Hemispheres (34 page)

His large, slug-like tongue crawls slowly across his lips and a candle of slobber dangles from his chin. He starts to move
forward and I grab his arm.

Johann, you cannot eat them, I say, urgently. You are not a magpie, or Königin Victoria in black mourning.

His face twists into an ugly snarl.

Get you filthy hands off me
Engländer
.

He pushes me back and I slump into a confusion of brambles which clutch at my clothes and hair. Johann bounds towards the
back of the lorry and suddenly there’s magma rising to my throat. I thrash myself clear of the brambles, globes of blood like
tiny red chillies at my forearms
and on my face. He’s stooping like a crane beneath the back bumper and I run at him, pulling him away so that he turns, arms
flailing and his face purple and engorged.

You are with them in league, he roars, slamming a knee expertly into my groin. I collapse, winded, in front of him.

First I have with you to deal, he whines. You fucking firescreen, you sapsucker.

He pulls a full bottle of Canadian rotgut whisky from the inside pocket of his overcoat and tears off the top and wrenches
my head back by the hair so that I fear being scalped. Instead he turns me over and plunges the bottle into my mouth.

Have a drink Herr Cornelius, he shouts.

The neck of the bottle almost down my throat, Johann on my chest, pinning my upper arms with his knees. I’m forced to swallow,
and swallow, and swallow, bubbles of my life wriggling upwards through the golden fluid, until half of it’s gone and replaced
by my breath. Queen Victoria puts the bottle down carefully on the ground, her jowls quivering. She reaches inside her black
organza cleavage and a huge knife like a flatfish jumps into her hand.

You killed Albert you whore, she spits, the piggy eyes incandescent with rage, raises the glittering flatfish into the air
above my throat.

I’m going to rip you, she murmurs, with some relish. And then I’m going to gobble them fledglings.

As she says this, jet earrings a-quiver, one of her dumpy knees lifts just a little from my bruised upper arm. Just enough
for me to wrench the arm free with a brutal effort and smash my fist into her face. She topples backwards and spits broken
teeth, black blood dribbling onto the ground. Twist myself to my feet just as she flies at me with the giant blade, catching
me on the chin and tearing off a flap of skin.

By royal commission, this, she laughs, waving the knife above her head, black skirts billowing and hair coming astray. She
points to the royal crest on the blade.

That’s me sonny. VR. Read ’em and weep motherfucker.

She comes at me again with a Miss Piggy squeal, but this time I manage to sidestep and grab the chunky gold chain holding
the pendant round her neck. She jerks back like a hanged man reaching the end of the rope and I force her to the ground while
she slashes at me behind her back with the knife. Little mouths open and gape in my flesh, and I begin to leak onto the floor,
but I twist the gold chain tight and hold on, praying it doesn’t break. I twist the gold chain while her quaking dewlaps turn
purple and then blue, tongue protruding from the twisted mouth. I hold on until she is finished, and the knife stops dipping
its beak into me and falls to the ground. Then I sit down and watch the adult redstarts shyly observing me, alarm calls ticking
and autumn tails nervously beating. They come closer, among the glowing buddleia leaves and flakes of blue sky, and I can
see the bundles of tiny insects clamped in the needle-sharp beaks. Then, courage restored, they flit back beneath the lorry
and I hear the rasping cries of the brood.

Evening is growing and the air-raid sirens beginning to wail by the time I drag the old woman’s body deep under cover, at
the centre of a thicket. I take her velvet cloak to cover my bloodstains. Bombers are beginning to drone overhead as I hurry
back to the rusting lorry. The bottle is there, where she left it, perched primly on the ground, the raw gold beckoning within.
Searchlights are clutching at the night sky over the city, revealing flocks of bombers like black bats hanging upside down
from heaven. Guano begins to drip from the blunt bodies. I tilt the bottle where a small sun has been left brewing, and swallow
it down whole, hydrogen and helium and sunspots and solar flares and all. The crump of high explosive echoes from the edges
of the city and I lie down in the middle of the wasteland and wait for it to come.

So, you’re healed now, she says, from the other side of her desk. At least, your body is healed. The knife wounds, you know.

Her English is good, the voice calm and assured. Antiseptic, like the hospital smell of her little white office.

