We’ve heard a lot about you and got to know you a little better, but we still don’t know where you come from and why you exist. Let’s go back a bit. Back to the day when you first discovered that the world turns differently as soon as you take a step outside of reality.
It is December.
It is 1976.
It is late afternoon.
A family’s having dinner, while outside the winter rages and the streets suffocate beneath the snow with silent resignation. No sounds of cars, no playing children, even the dogs aren’t barking at each other on the pavements. Father and son sit silently at the table. Mother leans over the stove. She never sits down. She’d prefer to eat later on her own, because she’ll have more peace then. She says. Your mother, your father, you. You are aware that your parents haven’t got on for years. They endure one another. Your father sleeps on the sofa. Your mother locks herself in the bathroom. In public they’re two shadows that never touch. In the house they act as if one or the other of them is in a bad mood, as if you kids don’t understand what’s playing out in front of you. They don’t believe in divorce. Divorce is for losers. Your father’s a winner. He wouldn’t dream of letting your mother go. You sit facing one another at the dinner table. Your mother on your right, your sister on your left. Her chair is empty today. She’s at dance class. She’s allowed to turn up late.
“Sit down, now,” says your father, and your mother ignores him and lights a cigarette. She leans against that bloody stove as if she couldn’t stand up on her own. You wish they’d yell at each other. It would be nice if your mother won for once. A lot of things would be easier.
The news reaches you when your sister comes back from her dance class. You know when you hear her running along the corridor. The pace of her footsteps, her toneless panic. It’s only when she’s standing in the doorway that she says, “Robbie’s dead!”
Your father looks at you startled, as if you’d said the words. Your mother throws her hands to her mouth, her cigarette slips from her fingers. You lower your eyes because you can’t think how to react. You watch the end of the cigarette slowly burning a hole into the linoleum. When you look up, your father is still looking at you, startled.
Ten minutes later. Your father is shoveling the snow from the drive. He doesn’t need to do it, you could walk easily across the garden to the Danisch house, but your father needs an excuse. He stalls. He scatters sand. He puts the shovel in the garage. He shuts the garage. He comes into the house. Your mother spoke to Robbie’s mother on the phone; your help is needed. You sit in your room and watch the snow pelting the window like a raging swarm of insects. Your parents are talking downstairs. You hear them through the door. Perhaps they’ll forget about you.
Your sister looks in and asks if you’re coming or what? You get up, push past her, and hear your father say, “This isn’t for me.”
“What does that mean, this isn’t for me?”
“It means what it means.”
“But Karen and Thomas are our friends.”
“They are not my friends. They are neighbors.”
“How can you …”
They break off when you come downstairs. Your sister close behind you. You hear her humming quietly. She always hums when she’s anxious.
“You go on ahead,” says your father and disappears into the living room.
His boots stand like twin stumps in the corridor. The snow under the soles is firm and lumpy and refuses to melt. Your mother opens the front door and slings the boots outside. The TV comes on in the living room. You want to join him. You wish they’d actually pull knives on each other. And now your father’s free to win.
“Coward,” you hear your mother mutter.
“What’s wrong with Daddy?” your sister asks.
“He’s tired,” your mother replies.
“I’m tired too,” your sister says with a glassy look in her eyes as if there were tears that couldn’t get out. Your sister is seven, Robbie was thirteen. Your mother wants you both to put on something black. You go upstairs and get changed.
“What’s that?”
You look down at yourself. Your only black sweater is the one with Jaws on the front. Its mouth is wide open.
“You’re not serious.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
“If Robbie’s parents see you like that, they’ll get …”
Your mother breaks off, puts her hand in front of her mouth, and shakes her head as if she doesn’t know what to say. You go back into your room and get a dark blue sweater out of the wardrobe.
“Better?”
Your mother stands at the window blowing her nose with her back to you. She couldn’t really give a damn about the sweater. In the reflection in the window you see that her eyes are shut. From somewhere there comes the sound of your sister humming. You want to check on her, but you know your mother has to let you go first.
“I don’t want to lose you,” you hear her saying, as if that had anything to do with anything.
