made good, and Murat says he doesn't trust German banks, so he just sticks all his dough in a can—an old chickpea can. Smart guy, Nâzim. And so he hides the can somewhere in the shop. Pretty dope, right?”

Marco thought smart old Nâzim looked gay in that hat he always wore. But that didn't mean anything—Turks kissed each other just to say hi. Marco had never been in Nâzim's shop, with its fancy striped awning. Anita shopped at the discount supermarkets. Funny, that he hardly ever went to the far end of Constantinstraße. He knew Wren House. Mini-Marco used to hang out there before Porno came on the scene. And there was the Bopser playground, up by the subway. They fooled around there sometimes in the evenings, hanging on the monkey bars, smoking and drinking. Ufuk had fucked some slut from their grade there once too, in the little playhouse on the jungle gym. But they always got there by going up the Wächterstaffel steps. A little huffing and puffing and then you were there. It was only Murat's forced labor that put the shop on his map. They had all kinds of booze in there. At first he'd only thought about convincing Murat to steal a few bottles. Even with all his scolding, gay old Nâzim wouldn't have done anything if they carted off half the store.

But the can—of course that was better than a whole bathtub full of booze. He had to get it. Tons of cash, enough to get away, far and fast. Estonia instead of Marbach, that would really be something. He wouldn't take the dopey commuter line, he'd take a real train, maybe even an ICE. He just needed to grab the loot. Marco folded the note again and put it in his pocket. I'm coming, Eino.

Obviously he'd have to steer clear of the others if he left right now. They'd be where they always were—in the Olgaeck underpass, by Werner's kiosk, on the steps by the parking garage in Blumenstraße, or between Lidl and the sex shop. It wouldn't be hard to avoid them, their turf is small. He'd just tramp up to the fountain chick and wait there. He wouldn't be noticed, and he'd have a good view of Nâzim's rathole and all of Constantinstraße. Constantin, what a dumb name—as dumb as most of the names around here: Olga, Alexander, Katharina.

The fountain marks the border of his turf. Just like above it, the houses are old, but down here they're black and crumbling. Rank smells come from the cellars, and the courtyards are full of old junk. Then there's Marco's high-rise, a giant watchtower with Constantinstraße and Charlottenstraße slicing past beneath it, the subway and the roar of traffic. The fountain chick is in Zone 30. She sits there, hair piled on her head, pointy breasts: each one would fit perfectly in a hand, cold and smooth. She sits up there with her slim white legs crossed, showing a little ass, which is just as small and fine as the rest of her body. Marco thinks the fountain chick fits the spot perfectly. None of the women he knows could look like that—definitely not without clothes. She's like the people who live here in this neighborhood, where super-cars are parked bumper to bumper and there's not a scrap on the sidewalk. She's like the woman he rang up after the Halloween party at Wren House. The redhead who opened the door of her gigantic digs in tights. She'd flirted with them—really flirted, and had given them candy, and still kept this look on her face like: “You can't have me. I'm cool and you're shit.” She had way more than she deserved. And she was right here, in Stuttgart, two streets over, a two-minute walk, just up one set of steps. And that's just how it was with the cash that he needed. It was waiting for him, so close, rolled up in a can.