The German police cannot be called assistants to an illegal.<\/em><\/p>
DEDUCTION, AS IT IS<\/p>
After all, I arrived here at his suggestion, and there is no need to explain what motives guided me. In any case, they did not include a desire for idle pastime, which awaited me for the next week, if not two. Petya spoke so ambiguously about the prospects for work that I involuntarily began to doubt its existence in principle. Moreover, all this uncertainty gave rise to another unpleasant question: if work is so scarce here, why did he need to uproot me from my comfortable place, promising mountains of gold, without having any confidence in a favorable outcome? As it turned out later (much later than it should have!), my old acquaintance had reasons for this, and they were quite serious. In his opinion.<\/p>
Back during his first trip to Germany for, figuratively speaking, the long ruble, Petya sent me a couple of letters describing his life. Like, everything is fine, I'm eating bread with butter. But that wasn't what interested me now. The envelopes had a return address to which I sent my replies, so Petya had contact with that addressee, and quite possibly worked for him at that time. And now this address seemed familiar to me. I realized what exactly when I called home from the nearest payphone (which cost me a lot of money), and my wife spelled it out to me. The district name in the address matched the name of the S-Bahn station printed on the ticket that my friend gave me as a sample (so that I wouldn't inadvertently buy a ticket at some "child" fare). It seemed I had hit the mark.<\/p>
The remaining evidence that my train of thought was correct formed by itself. Petya would not go to a construction site without a coverall, and his bag with work clothes remained at home. So it wasn't a construction site. He didn't take any change of clothes with him at all – consequently, he made do with something that could be left at the workplace. Again, you can't leave anything at a construction site – colleagues would borrow it. Another minus in favor of the construction site. Where can you leave work clothes confident in their safety? Right, at a private individual's! And what if this private individual, last year's addressee, and the mysterious employer for whom Petya is now working are the same person? And if that's really the case, why was it necessary to hide it so carefully?<\/p>
Driven by a desire to get to the truth quickly, within a quarter of an hour I was sitting in an S-Bahn car heading in the right direction. After a while, I got off at the platform of an unfamiliar station with a familiar name. The rest was a matter of technique. Shoving the piece of paper with the address under the nose of every passerby and flaunting my impeccable pronunciation of the phrase "Wo ist das?", I finally reached point N.<\/p>
GRANDMA AND GRANDPA<\/p>
Before me stood a two-story building, built back under Bismarck and desperately in need of major repairs. Between this architectural monument and the neighboring house, there was a passage to the courtyard. The courtyard itself was hidden from view by another house located at the back of the courtyard, with its end facing the main entrance. The absence of gates at the courtyard entrance made my steps silent and my vision incredibly sharp. The vivid impressions of yesterday's encounter with the dog trainer did not allow me to relax. Pretending to be Chingachgook, I crept deeper into the yard, noting with satisfaction the absence of a doghouse and other accessories of canine life.<\/p>
The courtyard seemed deserted – not a living soul. Not a single curtain in the numerous windows of both houses stirred, no reaction to the appearance of a stranger. Not a single plaque with an apartment number. Nothing that could continue my further "investigation." I had already begun to doubt the correctness of my deductions when from the depths of the yard (behind a carport) came someone's elderly laughter. That was quite enough for me to, with feeling and deliberation, enunciating every sound, mumble the terribly difficult for me "Entschuldigen Sie bitte!" in the direction from which the laughter came.<\/p>
From behind the parody of a garage, a stout old woman peered out, surpassing in size the unforgettable Faina Ranevskaya. She wore a pre-war style dress that looked brand new, and it resembled more a refrigerator cover than an item of women's clothing. The grandmother, smiling good-naturedly, trudged heavily towards me. I instinctively looked around for an escape route, fearing that this health-radiating good nature, weighing well over a hundredweight, might crush me if it accidentally tripped over an ill-placed pebble. Worried about the danger threatening my health, I completely forgot the phrases I had so long prepared on the way to this house. Fortunately, the need for them disappeared even before I could organize my thoughts. The reason was Petya's figure, appearing in the narrow gap between the grandmother's back and the garage wall. The expression on his face could be described in two words: "Didn't expect..."<\/p>
Following Petya, the owner of the house himself, or rather both houses in this courtyard, came out of his hiding place. A typical burgher, the kind you see a lot. In size, he matched his wife, except he was shorter.<\/p>
Petya had to explain who I was. The grandmother reacted somewhat peculiarly. She dragged me into the depths of the yard and seated me at a large oval table made of white plastic, standing under a canvas awning. The subsequent command "Essen!" confused me. Choosing something from the huge amount of various treats that literally covered the entire table was not easy. Besides, I hadn't yet gotten properly hungry, but I didn't want to offend the hospitable old lady. However, I didn't need much persuasion, especially after I noticed a sweaty bottle of beer. I limited myself to that. Grandpa, catching my glance, handed me a bottle opener.<\/p>
COFFEE IN THE GARDEN<\/p>
Sipping my beer, I tried to make sense of Grandma's lamentations, from which I only gathered that in Ukraine there was "kein Essen", "kein Arbeit", and "kein" much else. In short, one cannot live like that! I suppose such awareness of the situation in Ukraine was Petya's doing. It was no accident that "kein Essen" was first on the list of our people's disasters – my friend had a ravenous appetite. So he scared the old woman to death with horror stories about the Holodomor. Look with what tenderness she watches Petya stuffing himself with cutlets – she saved a man from certain death! Say what you will, but my buddy did a tremendous job of explaining things among these trusting people.
