Taken by Berlin. Nicolas Scheerbarth
"Well, of course! You have a different climate, a different culture. You know, France, for example, they have been in the Union with us from the beginning, almost 150 years. Back then you had thirty years of Stalinism ahead of you. So... even in France you still feel today that some things are different than with us, not just the old houses or the names, I mean. Although my father always says France has lost all its identity."
"I don't know any French people. There were none in our settlement. Maybe somewhere else in Nikopol, but not in Gagarin Park. But I don't think you can compare that... because... for example, like... how people walk around here. That is not possible back in Ukraine."
"How people walk around?"
"Yes... the... not dressed, without..."
"Ah! Now I get it! Yes. My father mentioned something like that... that you don't know it. Although, it started with you guys, too. In the parks of Kiev or Kharkov there are naked people."
"Yes... in Kiev or Kharkov..."
Joschi had heard about it on the news, of this crazy fashion from the west of the Union, of which it was expected... hoped... that it would soon fade away.
"We started out the same way... some people in the parks of some big cities. And there are still enough dull areas in Germany, where you would go naked for a swim at most. Didn't your father tell you what it's like here? He's already been here twice. But... there's probably so much that's different with us than with you, it hardly matters."
Joschi wondered if his father had kept his mouth shut because of his mother. Maybe she wouldn't have agreed to the move if he had prepared her for the fact that she could easily meet a naked man here on the street. Or him a naked woman. His mother came from a rural region where naked people were known only from the media, which nobody watched officially.
So that was his adventure: naked people in public, the chaos at the airport or the still unknown secrets of the big city. He would have to get used to reacting quite normally... after all, he couldn't look to the side all summer. But it would be difficult... especially with the good-looking girls.
In the evening they sat around the big dining table... he with Axi, with whom he had been out and about all day... his parents, exhausted and immersed into some papers... Adrian's cousin with his wife and kids. Adrian's wife was out in Frankfurt. Adrian and Yilmaz prepared dinner in the kitchen. An extra chair inspired Joshi's imagination. Clarissa was expected for dinner. Joschi was very excited after Axi had dodged all questions about his sister with a "wait and see".
Yilmaz Örgün was a friendly man, slim, smaller than Adrian, with ice-grey hair and a deep black, dense moustache. Joschi noticed that he was involved everywhere in the household, and in the best of moods, while Adrian's cousin and his wife behaved like hotel guests. Unhappy, grumpy hotel guests. They paraded their fate so demonstratively that Joschi noticed it immediately... although it was not so terrible compared to that of most of the 300 million poverty and war refugees around the world. They didn't have it bad, they behaved badly.
"All they do is get mad because they fell on their faces," Axi had explained to him. "You should've heard what they used to say in the mails or on the phone. Australia is so nice and neat and clean and safe. And us, with our filth and our immorality and blah."
"Immorality"?
"Well, for example, you saw the neighbors on the left this morning on their terrace. Three men, five women. They live together as Conglobat. A multi-person partnership. They all sleep together, too. They're everywhere in Europe. Everybody's all right, but not monogamous. You should have heard what a riot Johanna made about it! Fornication' and 'perversions', in front of their children! Male and female wildly mixed up! That was quite a performance..."
"I believe it. What an idiot! What does your uncle do for a living?"
"Good question. He's an engineer, something like construction work. They say he's looking for work. But his ideas... we don't have a million square kilometers of desert to build on like in Australia. But instead of looking for something reasonable, he dreams of bombastic large-scale projects with which he wants to put concrete over our landscape here. They lived like they were on the moon. No one in Germany plans such large-scale projects anymore. But he doesn't want to go south or east either, where they occasionally plan such big things as highways or artificial cities."
"And his wife? Does she have a job?"
"The wife, work? She thinks she doesn't need to. You know, in Australia you could live well if your partner was an engineer... with a house and a maid and everything... but not here. If you don't live alone, but only one person earns, then you don’t have much. In Germany, one income might be enough for the flat, the debts and insurance and something to eat. Where do you think we'd all be sitting today if my parents hadn't inherited this house? And yet my mother works at the university."
"Life here... is very difficult?"
"Well, difficult... I mean, you can live how you want, but without money... you'll get nothing but problems. And you'll end up in the dirt real quick. Once you get a bad address, you don't stand a chance. If they give you a good job with us today, they will check where you live. And if your costs are too low, you won't get the job because they fear that you are too independent and may cause trouble. Or that you're antisocial."
"The people here... they do fine. I didn't see anyone today who is antisocial."
Joschi understood Axi quite well now, but struggled with the tricky German grammar.
"Of course! Though it doesn't matter. Ghetto remains ghetto, even if it's the other way around at Bad Homburg."
"Ghetto? This isn’t a ghetto!"
"Well, what would you call it? Just another kind... but, tell me... you don’t know that at all? Sure, nobody told you, and we weren't at the gates today. The whole of Bad Homburg is a ghetto. Closed. A protec. A protected area. It used to be only in America, for some housing estates... but for about ten years now, it's been with us, too. Bad Homburg was one of the first. Around the whole city there’s a fence, dressed up as bushes or soundproof walls, everywhere with cameras and motion detectors. There are controls at the gates, and if they get suspicious and can't verify you, you stay out."
"Controls"?
"For illegal drugs or guns. Of course, you can own a weapon, but then your card must be ok. Did you see the flat gray box in the trunk of my dad's car? In there's a Riot Booster, something with sound pressure. But he wouldn't stand a chance against the big gangs in Frankfurt."
"And the whole city is... locked up?"
"You mean 'locked'. Not really, because of course, everyone has the right to move freely. But you need a reason for places like Bad Homburg. In practice, they frisk you at the gate and ask you where you're going. Then you say, for example, 'to the spa' or some business, and you can go through. They don't ask questions until your card is out of order or you look really bad."
At that moment Yilmaz came out of the kitchen smiling... a full bowl of salad in his hands, followed by... it hit Joschi like an electric shock... it had to be Clarissa! In the family she was called "Riss". Joschi knew instantly that this sharp sounding word fit her better than "Clarissa".
Definitely. She resembled her father, a younger, more feminine version of Adrian. Slim, at least 180 centimeters tall, with somewhat angular shoulders, strong-looking arms, only half as wide as Katja at the hips, only the hint of a breast under a loose shirt... confusing, the stubble-short, black hair on the high skull... confusing, the face, Adrian's face, with a high forehead and strange, hard lines, the cool amused look, especially about the pale cousin and his family... a scornful smile around the corners of her eyes that became friendlier as she looked at him and her brother.
She wasn't a second Katja. Nevertheless, Riss possessed everything that Joschi had always found fascinating in Katja... her figure, posture, movements, charisma... in a highly concentrated, almost painfully direct form. This woman... Joschi didn't even think for a moment to call her a girl... was none of what a good woman should be, according to the experienced opinion of his peers or their fathers at