Tomorrow Berlin (7 page)

The apartment is on Schönhauser Allee in Prenzlauerberg. It’s quite a schlep from the Berghain, from the Ostbahnhof. They go on foot nonetheless. For Armand, it’s autumn in a new city. He has a sensation of space. Yes, it’s that: space and ease. He’s following a guy he doesn’t know to an apartment to check it out. He’s carrying his bag. He’s walking towards a new life; he has a heady feeling of disorientation; the wind that’s blowing is mild.

Tobias talks incessantly. He hops around. That’s how he is when he’s on drugs, he has a sense that he’s living for what he is. Armand listens. It’s reassuring to know he speaks French. Otherwise he might not have gone with him; it’s an anchor point.

Tobias is a lot shorter than Armand. It’s a bit like he’s trotting behind him, and yet he is leading
the way. He’s talking about a friend who died a few days ago. Drugs, of course. What else would it be in Tobias’s circle? Being an addict is a full-time job.

Armand still finds it romantic, how some people make their self-destruction a point of honour, applying themselves to their own decline. He doesn’t yet know if drugs will lead to his own disappearance or to living life more fully, but it’s a life he wants to taste, life as a shadow.

For now, the streets are broad, the road signs strange and notices impossible to figure out. German words have a particular appeal when you don’t understand them, something industrial about the way they are written; the sequences of consonants clustered together; a black language, as though still written in Gothic script. It’s a cold kind of sweetness, which envelops you and hits you. Yes, Armand wants to experience this life, these unfamiliar sensations.

The apartment is huge; they all are round here, it’s a constant, like the stairways with lino on the floor. The windows go down to the ground. The previous tenant left a week ago, an American who’d stayed six months. His room’s available; the other two are Otto’s and Claudia’s. Tobias has
been sleeping on the sofa. It’s a stop-gap; he’s been here three weeks. Claudia has gone away for a fortnight to see her family in Spain.

A few years back, Otto lived in the apartment with his wife. She left him. Since then, he’s rented out rooms to foreigners who are passing through. He’s a tall fair-haired guy who comes from the north of Germany. He’s a student of history and biology, though he’s thirty-five.

He’s making dinner. He didn’t know if Tobias would be back, but he made extra, just in case. Tobias introduces Armand as a good friend.

Otto invites Armand to stay to dinner. If he likes, he can also stay the night; he looks tired. Tomorrow they can talk about renting the room.

Dinner is fun. They speak English. Armand enjoys the realisation that he’s not the same person as when he speaks French. He doesn’t have the same character; he doesn’t make the same jokes. It’s nice to be able to change your identity temporarily.

Armand takes a shower, then falls asleep between clean sheets.

The next morning, as always, there are pancakes and café au lait. The Germans know how to live at home. Maybe because of the harshness of the winters. They have lots of accessories: to froth milk, to keep tea hot, to be comfortable at home without having to go out to the café.

The breakfast is nice. They smoke roll-ups, eat bacon. Tobias and Armand tell Otto about their evening. The three of them are like a family, sitting at the bar in the kitchen.

Otto feels it too. He likes Armand, this young Frenchman who has come here to paint, and why else? Hard to say. Perhaps it’s his restlessness that has brought him to this unknown city. He reckons they’ll be able to get along, that Armand, because of his youth and his character, will be an ally in the order of his existence. With friends, like in love, you can tell the ones who are going to be on your side.

If Armand likes the room, it’s his. The rent is modest; it includes electricity and internet.

Agreed! Armand will live here, put the few possessions he’s brought with him in the empty room – it’s more reassuring to know they’re there than in the Berghain cloakrooms.

They celebrate with another round of pancakes.
According to Tobias, Otto is cool. He gets high too. He was married to a really beautiful girl, an American; but she left because the two of them had got stuck in a rut. Since then, Otto has surrounded himself only with people who are passing through. He chooses foreign flatmates; he’s putting Tobias up for a few weeks.

He’s a generous guy. Tobias, for example, knew from the time he had problems that he could count on Otto to lend him his sofa and feed him. Yes, he’s a truly special guy, Tobias says. I’m pleased the three of us are going to live together; it’ll be a good laugh.

A white room: tiled walls, tiled floor. A guy in a white coat comes in. Franz is sitting in a hospital chair with armrests.

‘O-positive. That’s good. Maybe more for us than for you. You’re fit, which is good. Just relax. We’ll take ten tubes. And afterwards, you can have a sandwich. It takes it out of you, you know…’

‘Yes, I know,’ Franz replies.

