Broken Glass Park (23 page)

“What can you do?” I say. “Bad food, bad weather, social injustice. The old dictatorship replaced by a new one. Arbitrariness and violence. How are you going to achieve world domination with all of that to deal with?”

“I’m not worried about them,” he says. “It won’t take long for them all to kill each other off. Anybody left will be in the slammer. And when we take power, we’ll seal the border tight.”

“Great idea,” I say. “I’m all for it. Hey, you haven’t taken anything, have you? You’re clear-headed, right?”

“Of course,” he says. “What do you mean—taken anything?”

“Some kind of mind altering substance. Anti-anxiety. Stimulant . . . ”

“What are you talking about?” he asks, annoyed. “Drugs? I’m not crazy.”

“What about rock and roll?”

“What?”

“Are you into it?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, we’ve already established you’re not into sex and drugs.”

He sits up. I remain lying down.

“You talk weird,” he says.

“What do you mean—do I have an accent?”

“What? No, of course not. I mean what you are saying. It’s weird. Do you vote for the Green Party or something?” He says this in a worried tone. He’d probably be less disturbed if I were a man in drag.

I don’t want to bring to his attention the fact that I’m not even old enough to vote. And anyway, I’m not here for a political debate.

“So have we gotten to know each other enough?” I ask. I answer my own question as he rolls onto me and presses me into the cold grass. “Apparently we have.”

The conversation has animated him. Now he’s really passionate. I barely manage to move my head to the side—I don’t feel like having to deal with slobbery kisses on top of it all. So he nuzzles my shoulder. It tickles incredibly.

The stupid thing is that I don’t feel any better as a result. I close my eyes and then open them again. It’s not very comfortable and it’s boring. And the feeling of it doesn’t really affect me. This isn’t what I was trying for. I peer through my eyelashes and watch as he tosses the condom into the bushes, kneels, zips up his pants. I don’t find it funny when he wraps his arms around me, presses his moist forehead to my temple, and whispers cheesy words to me—it was good, really good. I almost answer with “my pleasure.”

I feel worse now than beforehand.

I put my rollerblades back on. It’s nice to have them on again because my feet are freezing now. He groans as he struggles to put his back on. He can’t close the straps. I help him in the dark.

“Want to skate a little more?” I ask.

“Where to?” he yawns. It’s obvious he’d like nothing better than to crawl into bed—alone.

But I’m not done yet.

I skate ahead and he follows. Sometimes he cries out in the dark and I have to go back and pull him along by the hand.

As we skate around, I start to feel a bit better.

“Where are we heading?” he says warily. “I don’t know my way around here.”

“Who cares,” I answer. “The path is good—nice, smooth asphalt.”

“I guess so,” he says tentatively. “I just hope we don’t end up in the Russian ghetto. I think it’s around here somewhere, isn’t it?”

“Don’t worry,” I say, propping him up again.

We race through under the underpass, the wind whistling in my ears. I turn and look at him. I can’t even manage to refer to him as Volker in my head. I watch as he smiles, spreads his arms out. His T-shirt flutters like a ghost.

“What a crazy night!” he calls out to me. “First you and now this.”

“It’s going to get even better,” I promise him. “Look out for that stick.”

His skates hit it and he falls. He rolls around as if he’s seriously injured, but I’m not buying it.

“It got you good,” I say, calming him down. I put out my hand to help him to his feet. “We need to cut through here anyway. The path gets bad up ahead.”

“Through the woods?” he says, appalled. “Here? Are you crazy?”

“It’s not really woods. Just through there is a clearing. There are big, beautiful oaks growing there.”

He follows me. What else can he do. I know he’ll never again follow a strange woman to an area he doesn’t know.

“Being in the woods at night really awakes primal fears, eh?” I call over my shoulder. He grunts something in response.

