Page 1 of Geist Fleisch
CHAPTER ONE
“Come on! You promised you’d keep up!”
Callum narrowly dodged a collision with a well-dressed couple with a well-timed leap left. He followed Anne’s blue hat as it bobbed up and down through the crowd now spilling from the Metropol onto the rainy street near Nollendorfplatz. All he knew about the bars in this district was that the richer nancies favoured them, at least on those nights they decided to give the rough-trade boys of Kreuzberg a rest. He knew this mostly from the boastings of Viktor, who lodged in the apartment above his own in Neukölln. The number of furtive-looking gentlemen Callum had spied climbing the stairs to Viktor’s told him enough about how Viktor supplemented the meagre wages granted a machine worker. He'd tried to take it in good humour when Viktor had suggested using his own physical assets to top up his wallet, though of course the German hadn’t been joking. Perhaps he’d meant it as a compliment, or a come-on. Callum had always been lousy at reading other fellows’ intentions, even without a language barrier.
“No, no, it’s this way!”
“I thought we were going to the Eldorado?” Callum had heard stories of Berlin’s most infamous nightclub and cabaret. He’d arrived too late to see Dietrich there, of course. So had Anne,in spite of the fanciful story she’d concocted in a letter that had outraged her father, sent her mother sick to bed with worry, and convinced Callum that Berlin, with its unchallenged freedom, sounded far more exciting than dreary, rainy, dirty Nottingham. He’d just as soon convinced himself that the adventure it promised would not be obstructed by little obstacles such as not understanding German.
“We are, later! I promised someone a drink first.”
“You promisedmea drink,” he reminded her, darting between a cab pulling into the curb and a plump woman wrapped in furs. The fur-ladenFrauglared at them with indignation as Anne shot off down Kleiststrasse, a busy street that ran parallel to the U-Bahn.
The rain grew heavier, and Callum quickened his pace just enough to see Anne disappear inside a small, darkened doorway. Had he paid less attention, he might not have seen her at all.
“Guten Abend,” Anne greeted the plump, somewhat gruff looking woman guarding the entrance with all the ferocity of Cerberus protecting the Underworld. Anne shucked off her wet coat and made a show of shaking it off onto the street. The human hell hound accepted it with precisely the kind of small snort Callum had thought she’d make and acquiesced. That was, until she saw him. Anne, it seemed, was ready for that too, firing off a cheerful string of German that Callum couldn’t hope to keep up with. It didn’t buy them a smile, but it was enough to admit Callum’s sodden coat with a tired sigh.
As he followed Anne to the bar, through the smoky atmosphere of the tiny club, Callum looked around at the women surrounding them. Many sat in pairs at intimate tables. At least three affected sharp suits, cigarettes glowing in the darkness as they animated themselves in conversation. Thebartender at least greeted Anne with a smile, and Callum recognised the wordFreundin. It most decidedly had not been directed at him. Anne’s arm linked around his, continuing the exchange with intimidating fluency until the bartender too, acquiesced. Callum didn’t need to understand the words to know he was the bone of contention.
“It’s all right, darling,” Anne assured him. “We’ll have one drink here then move on, all right?”
“If you’re sure,” he muttered, now more than certain he was not the bar’s preferred clientele.
“Liebchen!” The warm, rich voice belonged to a woman who put a gentle hand on Anne’s shoulder before exchanging kisses with her.
“Helene, I want you to meet my cousin… Well, not my actual cousin, but we’ve known each other for simply donkey’s years and—”
“Callum,” he said, extending a hand he hoped would dispel Helene’s bafflement.
“Pleased to meet you,” the woman answered, somewhat stiffly. “Entscheuldegung, aber…Anne has… help me with English, but…”
“That’s more English than I know German,” he answered with a laugh that wasn’t returned.
“Drink?” Helene asked Anne.
Callum wondered if this offer extended to him as Anne rattled off some order he didn’t recognise. Seeing how she looked at Helene, along with the two drinks the bartender slid to the women, he quickly realised it didn’t.
“Drink?” the bartender asked him. It felt like an act of rescue.
“Uh…ja.Ein Bier?” His affectation made Helene’s English seem fluent. Sinking into his bar stool, Callum gave up trying to follow the conversation Anne was having with Helene, instead focusing on the only other man in the place, the pianist, who besides being in the throes of a convivial tune, was not his type at all. Right. As if he was going to cock off in a lesbian bar. The idea made him smile, all the same.
Callum had never thought too hard about his attraction to men until he began noticing Anne’s unending and ever-changing string of close female friends. He hadn’t been the only one. A few years his senior, she’d in some ways taken the brunt of any scandal or judgement with headstrong dismissal, allowing him to find and explore beautiful boys without scrutiny, shielded by Anne’s long shadow. He owed her, and if that meant sitting awkwardly, waiting for Anne to impress and probably collect her latest conquest for the rest of their night out, then that’s what he’d do.
He slid his pfennigs over to the bartender as the beer appeared. She accepted them without a word, preferring instead to talk to another woman at the far end of the bar. Rather, the woman talked in her ear, between pointed glances at Callum. The bartender returned, leaning across the bar to mumble something to him in German.
“Ein…einschubitte…” He cursed himself for getting the word wrong immediately. “Sorry, I don’t—”
“Die Schatten, Die Schatten,bitte,” she said, pointing not unkindly to a seat at the darker end of the bar.
Shadows? That much, he understood. He pleaded silently with Anne for intervention with a look she completely missed.Fine. He would wait, stuffed into a dark corner, finishing his beer in peace until she got tired of using that fake posh accent to impress the localMädchenand was good and ready to leave.
It turned outDie Schattenweren’t so bad for people-watching, and the beer was good and colder than it ever was back home. He hadn’t yet learned to tell the German beers apart, or to match them up to the various names he’d seen about the bars in Kreuzberg. Engelhardt, Haase, Sacrau... Not that he’d make the mistake of asking for a specific one ever again. He’d asked for Bürgerliches at one place and the look of disgust the bartender had given him before a curt ‘nein’ had been enough to dissuade him from trying to name any more of the local brews. Some young bloke with a wry smile and thickly veined arms had tried to bring it up to him after. He’d caught the name Bürgerliches, at least, but with no hope of understanding each other, Callum had settled for tucking a hand into the man’s trousers, catching his mouth in a deep, hungry kiss, and enjoying their non-verbal, though far from silent night together. He’d had to borrow a few marks from Viktor to settle the bill in the morning. He should have known his luck with this Saxon beauty was too good to be true.
But at least tonight, his beer was cold.
He watched the piano player get up and collect his sheet music as a young woman dressed in a sharp tuxedo, her hair slicked back in the style that seemed popular here, replaced him. A couple of women cheered as the music sped up. A few even rose to dance on the small clearing in the floor. Callum wanted a cigarette. He reached for one, only to realise he’d left them in his coat, and no urge to smoke would persuade him to go another round with the surly bouncer.
“Entschuldigung?” he asked, getting it right this time as he made eye contact with the bartender. Unable to remember the word for cigarette, he mimed the action. She stared at him as if he were insane before holding up her hands to show she couldn’t help. He was about to ask Anne for one when cold fingers stroked his chin. Startled, he turned to find their source, a young woman wearing a small black mask that looked more at home at a masquerade ball than in some Berlin dive. She extended a cigarette, gently placing it between his lips with a white-gloved hand. The glove was almost as white was her skin, or was that just the light? Perhaps the combination of the black mask, a tuxedo not unlike the pianist’s and…! He’d never seen a woman wearingblacklipstick. Callum knew Berlin to be a place of self-expression and recreation, but he’d never seen someone quite like this.
