Three in the Morning, Hamburg

Seven in Tempe. Eight hours. Three in the morning in Hamburg.

He did the sum twice, because it was the kind of sum you did twice, and it came out the same both times. Europe had put its clocks back a fortnight ago; it was eight hours now, not nine. Three in the morning. A Monday. Lukas had a seminar on Monday, probably, at nine, in a room in a university Frederick had never seen, on something Lukas would never tell anybody about unless they asked him exactly the right question.

The landing was warm. It was always warm. The thermometer on the wall beside the narrow window said 79, and the window was open an inch, and through the inch, beyond the concrete fin, the car park lay under its lamps, and the air coming in off it was cooler than the stairs, which it had not been since April.

He found the number.

He had rung it perhaps four times in his life. Lukas did not ring people. Lukas was rung.

He pressed it.

It rang once.

It rang a second time, and stopped, and there was a silence on the line that was not the silence of somebody waking up. There was no breath in it, no fumbling, no light being turned on in a room in Hamburg. It was the silence of somebody who had been lying in the dark with the telephone in his hand.

“Yes,” said Lukas.

---

Frederick had thought about what he would say. He had thought about it on the stairs and on the step and for most of the afternoon, on the window bed, watching the light go up the wall. He had thought he would explain. He found that he could not explain, and that it did not matter, because it was Lukas.

“It’s Frederick.”

Nothing.

“He’s not all right. Since last Monday. There’s no programme. The boxes aren’t opened. The pencil.” He stopped. “He’s composed. He’s perfectly composed, Lukas. He goes to everything. He answers everything. He played whist this afternoon and didn’t count the ten.”

Nothing on the line. Not a breath.

“I said it,” said Frederick. “Today. At three. Once.”

He waited. Through the window, down in the car park, a girl came out of the arcade with a laundry basket on her hip and stood under a lamp and looked at her telephone and laughed at something on it, and went back in.

“Thursday,” said Lukas.

And the line went.

---

He sat on the step for a while with the telephone in his lap.

He did not ring back. You did not ring Lukas back. Lukas had said what there was to say, and the rest of it, the flight and the train to the airport and the seminar on Monday and whatever he would tell the university and whatever he would tell his mother, would be done between now and Thursday without a word to anybody, and on Thursday he would be there. That was what Thursday meant. It was not the beginning of a sentence. It was the whole of it.

At a quarter past seven he went up.

---

Alexander was lying on his back on the bed by the door, in the jacket, with his hands folded on the blanket.

He had not turned on a lamp. The bottle of Glacier was still on the closed Charter on the desk, in the middle of the cover. The light from the corridor came in round the edges of the door and lay on the floor in a thin line.

“You did not answer Theo,” said Alexander, to the ceiling.

“No.”

“It is seven. He rings at seven.”

“I’ll ring him later.”

“Yes.” A pause. “It is three in the morning in Hamburg.”

Frederick stood in the doorway.

“Yes,” he said.

“He answered.”

“Second ring.”

“He always answers on the second ring. He says the first one is for deciding.” Alexander did not move his head. “What did he say?”

“Thursday.”

There was a silence in the dark room. Down the corridor somebody’s door opened and shut, and somebody laughed, and the foosball went in the lounge, two floors down, far off, like a clock.

“Yes,” said Alexander. “That is what he would say.”

Frederick sat down on the bed by the window.

“He will not say anything,” said Alexander, after a while. “When he comes.”

“No.”

“Good,” said Alexander, and closed his eyes, and did not sleep.

---

Lena knocked at eight.

She knocked once, hard, and did not wait, and when Frederick opened the door she was standing in the corridor in a sweatshirt with LEIPZIG across it in faded letters, holding out a plastic box with a lid, in both hands, like an exhibit. There was a strip of masking tape across the lid. On the tape, in black marker, in capitals, it said:

312. TWO PORTIONS. 3 MINUTES. EAT IT. L.V.

“There was some left,” said Lena.

“You said nobody would leave the kitchen until it was eaten.”

“I lied. It was a tactic.” She put the box into his hands. It was still warm. She looked past him into the dark room, at the shape on the bed by the door, and then back at Frederick. “Three forkfuls,” she said.

“I saw.”

“I know you saw. I saw you see.” Lena looked at him for a moment longer, with her arms folded, short and dark and direct, in the sweatshirt. “I am a student of nutrition,” she said. “It is my field.”

