Clemens Meyer: All the Lights

Ten o’clock. The blue zero turns into a one. It took me a long time to find an alarm clock with a blue digital display. We were in a shop where they only had clocks and watches. Did she buy me the good silver watch there? The little blue one turns into a two. I’m standing in the dark, not moving. It’s not getting light this morning, that’s because of the sky. The digital display on the alarm clock is empty, but I watch the hands on my wrist. The electricity board came round, and the flat’s dark. I don’t know how long now, and I miss the little blue numbers. I want to lie back down, but I can’t make out the pillow. They rang up a lot; the phone works even in the dark. ‘Why didn’t you come to your appointment?’ I want to tell them about the short man with the moustache, who doesn’t take the train any more, but all I say is, ‘I’ve been very tired recently.’

‘We’re going to have to cut your benefits.’

‘It’s because of my alarm clock,’ I want to say, but they’re sure to know about the good silver watch on my wrist.

‘It’s me,’ she says somewhere, and I say, ‘How’s it going, where are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ she says, ‘I rang your bell, a couple of times.’

‘Must have been out for a walk,’ I say, and then there’s a click, somewhere out there where she is, and I know that sound. It’s a lighter, and she doesn’t smoke.

I hold the phone away from my head; the click’s still moving in my ear. ‘Where are you?’ I say and hear her voice and then I stay quiet and wait for it to click again, a different sound, a very different sound, and she’s gone. I walk over to the bedside table and pick up the lighter. I flick it on and off again and on again. I’ve arranged the filters in a circle. I let the flame burn for a bit, and then I want to hear the sound again. The little death. Not a sound in the flat, even the fridge is silent in the kitchen. I put the lighter carefully on the pillow and walk over to the window. I look out through the blind over to the railway embankment. The lights are glowing yellow; it must be evening already.

I stand in the yellow light and look at the street and then at my building. All the windows are dark, even the scrawny guy and his beauty are sitting in the dark; or maybe they’ve gone out, it’s the beginning of the month. There’s a bar down the road, but maybe they’ve gone to the Italian place a bit further away, the scrawny guy sucking spaghetti into his toothless mouth, and her watching him with a smile.

I sit down on the stairs, jamming the bottle between my legs. I screw off the top and throw it away. A couple of cars drive past, it’s turned cool now, and I drink. Then the light goes on, right at the top on the fourth floor. The curtains are pulled back but there’s no one to see at the window, just a big teddy bear sitting on the windowsill. I feel myself smiling. I hear the train behind me and the cars down on the road, but all I can see is the big teddy bear in the middle of the windowsill. I don’t know how long I look at it, I feel the smile in the corners of my mouth, then I pick up the bottle and put my head back and drink. There’s a plane in the sky, it leans slightly to one side and curves round to the airport outside the city.

‘How’s it going?’

I take the bottle from my lips and hand it to the short man. His moustache has gone, his face is swollen, his top lip hidden under a large plaster. He puts his head back and drinks and watches the plane.

Then he sits down next to me. ‘They gave me magic stitches,’ he says with a tap of his top lip. ‘They dissolve after a while, all on their own.’ He tries to smile but stops again; it must hurt. ‘Magic stitches,’ I say, and he nods. He hands me one of his roll-ups. ‘Do you still take the train?’ I shake my head, and he nods again. He’s sitting pretty close to me, and I feel him going all limp and leaning his shoulder against me. We drink, in silence.

I’m standing at the window, looking out through the blind over at the railway embankment. The lights are glowing yellow; it must be evening already. There’s a man standing in the yellow light. He turns away.

His mother was sitting in the dark. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘Aren’t you going to turn the light on? It’s getting late.’

‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘I like sitting here watching it get dark.’ She was in her seat, right by the window, and the last light of dusk fell on her hands and the table. He saw the candles, and now he knew she wasn’t watching it get dark out of choice. They’d cut off her electricity. He looked at the date on his watch: the twentieth, more than ten days to go until she’d get her money. And he had to wait more than ten days as well; he was used to waiting, after all the years he’d been waiting now. ‘I’ll be off then, mother,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ve got things to do as well.’

