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| Short Stories : No way |
When I think back to the whole thing, I can hardly help laughing, although, actually the story was anything but funny - but over time there is something amusing about it, even if Katrin is still not quite sure got over it.
Sometimes she asks me if I still remember what it was like with Andreas back then, and when I start giggling, she always looks at me angrily, as if it was my fault. I always apologize very kindly, even if I do it with a giggle and Katrin keeps looking down at me very angrily - because she always gets up when I start giggling to myself, puts her hands on her hips and lays it down her head a little tilted ...
Not that I want to tease her with it, but somehow it was too stupid how she reacted to Andreas at the time, because after all she had invited him to us - just like that, away from the street, although she was only just getting him Knew for an hour.
When I think about it, it occurs to me that it really didn't look like they'd only met that briefly, but I had no idea that they'd met by chance in the park - while feeding the pigeons, Katrin said said. (As if we didn't have enough pigeons in our town, the two of them also have to feed them and encourage them to make more pigeons.)
>> It would be so comforting to see the pecking birds running around on the ground in front of you, how they hunted so eagerly and without ceasing for the breadcrumbs, said the two. <<
It's totally crazy if you ask me, but it doesn't matter. In any case, Katrin and Andreas got along so well that they didn't want to hesitate and have a coffee with us right away.
At that time I shared an apartment with Katrin because we were both always pretty clammy, even if we didn't really like each other. Each knew about the other's quirks, and about the quality that each could rely on the other's; also that no new ones were added, we just took an apartment together.
Anyway - I come home that day around 6 p.m. and the two of them are sitting on Katrin's bright green sofa in the living room. I didn't really want to disturb and went straight to my room, but Katrin knocked on my door immediately and asked if I would like to have a coffee with them; it is also freshly brewed and still hot. I just thought: "Well, if the guy likes to drink your coffee, then he must like you a lot, or he has just as little knowledge of coffee making as Katrin!"
But nothing there, Andreas had brewed it, and the coffee was really good - not too strong and not too weak; somehow exactly like I always do and I found Andreas really likeable, because I thought that a guy who can make such a great coffee must somehow have a really good character.
Andreas was such a tall, very slim boy, with short, almost black hair that was shaved off the sides. His eyes were steel blue, really eerie, as if he were the devil incognito; I mean those steel-blue eyes that I had actually imagined on a blond boy with an angel face. When he smiled, and he did so quite often because he well knew how indescribably beautiful and charming his smile was, his gleaming white teeth flashed from between his red lips. Actually, he was just a normal boy.
... and that's one of those things that I didn't understand about Katrin, I mean that, at 28, she takes a boy with her. Andreas was only 17 and I thought that was a little crazy of her, even if I thought that she might just want to play a little mother.
I found Andreas a bit strange, especially because he kept looking at me and smiling again and again when I said something - regardless of whether I was talking about a massacre in Bosnia, the sunset in Corsica or an incident in the Nuclear power plant spoke; he always smiled, as if he were a bit stupid and didn't understand anything. When Katrin went to the toilet for a moment, he asked me how I would find him and whether I'd known Katrin for a long time, what she was like and all that kind of stuff. Well, that was a little too fast, but I answered and said that I thought he was pretty cute, but that he was a little too young for Katrin, and I would have thought that she knew him from tutoring, that she always gave. No, he just said, she was like his aunt, and he would have had a crush on her too.
I really can't get my mouth shut because I found it totally weird and horrible. Finally I said to him that Katrin was only a cleaning lady and that she only gave some tutoring in German and maths sometimes - I don't even know why I said that, because after all I have nothing against cleaning women, especially not against Katrin, where she always kept our apartment in order, even if her own room always looked as if a bomb had hit it; but I had already said it and it was too late to take it back.
Andreas smiled like that again and looked at me in a very strange way, as if he wanted to ask me something, but then Katrin came back to us in the living room and sat down very close to Andreas ‘ran. Suddenly he got up and said to me that I wanted to show him my room. I just looked at him in astonishment, but he pulled my arm out of the chair and held me tight until we had turned the corner in the hallway. What should I have done?
In my room I then asked him what that meant. But he didn't say anything, and just looked around my room in peace. Somehow I didn't like it at all, because I'm not that tidy and I always just leave all my intimate things lying around. But Andreas didn't make a single comment about the things (I don't want to say what he saw here. That would be a little too embarrassing for me!).
