Each boy sat at one end of the pipe. They spoke to each other in a whisper, and the echo carried their voices and made them sound weird.
When they come creeping, give me a sign
.
Sure thing
.
Do you have enough ammo?
When my gun’s empty I’ll start throwing rocks
.
Butch, what can you do with rocks?
Wait and see, Sundance, just wait and see
.
The rain came unexpectedly. No clouds, it came pelting down as if from nowhere. A summer storm in Berlin had always been a small miracle as far as the boys were concerned. For a while they just looked into the sky and couldn’t believe it. They stepped out of the pipe, stood shoulder to shoulder and laughed. The rain came whispering down on them. Their clothes clung to their bodies like a cocoon, their bony joints shining through. Even now, when you close your eyes, you can feel that warm rain. Summer rain. Unexpected and mild and in the midst of it two boys laughing as they stretch their arms into the air.
Eventually they sought refuge in the pipe again, and sat down together at one end. They pressed their sneakers against the inside wall and spat outside into the rain. They were so unsuspecting.
Butch heard the noise of the engine first. Shortly afterwards came the squelch of tires in mud. A car parked by the building-site fence. The boys ducked down in the pipe. Maybe it was a security guard, maybe they’d been seen. But it wasn’t a security guard. A man and a woman were sitting in the car. The man had a cigarette between his lips, the woman had flipped the mirror down and was doing her makeup. They could only be made out vaguely through the pouring rain. After a while the man got out, stood by the fence and peed.
Butch laughed out loud when he saw that. His laughter echoed down the pipe like the sound of someone quickly clapping. Sundance hissed a warning at him, and they retreated further down the pipe, but it was no good, Butch had lost control of himself.
“So what have we here?”
The man’s face had appeared at the entrance. Like a moon breaking through cloud cover. The boys didn’t run away. They were so young and naïve that they thought the man couldn’t touch them. There were two of them, after all. And the pipe had another end. The boys stayed in the middle, they were safe there.
“Aren’t you going to come out?” asked the man.
Sundance shook his head, Butch really wanted to run away. He wished he hadn’t laughed. You still clearly remember the way his hands pressed against the inside of the pipe. As if he could break the pipe open and fly away.
“Come on now,” said the man.
A knocking sound gave the boys a start. They turned round. A second moon had risen. The woman’s face was looking in at them from the other side of the pipe.
“What have we here?” said the woman, and Sundance thought, how funny that the woman should ask exactly the same question as the man.
“Funny, isn’t it?” he whispered to Butch.
“What?” Butch whispered back.
“The two of them.”
“Two pups,” said the woman and disappeared again. The man stayed where he was and asked their names. How old they were. What they were doing here.
If they wouldn’t come out.
“If you don’t come out I’ll have to come in,” he said, ducking into the pipe.
The boys ran to the other end and stopped. The woman’s shadow could be seen in the pelting rain. She was waiting for them.
“Will you come to me?” the boys heard the woman saying.
“Or will you come to me?” the man’s voice rang out down the pipe.
The boys looked at each other. They made up their minds and went to the woman. They trusted her more. They were like stalks of grass in a field that had never seen a lawnmower.
“One of you can go, the other has to stay. Who’s going to go?”
Simple as that. A question, an answer. Nothing more. The boys looked at each other. They had been crying, but the rain washed their tears away. They had told the man and the woman their names. Their real names, as if it would change things. As if reality would suddenly become reasonable if they acknowledged that they weren’t two desperados who attacked trains and blew up bank vaults. The boys had explained that they were only there to play. They wanted to go home, to which the man said it wasn’t so simple.
“Isn’t that right, Fanni?”
The woman told the boys that of course she wasn’t really called Fanni. Her real name was Franziska, but who wanted to be called Franziska? The man said he was Karl. Just plain Karl.
Butch tried to run away, past the woman, because he thought it would be easier to escape her. She kicked his legs out from under him. It was all so quick that Butch didn’t know what was happening. Suddenly he was lying with his face in the dirt, someone pulled him up and he was
standing next to Sundance again. His knees trembled, blood ran from his nose, his face was smeared with mud.
