Clemens Meyer - All the Lights

The little grey dog danced around her, and she took a couple of steps so the lead didn’t get tangled around her legs. I dropped my bag and squatted down as the little grey dog danced in my direction and stopped a couple of yards in front of me; maybe the lead wasn’t long enough or she was pulling him back. But I didn’t even see her any more, although she was really quite pretty; there was only the little grey dog in front of me, in the middle of the platform. He raised his head and sniffed, his nose was shiny. I held out my palm to him, my fingers slightly apart, the dog danced to and fro a bit and howled quietly. I heard the train pulling in and straightened up.

And then night. In fact it was still evening, but it had been dark since four, and I saw all the bright lights of the city. I stood outside the door, looked at the cars driving by, looked at the luminous signs and windows of the shops and bars opposite. The Turks and the Arabs had taken the area over years ago, and the Russians had a hand in things too, and back then before I went inside I’d had a couple of run-ins on this street, when we crawled from one bar to the next, but that was all over now. I opened the door and went inside. I took the money out of my bag, counted it out, rolled it up and put it in my inside pocket. The money smelled of fish, and the two queers in their little snack bar had stunk of fish as well.

‘The Boxer sent you, did he? Shacked up with him, are you?’

The guy winked at me and leaned over the little counter. ‘Used to look out for me, always looked out for me back then.’ He talked about their great friendship, about the Boxer’s honour, ‘Never lets anyone down, never leaves you in the lurch, you better believe it,’ and he talked about how the Boxer nearly made it to the Olympics, back then. He put a can of beer down in front of me and opened one for himself. ‘Have a drink. Out on leave, are you? Let’s drink to the Boxer.’ We said cheers, and he started talking again, about the Boxer and about the jail and about their golden days. The other queer didn’t say a word the whole time and just cut rolls and herrings, and when he started on the onions and queer number one was still going on and on, I flicked my half-smoked roll-up across the counter at him and said: ‘Time’s up.’ He grinned and nodded and took me to a little caravan he called ‘my office’, and it stank of fish and beer and cigarettes in there too.

I walked slowly up the stairs. The house was silent, and when the light went off I stood still and lit up. I walked on slowly in the dark. Light shone through the pane in the door. I stood still and put my hand on the bars. ‘Close it, I wanna show you something.’ I closed the window, turned around and still felt the bars cold on my hand. The Boxer was standing naked to the waist in front of his bed. ‘Hey, what’s this all about, pal?’

‘Just wanna show you something, son, come over here, come closer.’ He’d put his big hand on his chest, and I walked over to him slowly. He had the usual words and pictures on his arms and a big eye in the middle of his belly, but I’d seen all that often enough in the two years we’d been sharing. The Boxer wasn’t quite as inked up as the billboards I used to see in the showers, who carried their whole lives around with them on their skin, but he went to one of our in-house tattooists every couple of months. ‘It’s a new one, you haven’t seen it yet, it’s still fresh. Don’t need no photo any more. Never. Chucked them all away. She’ll always be with me now.’ He took his hand off his chest. There was the face of a young woman, she had shoulder-length black hair and was smiling. Her eyes were much too big, almost like in Japanese comics. She must really have been pretty fresh; her face was swollen up, especially her forehead and below her mouth — there weren’t any tattoo care sets in Fort Zinna. ‘Looks really beautiful,’ I said, and the Boxer nodded and went a bit red. I looked at his daughter, smiling at me with her big eyes. ‘Come in,’ she said. I looked at her nose, then her hair, which was quite short, and then her eyes … now they were sparkling and squinting at me. ‘Come in,’ she said again, ‘come on in if you’re going to.’ She turned around and I followed her along the hall. Maybe the Boxer had told her I was coming, maybe the herring boys. ‘The door,’ she said, and I went back again and closed it.

She sat down on the sofa. I stayed standing up in front of her, and she squinted up at me so that I took a couple of steps back. I held onto my bag with both hands and looked around. It all looked pretty cheap, but the Boxer had told me she was doing some training course, as a hotel clerk or something. ‘Like a drink?’ I nodded. She went past me to the sideboard, and behind me I heard her clinking glasses. She took a couple of steps, and then I felt her breath on the back of my neck. I held onto my bag and looked at the wall above the sofa. There was some reproduction modern picture up there, all just blobs of colour. She walked slowly back to the sofa and put two glasses of brown liquor on the table. ‘Why don’t you sit down,’ she said. She stroked the sofa cushions and tilted her head and smiled; she must have learnt that on her course.

I put my bag down and sat down next to her. ‘You’ve come on a little trip because of me, right?’ she said and moved closer. ‘Not that far,’ I said. I picked up my glass; it smelled like cheap and nasty ‘Goldbrand’, tasted like it too.

‘Bet you’re glad you’re here now, right?’ She moved away from me again towards the armrest, kicked off her shoes and stretched out her legs, touching my knees with her feet. I reached for my glass and pushed it to and fro on the table. There was an ashtray there as well, and I pulled out my cigarettes. I felt the roll of money in my inside pocket. ‘Be a sweetie and give us one.’ I lit my cigarette and handed her the packet. She fingered one out and put the packet down on her leg. I wanted to give her a light, but she took the cigarette out of my mouth and lit hers on it. I stood up and reached into my inside pocket. ‘Listen …’

‘Hey, don’t go running off.’ She jumped up so quickly that her cigarette and my cigarette and the packet as well fell on the carpet, but she took no notice and pressed right up to me and put her arms around me. She was really strong, even though she was so short. I wanted to push her away, throw the money on the table and disappear, find a place to hide and wait for Monday, but she held tight; she must have got her strength from the Boxer.

‘Don’t do that,’ I said, but she was still hanging on to me and rubbing her face against my neck, it must have been her nose, no, she can’t have got that from the Boxer, but maybe he’d had the best nose in town, before he nearly made it to the Olympics. She fumbled with my flies and said, ‘You’ve got to give me something, you know …’

I felt the roll of money in my inside pocket, but I knew that wasn’t what she meant, and now I knew that neither the Boxer nor the herring boys had told her I was coming either. I grabbed her by the shoulders but let her go again straight away, because I felt her skin and bones. I picked up my half-empty glass and lobbed it at the sideboard, so hard that splinters of glass and drops of liquor sprayed back at us. She took a couple of slow steps away from me and looked at me with her big Japanese comic eyes. I stumbled backwards and sat down on the sofa. I picked up her glass and drank it dry. Suddenly there was a man in the middle of the room. ‘Trouble,’ he said and came over to me. He walked fairly slowly, and I could have got him in the face with the glass, but I put it down on the table. I got up. I saw him pulling back to punch, but I didn’t move. He had a good right hook and I was on the floor. I turned on my side and looked between the table legs. She was crouching in front of the sideboard, her chin on her knees, and I looked her straight in the face. I got up. Straight away, the guy gave me two or three hard ones, and I went down again and looked under the table at the Boxer’s daughter, still crouched in front of the sideboard, not moving. I felt blood on my face. I saw the guy’s legs right next to me, I could have grabbed them, pulled him over and mashed him up, but I got up again and looked at him. He didn’t hit me straight away, and I looked over his shoulder at the wall. The guy rammed his knee in my belly, I gasped for breath and crouched down.