Sorry. Shaun Whiteside

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СКАЧАТЬ are a case, aren’t you?”

      And she’s absolutely right, Tamara is a case.

      An hour later they share a bag of chips by the district court building, and wait for the 148, toward the zoo. Frauke is feeling better. She has worked out that she sometimes sees nothing but storm clouds everywhere. When Tamara tells her to take less medication, Frauke doesn’t even pull a face and says, “Tell that to my mother, not to me.”

      At Wilmersdorfer Strasse they get off the bus and head into the Chinese supermarket opposite Woolworth’s. Frauke fancies stir-fried vegetables and noodles.

      “It’ll do you good to eat something healthy,” she explains.

      Tamara doesn’t like the smell in Chinese shops. It reminds her of the hallways in the blocks of apartments with corners stinking of piss, and it also reminds her a bit of an InterRail journey when she got her period and couldn’t wash herself down below for two days. But what bothers her most is that she has gotten used to the smell of dried fish after a minute, but knows very well that it’s still in the air.

      Frauke isn’t worried about that. She puts bok choy, baby eggplants, and leeks in the basket. She weighs a handful of bean sprouts and searches for the right noodles. Then she runs back to the vegetables to get ginger and coriander. She doesn’t like the coriander. She talks to a saleswoman and asks for a fresh bunch. The saleswoman shakes her head. Frauke lifts the coriander and says, Dead, then taps herself on the chest and says, Alive. The saleswoman holds Frauke’s stare for a minute before disappearing into the storeroom and coming back with a new bunch. Tamara thinks the new bunch looks exactly the same as the old one, but she says nothing, because Frauke is content. Frauke thanks the saleswoman with a hint of a bow and marches to the register with Tamara. The Vietnamese man behind the register is about as nice as the kind of uncle you might imagine trying to grope you under your skirt. Frauke tells him he can stop grinning. His mouth becomes a straight line. Frauke and Tamara hurry out of the shop.

      “Plan B,” says Frauke, dragging Tamara over to one of the phone booths. Plan B can mean anything with Frauke, but in lots of cases it just means that no Plan A exists.

      As Frauke is making her call, Tamara studies the people outside the Tchibo coffee shop. Even though it’s overcast they’re crowding around the tables under the umbrellas, shopping bags crammed between their legs. Grandmas with a cigarette in one hand and a coffee cup in the other; grandpas silently guarding the tables, as if someone has forced them to leave their flat. Among them are two laborers bent over their tables eating as if they aren’t allowed to leave crumbs on the pavement. Caffè lattes and apple tarts are on sale. Tamara imagines herself standing there with Frauke in thirty years’ time. Fresh from the hairdresser’s in their beige orthopedic footwear, their plastic bags full of booty, lipstick crusted in the corners of their mouths.

      “It’s been months,” Frauke says into the receiver. “I can’t even remember what you look like. And anyway my kitchen’s too small. I hate cooking in it, is that something you can possibly imagine?”

      Frauke looks at Tamara and holds up her thumb.

      “What? What do you mean, when?” she says again into the phone. “Now, of course.”

      Tamara presses her ear to the receiver as well and hears Kris saying he thinks it’s nice of them to call but he has no time right now, his head’s in the oven and they should try again later.

      “Later’s not good,” Frauke says, unimpressed. “Do you really not fancy stir-fried vegetables?”

      Kris admits that he isn’t in the slightest interested in stir-fried vegetables. He promises to call again later.

      “After the autopsy,” he says and hangs up.

      “What does he mean by autopsy?” Tamara asks.

      “For God’s sake, Tamara,” says Frauke and pushes her out of the phone booth.

      Whenever Tamara thinks about Kris, she thinks of a fish that she saw once in the aquarium. It was her twentieth birthday. Frauke had bought some grass from a friend, and the plan had been to get completely stoned and look at the fish in the aquarium.

      “You can’t beat it,” she had said. “You suddenly understand what a fish is really like.”

      They strolled giggling from one room to the next, got terrible munchies for Mars bars and stocked up on them at a newsstand before entering a room with a big pool. A handful of tourists had assembled, students sat yawning on the benches. Tamara’s mouth was full of chocolate when she stepped forward and saw the fish.

      The fish wasn’t swimming. It floated among all the other fish in the water and stared at the visitors, some of whom pulled faces or knocked on the glass, making the fish jerk backward and swim away. But the one fish remained still. Its eyes were fixed, and it looked through the visitors as if no one were there. Tamara thought, No one can hurt him. And Kris is just like that. No one can hurt him.

      At the time they all belonged to the same clique. Kris and Tamara and Frauke. There was Gero and Ina too, and Thorsten, Lena and Mike and whatever all their names were. They sailed through the nineties like an armada of hormone-drenched seafarers with only one goal in mind: one day to reach the sacred shore of high school graduation, and never to have to take to the sea ever again. After school they lost touch. Years later they bumped into each other by chance and were amazed at how much time had just slipped through their fingers. They were seafarers no more, neither were they shipwrecked; they were more like the people who walked along the beach picking up flotsam and jetsam.

      “What’s up?” Frauke asks, turning to Tamara, who is still standing beside the phone booth. “What are you waiting for?”

      “Are you sure he wants to see us?”

      “What sort of a question is that? Of course he wants to see us.”

      The last time Tamara talked to Kris was New Year’s Eve. Kris described her as irresponsible and incompetent. Tamara is in fact irresponsible and sometimes incompetent as well, but there was no reason to rub her nose in it. She has no great desire to listen to this tirade all over again.

      “Today’s his last day at the paper,” says Frauke. “Wolf mailed me. Kris has to see someone, or he’ll go off the edge.”

      “Wolf said that?”

      “I said that.”

      Tamara shakes her head.

      “If Kris wants to see anyone, it’s certainly not me.”

      “You know he doesn’t mean it like that.”

      “So how does he mean it?”

      “He … he gets worried. About you. And about the little one, too, of course.”

      Frauke deliberately doesn’t say her name. The little one. Kris, on the other hand, always says the name, although she’s asked him not to. And that hurts. They don’t talk about Jenni. Jenni is the wound that does not stop bleeding.

      Tamara tries to see Jenni twice a week. She isn’t allowed to talk to her. She isn’t allowed to show herself to her. On especially lonely nights Tamara walks through the south of Berlin and stops in front of Jenni’s house. СКАЧАТЬ