“I know.”

“Felix and I are on the floor.” She said it quite quietly, for Lena. “Both of us. Every night. Not only Kessler. You should know that.”

“Thank you.”

“Do not thank me. Heat it for three minutes. Not two. The dumplings.” She turned to go, and turned back. “And you eat one of the portions,” said Lena. “You. I have watched you too,” and went off down the corridor to 308, where Makayla could be heard through the door explaining to somebody on the telephone that her neighbour was a cop, probably, but a nice one.

---

He heated it for three minutes, in the microwave in the kitchen, which hummed in one note, unlike the refrigerator; and brought it up the forty-five steps with two forks; and turned on the lamp on the desk by the window, the small one, which did not reach the bed by the door; and put one portion on the lid of the box and the other in the box, and held the box out.

Alexander sat up.

He sat up slowly, the way his mother sat down, as though each part of it had to be done separately and in order. He took the box. He looked at it, and at the fork, and at the masking tape, EAT IT, in capitals.

“She has drafted this well also,” he said.

“She’s got a gift.”

Alexander ate.

He ate perhaps half of it. He ate it slowly, a forkful and then a pause, a forkful and then a pause, sitting on the edge of the bed by the door in the edge of the lamplight with the box on his knee, and Frederick ate the other half off the lid on the window bed and did not count, and counted, and did not say anything. At half past eight Alexander put the fork down in the box, and put the lid on it, and pressed the lid down at all four corners until it clicked.

“Thank you,” he said. “Tell her it was very good.”

“Tell her yourself. She’ll want it in writing.”

At the corner of Alexander’s mouth something moved, very slightly, the way his father’s had, the way Frederick’s own father’s did; and went away again.

“Yes,” said Alexander. “She will.”

---

At nine Frederick went down to the step again and rang Theo.

It was eleven in New Westminster; the Realm had put its clocks back a week ago and it was two hours now, not three. Theo would be in bed, or reading in bed, with Desmond in the corner in his scarf, and a lecture at eight tomorrow. Theo answered before the first ring had finished.

“You never say later.”

“I know.”

“Every Sunday since August last year. You’ve never once said later. I sat here and looked at it.” Theo’s voice was low, the voice of somebody in a small room late at night with a neighbour through the wall. “Is it your mum?”

“No. She’s fine. She’s well.”

“Your dad?”

“No.”

There was a short silence on the line.

“It’s Alex,” said Theo.

Frederick sat on the step under the narrow window and looked at the car park.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He heard Theo move, sit up, the creak of a bed in New Westminster. “Okay. Tell me what you’ve seen. Not what you think. What you’ve seen.”

So he told him.

He told him in order, because Theo had asked for it in order, and because it was easier: the programme, which had been on the desk every morning since August, on the Neues Palais paper, ticked through the day, and had not been there since last Monday. The boxes from Berlin, which had never been late, and which had been opened every morning at seven since he was fourteen, and which had sat sealed on the desk since Wednesday. The pencil, which had always been laid parallel to the edge of the desk, always, every time, in every room Frederick had ever seen him in, and which since Thursday had been put down anyhow. Breakfast, which he had stopped eating in October. Three forkfuls at lunch. Half a box at eight. The Charter, open at Article Nine since Thursday. His telephone, off. Awake at three every night, on his back, with his hands folded. Going to every class. Answering every question. The ten of clubs.

“And he’s polite,” said Frederick. “To everybody. Perfectly. He’s never been so polite.”

Theo did not say anything for a moment.

“And you said something,” said Theo. “You said it. That’s why you didn’t pick up.”

“This afternoon.”

“What did you say?”

“That he’s not all right.”

“What did he say?”

“No.”

The line was quiet. Frederick could hear, very faintly, the sound of a car going past under Theo’s window in New Westminster, in the rain, probably; it was always raining in New Westminster in November.

“Okay,” said Theo. “That’s good. That he said it. That’s him telling you.”

“Is it?”

“It’s the most he’s going to say. For now. He said it.” Theo breathed out. “Right. I’m going to tell you some things. You’re going to want to remember them, and you won’t, so when we’ve finished you write them down.”

“Okay.”