It’s terrible. The Danisches are sitting side by side on the sofa, looking miserable. Aunty Henna has come. She’s nobody’s aunt. She lives two streets away and everybody calls her Aunty. She’s always there if you need her. The women say Aunty Henna buried her husband in the cellar because she wanted to keep him to herself. You think that’s a lie. Aunty Henna’s too good-looking for that. She’s got no shortage of men running after her, she doesn’t need to bury one in the cellar.
Aunty Henna brings coffee and schnapps and talks quietly. She says all the things the Danisches would say if they were talking to your parents. It’s like listening to the radio. After half an hour Frau Danisch leaves the room and goes upstairs. Your mother follows her. After less than a minute, Frau Danisch’s grieving wails are heard. You get goose bumps. Everyone else pretends they haven’t heard. You drink your fourth cup of coffee and wish you could stick your finger down your throat. Your sister has curled up like a cat on one of the armchairs, she is fast asleep. Aunty Henna tops up your coffee. Herr Danisch holds his hand over his empty cup. He says he has enough. You wish you could creep under the table so that everyone would forget you. It has a glass top. Herr Danisch would see you. He wouldn’t forget you. He’d ask you what you were doing there. You drink your coffee. You can’t think of anything better to do.
Herr Danisch goes out onto the terrace. You follow him. Snow has collected on the roof. The terrace looks as if someone’s dipped it in a glass of milk. The covered pool is the same as ever. It’s a mystery to you. It should have changed. You swam in it only recently, you chased each other from one end to the other, while the snow raged around you, and all of a sudden the pool is taboo, even though nothing about it has changed. If you narrow your eyes, you can see Robbie. Arms spread, facedown, naked and motionless.
Nothing.
“I wish we’d never built that pool,” Herr Danisch says and turns the switch. The roof slides slowly sideways. Snow comes pelting through the gap and dissolves on the surface of the water.
“It’s the best pool in the whole city,” you say, and your words are as hollow and empty as the space your brain is sitting in.
“I know, Robbie said the same thing,” says Herr Danisch and turns away, without closing the roof again. Snow drifts onto your face, snow is everywhere. The water steams. Robbie turned the temperature up for you this morning. You’d like to turn the switch and watch the roof closing silently again. Like a weary eye. Like your thoughts, if you could think. But you don’t dare touch the switch. You don’t know if Herr Danisch would go completely nuts.
You hear him saying from the living room: “It happened quickly.”
And Aunty Henna replies, “He didn’t suffer.”
And the sound of Robbie’s mother howling comes from upstairs.
“Here.”
Your father’s come after all. He’s shaved and says he’s sorry, it took him a while to pull himself together.
“Delayed response time,” he calls it, and Herr Danisch nods and shakes his hand. Later the two men will withdraw to the den and sit on two stools and pass a bottle back and forth. Whiskey or vodka or brandy. You know the Danisch family’s alcohol supply. You know which pile of books it’s hidden behind. You and Robbie drank half the vodka and filled it up with water. The men won’t notice. Herr Danisch will tell your father how guilty he feels. He’ll look for a pickaxe to destroy the pool. Your father will restrain him. Later. Later isn’t now. Now your father’s eyes are fixed on you, just as they were when your sister came storming into the house with news of Robbie’s death. You know your father’s problem. He imagines it had been you. There in the pool. As if something like that would happen to you. Your mother thinks the same thing. They barely communicate now, but when they do, it’s on a shared wavelength.
“Go on, have some.”
Your father holds a beer bottle out to you. You’re too young to drink beer. Thirteen’s too young. Coffee’s okay, beer’s taboo. But the death of the neighbor boy makes your father look at you with different eyes. He doesn’t know how old you’ll get. From today, anything is possible. Drink.
“Thanks.”
You sip at it and then turn the bottle in your hands the way you’ve seen people doing it on television. Your sister has woken up, she is drinking Coke. What you wouldn’t give for a Coke right now.
You’re standing by the big plate-glass window. You thought everyone would balk at the idea of looking at the pool. But everybody’s looking at it. They’re looking at it as if something was suddenly going to happen and time was going to reverse itself, as if Robbie might rise unharmed from the water. The snow pelts through the roof. You wish it would fall more gently. But the snow doesn’t want to fall. It’s just pelting.
