A Guide to Berlin Read online

  Yukio, awoken by tea, said that he liked the sporty Nabokov - the man who broke his ribs and was knocked unconscious playing goalie for a football team at Fehrbelliner Platz. When he came to, Yukio added, they’d had to prise the ball from his frozen grip. They were all quiet then for a moment, contemplating this image of their writer, parting the air with his body, sideways flung; the writer with his two arms outstretched, seizing the ball from its fleet arc, just as his extra-clever head struck the waiting goalpost.

  Such disconnected conversation; such irresponsible idleness.

  And what had she spoken of? Cass could not remember. But she remembered the tone and the content of Gino’s speech. In the studio together they became very warm. Cass saw that Gino was edgy, sweating and ill at ease. He scratched at his chest and had trouble sitting still. He was drinking quickly. There was a sense they all shared of the dissolution of narrative order; there was a decline to arid blather and unacknowledged tensions. Conversation at some point turned unexpectedly taut. Sentences seemed to twang in the air; there was the strain of pulled wire and the threat of something retracting with a vicious whip of release. A prolix energy emerged, a warp factor that may have been a consequence of their lack of structure and ceremony.

  Then Gino made his speech. Biochemical mixture fuelled an articulate hostility. Unprovoked, he stood and spoke in a hissing, loud voice. No one dared interrupt.

  ‘We are all shits, my friends. We are all literary snobs in this vicarious little room of our own, dilettantish, smug, hidden from the fucked-up world. We are enslaved to the folly and the whirlpool of our own obsessions. Where is now rather than our own deeply intoxicating pasts? Where is Lampedusa, where is the tragedy of others? What do we think of a man playing “Nessun Dorma” on a saw in the shadows of a U-station? The lost homeless in Kreuzberg, the drug pushers in Gorlitzer Park, the illegally immigrant prostitutes, freezing their arses at Hackescher Markt? And all the other foreigners, wretched foreigners, who don’t have wine and company? Why do we meet for this writer who laments his lost Russia, when losses are everywhere, and always inestimable? We adore him because we find some cracked mirror there, we think that words will save us, that a fine description will drag us away from our own disappointments, and offer consolation, or explanation, or the return of a disappeared father. We want to cancel our nothingness with his vigour of incarnation, we want to believe, truly believe, in literary salvation. Who else tells us that a twig reflected in a puddle in the middle of a black pavement is worthy of our notice? That it looks like an undeveloped photograph, that it symptomises something inside us, that it reminds us of the entanglements of words and things and reflections; that we must all notice the withering as well as the blossoming; and that the immortal gesture is always present and exists inside the word …’

  There was a stunned silence. Cass was struck less by the anger than by the eloquence of the speech. It was Victor who rose and gently took Gino by the elbow. Gino pulled instinctively away, but then submitted when Victor insisted and tried again, leaning in close and whispering something that none of them could hear. If it was a reconciliation of some kind, it was quiet and easy; they saw Victor summon verbal authority against Gino’s unfocused fury. There was kindness in Victor’s manner, and a gentle fatherly command. They saw Gino’s shoulders sag, then he moved into Victor’s embrace. The two men stood there, silently communing. They made a strange sight: Gino was so much taller than Victor, yet he was the one supported.

  After a few seconds they turned, pulled open the glass door and stepped out together onto Cass’s small balcony. Gino lit up and Victor remained with him, talking. They appeared to float together outside in the semi-darkness. The tiny star of Gino’s cigarette appeared only when he inhaled. The flare, then the shadow of his arm, falling to his side, faint light from the studio only partially revealing them.

  The others watched, transfixed, then slowly and surely, and in a tone of concern, they began talking quietly among themselves. It reminded Cass of the decorum of a funeral, where there is one exceptionally grieved person, comforted singularly and especially, and others hover at a distance, knowing for certain that their own pain cannot possibly be so great.