“I’m a second-year, Freddie. I want you to hear that first. I’m not a doctor. I can’t prescribe a paracetamol. I’m telling you what they teach us and what my mum says on the ward, and that’s all it is.” He stopped. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“One. What you’ve been doing, keep doing. Sleep, food, and the things he’s stopped doing. You’ve got all three. Keep watching them. Not to fix them. So you know if they get worse.”

“Okay.”

“Two. He needs a doctor. A proper one, here, this week, in a room, with a door. Not me. Not Berlin on the phone. Somebody in Arizona whose job it is.” A pause. “He’s had help before. You know that. It’s public. So somebody in Berlin already knows him, and somebody in Berlin can find somebody in Phoenix. That’s not your job. That’s whoever does that.”

“Kessler.”

“Then Kessler.” Theo went on, in the voice he used for things he had read in a textbook and was not yet allowed to say to anybody; it was steadier than his own voice, and Frederick understood that he was using it on purpose. “Three. He’s got to say yes to that himself. You can’t say yes for him and neither can Kessler. But you can make it easy for him. You can make it the next thing. People can do the next thing when they can’t do anything else.”

Frederick thought about a sheet of paper with times on it, and ticks.

“Four,” said Theo. “Ask him.”

“Ask him what?”

“Whether he’s thinking about hurting himself. Whether he’s thinking about not being here.” Theo said it plainly, each word on its own. “In those words. Not are you okay. You’ve done that. Those words.”

Frederick sat very still on the step.

“I can’t…”

“You can. People think if you ask it, you put it in their head. You don’t. They taught us that the first week, and my mum’s said it at our kitchen table since I was twelve. It’s the opposite. It lets it out, if it’s there, and if it’s not there it’s a question, and he answers it, and that’s all.” A pause. “He’ll answer you. He answers everything.”

“Yes.”

“Five. If he says yes. Or if he says anything about not being here, or about everybody being better off, or he starts giving his things away, or putting things in order that don’t need putting in order.” Theo’s voice did not change at all. “Then you ring me, and you ring the doctor. And if it’s tonight, Freddie, if it’s now, you don’t leave him on his own. Not for a minute. Not to go to the toilet. You stay in the room, and you get Kessler, and you get an ambulance. You don’t wait for the order.”

“What order?”

“Any order. His. Berlin’s. The Household’s. Yours.” Theo stopped. “You’re used to there being one. Somebody to say now. There isn’t going to be one. Nobody’s going to give it to you. So you don’t wait for it.”

The window was open an inch. Down in the car park the lamps were on, and nobody was in it.

“Okay,” said Frederick.

“Six. It’s not your job to make him better. You can’t. Nobody can, that way. Your job’s to be there, and to get him to the person whose job it is, and to keep being there.” A breath. “And seven. You eat. You sleep. You’re no good to him on the floor.”

“Lena said that.”

“Who’s Lena?”

“A student of nutrition.”

“Then Lena’s right,” said Theo; and then, in his own voice, the other one, the one from the kitchen table in New Westminster with the radiator that knocked: “Freddie. Are you all right?”

Frederick looked at the thermometer on the wall. 79.

“No,” he said.

“Okay. Good.” Theo let out a breath. “That’s the right answer too.”

They did not say anything for a while. It was a quarter to midnight in New Westminster, and somewhere in a small room with a skeleton in it a medical student was sitting up in bed in the dark with his telephone, not saying anything as hard as he could, the way Frederick had once sat at a desk in this hall and not said anything at him.

“I’m coming down,” said Theo.

“You’ve got anatomy.”

“I’ve got a weekend. There’s a flight on Thursday night. I’ll be there Friday, the early hours. I’ll sleep on the floor. I’ll sleep in the car park.” A pause. “I’ll bring the scarf. Desmond doesn’t fly.”

“Lukas is coming Thursday.”

“Is he.” Theo thought about it. “Good. Then there’s two of us on the floor.” He stopped. “Write it down, Freddie. Now. When I’ve gone.”

“I will.”

“Seven things.”

“Seven things,” said Frederick, and Theo rang off.

He wrote them down. He wrote them on the back of his hand first, in biro, because it was the only thing he had, 1 SLEEP FOOD 2 DOCTOR 3 YES 4 ASK 5 DONT WAIT 6 NOT MY JOB 7 EAT; and then, because the back of his hand was not enough, he went down to the lounge, and tore a sheet off the take-one pad on the noticeboard, and wrote them out again properly, in his worse hand, and folded the sheet in four and put it in his shirt pocket.

