Sorry, page 2
The man spits at the woman’s feet, turns his back on her and leaves. The woman starts crying. She cries silently; the people react as people always do and look the other way. The children go on playing, and a dog barks excitedly at a pigeon, while an indifferent sun sees nothing it hasn’t seen a million times before.
On days like this it should rain, Kris thinks. No one should split up with anyone while the sun’s shining.
When the woman looks up, she notices him on the park bench. She smiles embarrassedly, not wanting to display her sadness. Her smile reminds Kris of a curtain that he’s been allowed to glimpse behind for a second. Nice, inviting. He’s touched by her openness, then the moment is just as quickly over, the woman rubs the tears from her face and looks across the water as if nothing has happened.
Kris sits down next to her.
Later he will tell his brother that he didn’t know what he was doing. But that’s later. From here on it’s all very simple. It’s as if the words had always been in his head. Kris doesn’t have to search for them, he just has to say them out loud.
He explains to the woman what’s just happened. He takes the bastard who cheated on her under his wing, and invents a difficult past for him. He talks about problems and childhood anxieties. He says:
“If he could, he would do lots of things differently. He knows he’s screwing up. Let him go. How long have you known each other? Two months? Three?”
The woman nods. Kris goes on.
“Let him go. If he comes back, you’ll know it’s right. If he doesn’t come back, you can be glad it’s over.”
As Kris is talking, he’s taking pleasure in his words. He can observe their effect. They’re like a calming hand. The woman listens attentively and says she wouldn’t have been sure what to think about the whole relationship.
“Did he talk about me a lot?”
Kris hesitates imperceptibly, then pays her compliments and says what you say to an insecure, twenty-three-year-old woman who will find her next lover without any great difficulty the very same week.
Kris is good, he’s really good.
“Even though he’ll never admit it,” he says at last, “you shouldn’t forget that he’s sorry. Deep inside he’s apologizing to you right now.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
The woman nods contentedly.
Everything starts with a lie and ends with an apology—even this morning here in the park. The woman doesn’t know who Kris Marrer is. She doesn’t even want to know how he knows the bastard who has just left her. And although she has no other connection with Kris, she asks him if he’d like to go for a drink. The woman’s pain is like a bridge that anyone can walk on, if they can summon up some compassion.
Sometimes, Kris thinks, we’re so interchangeable it’s embarrassing.
“A glass of wine would do me good,” she says, smoothing her dress over her legs as if the dress were a reason to think about her offer. He sees her knees, he sees the red-painted toenails in the sandals. Then he shakes his head. He didn’t do this to get closer to the woman. He acted purely out of instinct. Perhaps it was the banal primal urge of the protector. Man sees woman, man wants to protect woman, man protects woman. Later Kris will reach the insight that he has pursued his vocation—he had an urgent need to apologize. Later one part will find the other and form one big whole. Later.
Kris rests his hand on the woman’s and says, “Sorry, but I’ve got a date.”
There’s her smile again, but it’s not tormented now; she understands Kris, she trusts him.
“Another time,” he promises and stands up.
She nods. It’s over. The pain of separation has vanished, because she has seen a glimmer of light. A nice man has opened her eyes. And so we leave the woman sitting alone on the grass, and leave the park with the nice man. We are on the way to his job. It will be his last working day, and the nice man is not in a good mood.
“You’ve got to understand this,” says Bernd Jost-Degen ten minutes later and sticks his hands into the front pockets of his designer jeans. He stands with his back to the window, so that Kris can only make his face out as a silhouette. A digital hand twitches between a Chagall and a Miró above a digital clock projected on the wall. The boss’s office must always be in semi-darkness, or else you wouldn’t be able to see the clock. Bernd is three years older than Kris and doesn’t like people calling him “boss,” or pretends not to.
“There’s a lot of rationalization going on,” Bernd continues. “Look at me, I’m up to my neck in shit, as well. The structures aren’t the same any more, the world has moved on, you know? Back in the old days, people did good work for good pay. Now they have to do fantastic levels of work for bad pay. And they’re supposed to be grateful, too.”