  Without warning, Gino raised his voice, and then he was shouting in Italian. They were not sure what he said, but his tone was angry. A black ferocity possessed him. In profile they saw him push forcefully at Victor’s chest, then push again. They saw him lift Victor up and onto the iron edge of the balcony, balance him for a second or two on the railing, and then let him fall. Simply that. Gino lifted Victor, rested him, and then let him fall. It must have been a surge of incredible strength and perverted will. Victor seemed to offer no word or physical resistance – he was there balancing, seeming inanimate, teetering over nothingness, and then he was gone.

  There was a moment of delayed response, in which nothing was felt, or could be felt, at such an incomprehensible act.

  Gino was at first motionless, outside, looking over the edge down to the street, then the glass doors burst open, and he stood before them, guilty. Nothing could be said. Gino’s mouth was slightly open at his own shock and derangement. His face was unearthly white and his expression distracted. Marco pushed past him in a great rush to witness the fallen body. They all knew it without seeing: Victor had crashed and was shattered.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ Gino was saying. ‘Oh Jesus, oh Jesus.’

  Mitsuko was already sobbing and Yukio had his arm around her. He appeared to screen her eyes with his hand, as though the sight of Gino was too awful. Cass saw Gino’s desperation and stepped forward to touch him. But there was ice in him now; he was stiff and remote, glittering with his own act and its terrible enormity.

  In a tight voice Marco said, ‘We must call an ambulance, the police.’ But instantly Gino wailed, ‘No, no!’ And again they were stopped in time, two men halted and confused, robbed of the strength of sensible volition and rational decision. The room filled with the sound of Mitsuko’s hollow sobs.

  How much time passed? In truth none was sure, none would be able to say. There was a magnified quality to their responses, and a stylisation, yet all was hopelessly fixed, somehow, in inactivity and indecision. Marco argued with Gino, but nothing moved forward. There was a knock at the door, then the alarming pound of a fist, and they all returned to the present.

  ‘Jesus, oh Jesus.’

  Cass opened the door and saw not the faces of polizei or strangers, but Karl, sturdy Karl. In the hallway light he looked unusually solid, monumental. He was heaving from a hasty climb up the stairs.

  ‘We must get the body inside, into my room,’ he said.

  The body. He had said it - he had called Victor a body. The directness and lucidity of his statement was scandalous.

  And already Marco was trying to rewrite history.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Marco pleaded. ‘I was talking to him on the balcony and he leant backwards onto the slippery railing.’

  But Karl was not listening. ‘Come,’ he commanded.

  Why had Karl arrived? Why would he involve himself in their affairs? Cass wondered if she was the only one feeling such puzzlement. Yet having been shocked, and stuck, they were now overcome with the momentum of authority.

  They followed mute and miserable. The six of them, the new six, filed down the stairwell, saying nothing. Karl had asked no questions and seemed simply activated by his chore and the pressing need to tidy up. He was focused and deliberative. The others were united in blank disbelief and the altered speed of the world, together with their own rising fear, which came in sickening surges.

  In Karl’s room Mitsuko refused to sit, so Yukio waited with her, held in his arms. Karl led Cass, Marco and Gino out into the night. Gino held back, but was also compelled. He was riven by the need to see and not to see, and so too Cass and Marco needed to confirm what they dreaded, if only to meet a settled image when so many were uprising as possibilities.

  Such a beautiful night. New snow was everywhere,
lightly fallen, and it collapsed in soft crunchy pits beneath their feet. None had taken a coat as they left, so they stood unprotected in the cold. Yet it seemed appropriate somehow, that they should feel the sting and the risk of it, that their bodies at this moment should feel frail and assaulted. They all looked around anxiously. No one. No one visible. There was not a soul on the street. It was possible that no one at all had seen. On so cold a night, and so late, everyone was indoors. A body might hurl from above, darkly and undetected.

