about your mother in the bathroom, even though you don’t really know what your mother was doing. Your mouth is a machine gun, it never runs out of ammunition. Twice the word “abortion” slips sharp and jagged from your mouth and you bite your tongue to brake the onrush of words. Nessi doesn’t react. She clings to your hips and rests her head against your back. When you stop at Winterfeldtplatz she doesn’t move and you wait a minute and then another before you say you’ve arrived. Nessistraightens up, rubs her eyes and looks up at her block as if you’d dragged her to a gulag.
“Where are you actually going?”
You give a start. You look over your shoulder. Sorry, girl, but we’re starting to worry about you. Nessi is still sitting on the luggage rack and you’re still sitting on your bike and you feel her left breast warm against your back. Nessi asked you a good question. Where are you actually going? You’re not outside Nessi’s block, you’re not even anywhere near, you’re riding all the way through Charlottenburg in the wrong direction. More precisely you’re on Krumme Strasse; even more precisely than that, you’re on the way to Stuttgarter Platz.
At some point I’m going to be killed
, you think, and try to calm the shaking in your arms.
The first time you had a blank, two years ago, it was when you were at school and the bell rang for break. You went outside to get a hot chocolate from the kiosk, and you talked to a guy you’ve always wanted to talk to. Stink brought you back to reality by kicking your chair from behind, and at that moment you were back in class and Stink was asking if you’d give her some chewing gum. You couldn’t work out what had happened. It felt so real you could taste the hot chocolate in your mouth.
The second time was a month later at a party. You spent almost the whole evening playing strip poker, and when that got boring you went downstairs to dance a bit. Two songs later you were sweating and happy and wanted to fetch a drink when Ruth tapped you on the forehead and said she’d like to see if you were bluffing or not, because anybody who sweats bucketloads like you were doing must be bluffing. You looked helplessly at the people around you. You were still playing poker, your cards were rubbish, and there was a memory of dancing and there were drops of sweat on your forehead.
Your girls don’t know anything about it. You’re worried they’ll think you’re crazy and have you put in an asylum right away. Probably you got it from your mother. She calls herself a shaman and says she can sense when dead people are walking past her. She also firmly believes that everyone has to cross an abyss before he becomes a
real
person. Whatever a real person is, your mother says a lot of things when she has time on her hands, like that she has to die in Vietnam and nowhere else, she won’t be persuaded otherwise. You’ve looked the word up, and you’re sure your mother isn’t a shaman, because she’s never used her abilities for the good of the community. Witch would be better.
Two years have passed since then, and during that time you’ve had blanks at least once a month. It’s your description for those daydreams that aren’t really just daydreams. It’s not a jump cut and it’s not exactly a blackout. Whatever it is, no one writes on the internet about it. It’s your very own illness. So you weren’t surprised for a second when you rode your bike half a mile through the Berlin traffic with Nessi on the luggage rack without getting under a car.
Practice makes perfect
, you think, and you’d be grateful if your arms would finally stop shaking.
And there you are now and you wish you weren’t there. You made a mistake, you were supposed to bring Nessi home. Look at her: she’s not really in the now, she’s like one of those zombies who stare stupidly around the place and then go for your throat the minute you’re looking the other way.
Nessi leaves half
“Where are you actually going?”
You give a start. You look over your shoulder. Sorry, girl, but we’re starting to worry about you. Nessi is still sitting on the luggage rack and you’re still sitting on your bike and you feel her left breast warm against your back. Nessi asked you a good question. Where are you actually going? You’re not outside Nessi’s block, you’re not even anywhere near, you’re riding all the way through Charlottenburg in the wrong direction. More precisely you’re on Krumme Strasse; even more precisely than that, you’re on the way to Stuttgarter Platz.
At some point I’m going to be killed
, you think, and try to calm the shaking in your arms.
The first time you had a blank, two years ago, it was when you were at school and the bell rang for break. You went outside to get a hot chocolate from the kiosk, and you talked to a guy you’ve always wanted to talk to. Stink brought you back to reality by kicking your chair from behind, and at that moment you were back in class and Stink was asking if you’d give her some chewing gum. You couldn’t work out what had happened. It felt so real you could taste the hot chocolate in your mouth.
The second time was a month later at a party. You spent almost the whole evening playing strip poker, and when that got boring you went downstairs to dance a bit. Two songs later you were sweating and happy and wanted to fetch a drink when Ruth tapped you on the forehead and said she’d like to see if you were bluffing or not, because anybody who sweats bucketloads like you were doing must be bluffing. You looked helplessly at the people around you. You were still playing poker, your cards were rubbish, and there was a memory of dancing and there were drops of sweat on your forehead.
Your girls don’t know anything about it. You’re worried they’ll think you’re crazy and have you put in an asylum right away. Probably you got it from your mother. She calls herself a shaman and says she can sense when dead people are walking past her. She also firmly believes that everyone has to cross an abyss before he becomes a
real
person. Whatever a real person is, your mother says a lot of things when she has time on her hands, like that she has to die in Vietnam and nowhere else, she won’t be persuaded otherwise. You’ve looked the word up, and you’re sure your mother isn’t a shaman, because she’s never used her abilities for the good of the community. Witch would be better.
Two years have passed since then, and during that time you’ve had blanks at least once a month. It’s your description for those daydreams that aren’t really just daydreams. It’s not a jump cut and it’s not exactly a blackout. Whatever it is, no one writes on the internet about it. It’s your very own illness. So you weren’t surprised for a second when you rode your bike half a mile through the Berlin traffic with Nessi on the luggage rack without getting under a car.
Practice makes perfect
, you think, and you’d be grateful if your arms would finally stop shaking.
And there you are now and you wish you weren’t there. You made a mistake, you were supposed to bring Nessi home. Look at her: she’s not really in the now, she’s like one of those zombies who stare stupidly around the place and then go for your throat the minute you’re looking the other way.
Nessi leaves half
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