I had to queue for what felt like hours at the post office, stuck in a huddle of sweaty, smelly Berliners. If anything makes you want to stop believing in humanity then it’s queuing in a government department during a heat wave.
Most people were discussing the rumours about Hanna Krause, the chair of the Central Round Table. She was going to be at Kaminsky’s rally the next day. Nobody knew what was going on, whether there’d been some kind of deal. Whatever it was, it must be mega, just look at the way Kaminsky had been slagging Hanna Krause off, saying she was hysterical and calling the Round Tables knitting circles of saboteurs (he obviously doesn’t realise just how dangerous knitting circles can be).
It just didn’t make any sense, didn’t tie in with the stories Erika had told me about what Hanna used to get up to in the old days. People were coming up with fantastic conspiracy theories: Kaminsky and Krause have fallen in love, or Krause’s sold the Round Tables out.
Listening to all that sick gossip put me in an even worse mood and when I finally got to the head of the queue the clerk behind the counter was really snotty with me. She sighed and complained about having to get off her arse to fetch the phone book.
“You know, you could just leave them out here in front. That way you could sit on your comfy seat all day long and not have to get up for people like me.”
She gave me a look like she thought I was crazy. “These books are the property of the German Post, we can’t just leave them lying around.”
Honestly, sometimes I think these civil servants haven’t even heard we’re in the middle of a revolution.
The clerk came back and passed the Frankfurt district phone book over. “Move aside so that I can deal with other customers, and don’t be too long about it.”
I took the book to the tables they provide for you to fill in your withdrawal slips and customs declaration forms and stuff, and riffled through the pages until I got to the Beckers. I groaned, once again there was no Dr. Becker but there were about fifteen different A. Beckers. Great. I turned over a withdrawal slip and started to copy out the addresses and phone numbers, but sweat dripped off my forehead and splotched onto the rough paper. The damp patch kept growing, and was added to by another drop of sweat.
“Fuck it!” I said under my breath, and, checking nobody was watching, I tore out the page of Beckers and left the phone book on the table.
Back outside I considered my options. I could go back to the office, work through all these Beckers, try to eliminate them one by one, or I could do something less boring. The something less boring option was more than appealing right now—I was finding it hard to concentrate, every time I tried to do something my mind kept sliding off, towards Katrin or Schimmel or the Thaeri, or all of them bundled up together in a hard ball that sat in my stomach. I just ended up feeling sorry for myself, and that made me feel like a right sad case.
But I had a mission, and right now that mission was the only way I was managing to keep it together.