Elefant. Jamie Bulloch

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      12

      The same day

      Perhaps the macaroni cheese was too stiff a challenge for his stomach; the noodles were swimming in the fat of sweated onions, cream and melted cheese. Nor did the odours of the people sitting next to him help, or the smells drifting over from the kitchen. Schoch let some liquid drip from the baked pasta on his fork, then forced himself to eat a couple of mouthfuls.

      The soup kitchen wasn’t renowned for its cuisine, but the food was free. In Meeting Point the food cost four francs – for that you could get four litre-cans of 5.4 per cent beer at CONSU.

      But seeing as he was dry at the moment, he could have shelled out the four francs, it occurred to him.

      He speared three macaroni on his fork and watched the fat drip off, the process slightly accelerated by his trembling hand. ‘Do you know why I drink?’ Bolle used to yell. ‘To stop my hands shaking!’ Around this time of day Schoch’s trembling had usually stopped. But apart from this, going without alcohol was – as expected – all right. It was just boring.

      The rain looked as if it had set in for the day. Schoch walked close to the houses to avoid being splashed by the cars zooming past. Apart from him there was just an old woman and her dog on Blechwalzenstrasse. She was having a tussle with her umbrella, her large handbag and her overweight pet, who was mobilising all four of his skinny legs to resist this sodden outing.

      Schoch went into the Salvation Army hostel, took off his wet coat and hung it on the rack. Behind the glass of the reception booth an elderly man looked up from his free newspaper. ‘Is Furrer here?’ Schoch asked.

      The man nodded. ‘In the office.’

      Schoch went up to the door marked ‘Management’, knocked and went in.

      Furrer was a shaven-headed man with a five-day beard. He was probably about fifty, wore jeans, a checked shirt and a corduroy jacket. ‘Take a seat,’ he said, pointing to one of the visitors’ chairs from the junk shop.

      Schoch sat down.

      ‘I’ll get us a coffee.’ Furrer went out and returned with two large cups.

      Schoch took a sip. Black with lots of sugar, just how he liked it.

      He didn’t know why Furrer was so friendly to him. He had been ever since his first day as manager of the hostel. For a short while Schoch thought it was because Furrer was gay. But a single glance in one of the few mirrors he came across was sufficient to eliminate this possibility. So he’d asked him, ‘How come I get such preferential treatment?’

      ‘You remind me of someone.’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘Don’t know, but it’ll come to me.’

      After that he’d avoided Furrer, just to be on the safe side. But one evening Furrer intercepted Schoch outside Sixty-Eight and surprised him with the question, ‘I’ve got a room free, do you want it?’

      Schoch shook his head.

      ‘Why ever not? Winter’s on its way. Opportunities like this don’t crop up every day.’

      Schoch spent a moment searching for an answer, then shook his head obdurately. ‘Homeless people don’t have bedrooms.’

      Sumi was still alive at the time and Schoch didn’t have a fixed sleeping place. So he was happy to accept Furrer’s offer to store his belongings at the hostel. And later, when he inherited the River Bed, he kept them there. They wouldn’t have been safe in his cave.

      Schoch wasn’t the only one for whom Furrer put in safekeeping a few ‘personal effects’, as he called them. Schoch suspected that this allowed him to stay in contact with those homeless people who, like himself, wouldn’t be domesticated. The lockers were in Furrer’s office and it was difficult to access them without bumping into him.

      Furrer asked the inevitable question, ‘How are you?’

      And Schoch gave the routine answer, ‘Good.’

      ‘You don’t look it.’

      ‘I haven’t looked good since I was nineteen.’

      ‘What about the shakes?’

      ‘Didn’t have them then either.’

      Furrer laughed and shook his head. Then he turned serious. ‘Dr Senn is coming at eight tomorrow morning. Shall I put your name down?’

      Dr Senn was the GP who held a surgery once a week in the hostel for those who couldn’t bring themselves to seek out a doctor in their practice.

      Schoch shook his head. ‘He’s not going to make me any prettier.’

      ‘Why don’t you join the group?’

      ‘The alky group?’ Schoch said with a grimace.

      ‘Hasn’t hurt anyone yet.’

      ‘If I want to stop, I’ll stop.’

      Furrer nodded thoughtfully. ‘Well, that’s good.’

      Schoch stood up and went over to his locker. ‘But if I do stop,’ he said, more to himself than to Furrer, ‘what will I do instead of drinking?’

      The question was not meant as ironically as it sounded. When Schoch stepped out of the Salvation Army hostel, he didn’t know where to go. Normally he would have headed straight for CONSU, the wholesaler with the cheapest beer, and bought himself a six-pack. If the weather was good, he would have then gone to Freiland Park and sat on a bench or joined the other homeless people, depending on who was there. In poor weather he might have taken the six-pack to the tram stop at the station and shared it with the dog lovers. And with today’s weather as bad as it was he’d have taken himself off to the AlcOven, where it was warm and dry at least.

      But without any beer? Without that spark of happiness that only ever lasted for two or three cans, then was replaced by something that might not have been satisfaction, but was at least its little sister, indifference? How was he going to kill the afternoons and evenings now?

      Should he, as Furrer kept suggesting, register as a street vendor for Gassenblatt, the homeless newspaper? ‘It gives you a structured day, your own income and you meet normal people,’ he said. And you can’t drink, Schoch thought. For him, those were precisely the ‘advantages’ that militated against it.

      He’d tried it once. Furrer had lent him sixty francs, which had allowed him to buy twenty copies of the paper and keep 100 per cent of the income from these.

      But after a short spell beside the escalator of the pedestrian underpass he’d had enough. He felt silly in the light-blue coat and matching baseball cap, and found it so embarrassing trying to talk to people. He recalled how he’d given the vendors a wide berth when he was one of those passers-by.

      In almost two hours Schoch had sold a single paper, to an old lady who looked as if she СКАЧАТЬ