„You heard me right, she was my best friend,“ she repeats so that there are no doubts about what she had just said. „We have been friends since childhood,“ she adds and waits if I will react somehow. When she gets no reaction out of me, she continues. „I knew all along what she did to you but I made her a promise to never let you know that we knew each other,“ she finishes.
„Well, I don´t know exactly what you expect me to say to this,“ I reply, a sheer desperation washing over me since I still have no clue how it’s all gonna be linked together. If she hadn’t told me that she had been withholding it from me, I would have still been clueless. I feel like an empty container that needs to be filled with memory substance, but I can´t tell her that.
„If you let me speak, I will try to explain everything to you, alright?“ She looks hopeful when she searches my eyes for any reaction and I just nod silently in agreement. I´m glad that I don’t need to talk and Sab starts to speak slowly.
„We met in primary school. We used to sit together and were inseparable friends, as it always is with girls that age. We were like two peas in a pod and we also used to fall for the same guys. But it could never separate us, because we always fell in love with the ones who didn’t want us.“ She smiles and continues. „When we were fourteen, we both fell crazily in love. And sure enough, once again with boys who didn’t want us. This time around they were two of them at least, even though they were the same. The only difference was that they didn’t know about it. I fell in love with Tom and she with you.“ She smiles at me, when I raise my eyebrows at her, obviously stunned.
„We were two of those girls screaming at concerts, your names painted on our faces, following you from concert to concert, having blast, enjoying this craziness more than anything else in this world. Once you even blessed me with a shiny smile and an autograph in my scrapbook, and Tom glanced at me in his typically seductive way, but that was it. We wouldn’t dare to dream about anything more than that. We weren’t that stupid to hope that you could ever love us for real.“
She sighs and continues. „Platonic love stayed with us for about three years, but then we slowly started to realize that you really were just two boys from shiny posters and eventually we got over you. All that was left were beautiful memories and a mountain of posters that I had to take off the walls and ceiling of my room when we redecorated the house many years later. If you ever wanted a TH archive, I can donate a complete collection,“ Sab offers while smiling tentatively and take another sip of her wine.
„Soon after, Karin fell in love with Torsten and I fell for that bastard Peet, who ended up cheating on me with his own wife. From time to time and for the sake of sweet nostalgia we went to your concert but it wasn’t as a strong devotion as before. We both lived the typical lives of nineteen-year-old girls.“
She lowers her voice and continues. „And then I met you at that destined party at Manfred’s where we got high and ended up here in your bedroom.“ She puts her hand on my shoulder and waits till I look into her eyes; there is sadness in them, but at the same time I can see a tiny smile on her lips.
I smile at her too and I’m glad that Tom managed to tell me all about it already yesterday. If I hadn’t known I would have most probably fainted right now.
„All that adolescent infatuation with you both came back to me with full force when Tom kissed me for the first time at the party. All three of us were totally out of it, but I still realized somehow that he was the one who took my heart a long time ago and that now I had the chance to have him. Late, but still. I was a little bit surprised that you were so eager to join us kissing, but I thought that it was because of the pot and alcohol. I was plotting in my head how to get into Tom´s bed and that no matter what. I wanted to reach the goal I didn’t reach when I was seventeen. You know me, when I get something in my head I am relentless. You were both adorably drank and you let yourself get manipulated right into the bedroom. I do not need to tell you though that I was not prepared for that kind of shock that awaited me. Tom couldn’t care less about me and started to make passionate love to you instead. You totally zoned me out and at that moment I realized that your insinuated intimate relationship people used to talk so much about, was a fact.“
She smiles at me with understanding and continues. „I gave up, there was no point to stay so I left you in the bed and I went to sleep in the living room. The next morning you were so shocked to see me that I thought you would both get a heart attack. I was playing with you for a bit but I already knew that I wasn’t going to tell anyone. There was no reason. I liked you both a lot.
The next day I told Karin that I met you at the party and she was naturally in a state of shock. She got terribly envious. She was going through an unpleasant break-up with Torsten at the time so I wanted to cheer her up somehow, so I told her the funny party story. Of course I didn’t tell her about true nature of your relationship. When I make a promise you can count on me. She knew though that you and me were in contact and she was desperate to get to meet you too. She wouldn’t let it rest and she nagged at me for so long that I finally caved in. I didn’t want to do it and it took her several weeks to persuade me but at the end I found out what party you were invited to go to. It was a party at the Hilton Hotel and when Tom got me a free pass I gave it to Karin.
The rest was already destiny’s doing. You had had an argument with Tom the day before the party so you came to the Hilton alone. I wasn’t there to worn you and Karin was on a mission. She had rented a room for one night in the hotel so she had a place to take you to. And she succeeded, thanks to your drunkenness,“ Sabine finishes the story. I was truly an easy target that night.
I drink up the rest of the wine that’s left in my glass and I suddenly remember the headache I had had that morning.
„You see, she must have thought that she still loved you and believed that it could be somehow mutual, but when she woke up the next morning in an empty bed, she knew that she stood no chance. You run away and she realized that it was all just one big mistake. She cried a lot, because she already thought that she had got you, but she was terribly wrong. She told me about your night and then we didn’t see each other for some time. When she finally called me three weeks later telling me that she was pregnant with your child, I thought she was joking. I couldn’t tell her about your relationship with Tom, but she insisted on meeting you. She thought that a baby would change everything, that you would at least start speaking to her on normal terms. After a lot of pleading to me, I gave her your cell phone number. She came to me after your meeting and she was crying again. I tried to calm her down, to make her see it from your point of view but there was no love for you left in her. She started to hate you instead.
