Elefant

‘He’s right,’ Bolle mumbled. ‘How do I know they don’t exist?’

10

The same day

All the washing machines at Meeting Point were being used and all the showers were occupied. At most tables in the cafeteria people were waiting for seats to become free. Their clothes were damp and dirty, and their frozen bodies were longing for a hot shower. It might be hours before it was Schoch’s turn.

He knew most of the people waiting and nodded to some of them. Then he left.

The rain had eased up somewhat, but a spiteful little wind had picked up. Schoch pulled the coat around him more tightly and took longer strides.

After ten minutes he’d reached the shiny chrome WC container. It was occupied, but at least nobody was waiting outside. He put his heavy holdall down beside the door and sat on top of it.

Bolle was seeing white mice, and he was seeing pink elephants. Sumi had seen animals too: cockroaches. ‘The size of your fist!’ he’d claimed, clenching his tiny hand.

But that had been when Sumi was in withdrawal. Schoch wasn’t. And Bolle? Unlikely, judging by the state he’d been in at the Morning Sun. But he hadn’t said when he’d seen the white mice. Maybe it was yesterday. Maybe he’d tried to stay off the sauce and it had happened then. Schoch should have asked.

But was it important? If these visions only occurred when you were in withdrawal – which Schoch certainly wasn’t – didn’t that mean the little pink elephant had been no hallucination?

Pink elephants? Come off it!

11

The same day

The electric door to the WC slid open and a young woman stepped out. Her blonde hair hung down in thick strands, some of which were coloured green. She’d reapplied her lipstick and the dark red stood out sharply from her pale face. Eyeing Schoch with tiny pupils, the woman pressed the large shoulder bag more tightly to her slender body and walked away with faltering steps.

Schoch stood up quickly and darted into the WC before the door slid shut again, to save himself the franc he would have had to put in the slot otherwise.

The WC was constructed out of plastic and stainless steel, without gaps and cracks so it could easily be hosed down. The floor around the loo was wet from the water that sluiced the toilet bowl and flooded it each time the door was opened.

Beside the toilet was the loo paper that the woman had used to cover the rim. The smell of patchouli oil hung in the air.

In the metal basin he found a syringe like the ones you could get from the vending machine twenty metres away. Schoch threw it in the bin. Then he undressed, went to the loo, took a flannel and soap from his holdall and washed himself.

In the mirror he saw a haggard-looking man with long hair and an unkempt beard, both blackish-brown and streaked with grey, just like his sparse chest hair.

He looked away and continued washing himself.

Had he drunk more yesterday than on other evenings? Or harder stuff than the litre cans of cheap beer from the supermarket? Where had he been anyway? With the dog lovers at the station as always? Followed by dinner at the soup kitchen? And a nightcap at Hauptplatz tram stop?

He couldn’t recall anything unusual. But was this really his recollection of yesterday? How did it differ from the day before, the day before that, and the day before the day before that? If yesterday had been different from the evenings before and he had no memory of it, wouldn’t the memory of the evening before that leap in to take its place?

Schoch had admitted to himself long ago that he was an alcoholic. But he was a disciplined alcoholic, he kept telling himself. He had his alcoholism under control. He could stop whenever he wanted, as he’d proved several times already. Stopped and, because he’d managed it, started again. He’d stop for good when there was a compelling reason to do so.

Was a pink elephant a compelling reason?

‘Are you sick?’ Giorgio asked.

Schoch had declined the beer he’d been offered. ‘Just not thirsty.’

‘Since when did you drink because you were thirsty?’

Schoch shrugged.

Giorgio was the down-and-out Schoch liked most. His sleeping place lay around one hundred metres upstream from Schoch’s. It was also a hollow eroded by the river, only a little roomier. Giorgio needed more space because he had three dogs. Obedient mongrels with colourful scarves around their necks. He would starve for these dogs and sometimes he did if there wasn’t enough for all four. His real name was Georg, but everyone called him Giorgio. It suited him for he had a moustache he spent a fair time looking after and he always wore a neckerchief like his dogs.

