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Chapter Text

Desiderata (Chapter 1) - 'Fruckeneintopf'

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αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ παύσαντο πόνου τετύκοντό τε δαῖτα
δαίνυντ᾽, οὐδέ τι θυμὸς ἐδεύετο δαιτὸς ἐΐσης.

- Book II, lines 430-31

Sven Kruspe makes the best stews in Schwerin, and he resents that greatly.

This is not a bad thing, to clarify. He has fed a great many people and satisfied most of them, a great virtue by all accounts. It is, however, endless work: Sven's days are filled with peeling root vegetables, sautéing them, and boiling them, in that order (repeat ad infinitum). Now and then he adds a bay leaf, salt-and-peppers the broth, or chop up some meat to toss in. Not hard work, but not fulfilling, and every day at this Gaststätte reminds him he's not where he wants to be in life. Being the best at throwing things into a pot – at a self-service cafe, in Schwerin – is not what he'd like to be known to the world for.

But hired to cook he was, and so he must. Better a young man with a mediocre apprenticeship under his belt than one without, rudderless and directionless in a rapidly changing world. Sven pauses among a pile of peeled potatoes, the paring knife poised deftly in his hand, looking out of the window. With the back of his other hand he rubs off the steam. Rain in the city centre. It will not let up until evening. He'll be home by then.

He just hopes someone will look after his stew after he's gone.

Sven works lunches. He's not sure why the evening soups and stews have suddenly become his problem, but he has the requisite pride, and someone needs to do it. He's tried leaving out the prepared ingredients for the evening cooks. Arranged them on his own mise-en-place, everything barely short of labelled in order. Nein, they said: he guarantees a particular baseline of taste, and the patrons like it that way. Better he take care of it, it's for the common good. He's not sure if that's true, but he'll do it if it keeps the Gaststätte afloat. At least stews are more flavourful when allowed to rest.

Business has been slow recently. He has very little money.
Those two things should be prevented if he wants to stay alive.

The door swings open. Sven tosses the potato peels into a bucket. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a young man at the doorway. He stands there for a moment, blankly staring, fiddling with the collar of his coat – reading yet again the ubiquitous sign Sie werden platziert! - then, still fumbling, goes and takes a seat. He picks up the menu card and surveys it carefully. Puts it down, then gazes blankly ahead. Sven would recommend the Buletten, personally. They're not fancy, and maybe they won't taste the best after sitting under a heated element all morning, but he made them by hand and can attest to their quality.
Besides, the man came for a late lunch. The only other option is cabbage-and-bacon soup, without much of either in it. The cook who made that walked out to get drunk halfway through the morning shift, and has not returned since. It's just slop at this point: clear on top, cloudy and fibrous at the bottom, a few small, sad, colourless slivers of pork swirling around. Sven would never have stood for it, had he been in charge.

But hey, maybe that's how he likes it. Sven doesn't shift the tables, anyway. To each their own.

He cubes the potatoes and throws them in a pan to sauté.

Sven has seen this man before, several times. He has little variation: dark hair, a brooding face, always a basket or a box held to his body with one arm. It's always just the one, and may be full to the brim, or totally empty. (Sven has not noticed a pattern in the contents.) He lives in the area and comes for lunch, the generic descriptor for most of this cafe's clientele. Only the vestige of memory keeps Sven invested in his appearances – not without profit, as it'll turn out later.

The first time he came, it was with an older man. It was pouring with rain then, too. Sven had just begun working there. Not his first job as a cook, but the first with his own station; he didn't think he'd stick around for more than a season or two. Dripping with grease to his elbows he'd glanced up, saw the two peering past him at the written menu, and looked away out of politeness.

The older man with glasses, the young man with brooding green eyes. Father and son. They looked exactly as uncomfortable with each other as that description demanded. They spoke in quiet voices, but bluntly enough, as Sven overheard from the younger one: "Let's go, it's too dirty here."

You're no painting yourself, Sven had thought dryly, putting the carrots and parsnips out to soak. Rightly, too, for the young man's trousers and sleeves were plastered with dirt – a trait noticeably absent, Sven noted, on the older man, who frowned with a disapproval all too familiar. "Well, I'm hungry, and I need to take care of it somewhere."

No argument was had on whether this had to be the place. So there they stayed, and ate. Sven watched them go. That would've been the end of it, except the younger one kept coming back, dirty floors or not. Looking only at his menu choices, he even turned out to be rather adventurous over time. This is exactly the kind of continuity that makes Sven's daily life bearable: not at the forefront, but always there, and always reliable.

"Sven."

"Ah?"

Another basket is dumped unceremoniously in front of him. "He's cleared out the Buletten, make some more."

Full of potatoes, yet again. Sven sighs and rubs his forehead. The other cook narrows his eyes.

"Of course."

Yes, yes, the daily grind. Talk about an impossible daydream.

But even so, Sven is oddly glad, looking at the empty row under the heating element. A glance in the young man's direction reveals that he's served himself all six remaining patties, all tuts and glares aside from the patrons behind him; he pours himself some water, goes back to fetch more fries while he's at it, and sits down contentedly. That's something he could never fault this customer for, that air of gladness, especially when he feasts on whatever Sven cooked that day. For someone who's never taken notice of Sven – who can't even see who cooked what – he's been very consistent in trying out Sven's handiwork.

Schnitzel, yes. Pea soup, yes. Pork chops, cabbage rolls, even the watery Stroganoff on swollen pasta when there were supply shortages throughout the city. Run-of-the-mill cafeteria or not, visitors are guaranteed to receive their money's worth here.
So Sven continues his work. He stirs the potatoes into the bubbling pot, sautéing oil and all, and tosses two bay leaves into the concoction. He sculpts more Buletten and throws them on the grill. After that, he washes the new batch of potatoes and peels them too. Out in the dining area the man chews his patties, slicing each one in rough quarters, eating them speared with one or two fries at a time. Sometimes he stares at the window, tracking raindrops on the glass, as the city goes about its grey-but-steadfast life outside. He sits alone in the corner. His gaze is very far away. Sven wonders if it's nice, where his head is at.

And the stew's starting to simmer. It's good stew.

-----

Sven has always had family problems.

Perhaps that's why he can't keep his mind off that young man. He doesn't entertain this connection often, because he doesn't have anyone who could advise him on it – who's he going to talk to, the man? – and also because it sounds so pitiful. Family problems is such an ingrained phrase, like his entire household was an inherent wreck where everyone got thrashed up and down and sideways, when the reality is that he just doesn't feel much of anything towards them. They're like people who have nothing to do with him whatsoever. Sometimes it's as if Sven wasn't even born, rather materialized; like he alone came from a distant planet, detached from Earth's place in the cosmos, always in the wrong crib.

The alienation bothered him when he was younger. Even as a child he knew he'd fallen through the cracks. He hated it at the time.

Now he's just tired. Hatred hath made me sick, or so he read in a poem once.

He sighs and lights another candle. Its glow falls on the guitar against the corner. He gets up to fetch it, takes it out from its case, and holds it on his lap lovingly.

This room is small and cheap, but it's his. He's been here for over two years, first to attend conservatory, then to make use of his apprenticeship. Home is a village a hundred kilometres from here, neither too far nor too near. He has no urge to visit and would prefer to be further away, if anything, but this is the most he can do for now.

He'd be out of here if there were opportunities. If they aligned with his passions, even better. With guitar held to his body he moves towards the window, and wipes off the condensation, peering into the dark.

Still night, no stars. Nary a passerby. Even the bars and pubs are quiet, their music minimal and distant as if through a fog, not that there's much of a music scene in Schwerin. Sven would like for that to change, but he doesn't know how to go about it. His chef's whites are the only thing he has the energy to change, on most days.

Sven draws the curtain. Extinguishes all the candles but one, the shortest one, which will burn out under its glass case by the time he goes to sleep.
He returns the guitar to its case. Opens a package of brown bread. With a knife he cuts rough slices, and loads them up with the deli meats he got from the cafe. From room to kitchen he goes every day, back-and-forth between each transit point, moving a lot but never going anywhere. It's enough to make him miss the conservatory. There the rules were strict, but he had a direction: it was there he learned jazz guitar, both the instrument and the style, vibrant and unpredictable enough it excited him. Back then his life seemed to sparkle in unexpected places.

Presently it's as dull as pumpernickel. He chews on the hope such a time will come again.

-----

Not many come to the Selbstbedienungsgaststätte nowadays. When they do, they seldom talk. Just about everyone has taken up reading, preparing for the intellectual conversations on the street – but as the Gaststätte is merely a transit point, they don't hear much of it, much to the consternation of the workers. "It's the Glasnost." They mourn in hushed voices, polishing the glasses. "The SED say they aren't having it, but how? – That Gorbachev unearthed something too big, too hot to be contained. First them and then us. It's the beginning of the end."

Sven can see it. Books and papers, by the dozens, appear in the Gaststätte every day. Carried underarm, or generously left behind, so other patrons may also become informed citizens by the end of their meal.
The young man comes for lunch again. He too leaves a book behind. Sven, in an unusual move, takes it after clearing the table. It is not claimed by the end of the day, and so back to his room he goes, the book bouncing lightly in his bag. Over familiar candlelight he surveys the unfamiliar contents, which are not in any way what he expected. The book is small and leather-bound, with narrow ruling inside: a notebook, in other words, of the sort one would take to university. Sipping at leftover stew, Sven turns the pages slowly, his mind filling with questions.

     Da steht ein alter Baum.
     In ihm ein hohler Raum.
     Darinnen wohnt ein Specht.
     Mir ist 's recht.

He raises his eyebrows. The poem jumps out on the first page, carefully handwritten, center-aligned, unattributed. Sven turns the book front and back and can't find a name, nor is there one on this page. The writing is not elegant but it is very clear, even purposeful. Sven is oddly excited.

He gets up and turns the light on.

Above his head the bulb flashes, drowning out the candles. He blows those out and waves the smoke away. Yes, the light does work; Sven is just penny-pinching. It only comes on when the neighbours are complaining about his guitar, and he wants to spite them – or more rarely, if he needs to pay full attention to something. One doesn't encounter a poet in the wild often. What else awaits Sven in those pages, whatever can that man be up to?

     Out of my hand Autumn eats a leaf: we are friends.
     We peel time out of a nut and teach it to run:
     time sprints back into the shell.

That one is attributed to a Paul Celan. The following pages bring forth more startling stanzas, more names: Izabella Akhmadulina, Bertolt Brecht, Ingeborg Bachmann, Kito Lorenc, Elke Erb. All the poems are painstakingly copied by the same hand; what few errors there are have been firmly scrubbed out, or inked over with the smallest possible patch. Sven almost fancies he can see the man's distress in each mark, those tiny signs of unbelonging. A grin lights up his face. He hastily drinks down the remains of the stew and pushes the bowl aside, pulling the notebook closer to him.

Well, fancy that: an anthologist! Sven knows people who compile things like this. Political speeches, dissident novels, and poetry anthologies are the most popular genres. He's never dabbled in it himself, but he admires them, because they're their own boss: they control everything from scribbling to typing to distributing their literature, even daring to sit in jail for it occasionally. It's good money as long as they keep the Stasi out of their hair. Sven guesses that the man is such a bootlegger, this notebook one of his products, and he must be proud of what he does; interspersed between the famous names are the unattributed poems, all in that resolute hand, the man's attempt to insert himself among the literary greats. What cheek – but what courage, what an affirmative statement all the same!

Without such moxy life wouldn't be worthwhile. Sven is delighted.

He could take inspiration from this.

About fifty pages in, however, it becomes evident he overestimated the usefulness of this book. Less than halfway through the notebook the handwriting slips, and the margins fail; the meticulous cataloguing stops, and no more poems are left, leaving Sven to stare at a mess of scribbles. The last half of the notebook is totally blank. The scribbles refer to nothing he can recognize, nor can he make sense of more than a few lines:

     wie kommst du nur im Traum darauf
     daß ich dir sage
     ich wonach? (du) schon kennst schon tief in
     - / - / - / - / (-)

"Hm-mm-mm..."

     wer ist es nur der mit mir spricht
     du ██████████ (bist/nicht?)

     für dich für mich für immer

     du
     du lehrst
     du lehrst deine Hände
     du lehrst deine Hände du lehrst
     du lehrst deine Hände
                                       schlafen

     ein kleines ██ in Flammenmeer kein █████

Followed by a page filled with wordless doodles, flowers and swirls and pen-tester squiggles. Several sentences drift by in the margins, but they are violently crossed out and Sven cannot read them. (He does, however, find an inked KISS logo on the bottom right corner, which recovers some of his faith in the man; he has to be a rebel after all.) Fine then, this book doesn't have to be for distribution. Are these the struggles of a fresh-faced poet, pouring his heart and soul into prototypes?

     1 turnip
     1 leek
     2 onions
     2 carrots
     4 potatoes
     100g Speck
     3 smoked sausages

Apparently not. Sven sighs and snaps the book shut.

"... Maybe he's just nuts?"

He kind of wants more stew.

In the absence of it, Sven makes do with a leftover roll. He mops the bowl clean and chews the remnants, unsure why he feels so deflated. What did he expect, transcendental wisdom? – But maybe so, maybe so. Homebrewed anthologies are usually made to confer that kind of thing. Sven picks up the notebook and rifles through it all over again, wondering if he missed something.

Again his hopes are dashed. The poems appear in no set order; no one poet occurs significantly more or less frequently than the others; there isn't even a consistent theme between the poems, let alone exhilarating stick-it-to-the-man discourse. They're not the sort Sven read at school, but they aren't particularly dissident. The poets themselves may be, but one wouldn't know it from the content alone. No biographies, no explanations, no context. As much as he hates to admit it, this is probably nothing more than a literary trail through one man's mind. He sighs again, disappointed, but doesn't let go of the notebook this time.

Sven doesn't know what to think about freedom.
A part of him wants it desperately. Expects it, as he expected it from this stranger. But actually recognizing it is harder. To Sven, freedom is like honey: it drips from the top, from abroad into the GDR, its creeping snail-like but inevitable. How sweet the result, how agonizing the wait. How terrible, the distance, or the objective lack thereof. In Berlin freedom is right there, beyond the length of the Wall.

That's where Sven would like to be. Where his passions are. Sven hasn't gotten a chance to dip his toes in the scene yet, but Berlin is where Ostpunk resides in its brightest glory: it is the most desirable stop, the final stop, in East Germany for bands that make it in the rest of the country. The lads there have permits to go abroad, or so Sven has heard, even to the West. State-sanctioned permits, something that only became possible in the recent years, sanitizing violent history. For the earlier punks were not treated so officially, of course, they just got deported to the West.

In a way, they are the truly free people, for the SED no longer owns their souls. It's still a wretched thing to wish on someone. Sven glances at where his guitar is, and shudders, pulling his knees close to his chest.

And then Gorbachev came along. He broke the status quo. He unlidded the pot! Suddenly they said it was everywhere, this freedom: svo-bo-da! In the air, in the streets, in the literature. First them, then us.
It hasn't been a year since that happened. Sven has barely gotten over the announcement, let alone comprehended its effects. A year isn't enough to define freedom. Not to mention he hasn't seen much of it yet; the SED have said they aren't having it. The Russians might be running around in a cloud of hope, Rybakov and Solzhenitsyn under their arm, but East Germans still have to sneak around as before. The only difference is now they know other people aren't sneaking around. That being out in the open, with strange music or literature at hand, is an option.

And once the seeds of possibility are planted, who really knows how it'll bloom?

     There stands an old tree.
     In it, a hollow space.
     Within resides a woodpecker.
     All feels right to me.

So it is, according to the owner of this notebook. Sven goes back to the first page and traces each line, smiling softly at the completeness of it: woodpecker in hole in tree, nestled like a seed in earth, the correct way of the world. Perhaps the woodpecker pecked itself the hole, perhaps it was already there. But no one can doubt it's where the bird belongs. Maybe the search for freedom is as simple as that, wandering in a forest of possibilities, going through whatever fits.

Seen through that lens, this poetry notebook makes a bit more sense. (Only a lens, not objective truth – but whatever helps Sven see better.) For that man all those poets are possibilities, or more accurately inspirations, from the outside; through them he'll refine his writing style, find even better poems, get a load off his chest, whatever suits him. The important thing is that he's exercising his right to do so. It strikes Sven that maybe, the ingredient list at the end refers to something on the outside as well: a full perusal confirms his suspicions, as between the last few blank pages, he finds two cuttings. One's an article by a Gitta Lindemann, a lengthy review on a theatrical production, and one's from a domestic magazine. Recommended recipes of the week.

Sven knew these ingredients were familiar.

It's a recipe for Fruckeneintopf. Or Steckrübeneintopf, according to this magazine; consistent nomenclature, German does not have. Sven has made this stew many times before. It's hardly something he needs a recipe for, but just this once he pays attention, and reads every step carefully.

He uses one bay leaf for four people, the recipe recommends two.
He prefers to keep his ingredients recognizable. The recipe assumes this also, but suggests the possibility of puréeing at the middle stage.
He puts the sausage in towards the end. This recipe suggests doing it earlier, so that the marbled fat dissolves smoothly into the broth. It seems the young man was especially taken in by this part, for that line (as well as 'smoked sausages' in the list of ingredients) has been circled in pencil thrice over. The magazine cutting is worn, clearly referenced many times before. Sven caught the young man in the process of copying it down, preserving it for himself and maybe the generations to follow. Food is the building block of human time.

Looks like he's going shopping when the sun is up.

-----

Everyone has a different idea about what freedom means.

The absence of fear. The absence of authority. The absence of law. Not being flogged, not being jailed, not being prevented from going anywhere. Sven supposes that freedom, to him, means the ability to fulfill his dreams. He wants to dream, live in an environment where such dreams can be fulfilled, and not be prevented from doing so.

He'd like to be able to make life-changing statements in front of a crowd. He'd like to be able to choose between a hundred brands of sausage, if he wanted to. Most of all, he'd really like it if those things were treated as equal desires, equally valid and worthy of fulfilment. He wants the State to stop making him scared of his dreams. Sven would like to be so free he doesn't need to think about freedom. He wants freedom to be normal.

But that day is still far away. Definitely for the East, probably everywhere else in the world, too. So for now, freedom is everything Sven can catch with the net of his imagination, as limited his world may be. Freedom is the ability to read someone else's recipe in someone else's world, and deciding to adopt that little piece of another unto himself. Freedom tastes like a good broth.

-----

Sven doesn't work weekends. Interesting developments have occurred at the Gaststätte while he was away. He's back at his station on Monday, merrily working on his stew, when the young man comes searching for his notebook – unbeknownst to Sven, for the third time in three days.

He's distressed. The workers are baffled and irritated, mostly. He's the only customer and he refuses to eat anything. Judging by the conversation, he'd had to talk to different people every time, none of whom have understood his plight. The moment he sees him, Sven instinctively ducks out of sight, his face burning – then pops back up, hastily stirring the unrestful pot. This kitchen leaves no room for personal feelings.

But Sven is right-minded, just nervous. Shame gives way to the clear vision of his task: he alone knows what the man's talking about, so he ought to solve this situation. Sven takes a deep breath and steps out of the kitchen, circling around to the dining area.

"I really – really beg of you, Frau..." The young man is pleading, his voice hushed; the matronly head of the Gaststätte stands before him, unmoved, her arms folded upon her chest. "If I could please look around, just once, or at least ask someone who was there. It happened last Friday, when you served the goulash-"

"Genosse, you think this is fine dining?" She scoffs, doubtless dismissing him as a meddlesome loiterer. She doesn't care what he has to say about goulash, probably doesn't even remember there was goulash; she's not the cook, and the menu here is limited. What's available that day is what you can eat, no other choices provided. It doesn't help that the young man is very hesitant to describe the lost book, wary that she might think he's smuggling contraband. "Where do you think you are? No, you may not go behind the serving area. No, I was not here on Friday, and-"

"But I was there." Sven speaks up, startling the two apart. He takes the young man by the arm and pulls him away. "I made that goulash. Komm, what's this about goulash, what do you need?"

Then, in a whisper: "The notebook. It's still here. I'll bring it out."

The way his eyes light up, it could illuminate the whole room.

Sven lets him go and hurries back into the kitchen. He slides open the serving-window; the man understands he ought to approach his side, but pauses, before decisively pulling out his wallet. It seems the man's trust in the goulash has won Sven his trust for: well, everything else? Maybe. With two silver coins he purchases the right to be here, picks up a tray, and heads over to Sven. Seeing this, the matron scoffs again – but leaves him be, walking off to tend to the storage room.
Fruckeneintopf, the way the man likes it. Hopefully. It's a common menu item, but this is the first time Sven made it to a recipe. He ladles generous scoops into the bowl, and as he places it on the tray, slips the book discreetly beside it. "Enjoy." He says. Pauses. Thinks of something else. "I, uh, I didn't look in it."

Hope that makes you feel better. You can stop worrying now.

Alas, although the intention is good, Sven is not the best liar. The man gives him a look; he blushes, knowing he spoke exactly like someone who did look, but holds the other's gaze. Slowly, a smile drifts to the man's lips.

"I appreciate it." He says. "Looks like it's a slow day, why don't we have lunch."

He speaks in such a particular way, Sven realizes.
It's only been a couple of sentences, but already Sven hears a strange disharmony between his voice and his speech. The former is quiet and almost sleepy (hypnotic, even), the latter anything but. Sven wouldn't call him direct, but he has barely any room in his speech for questions, either from others or himself. Even while anxious he stated everything as if it were happenstance, watching events unfold towards him like wild geese taking off from a distant field. "I'm the only one here at the moment."

The man gestures to the counter. All manner of foods are being kept hot on it, with nary a customer through the door. "Who else would I mean."

Definitely an observer, rather than a participant of his life. Not a question in that sentence either.

Sven hesitates, but loosens his apron, and grabs himself some bread and stew.

"I'll need to go the moment the kitchen needs me."

He says that, but there's no matron in sight. No other cooks. They don't come by any more regularly than the customers nowadays. The man nods, clearly not thinking this will be an issue; he sits at a table by the window, and Sven takes the opposite chair, facing the other.

It is very quiet here. The pots are simmering, and the passersby are chatting, but those usual noises are shut outside of the dining area. Sven has seldom sat here before. His lunches are usually taken in a corner of the kitchen, on a spare enamel plate or bowl, comprised of whatever isn't suitable for show: the first pancake, which is always misshapen, or the last Bulette, which is always small and charred. But now he's been granted his own place, and he's sitting here, enjoying his stew at its finest. Simmered since morning, with plenty of smoked sausage to replenish the flavour, it's a hearty and rib-sticking concoction to banish all winters.

The man tries a spoonful. Delight shows on his face almost instantly. He enjoys the potatoes, Sven prefers the carrots. He especially loves the smoked sausage, meticulously balancing each slice against that of a vegetable.

Funny how Sven has fed so many people, yet has seldom sat with another in this way.

The notebook stays by the man's side throughout. (No basket today, nor a box.) He smiles when he catches Sven glancing at it repeatedly. "For someone who didn't read it, you're awfully curious about it being there."

Sven wants to tease him for flustering him earlier. "You carry samizdat, citizen?"

The man tenses in his seat. His green eyes widen, and for a second there is so much panic in it that Sven regrets saying anything. "It's no big deal to me," he shrugs, too awkward to give a proper apology; ever since he left the conservatory, his ability to interact with his peers have rotted into the dirt. "What else is worth reading nowadays. At least people want those. All I do is cook, I don't change lives or do anything exceptional."

He's always been like this. Overspilling, overtelling, always needing to be contained – in school, in bedrooms, in cafeteria kitchens. Sven lowers the spoon, then meets the other's eyes, smiling with something halfway between contentment and resignation.

"You see... I play guitar." He murmurs, exchanging one secret for his own. "Not for money. For my own... Gemütlichkeit."

At least he can control where he spills, and about what.
He seems to have struck well. Agitation of a totally different sort dances in those green eyes now.

"The harder and jazzier, the better."

The stew is the least of their problems. Sven leans in close.

"Without a permit."

The man sucks his breath in, long and deep. It seems an eternity before he speaks again, and this time, it's a genuine inquiry. "Not even a Spielerlaubnis?"

Sven shakes his head dryly.

"Never even once."

The tension swells, then sinks slowly, as Sven hoped it would. The burden of knowledge now rests on the other man: do with it what you will, is Sven's unspoken message, in the hopes he's not casting his bottle into dangerous waters. After all, if the man can suspect Sven is an informer, that distrust can go the opposite way too.

But Sven would rather not live fearing and distrusting others. Especially not this man, if he can help it. This is the first truly interesting person Sven has seen in a long time. As the man sits there, torn between hesitation and wonder, Sven rummages in his pockets – and brings out three guitar picks, all very old, all of them worn down in the same place. He splays them out on his palm as proof of what he's confessed.

The man exhales with admiration. "Wicked."

That brings down all walls. Sven is satisfied. Sven is glad.

They pause for a piece of bread and some more of the stew. Sunlight drifts in tiny motes above the table. The air is calm, so serene, that it's as if a dam has burst when the man speaks again: "My father, he's a writer. And my mother, too, she's a journalist. Look..."

Then he opens up the notebook himself. Finds the newspaper cutting, and gives it to Sven freely. "That's her," he explains, gesturing at the name, which Sven gazes upon with renewed understanding. "The whole family writes, just about. But I..."

"You want to take after their footsteps?"

The man is silent. Sven has the sense of tapping into a very deep well.

Echoes and oblivion. He has never seen such vast green eyes, as perilously deep as faith. The man has few expressions, but they're all complicated, in their own fashion. How else should they be, in Sven's fashion?

"Somewhere inside me is something waiting to be told.” Is the answer he gives at last. Even then he tilts his head, unsatisfied with its incompleteness. "I don't know what, nor how to go about it, but I still collect whatever inspiration I can. Got easier after Gorby." A little smile, and a shared wink. "I like poems the best; so much wisdom in a few lines. Perhaps that's how I'll tell my story, if it can be told at all. I wonder if it'll ever be the right time."

