‘Pretty little girlfriend,’ he said. A few minutes back, when we could hardly dance any more and I’d laid my head on the girl’s shoulder, I’d had a feeling I’d seen his blond hair somewhere in the crowd. But there were plenty of blond guys out there and he’d never told me he did business in Köthen. And he was doing business, I could tell straight away, even though the girl was tugging at me and wanting to leave and I had to concentrate to stop Blondie from swaying and whirling. Some guy palmed him a note, and he pressed something into his hand. The guy clenched his fist, opened it again for a moment and looked at his hand, then grinned, turned away and headed for the toilets. ‘It’ll take a while,’ Blondie called after him, ‘but then you’ll go mental.’
‘What’s all this crap?’ I said, shoving him in the chest. The girl let go of me and stumbled against the wall. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, turning her face to me. Her eyes opened and closed, but it was just the sweat running down her face.
‘Just a minute,’ I said. ‘Just a bit. Wait a minute, sweetheart.’ But she didn’t want to be my sweetheart any more, and I watched her swaying to the exit, raising both hands and saying something I didn’t understand.
‘Don’t you want to go after her?’ Blondie put his hand on my shoulder.
‘What are you doing in Köthen, Stephan? If they catch you here — Christ, you’re not even being careful!’ I took the note out of his other hand and shoved it into his jacket pocket.
‘Don’t worry, little brother,’ he patted my shoulder a couple of times. ‘They’re all village idiots here, they’ve got no idea, they won’t even notice.’ He winked at me and smiled. There it was again, his smile; he looked as innocent as a child. You wanted to help him, even though he might not even need any help, like a child you couldn’t help being fond of. Even if he’d done something really bad all he had to do was smile and you’d stroke his hair and everything would be all right again. I stumbled and held onto the wall where the girl had just been leaning. I looked towards the exit but she’d disappeared.
‘And you know what the best bit is?’ I closed my eyes, but he was right by my ear. ‘Painkillers. You get it, painkillers. I’m ripping these village idiots off and they don’t even notice!’ He laughed, and then I heard him rummaging in his pockets. ‘No one knows the brand; they’re from Poland with this little star on them. Like a pill, like ecstasy.’ I opened my eyes and saw the little white pill right in front of me, saw the star in the middle as well, and then there were two guys, they gave him two notes, and he gave them the pill and got another pill out of a little bag that he put back in his jacket pocket afterwards. ‘And be careful, lads, they’re …’ But they were gone. I gave myself a shake and tried to clear my head. I’d need a clear head soon enough, I was sure of that.
‘How long have you been standing here now?’
‘For a while, quite a while, I’ve earned a packet, hey, I’ll get you a drink!’ He held the notes in front of my nose, but I batted his hand away.
‘Right, come on, we’re getting out of here!’ I dragged him to the exit, and it was about time because they were coming for him now, a couple of yards behind us, the first of the village idiots who’d noticed that the pills Blondie was selling didn’t make them go quite as mental as he’d promised. And even though they weren’t in any pain, they still wanted their money back and they wanted to inflict some pain on Blondie. Five or six guys, young lads waving their arms and pointing at us, or only at him but I’d decided — no, not decided, it had just happened, and I was with him, right in the thick of it, and I let it happen. ‘Come on, let’s go!’ Then we were outside, and they were still coming after us, five or six young lads, and there were more and more of them now. We walked towards the station, and then we ran, and I shouted, ‘You fucking idiot — painkillers!’ And he laughed as we ran, and suddenly I couldn’t help laughing either, and I got a stitch.
‘Painkillers, you halfwits bought Polish painkillers!’
Did he shout, did I shout? Did we both shout while the village idiots were coming after us? We laughed and ran.
He lay next to me in bed and I watched him sleeping. We were in a cheap dive and the bed was far too small for two. We’d stayed in good hotels a couple of times, separate beds, and one time we’d had a room each. But when I’d woken up early he was lying on the carpet next to my bed. He had a talent for opening doors, and I’d found a blanket and covered him over.
He looked pretty pale lying next to me in bed, asleep, his head shifting on the pillow now and then. He’d snorted something to help him sleep, probably heroin. He always made sure I didn’t watch him doing it, even though I’d never said anything, and I needed some of it myself some nights. We took trains from town to town, usually medium-sized towns, sometimes the big cities, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, he’d been almost everywhere and he knew where we could go on tour. I can’t remember exactly where we’d started it all, it was probably some kind of coincidence, happened without us thinking much about it, turned out that way while we were riding the rails and didn’t know where to go next. Sometimes I thought … No, I hardly ever thought about it, it was as if we belonged together, like brothers, I told myself, and when we were sitting on trains, sleeping in hotel rooms, walking through the towns, it was as if we had to keep moving, and everything else that was behind us, that lay before us, was strangely blurred. We didn’t care about it, we were riding the rails.
I saw them sometimes when I slept. They were usually older men, sometimes young ones too. I saw the fear on their faces, in their eyes. Usually I didn’t even have to touch them. One old man had started crying. He was wearing a bit of make up, blusher on his cheeks — a painted old man crying and turning to the wall while I went though his pockets.
‘Stop crying, you queen,’ said Blondie, and before I could stop him he slapped him across the face. ‘Leave it out,’ I said, but he just looked at his hand, stained with blusher and the old man’s tears. ‘Dirty bastard, you fucking dirty bastard!’ He wiped his hand clean on the old man’s jacket. ‘This fucking queen’s got me all dirty.’
‘Leave it,’ I said, taking a couple of notes out of the old man’s wallet. He was still crying and he’d started trembling. I put the wallet back in his jacket and the old man trembled and said, ‘Please don’t hurt me.’ That had been up on the coast, by the door to the basement in a house near where the rent boys stood at night.
‘You mustn’t ever leave me alone then,’ said Blondie. He’d woken up. His eyes were blue, dark blue. Up on the coast, we’d often stood by the sea together.
‘How d’you mean?’ I asked, turning my head to look at the ceiling. The light was on, a couple of flies perched around it.
‘When I go with them,’ he said, and I felt him moving his legs, ‘promise me you’ll never …’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘You know that, Stephan, you know I’ll be there then, you know I’ll always come. We’re raking it in, you and me, they’re all village idiots, even in Hamburg, even in Cologne, eh?’ I laughed, and for a moment it looked like the light was flickering.
‘Village idiots,’ he said. He was talking pretty quietly now. I could hardly understand him and I turned back to him. ‘We’re doing pretty good,’ he whispered.
‘Yeah, we are,’ I said, putting my hand down on the pillow next to him.
‘Better than back then,’ he whispered. ‘Better than …’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘better than back then.’
‘Can you get me something please?’
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘if you want.’