18
I ran across the dark, narrow corridor, then turned left to the hallway with the iron handrail and creeped in with my back against the wall, the two tanks and the opened door in my sight. I saw Tschick running constantly and stopping at a corner, and I could tell how clueless he was, even from the back. But he ran like a fool, at least three minutes, without noticing me already behind him. He stood still on a empty field. I rose my shotgun high and hit him in the back. A stream of blood shot out of him, and he fell to the ground. “Shit.” he said, “Where the fuck are you? I can’t see a single thing.” I switched to chain gun, played around with his body and jumped in a circle.
“Great, man. Yeah, don’t overreact, dude.” Tschick pressed new game, but it was pointless. He didn’t plan the landing whatsoever. You could run behind him for hours, and he wouldn’t notice, and I killed him every time without an effort. I was a kind of world champion in Doom, and Tschick really didn’t know a single thing.
He grabbed himself a beer.
“And, if we drove away?” he asked.
“What?”
“On vacation. We don’t have anything to do whatsoever. We could go on vacation like normal people.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Off with the Lada.”
“That’s not what normal people do.”
“But we could, or?”
“Nah. Press start.”
“Why though?”
“Nope.”
“If I beat you…” Tschick said, “Let’s say, if I beat you in five rounds. Or make it ten. Ten.”
“You’re not gonna kill me even if I gave you a hundred chances.”
“Ten it is.”
He really put an effort into it. I shoved a handful of chips in my mouth, waited until he picked up his weapon and let myself be shredded.
“Seriously.” I said, “Let’s do it.”
We almost spent the whole day doing nothing. We jumped in the pool twice. Tschick told me about his brother, and then he found the beer in the fridge and chumped down three cans. I also tried to drink one. I’ve tried a decent amount of beers before, but it never tickled my fancies, and not now either. I managed three quarters of the bottle. But it didn’t have an effect on me whatsoever.
“And if they catch us?”
“They’re not going to. And, if they wanted, they could’ve done it a million years ago and then the police would be here. They don’t have the slightest idea that the Lada is stolen. They saw us for ten seconds, at most, and they’re just gonna think it’s my brother’s.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“If you wanna drive away, it’s not gonna hurt to have a destination.”
“We could pay a visit to my relatives. I have a grandfather in Walachei.”
“And where does he live?”
“What do you mean, where does he live? In Walachei.”
“Around here or what?”
“What?”
“Somewhere out there?”
“Not somewhere out there, man. In Walachei.”
“That’s the same though.”
“What’s the same?”
“Somewhere out there and Walachei, that’s the same.”
“I don’t get it.”
“That’s just a word, man.” I said and gulped down the rest of my beer. “Walachei is just a word! Kinda like BFE.”
“My family comes from there.”
“I thought you were from Russia?”
“Yeah, but a part is from Walachei. My grandfather. And my great-grandfather and – what’s weird about it?”
“It’s like having a grandpa in BFE.”
“And what’s weird about that?”
“There is no BFE, dude! BFE means Bumfunk Egypt. And there’s also no Walachei. When you say someone lives in Walachei, it means they’re living in Pampa.”
“And there’s also no Pampa?”
“No.”
“But my grandpa lives there.”
“In Pampa?”
“You’re fucking crazy, seriously. My grandpa lives in a country called Walachei in this world, and we’re driving there tomorrow.”
He went serious, and I got serious too. “I know one hundred and fifty countries and their capitals.” I said and took a sip from Tschick’s beer, “There’s no Walachei.”
“My grandfather’s cool. He has two cigarettes in his ears. And only one tooth. I was there when I was five or something.”
“What are you exactly? Russian? Or Walacheian or what?”
“German. I have a passport.”
“But where you were born.”
“From Rostow. That’s in Russia. But our family comes from everywhere. West Germany, East Germany. And Switzerland, Walachei, Jewish gipsies…”
“What?”
“What, what?”
“Jewish gipsies?”
“Yeah, man. And Walachen and…”
“No such thing.”
“What such thing?”
“Jewish gipsies. You’re saying shit. You’ve been saying shit the whole time.”
“Definitely wasn’t.”
“Jewish gipsies, that’s like English French! There’s no such thing.”
“Of course there are no English French.” Tschick said, “But there are Jewish French. And there are also Jewish gipsies.”
“Gypsy Jews.”
“Yes. And they go around Russia selling rugs with a thing on their heads. You can recognize them from the thing on their heads. A fag.”
“More like a fag on their ass. I don’t believe a single word.”
“Don’t you know this film with Georges Aznavour?” Now Tschick really wanted to explain.
“Films are films.” I said, “In real life, you can only be either Jew or Gypsy.”
“but Gypsy is’t a religion, dude. Jew is. Gypsy is someone who doesn’t have a place to live.”
“Those are berbers.”
“Berbers are carpets.” Tschick said.
I thought hard for a long time, and then when I finally asked Tschick whether he was serious about the Jewish Gypsy thing and he nodded, I believed him.
What I didn’t believe, was the shit with his grandpa. I already knew that Walachei was just a word. I proved to Tschick in a hundred ways, that Walachei didn’t exist, and I only made some progress when I made some exaggerated moves with my arms. Tschick did it again, and then he went and grabbed another beer and asked whether I wanted another one. But it didn’t tickle my fancies, and I wanted a cola.
Agitated, I saw a fly buzzing around the table. I had the impression that it was agitated as well, because I was agitated. I haven’t talked with someone like this in a long time. Tschick put two bottles on the table and said: “You’re gonna see it. My grandpa and my grandma and six cousins and the girls hot as fuck – you’re gonna see it.”
In fact, the thought slowly began to bother me. But as soon as Tschick had left, the cousins and everything else dissolved into a fog and disappeared, and all that remained was a miserable feeling. A crying misery, almost. But that had nothing to do with Tschick. That had something to do with Tatjana. With the fact that I had no idea what she was thinking about me now, and that I might never find out, and at that moment I would have given a lot to be in Wallachei or anywhere else in the world but Berlin.
Before I went to bed, I opened my computer again. I found four emails from my father complaining that I had turned off my cell phone and that it wasn’t ringing downstairs either, and I had to think up some excuses for him and explain that everything was perfectly fine here. Which it was. And because I didn’t feel like receiving these emails and couldn’t think of anything, I typed “Wallachei” into Wikipedia. And then I really started to think about it.