Читать книгу Time Lies - Magnus Stanke - Страница 10

Karl has done it, — period.

In his mind this thought doesn’t require an adverbial qualifier like ‘already’ or ‘at last’. It took however long it took, and he has done it. He has proved that time actually passes. He knows this because he can hear his hair grow when he does nothing but listen. The sound is faint, but it’s audible, and while he listens moments collect, become longer moments, flow together in a time-and-space continuum. And then they pass.

It’s either that or he has gone bonkers.

Fact is, time can be managed and has therefore become irrelevant. It has lost all meaning. It doesn’t matter if he’s locked up for another year or another minute. Which isn’t to say that he trusts time. Karl has spent more of it being happy than sad, and yet it’s the sadness that gets to him if he allows it to, as though good times were subservient to misery. He learned to condense time through thought when he was in prison. He found a way to get lost in thinking, and to lose time while he was at it, in the infinitesimal spaces between thoughts. He has become rather good at this. He can get lost for hours, maybe days, in a state of near-total suspension where his heart rate and breathing slow down, his metabolism takes a break and his thoughts stop altogether.

He starts by concentrating on these gaps between thoughts and stretches them like rubber bands. From the outside it looks as though he just sits and breathes occasionally. His in-breath is big and he sends it down deep into his consciousness, into the perception of his body, all the way down into the tiny veins in his toes and throughout his viscera. He uses up virtually all the energy contained in the in-breath. When he exhales, there is hardly anything left; little air, even less oxygen and practically no energy at all.

Karl doesn’t know anything about meditation, about the state of nirvana or any related spiritual concepts. That’s not why he does what he does, to reach salvation of the soul. He does it because it comes naturally to him under the circumstances, because there is nothing else to do and because, well, it helps to pass the time. It kept him sane in prison, relatively speaking.

Once the conscious thought process is suspended, Karl’s mind is free to wander back in time. His inner eye watches scenes and people from his long forgotten childhood, almost tangibly in front of him. But he never reaches out his hand, never tries to touch what only he can see, and see only, never hold.

*

Sometimes even Karl can’t help caring a little about how long he has been here in this room. He’s worked out why the air in the room doesn’t become stale. Occasionally he detects weak currents of fresh air coming in through the tiny gap under the metal door. They’re not cold, exactly, but they are different from the air in the room.

Whenever he detects the life-giving flow, Karl concludes that the wig man, his jailor, is nearby. Perhaps he’s as little as a few inches away from him, spying on him benevolently, but watching for sure. This knowledge mustn’t alter the way Karl behaves, Karl decides. The man is watching and waiting for him to do something, and if Karl is aware of that, if he tries to second-guess what the man wants to see, he’s just as liable to get it wrong as not.

So he does nothing. Nothing different, that is. He just continues doing nothing, waiting, thinking, remembering, voiding his mind.

His mind drifts to the day he lost his virginity. A day nobody ever forgets, boy or girl, but in Karl’s case it was a day on a global scale — tremendous, earth-shattering, unforgettable.

And it wasn’t just the sex.

Mum, ‘Mamochka’, as he called her tenderly, not because she was Russian, but because all things Russian made a good impression on her back then, and calling her Mamochka earned him a hair-ruffling at least, sometimes a hug and even more rarely a kiss — Mum was in one of her moods.

‘Mamochka, oh Mamochka, why are you sad again? Comrade Lenin and Comrade Stalin, didn’t they say we socialists should rejoice in our ideals? We’re working hard, we’re working even for the capitalists who think we’re against them. They don’t realise we want this here place, this here earth, to be better for everybody, communist and capitalist alike, united by our higher ideals.’

Was it true? Was the communist dogma really that altruistic back then? Maybe, but they never understood this. Instead, as mum would explain, the capitalists come over to our side, to East Berlin and plunder our shops. You see, we ensure that nobody starves, nobody goes hungry. A bread roll costs next to nothing, two pennies. The price of rent hasn’t gone up for nearly twenty-five years. In fact, the rents after the war were reduced to pre-war — 1937 —prices and frozen there. Nobody sleeps without a roof over their heads or with an empty tummy in the Workers’ and Farmers’ state we call the ‘Democratic Republic of Germany’.