Try to guess what occasion this table was set for? And you didn't guess! This is just a light snack. Petya had overworked himself and they brought him coffee in the garden. And so it wouldn't seem too little, the coffee came with a liter of apple juice, a bunch of bananas, several apples, a pot of cutlets, buns, jam, beer, several types of pâtés, cheese, and many other odds and ends. Can you imagine what the lunch menu was like!
And now a trick question: what could he have overworked himself at to need such "Pause" every two hours? Don't bother, you won't guess anyway. Petya was painting a wooden fence with paint similar to our PF-115 enamel. And before that, for two weeks he handed the owner tools while he assembled a carport from a purchased set of components. Grandma proudly told me this, and Petya was very reluctant to act as translator. Grandpa remained silent all this time, actively nodding his gray head in confirmation of his wife's words. Now I understood my friend's taciturnity when it came to his work. He had something to hide. He had set up a resort in a single yard, and didn't want to lose it. And I wasn't even after a warm spot in his boarding house. He could have explained everything like a human being – I would have understood. Especially since I was in his debt.
I was beginning to feel uncomfortable because of the completely idiotic situation caused by my childish stunt. A half-baked Holmes! What the devil prompted me to conduct that investigative experiment! I had to urgently come up with a convincing reason to go home, since no one was going to let me go just like that without feeding me to the gills. Grandma considered it her duty to feed all the starving people of Ukraine...
The Almighty heard my prayers, and Grandma stopped her feeding harassment. In return, she was struck by an equally tricky idea – to find me a job at all costs. Poor, poor, poor Grandpa! He had to hastily set about implementing Grandma's idea. And poor Petya! He almost choked in surprise when he heard that the lady of the house decided to pay me ten marks an hour for work as well. Ten marks, plus a "buffet" to boot. Such a thing could only be seen in a sweet dream. But dreams are dreams, and my agreement to work meant losing this volume of work for Petya, and I didn't want to complicate our relationship. But Grandma didn't want to hear anything about my refusal. It ended with me being handed garden tools, and I started cleaning the garden.
No matter how hard I tried to work poorly to arouse the owners' displeasure and thereby improve my friend's mood, I did not succeed. No one kicked me out; on the contrary, they invited me to come again the next day. Petya was in shock. He was clearly not ready for such a turn of events. Sharing the "fishy spot" with me was not in his plans. I wonder what was?
The day was completely ruined...
GRANDMA'S PROTÉGÉ
The workday ended, and Grandma, after paying us, once again invited us to eat. It took great effort for me to agree to this torture of my stomach. But nothing can be done, the master is the master. Especially since all my objections were ignored by the hostess. I was forcing down another banana (curse the Holodomor!) when a Ford minibus flew into the yard at breakneck speed. Brakes squealing, it stopped a few centimeters from the house wall, and a brisk fellow about forty years old jumped out. Hairstyle: "Hit the comb manufacturers with a five-finger strike!", blazing gaze, running gait, lightning-fast movements forever defined his nickname "Brisk".
