‘How d’you know about him?’
‘From a friend.’
‘You’re not as young as you used to be, Stephan.’
‘Hey, come on.’ He’d smiled, and then he’d added, ‘Young enough for him, as long as I play along.’
‘Play along?’
‘You know, everything he wants. Even if it hurts.’
‘If it hurts,’ I’d said, and he’d kept on smiling.
‘And your friend?’
‘That lad in Berlin, you remember …’
‘Yeah.’ He’d been there for a while, while I’d been working in a bar with an old mate I knew from inside, serving customers, keeping the peace and whatever came up.
‘I need a holiday,’ he’d said.
‘Sure, you take a bit of a rest.’ He’d been there a couple of weeks, with his ‘lad’, while I was in the bar every night and couldn’t sleep in the day, a bed in the back room, far too small for two, and I’d left the light on, but now we were riding the rails again.
‘Come by around ten. His flat’s out by the harbour, I’ll write the address down for you.’
‘No, I want to see it before. It’s safer that way. Then I’ll stay close by.’
And I was close by. I was drinking whisky and looking at the big bridge and the ships disappearing slowly in the darkness. There was one very large ship, with several decks one above the other. I ordered another whisky, then another. I looked at the hands of my watch.
There was a woman next to me at the bar, drinking as well, a large cocktail. I’d ordered it for her. ‘Are you waiting for someone?’ asked the woman. She’d asked me a couple of things before but I’d just answered yes or no and then ordered her the cocktail. It had been a long time since a woman had asked me to get her a drink.
‘No,’ I said, looking at the hands of my watch. Still time; Stephan would probably be going over to where the guy picked up his boys right now. His ‘lad’ in Berlin had told him everything. ‘What if he doesn’t come?’ I’d asked. ‘What if he takes someone else home?’
‘You know me,’ he’d said, ‘I’m irresistible.’
‘I’ve never seen you here before,’ said the woman. ‘You’re not from round here, are you?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not from round here.’
She drank her cocktail, stroking the end of her straw across her lips. ‘Are you here on holiday or are you working?’ She didn’t stop chatting, and I picked up my glass and turned to face her. It was dark outside now, and it was pretty gloomy in the bar too, little candles burning on the tables even though most of them were empty. She wasn’t that good looking, jaded, the corners of her mouth drooped, bags under her eyes, but her blonde hair shone in the light of the red lamp above the bar and she was nicely dressed, and the way she was dressed I could tell her body was still in pretty good shape, although it could all be playing tricks on me, the light and the whisky and the night. ‘What about you,’ I said, ‘what do you get up to?’
She stroked her straw across her lips before she drank. ‘This and that,’ she said, pushing the glass aside and taking out the straw and holding it between two fingers and tapping it on the bar a couple of times. I nodded and looked past her at the big window, behind it the night. I nodded again and looked at her, and now she smiled and blushed and lowered her head a touch and looked at the bar.
Sometimes I think that was what it was, that smile, that blush, that lowered head, sometimes I think … A cheap tart, I’d thought in the bar when she sat down next to me, and she probably was one, maybe a professional, I’d thought, and maybe she was one, semi-professional, now and then, but that blush — no, it wasn’t the smile so much, it was the blush, the lowered head, because just before she’d been asking stupid questions and laughing loudly. Sometimes I think she just did that for me at that moment, just acting because she could tell I’d like it. Sometimes I think, and sometimes I know, that all she did was give a stupid grin, that moment next to me, her head leaning forward into the red light of the lamp above the bar.
‘Hey,’ she said, ‘you’re a nice boy.’
‘You’re a nice girl,’ I said. I looked at my watch and put it in my pocket.
I ran down the corridor. I wanted to get out of there. There was a man lying on the floor, one arm splayed strangely away from his body. ‘Stephan,’ I called out, but I knew he wasn’t there. I’d searched the flat but all I’d found was sex toys. And special furniture, benches, stools. I found stuff only doctors have. I stood in the hallway, but there was no man on the floor any more. The door was open. I ran down the stairs. There’d been a couple of bushels of Blondie’s hair on one of the pieces of furniture.