Together, united we are strong. Seventeen million strong in East Germany alone. Four million, nearly a quarter of our comrades – your mamochka included — were refugees after the war, when we beat fascism. We welcomed our brothers from the east with open arms. Sure, there are some…misunderstandings, some misinterpretations. That’s why we have the Party — benevolent, watching, helping others to see it our way. Yes, the farmers don’t like the land reforms. They don’t like giving up their so-called private property. Not yet. But they will come round, mark my words. With time they will see the error of their ways; they too will see the light and drop the egotism.

In the summer of ’61, the time came for city kids — like and including Karl — to do their bit for the Revolution, to soak the land with their honest sweat and get a taste of what it meant to toil for a better tomorrow. Callused hands were highly desirable for future cadres. It was during the summer vacations and good, socialist cabbage was there for the digging. Karl’s class was housed on a farm near Delitzsch where the coal smell didn’t hang as thickly as in the cities.

And there he met Ramona, two and a half years older than him, all red curls, freckly skin and blue eyes. She was a sight to behold all right, practically all woman at the tender age of fifteen. And for some reason she took a liking to Karl, dug up the same part of the field, showed him the ropes of harvesting, and a lot more than rope.

When Karl remembers her now he can’t fathom for the life of him what satisfaction, what earthly pleasures she could ever have hoped to derive from him, a tall but lanky, pimply boy from the city, shy as a rainbow, immature as peace on a cold war afternoon. And yet, there she was, there she is, as though he saw her yesterday, leading him on, coming to him in the balmy night in the barn, spiriting him away surreptitiously from his friends, taking him by the hand and beckoning him up the church tower.

With no moon to speak of, Karl remembers not understanding how she found her way through the pitch black so effortlessly. Then the not-understanding ceased to matter as his hands explored, guided by her hands, the netherworld of her skirt and blouse. Unfamiliar, tingling sensations at the tips of his fingers, up up up. His fingers found her small breasts, her hard nipples, her hot groin.

He remembers the dates, the days, the tingling. The first time, the second, and especially the third and last time with Ramona, the night from August 12 to 13, 1961, forever etched into his memory for two reasons; one is her, Ramona the Red. The other reason is the news that night. It spread like a wildfire and brought on a barrage of emotions and reactions from everybody, young and old.

He remembers images, sensations. Looking up from his reclined, supine position he saw Ramona sitting on top of him, riding him like a bronco; his hands wandering up towards her belly-button but stopping halfway. A reaction, a different sigh from her parted lips, deeper, more intense. He remembers lingering, his fingers relishing her sensitivity. This spot she liked. All focus on her now, on Ramona heading for a crescendo, the first one he’d provoked in a woman. His fingers probing the area, circling it, focusing on the one delicate, tender spot, Ramona getting louder and louder all the while.

She reaches for the sky with both arms but falls short, finds a rope instead. The rope is connected to the lever of the axle of the church bell. She grabs it, wraps it around her arm. Karl sees it now like he saw it then. When she comes, she pulls the rope. The clapper hits the inside of the rim, and the toll, nearly deafening the lovers, is heard for miles. Soon it’s joined by others, by chimes from church bells all around, near and far. Ramona untangles her arm from the rope when she’s done, but the echo continues long after it has any right to.

Here’s the thing: it’s no echo, and it’s not Christmas. It’s the middle of August. It’d better not be World War III.

In the languid state that follows the ecstasy, thinking doesn’t come naturally. It takes its sweet time, and only now do the lovers start to worry about what they’ve started. Church bells haven’t been heard for months and years. Good socialists don’t need God — religion is too decadent, too addictive. What if the villagers find them here, half naked, bathed in lustful perspiration, happy and exhausted?

It’s too late to run. People are already gathering outside, curious about the racket. What will the Party do to them? Brand them class enemies? Send them to Siberia?

Worse?

But then comes the miracle. Lady Luck is with the lovers tonight — her timing impossible to improve on. A courier arrives from Delitzsch with news. He’s a busybody who’s not supposed to say anything until the next morning, but when he sees all the people and hears the church bells all around he can’t keep his trap shut, spurts out the news that rocks the entire nation to its foundation.

August the thirteenth is the day that the right and honourable Leadership, the SED, the Party, erects a Wall around the country, a Wall to keep the others out, capitalists and carpetbaggers who come over, buy our produce cheaply and resell it for a huge margin in West Berlin. Thanks to the Party we have the Wall. Thanks to the Wall, the West will take us seriously now and the profiteers, the exploiters, can no longer exploit us, can no longer profiteer from us.

