The day after the funeral you went to work. No one knew what had happened to your best friend, and that was how it was supposed to stay. There was the job, and there was private life. That was the day it first happened. In the bathroom you stood by the basin to wash your hands. Your eye fell on your unshaven face in the mirror, your cheeks were a bit hollow and there were shadows under your eyes. You were about to dry your hands when your eye slipped away. You tried again. It didn’t work. You could no longer look yourself in the eye. Startled, you laughed out
loud and were bringing your face close to the mirror when one of your colleagues came in.
You left work early that day and drove home. You couldn’t focus your eyes on yourself. Your eyes avoided you. You were so frightened that you took two days off. You sat in your apartment and wondered what it meant. And during that period of calm the realization came to you. You were overwhelmed with guilt and you cried, you got drunk and barely stirred from bed. But whatever you did, your eyes avoided you.
Four days after his death you had reached bottom. Ghosts pursued you.
What if I’d talked to Lars? We could have talked about everything. Would we have? Was there another way?
Your rhetorical questions didn’t help. You had chosen one course of action and you had to live with the consequences.
On the fourth night you started with wine and later switched to tequila. At about nine in the evening you drunkenly went upstairs to Lars’s flat. You wept, you sat on a sofa and howled and wept. There were photographs of the two of you, there was the life that would never be again. You touched his belongings, you even sniffed his clothes, abandoned and lonely. In the bathroom you stood in the doorway for a moment before getting the cleaning things from the kitchen and starting to scrub out the bathtub. Your mouth moved of its own accord, all the words and excuses came out and came back to you because there was no one who wanted to hear them.
How you finally ended up in the bathtub, you can’t remember. You remember that from one moment to the next the candles were lit, the foam made little crackling noises, and you were up to your neck in the water, your face wet with tears and steam.
When the water turned cold, you climbed out of the tub and dried yourself. You left your clothes lying on the lid of the toilet and went naked into the living room. There was no thought, there was only the action. Lars was a bit bigger than you, but it was barely noticeable. You took clothes out of his wardrobe. As you did so you couldn’t stop crying. You got dressed and sat on the sofa until no more tears came. Then you went out into the night.
The new club was at the end of Bleibtreustrasse, just before the Ku’damm. You found a table that was free and went on drinking. Later, you spoke to a woman while dancing. It was nice, it was natural. You stood at the bar drinking companionably, when she leaned forward and asked your name. And that’s when it happened, you deliberately brought
him back to life.
Lars
, you replied. You just said his first name, and the woman had no problem with that. Why should she? It was fascinating. She didn’t doubt it for a second. Why should she?
Lars
.
You went to his flat. You slept together in his bed and later sat at his kitchen table and drank his wine. You had sex again in the bath. Her hands on the tiles, your hands on her hips.
Fuck me, Lars, fuck me!
You had already had sex with a number of women, but never before had one of them ever called out your name. So you did as she asked. Lars fucked her. Lars lay in bed with her and slept deeply and soundly and dreamlessly. In the morning you woke up with a clear head. You let the woman go on sleeping.
The euphoria made you nervous. What did it mean? Were you psychotic? Were you going mad? Was that the course of action you wanted to take? Tribute. Every friendship expects tribute. So you opted for the tribute and went into the bathroom and bent over your dead best friend’s sink and held your face under the tap. As you lifted your head again, you still couldn’t meet your gaze in the mirror. Your eyes avoided you, jerked to the left, jerked away.
It’s me
, you wanted to say, but you didn’t know if it really was.
Your first reaction was to laugh.
Christ, I’m exhausted
, you thought and shook your head. Then you went closer to the mirror. It still didn’t work. Like two identical poles making contact. You couldn’t focus your gaze on yourself.
That day you started paying your tribute.