"Sometime is better than never." Sven passes him the last slice of bread. Their hands brush warmly. "These aren't ordinary times, anyway. The world is becoming freer than ever. If that's what you're waiting for... I don't know when we'll be free, but I think you're in the right place, and in the right time, to watch it dawn upon us."

It is difficult to speak sincerely in a dictatorship. Here they sit, two young and rustic men, speaking mostly in obfuscated language: out of necessity, because the State is always watching, but also simply as a matter of geography. There are countless sardonic, underwater, yet self-conscious applications in the German spoken around these parts, with thirty shades of irony reflected upon a single word: citizen, for instance, or freedom.
But that doesn't mean sincerity is not worth trying. Sven isn't used to it, actively has to fight off feeling silly about it. But he would really like this man to know – to believe, on some level – that yes, we're going to be free, our lives and dreams matter. They have meaning. You follow your passion and I'll follow mine, there will come a time when they are rewarded.

He made do with less emotional words, but his heart has touched the other's. Sven is treated to a moment of stunned silence, then a broad smile, far lovelier than he'd have expected from this strange, brooding man. His heart skips. Sven is suddenly reminded of cherries. Straight from the tree, rinsed cold under the water, with a dab of thickened cream trickling slowly between their glossy orbs.

He has not thought about cherries in years. It is a very sweet kind of hurt.

"Thanks." The man says quietly. "I hope I am. And I guess I'm not going in unprepared, whenever the right time might be." He savours the last piece of smoked sausage in his bowl. "I write my own poems sometimes, though I'm not so good."

Sven neglects to think. "I think you are. I quite liked the one about the woodpecker."

There's the broad smile again. "Enjoyed reading it, did you?"

And from then on, nothing goes according to the script.
There is a blush. There is an awkward glance to the side. But Sven isn't half as embarrassed as he feared he would be, and the man seems almost pleased someone read his work. This is not consistent with the man's later attitude, nor his engagement with the art of poetry, which he won't take up fully until the nineties. From this point neither man are bound to the usual decorums of their society, nor perceive any real boundaries between their thoughts and feelings; they don't get to know the facts about each other any quicker than their other friends, but emotionally, they act as if they didn't have walls in the first place. Sven ignores the obligation to explain himself in favour of the more fundamental question: "What's your name?"

"Till Lindemann." A strong hand is extended across the table, and is grasped by another. "You know, I do music, too. Drums. I'm in a band, we practice at my place... if you wanted..."

"Sven Kruspe. And I'd be delighted."

Till asks nothing about Sven's schedule, nor says anything about his own, but seals the verbal contract with a piece of notepaper. Name, phone number, an address that Sven vaguely recognizes as on the shore of the Schweriner See. "Could I have more Speck," is the only thing he asks in exchange.

"Why not," Sven says, and ladles him more bacon. He gets himself some, too, while he's there. It is beginning to rain.

Chapter Text

Desiderata (Chapter 2) - ‘Ponchik’

-----------------------------

ἔνθα φίλ᾽ ὀπταλέα κρέα ἔδμεναι ἠδὲ κύπελλα
οἴνου πινέμεναι μελιηδέος ὄφρ᾽ ἐθέλητον

- Book IV, lines 345-46

"Ti-ill!"

It is a menagerie, this reed cottage, overlooking the dark blue shore of the Schweriner See. Sven can't get enough of it. A cat winds its tail around his leg and he laughs, exhaling pearly white into the air. "Why, Muschi, you're looking for him too?"

Such a loud meow from such a small cat. Muschi wandered in from the forest three months ago, on the night of the first snow, and hasn't left since. Till takes in everyone and everything. "Come on, then," Sven says, and picks up the cat in his arms, where it nestles with narrowed green eyes and a purr. "Let's go find him together, ja?"

He's come to stay for the week. The fifth season is bitterly cold this year, but spirits are high and the sun bright. Sven lives in Berlin now, but with Till at his cottage is where he feels most at home – a sentiment gained, ironically, after having left Schwerin many months ago.
It's why he keeps coming back. Sven doesn't regret moving away, though. It's lonelier in Berlin than he thought it would be, but loneliness is the matter of who you know rather than where you are; as long as he can rely on somebody, and have somewhere to go back to, he can endure. In the absence of Sven's own kin, Till will do just fine, as do those who are drawn to Till's presence. That's what his solo room in Schwerin never had, and why he doesn't miss it, nor his family.

Sven buries his face into the cat. Cuddles gently. Later other guests will arrive, but he prefers it like this, just him and Till together.

It never lasts as long as he wants it.

He finds Till at the furthest corner of the yard. He's hauling firewood; in lieu of a good morning they share knowing glances, and Sven lets down the cat to help. Back and forth they go, until there's a decent pile near the kitchen, and the fireplace lit. Only then does Sven state his intent. "I'm going into town, I need to check the post. I’ll be back by afternoon."

"Of course."

"You need anything?"

Till's green eyes drift into the distant sky.
Sven fights back a grin. He loves seeing Till deep in thought. The gaze is the most alive thing about that man, casting its arc into the lake or the faraway forest, unspoken thoughts rushing a million miles behind those eyes. "I thought," he begins, then falters for a long time, in the way he does when he knows precisely the thing he wants but doesn't want to admit what. Muschi rubs against his shin and he absent-mindedly leans down, scritching her dark ears. "I don't know if... but since you're with us, if you'd be so obliged..."

Sven smiles. "It amuses me, how the Katzen adore a Naschkatze." Then, as Till blushes: "What's in the cupboard?"

Whenever Sven asks this question, he refers specifically to the one on the top right. Furthest from the door, and the hardest to reach, but filled with the most tempting items in the kitchen – for yes, Till keeps all his sweet things there. They open the door and examine its contents.

Cartons of Mokkabohnen. A jar of Nudossi. Bambina bars for Till's daughter, Nele, when she's good. Aside from the chocolates, there are things to bake with: bags of sugared nuts, dried fruits, many jars of honey from one of Till's neighbours down the road. Packets of baking powder, saved strictly for the holiday cakes. Yeast, in more plentiful amounts. At the very back is an unlabeled jar and Till takes it down, holding it curiously up to the light. "Well?"

Till opens up the lid. "Mutti's cherry jam. I'd best use it up."

Sven's expression freezes. A second ticks past, then he resumes his smile.

"Doughnuts it is." He says, and tells himself the joy on Till's face is enough.

Cooking is the best way through which he repays Till's hospitality. Best, because Sven is uniquely suited to the task, and because he fills the house with light whenever he enters with iced cookies, birthday cakes, or a basket of doughnuts in hand. There's more creative satisfaction in making music, but that's mostly between himself and Till; feeding a household is a different kind of fulfillment. Doughnuts are Till's favourite. The humble Berliner is still far from an everyday food in his home, in fact, it's rather naughty – doughnuts can't be made as routinely as a cake or a loaf of bread, while still requiring the patience demanded of both. Mixing, proofing, waiting. Yet one only needs oil, and some kind of jam, to set them apart from the usual list of baked goods. Simple but luxurious.

Till can't get enough of them. He especially craves the ones Sven makes. Sven is flattered, but does not know why; he has no secret ingredient nor method. He's asked multiple times whether the local Konditorei won't cut it, and Till's shaken his head every time. "The ones there are dry by the time I'm running my errands, and there's not much filling. I think it's not homemade, that jam."

"Well, they do run a business."

"True." Till had nodded. "But my cravings don't work like one."

Till's cravings do, however, appreciate the work of a single chef. Sven is beloved.

-----

There's still work to do before the guests come. Till gets his fishing rod and bucket, hoping to draw a pike from the lake, and Sven goes to change. A glance at the clock – the bus is not due for half an hour – and all the warm things go on, he tidies his bed, and packs a small bag with everything he needs. Wallet, spare change, a string bag for necessary purchases. Out of the window he glimpses Till, hunched against the woodpile, still cradling Muschi in his large, worn hands.
There's a fresh scar on his right thumb. The evening Sven arrived, two days ago, he'd butchered a duck for the weekend roast: one of the long-necked ones with a snowy coat and a brash quack, robust enough to feed a whole band. While cleaning out the cavity a bone fragment tore his skin, inflicting what would've been a painfully infectious wound, had not Sven immediately washed it off under running water and thrown antiseptic on it. (Food safety is paramount to a cook, practicing or not.) No doubt the wound stung, but Till was indifferent to the proceedings.

"Ducks like to die as much as you do." He'd shrugged, as Sven peeled the backing off an adhesive plaster. "This one went the extra mile to make his point, that's all. He deserves a little rest to recover from his fate."

"The whole forty-eight hours?"

"Yes. Might catch a fish in the meantime, if I'm lucky."

Sven tutted, but had stuck the bandage over Till's wound nonetheless. "Don't get it wet."

This, despite knowing the man would pull it off the moment the wound scabbed over. It's certainly not there now. Sven sighs again, and cradles his chin against the palm of his hand; surely by now the wound has closed, but he worries it'll be agitated again, perhaps even pick up an infection from the water. Nothing against the Schweriner See, Sven feels peace whenever he's nearby, but it's still not a great idea to splash around in it with an open wound. He's felt that pain before.

But in all fairness, there are worse things than a flesh wound. He never worries about anyone else like this, just Till. Sven wonders if this is odd, and frowns, remembering the blank expression on Till's face as he touched the plaster; he'd pressed it gingerly, let go, then looked up. "Have you never hurt yourself cooking before."

"Of course I have, but it was different at the Gaststätte. I saw hundreds of people there, and I promise you, none of them ever signed up to sample my blood."

"And when you're by yourself?"

"I still put antiseptic on. You just walk around bleeding everywhere?"

Till did not answer this. What he did say, however, has lingered since: "My feelings are my feelings, whether they hurt or not. I don't know if I like the hurt, but I like that I'm able to feel it, that it belongs to me... I don't want to be detached from myself."

Those words haunt Sven because he can't understand them. He'd do anything to not feel some of the things he feels. To forget, or to be numb, whichever serves him better. He shakes his head and looks away from the window, determined not to dwell on this memory; it's not as easy as it sounds, especially when the duck is still downstairs. Sven glimpses it as he checks the fridge. Outwardly he's concerned with the availability of apple juice, but he's really looking at the duck, which Till's finished preparing for the roast: stuffed with herbs and garlic, rubbed with salt, and trussed neatly in its pot. It bears little resemblance to the carcass that stabbed Till in the hand, nor the bird that grazed freely about the yard. He looks up to see more ducks trooping by the back door, unafraid of Muschi crouching in the corner, followed by Till who herds them into their pen. He bolts it shut and enters the kitchen, stamping the mud from his boots at the doorway. "There's something in there I want you to have."

"Ah?"

"At the very back. Above the pickles. Can you see?"

He can. Sven lifts out a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Till nods in approval. "Take it with you when you go back home."

"What is it?"

Upon Till's prompting he looks inside, and finds it full of the thick, rich, golden fat rendered from a previous duck. "Roast potatoes with it." Till says, as Sven looks up with surprise. His eyes fall upon the other's form; his smile falters slightly, then he pulls Sven into his arms. "Scholle, you've gotten so skinny since you moved away. You need duck fat."

Sven gazes at him. Scholle. His nickname, wholly unremarkable, unless spoken by Till: the first syllable hushed like a well-kept secret, the second echoing deep in the throat.
Right below that voice, deep within that strong body, is where the heart sits. Till's has touched his own. Sven buries his face into the other's sweater, silently holding him in thanks. Every time he visits Till likes to slip him a little something, duck fat or new gloves or even just a Milka bar under the pillow, making sure he knows that he's cared for. How will he ever repay this gratitude, how can he even voice it.

Never mind his birth home, his old room, even Berlin. This is home. The problem is whether Sven can admit that.

-----

Till offers to give him a ride, but Sven mindfully declines: his Trabant requires an elaborate ritual just to start up, several more on the way. He doesn't want to delay Till catching that fish any further, and besides, he'd like some alone time.

"Walk you to the stop, then," Till compromises, so off they go. Sven pulls his scarf tighter around his neck – a Christmas present from Gitta, who's taken him under her wing since Till introduced them both. They don't always cross paths in Schwerin, but she fusses over him and sends him a parcelful of sweets every month. "If you ever do need a ride, Scholle, just ask. It's no inconvenience. The bus can take so long."

Sven smiles faintly. Till's right, it's only twenty minutes to Schwerin by car (yes, even the Trabant), while by bus, it's three times that. It's not typical of Sven to prefer slow over quick, no wonder Till thought Sven feared inconveniencing him. This is not why he refused, he just doesn't know how to explain it.

Truth is, this is the only bus route he enjoys. He only rides the ones in Berlin briefly, and on long-distance buses, he only cares about sleep. But the one from Till's village to Schwerin has a mystical quality to it: the ride is exactly an hour from start to end, neither too short nor too long, and the scenery seldom changes. Because the lake is nearby the air is often misty. Whenever Sven's on this bus he feels like he's a cloud in trousers, driving, drifting, floating through nowhere; it's the perfect place to think, or else blank out his feelings, an in-between space free of consequence.

Till has somewhere like that, too. In the attic he has a rocking chair and a record player, and Sven has seen him up there on many nights, gazing out to the stars with Mike Oldfield spinning in the background. Sven appeals to the image.

"The bus to me is like your Schaukelstuhl," he says.
Till understands instantly. His eyes glimmer like sunlight on a springtime branch. "Come home safe," he says, and squeezes Sven's shoulder as the bus comes in. Sven pays the fee, waves out of the window, and settles into the hourlong warmth.

-----

One needs money in order to purchase food. This fact has always been close to Sven's heart, but it torments him all the same.

The post office is quiet. Sven asks after mail in his name, and is handed an envelope in familiar handwriting. Because there are no customers, no one protests him opening it right there, and Sven is permitted plenty of time to suffer.

He still gets mail here. When he first moved to attend conservatory he didn't have his own address. So his mother sent all her letters to this post office, and after he graduated, Sven just never bothered to inform his family where he lived. They don't know he's in Berlin now, as he writes back rarely, and only when he's in Schwerin to post it. It's been this way for half a decade and he ought to be used to the routine, but he's not. In the envelope is a money order for a hundred Marks, which is what he really came for; beside that, some photographs, and a folded letter which is his burden.

     ... the cherries are already blossoming. Sometimes I can't tell whether it's the petals or the snow on the ground. Ingrid from down the road came for tea last week, she asked after you. She remembers you at the sport school, always the top of the class, my blue-eyed boy. One day we must have a gathering, her and the neighbours and the family, when you come back.

     Are you all right?

Sven shuts his eyes tight and lets the world drop dead.

There's more to the page, backwards and forwards, but he disregards it. His mother's letters are not substantially different in tone, he's read the same letter a hundred times at this point. The fact he still hurts to read them, with the same intensity every time, makes him furious and sad with nowhere to tell it to.

When you come back. As if he wants to, as if he misses them. The sports school wasn't bad – he developed a gift for wrestling at a young age, it helped him out even as an adult – but it was never representative of his wants. Perhaps he'd have had more luck in the music scene if his parents had let him give up sports earlier. And those damned cherries; Sven wonders if he ought to break his silence, ongoing for three months now, just to send a line about the cherries and how much he doesn't want to hear about them. Not from her, not now, not so many years too late.

Are you all right, his mother asks, while talking about everything that makes him the opposite of all right.

He checks the photographs. One of the family, taken last autumn, therefore minus Sven; one of his sisters, their dresses very à la mode; a solo portrait of his mother; a photo of Sven in his preteen years, so that he isn't left out. This is the yearly reminder that they exist. That they'll always be around, to support him should he come back – but Sven never felt supported by them before, so it only makes him feel more outcast. He's frozen in his childhood innocence, present only in yellowing photographs – but he sees them growing up, every year, leaving him behind step by step. Even the adults, who grow accustomed to his absence.

Why do they show him this? Why would he want to go back to that?

"Genosse, are you all right?"

Sven opens his eyes. An elderly man has come to claim his mail, and he's in the way. He moves aside with a brisk nod; there was an audible bite in that question, the implication Sven genuinely has something wrong with him, but he ignores it. As he moves counters and cashes in the money order, waiting for the clerk to return, he mentally drafts a response to the letter:

     Mutti,

     Thanks for the photos. For the Ostmarks. Guess what – I'm in a band now. I'm the guitarist. We've started doing shows around Schwerin recently, before the year is out I want to go a lot further. Looks like both the conservatory and the apprenticeship worked out for me; I hope you'll be glad to know I'm doing well.

     I've thought about visiting, as it's been a long time. But ___ [INSERT OPTION HERE] ___ so I think it'll be a while. Send my love to the pets, and Ingrid, if you see her again. I remember she was very kind to me. - S.

     Option A: Because I don't know how to act around you, I need time to practice,
     Option B: You and I know perfectly well my existence is a burden to the household,
     Option C: You don't actually even like me, and you never have, especially when I started asking about my real Vatti and begging you for cherry soup. I see how everyone flourished without me. You don't need me there. Even if I came over, you wouldn't give me a single glance, except for the sake of appearances.

The cold clink of cash snaps him out of it. He takes the money and leaves.

On his way out he crumples the letter in his hand.

It's no use. He speaks insincerely. He doesn't want them to know too much about his life, so he must distill it down to the basic facts, truncating even those: he's in more than one band, for example, and he's gone a lot further than Schwerin. Sven's ideal response has all the emotion sucked out of it, and he finds it impossible to censor himself. Looks like he won't be writing back this month, either.

Sven breathes out, slowly loosening his grip. He gazes down at the letter for a long time, his fingers still curled around it, before he straightens it back out and folds it back up. Carefully, this time, with the photographs untouched. In his breast pocket the letter goes, buried deep in his heart, wound around his grief and his unsent reply.

It's for his own sake and theirs. Sven wants to weep, though the moment passes quickly, leaving him cold and bereft.

Are you all right, his mother's words echo in his ear again. He's angry, but burns with grief as well. She was such an exhausted woman. Soft-voiced and gentle, but very far away. This is his problem, the constant assumption of negative intent: are you all right is not go fuck yourself, no matter how much Sven fears it is, but every time he's faced with his mother that's what he hears. And while he's always tried to take things in stride, leaving the past in the past, he's not someone who can pretend the past didn't happen; that's a disservice to the boy Sven used to be, a stranger among his own kin. Until he can resolve this difference, he will not be reconciled.

So the gulf between them grows deeper, and Sven runs further to escape.

Before he returns he peruses the market for fruit. Apples, mostly, fragrant oranges and mandarins for show only. It's not yet time for berries and cherry season is still months away. He could weep with joy, but instead chooses to be normal, and returns to the deals of the day. Flour happens to be available, as is milk, and Till has many eggs back at his house. It's like Marx himself wants these doughnuts to happen.

-----

Sven has it so good nowadays. The meeting with Till was heavensent. Thanks to that day at the Gaststätte, and their rapidly-growing acquaintance, Sven has ventured upon his rightful path: he's finally gotten to know other bands, Till's among them, and the guitar never leaves his hand. He has never been happier.
But for most of his life, Sven has gotten by barehanded. While he was growing up problems were solved with fisticuffs, figurative or literal, and the one who hit hardest won every time. He fought fast and dirty and learned early never to cry. This worked for most things but not his family, which he might regret in retrospect if he had the time to.

It wasn't that he was neglected. Life was dandy until he was about twelve: he'd sit down at the table, carve meat, serve desserts and everything. But the family dynamics kept changing, and what they had was frequently stretched between the siblings (of which Sven was last) – and soon, he began to find them unbearable. His mother doted on his older brother because he was smart, ready to become the next man of the household. His stepfather doted on his sisters, one of whom was prim and proper and the other sweet and playful, the true baby of the family. Being last won Sven no medals. He wanted to be at the top of the world, always.

Within a family unit, however, he had little chance. First scoops of the main meal, the largest cut of meat, the sweetest cakes, all for them. But all Sven really wanted was a bowl of his mother's special cherry soup with cream-of-wheat dumplings, sweet and cold like ice cream against his tongue. He never got it. No matter how much he pleaded, it never happened, and it fucking pissed him off that month after month after month he asked for this one thing and she just didn't care, until the anger bubbled into hatred for his siblings and his stepfather and his mother and even the cherries, eventually, until he was free.

He knew one day he'd be free. The day couldn't come fast enough.

He started acting out to make it easier on everybody.

One time his stepfather extended an olive branch and made the Kirschsuppe. Sven wasn't having it. He ran outside and hurled the whole bowl to the chickens, who happily devoured it all. His stepfather was angry and distraught, gesticulating wildly at the bloodlike stain all over the coop, but Sven wouldn't say sorry. Why should he? It wasn't just any Kirschsuppe he wanted, he wanted one from his mother. His stepfather shouldn't have assumed in the first place. But no one understood, not even his mother, who looked at him so helplessly with her tired eyes. She took him outside and grasped him by the shoulders, asking: well then, what did he want? What?

Sudden rage had coursed through his veins. "I said I didn't want it! I told him I didn't want it! And from now on, I'm not going to eat anything I don't want to!"

This was not what he'd meant, of course. Sven loved his mother. Beneath the anger lay his actual plea, in language simple and desperate: please don't be mad at me. Please look at me, take care of me, and stroke my head. Please say you love me, whether I'm bad or good, I need you to take my side. But the plea went unheard and they took away his meals as punishment. And because Sven was so combative, he lived up to his threat: he was not being punished if he refused to eat out of his free will, so that was what he did. No amount of shouting and begging could move him, as the adults had not been moved by his. All that summer he kept his mouth shut, and he grew terribly thin. Had he not returned to school after the holidays, and had they not fed him there, he would have starved to death.

And not a single cherry in sight. Of course.

It wasn't really about the cherries. He could get his own fine. There was a cherry tree in the yard, and every summer, it rained its crimson gifts onto the house. Sven was inordinately furious because it was really that simple, what he wanted, and yet no one could be bothered to do it for him. He was presenting to his family a question of effort, but they'd failed to realize there even was a question.
Soon it was time for conservatory, and the apprenticeship adjacent to it. Perhaps it was because of the Kirschsuppe episode Sven had decided to be a cook, although he appeared indifferent to cherries at the time, and he had his hackles up for the entire duration of his training. He had problems with authority. He refused to follow recipes and spiced up things however he wanted. They had to fight hard for him to master fried foods, for he was often impatient and inconsistent, a disastrous temperament near hot oil. It got so bad at one point his teacher had shouted: "You need to be more patient! How are you going to feed the people with something like this?"

Out came one of Sven's charred cutlets. His temper flared again. "I'm not going to feed anybody, and when I'm older, I'm going to have a housekeeper."

To the great ire of his teachers. This was in the early eighties. What housekeeper, what capitalism? - Life was still about the common cause! They shamed Sven in front of the class, called his parents, wanted to eject him from the youth group: "The regional secretary will hear of this. You'll never have a job around these parts once they discover what kind of FDJ boy you are."

He'd barely worn his Pioneer neckerchief. He would've handed it in right there. It was only because his mother pleaded he was allowed to finish his course.

(He feels bad about that sometimes. But it's not because he made her cry. It's not.)

Sven was a good cook when he got out. He had to be, in order to graduate – thus, to pursue his passion – and by then he'd realized cooking would serve him well. Now he could make himself all the Kirschsuppe he wanted and nobody could do anything about it. In fact, for the first few months of his independence, that was exactly what he did: he made all the sweets he'd never got, and then the meals he'd missed or half-remembered, perfecting each one until he was satisfied. His childhood self was jumping with joy. Finally he had regained the joy of cherries, in cakes and pies and soup.

Soon afterwards he lost it again. He could no longer ignore how easy those foods were to make. Now he knew he hadn't been asking for much, and that brought the old resentment back – except, this time, with a side of resigned acceptance. Cooking was not difficult, but Sven had also realized it was tedious, especially in huge batches for other people to eat. Once at the Gaststätte he understood how it was, and felt like a complete bastard that he'd tormented his mother so. True, it wasn't quite the same: he was cooking for dozens, even hundreds of people at a time. But he could leave after his assigned meal, while for his mother, there was no such escape. Of course the Kirschsuppe hadn't been a priority. She'd had many mouths to feed and much to worry about.

They were not so different after all. Only after he was already gone did he come to that understanding.

Fast forward to now. Sven stayed gone. What else can he do? There were no prospects in his village back then, and there aren't any now; try as he might, Sven still can't bring himself to reconcile with his parents, just because he can see why they'd acted the way they did. Even if he goes back, he'll still be dead last among his siblings. He'll still be different, an outsider, still simmering with thoughts and feelings that have no place in the family. Why bother? Some things are comprehensible but not acceptable. Sven has told himself a hundred times over – usually during transit, sitting in buses like this – that he forgave his mother, and forgave his stepfather, but he hasn't. Nothing but emotional anaesthesia. You had your reasons and I had mine, I hope we recover from them someday.

It's ridiculous to beg for affection at his age. He won't expend any more effort on caring.

Amen, amen. May we not meet again.

Suppose that one day, he could write all this down.
Suppose he could be truthful. Suppose he could make it up with his mother. But Sven lives in a country where honesty is a weakness: resentment can be felt but not confessed, truths about family life best left buried. Who'll keep it safe, if he won't? Even in rural villages the State is watching. Through local gossip, banter at the co-operative, prying neighbours and actual policemen they listen; freedom has taken hold like a slow beacon across the Eastern hills, but it's still dangerous to be known this way, as a dour and rebellious youth who doesn't get along at home.

Authoritarians despise such a character. He'd rather not be tripped up for family issues, or for them to be threatened because of him; no, he can't do that to them. Sven has heard that the Stasi recite family letters at their prisoners while interrogating them, mocking the minutiae of their life. So perhaps it's better his mother never hears from him, her blue-eyed dissident son with a wild heart and a striped mohawk. She'd hate his hair right now anyway. She used to comb it back smooth.

-----

A hole has opened up in his heart.
Sweetness fills the void, if only for a while.