They are locked out for good.

For a moment there is silence around the old church. Then the questions begin and the lovers mingle with the crowd, make their getaway unseen.

‘And us? Are we locked in?’

‘We are safe from the capitalist-imperialists, and now stop asking questions.’

It was a conversation oft repeated in seventeen million minds in the days and months and years following the day, August 13, 1961.

Yes, we are safe from them.

But are we safe from ourselves?

*

Karl opens his eyes. Something has brought him out of his state, back to this room.

Is he really safe here, safe from himself at least? Has he likewise built a wall around himself to shield against the outside when the real danger is – and has been always – inside?

And about the anguish, when did that start? He doesn’t remember feeling it in August 1961. But hey, wait a minute. He felt it earlier than that, around this tenth birthday. Mum – Mamochka – drunk again, repeating some slogan or other like a scratched record, over and over. She got like this whenever lovers jilted her, and sometimes when they didn’t. Sometimes it took nothing to trigger it, or almost nothing. Sometimes seeing Karl’s reflection in the mirror sufficed to set her off.

He never knew whether she would push him away or shower him with affection. The latter happened rarely, was precious beyond compare even when her breath stank of booze, she slurred her words and her cough became an endless hacking.

No, let’s focus on the good. Horny is good; focus on horny. Let’s remember Ramona, her fiery hair and temperament, her blue eyes and her freckled face. Whatever happened to Ramona?

Today, like other days, Karl has an erection when he slips out of his trance-like state. Usually he takes care of it, satiates the lust. But not this time. He is tempted, but he dreads the emptiness that follows the rush. Emptiness, the mere thought of it, is too much for now, too much for his anguish.

And then something else expands and it is not his genitals. It’s something in him, bigger than him, stronger. It’s the desire to see daylight and people and plants and buildings. He wants to be among the living, talk to someone, anyone. What time of the day is it? Evening? Morning? Night? Is winter over, has spring already sprung? Surely it can’t be summer or autumn yet, or can it?

‘Surely’ ceases to exist. It could be anytime. Not anywhere – he knows this is the West, the Wild Wild West. But anytime. Definitely.

Karl approaches the metal door and sniffs the air.

‘Are you there? Are you watching? Man in the wig, HELLO?’

He gets down on all fours, presses his nose to the tiny gap and can’t detect anything but dust. No fresh breeze today.

For the first time since he was locked in the room, Karl panics. He feels it surge inside of him. Before he knows it, becomes aware of it, he throws himself against the door, hollers, screams at the top of his lungs.

‘LET ME OUT!’

His fists are soon covered in blood, but the metal doesn’t budge.

The silence doesn’t answer. The vacuum doesn’t echo. It’s all in his head.

His voice breaks. His vocal chords have atrophied like most muscles in his body, out of practice from lack of use.

He is alone and he knows it. His jailor is not coming, can’t be spirited into this room — into existence — by sleight of hand. This isolation ward, this sterility, is devoid of any life from that could react to him, prove that Karl exists. There’s no rat, no worm, not even an ant.

I think, therefore I am, he thinks.

But is he really thinking or is he merely thinking that he is thinking it? Maybe he died on his last bender and everything since then has been letting go, shuffling off the mortal coil, taking leave.

That’s it. This is nothingness. This is worse than the Stasi.

And then Karl knows what to do. He doesn’t sob anymore, but wipes his face dry with his shirt-sleeve and takes a determined step towards the cupboard. He finds the cookie tin and opens it. He counts. There are seven cookies, big ones, in there. Seven.

They should suffice.

Now he is calm. He knows what to do. He opens the fridge and decides he doesn’t want any milk. Instead he finds a bowl, a big, beige bowl, and fills it with water. Next he takes a spoon. He knows what to do. He crushes the cookies into fine crumbs. A voice inside him wonders if the man with the wig is watching in spite of everything. And, if he is watching, does he know what Karl is planning, is doing? It doesn’t matter. Karl knows what to do. He doesn’t care anymore about the man, watching or not. He pours the crushed cookie crumbs into the beige bowl, spills some but gets most of them into the water. And then he stirs the mix. He knows what to do. He opens the tap to add water to his crumbly cookies. Otherwise he’ll never get them down. He stirs and finally he has a thick broth, sticky and slow like cough syrup but liquid enough to drink. He knows if he doesn’t drink enough he’ll just wake up with that horrid chemical taste in his mouth; he’ll just wake up again. No, he’ll need to drink all of it, as much as he can get down. The bowl is almost filled to the brim. He knows what to do. He takes one last look around and then he drinks the liquid, gulps it down greedily in huge swallows. If he doesn’t drink enough of the stuff…He has to drink it all. There. He fills the bowl again as he can hardly breathe. He drinks more water, sends the bolus, the contents of his mouth, down into his stomach, tries hard not to heave it back up and out again. Stay down where the drug can do its job.