How long? I stammer, uncomfortable on the plastic chair.

You’ve been in hospital five weeks, she says. Lucky to be here. You lost a lot of blood.

I reach a hand up to my scalp. It’s naked, brutally shaved.

Sorry, she says. The locks had to go. You were quite badly infested.

And then I look at her. A white face with a long clean jawline, a lascivious turn to the upper lip. Coarse black hair swept
away and gathered at the back. She’s wearing a sleeveless top and I can’t help staring at her arms which are thin and bare
and white as a pelagic bird. And bluegreen snakes coiling around from wrist to shoulder in whorls and vertices like a double
helix.

Caroline Baumann, she says. Everybody calls me Cally. I’m the alcohol project worker. There’s no compulsion, of course. You
can go back on the streets if you wish. But we can offer counselling and support –

Her voice tails off. My eyes rove over her white skin, the elaborate tattoos, then snap, embarrassed, back to her face.

I got them done in Kreuzberg, she says. After a colossal acid trip.

She stretches a thumb and middle finger round the broadest extent of her slender bicep, slides it down towards the elbow.

So why the snakes? I ask her.

I don’t know. I’ve always been fascinated by them. I love their skin, the patterns on it are so intricate. Like an engraving
by Escher.

She pulls herself upright. So Mr Cornelius, shall we begin?

It’s not Cornelius, I tell her. The passport, it’s fake.

So what is your name?

I try to rub the creases out of my forehead with my palms.

That’s the thing. It’s gone. I need to get it back.

Your memory will come back, eventually. That’s what happens in almost every case. Let’s start at the beginning.

I sigh deeply, lean back in the chair, put my hands behind my head. Fix her with my eyes.

To be honest Miss Baumann. Cally. I’d rather talk about snakes.

*

Four days later I wake up in her apartment, bathed in sweat. The tenor bell of the cathedral has a deep penetrative note which
vibrates through the building each time it sounds the hour. She’s next to me, twisted in the bed.

It’s okay, she says. You must have been dreaming.

Yeah. I grin uncertainly. Dreaming about the sea.

You have to rest, she says. Get some of that strength back. No time for worrying.

You know, I… I think I had a kid. A wife. Years since I saw them. How many? I don’t even know what year it is now.

Perhaps, she says. But you can’t go looking now. You’ve been through a lot. Got to eat, like John Wayne said, get off your
horse and drink your milk. Good for the bones.

She pads through the small flat in the half-light, to the kitchen. I hear the fridge pop open, see the flood of light. Back
to the bedroom with a glass of milk and a slice of black bread. Ghostly light outside, not quite dawn, the city still asleep.
I drink hungrily, thick milk smeared across my stubble. Cally giggles.

Du Ferkel!
You need a –
Lätzchen
– I don’t know the word in English – for a baby.

A nappy, I offer, smirking.

I know a lot of English men like that sort of thing, but no, I know a nappy is for shit, huh? This thing goes around your
neck.

You, I say, smiling.

And she twists her head from side to side on the pillow as I move above her, in the bed in the half-lit room beneath the deep
tenor bell of the cathedral, in the lost room deep in the dark heart of Europe. Her arms with the snake tattoos are around
me, raking my back, cupping my buttocks, rubbing at the stubble on the back of my head. Her thin legs are moving around my
thighs, knees jutting out an angle like bent coathangers. She imprisons me with the thin bars of her limbs, limiting me to
this one simple movement of the buttocks, ploughing
backwards and forwards. When she comes and cries out harshly she clasps me fiercely with her arms, the white arms with the
coiled tattoos, constricting my chest so that I can hardly breathe, holding me fast so that I can’t escape, so that I’m pouring
out my life into her.

And days go by. Weeks. When Cally is at work I sit slumped on the sofa. There’s a fog outside, soft and absorbent, the gothic
bulk of the cathedral sensed rather than seen. The television is beginning to occupy more and more of my days, as I get fitter
and more mobile, bright moving pictures and sounds occupying the front part of my brain. Like a group of vacuous and noisy
squatters, chatty but ultimately pointless. But they stop the real heavies moving in, the ones I don’t want to meet.