“I still can’t believe it,” Herr Danisch says quietly, pulling his upper lip into his mouth. All of you are reflected in the window. Your sister turns away first and switches on the television. Aunty Henna whispers to her that that’s not quite decent. Your sister tells her what series is about to come on. Aunty Henna says: Well, if that’s the case. You keep watching the room in the reflection. You keep watching your father on your left and Herr Danisch on your right. No one mentions what’s happened. You shut your eyes. Like a jackknife. Like a door. Like a grave that’s being sealed.
Dennis waits for you before school the next day and asks, “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean nothing?”
You try to walk on, but he grabs you by the arm and drags you into a doorway. Your winter jackets rub against each other and make a whispering sound, as if sharing a secret.
“What do you mean nothing?” Dennis repeats, and presses you against the wall and pushes his forearm against your throat so that you have to stand on tiptoe.
“Don’t fuck with me!” he says menacingly, and you can clearly see the fear in his eyes and hear it in his words, and you can smell the smell of fear in his mouth, too.
“If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you.”
“It … was … nothing,” you manage to say.
Dennis lets go of you, takes a step back, and runs off.
Robbie used to come out with these sayings. He said things like Not every open door is a way in, or He who sees much light, casts a shadow. At school he was dismissed as a weirdo. The girls liked him because he was always paying them compliments that they never really understood but which always made them laugh. He said: The way you smell is the way I’d like to dream. Or When you laugh, the sun shuts an eye. The boys told each other that his mother had been X-rayed once too often when she was pregnant. The girls swore it had something to do with the tap water.
You liked Robbie. Perhaps because you drank the same tap water, or perhaps you thought you understood his sayings. He talked a lot of nonsense, but that’s better than being quiet. Quiet like you. Like a fish.
Now the seat next to you in the classroom is free, and everybody avoids looking at it. The teachers don’t pick you either. You’re invisible, because Robbie’s invisible. If you got up and left now, no one would say a thing. It’s a good feeling. You’ve always dreamt of it. Being invisible. Two days before Christmas. Like an angel hiding in its angel state. You’d walk through the city and eat what you liked. You’d read comics without buying them, go to the movies for nothing, and feel girls up whenever you felt like it.
Simple as that.
Over the blackboard dangles a Christmas star one of the girls has made. On the right of the door there’s a photograph of Robbie. Your classroom teacher has pinned it on some cardboard, and you’re allowed to write your names around the photograph. It reminds you of your sister’s autographed cast when she fell on a skiing holiday. Six weeks later, the plaster came off and ended up in the trash. Your sister cried for an afternoon because she wanted to save the signatures. You imagine your classroom teacher giving the photograph, cardboard and all, to Robbie’s parents. You can clearly see them stuffing the cardboard into the trash can. They’ll probably keep the photograph.
Once Robbie tangled with a guy from the senior class. He was a rocker with hair down to his ass, who’d sprayed beer all over the place at the last school party and sold hand-rolled cigarettes at break time. Robbie had no respect. He had this way of looking askance at people so that they thought one of their legs was too short or something. The rocker noticed this and asked Robbie what he wanted. He asked what Robbie thought about minding his own damned business. Robbie shrugged and said: Lots of hair on the head don’t make a hairdo yet. The rocker just stood there as if someone had pulled his plug out. And Robbie turned away and never so much as looked at the rocker again. He knew what was good for him. He never went too far. He wasn’t stupid. If he was challenged, he said: No, leave it be, or do you think a snowman pees on the fire? And he would laugh. He was good at laughing, you always thought.
Two girls come up to you in the playground at break time. They ask how you’re coping, whether you saw him there in the pool and what sort of feeling it is, you had been friends and everything, after all, it must be a weird feeling, isn’t it? And while they’re talking you watch their breath, which detaches itself from their lips in wispy clouds and comes together in the air, and you wonder what it would be like if you breathed in one of those clouds of breath, would you know what they’d eaten or drunk or thought over the past few hours? Maybe every cloud of breath is a scrap of soul. If that was so, you’d suck the air out of their lungs in tiny portions to make them shut up for a while.
