Tomorrow Berlin Read Free

the rue d’Assas with Maurice, Paulo and Gégé. He did a line or two with them and there were more clients there, so that was extra money rolling in – like Molloy with his pebbles, he stuck the notes in his left pocket and took out a ball sealed in plastic from his right – an endless cycle. He also felt he was giving them pleasure; he was selling a bit of happiness. Didn’t he also take some of that happiness himself whenever he wanted? He had that in common with them, the little artificial excitement, the awakening of the soul. Oh, how he would have loved to be like that all the time, without having to stick a straw up his nose.
     
    One Monday night, he met Victor in one of the orgy bars. They fucked like crazy. The difference was, with Victor he felt satisfied. He didn’t feelthe need to go and look for other arses, to be penetrated by other cocks. He felt full of Victor. That was enough for him. Their bodies completed each other as though they could talk to each other, as if this ease went beyond them.
    Victor was thirty-five, about ten years older than Tobias. They exchanged names. Tobias didn’t have a phone; he jotted down Victor’s number.
    They kissed shyly as they parted outside the bar where they met, as though they wanted to recreate the embarrassment of a less brutal encounter, as though they had not already fucked in that filthy bar, rammed with bodies.
    ‘Will you call me?’
    ‘Yes. You’ll need to wait a bit.’
     
    Day was breaking. It was cold, but in a nice way. Tobias smoked as he walked slowly along – he was enraptured. If you’d looked closely at his face as he walked home after that strange night, you’d have seen a little smile on his lips. Not the smile of a drunk, but something suggesting happiness was within reach. You can sense it, it’s there; you could almost touch it, the happiness of enchantment.
    He could sense the little nostalgic smile crease his cheeks; he felt like he was observing himselfwalking in the streets, a figure alone, but already as though he was missing Victor.
     
    It was almost seven when Tobias reached the rue des Écoles. All the way there, his little smile had remained. It disappeared instantly when he saw Jérôme outside the building being led to a police van in handcuffs.
    Their eyes met. Jérôme motioned to him to get away. There was no sense in him getting picked up too. They’d both go down, and what good was that?
    Tobias obeyed. He passed the building one last time and kept walking. He just kept going.

II
    Armand’s a nice guy. Whether people like him or not, that’s generally what they think; a nice loser, with tangled hair and jeans that are too short. He mooches round the bars hoping to catch the eye of some hot girl. Armand says he wants to be a painter; he works at it a bit every morning. On the street he looks for pieces of wood and road signs. He likes having paint splashes on his hands, arms or legs as proof of what he’s doing. He also likesthe idea that he’s working with something physical, one foot in reality, the other in creativity. It’s the physical sense of the moment when he’s painting that he likes; otherwise, maybe he’d have wanted to write.
    He plays the drum machine. He doesn’t eat much. He smokes plenty, though. It’s unusual to run into Armand without a cigarette end dangling from his lips. It doesn’t go with his look, the extinguished butt he chews at the corner of his mouth. Armand’s young and quite good-looking. He has four scooters; one day, he’s going to buy a motorbike. And then he’ll finally be free; he’ll ride around in the desert, a law unto himself, the stars and stripes tattooed on his shoulder.
    At sixteen he left his mother’s house to live with a girl he loved more than life itself, as he put it. He truly believed that.
    She’d sent him emails without him knowing who she was. He saw a girl in the high school yard and hoped it was her.
    The emails were funny; every evening he had to