The key turns in the outer door. Has she been locking me in? I’ve never checked, never yet felt strong enough to venture outside.
But the thought of being locked in troubles me. It’s like a pond, this apartment. Comfortable and warm, but too murky. I think
of going across Roncalliplatz to the cathedral, climbing up into that tower until my knees are jelly. Climbing up above the
fog, above the booming of great bells in the murk.

Where have you been? I missed you.

Have to earn us some bread, she says. I have clients who need me. Not just you.

Plenty of alcoholics in the world, I say. You know, I used to have these migraines – a blur would move slowly across my vision,
like a sunspot swimming across the sun. Eventually it would drop over the rim and I could see again. But right then I’d get
a blinding headache, like I’d been hit with a hammer. It’s like that now. Everything’s blurred, but I can feel the blur moving.
I want to see again.

When that happens you might have to put up with a big headache, she says.

A few days later she gives me a key. It winks on the string like a fish.

Had this cut today, she said. For you. You can go explore when I’m
at work. I take the key and put it in my pocket. It feels light, almost weightless.

Fresh air, she says. You need to build up the strength in your muscles.

Yes, I tell her. Walking is good. Walking is fine.

We’re sitting in the living room of the flat, bars of sunlight jutting through the diaphanous curtains. The television is
babbling. When she’s gone out, I close the flat door behind me, lean against the outside. Sweat prickling on my scalp, dark
patches welling like tears in my armpits. Look down the dark stairwell. It reminds me of others. Wooden banisters worn smooth
by the passage of hands. Whitewashed steps leading up. Snow blowing through slats.

Take a step down, heart accelerating wildly, knocking in your ears. Both hands braced against the walls. Focus on the street
door at the bottom, mail lying haphazard on the floor, flyers for restaurants and bars. Focus on the bright flags of paper
and make yourself walk. The sweat patches have swollen, become dark moons. Walk to the bottom.

I grasp the brass latch of the street door, open it a crack. A sliver of sunlight, with a hot breath of coffee and pastries
and dusty pavements. I open the door a little more, scrutinize the passers-by. A tall man, slightly stooped, wearing a black
leather jacket. Greying hair, slicked back. I’m straining to see his face, but he ducks into an alleyway. And then there’s
a younger man, well-muscled, hair close-cropped like suede and a sleeveless tee showing off his upper arms. Their names are
on the tip of my tongue.

And then there’s a hand on my shoulder, and I turn in surprise. That gentle pressure.

That was classic, he says. Yan, you really are a tool.

Joe.

He hovers in front of me for the moment it takes me to realize that it isn’t Joe, but the tenant from the upstairs flat, and
that he’s put a hand on my shoulder because he wants me to move out of his way.

Entschuldigung
, he repeats softly, spectacles like moons. I move to
make way, click the door shut after him. Slide down to the floor, back against the closed door.

Joe, Horse Boy, Fabián. I’m walking down the stairwell of a block of flats. The stench of piss, graffiti on the walls. A plastic
bag in my hand, bottles clinking. Whisky. I can smell it. When I look up I can see my own footprints coming down the stairs,
the tread of my brogues.

Stairs and stairwells. Over the months I linger a little longer, each time I leave the flat, feeling my heart palpitate and
my gullet tighten. At the bottom, sunlight bristles through the panel of the street door. Smooth wooden banisters on the stairs
at home, where Kate thought there were ghosts.

Kate. Her name in my mouth like a sugared almond.

And there were whitewashed stairs in an old farmhouse, back on the Falklands. I dreamed an attic and muzzle flashes and then
nothing, like I cheated death there without even knowing. Or perhaps I really died there and now I’m a ghost, dwindling in
the bright world.

I finger the brass lighter in my pocket and it turns cold.

There’s a third stairwell, somewhere close in a block of flats, and my shoes leaving great damp stains on the concrete.

At first I linger in the square by the cathedral, soaking up the sun and feeding the pigeons. Birds crowd and tumble about
my feet like jugglers, perch on my hands with those scaly feet, pink and crabbed. And then onto the U-Bahn, rattling through
the city and suburbs, riding the different lines to places I’ve never heard of, enjoying the anonymity, the sense of ease.
But underneath this lazy convalescence I’m looking for a scent. Narrowing down the options.