She also told me that she knew about your relationship with Tom. She was telling me all details about that night and about how you were calling out Tom’s name instead of hers. She was going to use it as her weapon against you. ‚He will pay!‘ she was repeating over and over again. ‚I don´t want that bastard of his, he would turn out to be as cold hearted as him!‘ she was screaming and crying. I felt sorry for her but I knew I couldn’t help her.“
Was I really that cold hearted? That fact about my old myself stings a bit. I´m not such a person… or am I? Maybe I was, at that meeting. I didn’t want to have anything to do with her so I chose to be harsh. I was afraid that she would ruin my relationship with Tom and I needed to get rid of her quickly. It was her after all who asked for money to get an abortion, she didn’t even ask my opinion. I just did what she wanted. She was the one making the rules, she was the one extorting, I was a victim here.
„Then she disappeared from the surface of Earth for a few months,“ Sab continues. „I didn’t know what kind of an agreement you two made but I supposed that you gave her money for the abortion and didn’t care about her anymore. She didn’t show up for a very long time, she didn’t pick up the phone when I called, she didn’t answer my messages. I was slowly starting to think that she was dead somewhere, when one night the door bell woke me up.
When I opened the door, I found totally drunk Karin standing there. She came in babbling nonsense. I didn’t understand what she was trying to tell me, but I had to take care of her, she was my friend. She looked terrible. Greasy and messy hair, grey sallow skin, no make-up, her body out of shape, face all puffy… a typical alcoholic. She had been such a beautiful girl once and now this. I put her in the bed and when I woke up, she was gone. She had lost her cell phone and she didn’t have money for a new one, she drank it all. I didn’t know how to find her, and I couldn’t ask you because I was not ready to confess that I had something to do with her. I didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship, I really liked you both and this would be probably the end of it. You have, for obvious reasons, never talked about Karin in front of Tom, so I gave up.“
I pour myself some more red wine while staying quiet. What can I possibly say to this? Sabine once again plays a key role in mine and Tom´s life, we just didn’t know about it. I refill her glass too and wait to see if she will continue. It is quite clear to me now that Karin drank herself to death. My visit to her flat, the one I remembered, is a clear proof of that. When she needed some money, she called me and I arrived and paid. Exactly as she wanted.
„And then I bumped into her by chance on the street. Actually, she bumped into me. She almost knocked me over with a baby carriage. She wasn’t particularly drunk, she was just disoriented and somehow she steered her baby carriage right into the car I was just getting out of. When she saw me, her face turned pale and she looked like she wanted to avoid meeting me all together. It wasn’t difficult to catch her and get her to the nearest coffee house though. I bought her two glasses of wine and she started to talk. She was bragging about how well she was doing, that you were giving her enough money, that she had rented a flat where she lived with her child. When I asked her who the father was she said that she didn’t even remember. ‚Some drunken bum I met‘, was her final answer.
I could see that she was lying. She couldn’t be doing well, I could tell from her clothes and shabby look. I insisted to walk her home just to see where she lived. It was an old, dirty house, in the urban part of eastern Berlin, the corridors were littered with rubbish and it looked the same in her flat.
I invited myself inside, she would have loved to kick me out, but I didn’t let her. I opened the window to let some fresh air in, the stench from alcohol and cigarettes that lingered in her house was repulsive. There was an incredible mess inside. I didn’t get it how she could possibly live with her child in such conditions. She was presumably treating him well, but when she got drunk, the boy was out of luck. Fortunately she had a kind, helpful, old neighbour, who looked after the boy every time there was a need. I tried to tidy up her flat, but it was hopeless. When I came back the next time, it looked exactly the same as before,“ Sabine says sadly and I can see in her face that she is blaming herself a lot.
„We continued like that for few months. From time to time I visited her, but the child was more and more often at the neighbour’s, so I didn’t even have a chance to see him growing up. Meanwhile, I became your make-believe lover and of course, she knew it. She didn’t object or anything, but I could see that it bothered her. Sometimes she told me that she had called you for money again, she even got herself a new cell phone so I could contact her, but she wanted me to pay for the calls. She was drinking more and more, spending all her money on booze and gradually she started adding pills to the alcohol.“ Sabine sighs and drinks a little of her wine. I can see that it´s hard for her to talk about it.
„Then, someone called the social services. Karin called me in desperation begging me to come over immediately. She told me that they took her boy away. She was in such a mess, but I had been expecting this. The neighbours probably couldn’t look at it anymore. She was drunk, crying in my arms and she was repeating one sentence over and over again: ‚Why? Why on his birthday? Why?‘ I felt sorry for her, but I knew that she wouldn’t get her son back any time soon. I tried to talk some sense into her telling her she needed to go to rehab otherwise she would never see her son again. While I was talking to her she continued drinking and when she fell asleep I went home. In the car I was thinking about what she had told me and then I got it.“ Sabine stops talking and looks at me.
Tohle byl velmi důležitý díl… Když jsem ho četla v české verzi, skoro jsem nedýchala. Ale moc jsem si přála, aby… – ale to je hlavní téma další kapitoly.
Janulko, tak trochu jsem nevěděla, kam mám napsat koment první řady, tak jsem ho písla pod 41.díl a musím říct, že tvou povídku miluju, úplně jsi mě okouzlila. Opravdu smekám! ♥♥♥