You spoke to the owner of the house and rented Lars’s flat as well as your own. There were no problems, people don’t make problems for someone in your position. You neglected to tell the bank that Lars was dead. You faked his signatures and brought a myth to life. Among his papers you found all the information about his bank accounts, his health insurance and so on. You quit his job with the explanation that Lars wanted to look after his sick mother. You did everything necessary to make Lars disappear from the picture. And then you did everything you could so that no one would forget him. As a result Lars became someone who remained present through his absence. Not forgotten, not dead, but alive.
One morning the phone rang, and you automatically picked up the receiver. It was a friend of Lars, and you didn’t know why he’d called you of all people. Before you could ask him the question, he started chattering
and asked you what Berlin was going to be like in this mild winter. It was only then that you realized that you weren’t in your bed.
Since when have I been sleeping up here?
You didn’t know. After a brief moment’s hesitation you gave Lars’s friend the right answers. He didn’t doubt for a moment who he was speaking to.
Even though you were paying tribute, your condition didn’t improve. Your eyes kept avoiding you. You cried, you hit the mirror until shards fell into the sink. Nothing helped. You revitalized Lars’s apartment as if it were your own. Your private life dissolved into nothing. You had only one goal now—to do justice to Lars. He would go on living through you. Until the point when he let you go. Perhaps no one can understand that, but you were shaken to the marrow by the fact that you could no longer look into your own eyes. You were surrounded by guilt.
Am I going mad? Should I go and see a doctor?
You covered the mirrors, even the ones in your own apartment. Women thought it was eccentric, you told them about a Jewish uncle who had passed away, and they were surprised that you weren’t circumcised.
How long could it have gone on? Who knows? How long could you have lived those two lives? A year? Longer? You were relieved of the decision when you discovered the octavo notebook on the bedside table. Names, loads of names. Two of them were underlined, two of them you knew. At that moment you understood what a farce you were living. And you became furious, furious with Lars, because he wouldn’t let you go. What else did he want from you? What else could you give him?
The realization was like a clear slice through your thoughts. It was up to you to make everything right. To create equilibrium.
I’ll give you Fanni and Karl. And you let me go
.
The man hits you in the face. Your eyes snap open, you don’t know how long you were unconscious. The man tells you to concentrate. He repeats himself. An endless litany.
Who? Are? You?
You shake your head, you no longer know who you are. He lifts the hammer. The shadow of his arm. You turn your head away and answer. He doesn’t understand you, you whispered. You whisper again.
Quietly
. Vomit flows from your mouth, you cough. The man stands on tiptoe.
Closer
. His ear is close to your mouth. Every word is like a sentence when you say:
“I’m going to kill you.”
“No, you aren’t,” the man whispers back. “And shall I tell you why you aren’t going to kill me? Because I’m not really here.”
“Yes, you’re here,” you say, and at that moment your legs shoot upwards and close around the man’s back. You scream, you scream into his face, because your body is pure pain, as if not only your whole weight, but all your nerves were hanging on that one nail, as if nothing existed any longer but that damned nail in your damned hands. Go on, scream, let it out, because this may be your only chance, so don’t fuck it up, let it all out.
You can only hope the angle’s right. You tense your arm muscles, a red-hot wire scrapes up your spine, your backside presses against the wall, the man struggles against your scissors grip and swings his hammer wildly, but it’s too late, there’s a jerk and the nail stays in the wall, and your hands come lose like meat from a kebab spit, and at last you’re free.
A
BEAM OF LIGHT
falls into the dark living room. Tamara hears heavy breathing, then footsteps approach and the terrace door is closed. She hears the jangle of keys; in the minute that follows nothing happens. Whoever it is standing in the living room, all he’s doing is standing in the living room as Tamara crouches behind the sofa, knees to her chest, holding her breath. At last the footsteps move away again.
Silence.
The light in the hall goes out. Tamara waits for the front door to close. Nothing happens. She stays in the darkness. Seconds turn to minutes.
One more minute. Maybe two
.
