Jáchym Topol - City, Sister, Silver

THAT TIME IN BERLUN. THE KINGDOM OF THE KANAKS. THE DARK LADY. I FIND A QUEEN. AN LOSE HER.

Berlun, I reminisced … we’re ridin along neath one a the strasses, checkin out the advertorials, happily sittin, happily purrin, an they got us! Ticket check! The whole train starts buzzin. Black, yellow, white, spotted, everyone splits. We get nabbed. Kopic fakes a heart attack, I’m sobbin. We whip out our cards from the camp. They wave em off. An again, later … we’re sittin. An here comes security. Headin straight for us. Hey, says Kopic, isn’t it weird how they always head straight for us? By then we’d gotten normal haircuts, brushed our teeth, shined our shoes, and our odyezhda — it was super. We went by the ads: impeccable black-and-white checked sportcoats, trijeans, nightingale kneesocks, Kopic had a fab cap with a Pi Beta Kappa insignia, I was jealous. It was all … found clothing. But we looked just like the natives. I mean we had our own tongue, that’s obvious, but nobody talks on the subway. Hey, Kopic looks at me … now I get it, it’s your mug! Huh, I yelled, what? I donno … but it’s in your mug, it’s different! I look at him … look around at the other whites on the train … aha! Guess what, dear Kopic, you’ve got it too.

And then it happened. Jakob Kopic gave me that sentence. We’re ridin the subway again, goin to check out a few department stores an a Nazi monument or two, there’s colorful groups all around makin noise, an ticket check! An again straight for us! Kopic can’t take it, pulls the brake, I kick out a window, Jakob throws down the ladder, an we go flyin into the tunnel. Police flashlights flicker, they’re not gettin us! We race, breathless, around a corner, an again another corner, the cops right behind us, an all of a sudden some hands shoot out an snatch us into an alcove. We don’t resist, outnumbered. The cops go whizzin by, Kopic sprinkled pepper to fool the dogs. We knew that one. Very well. I look who nabbed us, Kopic goes on reconnaissance. Before me stands a little man, black as a boot, with a tusk through his nose that shines in the dark. Ungara, Bulgara, Polisha, Rumana … he probes. Nearly guessed. It’s in my mug. Ich bin Chekoslovakiya! I beat my breast. Ich weiss, kommunisten, nix gut! says the little man, his teeth’re shinin too. Ja, ja, I chime in, grosse scheisse, nix gut, fuhrers! Blah-blah-blah … sure, guy. Und you? I ask, Angolak, Congan, Ugand … eh? Nein! Nein! Ich Kanak! he pounds his tiny chest with his fists. Gut? I say. Nix gut! Kommunisten? I try. Nix, he says. Banditen. Nix essen, kein vitaminen, grosse problem. Aha! I get it. Dokument? he asks. Nix. Nix identifikatsionpapir, légalité keine! You? Keine! he says. Arbeit, mark, gut gelta? Keine, I reply. Ja! he says, thinks a second. Ich arbeit heer. Tunnla! Huh? I don’t follow. Tunnla! Tullers! Ch! Ch! He makes like he’s diggin. Nein, not me! I say. The Kanak tugs at my elbow. We go into the back. My eyes bug. There’s some mine or somethin back there, lotsa nimble little black guys. Diggin up dirt an cartin it off in wheelbarrows.

Kopic comes runnin up, gaspin for breath, air’s clean, he reports, his eyes bug too. My Kanak friend explains: Tullers, ch, pa! Essen heer grosse, grosse, bik! Kanakland keine! He curls his fingers and scoops his hand toward him in the international gesture for stealing. We chime in. Tunnelers! Nach Kanakland! Aha, Kopic understands. They’re diggin home. Globe, I say. Globe, thru? Ja, nach globe, the Kanak says gleefully. Essen konzerv und joos supermarket Doychland nach Kanakland fur kindern und fraulen Kanak und nix problem! Grosse und grosse gut. Frishten sie? Ya, says Kopic, nach Kanakland thru globe wieviele kilometrs? Kimtr? the Kanak is stumped. Kopic, an old hand when it comes to language, shows him how long ein metr is. Wieviele metr nach Kanakland? Ja, our rescuer catches his drift. He draws a number in the sand. Hey, I say to Kopic, if you look from this side it’s 60, an the other way it’s 90, that’s doable. The Kanak rubs the numbers out. Keine problem! Kimter nix problem. My guess is they donno how far it is, says Kopic, an they don’t give a hoot. Ja! says the Kanak as if he understood. Arbeit?! He points to the shovels and wheelbarrows. We shudder. But … could be nice in Kanakland … palm wine, beaches … Are you kiddin, says Kopic, we don’t have time. Maybe they’d make us overseers, I say, I mean hey, we’re white … We don’t have time, says Kopic. He’s right. Auf wiedersehen … an lotsa luck, we wish the Kanaks. Farewell. A second later we’re on the surface. Stridin along. Yep, says Kopic. Kanaks … hey, we’re Kanaks too! Oh yeah! I realize. In a blink. That was the important identity sentence. The holy ghost musta come over you, Kopic, or’re you from the clan of Elijah the prophet? Could be, Kopic said solemnly. He was right. We were all Kanaks. The megarace of the tunnel. That whole crew in Berlun on the way back to Europe.