There. His consciousness is beginning to slip away already. This is fast. His knees give way, his eyes flutter and close. He starts to fall, to drop, to fade.

He doesn’t hear the metal door open, not even faintly. He is too far gone.

*

When he wakes up again he is in the room, still or again, he has no way of knowing.

His eyes take a long time to focus and his brain is slower still. The cotton, the fuzziness. His brain spongy, befogged and befuddled. He detects the taste, faint, mixed with bile, but it’s there all right. And a soreness in his throat that runs all the way down his trachea and into his stomach.

Only gradually does consciousness return, and when it does he wishes it hadn’t. Slow, inconsequential thoughts float though his head like spuds of soapy water.

Did I really want to kill myself or was it just a test for the man with the wig or a cry for attention? I am alive. I’m still here, still a prisoner. I didn’t die and I’m not dead. I tried to kill myself but he didn’t let me go, the man with the wig. I haven’t yet served my purpose to him.

At least there is that, the new knowledge. The man does care. And he must be watching after all.

Karl finds proof of this when he is finally lucid enough to sit up, to ignore a body that is protesting, that doesn’t want any sudden moves; a body weakened from the drug and from the fact that his stomach was pumped while he was out.

And what is this?

There is a letter, an envelope near the metal door. The man must have pushed it through the narrow gap.

A message for Karl. A sign of life, at last. Communication. He is not alone.

He stumbles to the door and tears at the envelope to read the message from beyond the door.

‘Dear Friend. Things will change. You are not forgotten and your time is neigh.

Today is your birthday. At eight o’clock – not before – open the small envelope.

Many Happy Returns.’

The note is typed and without signature. Karl picks up the envelope that he discarded seconds earlier. Indeed, there is another, smaller envelope inside of it.

He’s not supposed to open it until eight o’clock. Fine, but how is he going to know when it’s eight? And his birthday? His birthday is on February 23 – is that today?

Karl’s heart is pounding. He feels he is returning from a long absence, coming back to date. What day did he meet the man with the wig? It was early January 1982, a Thursday probably, though he can’t remember the exact date.

The tenth, it must have been around the tenth.

Assuming it is really his birthday, that would make it about a month and a half, maybe seven weeks that he has been here, imprisoned. It feels like an eternity.

Only after a while — he is still sitting on the floor by the door, hasn’t moved since reading the letter — does Karl start to question the veracity of its contents. It could be any day, any year, any time as far as he can say.

But then he makes a new discovery, this one at least as exciting and disturbing as the first. There is a metal alarm clock on the fresh pile of clothes and towels, right in the centre of the table. The flannel swallows the ticking. That’s why he hadn’t heard the intrusive noise in the familiar silence before.

It doesn’t matter if the time on the round display is accurate. What matters is that from now on, as long as he keeps the clock wound up, he can measure absolute time, at least relatively speaking. Starting right now. If this is Hour Zero, from now on he will know how much more time passes, minute by minute.

He is back in time.

He picks up the alarm clock, feels its coolness in his hands, cradles it like a precious stone. According to the clock it’s seven-thirty, half-past seven. In thirty minutes’ time he can open the second envelope. Another half an hour after the timeless eternity he has spent locked up in here. It’s not asking too much, surely. Surely waiting for another thirty clicks of the minute hand whilst doing nothing but listening to the sounds of his growing beard and fingernails is as easy as a junkie prostitute at Bahnhof Zoo. Surely. Except that —

Without thinking another thought Karl tears open the small envelope. If this is really his birthday, he must be within his rights.

In the envelope there is a small piece of cardboard, like a page from a public library’s filing system. On the card there is another typed message.