Tamara waits five minutes before venturing out from behind the sofa. She creeps to the terrace and tries to open the door. The door is locked. Tamara could weep. She wonders what she can smash the glass pane with, and picks up a standard lamp. She swings the lamp. The gas pistol slips from the waistband of her trousers and falls on the floor. Tamara freezes. She looks from the pistol to the open living room door.
No one heard me, no one …
And it’s at that moment that voices reach her ear. Quiet, restrained, then a scream, muted, far away, like a radio station sending faint signals. Tamara listens. The blood whispers in her ears, her heart hammers. She concentrates and follows the source to the heating. She leans forward. The voices are coming from the radiator. Tamara presses her ear to it and gives a start.
Why is the heat on?
Her ear touches the hot metal again. She
hears a groan and then blows, and then it’s silent again. Break in transmission. And suddenly she knows why Kris isn’t answering the phone.
Because he’s here
. Why she can’t get through to him.
Because Meybach’s got him
. A voice speaks.
Kris?
Tamara can’t make out a word. Her hand reaches along the radiator. The pipes lead downwards.
T
HE IMPACT IS VIOLENT
. The back of your head scrapes against the wall, then you land on your left shoulder and try to get away from the man as fast as possible. You have released your legs from him, which wasn’t all that clever, because now the man’s free and he’s going apeshit. The hand with the hammer is swinging relentlessly up and down. You’ve been lucky so far. He grazes your arm, he grazes your leg, he misses your face by half an inch. You turn into a crab and scuttle backward. Your foot shoots out. The man wheezes, he has difficulty getting to his feet, and he rubs his chest. His face is white as chalk. You pull yourself up by the workbench. Your hands find a broken table leg, it’s not a match for the hammer, but it’s better than nothing. Now you’re ready for him.
“Come on then,” you say.
He doesn’t hesitate, the hammer hisses through the air, you dodge it, the hammer misses your chin, then the man throws himself forwards and his shoulders ram into you. The table leg flies out of your hands, and you fall backward.
How can he be so fast?
You don’t know, you smash him in the kidneys, hit his stomach, hit his chest, and try in vain to hit him in the face as you gradually realize that you’re weaker than you thought.
He’s wearing me out
. Your blows have no visible effect.
There’s a strange sound, and it’s a moment before you work out that it’s the man. He laughs hoarsely and presses one hand to your throat so that the back of your head hits the floor, the hammer swings up, reaches its highest point and is on the way back down when the cellar door flies open with a crash. The man turns his head, your fist catches his neck, and you feel his sinews giving under your knuckles. The man falls back with a groan. Tamara Berger is standing in the doorway, and now it’s your turn to laugh, because the scene looks like something out of a bad action
movie, except that even in a bad action film the heroine would never look so terrified when making her entrance.
“S
TAY ON THE FLOOR
! You hear me? Stay on the floor!”
The man in the tracksuit is so exhausted that he can barely move. He stays on the floor and raises his arms in self-defense. Tamara doesn’t know where to look first. She recognizes the man who is looking after the Belzens’ house. She remembers his name. Samuel. Tamara is relieved that he’s still alive, and aims her gun back at the man in the tracksuit.
I know this guy too. That face, where …
And then she has it. In the kitchen. One of the two policemen; the one she asked to sit down.
Who was so young that I couldn’t take him seriously
.
“You’re a policeman,” she says in surprise.
“Criminal investigation,” says the man.
“You … You were with Gerald.”
“That’s right. Gerald’s my boss. I’m Jonas. Jonas Kronauer.”
Tamara doesn’t understand anything any more.
“What … what are you doing here?”
“That’s a long story,” says Kronauer and tries to get up.
“Don’t,” says Tamara.
“What?”
“How dumb do you think I am? Sit right where you are. First I want to hear what’s happened here from him.”
She notices that the policeman is looking at her gun.
“This isn’t a toy,” she says.
“I know,” says Kronauer. “I didn’t think you’d aim a toy at me.”
Tamara waits to hear if Kronauer has anything more to say. He sits there in silence.
Good
.
Tamara crouches beside Samuel.