Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

“The funeral is in four days,” said Claudia. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to pick you up before that. I have to help Tamara, she’s completely out of sorts. You’ll have to take the train. Can you manage that? Or should I send Dirk to get you?”

“Do I really have to?” I asked.

“Marek, I’m begging you. I know it’s difficult. I know you’re… with your new friends. But these things happen when they happen. He is after all… your father.”

“I haven’t had a real father for ages,” I said.

“If you only knew,” said Claudia.

I sat on my suitcase beneath the information board that had no information at all. The train back to Berlin was supposed to come in half an hour. They all wanted to take me to the station but I refused. I had said that I wanted to be alone and that seemed to make sense to them. I also didn’t want the farmer and his tractor. I pulled my suitcase the long way, staying on the paved path, and my thoughts rattled in rhythm with the wheels.

They gathered around me to say goodbye and I set off quickly and didn’t look back even once. I had a lump in my throat but I couldn’t tell if it was because of my father or Janne or general Rottweiler-weltschmerz. It felt as if I’d been here for weeks, not two nights, one of which was awful and the other would have been the most beautiful night of my life if I hadn’t have slept through it. I tried to imagine myself going to another group meeting back in Berlin and I started laughing.

The loudspeaker crackled loudly and a few minutes later the regional train pulled in. I hoisted up my suitcase. The train was nearly empty and nobody looked at me. With my index finger I felt my face under my sunglasses to make sure nothing had changed over the last couple of days. Everything was the same as ever. If my father had seen me again it would have cost him a few nights of sleep for sure. At least in that regard he’d been lucky.

Claudia had sent me the address, with annotations, in a text. My father had lived in a village near Frankfurt called Einhausen, the same place where he and I had both been born. After he had discovered his love for our au pair, Claudia had gone back to Berlin with me. My father was born and bred in the state of Hesse and had his office there where his family had lived for generations.

I had to switch trains in Berlin, Hannover, and Frankfurt. The ride seemed like it would never end. The phone stuck in my hand. Claudia kept sending texts, where was I and how was I feeling. I wasn’t feeling a thing.

I didn’t have a phone number for Janne. Not even the guru’s number or anybody else’s number. Maybe I had the list with everyone’s contact info stuck in my suitcase somewhere, but probably not. Marlon would now have Janne to himself in Marenitz — oddly enough that thought didn’t upset me at all.

What was funny was that I almost missed Marlon more.

An old lady in a blue uniform, with swollen feet, pushed the refreshment cart down the aisle. Badly damaged venous valves, I thought, and I ordered myself a coffee. She took my coins without counting them and handed me a lukewarm paper cup.

People were not in such sound condition as I’d always thought. I let my gaze sweep over the backs of heads that I could see from my seat. Some of these people probably thought they were healthy and always would be. I used to think the same thing. My father, too, probably, and now he was dead.

Claudia had said that I should take a taxi from the station. They didn’t have time to pick me up because they needed to stay with Tamara and the little one. It was tougher than I thought to get a taxi. There wasn’t a single one waiting at the tiny station. I walked all around it, startling a couple of teenagers with beers in their hands. I wondered whether I’d be standing here if my father had used a condom with our au pair. Then with a sigh I opened the map function on my phone and tried to figure out which way I had to walk.

As I set out across a parking lot a taxi showed up. A man with a black mustache sat at the wheel, probably a Turk rather than a Pakistani I decided as I slid into the back seat next to some bags. I told him the address. He looked at me in the rearview mirror.

“Who did that?” he asked.

“A Rottweiler.” It had been a while since anyone had asked about it. About a week. An eternity.

“My brother-in-law had a Rottweiler.” The Turk sounded as if he was doing me a favor telling me. “Real nice. But such teeth!”

“If it was up to me I’d have them all ground into bonemeal. As far as I’m concerned, that could go for every dog on the planet.”

The Turk shook his head. “Not all. My brother-in-law’s Rottweiler is nice. But you really look different. What does your girl say?”

“She’s getting off with a blind guy,” I summed up our complicated love triangle for him.

“The girl blind, too?”

If only it were that easy, I thought. “She’s in a wheelchair and is the prettiest girl in the world.”

“Shit,” said the Turk understandingly.

After ten minutes I realized he was fucking with me. Einhausen wasn’t that big. It was a dump with ten thousand residents, you could walk all the way through town in fifteen minutes.

“We almost there?”

“Almost there,” the Turk echoed. “What are you here for?”

“My father died,” I said and couldn’t believe that he was suddenly pissed off and yelled that I shouldn’t fuck with him. It took a lot of effort to convince him to still take me all the way to my destination.

I stood before a gray box that was mostly hidden behind a meter-high hedgerow that smelled like cough syrup. On the gate was a plaque with my last name on it, engraved in rounded letters. The place was a nightmare in concrete. After all those years in our historic landmarked building, I wasn’t prepared for this. For a second I wondered if maybe what came between my parents wasn’t Tamara at all but rather aesthetic differences. Those were harder to overcome than a pregnant au pair. Even under happier circumstances I wouldn’t have been happy to enter this mausoleum. But the taxi was already gone and the driver had kept my change. I rang the bell.

It buzzed and I pushed open the gate. The yard was wide and lined with low hedges that also reminded me of a cemetery. I headed toward the door, from which hung a wreath, that also reminded me of a… The door opened.

I attempted a smile so painstaking that it pulled at my ear.

In the doorway appeared a tyke with spiky blond hair, just like mine had been. He was wearing Star Wars pajamas and slippers with bunny ears. His expression suddenly became the famous painting by Edvard Munch. Then he disappeared in a flash and his Scream echoed from somewhere inside the house. As I got nearer to the door I could hear him swearing loudly that he would never do it again if the man with the hat would just please, please go away.

And then I landed in Tamara’s arms.

Unlike the old days I didn’t have to stand on my tiptoes to be able to look down Tamara’s shirt. I flushed thinking how present Tamara’s breasts had been during that year at our place. As far as I could tell, my perspective was the only thing that had changed in the equation.

“Sincere condolences,” I mumbled, blindsided by the slew of postpubescent thoughts hitting me. Then I finally looked her in the eyes.

In the past I’d always found Tamara very pretty. That was basically still true, even though my standard of beauty had shifted significantly because of Janne. Compared to Janne, any other woman looked like a rough draft And at the moment Tamara wasn’t exactly bursting with life. She had red splotches on her cheeks and dark rings under her bloodshot eyes. She looked about as old as Claudia. And just to prove it, Claudia came up beside her.