Tomorrow Berlin Read Online Free PDF Page B

girl to love.
    At school he seemed to be living in another world. It looked easy, but he was short of money. He gave some private lessons, but that wasn’t enough. He had to find a way of getting by so as not to lose face with Emma. He learned to steal, not expensive things, just food and shampoo, beer and Mentos from the local mini-market.
    He learned to ask for things too.
    Near school there was a café where all the students had lunch. Serge ran the place. He was a good guy. Every day he gave Armand his lunch and pretended to get him to pay without other people noticing.
    Emma worked at her preparatory classes for university. Armand rode around on his scooter, stealing books or food, then returned to their attic, happy to find her waiting for him.
     
    Armand passed his bac, as Emma had done a year earlier, and began his first year of prep for university. They worked on their lessons, they slept together. But something was missing, something of the enthusiasm they had had in sharing their normal life.

VI
    Franz was eighteen when he arrived in Berlin. He had his bag in his hand, the wedding suit and his diploma from the Hannover Institute. Sir had recommended him to a few businesses in the city – in the west, where the streets are cleaner, the people busy, like in Munich, and the economy thriving. The men walk quickly, holding sandwiches, as though they couldn’t possibly waste time on lunch. The women – both young and old – clack their heels energetically. They look proud and powerful. You wonder how they pick up men. Maybe they go for men more powerfulthan them; or less, and dominate them with a few little slaps.
    Franz liked all this activity. Between their offices and the luxury shops, these people were in a hurry, preoccupied, and how happy they must be, since they had no time to idly nurture their little neuroses.
     
    After attending a few interviews wearing his tie, Franz entered this world. He was to be executive assistant at Günther and Co. After all, being an assistant is not so bad if ‘executive’ is part of your title, he thought. You start as a secretary and you climb the ladder, a lifelong career at Günther and Co.
    He started work. It was dull. And his company’s offices were gloomy, too. But that’s how it goes, you get a boring job at Günther and Co, slog your guts out, then one day you marry a Katherine, with a hollow face and no spark, but soft skin and gleaming hair. You make love and a little Martin comes along. You go on holiday in your car. Before long, Martin will graduate and you can relax.
    Meanwhile, Franz lived in a two-room apartment in Nollendorfplatz. He was eighteen. He did the filing. In the evening, he closed the door and read second-hand books.

VII
    Tobias didn’t know what to do. He schlepped all over, in the metro, squats, parks. He soon left the café where he was working; then it was heroin and that whole life. Not for long, just a month, until fate reached out to him.
    He was walking along the rue de Tocqueville, looking at the ground, hoping to spot a coin or a handkerchief, something to catch his attention. But rather than a scratch card or a banana skin, he spotted his sister’s shoes. He looked up – yes, it was her, like an apparition, with a little boy by her side.
    There were no benches nearby, so they went to a café. His sister was alarmed at how pale Tobias was. But it wasn’t the moment to think about that, they were back together again; and at last he was able to meet her son, little Lucas.
    Lucas looked impressed as he drank his grenadine.
    ‘Lucas, this is my brother, Tobias, your uncle.’
    Tobias was ashamed of the state he was in: pale and dirty. He was sorry he hadn’t met his nephew a few months earlier when he was working, when he was in love.
    He thought about life’s setbacks, but this one had worked in his favour. His sister took himin. He detoxed in the little apartment on the rue Campagne-Première, where he lived with his sister and