  Victor was lying face up, a brazen corpse. This was the first surprise. Cass had somehow not expected to see his face. ‘Unblemished’ was the word that sprang to mind, and she hated herself for the instant comparison. Victor’s head was ringed with blood, in a slick, bright halo, and his eyes were fixed open, snowflakes falling shallow inside them. Tiny crystals glittered there, giving a semblance of live alertness. Cass bent to her knees. She moved very near to his face. She closed the eyes with her hand as she had seen done in the movies. A gentle push at the eyelids was all it took, then a little more pressure, a calm resting of the fingers. The bushy moustache was also covering with snow; she wiped it away. Gino gave a little groan and rushed back inside. Karl and Marco lifted the body, Karl at the feet and Marco with his arms hooked under Victor’s, while Cass continued to brush snow from his still-warm face, delicately, carefully, with her open palm. She was still brushing, as if it would make any difference, when Victor was lowered onto a blanket Karl had hastily spread on the floor of his room. Marco reached for Cass’s hand and held it firmly, in silent command, to stop her brushing movement, then pulled one corner of the rug over Victor’s face. Now that he was a shape, not Victor, it should have been easier. But Cass felt a rising, queasy, ungovernable panic. This was the second surprise. That it was the hidden face that truly panicked her.

  In whatever madness they were enduring, Karl had taken over. He telephoned his son, Franz, speaking far too loud. There was a garbled conversation.

  ‘Truck … Now.’

  ‘No, now.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  No one stopped Karl and called the police. No one wanted to be blamed, but all felt implicated and guilty. Later it would seem impossible, entirely inexplicable, that they had become so passive and indecisive, that the repercussion of Victor’s fall had made them all crumple like children, that without discussion or decision they had let Marco and Karl take control.

  Gino was by now curled alone in a corner. Cass saw that he held Victor’s spectacles; he must have found them in the snow. Mitsuko and Yukio remained together, facing away. Karl offered them all a shot of vodka, but only Marco accepted. They clinked glasses – a habit, surely, but a vile gesture in the circumstances – and drank. Cass saw the blood on Marco’s hands and shirt and held up her own hands in a mute sign, like a Muslim blessing. Wash, she was signing. Wash your hands. She too had a tidying instinct, and wanted death cleared away, wanted it all put right, wanted the night to stop spinning.

  It was Cass who offered to return upstairs and retrieve their coats and scarves. She found her own coat and put it on, drawing it close, then with the bulky bundle stood for a minute outside her door thinking what a comfort it would be, to have their warm clothes with them. The blast of freezing night air had seemed extreme, but it might have been shock, or the sensitivity of her nervous condition. She remembered how death changed everything, time and space, the significance of small objects and creature comforts. Death had its own weather. Death was uncontrollable as cyclones. She reeled a little, unsteady, as she descended the stairs. In those few moments alone carrying the coats, cautious and silent, relieved to have her own chore to perform, relieved to be active, not still, she experienced a sudden sense of her own life congealing. Alexander had also been wrapped in a cloth – not a blanket, but a curtain, pulled from beneath a fallen window frame. Her father had lifted the heavy frame to extract it. She saw him now, pulling at the fabric carefully to keep it intact. Was he crying? He may have been crying. Her usually reserved father may have been crying. The curtain bore a decoration of autumn leaves of a kind she had never actually seen - European leaves of an unbelievable orange, regularly shed in unbelievable seasons. They matched her sense then of things misaligned and incredible. The shape of her beloved brother, wrapped in a decorative cliché that meant nothing; the expedient offence of it, the simplification.

  When the truck arrived – old and rusty and rattling down the street – the man who climbed from the driver’s seat looked a lot like Karl. He shook hands with Marco, only Marco, selecting him as the leader, or the one inherently blameworthy. Perhaps too, she thought later, Franz had been told about Marco, or perhaps he had come to help out of a brotherly instinct for the medical condition they shared. Perhaps Karl had bribed him in some way, or offered to pay for his assistance. Cass would never know. The handshake was like the clink of vodka glasses, unseemly and incongruous. Franz acknowledged the others only with a brief nod of his head. His manner was businesslike, gruff and dourly preoccupied. They all noticed he had the gait of an injured man, leaning to the right and slightly lurching.