He laughs the laugh of someone who isn’t one of those people. Kris feels like an idiot and doesn’t know why he wanted to speak to his boss again. At his feet are two paper bags that the cleaning woman handed to him after she had cleared his desk.
“It’s a market economy, Kris, it’s overpopulation. There are too many of us, and our souls belong to capitalism. Look at me. I’m dangling on strings. I’m a puppet. The guys at the top are saying, Bernd, we want twice as much profit. And what do I do? I give you cheaper mineral water and order the cheapest kind of coffee and make cuts wherever I can, so that the people up there don’t get rid of me.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” asks Kris. “You fired me, you’ve made me one of your cuts.”
Bernd rests one hand on the other and leans forward.
“Come on, Kris, look, my hands are tied, kill me if you want, but my hands are tied. It’s last in, first out. Of course you can go straight on to another job. And if you like, I’ll write you a reference, I’m happy to do that. Of course. Try the Tagesspiegel, they’re a bit slow off the mark. Or what about taz, they’re … What’s up? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Kris has laid his head on one side. His thoughts are focused. It’s a bit like meditation. Each time Kris breathes in he gets bigger, and each time he breathes out his boss shrinks a bit more.
“You’re not going to get violent on me, are you?” Bernd says nervously, and steps behind his desk. His hands disappear into his trouser pockets, his torso leans back as if he were standing on the edge of an abyss. Kris doesn’t move, he just observes, and if he were to step closer to his boss right now, he’d be able to smell his fear.
“I’m really sorry, man. If you want—”
Kris walks out on him mid-sentence and crosses the editorial office with the paper bags under his arms. He’s disappointed. Bernd Jost-Degen has never learned to formulate an apology properly. Never say you’re sorry and hide your hands in your trouser pockets as you do so. We all want to see the weapons we’re being injured with. And if you’re going to lie as he just did, then at least take a step toward the other guy and let him feel you’re telling the truth. Fake closeness, because closeness can mask lies. There’s nothing more pitiful than someone who can’t apologize for his mistakes.
No one looks up when Kris walks past. He wishes the whole gang of them would choke on their own ignorance there and then. He’s worked closely with them for a year, and now not a single one of them looks up.
Kris sets the bags down on the floor of the elevator and looks at himself in the mirror on the wall. He waits for his reflection to look away. The reflection grins back.
Better than nothing, Kris thinks and presses the button for the ground floor.
The two bags contain all his research and interviews from the last few months, which no one’s really interested in. Current for a day, then just some junk that’s recycled over and over. Journalism today, Kris thinks, really wanting to set the whole pile on fire. When the doors open again, he steps out of the elevator and leaves the bags on the floor. At almost the same time they tip sideways with a sigh, then the elevator doors close, and it’s over.
Kris steps onto the pavement and takes a deep breath.
We’re in Berlin, we’re on Gneisenaustrasse. The World Cup has been over for nine weeks, and it’s as if it never happened. Kris doesn’t want that to happen to him. He’s in his late twenties and after twelve months in a steady job he’s unemployed again. He has no interest in looking for another job, and neither does he want to switch, like hundreds of thousands of others, from one internship to the next, getting by on starvation wages and hoping someone takes him on sooner or later. No. And he doesn’t want to work as a trainee, either, because he’s had training and he’s been through university. His attitudes are at odds with the job market—he’s bad at begging and far too arrogant for small jobs. But Kris doesn’t plan to despair. He won’t end up with his head in the oven, no one will be aware of his problems. Kris is an optimist, and there are only two things he can’t stand: lying and unfairness. Today he is aware of both, and his mood matches the fact. If Kris Marrer knew now that he has been moving toward a new goal since waking up, he would change his attitude. You’d be able to see him smile. But as he is unsuspecting, he curses the day and sets off for the subway. He wonders how to straighten a world in which everyone’s used to standing crooked.