---

The door of 314 opened before he knocked.

Kessler was in shirtsleeves. Frederick had never seen him in shirtsleeves. He was standing in the doorway in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow and no tie, and behind him, at the desk by the window, Felix was asleep with his head on an engineering textbook, and the room smelled of coffee.

“Sir.”

“Theo says a doctor,” said Frederick. “Here. This week. In a room.”

“Yes, sir.”

“His doctors in Berlin…”

“His doctors in Berlin have given me a name in Phoenix.” Kessler did not move from the doorway. “I have had it since Thursday.”

Frederick looked at him.

“Since Thursday,” he said.

“Since you saw it, sir.” Kessler’s face did not change. It never changed. It was the end of a wardrobe. “He must say yes. I cannot say it for him.”

“I know.”

“Nor can you, sir.”

“I know,” said Frederick. “Theo said.”

Kessler considered this for a moment, in the doorway, with his sleeves rolled up.

“Then Theo is a good doctor,” he said, “already,” and inclined his head a quarter of an inch, and said, “Goodnight, sir,” and closed the door.

---

At twenty past ten Frederick turned off the small lamp on the desk by the window, and lay down on the window bed in the dark, in his clothes, and did not say anything for some time.

Alexander was on his back on the bed by the door. The light from the corridor came under the door in its line. On the desk the two boxes were dark shapes, and the bottle of Glacier on the Charter was a darker one.

“Alexander.”

“Yes.”

“Theo told me to ask you something.”

“Then ask it.”

He had the sheet in his shirt pocket. He did not take it out. He knew what was on it.

“Are you thinking about hurting yourself?” said Frederick. “About not being here.”

He said it in those words. He said them plainly, into the dark, one after another, and they were the hardest words he had ever said in a room, harder than any oath he had ever sworn, and he said them, and they were out, and they could not be taken back, and he found that he did not want them back.

Alexander did not answer at once.

He did not answer at once because he was thinking about it, Frederick understood; not choosing, not going to the shelf, but thinking, properly, as he would think about a question in an audience that deserved a true answer and not a quick one. The line of light lay on the floor between them.

“No,” said Alexander.

Frederick breathed.

“I am not thinking about anything,” said Alexander. “That is what it is. It is not a thought. It is the absence of the next one.” A pause. “I am not thinking about that. I would tell you.”

“Would you?”

“I would tell you. Or Kessler. Or Theo, who would tell you.” Another pause. “It comes to the same.”

“Theo said to ask again. Not every day. But again.”

“That is not the arrangement.”

“It’s not a warning,” said Frederick. “It’s a question. There’s no limit on questions.”

Alexander was quiet for a long time.

“No,” he said, at last, to the ceiling. “There is not.”

At half past ten exactly, by the clock on Frederick’s telephone, without anything having been said to bring it on, Alexander reached up in the dark and turned off the lamp over the bed by the door, which had not been on.

---

At three in the morning Frederick was awake.

He had been asleep, briefly, at about one, and had woken at a quarter past two with the back of his hand itching where the biro was, and had lain since then on his side, facing the room, with his eyes open. He could see the shape of the bed by the door, and the shape on it, on its back, with its hands folded on the blanket. He could hear it breathe. It did not breathe the way people breathe who are asleep. It breathed carefully, the way you breathe in a room where somebody else is sleeping and you do not want to wake them.

He did not say anything. Theo had not said anything about three in the morning. There was nothing on the sheet in his pocket about it. He lay and listened, and did not say anything, as hard as he could, and was there.

At ten past three, Alexander said, to the ceiling, very quietly:

“Frederick.”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“It is eleven in the morning in Hamburg.”

“Is it.”

“He will have booked it by now.” Another pause. “He will have booked it at seven minutes past three, his time. Seven minutes after you rang. He will have done it lying down.”

“Yes.”

They lay in the dark in 312, the two of them, awake, with the line of light from the corridor on the floor between the beds, and the boxes on the desk, and the A on the butte outside the window, that neither of them could see.

“Goodnight, Frederick.”

“Goodnight.”

Neither of them slept. But it was not, Frederick thought, at some point towards five, with the window beginning to go grey at the edge of the blind, the same as being awake alone; and he lay and listened to his cousin breathing carefully in the dark, and breathed carefully back.