Untitled Part 6

“September 13th.” Evidently anticipating drama, the sergeant enunciates every syllable for effect. “What happened on September the thirteenth, Nathan? What happened then?”
I hesitate, because I don’t know how to explain.
“I will ask you again. What happened-”
Suddenly I have had enough. “I sailed to Timbuktu, then had a picnic with three pixies and a werewolf.” He is looking at me warily. “What do you fucking think happened? My dad attacked me and I killed him, I crushed him with a fucking IKEA bookcase and then I got the hell out of there.”
Seriously alarmed, the interpreter murmurs in my ear that I should calm down, sit back down, and mimes apology to the sergeant. I glare at him and bite back the urge to do something else I’ll regret.
The sergeant, however, exudes content. He leans closer to the tape recorder and never takes his triumphant gaze from my face.
“Interrogation concluded, fifteen minutes past six,” he says softly. He clicks the ‘Stop’ button and folds his arms across his round stomach.
For a moment there doesn’t seem to be enough air; I feel light-headed and vague. It is a sensation akin to drowning. Is this fear? I can hear myself saying “Steffi” again and again and my head hitting the desk as the colour and the light rushes out like a tide.

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I came home from work. He was dead drunk. The stench of spirits made my eyes water and I muttered something in disgust, picking my way through the discarded bottles and takeaway wrappers.
His expression venomous, he pushed at the bookcase. It began to sway.
I remember it so well it is like a recording in Technicolour glory. I play it.
The bookcase begins to sway.
Everything from that point happens in slow motion.
I look at his face and know he thinks it will hit me. It is what he intends. Anger consumes me to the point that a red haze forms before my eyes, momentarily blinding me. Instinctively my arms come up to protect my head at the same time as I scream something.
The solid wood hits me like a lightning-strike. I feel my shoulder shattering as I am knocked to the floor. A wave of- of power? energy? fury? radiates from me, so strong it ought to be visible, a solid force, leaving me cold and drained.
The bookcase does not fall to the ground. It rights itself as though I have shoved it, and then topples in the opposite direction. Towards the one who pushed it first. Like some sick sort of playground game. It falls on top of my father and I hear his spine snap with a satisfying crack in the split second before I pass out.

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Books littered the floor around me. I knew before I opened my eyes, because I could smell their musty scent. My mouth tasted of dust. Some of the books had fallen from their shelves and as if peeping through window slats I could see parts of his face. His eyes were rolled back in his head, his mouth open, caught in a scream. An encyclopaedia lay open, face down, beside one outstretched arm; an old address book of Mum’s had scattered its pages around him like rose petals upon a coffin.
He was plainly, clearly, undeniably dead.
I crawled away, fighting to breathe normally until my head was clear. It was like my thoughts and nerves had crawled into a tiny dark cramped space. I knew the danger but I could not do a thing. I was just caught in a numb state of excruciating panic.
It could have been seconds later, it could have been days. The paralysis broke. Shaking from head to foot, I moved like a sleepwalker round the apartment, collecting things, items which felt too cold or too heavy in my hands. At the threshold I found myself with my face an inch from the gritty carpet, limp as a puppet with cut strings. That was how I felt. Connected to nothing. How could I run when I had nowhere at all to go, nobody who knew, who understood the real me? Nobody had even got close. Never. I had refused to let them. And now I had done this. I was now officially a criminal.
Blue. I saw Frau Schiller’s book on the floor beside me. Sudden, stabbing pain shot through my shoulder in fierce red-tipped streaks. I let the pages fall open at random. A photograph. Snow. Two pink-cheeked lovers hand-in-hand, laughing, calling something to the person behind the camera. An eggshell-domed cathedral twisting its ancient spire into an iron sky. Below a single word: Berlin.
Yes. My mind honed in on it. A core. A centre. Removing every last trace of my existence from the flat, I closed the door on my old life.

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They give me a counsellor to talk to after what they call my ‘Nervenzusammenbruch’. Yes. Another one. He comes into the little room they have moved me to every day without looking at me in that way; the way which says “You’re obviously crazy, and if this wasn’t my job I’d have nothing to do with you.” He doesn’t make me speak at all, not if I don’t want to. He isn’t a lot older than me. It’s quite comforting to have him there actually. Just for the presence of another human being.
I’ve never been good at coping with change, I explain to him one day, our shadows looming large side-by-side on the opposite wall. As a kid I always wanted everything to stay the same, even little things. Cereal. Wallpaper. Bus stops. Everything. Sameness day after day made me feel safe.
Now, sick, I have an urge to recreate the worst moment of my life, the biggest change of all. Does that make me crazy? Does that make me a freak?
It feels like blasphemy. But it was so Steffi. Even her death was cinematic. I think about it without ceasing, sometimes with awe. Because it was beautiful. Yet it was no warped fantasy, not a scene from an artistic film. It was her destruction.
I miss the rawness in that scream, the childlike softness of her parted lips, the shock in her wide eyes. I miss the danger in the way her outstretched fingers almost brushed my cheek as she fell, how my hands closed around thin air as if she had passed from sweet solidity to spirit in that second. That movement as we both reached for and failed to find each other feels like the last gift I have from her. A promise that she truly still wanted me.