Permutation City (23 page)

So the dying human had never woken, never known that he was facing death. And there had been no separate, mortal Thomas Riemann to carry the burden of guilt into the flames.

+ + +

Thomas had met Anna in Hamburg in the summer of 1983, in a railway station cafe. He was in town to run errands for his father. She was on her way to West Berlin, for a concert. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

The cafe was crowded, they shared a table. Anna's appearance wasn't striking -- dark-haired, green-eyed, her face round and flat. Thomas would never have looked twice at her if they'd passed in the street -- but she soon made an impression.

She looked him over appraisingly, then said, "I'd kill for a shirt like that. You have expensive tastes. What do you do to support them?"

Thomas lied carefully. "I was a student. Engineering. Up until a few months ago. It was hopeless, though; I was failing everything."

"So what do you do now?"

He looked doleful. "My father owns a merchant bank. I went into engineering to try to get away from the family business, but --"

She wasn't sympathetic at all. "But you screwed up, and now he's stuck with you?"

"And vice versa."

"Is he very rich?"

"Yes."

"And you hate him?"

"Of course."

She smiled sweetly. "Why don't I kidnap him for you? You give me all the inside information, and we'll split the ransom money, fifty-fifty."

"You kidnap bankers for a living, do you?"

"Not exclusively."

"I think you work in a record store."

"You're wrong."

"Or a second-hand clothes shop."

"You're getting colder."

"Who are you meeting in Berlin?"

"Just some friends."

When her train was announced, he asked her for her number. She wrote it on the sleeve of his shirt.

For the next few months whenever he was traveling north, be phoned her. Three times, she made excuses. He almost gave up, but he kept recalling the mocking expression on her face, and he knew he wanted to see her again.

Early in November, she finally said, "Drop round, if you like. I'm not doing anything."

He'd planned to take her to a nightclub, but she had a child with her, a baby just a few months old. "He's not mine. I'm looking after him for a friend." They watched TV, then had sex on the sofa. Climbing off him, Anna said, "You're really quite sweet." She kissed him on the cheek, then vanished into the bedroom, locking him out. Thomas fell asleep watching an old John Wayne movie. Two teenage girls with smeared mascara pounded on the door around two in the morning and Anna sold them a plastic sachet of white powder.

Thomas, still on the couch, asked her if the powder was heroin, or cocaine.

"Heroin."

"Do you use that shit?"

"No." She regarded him with mild amusement; she didn't care if he believed her or not.

He woke again at half past five. Anna had gone. The baby was still in his crib, screaming. Thomas changed him and fed him; Anna had shown him where everything was. He wanted a shower, but there was no hot water. He shaved, and left in time for his meeting, telling himself Anna would be back soon. All morning, and all through lunch, he could smell the sour odor of the child's skin on his hands, and he wondered if the smiling property developers could smell it too.

He phoned from the hotel, paying for the night he hadn't spent there, knowing that his father would scrutinize his expenses. Anna was home; he'd woken her. Someone nearby grunted with displeasure. Thomas didn't mention the child.

The next time, he came on a Saturday afternoon, with no need to be anywhere else in a hurry. They met at the Alsterpavillon, drank their coffee looking down on the buffoons in rowboats on the Binnenalster, then went shopping on Jungfernstieg. Thomas paid for the clothes Anna chose, authentic gothic designer trash that looked far worse than the cheapest imitation; it seemed she didn't really want to dress like him, after all. They walked arm-in-arm from shop to shop, and in the entrance to the most expensive boutique, they stopped and kissed for several minutes, blocking the way of customers trying to get past, then went in and spent a lot of money.

Later, in a nightclub with a bad live band who dressed like the Beatles and did Sex Pistols covers, they ran into Martin, a tall wiry blond youth who Anna introduced as a friend. Martin was all vicious back-slapping amiability, trying so hard to be intimidating that he was almost comical. They all staggered back to Anna's flat together, and sat on the floor listening to records. When Anna went to the toilet, Martin drew a knife and told Thomas he intended to kill him. He was very drunk. Thomas stood up, kicked him once in the face, breaking his nose, then took away the knife and dragged him moaning out into the hall. Thomas turned him on his side so he wouldn't choke on the blood, then locked the door.

Anna came out of the bathroom. Thomas told her what had happened. She went out and checked on Martin, and put a pillow under his head.

While Anna was undressing him, Thomas said, "On TV once, I saw an English soldier who'd just come back from Northern Ireland. And he said, 'It was hell there, but at least it was real. At least I've lived now.'" Thomas laughed sadly. "The poor fool had it all upside down. Slaughtering people is
real
-- and living an ordinary life is some kind of dream, some kind of delusion? Poor fucked-up kid."

He searched Anna for needle marks, but he couldn't find a single one.

Back in his office in Frankfurt, alone in his apartment, at the dinner table in his parents' home, Thomas thought about Anna, in images and scents. The memories never distracted him; he could carry on a conversation, or keep reading a mortgage schedule, while she played in his head like wallpaper music.

His father cornered him at Easter. "You should think about getting married. It makes no difference to me, but there are social advantages you're going to need sooner or later. And think how happy it would make your mother."

Thomas said, "I'm twenty-four years old."

"I was engaged when I was twenty-four."

"Maybe I'm gay. Or perhaps I have an incurable venereal disease."

"I don't see why either should be an obstacle."

Thomas saw Anna every second weekend. He bought her whatever she asked for. Sometimes she had the child with her. The boy was called Erik.

Thomas asked her, "Who's the mother? Have I met her?"

She said, "You don't want to."