-----

The first time he met Gitta, she was sitting in the garden, cooking jam over a Primus stove. "And who are you to my son?" She'd asked, neither friendly nor cold, her head tilted birdlike as she stirred the pot. Sven doesn't remember most of what she asked, for she was so quiet yet rapid-fire with her questions; but he does remember the end of their meeting, how she'd stared blankly into the sky for a long time, then offered him a choice between blueberry and cherry jam to take home. It was the best blueberry jam he'd ever tasted, excellent on cheese, the fruit almost whole with a plump tart bite. Sven still isn't sure what test of hers he passed, but from that day on she's greeted him like another son, and opened an extra seat for him at Christmas. Maybe she could tell, from sight alone, what was wrong in his life.

Sven is thinking about this now because of the doughnuts. He opens the jar of cherry jam entrusted to him, gazing into its untouched ruby depths; come to think of it, maybe this is the same jam she was making at the time. The time period lines up. Sven still wouldn't choose this over any other flavour, but Gitta makes a damned fine jam, and cherries taste wonderful regardless of Sven's hang-ups. He spoons out roughly a half-cup of jam and presses it through a sieve. Setting aside the clear red jelly for later, he tries the leftovers, closing his eyes as the woody bittersweetness comes through. This was clearly made for easy storage. It's sweeter, the fruit less intact, and more firmly set than the blueberry jam he had – but there's that tang of Morello-sourness, and there's the chew and texture. A slice of summer lingers in this jar.

Sven is quietly pleased. Maybe this can be his new taste of home. That's what he did every time he encountered cherries during his apprenticeship, write over the negative associations with better ones. The process has been slow, as there are so many foods with cherries in them, but it's working. One day he'll like them sincerely again, and he won't hurt to look back at his mother, nor his boyhood self. Sven hopes to heal. He cradles the jar like lifeblood to his chest.

"Scholle."

High sun, the dry clouds, sour cherries among rusted tools. His memories smell of summer, bright but very far away, screened with the golden dust of melancholia. Till's hand settles on his shoulder and Sven reaches back, resting his own over it; no need to look, or comment on one or the other's return, they're simply there. He smiles a smile Till can't see, and squeezes the other's hand gently, before putting away the sieve. "Caught anything?"

"A marvelous specimen. Look."

Till opens the fridge. Sven approves at the size of the pike, already gutted and scaled, soon to be baked with vegetables and sauce. "The boys called from Schwerin earlier, they'll be here any time now. So there will be six of us tonight, a choice of duck or fish... and no doubt, the most delectable doughnuts that ever graced my kitchen." He laughs and gestures at the counter. "The guests of honour?"

Three baking trays, side by side, several balls of dough on each. Sven grins. "You got it. The smaller ones are for Nele."

"You're an angel, Scholle."

"You're welcome. As long as they go to Nele, not sampled in advance by a well-meaning adult." A mock-severe glance; Till raises his hands in surrender, laughing bashfully. Sven relaxes at the sight. "Shall we?"

They make the final preparations together. It's a stretch to say Till's kitchen is like a cooking station, pots and pans being all over the place, but it is a livelier place to be in. Till heats up the oven, and arranges the racks so the duck takes center stage, to be joined by the dish of pike and vegetables halfway through. Leafy greens will be steamed on the stove, potatoes peeled and boiled; on the leftmost side, Sven is allocated a large pan half filled with oil, for frying the doughnuts later. It took an hour to prepare the dough, and it'll be three more to proof the individual balls. A long wait, but not so long they won't be ready by dinnertime.

Sven loves juggling tasks. It is satisfying to him when the pieces of a complicated puzzle fall together, which happens far more during cooking than in real life.

Outside, around the dusky yard, the doorbell rings.

Till tosses aside the dishcloth. "I'll get it," he says, and Sven waves him ahead as he prepares the piping tools. (On Till's way out, he stirs the potatoes here and a sauce there, in the same carefree movement which Sven appreciates. If there is a God he must live in Till's fingertips, so deft and practical they are.) He lays out the piping syringe and tip, covers the jam, and prepares a bowl of sugar for dusting later. The heat's building in the kitchen; he opens a back door, letting out steam and a great exhale, and leans out to soak in the breeze. Muschi lolls on the woodpile. Sven tiptoes to pet her head, her purrs traveling down to his wrist.
The perfect doughnut is light, airy, but steadfast around its center. They were how Sven knew he'd mastered his nemesis, the fryer and his own impatience; he makes do with the classic oil-filled pan now, but he still remembers the first fried food he made for himself, a supper of vanilla-cream Berliners. He wonders what it looks inside a doughnut hole, its void slowly filling up with sweetness, and what it might take for his heart to feel the same.

"What's this I see? What's this? O-o-oh!"

Sven is so startled he almost topples out of the door. He didn't notice the guests coming in. Neither have the guests, judging by the loud clatter and the whoop of joy that follows. "Flake, look! Doughnuts!"

"Pfannkuchen?" A haughty voice answers, and a young man enters the kitchen. Flake Lorenz, Till's friend, and also Sven's district neighbour along Schönhauser Allee. He has golden hair, a pale severe face, and speaks clipped Berlinerisch in direct contrast to Till's rounder tones. Sven adores him usually, because he's in the band of Sven's dreams alongside the other young man in the kitchen – Paul Landers, now meticulously splitting a doughball – but right now, he's just aghast. "I see Scholle's here, he always puts six to a tray. Should you be touching that?"

"Come on, just the one?" And now Paul's pinched off a bit. Sampled it, uncooked. "Beautiful, beautiful. It's even got lemon zest in it."

Sven splutters in disbelief. The pair turn to him, smiling brightly. He wants to give them a good telling-off, but it's hard to scold those who are so happy to see him, and ultimately he's just so baffled that he can only choke out: "It's raw!"

Paul and Flake chuckle guiltily. "What's all this?" Till asks as he enters, stepping past his guests to shut the back door before tending to the stove. Upon glimpsing Sven's distraught expression, his eyes swivel to the counter, at which point he assesses the situation. "Oh leave them alone, Paulchen, won't you. Scholle took great pains to indulge my request. Let them rise."

"I will. Sorry about that, Scholle, it's good to see you." Paul takes his hand in both of his, his fingers cool and slim from the outdoors. "You just make them so well, I couldn't resist. It's like you take me back to a childhood I never had. Mutti hardly ever made those, she hated getting oil everywhere."

"So did you, the last time you fried eggs. Perhaps you ought to try again with honey." Flake says dryly, handing over a bottle of sparkling wine they brought as a gift. He nods to Sven, disregarding Paul's protests. "Josch says hello. Feeling B's at Amiga next week again, he invites you to come along if you're free?"

Sven blinks. Today has been a day of ups and downs, despite nothing much happening. "Uhh."

Till comes to his rescue again. He's good at noticing when Sven is overloaded. "Let's go sit down. It'll be a while before dinner, and the night is long." He offers, and leads them out of the kitchen, his bulk helpfully squeezing them past the door. He settles on the sofa and pats his knees, beckoning them with his arms. "Komm, Jungen."

Paul and Flake rush forwards. Sven can breathe again. They collapse beside Till, Paul on the left and Flake on the right, all arms and legs and giggling helplessly. Till embraces them both, ever welcoming. Only Sven stands hesitantly by the door; invitations make him cautious, because they can't be controlled on his terms. It takes a knowing look from Till before he realizes the best seat has been left free for him.

Slowly, he walks forwards. Sits down on Till's lap, glancing back nervously. Till responds by pulling him close, his large hand stroking warmly down his back, helping him nestle into his arms.

It's like he's become the cat. In their mingled shadow blooms the evening.

Those people are his friends. He belongs with them, they're the ones taking photos with Sven nowadays. Sven thinks about the letter and the photographs, still folded in his breast pocket, and wonders how his mother would feel if she were to see him at this moment. Happy, because he found his place? Disappointed, because it's not the place she had in mind? Worried, perhaps, because he's no less precarious in heart than when he left home? Because despite everything, it turns out he's not all right?
Sven leans forwards. His shirt rustles, his old life crumpling between the new. Paul and Flake are talking again. Partly to each other, partly to Sven, now that Till has comfortably established himself in the background. Their heat comes through, too, as they turn around for a group hug; meanwhile, Sven puts his arm around Till's shoulders and nuzzles into his neck. Till's body heat is warm, darling -

- and a little -

- ever so slightly -

- just, a little bit sad.

-----

What is this thing called happiness, he wonders.
Where is happiness.
Where, where.
Where.

Chapter Text

Desiderata (Chapter 3) - ‘Bread’

-----------------------------

οὐ γὰρ ἀνὴρ πρόπαν ἦμαρ ἐς ἠέλιον καταδύντα
ἄκμηνος σίτοιο δυνήσεται ἄντα μάχεσθαι

- Book XIX, lines 162-63

In hindsight, it was a bad idea not telling his family he'd moved.
Kind of sad to think they'll be searching Schwerin for a man killed in Berlin.

-----

Sven's fucked, probably. Scratch that. He's definitely, absolutely, irrevocably fucked, and the state of his jail cell tells him so. Bench, bare floor, a door with a peephole, walls scuffed with years of pain. Happiness has never set foot in this place. Fifty hundred heartbeats ago they shoved him in here. It's a mere fraction of the time Sven has spent sleep-deprived, and alas, that's all the information he will ever know. There are no clocks in this cell.

No windows, either. Dark walls but a white lightbulb. The whole cell is designed like an interrogation room, missing only the desk and the officers. Sven sits under the spotlight glaring down at him, filling up the tight space, crushing him like a speck in its vastness. The cell is blindingly bright. Sven covers his face to shield his eyes and the guard outside bangs on his door.

Why don't you just piss off, he'd like to shout, but his hands slide off his cheeks.

How the hell did he end up like this?

Bread. Sven went out to buy bread. That was how it started, and how it ought to have ended, maybe with a side of egg or some sausages. Bread, the stuff of life, necessary even in the midst of social upheaval. White wheat loaf, pumpernickel, discounted, anything would have sufficed. His only mistake was leaving his street to get it, wanting a leisurely walk under the sun, such a bright October morning it'd been.

Looks like he got the bright part down pat. More than he ever asked for. His street is dark and shadowy, rows of small shaded windows concealed behind the trees lining the pavement. Sven only wanted to be away for a little while. Bread, sunlight, and sausages. Scrambled with an egg, maybe with soup on the side. He has a whole baton of Erbswurst back home. It would've been wonderful.

His stomach growls. Never mind all that. Sven lifts his gaze to the ceiling, where the bulb gleams like the winter sun.

It happened so quickly. He came in with a dozen others, all caught near the same subway station. Protests against the State have been ramping up, sooner or later Sven was going to walk through the line of fire; well, there he was, and there they all were, being snatched up by the police. He's not entirely sure where he is, except the van wasn't driving for long, and that they were all lined up and beaten together. One by one the officers dragged the arrestees out, slowly, through the agonizing hours – to individual cells like these, if Sven's experience was universal, or to God knows what fate.

So where are they now? Are they still being beaten, are they counting the seconds under the lightbulb like Sven is doing at the moment? There were a couple of quiet, compliant, law-abiding types, mixed in with punks like him; they didn't seem like they were out to protest. In fact, Sven can swear he heard muffled pleas about children and wives left waiting while he was in that lineup. Did they get to go home? Sven wasn't protesting, but he clearly drew negative attention with his mohawk, patched jacket, and his morose expression. Maybe everyone he came in with is now free, and he's the only one left behind as an example.

It's a dark thought. It is, however, unlikely to be true. Sven is not sure how to feel about this. Suffering is terrible, whether alone or in a dozen, and he doesn't know by what means they could be freed from here. The only way out he knows involves waiting or dying, and he hasn't been here long enough for either. Sven has friends who were arrested before – Flake, for example, who suffered a case of mistaken identity three years ago – and they were held for about three days. Most people don't die that quickly. Time is hard to grasp here, but that much he knows.

But those events happened years ago. His friends were allowed to stay in the same cell together. They weren't caught during a time of ongoing political unrest, vulnerable to beatings of this intensity. Sven can't imagine they'll let him go so easy. Can one be bailed out from the Stasi's clutches? Through what bribe? Do they free people whose families come calling for them, or would that be more bait for the State's cruelty?

Something slides with a sharp click through the door.

Sven jumps up and stares, wide-eyed, like a caged animal. (The guard outside might have chuckled, but he's not listening.) It takes a few seconds before he registers it's a food tray: blue, devoid of cutlery, with a cup of lukewarm tea, a green apple, and a Brötchen smeared with margarine on it. Hardly the gruel and rotten scraps of retold nightmares, but not promising, either. Sven hesitates for a long time over each item, but eventually consumes it all, making sure that he can be seen. He pushes the tray out, steps back gingerly, and only relaxes when he receives no response. He will never see a hand nor a human face here, unless they're of a guard, taking him away to be interrogated for the umpteenth time.

Still, even meager bread helps to clear the mind. Forget the part about family, Sven's isn't coming to save him. If anything, he's in more trouble if the Stasi connects the dots between Schwerin and Berlin; hardly the place for a family reunion, a cell for potential insurrectionists. Sven's friends in Berlin may have noticed him missing, but at best they share his ideals – hardly able, in other words, to poke around police stations to look for him – and at worst, they're informers. This is not Sven's first time dealing with the Stasi, no thanks to those snakes. They had a chat with him about his employment sometime ago, and while nothing came of it then, they might dig it back up to hit him even harder. Sven doesn't know. The waiting game is the only option he has, and so he must play it.

He shuts his eyes tight. He manages to open them in the nick of time to stop the guard's fist swinging at the door. A cough, some mumbled curses, then silence.

This doesn't feel real. He and this faceless guard might as well be alone on Mars, for all he can tell.

Sven thinks of Schwerin. Not the city, nor the family, but the lake. The birds, the greygreen fog, the dreamy lights in Till's cottage. Till himself, chopping wood and petting cats, gazing into abyssal dawn. Till, who doesn't even know he's missing, and whom Sven must keep safe at all costs.
His truths are simple. His lips are sealed otherwise. Through heavy-lidded eyes, Sven sits up straight and resumes the counting of his pulse, his muffled whispers keeping him company. White milk of morning he drinks it at dusktime, he drinks it at noontime and dawntime he drinks and drinks and drinks.

-----

Here are the facts of the situation.

    ACCUSED NUMBER: 856

    NAME: S███ K██████
     D.O.B.: ██.06.1967
     ADDRESS: 10███ Berlin, L██████ Straße ██
     OCCUPATION: Cashier; Musician [UNLICENSED]; Craftsman (Jewelry) [UNLICENSED] [We've had a conversation about this, 856.]

    DATE/TIME OF ARREST: 10.10.1989, approx. 11:30am
     REASON FOR ARREST: Participant in an illegal demonstration.

    NOTES:

    - Arrested in front of U R██████-Platz with twelve other participants. Relation to other accuseds unknown.
     - Claims to have been picked up by the police while buying bread.
     - Accused lives in L██████ Straße, over 2km from location of arrest.
     - Resident in Berlin since 198█. Long, dyed hair; unkempt appearance; dresses very badly.
     - Multiple previous violations of employment law. Rejected all attempts at aid, as well as an offer of recruitment.
     - Of sound mind but ill character, as observed often by IM <<█████>>, and noted by the excerpt below:

    Major F-: Accused Number 856, you realize there are accusations against you still outstanding from last year.
     856: Yes.
     Major F-: They can be pursued again. We may let go, but we never forget. You realize this, yes?
     856: I do.
     Major F-: I should hope so. Let's try this again. What were you doing on the morning of the 10th of October?
     856: I went out to buy bread.
     Major F-: Where did you go to buy this bread?
     856: R██████-Platz.
     Major F-: How did you get there?
     856: I took the U-Bahn from D██████straße. When I arrived, there was a protest right outside the station.
     Major F-: And what did you do then?
     856: Nothing. The moment I left the station I was arrested.
     Major F-: I seem to recall you live on L██████ Straße.
     856: Yes.
     Major F-: You expect me to believe there are no bakeries on L██████ Straße, or the shops along S██████ Allee?
     856: Of course not.
     Major F-: Then why not go there? Why go out of your way, to go as far as R██████-Platz?
     856: Well, you see, Herr, they make some really good bread.
     Major F-: You are scum, 856. Utter filth. Why are you even alive? No wonder your parents want nothing more to do with you.
     856: Really.
     Major F-: We've already notified them. It's too late for your tricks; they've denounced you. You have nowhere left to go.
     856: Mm-hmm.
     Major F-: Was it worth it, 856? To do that to your own blessed mother, you should've seen how she wept-
     856: Hahahaha ha ha oh Jesus oh my God
     [Interrogation paused for purposes of violence.]

That's what it must look like, anyway. That's all Sven can remember doing.
No matter what they do to him, that is all he has to give.

-----

He waits.

-----

Guard in, guard out. Tray in, tray out.
And he waits.

-----

After the third tray Sven starts keeping score of his meals. In the absence of sleep his mind wanders a curved and dangerous path; food is straightforward, food is neutral, the only regular change to his circumstances. He needs something to fixate on or he will go mad. Sven picks up the spoon, lifts it up, his arm like lead in its socket – then drops it again into the bowl. Soup splashes the rim. His eyelids are pale and damp. Shiny, with a fever rage.

He needs to focus. The spoon. Yes. He has a spoon now. This tray came with tea, a bowl of soup, and a single roll beside it. The one before offered water and a cold baked potato with nothing inside. The only common factor between the three trays has been the Brötchen, the margarine spread so thin Sven can barely see it under this light. Prison food is simple, too simple to analyze. Perhaps tomorrow they'll spice it up with meat, or a sweet snack, something that isn't plain old starch.

Tomorrow. Assuming Sven still has a tomorrow, that three meals indicate the passage of one day.
In practice it could be two meals a day. One a day, maybe even one every other day, if they're really trying to fuck him over. He can't tell. History could have come and gone outside of those four walls and Sven would never, ever know, as long as he is stuck here. It's not willpower the Stasi want to steal from him, it's time. Light like sand from an hourglass drips onto his face.

He covers his eyes with a hand. Leaves it there until the banging starts, then drops it. He's not even startled by the noise anymore, it does nothing to keep him awake; he would, however, appreciate it if the guard didn't come in and beat him up. Even that gets tiring after a while.

Sleep. What wouldn't he do to sleep.

It doesn't help that his food is so lukewarm. It can't be hot, in case Sven decides to throw it over a guard, or all over himself; terrible, but he sees the logic in that. What he doesn't understand is why they even bother heating it up at all. He'd have been equally glad to receive something icy cold, that might shock him awake. The soup is on the cooler side of edible when he finally manages a spoonful, but the tea is drinkable. Vegetable soup without vegetables, tasting mostly of gritty roux. Black tea, no milk nor sugar.

It's all so bland. So pointless. Sven feels suspended in fog. He stares down blearily at the spoon and wonders if he might keep it, whether he can use it to dig his way out of here, stick it into someone's eye at a pinch.

But exhaustion has made him numb. This spoon is just a burden in his state. Sven can barely lift it, let alone use it as a weapon. So he slips it back into the half-empty bowl and pushes it out with the tray, and lies back down on the bench, sinking into another stretch of eternity between this meal and next. An innumerable length of time later, when the fourth tray comes in, he leaves it untouched just to see what happens.

Nothing, it turns out. No one collects it, no one gives him another, even as another eternity floats by. This is Sven's tray. With despair he realizes he will only be fed when he returns it, no matter when that might be; they're happy to starve him for as long as it takes, they can wait forever.

It's not the violence that drives Sven crazy. Not the long silences, nor even the loss of time.
It's that they offer exactly, and only, as much as he can give, knowing fully that he is bankrupt. He's not a person. He's a plaything.

It's that realization which hurts more than anything.

-----

Blood under his nails, dried enough to scrape clean.

-----

Why are they doing this? Shouldn't they be bored by now?
What more do they want from him?

Life or death is a simple question. What's taking them so long?

-----

Another round of interrogations, brief this time. More pleas for information, more generic taunts about his family, but Sven is immovable. No one has proved without a doubt they know where his family are, let alone talked to them; nothing about his friends, either. Until the Stasi can give actual evidence that Sven's loved ones rejected him, he will assume they're bluffing. All he cares about is the blissful breath of fresh air. He is too tired for much else.

There are two officers in charge of his interrogation. One's not much older than Sven, barking orders in a sharp and trembling voice, hand swinging whenever he hears something he doesn't like. One's middle-aged, his mustache already grey, more patient and persuasive. Sven doesn't fall for it. Something about blood, stone, the latter lacking the former. His ill-fated bread errand isn't much of a story, but it's the only one he has, and they can go to hell if they don't want to accept it. Sven will be happy to take them with him.

-----

The fourth tray brought nothing but bread and water. A starvation diet fit for the deepest part of the clink, where the worst-behaved are left to starve, the walls padded so they can't even kill themselves. Sven laps water off the mug, tilting it in an agonizingly slow trickle down the side, trying to save the liquid for as long as possible.

Presumably he looks insane. They've stopped even banging on his door.

-----

Light, white light, forever cold and unwavering.

-----

Flesh learns fast. Flesh does as it's told. Eventually Sven is too twitchy to sleep, as terribly exhausted as he is, his nerves stuck on overdrive in case somebody shakes him awake, screams in his ear, starts wailing on his bruised body with their fists. Sven has heard nothing in many hours to indicate this will be the case, but this is not a rational matter; he'd be less wound up if he actually heard something. It's the anticipation that kills. He's been trained against his fatigue. Reprogrammed, from the bottom up.

If this goes on he will not be human any longer.

-----

Soon afterwards he starts going mad. Ringing in his ears, blurred vision, his words severed from thought.
In terms of abstract identity, but also in a very real sense, Sven Kruspe begins to die.

-----

856, you owe the State over a thousand Marks in unpaid taxes.
Indeed he does. They'll stay unpaid.
856, your next-door neighbour. He's an employee of ours. He's heard about you, he sends his greetings.
He's nothing special. Just about every apartment building has an IM. Schools, churches, anywhere there are people.
856, nobody in your building wants you back. We can fix that for you, but you need to be honest. Why make this so difficult?
Why would he return where he's not wanted? He's being honest, he wasn't protesting. It's not him making things difficult, it's them.
856, you realize your actions could have begun World War III.
Literally what the fuck? It's not like he was jumping the Wall. That's like, sixties repertoire, fresh from the Prague Spring and its ripples through East Germany. Sven was a baby when that happened. Is he guilty from birth by osmosis? If they're going to dig up the past, why not pursue those old charges they've already threatened him with? That would make sense. This does not make sense. They scold him for not having a permit for his guitar, and for not paying taxes, but then accuse him of sedition for the grand crime of buying bread. They know these things are not the same, yes? They realize that, don't they? This is insane. He can't process this any longer, he's going crazy, oh Lord oh Jesus they've all gone crazy and now they've locked him up in this madhouse he's going to die here and nobody knows

-----

back in his cell the walls start talking to him and he sees his mother. high up in the cherry tree, gazing down from a branch. "you know, mutti, it was kind of fucked up what you did," sven says, "i'm sorry i broke your heart, but we could've avoided this. why didn't you stop me leaving if you were going to miss me? why torment me with those letters? i thought you wanted me gone. was it so hard for you to ask me to stay?" his mother looks pale and tired, like he always remembered her, and that makes him feel at home. "it was obvious you wanted to be gone," her voice echoes in his head, quiet and defeated like the last time he heard her, "with a family to feed, life isn't about a single person's wants. would you have listened even if i said i didn't want you to go?" "and whose fault is it i wouldn't have listened? remember how you used to go without eggs and butter, so you could save them to make birthday cakes for us?" she is silent. "don't think i didn't notice your sacrifice. i cook. i know how much that stuff costs. whenever you made us a treat you had to forgo something; i thought it'd be easier if i asked for cherries instead. they were everywhere in the garden. i was born during cherry season, wasn't i? swipe them from the ground and i'd have been happy. fuck it and fuck the cherries, i just needed it to be from you. i needed you to need me, but you crafted a whole new family without me in it. where's my real vatti anyway? why did you stop telling me about him? i'd have gone to live with him if you didn't want me around. maybe if i'd kept in touch with him, he might've come to collect me from this hellhole. you couldn't let me have even that?" "this is exactly what i mean when i say you wouldn't have listened. too late now, too late." she moans. she stands up, swaying precariously on the branch, and before sven's eyes she warps into the version of his mother he has built up in his mind: expressionless, loveless, resentful, nothing like his real mother. cherry juice like dark blood trickling between her fingers. "you say that like you care, but let's face it, you just weren't a good son. you misbehaved at every opportunity. you almost ruined your own life and made my life hell on top of it all. the state looms over us as much as it does you. you know you'd put us in danger one day, acting out like this. tell me: is it really my fault that i couldn't love you?"

-----

The breaking point comes the moment his interrogators enter his cell, the younger one beaming as he holds up a piece of paper. "Fresh from your apartment, 856," he exclaims triumphantly, unaware of the scale of the emotions he's about to detonate, "a letter that came for you yesterday. Now we-"

Sven loses it. He moves so quickly nobody sees it coming. Before either officer can restrain him he lunges forwards, snatching the letter from his hand; without further ado, he tears it up and eats it, swallowing the shredded pieces in vicious fistfuls. The roll from however long ago is still here and he rips that up too, crushing bread into ink, the stale crumbs and the margarine helping the sheet along. The officers are horrified. Sven chokes on the last bite; he grabs the mug and takes a long swig, the last drop of his water disappearing down his throat, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

It took no more than a few seconds. Sven looks at them wildly.

"What letter?" He rasps, and smiles.

The officers stand there, aghast. Sven prepares to be done in.
It doesn't happen. The younger one laughs, nervously. "Crazy bastard!" He spits, but the venom is no longer there, nor the triumph; he turns on his heels and walks away, disgusted with Sven and the entire situation, and the older officer follows shortly. The door swings shut and no more punishment follows it. Sven lets out a wild laugh. He's shown the bastards what's what.