During second break you stay in the classroom. The school principal shoos a group of boys downstairs and ignores you. You’re standing by the window again, you’re invisible. It’s lonely being invisible on your own. It’s a bit like standing wet in the rain. It doesn’t make sense.
You cut the last period and go home. You stand up in the middle of class and walk out the door. The teacher doesn’t even look at you. It’s a good feeling. You’re the last soldier of the winter. Christmas will only take place if you want. You don’t know what you want. Your mother is over at the Danisches’ again, your sister’s at school, you shut the front door and you’re alone.
“I’m alone,” you say, and switch the receiver to the other ear. “We need to talk.”
“No.”
“If you don’t come I’m going to the cops.”
“Oh Christ, shit.”
Dennis hangs up and you know he’ll come. You stand by the window and wait. As you do so, you touch your stinging throat and remember the fear. Everything hides in the eyes, the mouth, the words. Fury and fear and desire. Dennis will weaken. You’ve seen it before. And if Dennis weakens, everything will collapse. Like a house of cards. Like ice after a long winter. Or like a lie when it meets the truth.
You know each other from the neighborhood. Dennis and Robbie and you. Dennis is two years older. Last summer he took your pocket money in return for letting you touch his cousin. Cousin Rita. And once you spent the night at Dennis’s, and he went on and on until you jerked each other off. It was okay as long as you kept your eyes shut and imagined it was Beate from your class. After that Robbie made his jokes, of course. That was when it got embarrassing. And Dennis said Robbie should take a breather, or would he rather take a fist in the face? And Robbie waved him away, as he always waved people away, and kept his mouth shut. Dennis and Robbie and you. You know each other from the neighborhood.
You look at your watch. You need something to counteract the fear in Dennis’s eyes. You want to steal his words, leaving him breathless. Anything to keep the fear at bay. You have to convince him there’s something worse than an elbow that cuts off air. Something worse than a fist delivering pain.
In your father’s den you find exactly the right hammer. It has a hard plastic head and it’s as heavy as if it were made of iron. That’ll be enough. You take the hammer upstairs and hide it under one of the sofa cushions. You’re looking at your watch again when the doorbell rings.
“Come in.”
“I don’t know.”
He pushes past you and stands uncertainly in the corridor. He’s half a head taller than you, he has no cause for concern.
“Sit down.”
Dennis follows you into the living room and sits down. On the edge of the armchair, his eyes darting. You see the wet trails his boots have left on the floor. You’ll have to wipe that up later, or your mother will go crazy. Dennis is uneasy. His winter jacket squeaks. You’re glad you’re not wearing your jacket. You’re no longer the same. He’s him, you’re you.
“What do you want to talk about?” he asks.
“No one’s to know anything.”
“Sure.”
“I don’t want you freaking out, Dennis.”
“What are you saying, what the hell are you saying?”
“I said I didn’t want you freaking out.”
“Are you out of your mind? I had nothing to do with it.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“What?”
You pull the hammer out from under the sofa cushion. You don’t take your eyes off Dennis. You lean forward and break his elbow with a single blow. It’s as easy as answering a question.
It was the second time that year that heavy snowfall had brought the city to a standstill and school was shut. Robbie rang shortly after breakfast and said the water was hot and his parents were away and anyone who wouldn’t like to be in a heated pool on a day like this in the middle of winter had a dick like a caraway cat. You had no idea what sort of dick a caraway cat had, you were not even sure if a cat like that existed, but you and Dennis went straight over to the Danisch house.
It was a dream. You opened the roof and lay in the warm water, the icy wind swept over you and froze the tips of your hair, while the snowflakes settled on your faces like a shower of cold kisses. At that point the snow was a treasure that the sky was gently spitting down on you.
You swam naked, you chased each other the full length of the pool and played cockhunting. The hunter had to catch one of the others and tug his cock, then he was free and the other guy became the hunter. It was your turn, and according to the rules you weren’t allowed to leave the pool.