Giorgio was once an insurance salesman and he’d retained his verbosity from that time. Conversations between him and Schoch were very one-sided. But as Schoch liked listening to him – Giorgio was neither pushy, nor nosy, nor stupid – and Giorgio liked talking, this wasn’t a problem for either of them. That’s why Schoch enjoyed spending the hours before lunch with the dog lovers, even though he didn’t really like dogs. There was always beer to be had, even when he’d spent the 986 francs basic subsistence that each homeless person received from the state per month. And they had a cosy regular plot near the station and the wholesaler CONSU. By the river when the weather was good and in the tram shelter if it was raining.

The few seats were occupied so Schoch sat on the ground, leaning against the back of the shelter, listening to Giorgio and watching the passers-by. He knew a few of them by sight because he’d sat here so often as they walked past without paying attention to him or anyone else in his group. Very occasionally he would recognise someone from his former life too. Men in suits, mostly, but also a few women in suits. All older and all passing by without so much as a glance in his direction. Even if they had taken notice of Schoch they wouldn’t have recognised him, twelve kilos lighter, nine years older and with a beard.

‘Got a fag?’ Lilly’s high-pitched whine tore him from his thoughts. Schoch took a packet from his pocket, tapped out a cigarette, but rather than offer it to Lilly, slid it out himself and passed it to her. He didn’t want her jittery, filthy fingers touching the filters of the other cigarettes.

Lilly had appeared out of the blue five years ago as the girlfriend of Marco, a young junkie. She couldn’t have been older than twenty at the time, pretty but prone to abrupt mood swings, and determined to get Marco off the needle. Soon she was addicted herself and when he died of an overdose she was four months pregnant.

The underweight boy she gave birth to was given up for adoption as soon as he’d completed his withdrawal treatment. Lilly stayed with the dog lovers, started selling her body to buy drugs, increased her doses and fell into increasing self-neglect. Now she looked about forty and with her thin, punctured arms and poor teeth couldn’t find punters any more.

Schoch offered Lilly a light.

‘I’ll give her one thing.’ Giorgio grinned. ‘She’s loyal to her brand. Only ever smokes Other People’s.’

‘Very funny,’ Lilly grumbled, going over to the dogs.

Just after twelve Schoch headed for the soup kitchen. His stomach could cope with something to eat now.

12

The same day

Perhaps the macaroni cheese was too stiff a challenge for his stomach; the noodles were swimming in the fat of sweated onions, cream and melted cheese. Nor did the odours of the people sitting next to him help, or the smells drifting over from the kitchen. Schoch let some liquid drip from the baked pasta on his fork, then forced himself to eat a couple of mouthfuls.

The soup kitchen wasn’t renowned for its cuisine, but the food was free. In Meeting Point the food cost four francs – for that you could get four litre-cans of 5.4 per cent beer at CONSU.

But seeing as he was dry at the moment, he could have shelled out the four francs, it occurred to him.

He speared three macaroni on his fork and watched the fat drip off, the process slightly accelerated by his trembling hand. ‘Do you know why I drink?’ Bolle used to yell. ‘To stop my hands shaking!’ Around this time of day Schoch’s trembling had usually stopped. But apart from this, going without alcohol was – as expected – all right. It was just boring.

The rain looked as if it had set in for the day. Schoch walked close to the houses to avoid being splashed by the cars zooming past. Apart from him there was just an old woman and her dog on Blechwalzenstrasse. She was having a tussle with her umbrella, her large handbag and her overweight pet, who was mobilising all four of his skinny legs to resist this sodden outing.

Schoch went into the Salvation Army hostel, took off his wet coat and hung it on the rack. Behind the glass of the reception booth an elderly man looked up from his free newspaper. ‘Is Furrer here?’ Schoch asked.

The man nodded. ‘In the office.’

Schoch went up to the door marked ‘Management’, knocked and went in.

Furrer was a shaven-headed man with a five-day beard. He was probably about fifty, wore jeans, a checked shirt and a corduroy jacket. ‘Take a seat,’ he said, pointing to one of the visitors’ chairs from the junk shop.

Schoch sat down.