Brisk is the owner of a small, slowly but steadily developing firm that does minor building repairs. If Grandma's words are to be believed, every second client of this firm sued Brisk after the repair for the awful quality of the work done. Like most similar firms, his organization was not above hiring "foreign specialists". And although Brisk was terribly afraid of the responsibility for this, the temptation to save an extra penny was so great that from time to time he allowed himself such pranks with the Law. Grandma had some financial relationship with him and had some influence over him. For the next fifteen minutes, she worked out a strategy for our employment with Brisk, whispering conspiratorially in his ear. Then she loudly announced to the whole yard that Brisk agreed to give us work, at which our future boss turned white as a sheet and began to look around warily – lest someone hear! They agreed to keep in touch through Grandma.
As we were leaving Babushkin Dvor, we had to give way to a huge jeep driven by a fragile-looking girl. Next to her, like a puffed-up turkey, sat a thug whose facial features resembled a bulldozer. When the car pulled alongside us, the dyed blonde's companion grumbled through the open window something about the excessive presence of Russians in his homeland. We had to swallow the insult in silence back then. But our wounded honor was avenged—literally a few weeks later, Bulldozer ended up working in the same team with Russian specialists, and he again uttered his fateful phrase. They, without thinking twice, plainly explained to the fighter for the purity of German soil "Who is who," slightly spoiling his noble Nordic profile, and from that moment he became a passionate fan of the Land of Crackling Frosts. Now he even shakes hands when we meet.
NEW "KHASA"
For reasons beyond our control, we had to move to a new place of residence. It was good that the landlord of the previous apartment transported our belongings in his car; otherwise, it would have been tough for us. Besides the bags with things, our luggage now included food supplies that we had stocked up on the day before with landlady-like prudence. Can't let good stuff go to waste! We didn't have that much money, by the way, to be able to afford abandoning a heavy bag of provisions. The amount of provisions can be judged at least by the fact that the cost of our food stock was almost one hundred fifty marks at LIDL prices. Why did we need such an abundance of food? Very simple—my comrade was a passionate lover of hearty eating, regardless of quality (as long as it was cheap!) and the sight of a refrigerator not packed to the ceiling sent him into a comatose state. In short, if we had moved on our own using public transport, this process would have taken us a whole day instead of half an hour's breezy ride in the worn-out Mercedes of the previous apartment's landlord.
Our new refuge looked absolutely terrible. The last time order was made in it was several years ago, judging by the thick layer of dust and garbage, behind which the outline of carpet runners was vaguely discernible. The kitchen was a storage of empty beer bottles, behind the piles of which it was difficult to reach the dining table. The view of the room where we were to sleep suggested that for the last few years it had been used exclusively for work by representatives of the oldest profession. And not very well-paid ones. The bathroom looked cleaner than all the others, but the cleanliness of the toilet and bathtub inspired doubt about the possibility of bringing them into proper condition in the foreseeable future. On top of everything, the apartment had a nauseating smell of fermented remnants of the bottles' contents, which we managed to forget only a few days after returning them at the nearest PLUS.
Until late evening, we worked tirelessly, literally clearing the garbage piles. By the end of the day, we had collected several yellow bags of "eco-friendly" garbage. We love Mother Nature, of course; we just didn't have any other bags on hand. The beer bottles were moved into crates found in the basement.
Poor vacuum cleaner, unaccustomed to such loads, in protest periodically expelled a cloud of acrid smoke from the depths of its dusty soul and fell silent for a while. After cooling down a bit and receiving a new filter as a reward, it again rushed into battle for cleanliness until it became hard for it to breathe through the paper bag clogged with dust, and it again created a smokescreen. In the absence of floor rags, we had to use the numerous things left by our predecessors over many years of using this apartment as a shelter for illegal immigrants.
The kitchen required special effort. The gas stove, covered with caked-on grease, along with the surrounding tiles within a radius of one and a half meters, flatly refused to yield to modern detergents. It surrendered only when Petya, driven mad by its stubbornness, subjected it to a "rigorous" cleaning using the old grandfather method—scraping with a sharp knife. This procedure took him two hours and cost us another half-bucket of space in the yellow bags.
The refrigerator could only be opened in a gas mask—the deposits of half-decomposed food emitted a cadaverous stench. Even after the most thorough cleaning, we had to keep it open for several more days so that our products would not reek of garbage.
