Without a tribe I didn’t belong anymore. Who’m I now, I wondered. An what’ll I do when I find her … Then I remembered … I’d met a Queen once, back when I was abroad … maybe it was Jícha’s story from that relatively recent period, which now seemed tucked away in the corridors whistling with time … he’d talked about his trip to Europe … I recalled my own trip there. That time in Berlun. With Jakob Kopic, my accomplice. Jakob gave me a good sentence there, that time in the subway. I remembered it, it was liberating.
We had a fast little group back there in Berlun. And there was no way we could pay for the subway, or any of the other transportation we had to take so we could see, hear, touch, and smell everything. Our finances weren’t in any great shape. We were stowaways.
13
THAT TIME IN BERLUN. THE KINGDOM OF THE KANAKS. THE DARK LADY. I FIND A QUEEN. AN LOSE HER.
Berlun, I reminisced … we’re ridin along neath one a the strasses, checkin out the advertorials, happily sittin, happily purrin, an they got us! Ticket check! The whole train starts buzzin. Black, yellow, white, spotted, everyone splits. We get nabbed. Kopic fakes a heart attack, I’m sobbin. We whip out our cards from the camp. They wave em off. An again, later … we’re sittin. An here comes security. Headin straight for us. Hey, says Kopic, isn’t it weird how they always head straight for us? By then we’d gotten normal haircuts, brushed our teeth, shined our shoes, and our odyezhda — it was super. We went by the ads: impeccable black-and-white checked sportcoats, trijeans, nightingale kneesocks, Kopic had a fab cap with a Pi Beta Kappa insignia, I was jealous. It was all … found clothing. But we looked just like the natives. I mean we had our own tongue, that’s obvious, but nobody talks on the subway. Hey, Kopic looks at me … now I get it, it’s your mug! Huh, I yelled, what? I donno … but it’s in your mug, it’s different! I look at him … look around at the other whites on the train … aha! Guess what, dear Kopic, you’ve got it too.
And then it happened. Jakob Kopic gave me that sentence. We’re ridin the subway again, goin to check out a few department stores an a Nazi monument or two, there’s colorful groups all around makin noise, an ticket check! An again straight for us! Kopic can’t take it, pulls the brake, I kick out a window, Jakob throws down the ladder, an we go flyin into the tunnel. Police flashlights flicker, they’re not gettin us! We race, breathless, around a corner, an again another corner, the cops right behind us, an all of a sudden some hands shoot out an snatch us into an alcove. We don’t resist, outnumbered. The cops go whizzin by, Kopic sprinkled pepper to fool the dogs. We knew that one. Very well. I look who nabbed us, Kopic goes on reconnaissance. Before me stands a little man, black as a boot, with a tusk through his nose that shines in the dark. Ungara, Bulgara, Polisha, Rumana … he probes. Nearly guessed. It’s in my mug. Ich bin Chekoslovakiya! I beat my breast. Ich weiss, kommunisten, nix gut! says the little man, his teeth’re shinin too. Ja, ja, I chime in, grosse scheisse, nix gut, fuhrers! Blah-blah-blah … sure, guy. Und you? I ask, Angolak, Congan, Ugand … eh? Nein! Nein! Ich Kanak! he pounds his tiny chest with his fists. Gut? I say. Nix gut! Kommunisten? I try. Nix, he says. Banditen. Nix essen, kein vitaminen, grosse problem. Aha! I get it. Dokument? he asks. Nix. Nix identifikatsionpapir, légalité keine! You? Keine! he says. Arbeit, mark, gut gelta? Keine, I reply. Ja! he says, thinks a second. Ich arbeit heer. Tunnla! Huh? I don’t follow. Tunnla! Tullers! Ch! Ch! He makes like he’s diggin. Nein, not me! I say. The Kanak tugs at my elbow. We go into the back. My eyes bug. There’s some mine or somethin back there, lotsa nimble little black guys. Diggin up dirt an cartin it off in wheelbarrows.
