In The Wake Read Free Page A

running and then, weeping, drink what little is left, and Ithrow the empty bottle into the nearest litter bin. I chuck the wet paper after it. Without glasses I couldn’t read it anyway. And then I walk on.

2
    THERE IS A ringing sound. I wake and I switch the alarm clock off. It goes on ringing. I fumble for the telephone in the dark, find it, and what I hear is the dialling tone. And then it rings again. It is the door. I switch on the lamp over the bed and look at the clock. It is not six, it is one. I pull my jeans on and a T-shirt, go out into the hall and open the front door. There is no-onethere so I walk barefoot across the hallway, past the letterboxes, and then I see the Kurdish family from the third floor standing beyond the outside glass door in the cold. Three children: two girls, and a little boy crying quietly. The mother stares at the ground with her headscarf right down over her forehead, and though it is dark outside between the blocks, the light from the stairway shinesred and blue and yellow in the flowers on her scarf, and the father with the big moustache smiles, he points at the lock and is bleeding from a cut on his cheek. He is my age, maybe slightly older. I go to the door and hold it open until they are all inside, and then I lock it again. He takes my hand and says thanks. I point at his cheek and look as enquiring as I can but he just shakes his headand smiles. Nothing to worry about. Right. He wears a white shirt under his grey jacket, and there are spots of blood on the collar. It looks dramatic, as in a film. He puts his hand on my shoulder and I
feel
that hand, he says thanks again, and then he points at my bare feet. It is so cold on the floor I am curling up my toes. Smiling, he pushes me towards my door, and then he opens his armsand puts them around his family and leads them gently and firmly upstairs, talking in a low, intense voice in a language I do not understand. The little boy is still crying. They have only been here for a few weeks, but he has learned to say “thanks”. That will come in handy, no question. They are from northern Iraq. That is all I know.
    I stay at the bottom of the stairwell listening to his voicefading and their steps fading on the way up. I could have invited him in, he could have come down when the children were in bed, and we could have had a drink or a cup of hot chocolate if that’s what he would prefer, being a Muslim, and we could talk about having a family, that it’s not that easy, or we could talk of Saddam Hussein, anything he likes. Maybe he can speak German, I know a bit ofGerman, more people than you’d think know German, and the last thing I hear before the door slams shut two floors up is the boy crying loudly. With no stranger watching he doesn’t hold back. Silence settles on the stairwell, and it is very cold. Beneath my thin T-shirt the elastic bandage is tight and uncomfortable, and I shiver uncontrollably.
    It wasn’t lung cancer; I had two fractured ribs.Not until I got home from town and walked, half bent over, past the mirror in the hall did I notice that I had a black eye as well. Everyone on the train and on the bus from the station had seen it, people I know and have said hello to for several years, only
I
didn’t know. All the pains had converged into one big one, and I could not distinguish one from the other. And then I lay in bed, fordays and nights, head spinning, before I called the doctor, dizzy from the want of air and thoughts of death, trying to unravel what had happened when I was far out of this world.
    I go into my apartment and shut the door. Only the light over my bed is on. In the bedroom I ease one of my father’s old sweaters over my head, it is washed out and soft to the touch, and then I put socks on beforeturning out the light, walking through the dark hall to the living room and turning on the lamp over the desk. The first thing I did when I found myself alone was to move the desk into the living room.