Dennis and Robbie jumped screeching over you into the water, and you followed their bare backsides as if they were light-buoys. Robbie was small and agile and incredibly quick. Every time you caught him, you heard one of his sayings.
“A few planks in the fireplace don’t make a forest.”
“Not every spirit is a bottle.”
“He who has lots in his head need not care about gravity.”
Dennis laughed at the sayings. At first. But when he was the hunter, and Robbie slipped away from him, Dennis slowly started losing his temper.
“Just shut your trap!” he yelled.
Robbie said, “Not every deep well has good water.”
You wanted to warn Robbie, you wanted to remind him that a snowman doesn’t pee on the fire, but you kept your mouth shut, because it was a game, it was fun, and you’d had a lot of trouble catching Robbie yourself. You liked the fact that Dennis was suffering a bit as well.
“One more saying and then—” he said and broke off.
“Then what?” Robbie asked in reply and psyched himself up at the edge of the pool, fists pressed to his side, chin jutting defiantly. His dick had shrunk from the cold and looked like a nut with a nose. You stood in front of him shivering. You could have gone on playing cockhunting all day, because the cold didn’t matter to you as long as you knew that warmth awaited you in the pool. The anticipation was better than the game itself.
“You want to know what comes next?” asked Dennis.
Robbie nodded.
“A punch in the face, that’s what comes next.”
“What a spoilsport you are,” said Robbie and jumped over Dennis in a high arc. He reemerged at the other end of the pool, long before Dennis had even reached the middle of the pool.
“What was that?” asked Robbie. “Did you even move?”
“Just shut your mouth,” Dennis called to him, “or I’ll stuff it for you, okay?”
Robbie stayed in the water. He spread his arms and rested them on either side of him, on the edge of the pool. He thought. He tried very hard, this one wasn’t off the cuff, he wanted to outdo all the sayings in the world.
“Four inches,” he said sagely. “Four inches is a short end.”
Dennis leans whimpering against the wall, hugging his elbow. You’re sitting on the sofa again, and everything’s set out. A splint, a bandage, and a few of the painkillers that your mother always takes when she has a particularly bad period.
“How … how could you … oh Christ, my … my fucking arm!”
Dennis is now younger than you. Weaker. He fears you. You hope that fear is going to keep growing.
“Not a word,” you say.
“You fucking …”
“Not a word,” you say again.
The rubber hammer lies on the coffee table between you. You see Dennis staring at it.
“If you like, I can break your other arm too,” you suggest, and Dennis bites his lower lip and goes on quietly whimpering.
He chased Robbie diagonally across the pool. Not pausing, not playing. As he did so, Dennis started climbing out of the water, completely ignoring the rules. But Robbie was still uncatchable. It could have gone on forever. When Robbie swam past you again, you finally grabbed him. It happened, it needed no explanation, your instinct told you: Grab him.
Dennis uttered a cry of triumph and came crawling over.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” said Robbie and tried to escape from your clutches.
“I want a saying,” you said.
Dennis came closer and closer.
Robbie started flailing with his fists.
You gripped him tighter.
“I don’t know any,” he said.
“Just one saying, Robbie,” you repeated and laughed, because it was stupid, it was really stupid, and yet it was important to you to hear a saying right here, right now. Robbie was the wordmaster. It was a mystery to you how he could always have a ready saying on his lips. He never repeated himself. Once he claimed it was the Chinese blood in his veins. And he had crossed his fingers, because of course there were no Chinese people in his family.
“Come on,” you urged him. “A saying and I’ll let you go right away.”
Robbie closed his eyes, concentrated, and said, “If a cat was a horse …”
He got no further than that. Dennis caught up with you, and Dennis was furious.
“Say that again,” he demanded.
Robbie turned around.
“What?”
Dennis thumped him on the ear, there was a splash, water sprayed on your face, Robbie’s ear turned red.
“Say that again,” said Dennis.
“The one about the well?”
“The one about my cock, you moron.”
“I didn’t say—”
Another slap, water spraying up, Robbie pulled a face, your hands were still tightly gripping his upper arms. The snow was tattooing your face so that he had to narrow his eyes slightly.