“You’re bleeding,” Sundance whispered to him.
Butch wanted to wipe the blood away with the back of his hand, the woman was quicker. Her arm was like a snake. She grabbed the boy’s chin and said, “Shut your eyes, pup.”
Butch shut his eyes. His whole body trembled. Blood and snot ran from his nose as he stood there and didn’t dare to move, to look, to be. The woman wiped the mud from Butch’s face with her fingers, then licked the blood away and kissed his trembling mouth, ran her tongue over his cheeks, licked his tears.
Sundance wanted to shout at her. He wanted to draw his two revolvers and shoot the man with his left hand and the woman with his right. His mouth remained closed, and the revolvers were far away in Mexico.
When the woman stood up again she said that one of them could go now and the other had to stay.
“Who wants to go?”
The boys looked at each other, and one of them was about to say that he wanted to go, that he really wanted to go, when the other one got in first. He was just a second faster and turned round and walked away. It was just a small betrayal; in that situation the boys wouldn’t have given each other anything anyway. One went, the other stayed. That was how it was. But Sundance didn’t really go. He hid behind a stack of tiles. He knew he owed it to Butch. To be there. For a while at least. Then he would get help. Then.
You remember everything. How Butch became a pup. How the boy turned from a human being into a dog. What the man did to him. What the woman did to him. How the pup had to crouch on all fours in the rain after they had undressed him. How he trembled and how his wails rang out beyond the pouring rain. Thin, lost, lonely. And how Sundance threw up. Out of fear and helplessness.
When the man and the woman disappeared, Butch became a human being again and lay in the rain. He tried to stand up and simply fell over. Too weak. No one can describe that pain. No one should. Not even you, even though you’re always trying to find words for it.
T
HERE’S THE SOUND
of thunder. Tamara suddenly sits up in bed. Her mouth feels as if it’s full of cotton. She remembers waking in a panic once before. An eternity ago, in her sister’s apartment. That time she had danced through the night with Frauke and had to go to the job center in the morning. This time is the night after the worst day of her life, and it had taken a glass of vodka to calm her down yesterday.
The clock says half past nine. Rain hammers against the window, lightning flashes vertically in the sky, illuminating a cloud front that looks like a waving banner.
Tamara waits for the thunder and counts the seconds.
On the ground floor she sees the clothes scattered by the front door. Two piles, trails of mud, dirty shoes. Tamara touches one of the piles with her foot. Wet. It looks as if Kris and Wolf had crumpled on the spot.
Tamara leaves the clothes where they are and goes into the kitchen. The smell there reminds her of parties with spilled cocktails and overflowing ashtrays. Tamara yawns. She knows it was a mistake to get up. She hates being awake before the others.
Who would willingly be the first to get up on a day like this?
She turns on the espresso machine, and as she waits for it to warm up, she drinks a glass of water and looks out at the Kleine Wannsee. The rain is being driven by the wind, making furrows in the lake. The markings by the jetty tell Tamara that the water level has risen. She is surprised that the Belzens’ lights aren’t on. At that moment she would have given a lot to see Helena and Joachim having breakfast through the panoramic window. The same place every morning. It would be normal, it would be like the old life. They would wave to her, Tamara would wave back, and the day would be a day like any other.
They probably had had breakfast ages ago
.
To give the place a good airing, Tamara opens the kitchen window that looks into their neighbors’ property. Cold air blows in and makes her shiver. Tamara holds her face into the rain. She sees the shed and the roof of their neighbors’ house. The rain leaves silver streaks in the air that make Tamara think of scratches on glass. When she is about to shut the window again, she notices a bright glimmer on the soil. She leans out again, stands there motionlessly and stares and waits for the glimmer to
repeat. Her hair goes wet, she shivers and wipes the rain from her eyes. She doesn’t have to wait long. A gust of wind runs over the land, and the glimmer is visible again. Now Tamara recognizes it clearly. Something white is waving to her from the mud.
“Wolf, what have you done?”