He staggers back to the bench and lies down and shuts his eyes.

Unhinged behaviour aside, the broken mosaic of his mind has latched onto something else: yesterday, the officer said, was when that letter came. Sven had no mail waiting when he left his apartment. It could not have come on the day of his arrest. The soonest it could have come is the day after, and it didn't reach him until today. That means, at the very least, that he's on the third day of his confinement. A confirmation of time's passage, that this is real life, that the sun and moon have indeed sunk and risen since this began.

Glad to get that learnt. Pity it's dogshit, what he's going through. Sven curls up and ponders what this means for him.

Three days. The longest any of Sven's friends have been held, and he's going to break the record. Not only was he arrested in the most rancid political climate he's known, there's no way they're letting him go after the heartbreaking stunt he pulled. Sooner or later he'll perish, or be dragged to prison – real prison, with a uniform and a stated crime, where they discard the dregs left over from interrogation. How long will he have to wait then? Six months, twelve months, many more years to come?

Sven hopes they'll let him write letters. He'd like to let his friends know where he is. Hopefully whoever wrote him this letter won't get into trouble, if they meant well; it's likely the Stasi have already read it, but it'll be hard to make a case against the sender without a physical copy. And if they didn't copy it before? Tough luck, they're never getting that letter back, seeing as nobody expected Sven to eat the damned thing. The sender's identity will just have to live in Sven's head as a thought experiment. He takes to this task with a resigned fascination.

Who could have written to him?

Not his mother. She doesn't know his Berlin address. Paul and Flake know it, but they're not big on letters; it's easier for them to visit, they don't live far from him. One of his bandmates, reminding Sven to come to band practice? Possibly, but they'd have left a note, not a fully inked page. Only the people who know his address, want to talk, and don't live near enough to visit would write to him – people like Till, for example. A faint moan escapes Sven's lips. The one person he wanted to hear from, yet desperately had to shield from cruelty at the same time. Till, or his found family in Schwerin, waiting innocently to hear from him.

Then again, it could be bills. A notice from the superintendent, something mundane like that. Maybe there never was a letter, and the Stasi just faked one, hoping to manipulate him into thinking his loved ones denounced him. Yes, that must be it. Sven believes this because it hurts too much to think of Till. In this matter, and this matter alone, he prefers the lie over the truth.

(The worst case scenario is that the letter was real, of course, and that he really was denounced, but Sven can't accept that. He refuses to go there. There are people who'd sell him out for a song, but it can't happen today. He couldn't let this letter be real so he ate it. As long as no one cuts him open to fish out the individual pieces, Sven is still loved.)

His breath hitches. His chest hurts. Sven gasps in and out, eyes clenched shut, as he rolls on his back to face the ceiling.
The air is cold on his face. The light, piercing through his eyelids.

(He has to be.)

He's spiraling again. Sven turns the subject onto himself, looking for a distraction. Who will he write to first in prison, what about? A draft springs into mind straight away:

     Paul, Flake, keep my Stratocaster safe for me. Keep her in her case. Do not under any circumstances carry her around in plastic wrap.
     Take both of my coats. Check the seams. I sewed about a hundred Marks in each coat, make good use of it.
     Burn all the letters in the shoebox. Some are from you and some mention you.
     I bought Nele two picture-books for her birthday, it's the package in brown paper in the wardrobe; see if you can't get it to her by then.
     All of my compositions you can use as fit, or burn, if you feel that's best...

Sven chuckles wryly. Exactly whom he ought to contact first, exactly what he must conceal – exactly what he shouldn't write, not so blatantly, as outgoing post will be censored. He must keep it brief. The destruction is the most important thing: burn the letters, burn his compositions, take the few items of value in the apartment. Paul and Flake will know to remove everything musical. He doesn't need to wax poetic about that.

But that's still too direct. Forget poetically, to wax at all about burning and taking is questionable. How can he convey his message without using those verbs? Sven's coming up blank. Maybe he could try a different language?

He knows a little English, but that'll only cause trouble. He remembers some Russian from school, although he's never written a letter in it – and it'll have to be a letter entirely in Russian, no trace of German anywhere, in case the Stasi think he's writing in code. Sven would have no defense on that front if he was caught, because that's absolutely the level of discourse he's aiming for. He and his friends have been speaking in allusions for years.

     Pavlya, heard you like to igrat' v shakhmaty nowadays. I've a spare chessboard if you want it.

Paul speaks good Russian. Paul could respond in kind, cover for his message, and he'll know that Sven's actually talking about the chess box next to the board. There are no pieces in there, but rather a set of pliers, beads, and a roll of silver wire; Sven shares the craft of jewelry-making with the members of Feeling B, all of whom do this illegally, and hide their materials in chess sets. They'll conceal that evidence for him, and with any luck, the rest. Sven chuckles again, this time with increasing hysteria, feeling tears rise to his eyes.

They stay unshed. It's funny, in a horrible and scarring way. Here he is, plotting elaborate schemes to hide his dissent – yet he hasn't given a single thought to his family. All because he'll only be hurt around them, or vice versa. But he'd write to them too. It's not hard. One line will do for the sum of his feelings.

     Mutti, sorry I was a brat about the cherries. Better you all forget I ever existed.

Better for them, better for him. Sven remembers what Till said about emotions: my feelings are my feelings, whether they hurt or not. Of course Sven has regrets, of course he wants to break down and weep, but that's no one else's business. They don't belong in letters like these. As long as he's still alive to feel, he'll feel them in his own time.

Sven should make the most of it. He might not have much left. Death is not difficult, it's the farewells that make it hard.

     Dear Till, I'm only young. I don't want to die.

Ah, yes. The bitterest truth in his heart.

Sven shields his face. Again the tears fail to come. He links his fingers upon his chest and sighs, feeling outside of everything.
He might not like it, but this is the death of something, and soon everything. He's had enough. The person who left home at sixteen, who played soulful guitar and was once the best stewmaker in Schwerin, who could never quite leave the fields and lakes of his past behind – that Sven Kruspe person is done. But he's not going to die in prison. Death is a master from Germany, but he's not going out with a beating, a choked scream and a candle snuffed out in the dark.

If I must die, my end is my own.

His emotions are his own, too. He'll take them with him.

-----

But he does not die.

The Stasi would never admit it to a scamp like him, but it's over. The fight was lost before Sven was ever arrested. Honecker thought so, Gorbachev thought so, watching the Berlin parades on the 7th of October. That was the actual sticking point, the day meant to celebrate forty years of the GDR: all around the country East Germans were fleeing, Hungary and Czechoslovakia had opened their borders, and the protestors roared up and demanded to be free. Everything the police have done since then were futile attempts to stem the flood.
That's what the arrests are about. They're scanning the streets, grabbing anybody they can – unbeknownst to Sven, Flake almost got caught too, at a church only ten minutes from home – but in reality, they've lost control. The situation has only worsened during the three days of Sven's imprisonment, and now even the officers are running around, trying to cover their behinds. Soon the order will come to burn and shred everything, so they won't have to answer for history. This order will fail. All this boils down to Sven being freed, without warning, a mere three hours after his stunt.

He's more confused than anything. Offended. Yes.

They remove him with inelegance. While he's in his morbid trance they drag him out, toss him into a van, and off they go. Sven huddles in the back, wide-eyed. They don't explain anything, won't even let him look out of the window – although this is less out of malice, more because the police are floundering.
Dropping Sven off is harder than they expected. They didn't want to release him near Weißensee, where they started, lest this paints a target on their backs; nor do they want to take him home to Lychener Straße, that's going too easy on him. But Berlin is no longer the police's playground. Every major street bristles with protests, every turn a sea of shouts and glares. If the protestors discover they have a hostage, they'll descend upon them immediately. They don't have the spine to face their own justice, so they drive almost to the opposite end of East Berlin, desperately seeking somewhere the crowd won't spot them.

Unter den Linden, no. Alexanderplatz, definitely not, it's vibrant with protests – and so, somewhere around the mouth of Schönhauser Allee it is. The officers don't even exit the van: a quick stop, the click of the door release, and they shove Sven outside. He rolls onto bare ground. Groans, supporting himself with trembling arms. The day is cold and bright.

"Run." Sven's bag is tossed on the pavement beside him. He catches the nearest officer's eye, the older one in charge of his interrogation, gazing helplessly at him. "Run, Jüngling, run. You might still survive."

He points far away. The Berlin Wall lies not far beyond his finger. He honestly meant to convey freedom – even vicious motherfuckers have moments of sincerity – but Sven sees it as a taunt. He bares his teeth, glaring like a wild animal; snatching up his bag, he walks off decisively in the opposite direction, head held high. What's he going to do at the Wall? Get himself shot? Crazy bastards, the lot of them.

Crazy, crazy, crazy. He's being crushed by madmen.

Only several crossings away does Sven regain his bearings. With a bitter smile he looks around Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße, where he wanted to buy bread. Looks like he got there in the end. He still doesn't have bread at home, so he should buy some now. Sven rummages in his pockets, then in his bag.

He has his keys. A book, thankfully legal. His wallet and Personalausweis. Everything is there. He lost all the change in his pockets while being arrested, but he wasn't carrying much to begin with; he's very hungry, he needs more than a loaf of bread. He keeps that kind of money elsewhere. Sven ducks into an alleyway and tears an inner seam of his jacket, emerging less than a minute later with two Goethes rolled in his palm.

Forty Marks. More than enough for bread, for dairy, too, and a little sausage. Alas, it is not enough for understanding.

There's no sidestepping it: Sven looks dreadful right now, and the looks he's getting bother him. He's walking off-pace, disoriented from lack of sleep. His clothes are scuffed, bruises stand out on his skin, he looks exactly like the sort of young alcoholic people from all walks of life give up on. He can endure it while buying bread (white wheat loaf, medium large), and the Tetra Paks of milk, but meat is an issue. The counter's a poor sight today. There's none of the smoked sausage Sven usually likes, no recognizable cuts of anything. His only choice is between greying mince and a loose Blutwurst, visibly more blood than the sausage; nevertheless, he gets more of it for the same price, so he pays for it. The saleswoman tosses his cut of the sausage into the scale, heavily stained with the fluids of previous purchases, then back out of it. "Your Einkaufsnetz," she barks.

Sven left his at home. He wasn't planning to buy all this. Anxiously he asks for some wrapping paper. "An envelope, a newspaper, anything - I'll pay you for it, Frau, I beg of you-"

"Genosse!" She scowls at his unkempt hair, his clothes, contempt dripping from her every word. "You think everything in our nation can be bought and sold?"

For the second time that day Sven snaps.
He slams his bag on the counter. Sends the scale clattering to the ground, dotting the floor with drops of still-wet blood. Heads turn; the saleswoman stands frozen, mouth hanging open; Sven would like to explode with the full weight of what he thinks about her and fucking string bags and the sausage and the wretched, wretched GDR, but refrains. With a disturbingly calm expression he leans in, and grabs the sausage off the counter with his bare hand. His nails sink into the moist surface, overladen with liquid; a streak of congealed blood shoots onto the adjacent meat, but Sven takes no notice as he turns and leaves. This is a very poor sausage. Sven stares ahead with uncanny eyes, never wavering in the slightest, as he walks all the way up Schönhauser Allee with the Blutwurst dripping all over his hand. By the time he's unlocked the door and tossed the sausage in the pan, he's smeared with blood and darkened fat up to his wrist, visceral proof of the State's ruthless assault on his dignity. He turns on the heat. Digs out the eggs, which have kept well in his absence, and fills the pan with them. Snips open a Tetra Pak, nearly taking his fingertip with it. Inhales the whole thing.

His knees buckle under him and Sven sinks his head against the counter.

He can't stay here, he realizes. He needs to get out of the country.
Yes, Sven wanted to be in the West, even before. But that was all he used to imagine, the being of it, the inertia of existing there. The journey was terrifying, and real life always got in the way. Friends. His music. His life, too, until the State showed him what it was worth to them.

Someday he was going to break. It might as well be over Blutwurst and eggs. Sven heaves himself up and washes his hands at the sink before he stirs the pan, noting the sausage has firmed up in the heat. He slices the loaf and takes the whole pan with him to the living room, where he sits cross-legged, filling his stomach with more than torture and letters. Not elegant, but pleasantly hot, and edible.

Now if only he had some butter. Real butter, deep and creamy, beaded rich golden around the sides of his plate. Sven mops up the last of the juices with a crust of bread, feeling as if his limbs were lead.

He needs a bath. Needs sleep. Life is a never-ending wheel of desires.

He cannot understate how kaput this makes him.

But escape has lit a fire in his heart. He has been granted another appetite to satisfy. For the rest of the day he contemplates his leaving, planning his route in his head. In the kitchen, at the table, in the bathroom come nightfall. The letters he drafted in his cell comes in handy, as he already has the most important tasks pinpointed.

His belongings. His family. His friends. It's the latter which torments him the most. But his bruises ache as he sinks into the lukewarm bath, washing away the muck of three days hence; these are his pains, his friends cannot feel them in his stead. They cannot live his life for him. He watches listlessly as his pale hair unravels around him, swaying like waterweeds beneath the Schweriner See.

If they catch me a second time, I will die.

That maxim has rooted itself firmly in his heart. Sven feeds it, nurses it, lets it wail. To think he accepted death before he even considered fleeing. Now it's as if all his fears have sunk into a void. Sven feels that he can do whatever, that he might as well.

He cannot possibly lose more than he already has.

-----

Food is his foremost concern. No stacks of tins or cooking implements. Water is the heaviest thing he can carry, but he doesn't need the full journey's worth; he can get all the water he wants after he crosses the border, it's only until then he needs to keep a low profile. A K-ration might be nice to have – Sven warily thinks about the lads he knows, hanging around in the back of darkened markets to trade Western cigarettes and military rations – but he doesn't have the time to gather such things. So bread it is, the crisp kind that keeps. His Erbswurst, water, and preserved meats all the way.

Sven runs around East Berlin for what he needs. Discards belongings, burns documents. So the day passes, and another. Through a stroke of serendipity he discovers who sent him the letter: a delivery slip comes for him in the morning, which he exchanges at the post office for his usual parcel of sweets from Gitta. Included within is a small note with her well-wishes, an apology for her parcel being late this month (a postal workers' strike), and the hopes her other letter got to him in time. Sven is relieved, but utterly devastated. He clutches the box to his chest. How will he tell her he got the letter, just not in a way he'd have liked. How can he tell her he won't be here for the next parcel, that she shouldn't send him anything ever again, in case he compromises her and Till; the despair rooted in Sven's heart tells him he doesn't deserve more of her kindness, and he believes that falsehood too, because it hurts less than the truth.

He needs the sweet to enfold the bitter. Everything she sent makes it in his pack. He composes letters, less fatalistic than the ones he thought of in jail, and sends them on the day of his escape.

-----

Liebe Mutti.

-----

The list of people he wrote to did not include his family. Nor his bandmates, to be fair: Sven slipped his key beneath Paul's door, wrapped in a note. Come morning, Flake will discover it while rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes, and then they'll both realize what he's done.

At least countless other people are doing the same this October. At least he managed to find a companion going the same way. He doesn't feel so alone in his exodus.

-----

I didn't want for much, you know. I just wanted us to be like everyone else. Sometimes you'd scold me, sometimes you'd be good to me. Every now and then, I'd have liked to hear that you loved me, I'd have said it back.

Embarrassing, isn't it? Seeing me beg for affection like this.
Sometimes I feel like I never grew up at all.

-----

He does, however, think about what he'd have liked to say. The only other thing he took were pictures of his family.

-----

But maybe grown-ups don't have it any different. Maybe people aren't all right, generally. They just pretend they are because it's too miserable otherwise.

They know they won't change anything. Why bother to feel?

-----

On the road he repeats and revises endlessly. During the daytime treks he mutters to himself, keeping a respectful distance between himself and his companion; at nightfall he turns abruptly silent, as would a songbird in a cage. Railroad tracks, darkened alleyways, harvested wheatland, they're all falling away from under their feet.

He's well into Hungary by the time he realizes his name is, too.

-----

I don't know. Maybe I want to think everyone's as unhappy as we are, on the inside and outside.

It's only fair that way. I don't want to be the only one to suffer.

-----

One by one everything he brought from East Berlin fades away.
The smoked sausages. Sweet wrappers, discarded en masse.
He has one last pack of crispbread left over by the time he approaches the border.

There's a fox lying dead on the path. His companion urges him on, but he takes time to move it into the bushes. It's still warm, its strong red body marred only by a snare around one leg. The cable is shiny from gnawing. It was two strands away from freedom. This is a wooded area in mid-October, the wandering season for foxes old and new; now and then a scream or a cry like barking laughter echoes through the trees, startling the men on their journey. He knows not what they mean but he can guess. Posturing, fighting for food and land, or trapped like that fox, perhaps, crying into the night's indifference: Let me live! I want to live too!

He won't be like that. Deliriously he thinks of Till. Broody-eyed Till, who spoke little, wasted little, and had infinite compassion for frail living things. Till, well-attuned to the wax and wane of nature, who accepted all life and death on his doorstep as a fact of existence. He recalls walking with Till around the lake. How Till sat at the kitchen table, reading to his daughter or petting the cat, greeting him with his warm smile as he entered with doughnuts or steaming bowls of soup in hand. Till's hand pulling up the covers around him, tucking him in warm as they said goodnight. And he didn't exist in a vacuum, either. There was Nele, there was Gitta – Gitta, who cared for him from so far away, whose letters and packages kept him going in Berlin-

-----

It's funny, isn't it. I'm like an imprinted chick that can't let go.
It was all wrong from the beginning. You and I and Them. Holding onto one another on this sinking ship, about to go down with it.

Gitta.
Till.

If only my family had been like yours...

-----

Everything human holds him back.

-----

Never mind.

It was all stupid, anyway.

-----

They waited for the guards to leave. They're alone now. The border fence, freshly cut.
His companion goes first. Extends a hand.

He takes it and slips out of himself forever.

-----

I hate you and I hate everything

It is mid-January when the man arrives at the lake. He has come to this foreign country via a foreign country. His eyes show the harrowing journey he had. But he knows where he is going, and although his pace is slow, his steps remain steady and determined. He crosses the village and sets on the long dirt path, the waters ahead glimmering in the moonlight.

All is quiet. Only far-apart streetlights illuminate the way. At the end of the path is a cottage, one window still dimly lit despite the hour. He walks up to it, slips out the spare key under a cherry-wood flowerbox, and sees himself inside. Silence greets him, his breath misting in the darkness of the kitchen. Nevertheless the smell is familiar. He breathes in deep and exhales, his smile as faint as his voice.

"Till."

For a moment it seems he is unheard. But there's no need to call again; beyond the closed door comes a gasp, a faint sharp clink like glass breaking, hurried movements. The man raises his eyes to the ceiling and traces the footsteps in the dark. Across the corridor, down the stairs. The click of the doorknob, and he stands face to face with Till, freshly a year older.

They look at each other. He doesn't explain. "Can I stay the night?"

Till is quick to come to his senses. "Of course."

"Thanks."

"Anything to eat?"

He nods. "Please."

Once he's safe he can afford to be plaintive. At the kitchen table the strength leaves his body; he slumps into a chair, closes his eyes, and proceeds to do and say nothing until Till returns. A bowl of reheated soup is set on his left side, a large hunk of rye bread on the right. The smell rouses him, but it takes what feels like an eternity for him to pick up the spoon, he is so exhausted.

Beef and barley, warming to the bone, the grains plump between his teeth. But it's the bread he enjoys the most. He sits there and eats it all, meticulously tearing it into quarters, then eighths, soaking each piece in silken broth. Sweet, savoury, so good it's almost painful. Everything else about this situation feels like a dream – yes, even Till, quietly watching him from across the table – but this bread, the stuff of life, that he can never doubt.

It is Till who speaks first. "Scholle."

He doesn't reply. He keeps eating.

"Sven?"

His hand pauses over the bowl. Trembles, faintly. "They didn't call me that over there." He murmurs, then looks up, a different light reflected in his eyes. "Couldn't. I didn't have my Personalausweis on me. Didn't want them to see it if I was caught. I wasn't going to be taken back there, you see."

"..."

"But they were ever so kind, Till. Gave me a new set of papers, used the name I gave them, they didn't even ask questions. I was tired of questions. Maybe that's why I was so lonely there, I wouldn't put up with people trying to know me." He shakes his head and finishes off the soup. "You're the only one who's called me Sven in months."

Till doesn't say anything. The man previously known as Sven pushes away the bowl, and sits with folded hands, jaw squared in anticipation.

The past three months have been chaos. He'll never entirely make sense of them. But Till probably wants to ask questions, and he wants to get them over with, so that he might sleep with a clean conscience. What those questions might be he doesn't know: what happened when he was arrested, how he left for the West, how he felt when the Wall came down less than a month later? How he left his friends and family hanging? Whether he felt like it was worth it?
A ghost of a smile twists his lip. Defense mechanism. He wasn't an optimist to begin with, but recent events have truly sent him headfirst down the figurative cynical chute. But Till has always been the man who could lift his shield, to reach in and touch his pale cheek. He's kind enough not to pry, nor does he let on any of his hurt. He only asks the one thing that matters most at the moment. "What did they call you there?"

He hesitates. Fishes in his pockets, brings out a laminated card, pushes it across. Till reads it. "I see. That's how it is from now on?"

He nods. Till doesn't notice it and he's trying not to show it, but the lack of judgement is already softening him; only now is he processing that he's safe, that he has come back to a place known and loved. But if he wilted here he'd cry, and he's kind of forgotten how to do that, he hasn't cried in so long. Warmth is all he wants, neither too close nor too far, until he's pulled himself together.

"So be it." Till finally says, and returns the Personalausweis. Their hands brush halfway along the table, then link together, proof of one heart having touched the other. "Welcome home, Richard."

-----

Perhaps, philosophically speaking, there is no reason for him to live.
It doesn't matter. He'll keep going, anyway, striving for a better world.
It might be a meager life, it might never shine bright. But it is Richard's own.

Chapter Text

Desiderata (Chapter 4) - ‘Soljanka'

-----------------------------

Πάτροκλος μὲν σῖτον ἑλὼν ἐπένειμε τραπέζῃ
καλοῖς ἐν κανέοισιν, ἀτὰρ κρέα νεῖμεν Ἀχιλλεύς0.

- Book IX, lines 216-17

Names are just things, actually. Anyone should be able to change theirs for whatever reason, no matter how meager. Richard mourns that so few share in this enlightenment. "Jungs, get your IDs ready. Till, pass me mine?"

A series of groans answer him, followed by the rustling of pockets. They're coming back from a gig at Saalfeld. It's Richard's turn on the wheel. Till slips him his Personalausweis from behind the driver's seat, and at the same time, reaches towards the back of the van to shake Olli awake. Schneider does the same for Paul, then again with a brusque sigh, when Paul just snuggles deeper into his jacket. Flake is reading in the passenger's seat. These men are Richard's fait accompli, his bandmates and companions for the rest of his life. There isn't much in common yet between them, but for the purposes of this roadside check, their identically-emblazoned papers will suffice.

Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Capital has won out.
Now everywhere is called the West, including the East. Richard studies his new name, glimmering on his Personalausweis.

He has contemplated this issue for five years. In that time he's seen changes on every level, from the personal to the national. He can no longer imagine tying his existence around something as arbitrary as a name; oh, he's aware people are annoyed by such changes, he just has no sympathy with their ire. No one in this van has a problem calling him 'Richard', but there were people from his past who did, and Richard severed from them quickly. Why put up with those who make a liar out of him every time he introduces himself?

"Put your seatbelts on. Here he comes..."

The law. Laws make him put up with it. Would've made him, at least, had Richard not sorted out his documents in West Berlin. He's still antsy around law enforcement, but Richard is endlessly gleeful about having one over on them, and his voice doubtless shows it: "Prost Neujahr, officer.”

"Same to you. Where are you headed?"

Till gives the district and Richard hands over the documents. The inspection is brief. All six men are responsive; Richard's driving license, valid, winter tyres, good, seatbelts, excellent. He glances through the IDs – raises a curious eyebrow at the sole different one – and lets the van through. "Safe travels, Herren."

Richard offers his usual complaint once they get moving again. "Why not get a new Personalausweis, Flake."

"For what? Mine's good until next year."

"But you don't even use it. You show your passport every time. Isn't it a pain to carry that around everywhere?"

"Only because they keep trying to upgrade my Personalausweis if they see it. The hell do I need another one for? The Bundesadler?" A snort of disdain. Flake tucks his eagle-emblazoned passport away. "This one is plenty. I never asked to be part of the BRD."

Richard shuts his mouth. He'll debate Flake endlessly on matters of convenience, but not on nomenclature, out of principle. Schneider is less willing to let it go. "It's just Deutschland now, isn't it? One people and one republic."

"Yes." Flake replies impassively. "The BRD."

It's no use arguing with Flake. Best to not start at all, and failing that, to change the subject.
"We should call our hosts," Till suggests, which dissipates the tension. Richard nods, and keeps driving, looking for a phone box. The snowy tops of Berlin lie ahead.

-----

Under everyday driving conditions, it's three and a half hours from Saalfeld to Berlin. Today is not everyday. Today is the first day of 1995, and the men have spent it more or less unrested, having played all night long. They lingered at the club past closing time and catnapped between driver swaps, but not as much as they needed. Amidst the heavy snow, the hauling of equipment, and frequent rest stops, three and a half hours has turned to over six. It's dusky when they reach Berlin. The sun sets so quickly in winter.

None of them go home. For one, they have different homes: they meet up in darkened basements to practice, there's nary a home base big enough for all of them in their immediate future. Luckily, a couple in West Berlin has offered to host them tonight. The husband got to know Paul during the late Feeling B days, and now they're fans of the fledgling Rammstein. Like them, the couple are wryly bemused, a little lost in their new world – they kept saying how good it'd be to have them around, to have company at last -

"Scholle."