‘Shall I leave you something here? I’m flush right now.’ He knew she’d say no. It was only once he was outside in the stairwell that he remembered his eye, thought it was maybe quite a good thing his mother was sitting in the dark, so she couldn’t see it. It wasn’t that bad, not even very swollen, just a small dark blue, almost black crescent under his eye that wouldn’t go away, for days now, even though he pressed ice cubes on it and used some gel from the chemist’s. He didn’t even remember exactly how it had happened any more, some young lad in some local bar. He hadn’t started it himself, he was quite sure about that — when he was at a bar drinking away his money, even though there were over fourteen days to go, all he wanted was to be left in peace and to forget everything. Maybe he hadn’t been watching out and had barged against someone, and some of these young lads were damn quick to pack a punch and start fights over nothing. Most of them were waiting just like he was, just not for as long. But they were waiting all right, for work, for money.

He walked the streets, not looking left or right; he knew everything here, every street, every building, he’d been living round here for over forty years, and he heard the voices from the open windows, the clatter of plates, children, and he felt the people walking past him, and he saw the yellow light of the street lamps and the brightly coloured lights of the bars and shops out of the corner of his eye. Only a couple of bars had kept going, there’d been one on every other corner in the old days, and the little shops had started disappearing as well.

He walked past the playground where the young people met up in the evenings and at night, and he could hear them now as well, maybe the lad who’d given him the black eye was even there.

Someone said, ‘Excuse me, sir,’ and he took a step to one side and asked, ‘How are you?’ And the woman with the big twin buggy who lived a couple of doors down from him smiled and said, ‘Oh, not bad.’ She tapped a finger to her eye and then asked, ‘I hope that was nothing serious,’ but she had dark circles under her own eyes, sometimes so dark that when he met her in the street it looked like she’d taken a couple of punches too. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Just been doing a bit of sport.’ She nodded and pushed the buggy past him, and he eyed her baggy jeans that looked two sizes too big.

He stood in front of his letterbox. He hadn’t checked it for post for a few days now, and as he turned the tiny key in the lock and opened the door of the box, three letters fell to the floor at his feet. He bent down and picked them up. One from the job centre and one from a company he’d applied to ages ago, and he knew there was no point reading it but tore open the envelope anyway. He pulled out the folded sheet of paper, held it into the light of the stairway lamp, then he screwed it up and put it in his pocket with the empty envelope and the letter from the job centre. He held the third letter in his hands for a while until the light went out automatically. He stood in the dark, stroking the envelope. He could feel the stamp. There was a large butterfly on it, so brightly coloured that he thought he could still make it out in the dark, and above the butterfly were the large capital letters ‘CUBA’. He didn’t know anyone in Cuba. He had turned the letter over, but there was no sender on the back, no name, no address. He switched the light on and went up the stairs slowly with the letter. He lived right at the top on the fourth floor, and as he climbed up one step at a time he kept thinking over and over, ‘Cuba, Havana, Cuba’. Maybe the letter was for someone else, but his address and his name were written large and clearly on the envelope. He unlocked his front door, put the key in the lock from inside and turned it twice, and then he turned on the light. He thought about his mother and about how he’d have to pay again soon or they’d come round to his place too. Cuba. He hung his jacket on the peg, went into the kitchen and put the letter down on the table, right in the light of the lamp. Then he took a beer out of the fridge but put it back again and made coffee. He had hardly any money left, and the beer had to last another ten days. He could take back deposit bottles, he had over forty empty beer bottles on his small balcony, plus a few mineral water and cola bottles; he’d get a couple more beers for the deposit money but he was ashamed of turning up with large, clinking bags full at the supermarket with the local drinkers standing around outside. The only times they weren’t there were when it was particularly cold in winter. Why don’t I take a small bag to the supermarket, he thought, and get rid of the bottles bit by bit? He poured himself a cup of coffee, milk and sugar, then he sat down at the table. He drank a sip, a few drops of coffee spilt on the table, and he fetched a cloth and wiped across the tabletop a few times, then put the cup down on the cloth. He sat down again. He examined the letter, trying to recognise the handwriting, but he hadn’t got any private post for ages now, only from the benefits office and companies he’d applied to. He held the letter up to the light but he couldn’t make anything out in the envelope. The postmark had ‘Cuba’ in it too, and then there were a few little numbers, probably the date, he could read ‘08’ but the rest was smudged; perhaps it had got wet on its travels. Had the letter come by ship or on a plane? But then it would say ‘Air Mail’ on the postmark, wouldn’t it? His mother had got a letter from New York once, from a cousin, and he’d read something about ‘Air Mail’ on the envelope. ‘Paula’s on holiday in New York, imagine that, New York, an eight-hour flight, you do remember your second cousin Paula, don’t you?’ But he couldn’t remember a Paula, and what did he care about planes and ships and New York?