He worried about her sometimes -- afraid she'd get herself arrested, or beaten up by junkies or rivals -- but she seemed to be able to take care of herself. He could have hired private detectives to uncover the mysteries of her life, and bodyguards to watch over her, but he knew he had no right. He could have bought her an apartment, set her up with investments -- but she never suggested anything of the kind, and he suspected she'd be deeply insulted if he made the offer. His gifts were lavish, but he knew she could have lived without them. They were using each other. She was, he told himself, as independent as he was.

He wouldn't have said he loved her. He didn't ache when they were apart; he just felt pleasantly numb, and looked forward to the next time he'd see her. He was jealous, but not obsessive, and she kept her other lovers out of the way; he rarely had to acknowledge their existence. He never saw Martin again.

Anna traveled with him to New York. They fell asleep in the middle of a Broadway show, saw the Pixies play at the Mudd Club, climbed the stairs to the top of Manhattan Chase.

Thomas turned twenty-five. His father promoted him. His mother said, "Look at all your gray hairs."

In the spring, Erik disappeared. Anna said casually, "His mother's gone, she's moved away."

Thomas was hurt; he'd liked having the boy around. He said, "You know, I used to think he might be yours."

She was baffled. "Why? I told you he wasn't. Why would I have lied?"

Thomas had trouble sleeping. He kept trying to picture the future. When his father died, would he still be seeing Anna, once a fortnight in Hamburg, while she dealt heroin and fucked pimps and junkies? The thought made him sick. Not because he didn't want everything to stay the same, but because he knew that it couldn't.

The Saturday in June was, almost, the second anniversary of the day they'd met. They went to a flea market in the afternoon, and he bought her cheap jewelery. She said, "Anything nicer would be asking for trouble."

They ate junk food, went dancing. They ended up back at Anna's flat at half past two. They danced around the tiny living room, propping each other up, more tired than drunk.

Thomas said, "God, you're beautiful."
Marry me.

Anna said, "I'm going to ask you for something I've never asked for before. I've been trying to work up the courage all day."

"You can ask for anything."
Marry me.

"I have a friend, with a lot of cash. Almost two hundred thousand marks. He needs someone who can --"

Thomas stepped back from her, then struck her hard across the face. He was horrified. He'd never hit her before; the thought had never even occurred to him. She started punching him in the chest and face; he stood there and let her do it for a while, then grabbed both her hands by the wrists.

She caught her breath. "Let go of me."

"I'm sorry."

"Then let go of me."

He didn't. He said, "I'm not a money-laundering facility for your
friends."

She looked at him pityingly. "Oh, what have I done? Offended your high moral principles? All I did was ask. You might have made yourself useful. Never mind. I should have known it was too much to expect."

He pushed his face close to hers. "Where are you going to be, in ten years' time? In prison? At the bottom of the Elbe?"

"Fuck off."

"Where? Tell me?"

She said, "I can think of worse fates. I could end up playing happy families with a middle-aged banker."

Thomas threw her toward the wall. Her feet slipped from under her before she hit it; her head struck the bricks as she was going down.

He crouched beside her, disbelieving. There was a wide gash in the back of her head. She was breathing. He patted her cheeks, then tried to open her eyes; they'd rolled up into her skull. She'd ended up almost sitting on the floor, legs sprawled in front of her, head lolling against the wall. Blood pooled around her.

He said, "Think fast. Think fast."

He knelt over her, one knee to either side, took her face in his hands, then closed his eyes. He brought her head forward, then slammed it back against the wall. Five times. Then he held his fingers near her nostrils, without opening his eyes. He felt no exhalation.

He backed away from her, turned away and opened his eyes, then walked around the flat, wiping things he might have touched with his handkerchief. Avoiding looking at her. He was crying and shaking, but he couldn't think why.

There was blood on his hands, his shirt, his trousers, his shoes. He found a garbage bag, put all his clothes in it, then washed the blood from his skin. There was a black spot in the center of his vision, but he worked around it. He put the garbage bag in his suitcase, and put on fresh clothes: blue jeans and a black T-shirt. He went through the flat, packing away everything that belonged to him. He almost took Anna's address book, but when he checked he saw that he wasn't in it. He looked for diaries, but found none.

Dozens of people had seen them together, month after month. Anna's neighbors, Anna's friends. Dozens of people had seen them leave the nightclub. He wasn't sure how many of her friends knew what he did, where he was from. He'd never told any of them more than his first name, he'd always lied about the rest -- but Anna might have told them everything she knew.

Having been seen with her alive was bad enough; he couldn't risk being seen walking out the front door the night she was killed.

The flat was two flights up. The bathroom window opened onto an alley. Thomas threw the suitcase down; it landed with a soft thud. He thought of jumping -- almost believing that he could land unhurt, or almost believing that he wouldn't care -- but there was a gray clarity underneath those delusions, and an engine in his skull a billion years old which only wanted to survive.

He climbed up into the window frame, into the gap left by the sliding half-pane, one foot either side of the track. There was no ledge, as such, just the double brickwork of the wall itself. He had to crouch to fit, but he found he could keep his balance by pushing his left hand up against the top of the frame, jamming himself in place.

He turned sideways, then reached across the outside wall, and into the frame of the bathroom window of the neighboring flat. He could hear traffic, and music somewhere, but no lights showed from within the flat, and the alley below was deserted. The two windows were scarcely a meter apart, but the second one was closed, halving its width. With one hand on each edge, he shifted his right foot to the neighbor's window. Then, gripping the intervening wall tightly between his forearms, he moved his left foot across. Finally, securing himself by pressing up with his right hand, he let go of the first frame completely.