It’s normal, I say.
I know, he says, but still.
Give me a hand, I say.
Together we strip the bed and I stuff the sheets into the bottom drawer of the cabinet. We creep back into bed. Nico snuggles up to me. I hear a siren outside as a fire truck drives past on Argentinischen Allee.
I’m supposed to say hello to you from Amir by the way, says Nico.
What, I say sitting up, you went there again?
No I called him.
Called him? How did you get his number? I want to call him too.
You can.
I jump out of bed.
Not right now, says Nico, it’s already too late.
Why, I’m sure Amir’s not asleep yet.
Get back in here, whispers Nico pulling me gently back onto the bed, you can only call during certain times. We can call tomorrow. Besides, I have something for you.
For me? What is it?
Only if you settle down.
Fine, I say letting myself fall back onto the pillow.
Nico gets up and looks in his trouser pocket and then hides something in his hand. I can’t help smiling.
I saw it, I say.
No you didn’t, says Nico.
You’re right, I didn’t.
Close your eyes, he says fumbling around with my fingers.
Out of nowhere my heart starts beating like crazy.
Now, he says.
I open my eyes and look at my hand. On it is the ring, Jasna’s ring, Mama’s ring, Papa’s ring, three stones, two little white ones and a green one between them.
I know, maybe it’s a bit over the top, says Nico, but do you like it anyway?
I look at Nico and at the ring and at Nico again.
Where, I whisper, how did you get it?
I found it, says Nico, under the S-bahn, does that bother you? I took it to the lost and found office but when nobody picked it up after two weeks I was allowed to take it. I went to a jewellery store, it’s real.
I know, I say looking at the ring again.
My hand slowly starts to tremble, only a little bit at first but it keeps getting stronger and then the trembling crawls up my arms and into my shoulders and down through my guts to my hips and legs until my entire body is shaking, I can’t do anything, I can’t stop, it’s like in an earthquake or a storm, some kind of natural disaster.
What’s wrong, asks Nico, his voice sounds very distant.
I shake my head and look at the ring, all I can see are the small stones, Mama and I are the small white stones and Papa the big green one, I think, then everything goes blurry and something warm starts running down my legs but luckily the warm stuff running down my legs is just sperm.
What’s wrong, Nico keeps saying.
Nothing, I say trying to get myself together, go get me some toilet paper please.
Nico goes into the bathroom. The burned girl has woken up, at least she’s moving around in her bed. Nico comes back with a roll of toilet paper.
Will you please tell me what’s up, he asks.
I wipe my nose.
Tell me.
Quiet, I whisper. My jaw, the wounds, everything is throbbing, the toilet paper is grey and so hard it hurts when you wipe your eyes and makes you cry even more. I take a deep breath, I look over at the burned girl, she’s not moving around anymore, maybe she’s trying to fall back to sleep, maybe she’d like to say something, like we need to stop screwing and crying I want to sleep, cut it out she’d probably like to say but maybe she can’t talk, I think, and then that if she can’t sleep we have something in common she and I, but we don’t have anything in common because I can talk and I can say something right now and I want to. I take a deep breath.
We saw it, I whisper.
Saw what?
How he stabbed her at the playground.
Nico looks at me incredulously.
What?
There’s no what about it goddamn it, we were sitting at the top of the slide and we saw the whole thing. How he took her in his arms and then how he executed her with his knife, how Jasna laid there in her own blood and puke.
You can’t be serious, says Nico.
You don’t know a thing about death, oh it’s natural and a part of life, you don’t have a clue.
Nico is silent and stares at the bedding.
Who, he asks at some point.
I shred the rough toilet paper between my fingers.
Tarik, I say, it was Tarik.
You have to go to the police, Nico says for about the hundredth time since we woke up.
I jump out of bed and pull up the shades.
Leave me alone, I say, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
You can’t act like nothing has happened. Like I said I’ll go with you if you want, you don’t have to get through it alone.
Get through it, I can’t hear it anymore. The fuck you’ll help me get through it, you have nothing to do with it, I say.
I do now, says Nico.
I throw him his clothes.
Here, I’ve got a visitor coming, you have to leave.
Looking hurt, Nico gets dressed. We take the lift down to the ground floor together without saying a word. When we’re at the exit Nico looks at me for a long time.
What, I say.
I really don’t want to say this but if you don’t do it I’m going to.
What are you going to do if I don’t do it?
Go to the cops, says Nico, you open yourself up to being charged as an accomplice if you don’t say anything. And so do I.
Do you really think I didn’t think about that?
Think it over, otherwise I’ll see it through myself, seriously, says Nico then he turns and leaves.
I stagger to the lift and then back to my room like I’ve drunk too much Tiger Milk, that’s exactly how I feel. The burned girl is sitting upright in her bed slurping from my plastic container, she looks at me reproachfully. I crawl back in bed, her breakfast is on my side table, muesli with yoghurt, I dip my spoon into it hiding the muesli beneath the yoghurt like the polar bear on Terra X burying itself in the snow, I bury the flakes of grain under the cold yoghurt but the muesli sticks to my teeth and I try to chew it up anyway.
Jameelah and I need to talk, but even the thought of that is out of the question, game over, might as well leave the playing field and hit the showers. Amir, I think, I need to talk to Amir, I have to tell him everything, maybe that will make him come to his senses, I should have done it ages ago, why on earth haven’t I done that, I think.
The burned girl clears her throat.
You’re bleeding, she says.
I turn to her.
There, she says pointing to her mouth.
Shit, thanks.
In the bathroom I look in the mirror. Everything is bright red back by the stitches inside my mouth, blood is trickling out of one of the wounds. I shove toilet paper into my mouth and bite down on it.
Thanks, I say again.
I’m being transferred, says the burned girl as if it’s any of my business.
Nice, I say pulling my phone out of a drawer. I go out into the hallway but I don’t have any minutes left so I go down to the information desk.
I desperately need to make a call, I say putting a piece of paper with Amir’s number on it on the counter in front of the nurse, Nico wrote it down for me just this morning.
She dials the number and hands me the receiver, it rings a few times until finally some bureaucrat answers.
I would like to talk to Amir, I say, Amir Begovic.
That’s not possible, says the bureaucrat, the inmates can only use the phone from six until eight.
When I get back to my room the burned girl is gone. I still have the taste of blood in my mouth so I go into the bathroom and rinse it out. There’s blood and bits of muesli when I spit out, everything hurts like I’ve just gargled lemon juice. I open my mouth as best I can and see that both sets of stitches on my lower jaw have popped out. I sit down on the toilet, close my eyes, and try to think of jokes instead of the pain, it’s something Jameelah and I came up with and it usually helps but this time it doesn’t so I shred toilet paper and sit there on the toilet seat trying to deal with the pain. Then somebody knocks on the door.