Striking traits: scratches a spot on the back of his head to the right at least 50x over the course of the evening (endogenous eczema?). Bored, perspiring, complains about the heat (temperature around 19.00 only +16˚ C), one of the last to leave the event.
This was followed by the date 27 April of the year in question.
W. was glad to move out of the mirror, as he’d been forced — the broad mirror tilted out from the wall and captured the entire table — to endlessly identify himself among the other guests: the furrow over his nose, intersecting his brows and giving him a bifurcated gaze. The film of sweat on his brow, the hair which had grown over his ears and absorbed all the filth of the streets, gleaming greasily in the lamplight. . he decided to ask Frau Falbe tomorrow if he could use her bath.
As a matter of fact, he remembered the event, held in the spring (last spring?) on the grounds of a church in Berlin’s Rummelsburg district. Long after darkness fell, throngs of young people kept arriving to stroll about the church’s yard and gardens, children chasing one another in their midst; there were snack stands and tables where second-hand things were sold, the proceeds going to some good cause he’d forgotten; somewhere guitar music struck up, paper lanterns scattered coloured light. And outside the entrance several patrol cars had driven up in staggered formation; the loitering officers had long since abandoned the attempt to demand each new arrival’s identification. When W. had arrived in the afternoon things were different, even from a distance he’d seen the uniformed officers, stressed out by the exhaustive spot checks. . but with bored expressions they’d seemed about to let him pass. And he’d gone up to one of the policemen and provocatively whipped out his ID to the guy, who took it wearily and thumbed quickly through the pages. . You’re holding the ID upside down, Sergeant! W. said.
(C. took an S-Bahn train from Rummelsburg Depot to Ostkreuz, and one from there to Lichtenberg, where he changed for the U-Bahn to travel one stop in the direction of Alexanderplatz. In the dim underpass at Lichtenberg he already felt he was alone; from the platform he’d drifted slowly down the overlong, low, bare concrete shaft, past the long-distance rail platforms, all the way up front to the exit, avoiding the stairs in the middle, descending into the U-Bahn only at the front. There were only a few figures skulking about the underground platform: he was unlikely now to meet an acquaintance who might have seen him at the church in Rummelsburg. Now he took the U-Bahn to the next stop, at the Magdalenenstrasse Station he’d reached his destination; he took the eastern stairs — leading back in the direction of Lichtenberg — and up on Frankfurter Allee he went back the opposite way, heading for the cafe. — If Feuerbach had been sitting in his place by the window now, with his cheek to the glass, he would have seen him coming.
But to his surprise there was activity outside the cafe, tables and chairs stood out on the light-flooded pavement, almost all of them still occupied, beneath colourful folding sunshades held to the ground by heavy cast-iron bases. The cafe had started its outdoor service! Every year it went from the eve of 1 May to 31 August. A wiry little waitress was hired for the four months; C. recognized her from afar, a colourless creature of indeterminate age — between thirty and forty, thought C., his intuition failing him here — who served promptly and precisely, still more remote than her indoors colleague who wandered lost in thought between the rows of tables. C. had never seen any of the jovial evening guests elicit even the semblance of a smile from the waitress’ pinched lips; her blonde hair was combed back tightly, adorned at the hairline by a tiny white cap which she didn’t seem to wear for decoration; on her, for some reason, it looked like part of a uniform illustrating her function. And she fulfilled this function stony faced, moving from table to table with an even tread and pedantically noting even the simplest order on a tear-off pad. . The manager’s UnCol, Feuerbach had said after only a minute the first time they’d sat at one of the outside tables. Let’s go inside, we’re being watched out here. — And C. had never managed to get service from her, because she had been severely insulted by his superior. On their second attempt to take advantage of the outdoor service, she came up to their table and punctiliously uttered the mandatory three words: Your order please. . And Feuerbach had requested: Two beers, three double brandies! — She gave a look of cool surprise and asked: Are you expecting another guest? — Feuerbach started to explain that the third brandy was for her, but shut his mouth again and screwed up his eyes. Then he said: Oh, by the way, miss, it works both ways. . why don’t you stick your cockade on that idiotic hat of yours! — With that they’d forfeited the chance of ever being served at the pavement tables again; they moved into the taproom. — She understood me! said Feuerbach, and explained to C. that in the Firm the word cockade was a very common code word for the human arsehole.
This evening — actually it was already night — the first lieutenant was not in the cafe; this knowledge was enough for C., and though his window seat in the taproom was still free, he headed for his flat. He had a bundle of papers in the inside pocket of his parka, the second part of the profiles for which he had taken notes during the Ecology and Perestroika workshop. The event didn’t really fall under Feuerbach’s purview, but it had been clear that a large portion of the Scene would show up there. . It’s about connections with the grassroots groups and so on, Feuerbach had said, not much fun for us, but work is work, and you don’t have to be too particular about it.
And, no doubt unconsciously, C. had done just that: twice he had dated the documents wrong. At the end of the first third, which he had delivered the day before, stood the date 27 April; the sheaf in his pocket, beginning with Person No. 30, was marked 28 April. . if it had gone on like that, the next day he would have written 29/04 under the rest. — But as a matter of principle the cafe tables weren’t set up outside until the eve of 1 May. . he had back-dated all his notes by one day. How was that possible? A little square daily tear-off calendar hung in his flat, and he never neglected to tear off the old sheet. At night he had typed up the list, because his handwritten notes were barely legible: you started sweating when you had to find five minutes at a public event to take notes unobserved, for instance, in much-frequented toilets which didn’t really lock. . the final straw would have been to get asked if he had diarrhoea — and he’d worked on it until five in the morning or later. . after all, it was twenty people he had to process, had to plausibly alter if necessary. . the second part of the list — Criminal profiles! he said — ought to have been delivered now, with the date 28 April beneath it. . but on that day the event in Rummelsburg had only just begun. — The only explanation was that two days ago he’d forgotten to tear off the calendar sheet from 27 April. .
The night before, he had slipped the first part of the list into Feuerbach’s hand under the cafe table; Feuerbach had tucked away the pages without looking at them and said: And tomorrow you’ll bring me the second day! — The whole thing was no big deal, of course, but it was a sign of nerves. .
All that had happened almost exactly a year ago; he no longer knew how he’d revised the false dates back then, or if they’d ever been corrected at all. . maybe he had gone on living with this faulty time ever since. — For perhaps the last year, he thought, we’ve gotten in the habit of arriving a little too late.)
Around noon he woke up in Frau Falbe’s double bed. Blazing sunlight flooded in through the big window on the left side of the room. . he had slept with his back to Frau Falbe’s half of the bed, lying on his side — as always with his knees drawn up and his fists in his lap — full of unrest and as though in a paroxysm, but the dreamless void had drawn him down all the deeper. As soon as he woke he felt the dull pain in the back of his head like a distant drilling, the after-effect, all too familiar, of an overdose of inferior alcohol. . of course he had sat in the pub for far too long, and in the end the drinking had become a sheer test of his endurance. Now he had that familiar taste of bile in his parched oral cavity, in his throat the uvula was sore and so tangibly swollen that it made him nauseous — he must have battered it with unbridled snores. Mucous had solidified rock-hard in his nostrils, and at rhythmic intervals a faint whistling noise escaped his lungs. . it wasn’t the bracing, cleansed awakening one marvelled at in James Bond movies. . the alcohol was famously better on the other side of the Iron Curtain.