Sorry - Shaun Whiteside

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and crosses the editorial office with the paper bags under his arms. He’s disappointed. Bernd Jost-Degen has never learned to formulate an apology properly. Never say you’re sorry and hide your hands in your trouser pockets as you do so. We all want to see the weapons we’re being injured with. And if you’re going to lie as he just did, then at least take a step toward the other guy and let him feel you’re telling the truth. Fake closeness, because closeness can mask lies. There’s nothing more pitiful than someone who can’t apologize for his mistakes.

      No one looks up when Kris walks past. He wishes the whole gang of them would choke on their own ignorance there and then. He’s worked closely with them for a year, and now not a single one of them looks up.

      Kris sets the bags down on the floor of the elevator and looks at himself in the mirror on the wall. He waits for his reflection to look away. The reflection grins back.

      Better than nothing, Kris thinks and presses the button for the ground floor.

      The two bags contain all his research and interviews from the last few months, which no one’s really interested in. Current for a day, then just some junk that’s recycled over and over. Journalism today, Kris thinks, really wanting to set the whole pile on fire. When the doors open again, he steps out of the elevator and leaves the bags on the floor. At almost the same time they tip sideways with a sigh, then the elevator doors close, and it’s over.

      Kris steps onto the pavement and takes a deep breath.

      We’re in Berlin, we’re on Gneisenaustrasse. The World Cup has been over for nine weeks, and it’s as if it never happened. Kris doesn’t want that to happen to him. He’s in his late twenties and after twelve months in a steady job he’s unemployed again. He has no interest in looking for another job, and neither does he want to switch, like hundreds of thousands of others, from one internship to the next, getting by on starvation wages and hoping someone takes him on sooner or later. No. And he doesn’t want to work as a trainee, either, because he’s had training and he’s been through university. His attitudes are at odds with the job market—he’s bad at begging and far too arrogant for small jobs. But Kris doesn’t plan to despair. He won’t end up with his head in the oven, no one will be aware of his problems. Kris is an optimist, and there are only two things he can’t stand: lying and unfairness. Today he is aware of both, and his mood matches the fact. If Kris Marrer knew now that he has been moving toward a new goal since waking up, he would change his attitude. You’d be able to see him smile. But as he is unsuspecting, he curses the day and sets off for the subway. He wonders how to straighten a world in which everyone’s used to standing crooked.

      TAMARA

      JUST AS KRIS IS leaving the editorial office, Tamara Berger is sitting up in bed with a start. The ceiling is just a few inches away from her head, and Tamara knows she will never get used to it. Like waking up in a coffin. She falls back into the pillows and thinks about the dream that is echoing around in her head. A man asked her if she had made her decision. Tamara couldn’t see his face, she could just see the tensed sinews at his throat. So she tried to walk around the man, but his head kept turning away from her until hairline cracks formed at his neck that made Tamara think of dried-out earth. Finally she laid a hand on the man’s head so that he couldn’t turn away any more. She walked around the man and woke up.

      We are in Berlin South, two streets away from Steglitz Town Hall. The room looks out onto a courtyard to the rear, the curtains are drawn, and a wasp is flying tirelessly against the windowpane. Tamara doesn’t know how the wasp got through the sealed window. The alarm clock shows 11:19. Tamara doesn’t believe it and holds the alarm clock right in front of her eyes before she gets cursing out of the bunk and puts on last night’s clothes. A minute later she dashes from the apartment as if the house were in flames.

      You’ll now be wondering why we are spending any time on a woman who can’t even manage to wash her face or put on fresh clothes after she wakes up. Tamara asks herself the same question as she looks at her face in a reflection on the subway. When she got home at four this morning she was far too tired to take her makeup off. The running mascara left dark traces under her eyes. Her hair is straggly, her blouse crumpled and open one button too far, clearly revealing her cleavage. I look like a tramp, Tamara thinks and buries her face in her hands. Without a word, the man diagonally opposite hands her a tissue. Tamara says thank you and blows her nose. She wishes she had slept through the whole day.

      Even though it’s hard for you at the moment, you have to believe that Tamara Berger is an important element in this story. One day you will sit opposite her and ask her whether she’s made her decision. Without her we’d have to part now.

      The job center is closed. Tamara gives the door a halfhearted kick and walks to the nearest bakery. She eats a sandwich standing up and sips at a coffee that tastes as if it’s spent a third night on the hot plate. The woman behind the counter shrugs and refuses to make a new pot. She says what’s there has to be drunk first. And no one else has complained. Tamara thanks her for her terrible service, and when the woman turns away she steals her packets of sugar. All of them.

      The apartment belongs to Tamara’s sister, Astrid. First floor in the front of an old building. Not beautiful, not ugly, just practical. Two rooms lead off to the front, and the third, next to the bathroom, is Tamara’s. It has a depressing view of a gray courtyard that has never seen sunlight. In summer the stench of rubbish bins is so bad that Tamara has sometimes woken up choking in the night. When she complained to her sister, Astrid said that as far as she was concerned Tamara could go back and live with their parents if she wanted. Tamara kept her mouth shut and sealed up the chinks in the windows.

      We are family, she thought, that’s how things are, you keep your mouth shut and hope things will get better one day.

      Tamara really thinks that. Her father took early retirement, at thirty-nine; her mother spends her days behind the till at Kaiser’s supermarket, and in the evening she sits and crochets in front of the television. Apart from Astrid, Tamara has an elder brother who disappeared from home at some point to emigrate to Australia. The children grew up with the traditional bourgeois philosophy that life is no one’s friend and you should be content with what you have.

      When Tamara gets back from the job center, Astrid is standing at the stove stirring a kind of green cream. The flat smells like the locker room after a game.

      “It stinks in here,” says Tamara by way of greeting.

      “I can’t smell anything any more,” Astrid replies and taps her nose. “It’s like Chernobyl in there.”

      Tamara kisses her sister on the cheek and opens the window.

      “So? What happened?”

      Tamara would like to answer that nothing’s happened, because nothing actually has happened, but she knows exactly what Astrid means. So she keeps quiet and pulls off her boots and hopes to get away without any further questions. There are days when she manages to do that.

      Astrid studies each of Tamara’s movements. Not a lot has changed between the sisters since childhood. They might be four years apart, but no one can see the difference. Tamara doesn’t know whether that speaks for her or against her. In the old days she always wanted to be the older one.

      “Don’t make that face,” says Astrid. “One of those big bookshops will take you on eventually. Dussmann or someone. They’re always looking for people.”

      Astrid can talk. People with jobs are always hearing that there are jobs everywhere. A year ago Tamara’s sister set up a nail studio in the basement of the building. She also mixes up creams and face masks to order. At the end of the year she intends to specialize in massages. Astrid runs the nail studio on her own. Tamara would like to help her, because anything would be better than sitting around idle, but Astrid thinks Tamara is overqualified.

      Tamara hates the term. It sounds as if she’d developed an infectious illness after she took her final exams. Normally qualified is always better, it means the employer can pay less. Student is best of

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