TAMARA
JUST AS KRIS IS leaving the editorial office, Tamara Berger is sitting up in bed with a start. The ceiling is just a few inches away from her head, and Tamara knows she will never get used to it. Like waking up in a coffin. She falls back into the pillows and thinks about the dream that is echoing around in her head. A man asked her if she had made her decision. Tamara couldn’t see his face, she could just see the tensed sinews at his throat. So she tried to walk around the man, but his head kept turning away from her until hairline cracks formed at his neck that made Tamara think of dried-out earth. Finally she laid a hand on the man’s head so that he couldn’t turn away any more. She walked around the man and woke up.
We are in Berlin South, two streets away from Steglitz Town Hall. The room looks out onto a courtyard to the rear, the curtains are drawn, and a wasp is flying tirelessly against the windowpane. Tamara doesn’t know how the wasp got through the sealed window. The alarm clock shows 11:19. Tamara doesn’t believe it and holds the alarm clock right in front of her eyes before she gets cursing out of the bunk and puts on last night’s clothes. A minute later she dashes from the apartment as if the house were in flames.
You’ll now be wondering why we are spending any time on a woman who can’t even manage to wash her face or put on fresh clothes after she wakes up. Tamara asks herself the same question as she looks at her face in a reflection on the subway. When she got home at four this morning she was far too tired to take her makeup off. The running mascara left dark traces under her eyes. Her hair is straggly, her blouse crumpled and open one button too far, clearly revealing her cleavage. I look like a tramp, Tamara thinks and buries her face in her hands. Without a word, the man diagonally opposite hands her a tissue. Tamara says thank you and blows her nose. She wishes she had slept through the whole day.
Even though it’s hard for you at the moment, you have to believe that Tamara Berger is an important element in this story. One day you will sit opposite her and ask her whether she’s made her decision. Without her we’d have to part now.
The job center is closed. Tamara gives the door a halfhearted kick and walks to the nearest bakery. She eats a sandwich standing up and sips at a coffee that tastes as if it’s spent a third night on the hot plate. The woman behind the counter shrugs and refuses to make a new pot. She says what’s there has to be drunk first. And no one else has complained. Tamara thanks her for her terrible service, and when the woman turns away she steals her packets of sugar. All of them.
The apartment belongs to Tamara’s sister, Astrid. First floor in the front of an old building. Not beautiful, not ugly, just practical. Two rooms lead off to the front, and the third, next to the bathroom, is Tamara’s. It has a depressing view of a gray courtyard that has never seen sunlight. In summer the stench of rubbish bins is so bad that Tamara has sometimes woken up choking in the night. When she complained to her sister, Astrid said that as far as she was concerned Tamara could go back and live with their parents if she wanted. Tamara kept her mouth shut and sealed up the chinks in the windows.
We are family, she thought, that’s how things are, you keep your mouth shut and hope things will get better one day.
Tamara really thinks that. Her father took early retirement, at thirty-nine; her mother spends her days behind the till at Kaiser’s supermarket, and in the evening she sits and crochets in front of the television. Apart from Astrid, Tamara has an elder brother who disappeared from home at some point to emigrate to Australia. The children grew up with the traditional bourgeois philosophy that life is no one’s friend and you should be content with what you have.
When Tamara gets back from the job center, Astrid is standing at the stove stirring a kind of green cream. The flat smells like the locker room after a game.
“It stinks in here,” says Tamara by way of greeting.
“I can’t smell anything any more,” Astrid replies and taps her nose. “It’s like Chernobyl in there.”
Tamara kisses her sister on the cheek and opens the window.
“So? What happened?”
Tamara would like to answer that nothing’s happened, because nothing actually has happened, but she knows exactly what Astrid means. So she keeps quiet and pulls off her boots and hopes to get away without any further questions. There are days when she manages to do that.
Astrid studies each of Tamara’s movements. Not a lot has changed between the sisters since childhood. They might be four years apart, but no one can see the difference. Tamara doesn’t know whether that speaks for her or against her. In the old days she always wanted to be the older one.
“Don’t make that face,” says Astrid. “One of those big bookshops will take you on eventually. Dussmann or someone. They’re always looking for people.”