There are fewer of them than I had expected. Five guys, two girls. They’re sitting on the backs of the benches, next to a table that’s been tipped upside down. In the middle of them is a hole in the ground, and in it a nice fire is burning. Peter is there with his two lieutenants, along with Anna and three others I’ve never seen before. But I can tell they belong—I recognize my countrymen immediately. Sometimes I can see it in the structure of their faces, sometimes in the clothing. And when nothing else sticks out, I can tell from the doomed look in their eyes.

I wave and then take off my rollerblades and walk barefoot. The skates are heavy and I hand them to Peter, who comes up to me and says, “Are you nuts? Barefoot? There’s broken glass all over the place.”

He doesn’t look at me—he’s looking over my shoulder at my companion, who is awkwardly following me, walking in his skates.

“This is Volker,” I say to the group. In German. “He’s a likeable member of the National Party, an activist for the party, in fact.” They don’t react. They don’t know what the National Party is all about. “And these are . . . my friends,” I say to my companion. Now the group starts to react, looking at each other with surprise.

“Volker’s a little Nazi,” I say, again in German. “I’m totally sympathetic.”

He begins to quiver.

“What the hell is this?” says Peter in Russian.

“I don’t know either,” I say. “A whim. What do we have here, gentlemen?”

The upside-down table is covered with stuff. Spray cans, some of them in baggies. Plastic bags, half-empty bottles, jars, lighters, knives, cartons. It looks like a dirty little laboratory.

The next set of events takes place without any words. Peter points at me and raises his eyebrow. I nod. I feel at home.

I’m handed a rolling paper. Somebody sprinkles some brown crumbs onto it. Then on goes a clump from a bag of loose tobacco.

“Can’t we make it without tobacco?” I ask. “My body just can’t deal with nicotine.”

“I have a water pipe,” one of them says. “But it’s at home. And I have no idea how it works.”

“I guess this’ll have to work,” I sigh, rolling the paper up into a cigarette-sized tube. I’ve screwed it up and it falls apart. I was never any good at arts and crafts.

Peter takes it out of my hand, suppressing a smile. He opens it all up, rearranges it all, licks the edge of the paper, and rolls it into a perfect tube. He makes a show of twisting the end into a curly tail.

I nod appreciatively when he passes me his masterpiece with the words, “Ladies first.” He flicks a lighter and the flame makes his hand jump out of the darkness. A warped version of my face is reflected in his ring, which is gigantic enough to pound nails with—or skulls.

I inhale with all my strength, sucking in as much as I can. My fear of the tobacco disappears. I’m not putting a lot of emphasis on my well-being tonight.

I don’t cough, which is good. In fact, my body has no reaction. I sit there and wait and wait. Everyone stares at me. I stare back at them. Nothing happens.

“I don’t feel anything,” I say. “What the fuck. It doesn’t do anything. Is that stuff any good?”

“I got that on a class trip to Amsterdam,” says a guy sitting next to Peter. “We hid it in a piece of cheese. It’s Moroccan black. It works. Wait, maybe it’s Black Domina?”

“Rookie,” says Peter contemptuously, grabbing the joint. It cracks me up, and Peter winks at me, inhales, and then exhales the smoke through his nose. He closes his eyes and passes it on. The next guy holds the joint like a flute and grimaces and makes faces as he inhales. And although I don’t feel high, I find surprisingly warm feelings welling up inside me towards everyone here—everyone except one person.

“Like a peace pipe,” says Peter, looking at me. He’s acting as if there’s nobody here but me. “Everyone gets a puff, right?” I nod.

The joint is handed to the phony Volker and he drops it.

Anna picks it up.

“I guess Nazis don’t smoke Dutch grass,” I say. “They just drink genuine German beer.”

“We’ve got beer,” says Peter. “Hang on.”

He knocks over a can and amber liquid dribbles out.

In the distance frogs in the pond croak.

“Oh, sorry, I guess we’re out,” says Peter. “How clumsy of me. But who drinks that stuff anyway?”

Volker looks as if he’s already tried everything here. He can’t stop shaking and he’s doubled over as if he’s about to puke.

