Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

Then Niko came back.

— You want this place? said Niko. Maybe we can do this for you. But it costs.

— I'm sorry? said Haffner.

— You want this place? said Niko.

— I don't understand, said Haffner.

He understood, of course, that Niko had a proposal. It wasn't the deal which was beyond him. It was the fact that Niko seemed to think he could effect such a deal: this was beyond the limits of Haffner's scepticism.

— Simple, said Niko.

He began to explain. It all depended on knowing the right people; and Niko knew the right man. It was not so difficult. It all depended on the right things getting into the right hands.

— You are not from here, said Niko.

This was just the way things were. Everyone knew how this worked. Either you could go through the ordinary ways of doing things, or you could enter the speed road. It was just a question of speed. Then the papers could get handed over, and the villa would belong to Haffner. The wheels would be oiled.

— No questions ask, said Niko.

There was a pause. In this pause, Haffner considered the perfect bodies of imperfect women.

— I am your patron, said Niko.

— Cash? asked Haffner, suspicious.

— Cash, said Niko. You crazy or what?

Niko didn't really understand, he said, why Haffner needed any more detail at all. He only needed to know this. If he was so impatient.

— I'm not impatient, said Haffner.

If he were so impatient, said Niko, then things could be worked out. He had seen this problem before. He knew how to fix it.

Haffner had to understand, said Niko, that it was still the same people in charge. Yes, Niko knew what had happened. Haffner's papers would be sitting there, ignored, in someone's office. Just waiting for a reason to be dealt with.

— Let me think about it, said Haffner.

And as he tried to balance his doubts as to Niko's efficacy — his general untrustworthiness, the danger of relying too much on a man whom he had spied on only the night before, and whose girlfriend had so recently been soaping herself in Haffner's bath — against the obvious benefit of having, as he used to say, a man on the ground, Haffner excused himself: desperate to find a toilet, a cubicle where Haffner could think.

But reality continued to pursue him. He took a few steps, into a corridor which bore graffiti, torn posters, an exhibition of faulty plumbing. Then all the lights went out.

And Haffner was in the dark.

Practical, Haffner told himself that he mustn't get this wrong: he didn't want to lose his way. To his surprise, in a basement, in a bar, in a wasteland, he found himself wishing he had the practical wisdom of Frau Tummel. He stopped. He considered this thought.

To whom was Haffner loyal? It seemed unsolvable. There seemed so many ways for Haffner to demonstrate his disloyalty. Livia, the obvious candidate, was so fluently replaced by all her avatars, her rivals.

In the dark, Haffner edged his way along the wall — his hand extended, palm flat: directing invisible traffic. Distant whoops of masculine joy reached him from the main area, whoops which were tinged, now, for Haffner, with a poignancy. It seemed unlikely he would ever see humans again. Then suddenly the wall gave way, as it transformed itself into a door. Haffner peered into the black. Soothing plashings from what he thought could be urinals echoed throughout the room. Was this a bathroom? wondered Haffner. He could not be sure. It might have been, for instance, the hideout of the janitor.

Then he discovered one tiled wall. It decided Haffner on the question of a bathroom. Where else did one find ceramic? He ignored, for instance, the possibilities of storerooms, the opportunities of kitchens. Facing this wall, Haffner stood, unbuttoned his fly, and began the lengthy process of unburdening himself — telling himself that, after all, it wasn't as if Haffner disliked the dark. Bourgeois he may have been, but Haffner wasn't spoiled. He started working at Warburg's in the winter of 1946: the nightmarish winter, when the electrics failed and everyone in the City worked by candlelight. The clerks sat with their feet encased in typewriter covers stuffed with newspaper — gigantic and ineffectual slippers, improvised snowshoes. That spring, the streets were still a mess of rubble sprouting woodland plants — ragwort, groundsel. The dark had nothing on Haffner.

When he emerged, the lights were still not on. Now, however, a selection of torches had been discovered, and lighters, and solitary candles. A man was savagely strumming an acoustic guitar.

— Like a refugee camp? Niko breathed into Haffner's startled ear.

Haffner stared at him.

— So wonderful, no? said Niko.

Haffner looked around. In chiaroscuro, a girl was holding a flash-light above her head, like a handheld shower. In the sway of its light, she was dancing. As the light swayed, her breasts swayed with it. Another girl was on all fours, while a man mimicked the act of whipping her: his whip ascending in flourishes, an undulant lasso. The shadows made momentary blindfolds on the man's face; or the girls acquired sudden grimaces, as if from the painted masks of Venice, which Haffner had looked at, in wonder, in 1952, at the carnival with Livia — while she began to cry beside him, describing the carnivals she had seen before the war. Which seemed so long ago, she said. And already, at this point, Haffner had considered if he could ever leave Livia — because this was how he tested all his affections, by imagining him leaving them behind — and had realised that, for him, it was unimaginable. She was the only person he would never leave.

— Vodka? asked Niko.

— Perhaps not, said Haffner.

— Maybe you prefer tea? asked Niko. It is more British?

— A double vodka, said Haffner.

Returning with a plastic cup awash with vodka, Niko asked Haffner if he knew that they had all survived radiation. Or survived as much as they could. Oh yes, many years ago, when they were children, a factory had blown up a hundred kilometres south of here, but the distance was nothing, said Niko. The radiation was everywhere, all over the countryside.

— The motherfuckers, they killed us. Fucked us, said Niko.

His sister, he told Haffner, was born with only four fingers on her left hand. He moved closer to Haffner. He understood this? Only four fingers. On her left hand.

Unwillingly, Haffner inhaled the alcohol of Niko's breath. He drank a gulp of vodka, for equilibrium.

Haffner, said Haffner, understood.

It wasn't as if Haffner hadn't seen the horrors: he had seen the rule book torture — the forced standing for twenty-four hours, so that the prisoner's ankles swelled up, blisters developed on the soles of the feet, the kidneys shut down. In one village in Italy, the soldiers had just gone mad. They dressed up in women's clothes. They hung clothes in the trees. They went through the houses. Soon, there was nothing left to eat. Once, on the edge of the desert, they came across a food truck, carrying fruit. The people inside were crushed. Haffner and his unit stopped. They wiped the fuel and blood off, and started to eat the peaches, the heavy grapes. They hadn't eaten for a day. There was a girl there who had a dress but no legs. This was one of the women to whom Haffner felt closest. At a checkpoint in Syria, a kid was in an abandoned truck, cowering. He went to help her. He picked her up. Her head slumped off the neck on to his arm, heavy, like a pumpkin.

It wasn't then that Haffner threw up. It was ten minutes later, after he had buried her. After he had buried her just there, by the side of the road — because what fool would wander off to find a place to bury the dead? Just as what fool went off to seek his necessary privacy if he wanted to shit? The sniper fire on the way out; the friendly fire on the way back. Instead, you squatted there, in front of everyone, discussing the imaginary world of sports.