Dec 1982
Some cities are best defined by songs such as APRIL IN PARIS or AUTUMN IN NEW YORK, but Hamburg defied music, especially as winter weather skimmed off the North Sea to besiege the harbor city with endless rain, cold, and darkness. Every day the night conquered a few more minutes of light and our once-popular club on Epperdoffer Weg was deserted by the attractive youth, the esoteric intelligentsia, and the wicked rich, who sought the warm comfort of their homes rather than B-Sirs.
The sleek nightclub had been designed to resemble CLOCKWORK ORANGE’s milk bar.
The fashion people of Hamburg had loved the place throughout the summer, but with autumn the clientele had been replaced by pimps and off-duty prostitutes from the Reeperbahn. Neither liked to pay for their drinks and my share of the profits shrank to nothing.
Henri, the DJ from Paris, and I counted the days until we called it quits, only I wasn’t telling management about my departure in case I wanted to come back after the holidays.
Only one person deserved an ‘auf wiedersehen’.
I had been seeing Astrid since early October. The blonde twenty year-old studied fashion at the University. Her dramatic overbite and an aquiline nose stole any chance of her being called beautiful, but the slender Astrid was very accommodating in bed and took the time to improve my German.
“I may be leaving,” I told her after a lengthy session nearing dawn.
“Are you going for good?” she asked with an imaginative lisp.
“Maybe. Maybe not. You can always visit me.”
“Where?” She dressed conservatively for school and stuffed her night clothes in a stylish leather bag. The blonde had morning classes.
“Paris.”
“And not New York.”
“No.”
New York was off-bounds for reasons unexplainable to anyone in Europe.
“And you are not coming back?”
“To Hamburg?”
“Ja.”
“Vielleicht.” The cold dark wet murk of the North Sea port worsened after Christmas.
“When will you leave?”
“Before Christmas.”
“Then we will have more than one occasion to say ‘auf wiedersehen’.”
“Das ist rechtig.”
Astrid kissed me on the lips and left my Milchstrasse apartment.
I returned to sleep.
That evening SS Tommy showed up at the bar early. The few customers in the club avoided the six-foot enforcer for the GMbH. Astrid stood at the door dressed in a fur with very little else underneath. She normally never showed until after midnight. Something about this combination didn’t add up to two. SS Tommy handed me a piece of paper.
“What’s this.” The total came to almost 10,000 DMs or $6500 US.
“A bill.” His scarred finger jabbed the top of the ‘rechtung’.
“Oh.” My high school German coupled with Astrid’s lessons allowed my to translate the long list consisted of charges for sex. “What’s this?”
“This is what you owe for the nights with Astrid.”
“Astrid? I didn’t know she worked for you.”
She smiled at me with a crooked grin.
“Not all our girls work the Eros Center.” His gang ran a string of more than two hundred women on the Reeperbahn. Each had sex five times a night. 200 DMs times five times two-hundred women came to $100,000 a night. SS Tommy owed three Ferraris. He worked for Cali, who owned B-Sirs. “Everything is there.”
I checked the bill again. Each act was itemized by date.
“She never said anything about working for you,” I said in rough German.
“Everyone in Hamburg works for someone.” The Zuhalters were infamously violent and SS Tommy was no exception. I had to offer him a gesture.
“Here are the keys to my car.”
SS Tommy took the car keys for the VW, which I had paid 7000 six months ago.
“Where’s it parked?”
“At the mechanic shop.”
Two days earlier I had driven the orange VW into a tree. The mechanic had said last rites over the chassis. It was a total write-off,
“Warum?” asked SS Tommy.
“Just getting a turn-up.” It was an easy lie to tell.
“Das ist gut, du musst gibt morgen 5000 Marks mehr.” SS Tommy grabbed my arm in a claw grip to insure that I understood his demands.
“Kein problem.” My shoulder muscles had gone dead, as his fingers dug into my flesh. Pain radiated through my body. He wanted money not a car.
“I’ll give you a free night with Astrid.” SS Tommy clicked his fingers. “Stay with him. I don’t want him running out on me.”
“Jawohl.” She was good at taking orders as are all Germans.
I told the manager that I was going home early and left the club with the blonde. Everyone avoided me, as if I had the plague. No one had friends, when SS Tommy was your enemy.
Back at my apartment Astrid apologized for telling SS Tommy about my departure.
“Kein problem, but why had you made up a list?”
“For me to remember you.” Astrid caressed my shoulder.
>p>For a few seconds I almost believed her.
We had sex, as if nothing had changed between us and I suppose that it hadn’t.
Afterwards I got up from bed.
“Are you leaving now?”
“A little later. There’s a late train to Paris,” I said nothing about the 5000 DMs under my bed.
SS Tommy wasn’t getting a pfennig of it.
Neither was Astrid.
After a glass of sekt she went to take a shower, promising me a night to remember.
“Maybe I do 1000 Marks worth.”
“That would be nice.” I smiled sipping my glass of pesudo-champagne.
As soon as the bathroom door shut, I grabbed my cash and wrapped a wire hangar around the doorknob, trapping Astrid inside.
Within minutes I was ready to leave. I didn’t have much to show for six months in Hamburg, but I didn’t need much in Paris.
I heard thumping on the bathroom door.
Shouts followed.
“Chus,” I shouted, leaving a note on the kitchen table to SS Tommy that the bed, chairs, table, and everything else were his.
I liked this deal better than paying my debt.
I bent over to pick up Astrid’s underwear off the floor. I liked her smell. I stuffed them in my bag.
A minute later I caught a taxi on Mittelweg.
“Bahnhof.”
Ten minutes later I was in the station. The night was cold. I bought a ticket for the 12:34am train to Paris.
After that I hid on the platform like a spy fleeing Nazi Germany.
The southbound train pulled out of the station on time. My compartment was empty. The train stopped at every station. The towns sounded like battlefields. I didn’t sleep until we passed through Dutch customs.
Dawn brightened the gray skies on a landscape of ruined steel factories of the Low Countries. These industries had been destroyed by Japanese competition. The decay stretched from border to border into Belgium. The wet of the winter carried the corruption of rust and concrete. It smelled of death and I pulled out Astrid’s panties. They were French silk.
The conductor announced our ETA in Paris was 9:23am.
After arriving at Gare Du Nord I took the Metro to St. Germain, where I booked a room at the Hotel Louisiane and then breakfasted at the Cafe de Flore
Cafe du lait, croissant, and a Calvados said Paris and I sang APRIL IN PARIS to myself.
SS Tommy would never find me here.
Astrid’s panties were still in my pocket. I stole a whiff and inhaled the fading fragrance of cinnamon and sweat with a tang of herring. We had had a good thing for a few months and I smiled thinking that I would never see her crooked smile again.
And that was a good thing for this winter, especially since I couldn’t see that far into summer.
For that was Hamburg’s season to shine.