Franz knows the drill. Every month he comes
here to sell his blood. He knows they’ll put a tourniquet on high above his elbow and it’ll be too tight, that the needle will slide into his vein easily and that the tubes will fill up, one by one, until there are none left.

Then he’ll roll down his sleeve, someone will bring him a sandwich, attentively, as though he were ill. The guy on reception will give him a twenty-euro note in a brown envelope and off he’ll go with the money in his pocket.

Yes, he knows the drill.

It’s dark in the living room. Armand’s smoking in an armchair. He sniffs the edge of a yellowed book. These are the only movements permitted by his state of mildly depressive contemplation. He looks as though he’s resting after what he’s been through, now that he’s alone at last. But his features betray a little hint of eagerness, like the adventurer’s satisfaction in his new environment. He hasn’t yet found the treasure, but he senses it’s there, within reach, since he has travelled the whole path. He’s a young man at rest.

At the same moment, in an over-the-top rococo basement, Tobias is going from one man to another. He takes and is taken.

Then, for a moment’s peace, he locks himself in the toilets. He takes out his syringe and little glass bottle. The liquid rises in the plastic tube. 0.9, 1, 1.1, 1.2, right up to 1.6. A mouthful of Coke, then the contents of the syringe, then another mouthful. He sits on the toilet, his head in his hands. The music filters through, muffled by the toilet doors. He starts to cry. He waits for it to well up within him. He takes out a packet of cigarettes and looks at it for a moment. He breathes deeply, as though he had decided not to look more closely. He puts the bottle and the syringe back in a glasses case, then into his pocket, under his cigarette packet. Tears roll down his face. He strikes his head against the wall, three, four, five times; a little GHB convulsion. He is standing oddly, as though his disorientated body is unsure how to hold him up. His movements are jerky, the instinctive reflexes of muscles in motion. He opens the toilet door. He’s going back in. To take and be taken.

In the living room, Armand has fallen asleep by his yellow book. Tobias comes in, looking distracted.
He collapses on the sofa, then falls asleep, fully dressed, as though he’s wrecked.

A few moments later, Otto comes out of his room; he sees his two transitory friends and covers them with a thick blanket.

There are lights everywhere, words flashing, numbers jumping out at you with the promise of a new life.

It’s one of those little casinos you get in Germany. A far cry from the Côte d’Azur; here there are lots of slot machines and the guy on the door doesn’t look at you. You play by pushing big buttons, like in English pubs or on ferries.

A few guys dotted around the place are putting coins in the slots, pressing the illuminated buttons and staring at the screens on their bulky terminals.

Franz is here to gamble the money he got for his blood, his last resources. He’s already bought a packet of tobacco so he has sixteen euros left. It’s too little to hope for a big win – enough, on the other hand, to increase: for the sixteen to become fifty, the fifty, one hundred and twenty.

He picks his machine. The choice is never straightforward, maybe this one will give you a win, or maybe it’ll send you back on to the street, unable even to buy an underground ticket.

Franz has gone with his initial hunch since the time a few months ago when he felt himself drawn, almost as soon as he entered the room, by the machine that went on to spit out the jackpot. Since then he’s vowed he’ll always trust his instinct.

He sits down. The coins go into the slot as quickly as he earned them, as quickly as his blood filled the tubes. One by one, the tokens disappear, and are lost in the machine. Ten euros gone already. A huge amount when this is all the money you have in the world.

The coins go in. Where do they disappear to? Maybe he should change machine. No, stick with this one. Yes, but what if he loses it all? No, stick with this one. His first instinct.

Two more euros and he’s broke. Two euros! It’s come to this, wishing he had just one more coin, regretting buying a bit of tobacco.

He’s playing more slowly now. There’s no rush to gamble your last coins. What will he do if he loses? Go home, to the empty apartment that he’s been lent. There’s nothing left to eat in the cupboards. His dole is due in a week. What will he
do till then? At least he has some tobacco. He’ll go and borrow from a friend. He’ll make it through the week, but if only he could win, if only he could avoid the humiliation of going to ask his friends for money, again.

It’s his second-last coin. To think that before he got caught, he hid bundles of notes in mattresses, in books. It’s inhuman, this downward spiral, Franz thinks.

The coin slips into the slot. Franz holds his breath. He presses the plastic button. On the screen, the symbols flash by.

Yes! He can’t believe it! He’s won!

The joy of all those tumbling coins! And in a week, his dole!