A quick tap on his back. Richard looks around, startled. Paul's peering awkwardly from the phone booth, the receiver cradled against his cheek. "Ah?"

Paul taps his bare wrist. "Skol'ko vremya?"^[1]

Their hosts were recently married. Anna hails from Moscow, as did Oleg's parents. They are not six months settled in their current home, so the common language is Russian for the time being. "Polpyatovo."^[2] Richard whispers back after a hurried examination of his own wrist; he switches to German for the more urgent question. "Where the hell's your watch?"

Paul raises his eyebrows. It’s the only answer he can give right now, as it's his turn to speak – and how he can speak! Richard gets the message. He stubs out his cigarette and returns to the van.

This call has been going for over five minutes. But then, they expected that, and it wasn't just because Paul’s a chatterbox. Well-wishes from further East of the continent have always felt longer, and more full of heart, than the ones they get nowadays.
His own lengthy greetings conveyed, Paul hops back into the van. "Told them we'd be there by five." He says cheerfully, taking the passenger's seat: Richard and Till have swapped places, while Flake has moved to the back, snoozing with the book splayed over his face. He rummages in the glove compartment. "As for your question, my watch gave up the ghost. Look."

He holds it up by the strap. The clock face is frozen to four forty-four; AM, presumably, it was working when they arrived at Saalfeld. Richard rubs his chin. "Must be out of juice. Is there a repairer nearby?"

"Nothing's open anyway. It can wait."

He’s right. It's the New Year, and worse, it's a Sunday, the perfect double whammy for nothing-happening in Germany. Richard would've thought little else of this if not for Schneider's return: he heaves himself into the seat beside Richard, squinting lightly at Paul's watch. "Maybe we went too hard last night?" He shrugs, buckling himself in.

The human mind latches onto the most insignificant things.
So far Richard hasn't recognized this about himself, but it's true. The mind just loves to spin tiny things of no consequence into a world of pain. Something prickles in his heart; aside from an offbeat exhale, and a blink, he doesn't show it and no one notices it. "Quatsch!" Paul dismisses the comment entirely. "I haven't changed the battery since the reunification, it was about time it died. And even if we did, so what – it's the Silvester spirit."

Schneider concedes. When Rammstein was formed, the band put an embargo on any extensive bickering between Paul and Schneider; like oil and water, the two of them, but they do make a good salad dressing with the other four in tow.

They'll have forgotten this exchange before the night is over, like normal people. Unlike Richard, whose subconscious is turning this comment on its head over and over until it gains edges, not that he knows it. But what of it! They arrive at their destination at five, as promised, and the couple meets them so warmly. They couldn't even purchase a little gift to thank their hosts, as nothing was open, but the men are drawn into the hearth before they can even apologise for it. Fed, celebrated, the full nine yards. Faces brighten and the drinks flow, as does the conversation. It's like night has never cast its shadow upon this couple.

Some people are like that. Inherently are, or strive to be. Richard envies them greatly.

Most days he just holds onto the thinning rope.

But even he can take his mind off such things when there’s good food to be had. Sauerkraut, pirozhki, Salat Olivier. Sliced pickles and whole. Sausages, all of excellent quality. Dainty slices of baguette topped with butter and savories. Pickled herring! - Rolled with olives, or under a shuba, it's all good. Like many Russians their hosts celebrate the new year in style, and they celebrate it longer. A pot roast even materializes at six-thirty, accounting for the fact the band barely even ate last night.

"Bread's well and good, as is caviar – but meat is what men need!" Is what Anna has to say about it.
They're in love. Brimming with bliss. A drinking party and dinner party in one, what's not to like?

So delicious. So decadent. Vodka and champagne wash their cares away. By the time everyone's squeezed themselves back into the living room, they're plastered, but even through the haze the band doesn't forget their gratitude. There's a playful back-and-forth on what they can offer in return for this hospitality, with suggestions ranging from pragmatic (a bar meetup at a later date) to abstract (tickets for yet-unplanned concerts), before they settle upon a reciprocal meal. In this home, for the very next meal, once they've slept. They'll cook and clean up everything. Richard is volunteered as the head chef, courtesy of Olli: "He's awesome in the kitchen, he'll have you covered. Best Strudel I've ever had, I wish he cooked more often."

"I'm tempted, but that's a lot of work! What's easiest for you?"

"Uhh." Richard can't think straight. Olli's words weigh strangely on him. Till's hand comes to rest on his back, which prevents him feeling too weird about the comment for now. "... Soljanka?"

Blessed be the stewmakers! It's like he never left the Gaststätte at all. Richard half expects mockery – a qualified chef, and yet all you can think of is Soljanka – but the couple's faces light up. "The perfect hangover cure," Oleg exclaims, "and a taste of home! Anechka, what do you think?"

"I like it!" She gestures to the remaining spread. "Not only that, we'll need it, if we carry on like this. Drink up, boys!"

"Is that really okay?" Richard asks her later, while everyone's moved onto other topics. "It is just Soljanka. I fear it's not enough."

"Not enough!" Anna laughs. "You say it’s just solyanka, Richard, but most Rammstein fans will never get to enjoy a meal you personally made for them. Especially when you’re famous." She pours him a fifty-gram of vodka. "But we will. You broke bread with us and shared our home. It's good to have you here, that's what matters."

"Oh well." His voice makes it sound blasé, but actually, he's flattered. Now that Richard's thinking more clearly, he can see it's a sensible suggestion: he makes a damned fine Soljanka, and he can make enough to feed everybody. Sometimes simple is best. "In that case, I shan’t let you down. Shall we drink to it?"

Anna raises her own glass for the toast. "Budem!"^[3]

Short and sweet. We will be, and shall be. Richard admires such a definite existence.

They down the vodka in one gulp, and move to the opposite ends of the table. For zakuski Richard fancies something sweet. "What were you two talking about?" Till asks as he approaches, nursing a beer in one hand.

Richard grins at him, basking in the temporary lightness of being. "I realized I was pretty awesome."

Till beams at that. Well and truly, his whole face mirthful and bright. It's an expression he saves for addressing the entire band, or when he's alone with Richard – no in between. "That you are." He says, and they split an apple pastry together. It's good.

-----

Things wind down after nine o'clock. They're young men, they love parties – but their sleepless night is finally taking its toll. The spare room is open for the band, as well as all the soft furniture, whichever suits them for the night.

Olli passes out first. Being the youngest, and having missed out on all the Feeling B years, he is unused to drinking of this scale. After much chuckling, and some elbow grease, they move him into an armchair and tuck him in – but his departure, so to speak, brings the evening to a slow close. Bottles are set aside, dishes put back into the fridge. The TV comes on with the volume on low. The group disperses around the apartment, lingering over a final drink, or for the sake of a chore.

Richard takes particular care of the kitchen. When he emerges he sees that Till's smoking at the balcony, while Schneider watches the news intently from the sofa. He likes to be an informed citizen, he and Richard are alike in that aspect. Anna's taken out the ashtray. The book Flake was reading in the van, she's read it too; they're chatting about it in the kitchen, their voices quiet. Oleg and Paul are catching up. On the surface, the conversation's about what's happened in their lives. Paul joining Rammstein, Oleg and Anna's wedding, the current state of Moscow. (Paul once lived there as a child, so the matter is close to his heart.) But more importantly, they're discussing emigration, which catches Richard's attention and he listens in: "- considered staying in Moscow, but we agreed it wasn't a good idea. I don't think it'd be anything like you'd remember it."

"I don't remember it being fantastic when I was there." Paul's like that. Warm, easygoing, heartbreakingly blunt. "But I loved it anyway. Moscow shaped me as a person, by God, I always wondered about going back."

Oleg makes a face. "Go later. Now is not a good time." But it's an odd face he makes, more wistful than reluctant, the face of someone who'd rather not have to judge at all. "It was an excellent place to party. The nightlife we lost over here (pointing downwards) they still have there (out of the window, eastwards): fresh, vibrant, decadent. Anything goes. And that's exactly why we couldn't live there, because right now, anything goes in Moscow where money's concerned."

"Is that any different to here?" But Paul understands. Mid-stage capitalism has untamed their old world, and they're old enough that quality of existence outweighs adventure in their hearts. Rammstein is an attempt to synthesize both, but right now, only the adventure is certain. "But I feel you. Economy, stability, how quickly we've bent to it all. Since the Germans became one people we've led a richer life, but we've become more distant than ever."

Richard doesn't know how to feel about that. Maybe bereft.

Flake comes to join them. He fills the gap between Richard and Schneider on the sofa. He's remarkably collected for the boozy evening they've had; somehow he seems to know Richard was eavesdropping, although no one else noticed, and conveys this with a single inquisitive glance in the guitarist's direction.
Richard turns his head away, abashed. Flake doesn't press the issue, but gives the guitarist implicit permission to keep listening as Paul and Oleg invite him to converse. "So how's the band life treating you? You travel a lot? It must be easier for you to go further west – I know you're not keen, Flake, don't scoff – now that the border's gone."

"Haven't gone beyond Thuringia yet." The East-West border is gone, but the band's still edging awkwardly around where it used to be. That barrier was up for longer than they were alive. It's still like a different country out there. "Do we want to travel far, yes. Settle in the West, probably not. Who knows where life will take us. What about you, what does Anya think about your move? This is the furthest west she's been."

"I think she might like to go further. I'm not opposed to it myself." Oleg's voice turns low, almost playfully resigned. "Where to, is the question. Other Bundesländer? The Netherlands? France? America, the land of impossible dreams, perhaps?"

Paul snickers. Since the ill-fated Feeling B tour there, just over a year ago, his dreams of America have been happily dead in the dirt. "What for, strawberries in winter?"

"Not the only perk, but it is tempting."

Richard stares into the TV screen. The news report has ended. All political energy should have dissipated there and then, it certainly took the tension off Schneider’s shoulders, but not in Richard's heart. The west, impossible dreams, strawberries in winter. He knows why they describe it like that, but it makes him immeasurably sad.

Because he thinks about wanting to move too. He thinks about it a lot.

It wasn't because of the strawberries he fled, that's for sure.

He has nothing against strawberries. They’re better than cherries sometimes. He'd have found some too, that winter of 1989 in West Berlin, had he looked at the import sections at the supermarket – but too much was going on at the time, and Richard hadn't processed anything that'd happened to him, let alone the complex feelings he tied up with food. Perhaps that's why he's become shy about showing off his cooking skills, unless it's for someone he lives with. He ate worse in West Berlin than in the East. The food was better but he was too lonely to cook for himself. To think the West offered him so much potential, and he was too depressed to do anything with it.

Richard is anxious to prevent this happening again. It's why he's tried recently, and consciously, to cook more foreign things.
Soljanka is a truce. It didn't come from Germany, but it didn't come from the West, and everyone's already familiar with it. An echo of what has now departed, and will not return, for the better or the worse.

Where should they go next, where. The world is their oyster and they're not sure what to do with it.

"Come out for a smoke, Risch?"

That finally breaks Richard out of his introspection. He was craving one, actually. But that cigarette is not to be tonight, as something better comes along immediately: Till has stepped away from the balcony, fiddling with the hem of his sweater. "You guys turning in for the night?"

Paul and Flake shake their heads. "Not just yet. Schneider?"

"I'll stay on the sofa." Cleanly to the point. Till smiles; that was his actual question, he didn't want to deprive a more worthy bandmate of a bed. Richard feels oddly possessive of that smile. "Oleg put up a spare cot earlier, that bed's not the only one. Take it. You needn't worry about us, isn't that right?"

He's right. Till respects the democratic decision. "Rest up, Jungen," he says, then addresses the room more broadly, mindful of Anna's return. "Yeshche raz spasibo, chto priyutili nas na noch'. Uvidimsya utrom."^[4]

Paul nods. "Spokoynoy nochi. Anya, khochesh' pokurit'?"^[5] Till disappears into the spare room. Richard hesitates; Paul notices, and winks playfully, catching the younger guitarist's eye. "Davai-davai, ne opozdai."^[6]

He nods after Till. Richard blushes. Whether Paul doesn't want him to be late for the cigarette or Till, he doesn't know – but he'd always pick the latter over the former, and Paul knows it too. He always thought Till and Richard well-suited for each other, has said as much to both of them. Richard stands up, bids goodnight (ignoring Schneider's playfully-raised eyebrows), and slips away obligingly.

"Till?

The room is dark. Two beds, side by side. The actual bed on one side of the room, a camping bed on the other.
They're familiar with this arrangement. They had a bedroom that looked like this not so long ago. Till isn't surprised to see him: they share a smile, him on the camping bed and Richard by the doorway, before he beckons him closer. "I wondered if you’d come. Are you all right?"

The camping bed's closer to the ground than Till's comfortable with, but it is wider than the other one. This suits Richard fine, it means enough space for him to sit. "Yeah, I'm... I'm just tired. I've been awake for so long this doesn't feel real." He spreads his hands in front of his face, blinking at the pale expanse, then lifts his head towards the window. It's slightly open, but there's no chill, for the breeze is calm and the room heated. Only the streetlight shines a dim orange. "I should turn on the light."

"No need, I'm about to sleep anyway. Join me?"

"Natürlich." Richard hesitates, hand pausing on top of the covers. "Your back... how is it, do you need...?"

Till smiles again. Touches the back of Richard's hand, gently. Lifts it up, peels back the covers, and moves to the center of the bed.

"I'd appreciate it," he says, and takes off his sweater.

Richard lays him down properly. His breath catches as he sees the dark stains along Till's back, his undershirt stuck to the wounds. His sweater was dark so the blood didn't show, but judging from the dried feel, it seeped into the wool as well. He'll need a new one later, and that undershirt's no good. Right now, though, it's more important they can get it off at all.

This isn't the first time they've done this. Richard pads swiftly outside, fetching his bag and wetting a towel that was inside it. The lights are out in the living room. Those still awake have gone out for some fresh air, Richard can hear them chatting in the courtyard. When he returns he applies the towel gingerly over each stain, the warm water loosening the dried blood, until he can ease the fabric off Till's body altogether. Thankfully the wounds are not deep, and Till is not in pain. "He's a kinkster, that Flake." He chuckles as he relaxes.

Richard bites his lip. It's not that he's surprised, there are more extreme performances in the band's future, it's part of the lifestyle. Flake smacking Till around with a neon lamp is pretty tame, all things considered. "He didn't get glass on you?"

"No. I had him check after the show."

It's more that they're bound to each other. When Till is strong, Richard is strong, when Till is vulnerable Richard bends like a willow, that's just how it is. Richard mops carefully over the cuts on his skin. "Sorry I can't offer more than a Katzenwäsche."

Till's voice is muffled against the pillow. "Works for the cat, works for me."

But Richard does not merely want things to work. Deliver in spades, rather.

(He's so impatient. Anxious. Nervewracked, after the band's first tumultuous year.)

He just doesn't say it out loud.

The cuts are raised and sore-looking, but cleanly scabbed over. Richard pats them dry and rubs in some ointment. Till sighs contentedly, nigh melting into his touch. Richard would feel some kind of way about this, but tonight, the voices outside are distracting him. Till feels the same, if the slowing of his breath means anything. Together they listen while Flake and Paul debate, in very drunken Russian, the practicalities of taking Paul's guitar out from the van. Paul wants to keep it by his side while he sleeps; he says as they're already outside, they might as well go for it, but Flake doubts the need. "Ne vizhu smysla. Nikto yeyo ne ukradyot."^[7]

"Ob etom ya ne bespokoyus', Flake." Paul's determination can cut through an ocean of vodka. Once his mind's set on something, he will not forget, nor will he let others forget until he passes out. "Mne nuzhno kupit' novykh strun prezhde chem my poydyom domoy. Ne khochu zabyt'... Ya vspomnyu utrom, kogda uvizhu svoyu gitaru."

"Ya mog by napomnit' tebe-"

"A chto yesli ty zabudesh'?"

"Eto prosto struny." Flake is impassive in every language. "Ne vazhno."

"Mne vazhno, blin! Potomu chto oni dlya moyey gitary! Khochesh', chtob ya vzyal neskol'ko u Rikharda?"

Till cackles loudly into the pillow. Richard tries to stifle his against the back of his hand, but it's hard. "He is not stealing my strings." He chuckles as he moves to the window, pulling it shut amidst Anna's sweet laughter. He folds up the towel and the undershirt and places them on the floor. "Don't tell him where mine are if he asks, eh, Till?"

"My lips are sealed." Till's the one who keeps spare strings for him, wrapped in a paper bag in his backpack. No one has caught on yet. "But let's go to bed. Could you pass me my sweater, I should keep warm."

"I know a better way," Richard says, and enters the bed himself.

There are other reasons Till prefers a wider bed. He takes to the younger man's presence immediately. It's dark, but Richard can sense he's grinning, and blushes. This is all expected, quite normal, the way things have been since the Berlin Wall fell. They don't embrace just yet. Richard's on top, not fully but half-draped against him, and Till enjoys his weight. His heart touches over where the other's would be, and in this silence, he fancies he can hear the thumps; they burn together, skin against skin, until Till lifts his hands and cradles him to his chest. Richard makes sure to hold him without agitating his wounds.

They pull up the covers. They fit so nicely. Their breaths soft, their bodies as warm as candlelight. "I'm taking Nele to the market on Tuesday." Till's murmuring, his fingers slow against the other's hair. Richard listens as if in a dream. "She needs new shoes, she's growing so tall... Maybe go for a swim later. Come with us?"

Richard strokes Till's face. His stubble feels good against his palm, as does his lips. "I'll make you doughnuts after."^[8]

Till lifts his own hand to hold Richard's against his cheek. "Stay the night, won't you."^[9]

He smiles. "For more doughnuts?"

"More of you," Till says, and kisses him.

There's a pause. Then Richard lifts his head, tilting his lips further into the kiss. Oh, they are gentle.
They demand nothing else. At some point one puts an arm around the other's neck, pulling them closer, but that's it. This, too, is something that became natural after the reunification. They lived together in Schwerin for a time, getting used to the new world, looking after the children when one daughter became two. That equation has applied to almost everything Richard and Till have shared, save for their hearts, which are one. Eyelids remain shut after the kiss is broken; Richard finds his familiar place, his cheek nestled beside a warm chest, and Till tucks him beneath the covers.

"Let's call the girls tomorrow." He whispers. Richard nods a yes. Till is his safe place, the one place where he need not worry.

-----

He worries plenty as it is.

-----

Richard dislikes dreams. Not the ambition, but the pillowthoughts, for his dreams often bring him fragments of bitter memory. He's a realist even when asleep.

He's with Till tonight, so he starts there. He loved sharing Till's home by the Schweriner See: two beds pushed together, gummy bears in a glass jar on the shelf, Soljanka bubbling on the stove. Love is like a piping hot soup, devoid of rules but simmered over time with care. He liked to make Soljanka and serve it up with generous dollops of Schmand on each New Year's Eve with Till, a budding tradition broken when real life dictated Richard move back to Berlin and start the band. Till has since followed him, and it looks like Richard may resume this ritual this year, but there's no doubt their domestic joys have been constrained. See, for example, what happened last night – how Nele clung to his leg, and cried, as they were getting ready to go. "Papa and I'll be back soon." Richard tried to console her, soothing his own Khira Li in her cot. "Almost back before you know it, sweetheart, I promise."

But Nele knew anyway. "I'll miss you so terribly." She'd sniffled, burying her head against his chest. She was right to worry, seeing as they didn't make it back home tonight. "You're like my other Papa, I don't want either of you to go – it's Silvester. Ple-e-ase..."

He'd hugged her tight. "Oh, baby girl."

Yes, she tugged his heartstrings. Yes, it was Silvester. Till's first away from family, innumerable for Richard, biologically speaking.
He was trying to avoid another absence, now that he has a daughter. The threads of fate have him entangled something awful.

Still, there is the sweet to enfold the bitter. For once his dream lets him move onto the sweet. Richard recalls the scene: last night at Saalfeld, at the Klubhaus der Jugend, two hours before they were set to go onstage. The rest of the band left family and significant others behind, too, and who else could they rely on if not each other? So they celebrated what they could. They shared drinks and performed the Bleigießen, right there in a darkened dressing room. There was no tin, so they made do with candle wax – but there was a spoon to drip it with, a bowl of water, and their hopes and dreams were identical.

"Let's hope for the best, Jungs, we could use some New Year's luck."

(They found a producer for their first album just three weeks ago. They cannot mess up the coming year.)

They melted the wax. Dripped it in water, watched it solidify, tried to guess the shape. The results were largely impenetrable, as those things often are, but Richard's was unmistakably a guitar. "You get a wish, Scholle! I wonder if it's the same as everyone else's."

He turned his wax figure this way and that. "It won't come true if I tell, would it?"

But Paul was right, it was the same. Richard wished on it all night: Lord, may our band be successful, I'd like to not fuck this up for once.
He'll always be nervous about that. There will not be a point in the next ten years, asleep or awake, where Richard isn't wishing desperately for success. Till read the anxiety on his face, and sought to reassure him by seizing upon something – someone – Richard had been nervous about for a while. "Ein Degen, Flake? What're you planning to risk this year?"

Flake's wax figure was a perfectly straight, swordlike line, the indication of a risk-taker. Ever the skeptic, he put no stock to it; he never has. "You know I don't believe in such things."

"What, taking risks, or the very concept of a risk?"

He does, however, have faith in Till. They all do. Whenever he leads a story or a question, an air of contentment settles over the band. Flake was not immune to it, and Richard remembers how he let Till lean against him, his thin mouth quirked in a smile. "The Bleigießen. But I do find the act charming."

Till had laughed and clinked the bottom of glass against Flake's. "Prost! I'm glad you're with us tonight, Flake. May we expect you next Silvester? And all the others, perhaps?"

"You may."

Around the room the gazes became wry with relief. That was the question haunting the band since its inception, whether Christian Lorenz would permanently stay as its keyboardist; no use trying to record an album with an unstable line-up. Flake wasn't easy to persuade, and his attitude indicated on several occasions that he considered Rammstein the greatest risk of his life. Revisiting this moment, Richard is once again delighted by the confirmation, not to mention thankful Till wrangled it out of Flake. "As our keyboardist, not just visiting."

"Yes, I'm staying with the band." Flake was most lovingly deadpan. "I will take the keys, Lindemann. I will take them and fuck them extra hard. Don't worry about that."

Till laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. "That's the spirit."

So it was. So it is. Richard meets Till's eyes in the fading memory, painting an ocean-green filter over everything, and descends further into comforting darkness.

-----

Now that he thinks about it, a band is like a soup, too. It can be whatever you make of it, big or small, spicy or mild, fancy or quotidian. It is, however, always a medley of collaborative effort, its makings simmered and stirred and improved upon standing. It's infinitely adaptable and everyone gets a share, or say, if he's letting the metaphor drop. Maybe that's why he offered to make Soljanka, for ultimately it's the one soup all of them love. Till loves Fruckeneintopf more than everyone in the band combined. Olli prefers his Kartoffelsuppe light, Schneider wants it thick. Paul and Flake frequently argue between borshch or rosół as the superior concoction – but nobody, nobody ever fights about Soljanka. Many a basement jam session has ended with them hanging out at the local Russian restaurant, chatting over beer and soup meats. They're all young with heartaches of their own, but they have each other, and outside of that, there are the fans who love them, cheer for them, open their homes to them. How will he ever comprehend this love, his gratitude.

For once he wishes he could take this dream at face value. In fact, he'd prefer not to wake, now that he's found one he enjoys.
As much as the daughters, Till, and his bandmates reside in reality, it's also where the bitterness lives.

-----

But awake he must, eventually. He opens his eyes to serene sunlight. The watch tells him it's nine-thirty. Not his, Till's, ticking serenely by his cheek. Richard kisses that warm hand and strokes his face, smiling, then sits up to look around.

Everyone's sleeping in late. Neither he nor Till changed posture during the night, as they learnt to sleep fast and still while caring for their daughters. The same does not go for the other side of the room: a whole bed and Paul's not even in it, rather slumped against its side. Flake's facedown against the mattress, pressed flat against the wall. The empty half of the bed is proof they were meant to lie together, but Paul never made it, and he didn’t get to bring his guitar indoors either. Richard chuckles quietly, and swings his legs over, the carpet cool under his feet as he reaches for his bag. He aches for the cigarette he missed last night.

Gone for a smoke, will be back soon.

Such is the sentence which replaces him on the bed. He takes his coat along. Richard initially plans to go no further than the courtyard – how cold this marble winter, how good the nicotine in his lungs – but a reminder strikes him halfway down the cigarette. He's going to take up the chef's mantle the moment he returns. He's got a soup to prepare, and he'd like to make it special, really, really special.

He makes his way down the road, looking for the nearest grocery store.

The face of Berlin has changed greatly since the reunification. As Richard walks he takes in the surroundings more closely, realizing that this is not too far from where he stayed when he was in West Berlin. He didn't know Oleg then, nor Anna, he had nobody he could rely on there. He has the presence of mind now to see how pretty the storefronts are, how bright life is on this half of the city – but back then, he didn't care. By day he slept in his room, numb to his wounds, and by night he drifted from club after club for inspiration. Some good came of that, but in the end, it was people from the East who helped him realize that good. Maybe the thing Richard likes best about the West is that the people he liked from the East can now live there.

"Scholle."

Is that what freedom is? Of movement, of being able to leave his hurt behind whenever he feels like it?

"Scholle!"

Richard is startled out of his reverie. He spins around; Till's standing there, grinning, looking remarkably sober. "Till! Since when were-" He looks behind Till, at the expanse of the road they've come. "Did you run all the way here?"

"How else would've I made it?" Till's hair is disheveled; he's panting slightly, his jacket not even fully zipped up. In his hand is the note Richard left behind. "You're a fast walker. So near, Risch, but sometimes so far."

Something splinters inside him again. Richard gives him an odd little smile. "Ha."