“It’s okay,” I say scornfully. “Nobody’s going to do anything to you.”

“You sure?” asks Peter in German. “I don’t know. Want something to drink, you little fascist? Maybe a cup of sailor’s tea?”

“Of what?” I ask.

“Haven’t you read your classics?” asks Peter in a self-congratulatory tone, a proud host.

Volker shakes his head but Peter is already pouring clear liquid from a vodka bottle into a used paper cup. Then he adds a few drops of something from a brown medicinal bottle and stirs the concoction with a dirty knife.

“Legal speed,” he answers in response to my questioning look. “From England. It’s not something for you.” He looks at the cup pensively, leans his head to the side, and then pours a little more vodka into the mixture.

I’m quiet like the rest. I don’t say a thing as he approaches Volker and puts the cup into his hand. Volker’s hand is shaking as if it’s freezing cold. Peter wraps his giant hand around Volker’s and says, “If you spill even a drop, I’ll kill you. Do you have any idea what I have to pay for this stuff?”

He lifts the cup—his hand around Volker’s—to Volker’s lips. Volker closes his eyes. His head is shaking. With his other hand, Peter pushes Volker’s head back. Then he pours the liquid in Volker’s mouth, though the bulk of it sloshes down the sides of his face, causing Peter to issue a stream of comments, “I’ll fuck your mother” the most friendly of them. I listen with my mouth agape. It sounds almost poetic. If only I could curse as fluidly as that.

Volker moans, grabs his throat, and falls to his hands and knees on the ground.

“Let’s try that again,” says Peter, grabbing the vodka bottle. I stay silent, as do the rest. Except Anna, who whispers in a panicked voice, “Honey!”

After the third cup, Volker groans loudly—it’s almost a scream. I look at him. He lies down on the ground, but sits up again, scratching at his throat.

When he starts to puke at my feet, I get up, grab my rollerblades, and leave.

Nobody stops me. Nobody says anything. I can hear the wailing and gagging from the woods. Then they turn on a portable stereo. The clearing is filled with frenetic beats that sound like a racing pulse.

I stick my feet back in the skates one more time. They hurt now. The fact that I didn’t wear socks is taking a toll. The soles of my feet are raw and blistered. I skate anyway—through the neighborhood, past the Emerald, and out onto a main road.

I skate on the dividing line, right down the middle of the street.

I don’t swerve to the side of the road when I hear a car behind me. The street lights are dull, I’m not wearing anything reflective, and my dress is dark—as are my thoughts. Just one thought, to be more precise. I’m pissed off that the Moroccan black hash has bypassed my receptors.

I guess I need something stronger, I think. I want to feel something. Right now.

And then it hits me.

I wonder how long this will last.

Brakes screech. I don’t turn around. Everything’s a bit slowed down.

A taxi careens past to my right and comes to rest on the sidewalk. I realize I am looking backward.

It also dawns on me that I’m falling and that now my knees are scraping along the pavement. For yards. Finally I feel something.

Not on my knees at first. It’s my head wobbling back and forth as I’m wildly shaken and then rammed in the back. Suddenly I’m sitting on the sidewalk with my legs stretched out. There’s a small, swarthy man in front of me in a leather jacket. He’s irate. He’s cursing at me in a language I don’t know, a language with lots of sibilant sounds.

I look over at the taxi, sitting sideways on the sidewalk, the driver’s door ripped open, nobody at the wheel.

“Is that yours?” I ask. “Did you drag me through the street, you scumbag? You trying to skin me?”

He lashes out and a smack in the face goes pop in the night air.

“Little piece of sheet,” he says.

“It’s pronounced shit,” I correct automatically, holding my hand up to my face. Then I look down at my legs. The skin is gashed open. There are streaks of red pulp from the knee to the foot. I forget all about this or that Volker, about the joint with no effects, about sailor’s tea, and even Vadim.

I cry, quite loudly. Not because it hurts so bad—or at least not only because it hurts so bad. I cry because nobody is here to take care of me.