He’s got enough to make it. He’s happy. He leaves.

Armand has been for a walk in his new district. He’s even bought a bike. It’s 6 p.m. And he’s on his way back to the apartment. He’s happy, he’s beginning to take control of his life here.

In the living room, Tobias is smoking a bubble pipe and tapping away on Otto’s computer.

‘Want some juice, Loulou?’

Armand nods; he won’t refuse any experience; he’s in a state of discovery.

Ten minutes go by. Armand has a sensation of self-awareness that is both simple and confused. Not like a sudden slap in the face, more of a hazy feeling of happiness; a synthetic calm. Relaxing with the same simplicity as when you dance. You breathe lightly. The first times you take it you don’t have a powerful high. You feel happy without really knowing why. You don’t get the too-violent effect of other narcotics. Before you abuse it, it’s a subtle background state. You feel happy, talkative, and come to think of it, like you could fuck well, too.

The two of them chat, Tobias rolling his cigarettes, Armand taking bigger and bigger drags on the hookah, which looks like a holiday souvenir. What’s he come here to do? Paint. Yes, that’s what we need, painters. Above all, to live. What about girls? What sort do you like? Tall and blonde, a bit pale, ethereal. He likes it when they look lost in male company. Tobias knows some like that; he’ll introduce him. Even better, they’re not a pain in the arse like French girls.

Shall we do a bit more? Yeah, it’s been an hour.
It could be ten minutes or two hours; you lose track. It’s nice not worrying.

‘There’s bound to be a bit of speed in Otto’s room. I’ll go and look, we’re pretty wrecked. A little bit will do. That’s fine. No, don’t use your money, that’s disgusting. There are straws in the cupboard. Yes, cut it. Ah, that’s better, this’ll buck us up. Oh shit, the juice. I’m going to take some vitamins. They’re better than Coke. They also take the taste away and you get the benefit of the calcium and magnesium. That’s important. When you get high, you need to know how to keep in shape. I’ll give you some cream for your hands. That’s important too. Speeds dries your hands out. Here, have some vitamins. How much do you want? 1? 1.2? Yeah, one’s enough. Here. I’m going to take a bit more. 1.1 should do it. It’s not too much and you feel it more. I’ve been taking it for four years and I’ve never had a problem. Well yeah, I have, but that’s from something else. What’ll we do next? Let’s go and see Chrissi; she has good speed. You got a bit of dough? We’ll see, but we only need two grams. Ten euros each. We’ll be sorted for the whole weekend. Chrissi’s cool. She might give us a bit of free ketamine. She’s fifty-five. She’s a drug therapist. She looked after me, you know, when I wasn’t well. I slept at her place
and cooked for her. Risotto, soup – gloopy stuff like that. She likes that.’

Chrissi has a little ground-floor apartment. The big window looking on to the street is hidden behind curtains. The old druggie girls hide themselves away here. They know they can gossip without being spied on. It’s a little world of recluses. They get high together, here or somewhere else, though they don’t really like each other. There’s not much laughter, the only thing being shared is drugs. It’s a little community of loners, all of them seeking their own mind-numbing pleasure. Would they still be friends, if they had no drugs to share? But they do share, and you might mistake it for a real community.

There’s sheeting on the floor in the living room. A few books, very few. Like in the homes of people who read out of boredom. There’s also a desk; some scattered papers – that’s the way of it – and a computer pumping out music. There’s a guy sitting at it. He doesn’t speak, he’s selecting tracks.

Beyond that is the bedroom with a mattress on the wooden floor. Chrissi’s lying there; it almost looks like she’s asleep. It’s the ketamine, Tobias says. Some clothes, a bed, Chrissi sleeping, that’s it.

On the other side is the kitchen. That’s where it happens. On top of the fridge, a mirror, a card and two heaps of white powder, speed and ketamine. On the worktop beside the sink are a large carafe of vitamins, three syringes in a glass and a phial of GHB. One by one, people help themselves at their own pace, on top of the fridge or beside the sink. Tobias is talking to Rémi. Their paths haven’t crossed for several months. They used to party together a few years back, in the good old days. They fill each other in on people they no longer see. Since Rémi comes from Toulouse, they speak French. Sophie? Yeah, she’s quit, she’s got a kid. She’s working and stuff. Marion? Give over, she’s in Kottbusser Tor. That’s a way of saying that she’s gone to another level: heroin, crack, the Kottbusser Tor squats. Pierre? I heard he’s gone back to Austria. Yeah, Martin’s out of jail; he’s being careful.