But he beckons Till close nonetheless. They hurry on. Till slips his warm hand into Richard's pocket, which makes him chuckle.
What follows is now inevitable. Richard's heart has ticked wrong once too many and it is beginning to crack. He'll get better, of course, like the other times this has happened – but then he'll fracture again, and again, and it'll be years before he even understands what's happening. "I hoped I wouldn't wake you. How did you sleep?"

Till laces their fingers together, still in the pocket. "Wonderfully. This is a long way to come for a smoke."

It hurts more that he’s so lighthearted. "Had to get some stuff. For the hangover cure." This is met with a noise of assent. Richard spots the grocery store and leads them both to it, keeping his pace steady. "And how's your back, doesn't it hurt?"

He's anxious Till tore his cuts open while running. He is moving awkwardly, like there's a weight upon his back or his shirt is riding up weird. "I'm fine, I'm just cold. Maybe I should look for an undershirt while we're here, if they have any..."

Of course, the old one is ruined. Richard offers to buy him one, but Till shakes off that idea, saying he has plenty back home if the store has none. They part ways at the entrance, but not without an affectionate squeeze of the hand, leaving Richard feeling tight and hollowed out on the inside.
But he's right, he can't linger like this. He doesn't need much. Most of the ingredients are already at the apartment: onions, yes, carrots, bell peppers too. One potato, cubed and sautéed – but no more than one, to keep the broth clear. Smoked paprika. Salted cucumbers and pickles. For the meat he can use the smoked ham and sausages left over from the night before. But Richard is missing the key ingredient – a generous slab of Speck, which is how one begins Soljanka at all – as well as tomato purée, and a squeeze of lemon. Their hosts have beef bouillon cubes at hand, but Richard prefers chicken for the broth.

He picks all of that up, along with a large loaf of bread, and a box of chocolates. Anna loves pralines, he'd like to thank her for her encouragement as well as her hospitality. One excellent thing about Westernization is that he need not wait for his goods to become available sometime, someplace, in terribly limited quantity. He can just walk into a store and get what he needs, which is convenient where gifts are concerned.

He moves aisles. Till meets him halfway. "Check this out."

It's a sheet of button batteries. Richard looks at him questioningly. "Paul's watch," Till traces where the smallest batteries are. "It's bound to use one of those. I have a small screwdriver at home, save him some money... What do you think?"

That's a wonderful idea, is what Richard would like to say. Paul would appreciate that.
But the words won't form. Richard opens his mouth. Closes it again, aghast. It's not the state of Paul's watch he has in mind, but the context around it, what was said about it (too hard? last night?), and the fact Till has stepped up to fix something yet again.
Till seems to be fixing everything in this band lately. Rooms, objects, interpersonal tensions, all at his own expense. Approaching Flake. Cutting short arguments. Moving his own sofas into their practice room so the band has something to sit on. Procuring items, whether by paying the fair price or by stealing, simply because the band requires it. And now Paul's watch. All for what? His own displacement, an uncertain future, his body cut and torn.

Richard covers his mouth with a hand, stifling a weak laugh behind it.

"Ha."

It's not that Richard made a workhorse of Till, or anyone in the band. Everyone's pulling their weight, actually, and emotionally-stable Richard would understand this, but right now Richard is not emotionally stable. The sum of what it means to be Richard seems to be a wretched one indeed, according to the same beloved bandmates who have wounded him five times without meaning to.

I wish he cooked more often.
What for, strawberries in winter?
I never asked to be part of the BRD.
So near, Risch, but sometimes so far.

Richard looks up. Meets Till's startled eyes.

Maybe we went too hard last night?

"What the fuck is this." He laughs hoarsely, and a tear rolls down his cheek.

Till looks astonished. Richard is too, frankly. He's not crying so much as leaking, for no more tears follow the first – but his heart is crumbling, he needs gluing shut or else reinforcements. Till provides a healthy version of the latter. "Scholle."

Richard awkwardly averts his eyes. Undaunted, Till caresses the side of his face. He gently takes the shopping basket from the other's arm, as well as the string bag clutched in his hand. "Scholle, leave this to me. Wait outside."

Loath to leave him alone, Richard lets his wallet fall into the basket. "Take it out of my..."

"Understood." Till touches his forehead to his briefly. "I'll come and get you in a minute. Let's go back and warm up, okay?"

"Thanks..."

So that's how Richard stumbles out of the store, empty-handed. He leans heavily against the brick wall. The outdoors inspires no more tears than the indoors, but his chest burns, his misery stoppered somewhere in his throat. He takes deep breaths and every one cuts right to the bone. That's what he gets for being traumatized, not that he knows to call it that.

He supposes the harsh reality is that he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Just generally.

If only he were anywhere but here.

A neighbourhood tabby comes up to him, purring. Weakly, Richard strokes its head, and lets it go on its way. Cats are wonderful. They're just so oblivious to what makes everything terrible, life in other words, for living with life is very hard. Sometimes Richard is seized with the urge to run away, to drop everything for distant pastures and take Till with him: it's not like the red-hot impulse that led him to flee the GDR, but a concrete desire, a sentiment that verges on a plan at the worst of times. Freedom. He was thinking about freedom. Richard doesn't know what that means any more – but come to think of it, Oleg mentioned something like this last night, did he not? The land of impossible dreams, which Richard visited himself not long ago. On one of its harbours stands a statue, upright like a vast beacon atop the waves, gazing across the ocean as if to proclaim: I am the mother of all exiles, give me those who yearn for liberty. Give me your beaten, your hungry, all your oppressed. None of you need fear nor flee any longer, for here, you have reached the land of the free.

His breath catches in his throat. It's mortifying to admit that made an impression on him. God forbid he has to say it out loud.
What a conversation that’d be. The lead guitarist of a band, freshly formed and unsteady, admitting he wants to abandon everything for America.

So near, Risch, but sometimes so far...

Sure, not everything is right in the USA. Richard gathered that even from his brief trip. The inequalities here also exist there, America doesn't have an Eintopf culture to put other foods to shame, it'll never be as glam as Richard thought it was when he was twelve. But many things have let him down since he was twelve. He'll never be able to return to the moonlight sparkle in his youth, not after so many difficulties; if anything, America held up best out of all his naive expectations. He's tried just about everything in order to feel normal again, and what is America, if it isn't everything else?
Well. Tell a lie. There is one thing Richard hasn't tried: he never told anyone what happened during his imprisonment. He meant to, but he needed to get better first. By the time he'd gotten back on his feet, everyone had a story about the Stasi – or were ousting ex-informers, from friend groups and families – and Richard's story seemed a drop in the ocean. Only Till knows about the officers and the beatings, but not in detail, and even he hasn't been told about the injuries to Richard's psyche. Those wounds were festering before he was ever arrested. Richard fears laying them bare.

Long story short, he's ashamed. No one knows he's broken, to the tragedy of all involved.

It shouldn't have been like this. This was never a burden he could bear alone.
But, well. But.
Alas.

Richard breathes out and stares into the unfailing pale blue sky.

Despair is nonlinear. His mood is all over the place. And despite everything, it spikes again when Till exits the store, which makes Richard feel more fucked up than ever. "Thanks for that," he greets him nevertheless; Till seems glad he's calmer, although still concerned. "I'm sorry. My nerves are shot, Till, the past year has been a lot. I think it only just hit me."

This is not actually an explanation for anything, but Till accepts it in good faith. He simply returns Richard's wallet and leans against the wall next to him. The string bag dangles from his other arm, filled with Richard's items. (No sight of the batteries, Till put them in his pocket instead.) They dare to hold hands. His response is delayed, but wholly unexpected, when it comes. "Would you like me to make the Soljanka today?"

"What?" Richard blinks. "It's fine. If anything, I need to make it more than ever."

The beginnings of a frown flicker across Till's face. But it's true, cooking helps settle Richard's mind; now that he can breathe, he desires familiar activity, something he won't mess up. Already his breakdown is starting to feel unreal, like it was a fever dream, and the more smiles he inspires the faster he'll forget it happened. "I worry we're putting too much on your shoulders, Scholle." Till says, narrowly consoling him, but also not at the same time. "At least let us help. You've been running nonstop since the band began. Promise me that you'll rely on us now and then."

"Promise." He lies, nudging his head against Till's. "Could we just... have a minute before we head back?"

Till is silent. Then he lifts Richard's hand to his lips and kisses it. Relieved, Richard lets his head fall back, closing his eyes.

One's satisfied he can do something for the other, one's satisfied he's not stealing more of the other's time. Richard leans into the fingertips against his forehead, nuzzling like a cat – all of a sudden he wants Till sensually, desperately, as if he's the one thing that can anchor him to this world. Facedown on the pillow, or held lovingly against his chest, in the abstract dark of their lakeside home. He'd like to be melded into Till, like they did so many times after the reunification, and not think about anything else for a while. He's probably too much. Richard wants so many things that it kind of disgusts him, the very act of wanting. But at the same time, wanting has kept him alive so vigorously. That's why he's good at things, smuggling cars or playing guitar or cooking up a storm in the kitchen. What is he otherwise?

He's the founder of this band. He can't be weak. It's not the done thing.

Forget America for now. Richard has fled from responsibilities before and it didn't work out. No reason to think he'll be successful this time, when he has even more responsibilities than before. Feeling calmer, Richard turns his head and offers Till a smile. "Let's go. They'll be waiting for us."

"All right."

Their return is slow but peaceful. There's an additional trickle of tenderness, too, when Till stops them by the entrance to the apartment: he leans down and brushes his lips over each of Richard's eyelids, kissing away any tears that might remain, followed by one on the mouth. What will he do without Till, he can't bear to imagine.

-----

Their hosts are awake. After greetings they offer hot tea. In the spare room they see Paul's been relocated to the bed. Flake has also woken up, already washed and changed; he's now sitting with the guitarist's head on his lap, gazing down at him. "He is, so to say, halfway between this world and the other." He supplies dryly as he nods for them to sit. "He woke up earlier, but only for a few seconds. Picked himself up and crashed right next to me, he's been drifting since. Where were you?"

"Cigarette. Then to the store." Richard shrugs. As if on cue, Till pulls him close, letting him lean into his warmth. "I do have a Soljanka to make, after all. I also picked up some chocolates? For Anya?"

"Right." Something clicks in Flake's head and he looks down. "We must get something for the other half. Olli's up, by the way, he went for a run – thought you might've met him on your way back."

"No such luck. Schneider?"

Flake quirks his head towards the window. Out in the courtyard enjoying a smoke. Richard ought to have guessed; he and Schneider are very alike, for the better or the worse. "Did you sleep well?" Till asks, still holding him soothingly.

"My head's killing me." Or so Flake says, completely deadpan. "When the Soljanka's done, keep me away from the table until everyone else gets theirs; I'll have my head in the whole pot before you know it, Risch, it's that good. And I need it so badly." Beneath him, Paul begins to stir. "Ach. Rise and shine, Paulchen."

Richard wraps his hands around his mug. Yes, this hits the spot, already he's feeling so much better. This was where he was meant to be, he can't be alone with his thoughts for too long. Till strokes his hair. Flake is unaffected, but tender. His fondness is usually saved for Paul, but Richard is made warm by their acceptance nonetheless. Slowly, very slowly, Paul blinks his way to the waking world. His unfocused gaze drifts to the keyboardist's smiling face, resting upon it for a long time, as if he wished to possess even a tiny fragment of it.

It's an eternity before his eyes swivel towards Till and Richard. "Kuda?" He mumbles.^[10]

"Where to?" Richard repeats, and chuckles into his tea. "The store. Sorry if I woke you while I was heading out."

Paul just stares. "Are you awake?" Flake asks softly.

It's rare that Paul is so out of it. He's usually the strictest disciplinarian in the band. He maintains that blank stare for a great length of time before finally looking back at Flake, lifting a slow hand halfway between their faces, a tiny smirk on his lips. "Nu zhe, krasavchik... ulybnis' mne snova."^[11]

Flake gives him the most loving smile. "You are not awake. Rest up, I'll check on you later."

"Heh."

But the guitarist doesn't take him up on it. He closes his eyes, more thoughtful than tired, then cups his hand fully against Flake's cheek. His thumb brushes over the other's lower lip and Flake lets it happen. Their softness cheers Richard's spirits, makes him feel safe by proxy. The dreamy expression hasn't dissipated by the time Paul opens his eyes again, but this time his gaze is focused, and he speaks up in perfectly comprehensible German: "Funny you mention Soljanka. I've been dwelling on it all night. When we went to live in Moscow I was eight years old, and I was a very picky child at that age. Every meal was a battle. Never had a problem with their solyanka, though, it was something familiar from home. You know. Germany." He chuckles. "I figured out it was the other way around eventually, but that was all I ate for a time. Mutti made it with large chunks of fried sausage, Doktorskaya usually, I loved how it'd melt in the mouth. Some olives, and a generous scoop of Schmand – smetana – and I was golden."

He curls up further on Flake's lap. Till has inched close to listen in. Richard reaches up to touch the back of Paul's fingers, basking in the camaraderie. "Smetana, with accent on the ta, Papa would remind me. We had to fight hard for the concept of stress patterns. He always treated me more like one of his language students than his own child, but I was never so close to him as I was while in Moscow. We didn't have plenty but we still had everything. Last night brought it all back, the zakuski and the drinks. The streets encrusted with snow, shops decked out with golden lights, cut-crystal bowls filled with salad. I wonder if such a time will come again."

"I dare suggest it will." Flake answers quietly. He brushes Paul's eyelids closed, his slim fingers gentle like a kiss. "But even if it doesn't, perhaps it's enough that it came before. Just about anything can become memory, even if it only happened once; we take life one day at a time and today is just the past of tomorrow, but if it's important enough, it'll make its mark on you. I don't think memories ever really go away. You may or may not remember, but they stay with you. Music is the art of letting them overflow."

Richard leans his head against the bed, wistful. He can only hope that in the long term, he can perceive himself as the sum of the good memories in his life. "I admire your insight."

"Thank you. I do not have many."

"You've more than enough for me." Paul shifts in his arms. "Put them in a book one day, Flake. You have such pretty thoughts, you can move people, I know you can. You move me."

Flake smiles thinly, but with infinite fondness. "I'm no writer. But I do have an insight that'll get you moving."

"What's that?"

He leans down, his hair tickling Paul's forehead. Till and Richard both see the mischievous grin coming, and struggle to hold back their own.

"Strings."

It takes only a second for the light to click back on in Paul's eyes.

"Strings!" He yelps, and rolls right off Flake's lap, straightening up like a willowcane as the others laugh. He's so flustered he doesn't even question the fact Till and Richard immediately understood what he meant, darting around the room for his clothes instead. "Alright, I'm up – I got you – thanks for reminding me. Can I help with the Soljanka after I come back?"

Richard can calm down now. Yesterday's chicks are coming home to roost, and his life has resumed its usual continuity.

"Sure thing."

There will come a time, one day, when he can't hold back the flood any further.
But that is not now. Richard is better supported than he realizes. He is also more responsible than he gives himself credit for, see how he brings light to this household: he bids good morning to everybody, clears up the spare room, and rolls up his sleeves for the Soljanka after tea. The apartment regains its order over the next few hours, centered (however imperceptibly) around Richard's efforts. Olli measuring out the ingredients, down to the spoonfuls of pickle brine. Paul and Flake returning with the breeze in their hair, bearing the requisite packs of guitar strings and a bottle of Oleg's favourite wine. Schneider, sat by the kitchen table, peeling vegetables over a bucket; he has such a striking way of doing it, quick and precise with his back straight, his feet planted squarely upon the ground. "Takes me right back to kitchen duty, when I was in the army. Pass me the carrots, Till?"

"Of course."

Ever encouraging, Till adds an affectionate squeeze to the shoulder. Schneider looks uncharacteristically pleased, an observation Richard expends some effort to let go of – but what of it! Till's coming back to help him now. The broth simmers deliciously in the pot, chicken stock poured over sizzling cubes of richly marbled Speck. Tiny globules of fat bubble upon the surface, first golden, then reddened from the paprika. Till does bottle runs – sorting out all the empty bottles they've drunk from last night, taking them back to the store for the deposit, returning the hefty Pfand to their hosts – and makes the phone call home, while Richard stirs the vegetables into the pot. He even takes over from Richard briefly, tossing in the leftover sausages and the ham, when it's the younger man's turn to speak. Khira Li is having a nap and Nele's been watching cartoons. She's fine, although sulky from their absence. She says she loves her papas. Richard blows her a kiss down the phone and lids the pot swiftly when he returns to the kitchen, stifling the ache in his heart. Till understands. Their hands brush for a moment.

The soup comes together at lunchtime. The broth is reassuringly deep and clear, the loaf of bread resting invitingly on the table, the kitchen filled with the most sentimental smell. Paul's watch has been fixed; at some point Till handed him the batteries and Oleg lent them a screwdriver, and as he sits at the table the watch is ticking away strongly on his wrist. Till slices the bread and distributes it around the table, but Richard distributes the Soljanka, his cheeks rightfully pink with delight. And how! From the first spoonful, it's like a light has burst into bloom above their heads. "Vkusno, eto tak vkusno," is what Anna has to say about it.^[12] The rest of the review is drowned out beneath hurried sips and the collective tearing of bread, last night's fog wiped away as clean as sauce on a plate.

Everyone goes back for seconds. His hosts are pleased with the Soljanka, their gifts, and the men who left their home in better shape than when they entered it – so much that after cleanup, they invite the band to linger over tea and chocolates. Hospitality is a threefold grace, in which giving, receiving, and repaying are equal obligations. The sun sets quickly in January, and as they sit and chat, the silken velvet of darkness enfolds the outdoors once more. Richard leans out of the balcony, exhaling pearly smoke, his cares drifting into the winter breeze.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow he'll be with Till. They'll go to the market, he and Till and their daughters.
They'll buy new shoes. Lots of sweet treats, to make up for their absence. Children shouldn't be parted from their parents for long.
They'll go swimming if the weather allows it. Richard and Khira Li at the shallow pool, as she's still little, Till and Nele at the deeper end: they'll be like dolphins, the two of them. Doughnuts will rise on the counter, they'll enjoy dinner and maybe a film. He might even ask for a little love, just a little, once their daughters are asleep. No doubt Till will give it to him, in the gentle darkness of his room, calloused hands folded over a scarred back.

And after that? He'll do better. He'll make it so that no one in this band has to walk around with broken watches or bloodied undershirts. To make a point or for a concept, fair enough, and if Till wants to be kinky that's his right – but for the lack of other options, never. He may be tempted to run to America sometimes, but Richard is strong, and he has survived everything every incarnation of Germany has thrown at him.

"Is this – Gott, I heard this song all the time when we lived in Moscow! Flake, Schneider, come listen!"

"I did, too, and I've never even been – remember the boosters we made, the stations we tapped into–"

This is where his life is. He worked so hard to get it back on track. He'll take the future as it comes.
A warm hand settles upon his shoulder. Richard meets Till's knowing gaze, and moves to make space for him, nuzzling contentedly into the other's arm. Radio in the living room, warbling one last hurrah to the world they knew: all those nights spent by the Weltempfänger, listening out for the rest of the world, the static bursts of the World Service. The everlasting friendship of nations, now cold or broken, or somewhere halfway between the two. For his own sake Richard knows the past must be left to the past, but even he can't stop joining in with the voices, the wistful ode rising into the dusk:

     River flowing on, river standing still,
     All beneath the moonsilver light.
     One may hear the song, then hear it no more
     On these quiet serene Moscow nights...

¹ 'Сколько время?' (What time is it?) [←]
² 'Полпятого.' (Half four.) [←]
³ 'Будем!' (Translation in text, but alternatively short for будем здоровы, 'to our health'.) [←]
⁴ 'Еще раз спасибо, что приютили нас на ночь. Увидимся утром.' (Thanks again for letting us stay the night. See you in the morning.) [←]
⁵ 'Спокойной ночи. Аня, хочешь покурить?' (Goodnight. Anya, do you want a smoke?) [←]
⁶ 'Давай-давай, не опоздай.' (Go ahead, don't be late.) [←]
⁷ The entire dialogue between Flake and Paul is as follows:
   F: 'Не вижу смысла. Никто её не украдёт.' (I don't see the point. No one's going to steal [the guitar].)
   P: 'Об этом я не беспокоюсь, Флаке. Мне нужно купить новых струн прежде чем мы пойдём домой. Не хочу забыть... Я вспомню утром, когда увижу свою гитару.' (I'm not worried about that, Flake. I need to buy some new strings before we go home, I don't want to forget... I'll remember in the morning, when I see my guitar.)
   F: 'Я мог бы напомнить тебе-' (I could remind you-)
   P: 'А что если ты забудешь?' (And what if you forget?)
   F: 'Это просто струны. Не важно.' (They're just strings. It doesn't matter.)
   P: 'Мне важно, блин! Потому что они для моей гитары! Хочешь, чтоб я взял несколько у Рихарда?' (Goddamn matters to me! Because they're for my guitar! Would you rather I stole some from Richard?) [←]
⁸ 'I love you.' [←]
⁹ 'I always want you to feel wanted. You're safe with me. Take it easy, Scholle. You don't need to exert yourself, or feel you need to give back, simply to be with us. I love you just the way you are.' [←]
¹⁰ 'Куда?' (Translation in text.) [←]
¹¹ 'Ну же, красавчик, улыбнись мне снова.' (Come on, handsome, give me another smile.) [←]
¹² 'Вкусно, это так вкусно.' (Delicious, so delicious.) [←]

Chapter Text

Desiderata (Chapter 5) - ‘Daube Provençale’

-----------------------------

ἤματί κε τριτάτῳ Φθίην ἐρίβωλον ἱκοίμην
(On the third day I shall come to rich Phthia.)

- Book IX, line 363

     The Solution

     After the uprising of the 17th of June
     The Secretary of the Writers' Union
     Had pamphlets distributed along the Stalinallee
     Within which claimed that the people
     Had forfeited the confidence of the government
     And only through redoubled work quotas
     Could they earn it back. If so,
     Would it not be simpler for the government guitarist
     To dissolve the people band
     And elect another?

The rage Richard has been building up his entire life finally comes to a head that morning, over ten years too late, far from home in the South of France. A beautiful place, Studio Miraval. A creative place. A dignified place, certainly not the backdrop the band imagined for this argument. But such things have to happen somewhere, so it might as well be here, das ist alles.

Schneider starts it. It would be so easy to blame him. Truthfully, it's everyone's issue.
In the past couple of years Till has witnessed his bandmates tiptoeing around Richard, then in the last couple of months, beginning to actively resent him. Since the release of Sehnsucht Richard has been acting less and less himself (or arguably, too much, knowing him like Till does); he's forever lost in a haze of drugs and obsessions nowadays, trying to make every moment perfect, clinging tightly onto the momentum of their success. Nothing new in the world of music, but Richard is uniquely combative about his behaviour, and it has been wearing on his bandmates. "He's not a team player." Schneider complained a week ago, directly to Till, which in hindsight was a warning for what was about to happen. "No, it's worse than that. He's an asshole is what he is, leaning towards petty tyrant."

"He's unwell." Till had replied, more as a plea than an explanation. "Risch is having a hell of a time articulating himself, I don't deny that. But I don't think he's trying to take over the band."

Schneider disagreed. He didn't say it like that at the time, but oh, how he disagreed. "Any obsession leading to the exclusion of your friends means that you don't have friends at all. Just a bunch of people who happen to be there, until they realize they shouldn't be. I hope he understands that."
 
Well, if Richard didn't understand it before, Schneider has made sure he will now. Since they entered the studio the tension has only been escalating, and Till was always bracing himself for the day it exploded, as well as the damage control to follow. But reality is more absurd, so much more hurtful, than fiction. In his head, he was always there with Richard to help clean up the mess; in real life, he's shut up in his study, oblivious until Olli barges in to beg for help. Struggling with a verse, a plate of assorted tartines beside him, spread with salted butter and honey and the occasional sprinkle of berries.

He likes that term, tartine. A tartine is such a coy word. Not as blunt as a Butterbrot, but the same thing philosophically, home sweet home.

Anyway.

Brecht. He was thinking about Brecht. Brecht is useful, because his writing is heartfelt, honest, and makes the people in charge very angry. Schneider never had a high tolerance for Verfremdungseffekt, but he enjoyed the poems, and he adored that many of them were about sticking it to the man; not surprising, then, that he would co-opt Brecht in a complaint about leadership. Unfortunately, while Brecht's work is very good against strutting politicians, it is very bad against men shoved into dark corners, which is a fact Schneider may or may not have taken into account when he left that page open.

Picture the scene. Eleven in the morning, plates in the sink, the counter scattered with mugs of cold coffee. A newspaper lies upon the table, where Richard threw it two hours prior, strewn across the surface like a crumpled uniform. There's an article in there he couldn't bear to read at the time, for he was dealing with an old and creeping anger, as well as thoughts of a song he's been demanding on the album. He felt so strongly about this song because he wrote it for his daughter, and he misses her dreadfully, but the rest of the band didn't take it that way – and for Schneider, it was the last straw.

Till only fills those details in later, for Olli is not very descriptive. But he sees it all so vividly.
Richard leaving, Schneider entering, book and pen in hand. Richard's return to face the news he was avoiding.
Trying not to make a scene, because this news means so much to him and Till, yet so little to anyone else.

     Would it not be simpler
     for the guitarist
     To dissolve the band
     And elect another?

Coming back instead to Brecht's 'Die Lösung' (1953), with loving alterations courtesy of their drummer. Anyone would lose it after that.

It's not that Till can't see where the two men are coming from. It's – it's so damned stupid, is all, schoolboy shit that belongs in a comedy, and in any other world it might be just that. Unfortunately, Schneider is serious, and Richard finds it anything but funny. He storms out with book in hand, thrusting it in the drummer's face the moment he comes across him. "What the fuck is this?"

