cars; she saw streets stretching away, she felt how the train curved around the dark-as-death shape of the Tiergarten, and crossed over the black and ice-shining Spree. She saw the central station, the Hauptbanhof, and the Charité Hospital, she saw the university and Museum Island. There were lit windows, regular squares and livid patches of abyssal dark. There were countless hidden lives, countless hopeful or hopeless souls. And at last she saw, swallowing their train, the gargantuan mouth of Alexanderplatz.
Cass guided Mitsuko. She found the U8 line. One of the new trains, daffodil-yellow and decorated with a Brandenburger Tor design, drew sleek alongside them. It was this local emblem, repeated as a motif, that she dumbly stared through, suddenly tired. At Kottbusser Tor station she took Mitsukoâs arm and led her slowly to the exit under the vaststeel archway, so high it might have been holding up the night. Addicts with their dogs, and shady dealers dressed in black, hung abject and half-present in the exit shadows. A dreadlocked man wearing a Dead Weather hoodie stepped forward to offer a grubby folder of cannabis. His unhappy face, in the deep-purple cave of his hood, mumbled affordable euros. Cass was tempted, but held back, not sure what Mitsuko would think. He slunk backwards, his sly insistence fading, and she saw a scrawny brown dog yanked and dragged away.
It seemed to Cass that although they had travelled and arrived together there was a new distance between them. In her apartment Mitsuko prepared a simple meal of noodles with fried mushrooms. Neither had much appetite. Conversation was patchy. When Yukio appeared, Mitsuko rushed to be held and laid her pink head on his waiting shoulder. He whispered, low and comforting, in a sibilant Japanese. Cass wondered how she had described what happened on the train. She watched them embrace and enter the safe absorption of each other, aware of her own frozen feelings and uncertainty of response. The invisible dead: what might it mean in this city? How, in the context of its history, ought she respond to one unknown body, crushed and smeared beneath the irresistible wagon of a train? It was exhausting to weigh and properly consider the matter. Her mind became empty, her instinct defensive. She wanted neither to think nor to feel.
Yukio had bought cannabis from the men near the station. He held up a plastic bag in his long slim fingers and waved it, offering. Cass was relieved. She wanted not this austere clarity and her philosophical bent, but to be bluntedand deranged. She watched as Yukio rolled a joint with tidy and finicky skill, licking the paper with a swift, spontaneous flick of his tongue, extracting one or two stray threads, patting the tube into place. Then he rolled another, placing the first, like a regular smoker, behind his ear. Before long the air of the sitting room was smoky and permeated; they were each puffing away, flushed and urgent, as though desperate to be calm. Cass noted how much she liked the tiny crackle sound of dope igniting, that barely audible combustion, that pure time of the inhale. And so they settled, and began to relax, and might have slipped into each otherâs arms, so dreamy they soon seemed, so close up and so far.
In the end, they sat talking late into the night, finding their way slowly back towards each other. Yukio spoke a little more of his time as a hikikomori , describing himself as an astronaut, high in his ever-night capsule. Cass was reminded of Gino, how he too had spoken in the restaurant of spaceships and isolation. Something men shared, perhaps, a boyish aspiration or affection. Mitsuko confessed to a nostalgia for that nocturnal time, when they met while everyone was asleep and the darkness was wholly theirs. Cass had nothing to contribute to this easy romanticism, she was tired, she was stoned, she was suppressing yawn after yawn. When she could continue no longer, she asked the lovers if she might stay
Cass guided Mitsuko. She found the U8 line. One of the new trains, daffodil-yellow and decorated with a Brandenburger Tor design, drew sleek alongside them. It was this local emblem, repeated as a motif, that she dumbly stared through, suddenly tired. At Kottbusser Tor station she took Mitsukoâs arm and led her slowly to the exit under the vaststeel archway, so high it might have been holding up the night. Addicts with their dogs, and shady dealers dressed in black, hung abject and half-present in the exit shadows. A dreadlocked man wearing a Dead Weather hoodie stepped forward to offer a grubby folder of cannabis. His unhappy face, in the deep-purple cave of his hood, mumbled affordable euros. Cass was tempted, but held back, not sure what Mitsuko would think. He slunk backwards, his sly insistence fading, and she saw a scrawny brown dog yanked and dragged away.
It seemed to Cass that although they had travelled and arrived together there was a new distance between them. In her apartment Mitsuko prepared a simple meal of noodles with fried mushrooms. Neither had much appetite. Conversation was patchy. When Yukio appeared, Mitsuko rushed to be held and laid her pink head on his waiting shoulder. He whispered, low and comforting, in a sibilant Japanese. Cass wondered how she had described what happened on the train. She watched them embrace and enter the safe absorption of each other, aware of her own frozen feelings and uncertainty of response. The invisible dead: what might it mean in this city? How, in the context of its history, ought she respond to one unknown body, crushed and smeared beneath the irresistible wagon of a train? It was exhausting to weigh and properly consider the matter. Her mind became empty, her instinct defensive. She wanted neither to think nor to feel.
Yukio had bought cannabis from the men near the station. He held up a plastic bag in his long slim fingers and waved it, offering. Cass was relieved. She wanted not this austere clarity and her philosophical bent, but to be bluntedand deranged. She watched as Yukio rolled a joint with tidy and finicky skill, licking the paper with a swift, spontaneous flick of his tongue, extracting one or two stray threads, patting the tube into place. Then he rolled another, placing the first, like a regular smoker, behind his ear. Before long the air of the sitting room was smoky and permeated; they were each puffing away, flushed and urgent, as though desperate to be calm. Cass noted how much she liked the tiny crackle sound of dope igniting, that barely audible combustion, that pure time of the inhale. And so they settled, and began to relax, and might have slipped into each otherâs arms, so dreamy they soon seemed, so close up and so far.
In the end, they sat talking late into the night, finding their way slowly back towards each other. Yukio spoke a little more of his time as a hikikomori , describing himself as an astronaut, high in his ever-night capsule. Cass was reminded of Gino, how he too had spoken in the restaurant of spaceships and isolation. Something men shared, perhaps, a boyish aspiration or affection. Mitsuko confessed to a nostalgia for that nocturnal time, when they met while everyone was asleep and the darkness was wholly theirs. Cass had nothing to contribute to this easy romanticism, she was tired, she was stoned, she was suppressing yawn after yawn. When she could continue no longer, she asked the lovers if she might stay
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