When he had looked around enough, he just sat down very cheekily on my bed - I mean, you don't do that, just sit on a bed belonging to a total stranger, but he probably didn't care, and he just hit him a couple of times on the mattress next to him, telling me to sit next to him. I definitely didn't want that, because I immediately thought of such strange things that don't belong between two guys who only knew each other for half an hour. Then he smiled again so disarmingly, and I just did what he wanted - but he didn't want anything, just kept looking at me from the side, so that it almost became eerie to me. Finally he said something, which I unfortunately forgot. All I remember is that what he said made me very sad.
Andreas then hugged me so sweetly, and I immediately felt incredibly comfortable, even if I had to keep thinking of Katrin, how she sat so lonely and abandoned on her poison green sofa and clung to her mug of lukewarm coffee - Somehow I liked this idea, even if I don't know why I got such thoughts in the first place, and what this Andreas was actually aiming for with these actions.
We then went back to Katrin, who in the meantime had cleared the table and was sitting very quietly in a corner of the sofa. Andreas no longer sat down with her on the sofa, but in the armchair, directly across from me. We chatted for a while about God and the world, while he kept smiling that it was going through my marrow and bone. The whole time Katrin just stared out of the window and fixed the top of the chestnut tree in our courtyard with her gaze. It looked almost like a statue.
Around 10:00 p.m. Andreas went home, but by then Katrin had long since disappeared into her room.
When I took him to the door of the apartment, he looked again as piercingly as if he wanted to ask something, but he said nothing more.
Andreas was always with us quite often, which I also liked very much, but Katrin always had something to complain about. She probably didn't like the fact that I got on so well with Andreas and that we became really good friends. She keeps talking about the fact that I snatched her boyfriend from her, and I really didn't do anything, except maybe that I was polite to Andreas, but I couldn't help it, because after all my parents raised me like that.
I also thought it was funny when she asked Andreas if he didn't want to move in with us, because that didn't really fit with her behavior during the time before. Well, Andreas moved in with us and everything could have been very nice, but unfortunately Andreas got a little difficult. Katrin immediately said that we had made a big mistake, that he would have moved in with us - I didn't quite understand that because that was her idea after all.
Andreas kept giving parties so that the neighbors complained to the property management. But Andreas didn't care at all, and he just kept on doing this until I broke the collar myself. I took him to my chest and said some really bad things to him. I felt so sorry for him, as the tears ran from his eyes down his reddened cheeks, that I just had to take him in my arms. Of course, Katrin understood that completely wrong and meant that I wouldn’t be very close to doing things like that in her apartment with an underage boy. At first I didn't understand what she actually meant by that, but when Andreas looked at me, smiled so indescribably cute and hugged me very tightly, I finally understood what was going on in Katrin's head.
Actually I shouldn't have cared about that, but Andreas seemed to think exactly as she did, and that made me feel a little queasy in my stomach.
Certainly I found Andreas incredibly cute, and if he had been a few years older, or at least hadn't looked so childish, then ... But whatever, I only noticed that Andreas was talking about love and that he was himself had performed like this recently because he loved me, but I wouldn't have moved at all - he was just trying to draw attention to himself.
He had done that pretty well, although he could have just told me.
Katrin didn't speak to me at all for a few weeks and then suddenly moved out.
That was a bit too high for me, because I really couldn't help it that Andreas didn't want to know anything about her.
Eventually Andreas and I got together after all, even if I somehow always had a guilty conscience about Katrin, and also because Andreas was still so young. I was only 25 myself, but somehow I always had to think about what it would have been like if the whole thing had happened 7 years earlier. Because I would have been 18 and Andreas ten - that gave me pause. Andreas just laughed at me when I told him about it.
At some point, Katrin got in touch because she wanted to apologize to me. I immediately accepted the apology because I never understood that she had made such a riot about the whole thing anyway. Katrin also said how sorry she was and that I couldn't help it, because after all she brought Andreas with her at the time; besides, where the love falls ... She has given more such funny wisdom to the best, but unfortunately I forgot all the others.
I then met with Katrin pretty regularly. That actually surprised me, because we never really liked each other that much, but maybe it was because we knew each other so well and could do without liking.
Later on, Katrin and her friend moved in with Andreas and me.
Kind of weird how things turned out ...
In any case, Katrin still feels angry when we talk about the matter with Andreas.
At the end we both always laugh about the whole matter - when Katrin also noticed that love is looking for its way.
The four of us still live together, even if it sometimes feels like I'm alone with Katrin again.
This strikes me especially when she always acts so angry as soon as we talk about Andreas, and she says with mock anger that something like this will certainly never happen to her again! No way…!
Author : Pierre-André Hentzien