Kopic comes runnin up, gaspin for breath, air’s clean, he reports, his eyes bug too. My Kanak friend explains: Tullers, ch, pa! Essen heer grosse, grosse, bik! Kanakland keine! He curls his fingers and scoops his hand toward him in the international gesture for stealing. We chime in. Tunnelers! Nach Kanakland! Aha, Kopic understands. They’re diggin home. Globe, I say. Globe, thru? Ja, nach globe, the Kanak says gleefully. Essen konzerv und joos supermarket Doychland nach Kanakland fur kindern und fraulen Kanak und nix problem! Grosse und grosse gut. Frishten sie? Ya, says Kopic, nach Kanakland thru globe wieviele kilometrs? Kimtr? the Kanak is stumped. Kopic, an old hand when it comes to language, shows him how long ein metr is. Wieviele metr nach Kanakland? Ja, our rescuer catches his drift. He draws a number in the sand. Hey, I say to Kopic, if you look from this side it’s 60, an the other way it’s 90, that’s doable. The Kanak rubs the numbers out. Keine problem! Kimter nix problem. My guess is they donno how far it is, says Kopic, an they don’t give a hoot. Ja! says the Kanak as if he understood. Arbeit?! He points to the shovels and wheelbarrows. We shudder. But … could be nice in Kanakland … palm wine, beaches … Are you kiddin, says Kopic, we don’t have time. Maybe they’d make us overseers, I say, I mean hey, we’re white … We don’t have time, says Kopic. He’s right. Auf wiedersehen … an lotsa luck, we wish the Kanaks. Farewell. A second later we’re on the surface. Stridin along. Yep, says Kopic. Kanaks … hey, we’re Kanaks too! Oh yeah! I realize. In a blink. That was the important identity sentence. The holy ghost musta come over you, Kopic, or’re you from the clan of Elijah the prophet? Could be, Kopic said solemnly. He was right. We were all Kanaks. The megarace of the tunnel. That whole crew in Berlun on the way back to Europe.
Deringer’s a Kanak, we also called him the Commander, cause when he got drunk he’d turn to stone. Šiška’s a Kanak, worked for British intelligence, kept a close eye on us, gun at the ready. Borowiak, Polak, also a Kanak, then Šimuna, a.k.a. Šmelina, guy had all kindsa passports … Shimako an Chiharu, both Kanaks, always holdin hands, strokin each other, nibblin at each other’s lips an clackin their teeth like lovebirds, they lived together, rapturously intertwined, always lugged around various balls an rods, they’d laid it on too thick with the feminism in Tokaido, got socially under the hammer an psychologically bottomed out an … hit the road an ended up with the rest of us in Berlun, or was it the beginning? Vasiš, he’s a Kanak, slept around the clock, scared of lethal traffic, perforated sleeper, brother of the needle … Petrák, Czech as a log, always drawin maps, knows everything, never goes anywhere, he’s a psycho too … but Kopic, your woman an lawful wife is Doych, she can be our language bridge … till she took my splendid name, Kopic smirked, she useta be Yablunkovskaya … that’s old Ukrainian. Heh, Kanak to the core! Kopic’s kids’re Kanaks, we’re all Kanak. Maybe even the good Lord is … basically …? Slews of Kanaks. Rosie Simonides, she’s a Kanak too, we pitched our tent at her place, that was our lair. There were thirty cats livin there, we put special crawl-through doors in for em, they would gobble hash, an as it came rollin outta their bowels I realized why they called it shit. We were a Kanak kingdom, boys solid as birches, girls sweet as virgins, eurotrash for the most part. Mark was a Brit, at home he’d been hit, ended up in Berlun. A Kanak. Then there was a Dutch foursome straight outta Breugheclass="underline" professional Kanaks. We introduced our own currency, the kanaka. Slept in rocking kanaks. Picked through the heaps at Aldi, ruthlessly and Kanak-style. Once or twice I even got a case of the kanaks: A nun came riding out from around the corner on horseback, but in the blink of an eye she turned into a guy on a bike, an old Kanak. And slowly the most important thing of all came into being, the secret and open tongue of the Kanak kingdom.