Astrid can talk. People with jobs are always hearing that there are jobs everywhere. A year ago Tamara’s sister set up a nail studio in the basement of the building. She also mixes up creams and face masks to order. At the end of the year she intends to specialize in massages. Astrid runs the nail studio on her own. Tamara would like to help her, because anything would be better than sitting around idle, but Astrid thinks Tamara is overqualified.
Tamara hates the term. It sounds as if she’d developed an infectious illness after she took her final exams. Normally qualified is always better, it means the employer can pay less. Student is best of all, of course, but Tamara has sworn never to study again. She’s glad that school’s behind her; she doesn’t have to wear the academic invisibility cloak all over again. She doesn’t even expect much from life. She just wants to make a bit more money, travel a bit more, and she wants things to be a bit better overall.
“Did you call in and see them?” asks Astrid.
“See who?”
“Are you even listening? Bookshop? Big one? Dussmann? Something’ll come up there soon, believe me.”
Tamara nods even though she doesn’t want to, then stands by the kitchen table and empties all the sugar packets from her jacket pocket.
“Look what I’ve brought.”
Astrid grins.
“So who got on the wrong side of you this time?”
“A member of the working class,” says Tamara, kisses her sister on the cheek again and disappears into her room.
Even though she’s only been living with Astrid since the spring, it’s felt like an eternity. It was Tamara who chose to move in, but sometimes you just go with it and then you’re surprised that things happen the way they do.
If you could look around Tamara’s room, you’d think the person who lives here is just passing through. Two open suitcases with clothes spilling out of them, two rows of books along the walls, no pictures, no posters, not even any little ornaments on the windowsill. Having arrived is a state that Tamara is still waiting for. She doesn’t dream of owning her own house with a parquet floor and a husband whom she will bless with three children. Her dreams are bleak and feeble, because she doesn’t know what she wants from life. She doesn’t feel any sense of vocation, she isn’t enticed by a mission. There’s just the desire somehow to fit in, but without really having to belong. She likes society too much to be an outsider; she’s too much of an outsider to conform.
After Tamara has closed the bedroom door behind her, she listens to the treacherous silence. Through the wall she hears first a quiet cough, then a loud groan.
I’ve got to get out of here, Tamara thinks, and resists the urge to hammer on the wall. Werner is on the toilet again. Werner is Astrid’s current boyfriend, and he spends five days a week at her place, even though his flat is twice the size of hers. Astrid doesn’t see him on the weekends, because that’s when Werner goes from one house to another with his friends, getting so drunk that he can’t be bothered to see anybody. Werner is a high school gym teacher, and he’s had hemorrhoids since childhood. Every day he sits on the toilet for an hour and groans. Tamara hears every sound. Except on Saturday and Sunday, of course.
She climbs onto her bunk bed, grabs her headphones and the historical novel that lies open and facedown beside her pillow. Seven pages later the ceiling light flickers on and off. Tamara takes the headphones off and looks down from the bunk. Astrid is standing in the door frame, waving the telephone.
“Who is it?”
“Who do you think?” Astrid replies and throws her the phone.
Tamara’s heart starts thumping. There are days when she hopes to hear an elegant, almost tender voice at the other end. She knows it’s an idiotic hope, but she still excitedly presses the receiver to her ear and listens. She hears breathing, she knows the breathing and is disappointed, but tries not to let any of her disappointment show.
“Save me,” says her best friend. “I’m on my last legs here.”
Tamara Berger and Frauke Lewin have known each other since grade school. They ended up at the same grammar school, fancied the same boys, and hated the same teachers. They spent almost all their evenings with the clique at the Lietzensee. From the first kiss to the first joint they experienced everything there—lovesickness, crying fits, political discussions, arguments, and the depths of boredom. In the winter you could see them sitting on the benches by the war memorial. The cold couldn’t touch them in those days. They drank mulled wine from thermos flasks and smoked their cigarettes hastily, as if they might warm them up. Tamara doesn’t know when the cold took hold of them. They feel it much more quickly now, they whine more, and if anyone asks them why, they reply that the world is getting colder and colder. They could also answer that they’d got older, but that would be too honest, you don’t say that until you’re forty and you can look back. In your late twenties you go through your very private climate disaster and hope for better times.
