There’s no way Peter really listens to the music of this long-forgotten Russian goth band. My mother liked them. She listened to a lot of rock and pop, as well as chansons and musicals and opera. She never got stuck in any one genre.
How is it possible, I wonder, that here — in an apartment that reeks of coal, that’s scrubbed spic and span, a place where every piece of furniture is draped with a doily, where there are plastic flowers in vases on the windowsills, where the walls are covered with the type of horrible pictures of pink children that you can get three-for-ten-bucks at the supermarket, where red-checkered curtains flutter in the wind — that here of all places, this music is played?
In a strange room
With a white ceiling
A right to hope
And a belief
In love.
I stare at the checkered curtains.
We never had curtains. My mother hated them. It might be the one thing she categorically ruled out. She always wanted to have the windows open. The sun should come in. “Let the sun in and the rain will follow.” That’s a line from Die Fantischen Vier my mother liked. Yep, she even liked German hip-hop. The first thing Maria did when she arrived was to sew curtains — loudly colored, with giant flowers all over them. She put them up and pulled them closed.
Then I came home from school and she took them down again. Real fast. She made a blouse for herself out of the fabric. And one for Alissa.
Then she quickly took apart Alissa’s and turned it into three tops for Alissa’s dolls instead.
The drunken doctor
Told you
That you
No longer exist.
Peter reaches out with a bulging arm and taps me on the shoulder.
“What?” I say, taking a step back.
“Why don’t you come out to Broken Glass Park sometime?” he asks without looking at me. “You know, back in the woods.”
“What — where you guys drink and smoke weed and tag-team girls three at a time in the bushes? What would I want to do there?”
“Well, you just explained that yourself.”
“I’ll pass.”
“It’s not true about three guys doing girls at the same time. Where did you hear that? That only happened twice — and the girls wanted it.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want it.”
“Are you scared?”
I go right up to him and stand on my tiptoes.
“Get something straight,” I say. “I. Am. Not. Scared. Of. Anything.”
“Then come along. What’s the problem?”
“You guys make me sick. That’s the problem.”
“Aha,” he says calmly, lowering his head. “You want something better.”
“Exactly,” I say, and watch as his face changes. As if he’s been stung.
Then he gets his facial expression under control again.
“I wouldn’t be saying that kind of thing if I were in your situation,” he says slowly. “It could come back to haunt you.”
“I’m shitting myself. With fear.”
“Wise of you.”
“Alissa,” I say loudly. “How long do I have to wait for you? Let’s go home.”
No answer.
“Is he a good fuck?” asks Peter suddenly, looking me directly in the eyes.
“Who?” I say, stunned.
“The sugar daddy I saw here, the one who dropped you off. Some old guy with gray hair. I know how you are. You think we’re nothing but trash. But in reality you’re the worst of all, just a miserable slut. So is he a good fuck?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Amazing. I can hardly wait for the next round. Alissa! I’m leaving.”
She comes shooting around the corner and grabs my hand with her hot, sticky fingers.
“You can keep the bracelet,” she says to Katja, who waves goodbye somewhat lethargically. “I’m giving it to you.”
In the elevator she asks, “Who is Vadim?” Then she shouts, “Wait! Let me push the button!”
“Vadim?” I say, hoisting her up so she can reach the button. “Nobody.”
I’ve started running again. My favorite time to run is evenings, when it cools off a little. I run past the supermarket, past a sad old man’s pub, through a grove of sycamores, once around the local school, and then into the park and under the underpass. There’s almost always a train rushing past overhead.
It’s dark and moist under there even in the middle of the day at the height of the summer. Kids Anton’s age are always lighting little fires under here. I always come across little holes in the dirt filled with ash and charred twigs or burnt strips of newspaper.
I saw Anton down here once, too, and I was glad to see there was no fire burning near him. But my relief was premature. Anton was squatting down, busy doing something back in the bushes together with a black-haired boy. He flinched as I came closer and looked over his shoulder.
And I flinched, too, because at his feet was something that looked like a raw steak with fur and tiny feet.
And I thought to myself: I need to toughen up. How am I going to fulfill my mission if this is making me nauseated?
The thing that surprised me most was that Anton was clearly leading this odd operation. The other kid was just watching, and rolled his chocolate-colored eyes as I angrily lit into my little brother.
“Why did you kill this little creature?” I yelled at Anton, who just shrugged and shook his head.
“It was already dead,” said the other kid. There was a strange hostility in his pretty, brown saucer eyes, though he looked past me rather than right at me. As if I was too disgusting to look at directly.
“What is that thing anyway? And who are you?”
“I’m Ilhan.”
“And what’s that?”
“A hamster. Are you blind or something?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not blind.” Though I wouldn’t mind it when faced with this bloody clump of fur.
“Did you kill the hamster, Anton?” I asked in a weak voice. “I don’t believe it.”
“It was already dead,” he mutters.
“Died last night, I’m telling you,” said the other boy. “It’s my hamster. It belongs to me.”
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked with disgust. There was no other way to react — Anton was holding the handle of our kitchen knife in his blood-smeared hand, and the blade was buried in the lump at his feet.
“I’m trying to skin it,” Anton mumbled without looking up at me. It was taking every ounce of effort not to throw up on my shoes.
“With your bare hands?” I said.
“How else would you do it?” asked Anton as he gripped the lump with his skinny fingers and tried to pull it open, as stuff oozed from the carcass. The other boy leaned over him, his brow wrinkled with concentration.
“What’s that?” asked Anton curiously. “Do you know, Sascha? Have a look.”
“I’d rather not,” I said faintly. “Maybe another time.”
“Is that the heart?” asked Ilhan with interest. I pulled myself together, kneeled down, and took the knife from Anton’s hand, gulped, bit my lower lip, and tried to turn the hamster carcass carefully with the blade. Quite a bit of stuff fell out of the body cavity.
Crazy how much fits into such a small animal.
“The heart is very small in a hamster like this,” I said, rummaging around inside the carcass with the knife. “This is probably it here. No idea. That big thing there is the intestine.”
“And that?”
“Not sure. Probably the kidneys.”
“Cool.”
“Yuck. All right, Anton, get home, wash your hands. This thing is full of germs. Dead animals are poisonous. Remember that. Wash your hands three times with soap. How can you guys be so stupid and so savage?”
“It was already dead,” Anton mumbled.
“We just wanted to dissect it,” said Ilhan.
“Look at me when you talk to me — even if your father doesn’t look at your mother when he talks to her,” I said. To my surprise he obeyed.