Supposedly, Schoch was also the one who found Sumi when he snuffed it. He didn’t die from drinking, people said, but from having given up.
Schoch didn’t get close to anyone else afterwards. He kept a friendly distance and remained a mystery.
A young man he’d never seen here before, probably a rejected asylum-seeker needing to go underground, freed up the seat opposite. Within seconds Bolle had sat down. Rapping his knuckles on the table by way of a greeting, he said, ‘Shitty weather.’
Bolle was one of the loud ones. He always had something to say, but it wasn’t always new. Schoch normally avoided him, but in this situation all he could do was acknowledge Bolle’s presence. He shrugged and focused on his cup.
Bolle was blind in one eye, which looked like the white of an undercooked egg. Hence his nickname, Bolle, from the old Berlin folk song: ‘His right eye was missing,/His left one looked like slime./But Bolle being Bolle,/Still had a cracking time.’
Bolle tried to get the attention of the elderly lady, one of the many pious volunteers who helped out here. When she looked over at him, he called out, ‘Coffee schnapps, please!’ He was the only one who laughed; everyone else had heard the joke plenty of times before.
Or they didn’t understand him, like the African man sitting next to him, who said, ‘No German,’ when Bolle, still laughing, repeated, ‘Coffee schnapps,’ and grinned at him.
‘No alcohol,’ Bolle explained in English.
His neighbour replied, ‘No, thank you.’
Bolle now had a laughing fit. ‘No, thank you!’ he repeated. ‘No, thank you!’
When he’d composed himself he turned to Schoch and said, ‘They’ve got a new girl working at Sternen.’
Schoch’s cup was by his lips. Before he took a sip he said, ‘Aren’t you banned from there?’
‘I was,’ Bolle corrected him.
Schoch put his cup back on the table and said in the same dispassionate tone, ‘Because you’ve stopped begging the customers for beer?’
‘Because the new girl doesn’t care. It’s all revenue, she says. Earned, stolen or begged, money is money.’ Once again Bolle had a fit of coughing and laughter combined. ‘Earned, stolen or begged,’ he wheezed.
Schoch failed to react and Bolle tried to change the subject. ‘Ever seen white mice? Not real ones, but in your head.’
Schoch shook his head. Pink elephants, on the other hand, he thought …
‘I have,’ Bolle continued. ‘Last night.’ His bloated red face suddenly assumed a troubled expression. ‘Do you think that’s a bad sign?’
Schoch wasn’t listening. The memory of the tiny pink elephant had suddenly emerged from nowhere. Had he dreamed it? Or hallucinated?
‘Oi, are you listening?’
‘How do you know they don’t exist?’ Schoch said. He placed a franc on the table for his coffee, got up, rummaged on the rack for his yellow raincoat and left.
‘He’s right,’ Bolle mumbled. ‘How do I know they don’t exist?’
10
The same day
All the washing machines at Meeting Point were being used and all the showers were occupied. At most tables in the cafeteria people were waiting for seats to become free. Their clothes were damp and dirty, and their frozen bodies were longing for a hot shower. It might be hours before it was Schoch’s turn.
He knew most of the people waiting and nodded to some of them. Then he left.
The rain had eased up somewhat, but a spiteful little wind had picked up. Schoch pulled the coat around him more tightly and took longer strides.
After ten minutes he’d reached the shiny chrome WC container. It was occupied, but at least nobody was waiting outside. He put his heavy holdall down beside the door and sat on top of it.
Bolle was seeing white mice, and he was seeing pink elephants. Sumi had seen animals too: cockroaches. ‘The size of your fist!’ he’d claimed, clenching his tiny hand.
But that had been when Sumi was in withdrawal. Schoch wasn’t. And Bolle? Unlikely, judging by the state he’d been in at the Morning Sun. But he hadn’t said when he’d seen the white mice. Maybe it was yesterday. Maybe he’d tried to stay off the sauce and it had happened then. Schoch should have asked.
But was it important? If these visions only occurred when you were in withdrawal – which Schoch certainly wasn’t – didn’t that mean the little pink elephant had been no hallucination?
Pink elephants? Come off it!
11
The same day
The electric door to the WC slid open and a young woman stepped out. Her blonde hair hung down in thick strands, some of which were coloured green. She’d reapplied her lipstick and the dark red stood out sharply from her pale face. Eyeing Schoch with tiny pupils, the woman pressed the large shoulder bag more tightly to her slender body and walked away with faltering steps.
Schoch stood up quickly and darted into the WC before the door slid shut again, to save himself the franc he would have had to put in the slot otherwise.
The WC was constructed out of plastic and stainless steel, without gaps and cracks so it could easily be hosed down. The floor around the loo was wet from the water that sluiced the toilet bowl and flooded it each time the door was opened.
Beside the toilet was the loo paper that the woman had used to cover the rim. The smell of patchouli oil hung in the air.
In the metal basin he found a syringe like the ones you could get from the vending machine twenty metres away. Schoch threw it in the bin. Then he undressed, went to the loo, took a flannel and soap from his holdall and washed himself.
In the mirror he saw a haggard-looking man with long hair and an unkempt beard, both blackish-brown and streaked with grey, just like his sparse chest hair.
He looked away and continued washing himself.
Had he drunk more yesterday than on other evenings? Or harder stuff than the litre cans of cheap beer from the supermarket? Where had he been anyway? With the dog lovers at the station as always? Followed by dinner at the soup kitchen? And a nightcap at Hauptplatz tram stop?
He couldn’t recall anything unusual. But was this really his recollection of yesterday? How did it differ from the day before, the day before that, and the day before the day before that? If yesterday had been different from the evenings before and he had no memory of it, wouldn’t the memory of the evening before that leap in to take its place?
Schoch had admitted to himself long ago that he was an alcoholic. But he was a disciplined alcoholic, he kept telling himself. He had his alcoholism under control. He could stop whenever he wanted, as he’d proved several times already. Stopped and, because he’d managed it, started again. He’d stop for good when there was a compelling reason to do so.
Was a pink elephant a compelling reason?
‘Are you sick?’ Giorgio asked.
Schoch had declined the beer he’d been offered. ‘Just not thirsty.’
‘Since when did you drink because you were thirsty?’
Schoch shrugged.
Giorgio was the down-and-out Schoch liked most. His sleeping place lay around one hundred metres upstream from Schoch’s. It was also a hollow eroded by the river, only a little roomier. Giorgio needed more space because he had three dogs. Obedient mongrels with colourful scarves