Standing in Chrissi’s little kitchen, Armand feels he has entered a little world whose ways he hasn’t mastered yet. He doesn’t know how much to take. He’s feeling his way. Sometimes he’s a bit scared, but it passes, because he likes the state he gets into. He’s speaks to Rémi.

It’s odd, we’re a bit limited. Chrissi gave us speed because we gave her juice. It’s hard finding
GHB at the moment. David got caught. You can order on the internet, but that’s risky and anyway you don’t always have an address or a bank account. Lucy has some from time to time; we’d better call her next week if we don’t run into her this weekend.

Hey, the guy at the computer’s put on a great track. People start dancing. It’s dark outside. Makes no difference, the curtains protect us. Chrissi’s still asleep on her mattress. Rémi, Gando, Tobias and Armand throw themselves into the dancing in the living room. The bedroom door’s open. Chrissi doesn’t look like she’s about to wake up. The guy at the computer smiles for the first time. He’s a DJ or something. He’s obsessed with his machines. He doesn’t get as high as the rest of them. But from time to time he gets up from his chair to go and do a line in the kitchen. Because everyone’s dancing, he gives them a smile. Maybe that was what he was waiting for after all.

Time passes; soon it’s 5 a.m. Armand and Tobias are leaving.

‘You coming? Let’s go. To the Golden Gate. Hey, you look spaced out, Loulou. Me too. That’s ketamine for you. Makes you elastic. Marshmallow legs. I can’t walk any more; I’m folding. You seen my knees? They’re bouncing. I get scared
every time that I’ll end up walking like this forever. Rémi’s cool, isn’t he? And Gando. Did you meet Gando? Everyone’ll be at the Golden Gate. It’s 5 o’clock, it’s cool, we’ll arrive at the right time. You’ll see, it’s nothing but mates. Party people. No little Frenchies. You’re going to be a big hit with your pretty face. There are loads of girls. And guys for me too. Small, bearded, a bit muscly. Yeah, I need to feel their strength. That’s what I really like, you know. I want them to take me like a whore. Rémi used to say that all the time. In French. No one understood him. In the middle of the dance floor he’d shout it out. “Take me like a whore! Take me like a whore!” He’s not gay, it just made him laugh. You hungry? I think I am. I dunno. You want to go to McDonald’s? No, you’re right. Let’s see after. Anyway, there’s a Burger King beside the Golden Gate. At worst, we can go out and get something. A Whopper or something.’

Rémi doesn’t go out any more, so he’s not coming. Gando’s in no state to go anywhere. Chrissi’s asleep. They say goodbye. The guy at the computer has stopped smiling.

It was great; we’ve got to do it again. Call Chrissi, she’s got my email.

There are very few people in the underground now. Some revellers, the odd worker, some tramps. Armand and Tobias take some GHB on the platform. That means taking out the Coke, the phial of juice, and most important, the syringe. Armand looks like he knows the ropes by now. He’s no longer worrying about discovering who he is. He’s walking around, his spirit free and his heart numb. He feels that at last he’s living a little more intensely. He’s discovering the side of existence that seems independent of Time. It’s 5.30 a.m., they’re high but beginning to come down – they’ve been like that for eighteen hours but nothing can stop their bodies. It’s time to go and meet people. Have some fun.

‘So, we take the U2 to Alexanderplatz. Then change – there’s a McDonald’s in the station, we can get a cheeseburger – then U8 to Jannowitzbrücke. The Golden Gate’s right by the exit from the underground. Under the bridge, you’ll see. Yeah, a cheeseburger would be great. I should have enough.’

‘How do you pronounce the name of the station?’

‘Jannowitzbrücke’

‘Yanno–’

‘Yes.’

‘Veets–’

‘Yes.’

‘Broo-keh. That’s funny, broo-keh separate from the rest. Wait, let me try. Yannoleetsbookeh. No, sorry, Yannovitzbroovkeh. Hey, I’ve got it. Jannowitzbrücke. Will you help me learn some German? If I’m going to stay here, I need to be able to speak. Speaking matters. You can say things to yourself and try to understand others. And instructions. When it comes to language it’s not always straightforward. You get closer to people’s thoughts. Course, they need to express themselves. Yes, that’s it, they need to express themselves. It’s never enough just hearing what they tell us. When I’m painting, I’m thinking about certain things, but what am I saying deep down? I don’t know, maybe I should be trying to write them down. It’s not easy to give all that you have, to strip yourself bare, as they say. You owe it to yourself to be sincere. Simple and sincere. Like the greats. The rest, the minor talents, lie, and in order to be believed they dress up what they say in false complexity. They count on our loss. Illusion through loss. It works, you know. And people often speak to each other like that. Little complications invented so as not to reveal too much. Maybe they think like that, I dunno. They can
talk about insignificant stuff – I don’t mean the little stuff of everyday poetry, no really, I mean the kind of stuff that has no meaning because it’s empty – oh yeah, they can talk about that for hours. Empty heads. That’s what it must be, empty heads. Or full of formaldehyde.’

