Clemens Meyer - All the Lights

He takes her right hand, in its red glove now, and lifts it. ‘Remember …’ he says. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I’ll only show her it when she’s open.’ She punches her fists together, and he nods and pulls the two big black punch mitts over his hands. ‘Hit her over her left hand, just punch across it when she’s open.’ He takes a couple of steps back to the middle of the little room, holding both hands up with the mitts on them. ‘Left,’ he shouts in a hoarse voice, ‘keep her away from you, don’t let the bitch near you!’ She punches a left jab, jacking her left leg slightly, breathing out, ‘uh, uh, uh,’ punching her left hand over and over against her old trainer’s big black mitts, him moving now in the middle of the room as if he were a young boxer, ‘Hook,’ the young boxer shouts and dances from left to right, and she slams left hooks into his mitt, and when his right hand smacks out at her face she just blocks it and counters with her left fist, it’s her left over and over, until the old man calls ‘And now your right, show her your hard right,’ and she punches her right hand into his right mitt, right across his left hand just in that moment twitching towards her face, she twists her body into the punch, puts her weight behind it and screams.

She screams, Alina screams, and her brother screams too, ‘Alinchen, come to me, quick,’ she wants to push the front door closed again but one of the men has his foot in the door. The floor sways, even though they’re not on the ship any more, even though there are no gulls and no machines and cranes making all their noise outside in the harbour, even though no lights of passing ships shine in though the window any more and no passing ships take the daylight away, the floor sways, and she holds onto the door frame as the men just walk into the flat. ‘You’ve got to go,’ one of the men says, ‘you’ve got to go back.’ A couple of the men are wearing uniforms, and Alina knows what that means: back. There was an old Kurd on the ship, one storey above them, and he used to say, ‘If they come to take me back I’ll go to the captain.’

‘There is no captain here,’ she said and laughed, but he said he was fast, he said he’d worked on a boat before and he’d cast off, ‘And if the helmsman doesn’t play along I’ll beat him to a pulp.’

‘I’ll beat you to a pulp!’ screams Alina. ‘Left,’ calls the old man, ‘head, body, head! And when she’s open …’ She sees her brother sitting behind her on the sofa and hugging their father, their father looking tiny and disappearing into the cushions, her brother’s head on his chest. She pulls her fists up in front of her face, pushing her left leg a little forward and locking her knee as she slams her left fist into the first man’s chest. Two or three times she throws a straight left, and the man stops still and looks at her in amazement. ‘Right,’ calls the old man, ‘show her your beautiful right!’ she twists her body into the punch, puts her weight behind it and screams.

They walk along the long narrow corridor. The old man is next to her, his arm around her shoulders. She hears the music she asked for in the hall, a song from the mountains; her father is sitting right at the front somewhere, waiting. She looks at the floor and sees the tiny stone with the hole in it on her shoe. Her brother’s walking next to her. She punches her gloves together and says, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ She’s pulled the hood of her robe down low over her face. She sees the end of the corridor ahead. She takes a couple more steps and stops a moment. She sees the hall, she sees all the people, she can hear them. The roar of the sea.

He’d been looking for a Lithuanian all around town. He’d met a whole lot of Russians and he’d asked them about Lithuanians.

Kak dyela? How are you? Do you speak Lithuanian? Nyet? Do you know anyone who speaks Lithuanian?

He’d bought a whole lot of men vodka on his search for a Lithuanian, and he’d drunk a whole lot of vodka himself.

When he got the tab he made sure they didn’t see all the money he had on him. He’d taken everything out over the past five days — all their savings, seven thousand eight hundred marks — and sometimes he imagined his wife laying the bank statements out on the table in front of her and resting her head on her arms (a little place for the weekends, that’s what she’d always wanted), but the image didn’t touch anything in him. He wandered the streets of the town by the sea, and he felt as if he’d always been there.

He’d met Ukrainians, Poles, White Russians. Out by the canal leading to the small port was a snack van. That was where they usually stood around drinking beer and vodka, and when he came in the morning it was tea and coffee.

Kak dyela? Khorosho. Yeah, yeah. A Lithuanian? Zids is Lithuanian. Zids isn’t here right now.

So he waited for Zids at the snack van by the canal leading to the port. He drank beer and vodka, looking at the rundown yachts and ships moored on the banks of the canal. It was getting dark but Zids didn’t show up.

The men spoke Russian; he could only understand the odd word now and then. Two Poles were standing to one side speaking Polish. He didn’t understand that at all; the only word he knew was kurwa: fuck.

Zids didn’t show up and he walked slowly along the canal into town. It was nearly dark now, even though it wasn’t even five yet. He was cold and he thought for a moment he’d go back and drink another vodka, but then he saw all the lights of the Chinese restaurant and behind it the town steeple. Next to the church was the hotel he’d stayed in when he arrived in town days ago, but now he was staying somewhere else — his training course had been at the hotel; that was the only reason he’d come. He’d only gone along on the first day, listened to the presentations: market expansion, new scanners, customer service, optimising sales … He’d thrown the slip of paper confirming his attendance for the first day in the canal the first night but it hadn’t fallen in the water, landing on the deck of one of the run-down ships.

The ships. He’d looked at the ships for a long time. Now they were gradually disappearing in the darkness as he walked away from the canal over to the church. He did a detour around the hotel, even though the training course had long since finished and his workmates had all gone home again. The morning after the first night he’d been with her, he’d packed his suitcase and disappeared. A couple of his workmates had called after him as he walked past the breakfast room, but he’d carried on walking out of the revolving door. What had happened to him — was it just her? He hadn’t fallen in love, he was sure of that much; or at least he thought so. All of a sudden he didn’t know if he’d ever been in love. All he knew was that he couldn’t go back home anymore, that he’d stay here in the town where she was. He felt the money in the inside pockets of his jacket — how much had he spent so far? — but he didn’t want to think about that, about what came next; it seemed to him as if he could stay here forever.

He took out a stick of chewing gum, unwrapped it and flicked the wrapper away, and put it in his mouth. He didn’t want her to smell the vodka. He’d stopped smoking four days ago because she didn’t smoke. He’d offered her a cigarette from the nice leather case his wife had given him last year, back when he’d been made deputy manager of the Processed Foods section, although actually only deputy to the deputy.

He couldn’t help thinking of his wife as he opened the cigarette case carefully and held it out to her. She was standing in front of him, handing him the case with a smile and saying: For you, darling, for your promotion. It was all still there in his head: his wife, his flat, his job; but the longer he stayed in this town where she was, the stranger and further away it all seemed to him.