NEIGHBOR
The cleaning was nearing completion (the main part; the continuation lasted several more days) when a scraping sound of a key being inserted into the lock came from the hallway. Then the door swung open and a lanky figure appeared on the threshold, slightly swaying. The figure ducked, fearing to hit its head on the doorjamb, and had already lifted its leg over the threshold with the intention of stepping across, when it suddenly froze in place, staring at the floor with bleary eyes. Still standing on one leg, which increased the amplitude of the body's swaying, the figure with difficulty focused its gaze on the apartment number plate nailed to the door. As if wanting to drive away the vision that had appeared out of nowhere, the figure shook its head and repeated its drawn-out look at the floor of the hallway. Apparently, the result of the second survey did not satisfy the figure, as it again stared at the doorplate. It's hard to say how long this contemplation would have continued, but then the figure's vestibular system failed, leading to the complete and unconditional penetration of its entire body into the apartment. And only then did the figure notice us, barely restraining wild urges to burst out laughing.
— What the hell, guys, are you kidding? Who cleans up like this without warning? I thought, for real, that I was barging into the wrong pad! Funny, huh? — said Gulliver in an almost sober voice, closing the door behind him, and finally straightened up to his full giant height.
He was our new neighbor, or rather, we were the new ones – he had lived in this apartment for almost three years, not counting others. He was one of those true illegals who fate had cast here back in the days of the 'first wave', when you got 1.5 marks for a dollar and after six months of work without much effort people earned ten 'grands' in greenbacks, if the legends are to be believed. Yes, those were the days...
Having a bottle of beer each to get acquainted, we started to scold Gulliver for his sloppiness, and, incidentally, announced the introduction of a 'new order' in this apartment with all the ensuing consequences. Gulliver cast a forgiving glance over us.
'New order, you say? Well, well... When I came here, I also, just like you now, was setting things in order and all that. But then I spat on it all. I only sleep here. Besides, do you know how many transients like you have passed through here? You are the first ones who decided to bring order – the rest only did was eat and... I'm not going to clean up after everyone!'
As a reward for our righteous labors, he took the garbage bags out to the container, and the next day promised to turn in all the bottles, which he did to our great joy. Before going to sleep, he handed each of us a set of fresh bed linen from his emergency stash and retired to his bedroom. From there, his thoughts aloud about the meaning of life in isolation from the delights of close communion with the fair half of humanity could be heard for a long time, until they were replaced by thunderous snoring.
A PAINFUL QUESTION
Women... That is the problem of problems! No, not women themselves, of course, but their absence. Due to 'acute sexual deficiency', many illegals already have 'their roofs on the way'. There are, of course, entertainment establishments in Berlin, and the prices are quite affordable – 80-100 marks for 20 minutes of 'accelerated pleasure'. Plus various drinks that are customary to treat the ladies, cigarettes. But, as a rule, our men do not limit themselves to one session. We are not invalids – to finish in 20 minutes like rabbits! As a result, the fun lasts all night, and some spend (or lie through) up to 1000 marks. That's quite a lot. On average, that's the result of two weeks of work. And then another month or two of 'sexual starvation'. There are pedants who visit the priestesses of love relatively often and regularly, setting themselves the condition of spending no more than one hundred marks on pleasure. This achieves a certain regularity of sexual life, which noticeably improves their psychological state. But twenty minutes... You can get used to that!
But getting used to 'rabbit life' is only one downside of brothels. The second is the danger of falling into the hands of the police during the regular raids they conduct in hot spots. After all, it's no secret that most of the girls have no documents, and a good percentage of them are from CIS countries. And for the German police, the word 'Russian' is firmly associated with the word 'mafia' – hence the increased attention to such establishments. The danger of being caught 'red-handed' is so real that it scares off a good half of the illegals from this kind of entertainment. Even the knowledge of the saying 'Who doesn't risk, doesn't drink champagne!' doesn't help – the risk is too great. So they face the eternal question: 'Where should a poor illegal go?'.
Most illegals, not without reason believing that with that money they could get an order of magnitude more pleasure back home, save money without entering into relationships that would tarnish the 'moral image' of the semi-legal 'russo turisto'. But few of them last more than two or three months, even despite exhausting work – you can't fool Nature. And then – each to their own – some rush home to hammer nails into the slipping slate of a long-gone roof, some run to the brothel to hammer those same nails at a hundred marks per 'nail', 'loading' five or six 'nails' a night. The smarter ones (as they think) call up and have girls come directly to their place. This is cheaper (about 150 marks per hour), but the danger of a meeting increases many times – no, not with the police – but with our compatriots who will show up in a couple of days and unceremoniously take the last money from the amorous builder. And they might even decorate his face with indelible eyeshadow and rouge if he disobeys. And then he will rack his brains looking for the possible informant – it will almost certainly be the beauty with whom he spent such a sweet hour on one of the stormy evenings.