It’s a strange journey for Armand. As he’s talking, he goes up to objects on the underground. The seats in the carriages are not the same colour, there’s no turnstile, there’s one platform for both directions, the train comes in from the right, all these things which are different from what he knows give him a feeling of huge freedom.

They change at Alexanderplatz; long corridors and empty doorways. Neon reflections shine on the marbled floor. You could walk on it barefoot. Some bad food smells, a staircase and then another platform. Armand flexes then folds his identity card. In the middle, a fat white line to share.

‘Stop halfway. I’ll have the rest.’

Armand obeys; he slowly registers the smell of the Polish dumplings; that smell will lodge itself in the back of his throat every day and for so long that it will never leave him. These are his first experiences with amphetamines, which he’ll cherish. Speed is strong, it attacks the nostrils, you have to be prepared for it.

‘It doesn’t have an anaesthetic side to it like cocaine, but don’t worry, it won’t last long. That feeling that the powder is going off in your head like a rocket. In two minutes, you’ll be as good as new, able to dance for days. You don’t need to keep taking it every twenty minutes, you’ll see, if it’s good, one fix and you’re sorted for four hours. Well, only as long as you don’t do something dumb with the juice. Take my advice, if you feel the juice is taking you over, a good line of speed and it’ll be gone, it’ll put your feet back on the ground. But stay off the booze, I’m not kidding, Loulou, not even one beer. And if you’ve had too much, and you’re flailing around and your muscles are moving on their own, a nice line of speed will bring you back down.’

Entry is through a small metal door. The bearded bouncer is intimidating – but he hugs Tobias, gently. He’s introduced to Armand in German.

‘Hallo, ich bin Armand. Ich komme aus Paris. Alles gut?’
– the only sentence he has mastered.

‘Klar
!’

On the right beyond the cash desk, there’s what looks like a little garden with lots of sofas and armchairs. It’s not daylight yet; there aren’t many people outside. The club itself is on the left of the
cash desk under a U-Bahn bridge. The corridor is dark and the music pounding. You go down some stairs, then there’s the cloakroom, a bar at the back, armchairs if you fancy a break. It’s festive, steamy, exists beyond time.

Another room. Everyone’s dancing, facing towards the DJ. The atmosphere seems serious, the dancers’ movements repetitive and jerky. This is minimalist dancing, not like in Paris’s few techno clubs. The boys are not pawing the girls; though everyone’s high, there’s a kind of restraint. You go all out to get high, you leave yourself, but to be respected by others, you have to behave properly. Armand catches on fast, he grasps the customs.

The toilets are upstairs. People go in singly, in couples, even in fives.

Hours go by, it gets light outside. Neon lights, sweat.
Druffis
wander about, disorientated. A taste of GHB in your mouth. Talk is sporadic – you OK? – Tell me your name again – yes, I’m from Paris, I came here to paint – you want something? – Give me a kiss.

In a cubicle in the bogs. There’s filth on the floor. Armand has his arms round a girl he doesn’t know. He gives her some juice. She kneels down, unbuttons his trousers, briefly slides his cock between her lips and then stands up. They’re
going to dance. Already he’s almost forgotten her. He won’t bump into her again. Like everyone else, he has picked up an empty beer bottle that had been left against a wall. In the toilets he rinses it out and fills it with water; to rehydrate himself, and help the juice go down. After a few hours, he seems used to it. But he’s new to this all the same. Other people can tell easily, they’ve never seen his face before. It’s a small world where everyone ends up knowing everyone. Whether they say hello or not, you know the people dancing beside you. That’s where the
Drogensolidarität
comes from. A whole recreational community that gets high together, among fellow initiates. Some people are in fancy dress, suspender belts and lace basques; confetti gets thrown in the air, and there are glitter balls too. The joys are synthetic and outsized. It instantly feels like a new facet of existence. The feeling of living more intensely, the pride – perverse and displaced – that gives.