Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

“We have to accompany a fellow traveler,” I said formally.

Dirk nodded, hemmed and hawed a bit, and finally asked what kind of disability the person had.

“I don’t know what you would call it,” I said. “He’s crazy. Apparently he went after somebody because he heard voices. And he’s also a poof; I don’t know how the two things are related.”

From that point on Dirk didn’t say anything more.

Kevin didn’t live anywhere near me but rather over at Gesundbrunnen, on the third floor of a yellow-painted concrete high-rise block. He waved out the window and something about his dark profile disturbed me. The door buzzed open even though I wasn’t planning to go upstairs. Dirk left the car in the middle of the street with the motor running and came up the stairs behind me. It obviously made him a little uncomfortable. He must have loved Claudia a whole lot given the things he did for her. An early version of approval germinated inside me.

My forebodings were confirmed as soon as I entered the apartment. Kevin had lined up several small bags in the hall, each decorated with a pearly luggage tag. Unfortunately he himself was completely naked.

“Are you not ready?” I yelled. “Do you think the train will wait for you?”

“I’m ready,” said Kevin.

I picked a T-shirt up from the floor and tossed it to him.

“Not that one,” he moaned, but then he glanced at me and back at the shirt and threw it on. Then, nearly unprompted, he set off searching for a pair of pants. I looked into the kitchen, which was small but spotless. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that Kevin supposedly lived here with a partner. At the end of the day I still felt like Claudia’s little mama’s boy — I’d only just learned how to run the washing machine. Yet I was only a little younger than Kevin.

“I’m ready,” Kevin repeated proudly. I nodded: this time he had jeans on. They were cut off just below the knee and a fringe hung playfully down.

I grabbed two bags, Kevin the other three. Dirk, whom I’d forgotten in the staircase, mumbled something about making himself useful. Kevin had just closed the door when he suddenly screamed shrilly.

“What now?!?” I shouted.

“I forgot,” he moaned, “I forgot about Kongo.”

He pulled a key, hanging on a cord around his neck, out from under his T-shirt, bent over, and unlocked the door without taking the cord off this neck. He raced inside; I followed him yelling threateningly. Kevin ran into the kitchen, snapped up from the floor a bowl filled with sticky jam-filled cookies, and emptied it into a waiting bag that was already half-full of the same cookies. Then he shook fresh ones into the bowl from a box and stood up smiling.

“Kongo smashes everything to bits if he doesn’t get fed.”

“Is Kongo a cat?” I asked weakly.

Kevin shook his head.

“A dog?”

Again he shook his head. I decided I didn’t really want to know.

“One last question, what’s that stuff?” I pointed to the bag where he’d just dumped the cookies that had already been in the bowl.

“Oh that,” said Kevin. “Kongo already ate that.”

At that point I just shut down.

The only ones who’d been accompanied to the station by their parents were Janne and Friedrich. Janne’s mother was talking to the guru. Even at a distance I could see that the guru was sweating. Instead of his usual hat he had on a baseball cap that out of nervousness he kept taking off. He was probably hoping right to the end that none of us would show up.

Friedrich’s father towered over everyone. His gray hair gleamed like a helmet on his head, and with his crest and his graying mustache he looked like an aged Hitler Youth member. I would never have taken this man for Friedrich’s father if Friedrich hadn’t fought his way over to me and introduced me to the Hitler-grandpa, whom he addressed as Papa.

Friedrich’s papa looked at me and not a single muscle moved in his ruggedly creased face. He shook my hand with a very firm grip but unlike Friedrich didn’t say much. Actually nothing at all. Together with Janne he was the second person in a short period of time who didn’t deem me worthy of a second glance. Maybe he used to work at a clinic for burn victims or as a military doctor. But then he would have done something about the basal cell carcinoma spreading across the left side of his forehead. Though maybe he wanted a natural death rather than having medications screw around with things.

The guru stood on his tiptoes and counted us. In an attack of generosity I had allowed Dirk to come with me to the platform after we’d dug Kevin out from under all his bags in the backseat. First and foremost because Dirk also wheeled my suitcase. He was also carrying some of Kevin’s luggage and it made him look unbearably gay to me. Kevin stumbled along behind with a smile on his face that seemed directed at nothing concrete and at the same time at everything.

Dirk’s gaze went from one person to the next, taking in the prosthetic, skipping over Friedrich, and paused quizzically on Marlon. And then it arrived at Janne. I saw how Dirk exhaled and I suddenly felt jealous. The way he gawked at her bothered me.

“Thanks a lot and auf wiedersehen ,” I shook his hand stiffly before he hit on the idea to hug me.

“My pleasure,” he said. Suddenly I felt bad for him.

“Take good care of Claudia and feed my fish, Dirk,” I said.

He nodded, turned quickly, and left.

During boarding there was some confusion concerning Janne. The guru had informed the rail authority about the guest with limited mobility. Now two beefy men in uniform had assembled in front of her, and Janne looked at them in such a way that left them afraid to do anything. Janne’s mother stood next to her and red splotches appeared on her cheeks.

“We’ve never traveled by train before,” she said as I went over to her.

Janne’s face twisted into a grimace. I was afraid she would start to cry. As supremely self-assured as she normally was, that’s how shatteringly helpless she now seemed. And before I knew what to do, Richard shoved past me. He squatted in front of Janne and asked her something quietly. She nodded and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Richard planted his feet, bent down, and effortlessly lifted Janne. She reclined in his arms like Snow White being taken out of her glass coffin. Friedrich’s father fiddled with the wheelchair in the meantime. It clicked and then the wheelchair was suddenly totally flat and looked quite light.

“Here,” said Hitler-grandpa, shoving it into my hands.

Nope, it wasn’t as light as it looked. I had a tough time holding it with one hand. I looked at my suitcase. Janne’s mother pulled it to the door for me. Janne’s voice came from up above us. She waved happily out of the open train window.

“Hurry, hurry,” the guru urged, and I got the wheelchair into the train and jumped back down to grab my suitcase.

With nothing to do, the uniformed station attendants carried Kevin’s bags aboard. I turned around. Marlon was standing on the platform as impassive as a Coke machine. Nobody seemed to have thought of the fact that he might also need help. His duffel bag lay at his feet.

For a second the thought shot through my mind that we could depart without him and he wouldn’t say a word, he’d just be left standing there. I reached for my suitcase with one hand and for Marlon’s elbow with the other. “Here’s the door,” I said.

He put his arm out and his fingers clenched my shoulder. His grip was strong and for a moment I panicked, thinking he might break my collarbone. The guru yelled from the railcar and Janne’s mother hurried over and grabbed my suitcase again.

“Quickly, quickly,” she said. I wondered whether she was really worried about us or only about Janne. Maybe she had realized what wonderful young people she had entrusted her precious daughter to.