I ran down the street. I turned around and looked back at the house where Blondie had been just a couple of hours before. A taxi came, the sign on its roof glowing yellow. I waved and it stopped next to me. I opened the door and got in the back. ‘To the station,’ I said, and we were on our way.
THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF JOHANNES VETTERMANN
The man has a dog’s head. An Alsatian, large ears protruding from his head, pointing towards the ceiling. The man with the dog’s head is directly in the light of the large chandelier. Johannes Vettermann is lying on the floor, crawling backwards away from the man with the dog’s head. But the man with the dog’s head doesn’t seem to be taking the slightest interest in him. He’s holding a small, dark puppy in both hands, human hands, pressing it between the lapels of his jacket.
Now he opens his muzzle, a long pink tongue getting longer and longer until it touches the puppy’s head. The dog-man is absolutely absorbed in licking the tiny head. Johannes Vettermann wonders whether he ought to pick up the ashtray from somewhere behind him on the bedside table, but the two of them look so placid there, the tiny dog looking him right in the eye. ‘Father,’ says the puppy all of a sudden, and Johannes Vettermann doesn’t know if he means him or the dog-man. But the dog-man says it too, ‘Father,’ slurring slightly as he goes on licking. ‘Father, father, father.’ They won’t stop, their muzzles hardly moving, as if they were ventriloquists.
And he’s no longer crawling backwards, he’s crawling towards the door again where there’s a telephone on a table. There was a telephone on the bedside table but he smashed it against the wall because it kept ringing. No one knows he’s here, but it kept ringing and ringing.
The table is a long way away, a large suite in the best hotel in town, five stars, twenty-seventh floor, and the way to the door is even longer now because he has to make a detour around the two dogs. ‘Father, father, father.’
‘Then you two can —’ he whispers, ‘then you two can help me out a bit, can’t you?’
‘Bad father, bad father!’ Another man leaps at him from one side, Johannes Vettermann screaming out loud. The man is naked, tattooed all over his body, an eagle, a clown, faces, symbols, but that’s not what scares Johannes Vettermann. It’s the man’s face, contorted into a terrifying grimace. He has no top lip, his bottom lip sags lopsidedly, dark red and swollen, while two jagged teeth point towards his nose like two thin, white fingers. And his eyes … The eyes stare at Johannes Vettermann with such rage that he tries to crawl under the king-size bed. He’s still screaming. He squeezes his eyes shut so tightly that coloured circles begin dancing in the darkness. He takes the colours, mixes them, strokes them into lines, contours, heads, moves the brush, moves his shoulders, steps forwards and then a few steps backwards, moves back and forth in front of the canvas on the easel, ducks down and creeps around it, moves his shoulders, then stops perfectly still and touches the canvas over and over with the brush, breathing calmly in and out again, stroking and dabbing, a man with a dog’s head holding a puppy to his chest with both hands, the pale pink of the tongue … He opens his eyes; the room is empty. And the stabbing is back in his chest straight away. No, not just in his chest; in his head, his stomach and in his legs and arms, but mainly in his chest. He’s lying on his back, unable to move, looking up at the large chandelier. He threw a bottle at it, finest champagne, still half full, but he missed. That must have been a couple of hours ago, when he wasn’t yet lying on the floor. He’d been lying in bed, a woman on either side of him. They’d been with him all day, massaging his arms and injecting him. They were naked and beautiful, and he’d stroked them cautiously a couple of times but there’d been no real point to it; he hadn’t felt anything. They’d tried to fumble around at him but he’d just said, ‘Don’t,’ and told them the rules. They started getting bored and he gave them a bit of coke, and later he asked them to get dressed again because he couldn’t bear the two beautiful women so naked next to him and around him. ‘One blonde, one brunette,’ he’d said on the telephone, and when the guy had started talking about services he’d said, ‘I don’t care.’