Schneider knows exactly what. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't play the fool!" Richard raises his voice, then drops it again through gritted teeth, realizing he doesn't sound as steady as he'd like. He has skipped two meals and is having trouble orienting himself, a fact his anger briefly ironed over. "Christoph. Doom. I realize we're not on the best terms at the moment, but you can do better than passive-aggressive hints." He shakes the book. Frustration begins bleeding in once more. "Seriously. Cut it out. You say you don't know what I'm talking about, but riddle me this, my dear friend (his tone implying smartass motherfucker): why would this charming little attempt at commentary appear this morning, and not any other, out of all the blessed mornings we've spent here? Why, on top of my newspaper, in your handwriting?"

Schneider has very cold handwriting. Military. Recognizable. "Christ, is this book even yours?"

"Oh it is. I wouldn't doodle on any random book, God forbid."

"Well, then! ... Well, then."

There's a pause as the two men get their thoughts together. Schneider resumes his air of mock disdain, Richard contemplates a further line of inquiry. This is the last chance they have to reach a truce, thus avoiding the blowout, but heated minds think too alike. "Then what... the fuck... is your problem, exactly?" Richard spits out at last, hackles raised, eyes dark and dilated despite the bright surroundings. He's wan, pale, nearer to his last legs than he can acknowledge. Schneider gazes upon him with a disgusted pity. "Is it the songs, Schneider? My critiques? Have I been a dirty little bastard, tracking coke all over your precious carpet? You're no stranger to telling me how you feel, Lord knows I know too much about your psychology at the moment, so what did I mess up this time?"

"Nothing. Nothing new, anyway, that you need to be worried about." Interpersonal relations were already strained within the band. Richard has taken it the most poorly, but it hasn't stopped him contributing to said strain – it's hard not to assign blame to the man who turns every interaction into a fight, at least in Schneider's point of view, as rational as he generally tends to be. "Like you said, I'm happy to use my words; you'd have heard me if I had a problem with you, Risch, I promise. What you found wasn't a complaint, but a reminder. A kind of – self-reflection, if I may."

"Ah?"

"Oh yes. We all need one at some point, don't we?"

Schneider drapes an arm around his shoulder, inviting him to walk with him down the corridor. If not for his contemptuous tone it would seem almost reconciliatory. "You see, my friend... I've been too emotional nowadays, too hot-headed, something you'd know too well. I keep telling myself to get a grip, that my life used to be worse off than this, but the older I get the more I realize that memories aren't static. They say a person's shaped through experience – but what's the use of experience, if you can't recall them when you need them? Things that were once so important to you fade away. You forget how you came to be here, you forget the determination, the compromises, and the gratitude. It's a wretched state of affairs. Yes?"

Richard makes an irritated noise, tries to shrug off his arm. Schneider isn't having it. "Reading something from our time grounds me. Ours and our mothers' time. What else did Brecht say? When I speak to you coldly and impersonally, I speak to you merely like reality itself. An astute observation. So now and then, when I feel I'm getting too uppity for my boots, I like to note down the objective facts of my situation. Calms me right down, it's like magic. Oh, Risch, I just want us to get along, why can't we all just get along? ... But I shouldn't complain. It's not just me who's suffering. Everyone suffers, but eventually, we've all got to get over it somehow. Besides, if we disbanded, where else am I going to be? I remind myself of this all the time, it keeps me humble."

Richard looks him in the eye. "I think you're full of shit."

Schneider stares right back. "What're you going to do about it, bitch?"

It all spirals down from there. Or so Till is told. He is not witness to those events until after Olli has managed to find him, bursting into the study, out of breath and panicking: "Scholle and Schneider are hitting each other!"

It's like Till needs to bullshit to cope. "What, for fun?"

"No, I think Doom might've-"

But he's already out of the door. Olli follows him, hot-footed. The fire is slow but the fire consumes, and by the time they reach the scene, the brawl is well underway. Till emerges into the stormy air of the Baroque: the dim corridor, now alight with the confrontation, the bystanders, helpless against their rising wrath, framed in shadows at the smouldering edges of their partnership.
What was that about backdrops? – Tell a lie. There was never an appropriate backdrop for this argument, because they couldn't bear to imagine one, even though everyone knew it would come one day. Olli is distraught behind him, while Paul's halfway down the corridor, stuck in the doorway of his own bedroom. In his bathrobe he cuts the picture of cornered innocence, a mug of coffee in one hand and the morning paper under his arm, looking as if he's woken into a nightmare. Flake is all the way at the end of the corridor, one foot already down the stair; he's dressed in his cycling gear, his helmet straps hanging loose and forgotten, so taken aback he literally doesn't have an expression to offer. He was going to visit the village. They have excellent cheesecake there.

"- not a band, not a team, barely even friends seeing as nobody can stand to be around you -"

It's also quiet there, and more peaceful, than the mess this has become. No wonder he wants to bail. Everyone else, too, but Till.

"- and it's high time someone told you the truth, ja? The truth. The truth is that you're an absolute disgrace, thinking you're in any way qualified to lead this band when you've let go of yourself entirely." Schneider took a hard shove earlier. He rubs his shoulder, breathing hard through his teeth. "A leader! Now that's a joke! You can't even look after your damn self."

"Go fuck yourself! Go fuck yourself." Richard hurls a framed photo from the wall. It is, thankfully, just a print; thankfully, it is just plastic, skidding weakly along the ground. It doesn't end up anywhere near Schneider. "That's what happens when there's only one person trying to make this album work! Who's the one writing to Jacob every other day, the one staying up all night to fix mistakes? I am literally doing everything around here because you fuckers won't drop the attitude-"

"You are so eager," Schneider shouts over him, "to put... the hand that feeds... on the fucking menu. We can't contribute because you won't let us contribute. Working with you no longer means working as a team. You are controlling and disrespectful and only out for your own gain, and you've become exactly what you hate. A dictator!"

Olli gasps. Paul covers his mouth with a hand. Till's fingers tremble, then clench into a tight fist.

"As a matter of fact, Schneider, I should think you have it backwards!"

But it takes more than that to break Richard. He gives his bandmates no room to intervene; let no one say he didn't fight the insult. "You've undermined me at every single step since we came here, you and the others. What's a dictator without followers? Tell me. Do you listen to me? Do you care about my songs? Do you care about my vision, my suggestions, have you ever given a single shit about what I'm going through? If this is not the tyranny of the majority, then what is?"

He exhales hard, his eyes wide and wild with fury, almost all whites and no focus. "To think we're meant to be a united front! You want a scapegoat that bad, huh? Want someone to blame that we're all going to hell in a handbasket? If this isn't outright treason against the band I don't know what else it could be!"

Schneider turns white with fury.

"Treason? Treason!"

He seizes Richard by the collar, the veins standing out on his hands, his screams well-trained from years of onstage catharsis.

"Your existence is treason itself!"

Richard's face goes blank. Without further ado, he brings his arm back, and slugs Schneider in the face.
Schneider tumbles against the wall. From the depths of his throat comes a strangled gasp. He stands up and hits Richard back.
The mug slips from Paul's grasp. The spell breaks the moment it does. He kicks out, pulling Schneider back; shards fly everywhere under their feet; Flake rushes forth, him and Olli grabbing Richard in a pincer movement. "Stay back!" One of them cries (no one asks who) for they are dangerously close to the stairwell. Till's hands are shaking. His vision blurs. "Schneider. Schneider!"

"Let go!" Schneider yanks one hand free; Paul snatches it back, hissing with effort as their backs slam against the wall. His slippers paint helpless streaks along the lukewarm coffee on the ground, the sharp fragments clinking merrily against the wooden floors. "Didn't you hear him, we're all going to hell in a handbasket? Well, I'd hate to let that fucker down!"

Richard snarls at him. Actually snarls, wordlessly, lips peeled back and bestial. "Will the two of you please be reasonable," Olli cries, while Flake braces his knee against the wall in desperation. He's struggling. He has a height advantage over Richard, but with him in this state, not much else. "Look, I get it – it's been a hard year – but how's antagonizing each other going to help?"

"Each other! Are you blind? He hit me first!"

The fact that no one attempts the obvious rebuttal (Schneider provoked him) is a testament to how much goodwill Richard has lost. Flake tries the logical approach. "And you hit back marvelously, in any case; the debt is paid. Is it not better that we talk about how to salvage this?"

"What is there to salvage?! Here, I've got a better idea – how about you step aside, and I beat the shit out of him, good riddance to bad rubbish-"

"You don't mean that!" But Olli doesn't get to suggest what Schneider might have meant, for at that moment he takes a vicious elbow to the chest; he writhes in pain, coughing, staring up helplessly as Richard tries to free himself from his grip. "Till – Jesus Christ – I could use some help here!"

The words trip something in Till's brain and his limbs dart him forwards.

Now here's something to consider. Till isn't very good at emotions, showing them or reacting to them. Given that he's overflowing with them, often to the admiration of others, that sounds absurd – but it's true. So much for bracing himself, or for damage control. As he stares at the detritus he calls his bandmates Till feels as if he's gazing down into an enraged crowd, fastened alone atop an acrophobic stage, dissociated from his own limbs as if he's walking through tar. He can't handle it. Numbly, Till does the only thing he can think to do: he picks up Schneider, and leaves.
Ridiculous, but it is what it is. Before Till himself can process what's happening, he's hoisted the drummer over his shoulder, a remarkable feat given Schneider's own physique. Evidently no one else appreciates this for the feat of strength it was. There's a stunned wave of silence, and then Schneider is shouting and Richard is shouting and all the others even Flake is shouting and it's all too much, Mensch, it's just too fucking much, which is why he nopes out and does exactly as it says on the tin and:

     1) picks up,
     2) Schneider,
     3) and leaves.

It's not entirely about Richard. Paul was losing the battle, the china fragments glittered viciously on the floor, and Olli was close to tears; Till needed to be gone, and the problem needed to go with him. With his unanticipated passenger Till flees back the way he came, past the stairwell, all the way to the fire escape on the other side of the floor. The bars are fastened with a chain; Till rips it away, then throws his full weight against the handle, panting as the two of them sway into open air. Schneider is shouting something, but it's mere noise in the wind. It's only halfway into his descent, keeping a death grip on the rail, that the words finally register.

"Lindemann, for the love of God." The rage has vanished from Schneider's voice, replaced by wavering panic. "Let me down. Jesus Christ. Till, let me go, please."

Till pauses halfway down the stairs, panting. He stares over his shoulder. There's a strange electricity in the air and the skies are turning grey, the beginnings of an early-summer storm looming in the horizon. They aren't high up, but the château is old and the stairwell precarious, the wind fiercely knocking against steel mesh – and he's got Schneider suspended right over it, his legs nigh hanging past the handrail. He's bound to slip off Till's shoulder at the slightest misstep, and it's like a knock to the head when he finally comes to his senses; Till exhales shakily, stumbling the last few steps to the landing at a snail's pace, and lets Schneider down. Schneider jumps up as soon as he's freed, outraged by his treatment, though the anger fades quickly as Till falls to his knees.

"I'm sorry." Till croaks. Buries his face into his hands. "I didn't know I'd do that. Could do that. Forgive me."

The fight instantly drains out of Schneider's shoulders.

He stands there for a long time, gazing down at Till. Eventually, he closes his eyes – then with a shuddering sigh, sinks down opposite Till, the two of them facing each other across the width of the landing. Their legs lie askew upon the steel. Above them the birds continue to sing to a backdrop of uneasy clouds.

"This has really gotten out of hand," says Schneider, and faint thunder rolls in the distance.

Till sinks his head against the railings. "What happened?"

Schneider tells him. There's some hesitation involved – he always wanted Till to think well of him, and this tale doesn't present him at his best – but eventually, the full story is out there. "I'm not proud of what I did, just to make that clear." He adds hastily as Till's eyebrows twitch in agitation. "It was petty shit. If Flake had known what I did – if anyone else had, they'd have called me out, and I'd have deserved it. But how can you reason with a man who won't see any sense? He fights us on everything."

Till rubs his face with a palm. There's been an unspoken assumption in the band that if Till cannot get through to Richard, no one can, as he's the one person who's managed to remain cordial with Richard to this point. He embodies a hope that has slowly been fading. "This is not how a band is meant to operate. This is not how we are meant to operate," Schneider continues in the background, his voice sunken through with frustration. "One man's demands should not be taking the entire group hostage. And those demands, the insults, the anger... when does it end?"

"When he's no longer projecting." It makes Till feel awful to say it like that, but it's the most neutral description he has of Richard's mental state. "Risch is unhappy. He hasn't been happy for a long time, even before this album, or during our tour. But it's not because he hates us personally; he's seeking his wounds in other people, and getting frustrated when he can't find them."

"And you think that's acceptable?"

Till's head droops in lieu of a reply. Incredulity gives way to soul-deep frustration in Schneider's voice. "I don't think Richard should suffer. In fact, I encourage him to chip away at his unhappiness whenever possible. But it's not fair, nor appropriate, to throw the shards at our feet! Tell me, how many levels of projection can a person tolerate before he succumbs to full-on ego death?" He waves his hand, distressed. "This isn't only about his moods, he's trying to control every facet of the time we have at the studio. When to play, when to rest, two days ago he threw away Paul's food, I can't even... what? Who does that? What kind of unhinged behaviour is that? There's barely anything of Richard left in him!"

"Schneider..."

"He's not the only one who's scared!" The heart of the band's anguish begins to show. Schneider springs to his feet and paces the landing, a caged lynx seeking the exit. "That's what pisses me off, that he acts like he's alone, when he's not! Of course the future's terrifying, that's life, but he doesn't have to go through this alone. He has his family, his friends... he has us! There are people who love him everywhere! We'd never leave him to drown, but he – he just-"

Doesn't believe in us, can't trust us, continues to hate himself.
Till doesn't fill in the blanks out loud. He joins him instead, resting a comforting hand on his shoulder, letting the silence speak for itself until Schneider does.

"He thinks we won't drop the attitude? He thinks we don't care, that we've never given a shit about him?" The wind has dropped. It is eerily silent around the château. Schneider's words echo into empty air, suddenly too loud, yet in a way long anticipated. "That fool! That coward! He's not coping with his problems, he's running from them, leaving us in his dust and not even having the decency to admit it! If saying that makes me an asshole than I am a fucking asshole and I deserved to be beat! But!" He clutches his head, his fingers straining against his hair, as if he's about to tear it out altogether. "This! Cannot! Continue!"

Much to his (and Till's) astonishment, tears have risen to his eyes. Mortified, he turns away and leans against the handrail, glaring into the stormy distance. Schneider hates to appear weak – to give leeway to himself and not to Richard would be hypocritical, because they have the same fundamental problem – but Till doesn't make a fuss about it.

Finally, he sighs. "It was not good of you to call him a dictator."

Schneider scoffs. "Of course that's what's important."

"Have you read the news today?"

He blinks, then shakes his head. Till offers a hand and silently leads him back into the house, their footsteps creaking upon the stairs. Together they make their way down the corridor: the floor has been cleaned in their absence, Till notices, with the broken cup swept away, the picture frame restored in its place, and not a single person remaining in the area. He searches two floors for the newspaper he bought that morning, finding it at last on the kitchen table.

"Richard was probably in a bad mood before he found the Brecht." He says, and gestures for Schneider to check it out. Said Brecht has also been retrieved at some point, set aside on a chair; while Schneider reads, Till picks that up to survey the damage for himself, noting with sadness the exact changes Schneider had made. "He took that paper off me earlier, breakfast reading, he said. I should've known something was amiss when he didn't come back. Remember when he disappeared, right before the reunification?"

Schneider finds the relevant article at once. "I do."

Till closes the book and sets it down, watching Schneider's eyes grow steadily wider. "I think that's when Richard started being so unhappy. Perhaps even the why. Can't say I condone calling ordinary people dictators at any time, but your timing was not fortunate; it's not your fault, nor his, but I reckon it was always a sore spot."

It cannot be overstated how much thought went into this observation, how many years of worrying and hesitating.
This is the first time Till has dared to suggest this out loud. It was never a secret Richard fled for West Berlin – he'd left notes and sold his possessions, and he disappeared when so many other East Germans were going over the border – but if there was a tale and a pain and a sadness to be told, Till always thought Richard would be the one to tell it first, or else leave it buried forever. "Drab and boring," was all he'd said openly about his experience; no one was digging for grisly details, they were just relieved Richard had returned at all. He seemed physically safe and sound, and none of them liked playing psychiatrist with each other. Besides, surely, it was rude to pry. "They did a number on him, didn't they?" Schneider's voice is tinged with disbelief, not towards Richard, but himself for never making the link. "He never said anything to me. Or to anybody else, as far as I know."

"I'm not sure I'd have been told if we hadn't lived together for so long. And that wasn't much. They tortured him, Schneider. God only knows what they said to him, or what he saw, and hardly anyone has ever answered for it." He nods to the paper, grim-faced. "Well. One."

Schneider's head droops to his chest. "Shit."

"I should've warned him. Hell, maybe I shouldn't have brought this back at all." It's Till who picks up the German-language newspapers around here, and not every day; Olli prefers to wrestle with the French version, as it automatically gets delivered every morning, and the rest are content to do without. "It's me. I'm the coward. I could've asked him years ago if he wanted to talk about it, or if I could do anything to help, but I could never muster the words. In the house of the hanged man, to speak of the noose is indecent... or so they said, and I believed."

"Understandable. I'd have thought the same."

Schneider then begins to walk out of the kitchen. "Where are you going?" Till asks.

"I did him wrong. I need to apologize..."

"I don't think that's a good idea right now."

His judgement earns him a look of incredulity. Schneider may be quick-tempered, but he's just as quick to own up to his faults and make amends. Till has always admired that about him, but here he stands his ground. "It won't change that we're still in the middle of a disagreement, and that ever since we came here, Risch has been told he's a meddler. That's the actual issue. Besides, he didn't volunteer this information to the band, I doubt he'll take comfort from you on it. I'd rather you not eat another punch."

"It didn't hurt at all, you know? He doesn't even have the strength anymore."

A choked noise escapes Schneider. He covers his mouth, then turns away, tormented. "He's not eating, Till. I don't think he gets much sleep, and we fight every single day... but I didn't need to be that nasty about it. I started it. I can't not say sorry."

"Then say it later. Right now, it'll only be a band-aid over a shotgun wound."

Till looks down at his hands for a brief moment, then closes them, feeling deep in his soul that it is time.

"Yes, he deserves an apology, but about the right thing for the right reasons. Not to excuse anything else. Whether he's battling the past, or he's plain sick of us, if the heart of his discontent is not addressed this will happen again. A human being is not lenient forever. Eventually he'll get frustrated again, or you won't like his tone, and then one of you will think: that fucking bastard. And you'll know. You'll both know." Schneider flinches. "It hardly matters who started it now, it only matters who is suffering. Schneider. If I could ask you to lock up the instruments we have out, as many of them as you can. I'll go look for Richard."

The drummer's forehead is engraved with worry. "What are you going to do?"

"Talk to him, I hope." Till says, and breathes out. "But first: lunch."

-----

Actually, Schneider and Richard are pretty much the same people. They're both proud, yet relentlessly loyal. They constantly strive to better themselves. They have the same temperament, the same problems with authority, and they both hated the GDR for taking their faith and grinding it into dust. They know this about each other, which makes their current conflict ever more hurtful – why, Schneider was there, the night Richard came back from the West. He'd come to visit one friend and rediscovered another. Till remembers that moment so clearly, how Richard's voice had echoed up the stairs, his gasp of recognition, a faint shattering noise across the corridor.

He burst from his room. Schneider was there, surrounded by fragments of his nightcap, his blue eyes wide with shock.

"Scholle." He'd whispered. Took a step forwards, then another, as if to run downstairs. "Scholle!"

"Stay back! You'll hurt yourself." Till had kept him from Richard back then, too. Now he wonders whether he should've let Schneider go, but at the time it only seemed sensible, not letting him walk on glass – never mind the risk wasn't big in the first place, thank God for slippers. "I'll go. We don't know if it's really him, or what state he's in."

Schneider had bit his lip. "Should I come down in a few minutes?"

"Yes, do..."

But of course, Till's attention was then spent entirely on caring for his beloved, and Schneider had to wait his turn. He was dying to see Richard, he had every right, he'd been rattled by the man's sudden disappearance like literally everybody else – but he was still kind enough to step back, and to clean up the glass in Till's absence. It was morning before he was even told their friend was a Richard and not Sven. So really, it's never been the case that Schneider didn't care. It was a great injustice done to him that Richard was never told about his presence that night. Another victim of Till's silence, not out of cowardice, but definitely of neglect. The time has come for him to cease acting as a pillar of support, and start supporting, emphasis upon the progressive aspect. He may be cautious, but let no one say he isn't resolute.

-----

Schneider quickly updates the others on what they're doing. "Yes, every single one." Till confirms, when they stop by to help with the instruments; Paul's dressed now, Flake has given up on his outing, and Olli turns out to be the one who collected the Brecht. "Give me a few hours, and I'll see what I can do."

His bandmates are skeptical he'll be able to do much, but put a brave face on it. "Take care of yourself first, Till. I haven't done enough of that lately." Paul squeezes his shoulder with a taut, sad smile. "Lately I've felt as if I'm pouring goodwill into a black hole, hoping all the while: any moment now, it's going to start giving some back. I know it's not a helpful way to think. But get between a man and his God-given sweets, and he's bound to break down at some point..."

Those sweets are what Schneider was talking about earlier. "He hasn't said anything about the bonbons since?"

"Hid them. Unless Risch decides to go on an archaeological expedition, we're good."

"I see. I've avoided addressing him for too long." Bittersweet smiles are shared among all. Till looks at each of his bandmates in turn. "Truth is, I didn't want him to dislike me. But I say that like anyone would want such a thing. Where can I find him now?"

Flake quirks his head. "In his room. He locked himself in as soon as you left."

"Thank you."

"You're sure you want to do this alone."

"Don't worry about me. See you soon."

They withdraw. Till returns to the kitchen. It is time, however overdue, for lunch.

He peels the potatoes. Chops them up, sets them aside for later. A plate of carrots join the pile, followed by two handfuls of small mushrooms. He gets out the steamer, arranges the pots and pans all ready to go. These are merely extras on top, the actual hard work was done last night. Till reaches into the silent depths of the oven, cool and dark, and pulls out a large terracotta pot; lifts it, opens the lid, examines the contents. The pride of the region, a Provençal daubière, filled to the brim with its namesake.

He'd made this daube to cheer Richard up. The recipe seems to differ between every other person in the region, but Till asked around for the best one, within and without the château. The estate's chefs even offered to make one for him, but he insisted on doing it himself, at least this once with his own hands. Beef in a wine marinade, speckled with pearl onions; carrots sliced and small ones whole, tomatoes and herbs crushed between his fingers. All night the pot rested in the oven, embraced in its own heat, its pumpkin glaze gleaming warmly like cat's-eyes in the dark. So now here it is, and here he is, holding this armful of delectable stew. Six placemats on the table, for now only two set with cutlery, face to face.

Outside, far away, it is beginning to rain.

"Why a daube?" Paul asked him last night, while he was elbow-deep in the marinating process. "The French have so much else to offer."
As Till switches on the oven, and sets it to low, he is still contemplating the answer. Perhaps it was because it's a local dish, one the band still hasn't tried. It could have been the daubière: Till had never seen such a vessel before, and he'd wanted to learn more about it after glimpsing it in the kitchen. Or maybe, just maybe – in the absence of their usual soups and stews, he was appealing to home. Carefully he pours the pot's contents into a casserole pan, the meat so tender it falls apart at his touch; he looks to the side, and for a moment he fancies Richard is next to him, stirring some kind of Eintopf by the stove. The vision fades as soon as it came, taking with it the steam damp against his cheeks, the twinkle of his earring, of the gentle, relieved smile Till hasn't seen in half a decade.

Why a daube, they ask. It's probably not that complicated.

Richard hasn't cooked since the start of the year. He's abandoned a lot of things to the passage of the millennium, and Till's been worried this was one of those things. But in the meanwhile, everyone else has picked up cooking in Richard's stead: Till does it well, the daube smelled incredible while it was cooking, everyone wanted a taste. Everyone but Richard, who barely cares about food right now, being too lost in his general despair. Till thinks he'll come around, but in the meanwhile, he'll just have to see. He puts the casserole dish in the oven, tops it with the mushrooms, and leaves it to heat up slow. Before he leaves the kitchen, he rummages the cabinet under the sink in search of the dish soap, but finds a round tin of sweets instead; grimly, he notes the pyramid-shaped Berlingots that Paul bought on their way to the studio. An unusual place to find them, yes, but hardly one that requires an expedition.

He shakes the tin. Opens it briefly, finding it half full of small colourful bonbons, each streaked with white. With a sigh he shuts the lid again, thinking back to the evening when Richard tried to throw them away; the attempt was unsuccessful, unlike what Schneider claimed, but inspired great anguish nonetheless. What a mess that was – Paul held onto this tin for ages, nostalgic for his Tetra-Pak childhood, before he generously opened it up for everybody. In response to his goodwill, Richard picked out all the cherry-flavoured ones and insisted Paul trash it all, claiming they smelled like the 'stupid, soulless, sickening' Kirschkaltschalen of his childhood.
Naturally, Paul refused. Just because he couldn't stand the smell of his youth didn't mean he had the right to sully Paul's own. (That's the thing about Richard, he's so repressed that his thought process has become increasingly harder to follow, if not outright labyrinthine.) Because he could not explain his rationale, Paul then called him a wasteful motherfucker, to which Richard promptly retorted better a wasteful motherfucker than a disruptive one. Had Till not intervened, they might have come to blows. So that's why this tin is half full, and why Paul found a hiding place for the rest in a hurry. The cherry Berlingots live in Till's study now, in a little crystal bowl, next to those tartines he didn't get to eat. He'd made them the way Richard likes, too, mindful of the hotter tea and thicker-spread sandwiches they'd save for each other.

A decade of interdependence, come home to roost. Without knowing it, Till has become the reservoir for everything Richard has lost, and -

Can I stay the night?

- and oh, may the Lord forgive him, he too is beginning to brim.