“What?”
“Wolf, what the hell have you done?”
Tamara pulls the covers off him.
“What are you talking about?”
“Why are there flowers in the garden?”
Tamara hits him on the back with the palm of her hand.
“Wolf, wake up, damn it!”
Wolf turns round and swings his legs out of the bed. Tamara can see that he has an erection.
“What sort of flowers?” he asks.
“White flowers. In the middle of the garden. What have you done?”
Wolf rubs his face.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I swear.”
Tamara goes to wake Kris.
Five minutes later. The three of them lean out of the kitchen window, stare into the rain and watch the wind stirring the flowers on the muddy earth.
“Lilies,” says Kris. “I think they’re lilies.”
“And what does that mean?” asks Tamara.
Kris and Wolf look at each other quickly. Tamara knows them both too well, their exchange of glances amounts to an admission of guilt. They both have bloodshot eyes, and their hands are dirty. Tamara remembers the wet clothes in the hall. Her head is working slowly this morning, but it’s still fast enough.
“What have you done?”
“We got drunk,” says Kris.
“I can smell that, what else have you done?”
Rather than answering, the brothers look out the window again. Footsteps can be heard from upstairs, footsteps on the stairs. Tamara turns round and sees Frauke coming into the kitchen.
At last
, she thinks,
at last I’m not alone with them any more
.
T
HE HEADACHE DOESN’T
exactly help him think. He feels as if someone’s hitting the back of his head every ten seconds. He knows what’s about to happen. There are these moments that can’t be stopped.
Frauke doesn’t walk over to the fridge or put a cup under the espresso machine. She glances at her friends and says, “What are you doing?”
Only now does Kris notice that he’s standing with his bare feet in a puddle.
“There are flowers in the garden,” says Tamara.
Frauke joins them. Wolf makes room for her. Tamara points outside.
“You see?”
Frauke doesn’t take as long as Tamara. She looks from Wolf to Kris, and for a moment Kris has the panicky thought that she can read his mind.
I’ve got to start thinking about something else, I’ve got to—
“You’ve buried her?” says Frauke. “On our land?”
It sounds like a question, but it’s a statement. The emphasis is on
our land
. As if
that
were the greatest affront, rather than the fact that they have buried the woman.
Wolf shrugs.
“Still better than putting her in the cellar. We thought.”
Frauke pushes Wolf in the chest with both hands. He staggers backward.
“Are you guys perverted or something?”
“I can explain,” Kris butts in, without knowing what he wants to explain here. Wolf looks at him with surprise and Kris thinks:
What am I supposed to explain, for heaven’s sake? It’s a bit late to make up something about going to the woods for a second time, isn’t it?
Wolf’s surprised expression makes Kris grin. He feels hysteria mounting within him.
How can I grin now?
The corners of his mouth twitch, his head aches, he doesn’t know what to say in their defense.
“Do you think this is funny?” Frauke asks.
“No, I—”
“So why are you grinning like an idiot?”
“Please calm down.”
“Shit, I
am
calm.”
“We can dig her back up again,” Wolf says lamely.
Frauke has him in her sights again.
Why can’t Wolf just keep his mouth shut?
Kris thinks, and is about to interrupt, when everything goes in a different direction. As if someone has pulled the plug, Frauke turns away from Wolf and leaves the kitchen without a word. The front door bangs against the wall and falls shut again with a crash. They wait and then see Frauke running through the garden. She’s barefoot, her feet gleam brightly against the mud as she leaves the paved path and runs diagonally across the plot. She’s wearing her knickers and a T-shirt. The rain soaks her in seconds. There’s a flash of lightning, followed wearily by thunder. Frauke appears as a negative for a moment.
“I hope she isn’t going mad,” says Wolf.
Frauke freezes. The flowers are at her feet. The white is smeared with dirt, the wind has fanned the lilies out like playing cards. Frauke crouches down and picks them up.
“How on earth could you do that?” says Tamara.
“You’d never have found out,” says Wolf. “We wanted to tell you we’d taken her back to the woods and—”