grey Volvo follow. Karl dropped the keys to the floor and stepped back outside. There was no point even attempting to go back to the flat; there was nothing of value, nothing he cared to take with him, not even a toothbrush. His few garments were dirty and worn out, and he had his new passport on him.
Back on the pavement he leaned against the door and licked a cigarette with the tip of his tongue, pulled it past his pursed lips. The saliva helped to cool the smoke so it wouldn’t sting his lungs when he inhaled. It was an old trick he had learned back east to make the rough tobacco go down more easily and the habit had stayed with him. He could do with a drink while he waited. Maybe he should go upstairs after all, see if there wasn’t any vodka left somewhere.
Never mind that now. It wasn’t worth running into the landlady on the first floor or her husband on the second. Karl couldn’t be bothered having to explain, having to make excuses.
Would the man in the wig really come back? Light snow started to fall. He’d better come back, and quickly. Karl stepped from one foot onto the other. Cigarette smoke tasted great in cold weather, but the freezing air hurt his lungs and he knew smoking didn’t help his circulation. Before he flicked the butt away, he lit another cigarette from it. A little cold never killed no one.
When his current smoke was half gone the car reappeared and stopped beside him. Karl got in. The wig, beard and sunglasses looked friendlier now, almost seemed to smile at him.
‘I knew you’d come,’ the man said and there was nothing to say to that.
Before they joined the high street traffic, the man checked the rear-view mirror again and the hint of the smile disappeared. He hadn’t managed to shake the Stasi tail after all.
‘Don’t worry. By the time you wake up they will be long gone. Nothing to lose any sleep over. In your case, I mean that literally,’ the man said while he drove, the smirk back on his face.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the jewellery case, placing it in Karl’s hand without taking his eyes off the traffic. Karl opened the box and lifted the pill gingerly with his dirty fingers.
‘One question before I do this,’ he said.
The man hesitated.
‘That wasn’t the deal. But you may as well ask. I’ll see what I can do, depending.’
‘Why me?’ Karl said.
‘For reasons I can’t go into, you are the chosen one, one in a million – no, one in eighty million and then some. I wouldn’t do this with anybody else. In the world. But you have to take my word for it for now. I can’t explain at this point.’
For the first time the man put feeling into his words, and Karl had no problem believing every one of them.
The man needed him. Karl felt less alone than he had for a very long time.
‘Do I know you from somewhere?’
‘We said one question only, but, for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’ll regret this. Honestly,’ the man said.
Karl placed the pill on his tongue.
‘Nor do I,’ he said and bit down.
The drug, whatever it was, worked as fast as lightning. The last thing Karl remembered was a chalky, bitter taste as the pill broke and dissolved on his tongue. Then there was nothing.
*
So he has given up his freedom — his Western freedom, mind you — to go into this voluntary incarceration. He should have his head examined, Karl thinks, not without mirth. If he told this to anybody back east they’d think him insane. He knows dozens of people who would give their right kidney to go west like he has done, and now here he is, imprisoned, giving himself over to a higher power of some sort yet again, albeit a phonily-disguised one, drugged and abandoned to boot.
And yet he isn’t worried, not now. After all, it wasn’t his choice to come over to the West, not directly. When his position in the East became untenable they, the Stasi, had packed him away into a prison on some drummed-up political charges with an exaggerated sentence — all pre-agreed between judge and prosecution before the trial in order to attract western media attention. The longer the sentence for political prisoners, the larger the ransom that could be extracted. It was complicated, but it worked more often than not, and it wasn’t nearly as complicated as what happened afterwards, when Karl was out on his own and expected to make the most of his new life. He had skills, a trade that should’ve stood him in good stead to find a job, he had freedom, he even had a little bit of spending money. Yet in his head things were so complicated, so convoluted and tangled that he preferred to stay inside, locked up in his head and now in this room, alone.
He started drinking, heavily. All those new choices he now had to make — he just couldn’t cope. Even the act of imbibing is complicated in the West. His money, his very own marks, could buy seven different kinds of vodka, eleven kinds of schnapps, five kinds of brandy, ten kinds of whisky and countless more types of beer and wine, just in a local supermarket. It was hopeless. Back home supermarkets only sold one brand of each beverage among otherwise often empty shelves. Absence of choice makes life easy. It’s a luxury the westerners don’t appreciate enough.
Where are empty shelves when he needs them most?
Karl looks at his hands. They are steady. He doesn’t know how long he has been out of prison, how many hours he has slept. What does surprise him is the fact that he feels no cravings for alcohol or cigarettes. How is this possible? Isn’t he a certified addict? Doesn’t his body force his brain to see mirages and hallucinations whenever it goes sober for any length of time? Where on earth are his damned DTs?
Funnily enough, he only needs alcohol when it’s freely available. If it’s there for the taking he just can’t resist. When he is in prison for any length of time he tends to forget about booze entirely. Being locked up again will provide a healthy break for his body, a sobering drought.
A thought shoots through his head and he gets up and opens the fridge.
Please don’t let there be any booze in there.
His prayers are answered. The refrigerator contains nothing but food: cheeses, ham, vegetables and meat. There are tomatoes and eggs and yoghurt and even some bananas and oranges, luxury items back home. That man, his jailor, obviously doesn’t want him to go hungry. In fact there are probably more vitamins in that fridge alone than Karl has eaten in any given year of his life. And he doesn’t even have to do anything for it, he can just help himself whenever he feels like it, doesn’t have to go into a shop that is full of wrong choices, every product telling him that it is better than the competitors’, pick me or go wrong. The absurdity of it – how can they all be right?
Well, for now he doesn’t need to worry about choices. They have been made for him. Karl discovers he is mightily hungry. He finds cooking oil and a skillet and fries a couple of eggs and ham which he eats with a slice of brown bread and cheese. He pours a glass of milk from a tetra pack and rummages through the cupboard he discovers in the corner between the wall and kitchen cabinet. It contains more food: flour, pasta, rice, cans of tuna, a tin of biscuits and some other things he doesn’t recognise.
Karl has never had much of sweet tooth, but today he decides he wants a biscuit with his glass of milk. It reminds him of home, of his mum, Mamochka, before she got sick, beaming whenever she managed to get the hard to come by ingredients to make real cookies – a bit of real butter and sugar, maybe an egg. He ate them for her sake more than for his own, couldn’t bring himself to say that he didn’t really like sweet things, crush her enthusiasm.
He takes a cookie from the tin, bites off a small piece and chews. It isn’t so bad, so he bites again, chomping off half the cookie this time. Before he can take a third bite, his arm drops and he is asleep.
When he wakes up the room is as before, except the food utensils have been cleared away and the washing up is done. Karl is lying on his bed and remembers the man with the wig and most of the thoughts that went through his head before he fell asleep.
The