He'll always wonder what else he could've done. Whether he should've done more, or less, whether it would've changed anything. But, but – enough; Till was never a stickler for internal monologue, that was all Richard. For socio-capital-literary reasons Till's mind is a catastrophe, it does him no good to dwell on possible worlds. He puts the tin back and goes to look for the guitarist.

Richard is no longer where their bandmates said he would be. Till finds him in the practice room instead, sitting on the empty floor, in the company of himself and his guitar. (Barely at that; there are cables trailing everywhere, but none are connected.) As Till's shadow darkens the doorway, Richard lifts his head, and from the depths of his morbid trance something flickers in his eyes.

"Till!" He gasps. His trembling hands search out Till's, then cling on, with what feels like the final remnants of their previous strength. "Thank God you've come! I'm so sorry. I was a nuisance earlier, wasn't I? Forgive me..."

He can hardly hold himself up. Till hastens to support Richard as he falters; he seems minutes from dissolving right there, in the palms of his hands, so light and unsteady he has become.

If the Almighty were real Till would have to beg for forgiveness. They all would, if they knew it. Richard continues to murmur, oblivious.

"Should've known better than to start shit with Schneider. Should've just let it go... but you know, fuck it all... nobody understands, anyway, no one but you. It doesn't matter as long as you're here, you were always on my side." Till closes his eyes. Richard glances up, afraid of his silence, his fingers digging in. "Till, please look at me. Won't you look at me?"

There's a sentiment oft expressed towards the sort of suffering Richard endured: how could they hurt an innocent?
But it's actually very easy to hurt an innocent. It's the easiest thing in the world. In fact, the more guilty someone is, the more difficult it is to hurt them. Against systems legal and moral, and the knowledge of their own cruelty, to deal them a blow is merely to add a link in the chain – the only ones who could be punished by that are those who have no wish to perpetuate pain at all. That's a lot of words to excuse the outrageous evil of bad things happening to good people, but the whole point of this is –  well – what Till's trying to convey here, however crudely, is that when he lifts his hand and strikes Richard around the face, it's not that difficult, either. Richard reels back, stunned. Till looks at him impassively as he assumes a loose fighting posture.

"Whenever you're ready, Kruspe."

Richard's hand tightens on his cheek.

Why he's surprised, he couldn't say, nor why tears are welling in his eyes. Contrary to what the band believes, Richard knows his behaviour has been poor. He's appalled by himself, enough that he'd lie about it in therapy, if he were ever made to go. It's just that Richard's stood on the razor's edge for so long – he's too numb to continue loathing himself most of the time, and a part of him even likes the detachment, because it's an excuse to not give a shit. He's self-aware; what the fuck do his bandmates know? Of course they can't fix him, not while he holds the right to destroy himself.

But this is Till. Till Lindemann has never treated him like this. The rest of the world, yes, but never him. Richard's free hand balls into a fist.

"So that's how you want to do this, huh?"

Trembles uncontrollably, rises, as the other man looks on in silence. The storm has arrived. All other sound blurs.

"I get it." He sounds out of himself, something between a cry of despair or a beastly scream. "I'll go to hell, you son of a bitch, and I'm taking you with me!"

He lunges forwards. They fight. Throw hands, wrestle, whatever one might call it.
The word isn't important. By striking first, Till has thrown the ball back in Richard's court, and his mental space is all that matters. Fists wail upon flesh, red spatters cloth. A coiled-up cable hits the wall. It's not the pain that makes Richard rage: it's that Till made him feel small, like he's an unwanted brat sulking over cherries again, soup or sweets or the simple act of cherishment.
He remembers the first time he ran away from home. He was eleven. His stepfather had given him the belt, and his mother had ignored them, both for the umpteenth time. It wasn't the belt that hurt back then, either – he got off light for the time – but the fact it was his family. He could never trust anybody because they abandoned him, the people who should have cared for him the most.
He remembers how, as he huddled on the park bench in the after-hours, the night became dewy with the stars. In those days the air was clear, and he was in awe at the sight, each glow blurring like sequined silk. The weight of the universe descended upon him like a blanket, promising that he was worthwhile in the company of himself, and he slept. (He would not feel so comforted again until, many years later, he spent a sweet and sleepless night in Till's attic.) That was the sole balm granted to him by this bitch of an Earth, while at the same time, the lessons from home were breaking him.

Never give your heart away, because eventually, someone will try to kill it.

But Richard did. He gave it away many, many times, because he so badly wanted to belong. All that desperation, for what – so that he could kneel in this empty room, fucking up the one thing that actually loves him. Suddenly he comes to realize that Till stopped fighting back at some point, and is now lying flat beneath him, silently accepting the blows. Richard's fist stills in midair, his every breath like a knife to the lungs.

"..."

Finish him, the memory of that starry night whispers. Better off a lone wolf, you'll never be betrayed again.

"Till."

Till's eyes are shut. Dark hair limp around his face, the one place he had an arm up to guard, the rest of his torturable body defenseless. Richard shakes his head frantically. "Till."

Life takes its sweet time flowing into the other's face. Once it's there, though, Till returns to him straight away. He opens his eyes, and the rage washes out of Richard's shoulders in an instant. He grasps Till's face between trembling palms. "Till, I didn't... oh my God, what have I done – I never-"

And there it is again, the smallness. Looks like you were right, folks, he thinks as he clutches Till desperately to his chest, flashing back to the schoolteachers who said he'd amount to nothing. Who'd have thought it? Sven Kruspe is a bitter, impatient, worthless asshole.
So the future is in darkness and morality's up in the air. The fact Till seems surprisingly calm is the one saving grace of this mess, at least for a man beaten as mercilessly as he – Richard used to wrestle, he knows how to make it hurt, even in his weakened state. But Till does not protest nor blame. After several seconds, Richard feels his touch upon his cold cheek; Till takes what feels like an eternity to speak, and when he does, it is but a word.

"Tea?"

"What?" Richard cannot process what he just heard. "What?"

"Coffee?" Till doesn't wait for an answer. He beckons for Richard to lean down, so they might hear each other better. "You've become so thin. That can't be good. I made some food if you want it."

Richard splutters. His eyes blur once more, but out of confusion, not anger. It's like his grief rolled straight off Till like water off a duck's back, but that's fine – Richard would rather he was not understood if the other's well-being relies upon it, if the trade-off means Till will be okay. "I just..."

"Sometimes you've got to let it out, Scholle. It is what it is." He's hoarse from the pain, and his movements are stiff, but his tone is as matter-of-fact as always. "Help me up, won't you. Let's get some lunch."

And for once, Richard Kruspe can find nothing to add to the argument at hand. Silently he does as Till asked, and with some effort, they leave the room together.

-----

As they stagger into the kitchen Richard is thinking: I should apologize to Schneider, I should've heard him out. Funny how he should come to that conclusion now. Not a wink of him nearby, of course, nor their other bandmates; lethargically, he hopes no one other than Till heard his shame, as he slumps into the nearest chair. "Tea?" Till's asking from the other side, holding up a mug. He's put the kettle on and it's beginning to sizzle. "Got a new blend I'd like us to try."

Richard gazes at the mug listlessly. It's the twin to the one that shattered on the hallway. He feels oddly calm, like Till's beaten the subjectivity out of him, opening his eyes to his surroundings for the first time in a while.

"Let's try it."

If Till chose it, it's probably good. That's a nice thing to have, good judgement, shame Richard doesn't have more of it. He puts his head down and resumes thinking about Schneider.

Richard dismissed him earlier, but truthfully, he has always known Schneider's concerns were valid. Every time he had an outburst, he knew it must remind Schneider of the bad times – not just of political tyranny, but of Schneider's own younger self, hung out by the army to dry. The GDR might not have tortured him, but they were happy to cut him off from his friends, to exploit him, to promise him the life of a professional musician before yanking it out right under his feet.

Richard managed to avoid the repertoire, but he can still almost hear it. What kind of a man would you be if you didn't serve, they'd have taunted Schneider, before switching tones to mellifluous: come to us, do your time, we'll give you all the perks you'll need for a good life. Said perks were not delivered, he didn't get into the academy he wanted, and nobody recognized him for a very long time. Years of his life thrown away, just like that. No wonder Schneider used to be so wary, as unyielding as pasta al dente, downright hostile when he perceived someone didn't take him seriously. Isn't that the way Richard is now, didn't they bond over the same discontent all those years ago?

Schneider was never the enemy. It's all him. Him and the sum of his experiences.

"I'm sorry."

Till looks at him impassively. "For what."

"I shouldn't have hit you." Richard can't look at him. He's afraid of the bruises sure to be rising there, the proof of his savage strength. "It was wrong of me. I've made nothing but bad decisions since we came here, and this definitely takes the cake."

The brew is finished. Till sets the mug down in front of him, enveloping their hands in silvery smoke. His tone hasn't changed at all. "I hit you first. If you're to blame, so am I."

Perhaps Richard should've waited until both Till and Schneider were around to apologize. He can never seem to reach everybody he must make amends to, not all the same time, nor the correct time. He's lived his entire life like this, misfiring intentions, blindly stumbling into other people's good graces on the way.
He turns to the tea instead. A sip clears the fog of his thoughts. For the first time since he entered the kitchen, Richard becomes conscious of everything in it: the Brecht, the newspaper, the delicious smell in the air. Rain streaking the windows, the dim light of the oven, how the pots clink as they simmer atop the stove. Till himself, bruised but calm. Practical. Silent. Alone, like a lighthouse in the dark. Richard's fingers tremble around the mug, then steady themselves.

His voice is barely audible when he speaks again. "Mielke is dead."

Till saw earlier. "Yes."

"It was a long time coming." A sentiment backed up by the newspaper article's heading, which unlike Richard, proudly boasts of its forgetting: Erich Mielke? Kenne ich nicht! "So it goes. That fucker. The man who loved mankind so much that he sent thousands of them to an early grave. And now he's in there, too, except he was allowed to grow old."

There's a quiet rumble in the distance. Richard covers his face with his hands.

"I."

His palms have retained the warmth from the mug. Till holds his silence. Richard continues to speak into the dark.

"I'm not sure if I'm... trying to make a, ah, point... about injustice, here, or what. Didn't know the guy. His death changes nothing. At best he probably signed our Stasi files, ours and the entire rest of the country... what about you, Till? Have you ever been exclusively abused, beaten, or otherwise been made to eat shit by the late East German Minister for State Security, Erich Mielke?" Till shakes his head. "Nor I. I don't understand why I should be feeling this way. Never bothered with his speeches, never saw him beyond a TV screen, he never personally beat me while I was locked up or anything. That's what I mean, it's not personal."

"..."

"For some reason that seems to hurt more."

He lowers one hand. Keeps the other in place, his eyes shut tight, his forehead pressed into his palm. Distinctly he can feel Till moving towards him, slow as if he's carrying something in his hand; he moves his leg out the way, thinking Till might want to sit next to him, but his calculations are off. It's the chair on the opposite side of the table that scrapes, and Richard briefly gets a sinking feeling: this is it, I've driven Till away at last. "I'm sorry." His words tumble out again, audibly tinged with the desperate, as well as the despair. "To you, to Schneider. To everyone. About everything I've done, and am doing."

His breath hitches.

"Sorry that you have to put up with me at all."

Maybe that was his mistake all along, expecting to be understood through his pain. It's not like Richard wanted to lay his soul bare to Schneider, but because they were on such similar boats, he'd developed the expectation that they were obliged to tolerate each other's bullshit. Likewise with all of his friends, until they were driven away. It seemed to make sense at the time. If they couldn't put up with Richard, if they couldn't wait for him while he scrabbled to resume control of his life – then who would?
The potatoes splutter in their pot. Till makes no move to tend to them. He nurses his tea, quietly. "Risch."

Richard shakes his head.

"I don't know. I just don't know any more."

The rain grows louder outside. Richard draws in a deep breath, in drips beginning to overflow. "I'm fucked up, Till. There's something deeply wrong with me. I think I must've been fucked up all my life." Till moves as if to interrupt and Richard stops him. "I, I'm. I think, uh, I'm a bad person. I tried for years to hide it, but it was useless, it's open for everyone to see. Kudos to every bridge I burnt, I guess? May they light my way, what little is left of it."

A humourless flicker of a smile on his lips. His fingers are curling nervously against his palm. Richard inhales, clenches his hand – then lifts his head to face Till properly.
He's sitting there, regarding Richard with his usual mix of calm and melancholy. He would seem unchanged if not for the deep purple marks beginning to stand out on his arm, and most likely, under his clothes. Till shows no sign of being bothered by them, but neither does he hide them, and Richard knows they pain him; he was wincing with every step while they were making their way to the kitchen. Only then does it sink in that Till was offering himself as a shield, equally for Richard and for the others, meeting them halfway the only way they were willing.

"I hurt you. I hurt everyone."

Richard's breaths are coming in little gasps now. He covers his mouth with a hand.

"Why did I do that. Why."

Flashes of his shame, replaying before his eyes, which are too hot all of a sudden. So much for not making Till fix everything in this band, the way he's been doing since the beginning.

"How could I."

And still the rain. Still in the air, growing deeper by the second, the scent of daube provençale.

Richard has felt this before. Not in this exact context, nor the daube (not that he knows it's a daube), but the night he returned to Till from West Berlin. There was great agitation in his heart then, and there was beef broth, and Till had watched him as quietly as this across the table. Trauma has a tendency to reference back. And if Richard knew to explain himself like that, perhaps it could be like how it was once upon a time, his touching Till and Till touching him where it hurt the most – but one needs so much energy to hope, and he's a different person now. Try as he might, his own heart has grown numb, and he can no longer hope to touch Till's own.

How did this happen? How did it ever get this bad?

"It's fine..."

Laughter like a sob spills from his lips. He can barely see Till through the fog in his eyes, but holds him back with a look all the same. "It doesn't matter... I don't care any more, it was all wrong from the beginning. Schneider was right about me."

"He spoke to you with anger. I heard what happened, he was wrong to-"

"He said we all have to get over our suffering. That everyone suffers, not just me, nor him. Don't reckon he thinks that's the part which hurt the most, but it was, since the rest of Germany would agree with him."

Richard gestures blindly to the newspaper. "They said a lot of people don't remember Mielke any more. Hardly anyone from the West cares, and the young ones wouldn't, either; I don't begrudge them, if I could choose to forget I would. But for so many years, he was the face of evil. The poster boy for why our nation was so fucked, why we had to tiptoe around our neighbours, why we all acted like it was normal to put cushions on top of the radio. He led the Stasi, so he was to be most feared – then disdained, and punished, after the Wall fell." He shudders. "And now he's dead and buried. So the evil has been defeated, is that it? They'll tear up his flowers and spit on his grave... and then what? The rest of his scum are still out there, they'll get to carry on like nothing ever happened. Smile! ... Laugh! ... There will never be another Mielke, why can't you just be happy that justice has been delivered at last?"

"Risch..."

"They got away with everything. They still get to live their best life. The lights have gone off, and everyone's moved on... but... but I'm... I'm still here..."

He can't see straight any longer. His hands close into helpless fists as he slumps forwards, desperately grasping at the fabric of his life.

"I've been left behind... I'll only... ever be... the crazy one, now..."

With that, Richard Kruspe finally collapses unto himself, and cries.

It was always going to end like this. He should've given up a long time ago.
He never shed a tear for his family. The Stasi locked him up and said he was worthless and he laughed in their faces. He killed Sven without a thought, so that he might live on as Richard – he survived his escape and the impoverished nineties and all that empty comfort he shoved up his veins and he didn't cry then, taking charge of his own destiny, remembering what he promised himself in jail: if I must die, my end is my own. Perhaps that was the wrong decision after all. Richard is the person he is because he wanted to be free, but at what cost? The freedom of speech wasn't enough for him. Of thought, no; of movement, no; eventually, not even the freedom to live happily with his friends.

Your existence is treason itself, Schneider had shouted. Richard buries his face into his hands, sobbing as tears trickle down his wrists. He never wanted to acknowledge it, but that's what he is, that's how he looks to other people: treason, not just in the political sense, but to his beloveds. The constant adjustments he made to his vision, fine-tuning associates and selecting for perfection, discarding everything he had no use for like fine silt through his fingers – when all along, in the deepest recesses of his heart, he really meant I can't do this on my own.
Please don't leave me alone, is what his pride never let him admit. I'm so lonely, please understand me, I need you. But none of it meant anything to anybody unless he could say it. And because he didn't, nothing has changed, from the very first time he was rejected to this. He whittled himself down to a nut until his only desire was to be freed from pain, and well, he's always had that particular freedom at hand.
He was always free to give up and die. Could've done it from the start, so he wouldn't have had to inflict himself on anybody. And now, face to face with Till – looking at him with an expression of absolute nothing, and at the same time, all the sorrow in the world – Richard can take it no longer. He can't live through another minute of this painglory, and yet, the ones who destroyed him will get to live on. His mother, his father. The officers who beat him. Everyone who ever said his dreams were made of paper. Even his friends, past and present. Even his bandmates, even Gitta and Till, even his blessed children who love him – because love seemed to be the one thing Richard could never control, and asking for it hurt him, and that made him afraid. They'll be fine, while Richard has nothing, and will always have nothing at this rate.

Not even the album. Who even gives a shit anymore, who'd want it? It's got him all over it.

But man was not meant to endure alone. Richard wouldn't have realized this on his own, but the black pit of despair inside him doesn't give enough credit to the fact that the people around him are not as unforgiving as he fears them to be. A hand touches over his own: Richard looks up and sees that Till's passed him a handkerchief from across the table, folded into a neat square. Awkwardly he takes it, offers a nod of acknowledgement, and already pause has been lent to his grief. Contrary to what he expected, Till does not let go, either. His eyes are fixed on the back of Richard's hand, the knuckles of which (unbeknownst to the owner) are just as bloodied as Till's own.

"When was the last time we sat together like this?"

Richard doesn't know. But Till understands. His was not a question requiring an answer, rather the acknowledgement Richard weeps in the way one does, when there's nothing left to do but cry. He squeezes Richard's hand gently, then lets go, rising from his seat.
In silence he walks over to the stove and turns off the heat, then drains the vegetables, restoring to the kitchen a hush like that of the soul. "There's no shame in it." He says quietly, as the last of the steam dissipates into thin air; from the look in his eyes it is obvious that he, too, is back there, sitting opposite the newly-Richard Kruspe, speaking into existence the things he should've said that winter night all those years ago. "Weep, Scholle. It's all right. Take as much time as you need: it's as I said, sometimes you've got to let it out, and there is not a soul in this world who could judge you. We would be no friends of yours to hurry you along, or to refuse you the time to mourn."

I should have stopped mourning a long time ago, Richard would like to say, you're only drowning with me. But the words won't come. Till sounds so very far away, yet timeless at the same time. "I regret that I didn't sit with you sooner. I regret not acknowledging your pain. I had countless opportunities to do so before we came here, but I didn't, and I have made you suffer." He returns to the table and sits, this time beside Richard, taking his hand in both of his own. "At first it was because I feared insulting you. I knew there was a weight on your heart even before you went to West Berlin, and that it was heavier when you came back. To remind you constantly would be to hurt you, I thought; I trusted that if the time ever came when you wanted to speak about it, you would tell me in your time."

"It would have hurt me. I didn't want you to feel like that, I was grateful you never pressed..."

"Thank you." A faint smile drifts to Till's lips. It departs as fast as it comes. "But that couldn't have remained an excuse forever. Eventually I took it for granted that you'd stopped hurting; by then I knew a little of what you'd been through, so I told myself that was as good as the whole. I should never have assumed so."

But the whole was too vast to confess, that's why he didn't dare to try. Richard shakes his head, agonized. Never mind that it's Till, never mind the damn Stasi, Richard would never have gone crying to him over his mother, God forbid. "Didn't want to burden you. I couldn't be weak. I wouldn't have opened up even if you'd asked."

"But I would have been by your side." Till says gently. Richard awkwardly turns his face away, but is stopped when the other's broad hand cups his cheek. "Whether you told me or not, whether you spoke truths or untruths. My silence was for my benefit, not yours – and you should never have been made to feel that you had to stay silent in order to be loved. You didn't trust me to love you, did you?"

Richard draws a deep breath. "I couldn't."

"Nor to want you."

"No." And the tears spill once again. "I have never felt wanted. I am in the wrong crib."

Till looks at him with infinite sadness. Richard swallows heavily, feeling as if he's spat on the years of Till's generosity. A feedback loop of self-loathing. "If I knew exactly what was wrong with me – if it was something I could fix – believe me, I wouldn't have put you through any of this. I never wanted to hurt anybody or become a tyrant or force you to clean up after me." He folds the handkerchief onto his palm and buries his face against it. "I've become exactly what I hate... If that was all I was going to amount to, there's no reason for me to live, is there?"

The storm has ceased. The world is still, a deathly hush.

"If only... I had never been born..."

Words fail him again. Richard is suddenly aware of how empty he is; worn out from crying, he begins to think of eating, physically or emotionally. But he has no more strength to rectify this, and hasn't for a very long time. Somewhere down the line his Gaststätte is closed, all the tables wiped down, the last burning lightbulb shut off for the night.
But that's his own kitchen. Till's is still operating, as are those of his bandmates. Richard is pulled into Till's arms before he can say another word; bruise against bruise Till hugs him, letting the younger man lean into his shoulder, his warm hand caressing his hair.

"I remember the first time we met, Risch. The cafeteria, the Fruckeneintopf." Richard closes his eyes, letting his murmurs drift over him like an old tale. "How you made it exactly the way I liked, how you kept and treasured my notebook for me, despite us being strangers to one another. That was no conventional politeness. You have always been generous, and kind, and you have a keen affection for others that you've never disavowed – even when it would've benefited you to do so. When the police prowled the streets, they'd have wanted your help at least as much as they wanted to break you, and you never gave in."

This is true: countless people were approached to inform at the time, including the musicians Richard knew, sometimes to devastating effect. But he stood fast, as did his current bandmates. "Rammstein has gone through many arguments in its time, but in none of them did you abandon us. Hear yourself: you didn't want to burden me, or hurt anyone, because you'd been hurt the same... those who know pain and hardship know to be kind to others. That's not a weakness. It's the polar opposite. That is why we were, and still are, drawn to you."

Richard sobs quietly. Till brushes away his tears with a large thumb, mindful not to agitate one place he struck, fading the hurt just a little.

"Philosophically, you might be right. Perhaps there is no reason for you to live. But neither are you a being that was made to die. More precisely: I want you to live. Because I love you, and I want you, and I couldn't do without you." Till's kiss burns against Richard's forehead. "You helped me up and nourished me every time I fell, and now it's my turn. Never feel that you need to apologize to me. I'm here because I want to help you and hear you out; why, that's the reason I agreed to join Rammstein in the first place. Don't think of it as foisting your burden upon my shoulders, but simply laying it down for a little while. Your hurt will always belong to you, in the same way my responsibilities are my own – but might we be able to ease them together?"

"..."

"Will you allow us to try?"

A trembling nod. Then they embrace in full, Till smiling in sad relief as Richard's arms encircle his shoulders.
There are many more things Richard must sorrow for, probably. He won't come out unscathed, probably. But this warmth that touches his heart, the vision in the mind's mirror, sitting before him like a stranger he recognizes is – probably – love; Richard doesn't know what to do about it yet, nor can he believe the things he couldn't see but Till saw, but he doesn't feel like he's standing on a razor's edge any longer. Looking up at it, perhaps, but back on solid ground.

"Be gentle to yourself, Richard. Give yourself the right to be here. To be happy."

Till's fingers link between his own. Their eyes meet, ocean to ocean, echoing still waters. "Not because you're adhering to a standard, or because someone gave you permission, but because you're a child of the universe. Like nature, like us... like every living thing that flourishes."

There's a quiet noise from the doorway. Over the course of Till's monologue, their bandmates returned to listen: one by one they enter, slowly and in silence, offering their solidarity how they can. Richard tenses briefly to see them, but there is no judgement, no anger, no indication of blame whatsoever. "It'll be a long road. There will still be times we misunderstand each other, or justice fails you. Most likely, tomorrow's pain will feel just like today's." Till continues, offering them a meaningful glance. That's all it takes for them to take action. Richard can barely process it as his friends assemble the lunch Till started, Flake with the cutlery, Schneider with the daube, bubbling with a scent most delectable. "But promise me this, Scholle. Promise me that you'll trust us to be by your side, and that you'll keep going, even if not every battle can be won."

He has no idea what lies in that continued world. He cannot remember the yes or no, only that the before-world is gone, and there's no going back. "Till..."

"You're not alone." Bruised knuckles are raised to lips, and kissed, Till's hand folding ardently over them. And there comes Olli, with the plate of tartines he retrieved from Till's study; and there's Paul, who quietly takes out the tin of Berlingots from its hiding place, and places it on the middle of the table. "We'll be with you at every step. I promise."

A soul-warming spread, from the savoury to the sweet. Richard is overwhelmed. As his plate is set down before him, laden richly with daube and vegetables, he takes in those words of comfort like a letter in the stomach – harrowing, gained with much difficulty, but life-giving without his even knowing it. "Do you really mean it? You will still like me?" He looks up wildly at the rest of the room. His words are inelegant, blurted out from the bottom of the heart, but they understand. "All my life I've been afraid that if I opened up, no one would put up with me anymore. Because I was exhausting, because I'm a bad person, and I drive everyone away. You promise that won't happen? You really won't hate me, no matter what?"

"Why would we hate you." Flake says quietly, and holds him tight.

It's an invitation for everyone to join in. They all do, one after the other.
Six plates for six men, cautious but warm. Desperately needed, and at the end of the day, appreciated like a fine day's work. Schneider is the last to approach him. He has no words to offer, and hesitates guiltily as if he expects the guitarist's rebuke; but that is what motivates Richard to accept, because he has understood it is not humanity's inherent desire to harm. That deep down, everyone is scared, and trying their best. He buries his face into Schneider's shoulder, and Schneider holds him tight – the men who, despite their speechlessness, have said everything they need to know.