‘Look under your pillow. Place the chair facing away from the door and apply the found items in a logical way to facilitate your birthday treat.’

Karl turns the card over in his hands after reading it several times. There are no other messages so he proceeds to his bed and lifts up the pillow.

It’s there, all right. The drugs were too strong, the anaesthetic too effective for him to have noticed that a sack the size of a paperback novel was indeed concealed under his resting head. The material is black, shiny satin, and the words ‘Happy Birthday, Friend,’ are embroidered across the sack in golden letters.

When he picks it up Karl is surprised by the weight. He turns the sack over, dumps the contents on the bed. There are only two items inside – a pair of handcuffs and a different piece of black satin cloth. The cuffs are open and there is no key. Under closer examination Karl finds the cloth to be a hood. He tries it on for size and is not disappointed – it fits his head like a glove. There are breathing holes but no slits for his eyes.

So, the man wants him to cuff his arms into the chair facing away from the door, and the hood means Karl won’t be able to see what’s coming. Or who.

More importantly, somebody will be coming in. Another human being.

He glances at the clock – it claims to be seven-thirty four, a.m. or p.m. he doesn’t know and it probably doesn’t matter. Whoever the surprise visitor may be, Karl won’t be able to see, attack or run. The way he is feeling now he probably couldn’t have done either if he tried.

His mood is improved. Curiosity is getting the better of him, a curiosity that he hasn’t experienced for a long time, at least since he started this imprisonment.

He knows that a part of his life is now irrefutably over.

He winds the clock again and sets the alarm to go off at eight o’clock. Then he positions the chair as instructed and puts his left wrist into the cuffs. He wraps the short chain around the back of the chair, thus inhibiting his mobility. He briefly considers the possibility of trying to cheat in this game. Maybe he could close the cuffs behind him but without actually enmeshing his arms into the chair, without actually chaining himself to it.

But what would be the point? He has no intention of attacking the wigged man.

No, let’s do this right, show him I can be trusted.

He threads his left arm into the opening in the back of the chair and places his right wrist inside the other cuff. Once he clicks it shut he will be tied, his arms utterly useless behind his back.

He almost forgets to place the hood over his face.

There, done.

He can’t see behind his back anyway so he relies on his sense of touch to fulfil the remainder of the instructions. The metallic click of the closing cuff has a final ring to it. Unless somebody comes in with a key he will starve to death on this chair.

Trust is what he needs, trust in the man with the wig.

Karl can hear the sound of the ticking clock and nothing else. Gone are the subtle variances he has become so familiar with: his breathing, his heartbeat, his follicle growth. Now the only audible sound is time passing. How much longer will he have to wait until eight o’clock? If he’d adhered to the instructions and hadn’t opened the envelope early, he would still be free to move and look around. Knowing how much time is passing is already making his life harder, not easier.

He tries counting off seconds and minutes, but he loses count all too soon, can’t concentrate on the banal task of counting to sixty and starting again, so he just stops and waits.

It’s agony.

*

After what feels like a long, long while the alarm clock rings. It’s a loud, hollow sound and it reminds Karl of how, as a kid, he used to run along a metal fence with a stick that he pressed against the bars, rattling them like a warder in a prison movie, but faster.

When at last the ringing stops, the silence in the room is not the same, lonely silence that reigned before. Although he can’t hear anything, Karl knows he is not alone now. Somebody has come in.

His neck hair tries to stand up, but is hindered by the smooth material of the hood.

He strains to listen. Isn’t that somebody’s breathing, somebody who isn’t him? Should he call out, try and make conversation? He tries to say ‘hello’ but realises no sound is escaping his parted lips.

Then he feels warm skin touch his hand. It’s not an unpleasant sensation. Quite the contrary, in fact. By touch he recognises an unmistakably round part of the female anatomy. The person in the room is cupping her breast into Karl’s cuffed hand.

Then the pleasurable pressure disappears. He hears her stepping around his chair and feels her hands on his crotch. When she pulls his jogging bottoms over his knees he is tingling with anticipation and does all he can to facilitate the task.

Her hands disappear and Karl feels let down. Did she really stop so soon?

He can’t make out the new few sounds, can’t see how the woman rips off a tiny bit of condom wrapper with her teeth and spits it out.

When she unrolls the latex over his erect member he relaxes and expects that he is in for more than tease.

‘Happy birthday, friend,’ she says.