A New Tense. Jo Day

       Cover design by Joanne Day and Robert Hanna

      Dedication

      For Nina

      A Call

      I was another Australian in Berlin and it was my first winter. Snow was covering cars. The warmest winter in years, people said, but it was cold enough for me.

       I lived with three other people. I’d met one of them, Julia, drinking outside a bar in Friedrichshain. I’d wandered in from the street, drawn by the music, but I hadn’t liked any of the bands so I ended up sitting down next to her and starting a conversation. We sat out the front for hours, smoking cheap cigarettes and drinking cheaper beer. By the morning we’d decided to start a band and she’d offered me a tiny room in her apartment. It’d been so easy that I didn’t understand until later how lucky I’d been, all the struggles that other people had in trying to find apartments. I hadn’t even heard of the bar, I’d just been wandering around, locked out of the apartment I was crashing at, a friend of a friend from Melbourne who had started to hit on me with less and less subtlety. I told Julia about this and she offered me a place on her floor, and then, when we got more comfortable with each other, in her bed, until her other housemate moved back to Sweden and I could take over the room.

       We were all hanging out in Steffi’s room now. She had the biggest one that we used as a lounge, there was a television hooked up to a laptop that we watched movies on. Julia, Steffi and me were wrapped up in the bed and Max was lying on the floor. We’d been out the night before, separately, and we were necking beers, all in various states of ruin, except for Max, who was mostly sober and drinking a Radler because he was on call. I saw his eyes darting suspiciously to the window whenever he heard an ambulance outside (Krankenwagen, one of my favourite words), and he’d pat his pocket for his phone, all these actions subconscious, I thought. Steffi was coming down from pills, and Julia and I were hungover and speedy from a show we’d played the night before in Mitte. I was nursing a bruised and swollen elbow. Some English guy had pushed past me up the stairs at Heinrich-Heine Straße and I’d started to fall. I tried to grab onto him when I did, but the stairs were so sleety and slippery that I took him down with me, and even though he landed on me and I hurt my elbow he called me a stupid bitch before he’d even gotten up. Julia had stood above him and yelled at him in German until he’d slunk away with his mates to a safe distance. He’d called us stupid cunts, and I could hear in his voice that he thought he’d put us in our place, like we’d never heard the word before.

       Still, Julia’d thrown her bottle of beer at him, And that’s what love is, she said as we ran up the street away from his pack of howling friends, that beer was mostly full.

       It was Saturday night and Steffi was getting up, trying on different clothes, a birthday party she had to go to, she said, and she didn’t even like the person that much.

       “So why are you going?”

       She shrugged. “Free booze.”

       That peaked my interest, but we had enough booze here, and besides, this was basically perfection, friends and blankets and beers, Withnail and I playing on the television, flicking bottle tops across the room at Steffi’s bin, Julia rolling a joint that she’d pass around. Maybe some more people would drop over on their way out, but even if they didn’t, it was great to just stay in with Max and Julia, neither of us working tomorrow, talk of going to Tiergarten in the snow. I wanted to bring my camera and take some pictures for the winter zine I was making.

       Steffi decided on an outfit, took a drag from the joint Julia was passing around and left. We all yelled goodbyes until the door closed, bon voyage, schönen Abend, have a good one! I was so warm and content that when my phone rang and I saw it was Jones calling from Melbourne I answered it straight away, even though, aside from the occasional email to let each other know we were alive, we hadn’t talked in months. “Jones, you shithead, how are you?” There was a crackling, and then a different voice spoke. “It’s Calliope, Lauren.” “Ah, right. Sorry, I thought it was Jones.” “I gathered, dear,” she said. “Look, I’ve got some bad news for you.” Her voice, distorted through the countries, was heavy with something and I suddenly couldn’t breathe. “What? Are Jones and Gary okay?” Max and Julia turned to look at me. On the television screen, Withnail and I were discussing who was going to kill the chicken. “Yes, they’re fine.” “Are you sure?” “Of course.” “Well, Jesus, Calliope, don’t lead with that.” There was a pause. “It’s your mother, Lauren. We just got a call from her partner. She died last night.” “Oh,” I said, and the way that I said it was Oh, is that all? “Um, how?” “A car accident.” “Right,” I said, and couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I’m so sorry,” she said. She sounded it. “It’s okay,” I said, to Calliope, but also to Max and Julia, who were looking at me in concern. I started to extricate myself from the mess around me, sending one of the bottles of beer to the floor. It spilled a frothy puddle on the stained floorboards but Julia waved me away. I went to my room and sat on the mattress on its pallets next to the radiator. Clothes on the floor, beer bottles lined up against the wall, rolled up scrap of cardboard on the desk. The room was about nine square metres, not bad because I didn’t have much furniture, except I dumped my clothes on the floor and it was hard to get anywhere. There were dregs of wine in a glass on the desk. It was filled with cigarette butts. “Is Jones there?” I asked. “Of course.” There was an exchange on the other end. I felt like it went on for too long, and even though it should be impossible for me to hear anything I thought that I knew what was going on — Calliope begging for him to take the phone, Jones shaking his head until the last moment. “Calliope,” I said quickly, “it’s alright, I don’t need to talk—” “Hey,” said his voice on the other end. “Hey,” I said. “How are you?” “I’m okay. How’re you?” Like a stranger on the street he added courteously, “I’m sorry.” “Yeah.” “Hang on.” There was a pause, the tinny sound of a door opening and closing. “Mum started making up your room,” he said. They still called it my room even though it had only been my room for a few years, and that was a decade ago. “She’s gonna try to convince you to come back, at least for a bit. For the funeral, I guess.” “What do I do?” “Well, that’s up to you, mate.” “Yeah, I know that, but I can’t think. What do you think?” “I can’t make the decision for you,” he said. “Yes,” I said. “I know that, I’m asking because I want your opinion.” Dread came over me, and with it all the memories of how it’d been before I left, his coldness. I forced myself to remember that he was actually my closest friend and not some condescending stranger. Before he could say anything else, I said, “Can you put your mum back on?” “Yeah.” Calliope, on the end of the line. “Are you there?” “Yeah.” “Look, I think you should come back. For the funeral.” There was a light knock on my open door, and it swung in a bit farther. Julia was there. She mouthed, Are you okay? I nodded back at her. She stepped over the mess, handed me a cigarette and a fresh beer and left the room. “Lauren?” “I’m still here,” I said, lighting the cigarette and blowing out smoke. “Look, I don’t know if I want to come.” “Of course,” she said, but the beat was a little too long. “Will you think about it?” “Would I even be invited? To the funeral?” “It doesn’t matter if you’re invited or not,” she said. “If you want to go, you’ll go.” “When is it?” “I don’t have an exact date yet, but within the week, I expect.” “Okay,” I said, but I still couldn’t think, and the static of the bad connection was the soundtrack to the snow falling steadily outside. I shook my head. “Well. I can’t afford a flight.” “I’ll pay,” she said quickly. “I think it’d be good for you and Kostas to see each other.” Kostas was Jones’ first name. He’d hated the name growing up, and would always introduce himself by his last time. By the time it didn’t bother him anymore he’d already been cemented in friend’s minds as Jones, and so it was only his family members who called him Kostas anymore. It occurred to me that it’d be early morning, their time. “Why is he there so early? Is he staying with you?” “Yes.” “Why? Is he okay?” “He’s okay. He’s...you know.” “Yeah,” I said,