“That’s enough,” said Robbie suddenly sober and looked at you. At you, as if you were the one who had hit him. You hadn’t. So you grinned and said, “Give me a saying first.”
“Let me go!”
“Say that again,” said Dennis and hit him again.
From that moment Robbie started seriously kicking out around him. You held him tight, Dennis ducked Robbie’s head under the water, let him come back up again, and said, “Four inches, hmm, did you say four inches?”
“Did I?”
“Four inches, I heard it, or didn’t I?”
“He who asks many questions,” Robbie panted, “has no sense of humor.”
You exploded with laughter, panic, and nerves. Your blood was boiling. Dennis ducked Robbie’s head under the water again. Your excited blood made you sweat in the water. Robbie kicked out, caught you on the hip, and surfaced again. You couldn’t stop laughing.
“Just give me a saying,” you said, “one saying and you’re free.”
You liked this game much more than cockhunting. You liked it because you had a tight hold on Robbie and because you liked Dennis—in his rage and desperation. There were days when you liked Dennis more than Robbie. Days like this. Dennis never laughed when you had an orgasm and wouldn’t open your eyes. He understood that you were dreaming about girls. He always said: Just shut your eyes, it’ll feel better. And Robbie always said: Just don’t come on my shirt, dude.
Robbie spat in your face, and at last it was your turn to duck his head under.
It went back and forth, back and forth, and you drifted away from the edge of the pool. Robbie was getting weaker, his eyes rolled, he gasped for air. And when Dennis said that was enough, you asked for a saying for the thousandth time, and nothing occurred to Robbie, nothing at all, so you wrapped your legs around his hips and held him tightly in your arms.
And you went under like that.
And Dennis cleared off.
And Robbie and you, you went under.
Just like that.
Dennis doesn’t speak. His chin quivers, his eyes are glazed, he has taken three of the tablets. You wonder what his gaze would be like if you’d forced him to swallow them all.
“This stays strictly between us,” you say at the door.
Dennis can’t look at you. Tears are running down his cheeks. It isn’t because of the pain, and it isn’t because of Robbie. He’s crying out of fear, fear of you.
“Good,” you say and close the door.
After that you hid in the snow. You watched Robbie’s corpse drifting in the middle of the pool. His butt was paler than his back, his shoulder blades were like narrow hills, and his hair fanned around his head as if it had a life of its own. You were glad he was lying facedown in the water. The snow surrounded him like a raging curtain. Fine mist rose from his back. As if his body could only breathe through its skin now. As if his soul was dissolving into haze.
His mother’s car stopped with a crunch of gravel in the drive. She got out. Her footsteps on the way stirred the snow awake. She carried the shopping into the kitchen, and then her voice rang out. She called Robbie’s name. She couldn’t have known that she would never call his name again. And then she came to the big window that led down to the terrace, and spotted Robbie in the pool. You waited until she spotted him. It had to happen. You couldn’t just leave Robbie alone. And when his mother screamed, you hauled yourself up out of the snow and went home.
It’s the night after. After Robbie, after Dennis, after you. You crept off and climbed over the garden fence. The key hung on a hook beside the door to the terrace. You got undressed and put your clothes neatly on a chair. The water is lukewarm.
The roof slides open, the night is as wide as if your life had no beginning and no ending. You lie on your back and float. You’re naked and calm. After Robbie’s death you were sure that lots of things would come to an end. You thought there would never be another starry night. You were also sure the snow would cover the whole world and usher in a new ice age.
There are millions of stars shining above you, and it’s stopped snowing.
Every end is a beginning.
You lie still and motionless in the water and stare into the sky above you. Robbie’s parents are asleep, your parents are asleep, the world has turned away from you. That’s as it should be. It feels as if your soul might break away from your body at any moment and rise into the night. Like snow in reverse. Then your soul would meet Robbie’s soul up there. Robbie’s probably waiting for you. You move your arms very slightly. You have a thought, and the thought makes you smile. He will have a long wait, you think, and move your arms like an angel resting its wings for a while.
And that’s how it started.