If you have the gift of coherently sustaining a conversation with a German woman for a few minutes, you can safely go to a German disco 'for those over twenty' and get to know a German girl tired of waiting for a real prince and dreaming of finding at least a real man. With some special sense, she will smell in you her only hope for the evening, she will cling to you in a death grip, one that on the Reeperbahn would have cost you many thousands of marks.
'Russian' discos are not favored by illegals. Dangerous, you know... If during the night these dance floors are visited three or four times by the police to separate the next batch of dead-drunk punks waving fists (and sometimes knives), you won't get much pleasure. The last thing you need is to run into a document check because of some idiots. Then you'll dance to the fullest! Trying to find a girlfriend among the 'new Germans' is generally a lost cause. For most of 'our' girls, the blood has long acquired a bluish hue, and they fully consider themselves true Aryans. 'Persons without permanent residence, please do not disturb!' – a standard note in newspaper ads like 'looking for a friend'.
ROUND OF THE DOMAINS
After consulting with an expert and wandering through specialty stores to our heart's content, we finally decided to buy that old mobile phone that was offered to me at the construction site. Even though the battery charge only lasted twelve hours, that was more than enough for us. Now we were no longer tied to the home phone, even though mobile communication cost a pretty penny. But we managed to save money by turning our communication into "semi-mobile": we received incoming calls on the phone, and outgoing calls were simply not used.
When we needed to call from outside the home, we used a payphone, paying with phone cards of unknown origin that were sold in abundance in every telecafe of the time. Strangely enough, the largest selection and lowest prices for cards were in some backwater Indian-Turkish-Afghan grocery store-warehouses. The connection speed when using a card depended more on the eye pressure in the nineteenth eye of the forty-five-headed inhabitant of Martian Eight Hills than on the phone line. But the cheapness of such communication made us turn a blind eye to its quality.
With a mobile phone, we felt much more confident. Frankly, job offers did not immediately increase as a result, but we had the opportunity to explore our new domain – that is, the area adjacent to our new apartment. Before that, we had made do with short forays one at a time to the nearest 'PLUS' while one of us stayed home waiting for a call.
Now we could roam around 'our' neighborhood together from morning till evening – it was more fun. During our walks, we mapped out the nearest grocery stores, bus and tram stops, and gas stations. Among the stores, special attention was paid to the cheapest ones – such as 'ALDI', 'LIDL', and 'NETTO'. 'KAISER' and the like were not on the agenda due to their unjustified high prices. The blessed 'KAUFPARK' with its, in my opinion, optimal price-quality ratio was too far away, and we could only dream of it.
The closest to us was 'PLUS', which was not so cheap; it took about twenty minutes by bus to get to 'LIDL', and we never managed to find 'ALDI'. But there were plenty of 'KAISER' stores. The gas station where you could always get 'fuel' in the form of alcoholic drinks at night turned out to be so far that it defeated the purpose of visiting it at the specified time. When does one run to the 'gas station'? When you don't have enough booze to reach the right state, and the stores are already closed. But by the time you run there, you'll have sobered up so much that it's time to have a hangover drink. And the police at night have a habit of checking on the well-being of loitering individuals, and we didn't need that.
From all the nearest tram and bus stops, the schedules for each route were carefully copied. You should have seen this picture: two grown-up goofballs standing on either side of the pole with the schedule boards, copying them down like seasoned schoolkids copying the class schedule in the school hallway. Germans who happened to be at the stop at that moment opened their mouths in surprise. But such notes are very helpful in planning the 'home – work' route. Given the punctuality with which German transport operators follow the schedule, you can calculate the time to leave home to the minute, which often allows you to extend precious morning sleep significantly. Of course, there are occasional slip-ups due to changes in schedules because of road repairs, but these are more the exception than the rule.
Also read related material: NOTES OF A BERLIN ILLEGAL -2
Andrey YEVODOKIMOV.
Special for 'Zagranitsa'.