  For now, they piled in, Marco up-front next to Gino and Franz, she with Mitsuko, Yukio and Victor in the back. Seated with her back against the cold metal, her legs outstretched, it was Cass who held Victor. There, in the trembling tray, surrounded by ropes and tackle and an indistinct smell of raw meat, she held the precious shape of his head in her lap. They pulled away into the night. They did not know where they were going. They did not know why they were in the truck, or what unspoken obligation bound them to this reckless response. Cass’s last glimpse, before Franz lowered the metal roller door, was of Karl shovelling red snow into a plastic bucket, still busily tidying up the scene of the death.

  22

  The third surprising thing was that they had all accompanied Franz.

  It would have made sense if they had dispersed, all gone their own way; it would have made sense, of course, if they had rung the police, and told a credible and exculpating story. But instead they consented without discussion to go together with a stranger, to who-knows-where, in the darkness, in a noisy old truck. Having no burden of consistency in their experimental community, they now slipped into a genre, into driven action, not reflection. They cancelled disquiet for deed; they wanted a procedure, a decisiveness that would take Victor away. In the future there would be no consoling explanation - in the disgrace of the event they were simply cowardly and passive. There will be fleeting moments in which they will consider otherwise, what might have happened if they had acted in a manner more responsible; but for now an irrevocable plot had taken over, now they were compromised, and submissive, and must pretend they knew what they were doing.

  The cold metal floor of the truck was almost painful to sit on. The air was foetid, freezing and horribly closed and Cass felt woozy with dread and the weight of the death that she held. Mitsuko was quiet. Yukio was wide awake, but lost in the world of his own thoughts. Now and then light from outside entered the crack beneath the back door, but for most of the journey they were riding in almost total darkness. They did not say a word. They were still a group then; they were still hypothetically together. For all that it was a nonsensical circumstance and fate, they had without question and in unanimity joined forces with Gino.

  The truck drove for too long. They felt it slow, start again, enter traffic, swerve away. They felt confined, like prisoners. There was no way of knowing where in Berlin they were heading. Blind journeying carried its own kind of fear and Cass was overcome by grim misgivings. When at last the truck stopped, she felt enormous relief. Now she would know what they were doing, what plan Franz and Marco had hatched. She heard the front doors creak open, then she heard them bang shut. The truck shuddered. Footfall, and then the unlocking of the metal door: Franz flung the door up into its roller with the emphatic gesture of a conductor at the end of a huge symphony. Marco and Gino were standing close, and each by prior arrangement took charge of the blanket
ed body. Neither spoke. They lifted Victor down between them, and only then did Cass and the lovers descend.

  ‘Where are we?’ She needed to know.

  ‘It’s the Havel,’ said Marco, ‘the river. Near the canal.’

  It was snowing densely but she made out the city lights in the distance. They were near the bank of the river in what seemed to be a wild space of rubbish and dead wood, surrounded by sentinel, leafless trees. Franz switched on a torch so that she saw the swing of a yellow beam and stripes of snow flurry briefly aflame. But it was a mystifying dark they inhabited, away from street lamps, semi-erased, and full of slow-moving snow. There was the sense of texture around them, of drifting presences, as if the air was remade with another substance, as if the air itself was altered and atomically changed. And cold. Bitter cold.

  In the distance the water shone with plates of ice, jagged near the shore. Further out lay a stretch of profound deep black. Something inside Cass crumbled, subsided and gave way.

  ‘Not here,’ she said to Marco.

  ‘Further up. A clean space, I promise.’

  Franz offered no help with the body, but seemed to be lugging over his shoulder a lump of iron – an anvil, was it? – attached to a soft-clinking chain.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ said Cass in a small voice. But Marco and Gino continued to walk ahead, disappearing into the dark, carrying Victor’s body. As she watched them ignore her, she experienced a flash of outrage.

  ‘Stop!’ she called out.

  Their faint shapes turned. They all stopped. The anvil glinted on Franz’s back.

  ‘This isn’t right. We haven’t discussed this. You’re going to throw Victor in the river? Just like that, like garbage?’