Sorry. Shaun Whiteside

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СКАЧАТЬ time,” he promises and stands up.

      She nods. It’s over. The pain of separation has vanished, because she has seen a glimmer of light. A nice man has opened her eyes. And so we leave the woman sitting alone on the grass, and leave the park with the nice man. We are on the way to his job. It will be his last working day, and the nice man is not in a good mood.

      “You’ve got to understand this,” says Bernd Jost-Degen ten minutes later and sticks his hands into the front pockets of his designer jeans. He stands with his back to the window, so that Kris can only make his face out as a silhouette. A digital hand twitches between a Chagall and a Miró above a digital clock projected on the wall. The boss’s office must always be in semi-darkness, or else you wouldn’t be able to see the clock. Bernd is three years older than Kris and doesn’t like people calling him “boss,” or pretends not to.

      “There’s a lot of rationalization going on,” Bernd continues. “Look at me, I’m up to my neck in shit, as well. The structures aren’t the same any more, the world has moved on, you know? Back in the old days, people did good work for good pay. Now they have to do fantastic levels of work for bad pay. And they’re supposed to be grateful, too.”

      He laughs the laugh of someone who isn’t one of those people. Kris feels like an idiot and doesn’t know why he wanted to speak to his boss again. At his feet are two paper bags that the cleaning woman handed to him after she had cleared his desk.

      “It’s a market economy, Kris, it’s overpopulation. There are too many of us, and our souls belong to capitalism. Look at me. I’m dangling on strings. I’m a puppet. The guys at the top are saying, Bernd, we want twice as much profit. And what do I do? I give you cheaper mineral water and order the cheapest kind of coffee and make cuts wherever I can, so that the people up there don’t get rid of me.”

      “What on earth are you talking about?” asks Kris. “You fired me, you’ve made me one of your cuts.”

      Bernd rests one hand on the other and leans forward.

      “Come on, Kris, look, my hands are tied, kill me if you want, but my hands are tied. It’s last in, first out. Of course you can go straight on to another job. And if you like, I’ll write you a reference, I’m happy to do that. Of course. Try the Tagesspiegel, they’re a bit slow off the mark. Or what about taz, they’re … What’s up? Why are you looking at me like that?”

      Kris has laid his head on one side. His thoughts are focused. It’s a bit like meditation. Each time Kris breathes in he gets bigger, and each time he breathes out his boss shrinks a bit more.

      “You’re not going to get violent on me, are you?” Bernd says nervously, and steps behind his desk. His hands disappear into his trouser pockets, his torso leans back as if he were standing on the edge of an abyss. Kris doesn’t move, he just observes, and if he were to step closer to his boss right now, he’d be able to smell his fear.

      “I’m really sorry, man. If you want—”

      Kris walks out on him mid-sentence and crosses the editorial office with the paper bags under his arms. He’s disappointed. Bernd Jost-Degen has never learned to formulate an apology properly. Never say you’re sorry and hide your hands in your trouser pockets as you do so. We all want to see the weapons we’re being injured with. And if you’re going to lie as he just did, then at least take a step toward the other guy and let him feel you’re telling the truth. Fake closeness, because closeness can mask lies. There’s nothing more pitiful than someone who can’t apologize for his mistakes.

      No one looks up when Kris walks past. He wishes the whole gang of them would choke on their own ignorance there and then. He’s worked closely with them for a year, and now not a single one of them looks up.

      Kris sets the bags down on the floor of the elevator and looks at himself in the mirror on the wall. He waits for his reflection to look away. The reflection grins back.

      Better than nothing, Kris thinks and presses the button for the ground floor.

      The two bags contain all his research and interviews from the last few months, which no one’s really interested in. Current for a day, then just some junk that’s recycled over and over. Journalism today, Kris thinks, really wanting to set the whole pile on fire. When the doors open again, he steps out of the elevator and leaves the bags on the floor. At almost the same time they tip sideways with a sigh, then the elevator doors close, and it’s over.

      Kris steps onto the pavement and takes a deep breath.

      We’re in Berlin, we’re on Gneisenaustrasse. The World Cup has been over for nine weeks, and it’s as if it never happened. Kris doesn’t want that to happen to him. He’s in his late twenties and after twelve months in a steady job he’s unemployed again. He has no interest in looking for another job, and neither does he want to switch, like hundreds of thousands of others, from one internship to the next, getting by on starvation wages and hoping someone takes him on sooner or later. No. And he doesn’t want to work as a trainee, either, because he’s had training and he’s been through university. His attitudes are at odds with the job market—he’s bad at begging and far too arrogant for small jobs. But Kris doesn’t plan to despair. He won’t end up with his head in the oven, no one will be aware of his problems. Kris is an optimist, and there are only two things he can’t stand: lying and unfairness. Today he is aware of both, and his mood matches the fact. If Kris Marrer knew now that he has been moving toward a new goal since waking up, he would change his attitude. You’d be able to see him smile. But as he is unsuspecting, he curses the day and sets off for the subway. He wonders how to straighten a world in which everyone’s used to standing crooked.

      TAMARA

      JUST AS KRIS IS leaving the editorial office, Tamara Berger is sitting up in bed with a start. The ceiling is just a few inches away from her head, and Tamara knows she will never get used to it. Like waking up in a coffin. She falls back into the pillows and thinks about the dream that is echoing around in her head. A man asked her if she had made her decision. Tamara couldn’t see his face, she could just see the tensed sinews at his throat. So she tried to walk around the man, but his head kept turning away from her until hairline cracks formed at his neck that made Tamara think of dried-out earth. Finally she laid a hand on the man’s head so that he couldn’t turn away any more. She walked around the man and woke up.

      We are in Berlin South, two streets away from Steglitz Town Hall. The room looks out onto a courtyard to the rear, the curtains are drawn, and a wasp is flying tirelessly against the windowpane. Tamara doesn’t know how the wasp got through the sealed window. The alarm clock shows 11:19. Tamara doesn’t believe it and holds the alarm clock right in front of her eyes before she gets cursing out of the bunk and puts on last night’s clothes. A minute later she dashes from the apartment as if the house were in flames.

      You’ll now be wondering why we are spending any time on a woman who can’t even manage to wash her face or put on fresh clothes after she wakes up. Tamara asks herself the same question as she looks at her face in a reflection on the subway. When she got home at four this morning she was far too tired to take her makeup off. The running mascara left dark traces under her eyes. Her hair is straggly, her blouse crumpled and open one button too far, clearly revealing her cleavage. I look like a tramp, Tamara thinks and buries her face in her hands. Without a word, the man diagonally opposite hands her a tissue. Tamara says thank you and blows her nose. She wishes she had slept through the whole day.

      Even though it’s hard for you at the moment, you have to СКАЧАТЬ