Deringer’s a Kanak, we also called him the Commander, cause when he got drunk he’d turn to stone. Šiška’s a Kanak, worked for British intelligence, kept a close eye on us, gun at the ready. Borowiak, Polak, also a Kanak, then Šimuna, a.k.a. Šmelina, guy had all kindsa passports … Shimako an Chiharu, both Kanaks, always holdin hands, strokin each other, nibblin at each other’s lips an clackin their teeth like lovebirds, they lived together, rapturously intertwined, always lugged around various balls an rods, they’d laid it on too thick with the feminism in Tokaido, got socially under the hammer an psychologically bottomed out an … hit the road an ended up with the rest of us in Berlun, or was it the beginning? Vasiš, he’s a Kanak, slept around the clock, scared of lethal traffic, perforated sleeper, brother of the needle … Petrák, Czech as a log, always drawin maps, knows everything, never goes anywhere, he’s a psycho too … but Kopic, your woman an lawful wife is Doych, she can be our language bridge … till she took my splendid name, Kopic smirked, she useta be Yablunkovskaya … that’s old Ukrainian. Heh, Kanak to the core! Kopic’s kids’re Kanaks, we’re all Kanak. Maybe even the good Lord is … basically …? Slews of Kanaks. Rosie Simonides, she’s a Kanak too, we pitched our tent at her place, that was our lair. There were thirty cats livin there, we put special crawl-through doors in for em, they would gobble hash, an as it came rollin outta their bowels I realized why they called it shit. We were a Kanak kingdom, boys solid as birches, girls sweet as virgins, eurotrash for the most part. Mark was a Brit, at home he’d been hit, ended up in Berlun. A Kanak. Then there was a Dutch foursome straight outta Breughel: professional Kanaks. We introduced our own currency, the kanaka. Slept in rocking kanaks. Picked through the heaps at Aldi, ruthlessly and Kanak-style. Once or twice I even got a case of the kanaks: A nun came riding out from around the corner on horseback, but in the blink of an eye she turned into a guy on a bike, an old Kanak. And slowly the most important thing of all came into being, the secret and open tongue of the Kanak kingdom.

We didn’t have much time. A lot of it had already been devoured by that freak of freaks, the scavenger Colonel Time-Vulture. How I loved the demonstrations! Free, truly, in every sense … Au! sland! er! raus!* The first word like a pterodactyl, the second like the creak of the spit. Drums, whistles, bagpipes, panpipes, waving flags, I loved it. Didn’t miss a single rally. Auu, I roared, sland, that sounded almost Celtic, then a very solid: er! and the glittering finale: raus! like the rip of a scythe. The ice queen rattled her frozen train. I marched. No one could tell. I’m very handsome, everyone thinks so. I’ve got fair hair an blue eyes an clear skin with pockmarks. An I was in the right spot on the globe at an opportune moment. You’re so smart, Kopic said enviously. Tell me, he begged in the lair afterwards, what was the protest like? First gimme some cash! He clammed up. Are you kiddin! He couldn’t go to the rallies. He would’ve got his head bashed in. Those boar fangs, brown almond eyes, kinky hair, an that beak a his! Not him! He was obvious! When anyone at the demonstrations addressed me in a friendly way: Kamerad … I’d flash a grin an point my thumb to my ears an lips … a deaf-mute Kamerad … even they’re with us, the Nazi lovers would say to each other, even though they know what awaits em the next time we win, won’t be long, isn’t that touching … my roars were drowned out by the thundering voices … so I lied my way through an finally I could protest freely, an one day I notice … these guys walkin around at the back, shaved heads, uniforms, but they’re luggin burdens, beams an stakes, prospectors? I glom on to em an I can’t believe my ears: If I’m lucky, Mirek, maybe herr oberst’ll lend me his bullwhip … someday … maybe they’ll notice us, Jarka, if we try real hard … yes, Jindra, we’re an inferior race, but they’re so amazing … Czechs, and they were blind … I was seized with rage … but then pity, they don’t need any help croakin, poor bastards, ugh! They’re just carryin the load.