Bricks and Mortar

Clemens Meyer, Katy Derbyshire

• Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781910695197
• eBook ISBN: 9781910695203
• Subtopic: Literature General

Bricks and Mortar is the story of the sex trade in a big city in the former GDR, from just before 1989 to the present day, charting the development of the industry from absolute prohibition to full legality in the twenty years following the reunification of Germany. The focus is on the rise and fall of one man from football hooligan to large-scale landlord and service-provider for prostitutes to, ultimately, a man persecuted by those he once trusted. But we also hear other voices: many different women who work in prostitution, their clients, small-time gangsters, an ex-jockey searching for his drug-addict daughter, a businessman from the West, a girl forced into child prostitution, a detective, a pirate radio presenter…

     In this ambitious novel, Clemens Meyer pays homage to modernist, East German and contemporary writers like Alfred Döblin, Wolfgang Hilbig and David Peace but uses his own style and almost hallucinatory techniques. Time shifts and stretches, people die and come to life again, and Meyer takes his characters seriously and challenges his readers in this dizzying eye-opening novel that also finds inspiration in the films of Russ Meyer, Takashi Miike, Gaspar Noé and David Lynch.

ON THE BORDER RIVER

He pushes the paper plate with the half-eaten cheese roll aside, wipes his fingers on the paper napkin, then screws it up and puts it on the plate. He pulls up the collar of his coat, adjusts his scarf. Cold for November. He throws the half-empty coffee cup in the bin next to the table but leaves the paper plate where it is, picks up his leather case, puts the newspaper in his coat pocket and crosses the concourse towards the platforms. He has to look for the right platform first, through the tunnel on the left. His breath comes out in clouds. A young woman is trying to lug a pram up the staircase.

Clack. Clack. One step at a time. ‘Wait a minute…’

‘Thank you. The lift’s broken.’

He reaches a hand out for the rod between the wheels. He can’t see the child in the pram, thickly swaddled and hidden between covers and cushions. Once they get up to the platform it starts crying. The woman thanks him again and he says, ‘No problem.’ He wonders where she might be from. Didn’t sound like the East, from her accent. More like Hannover. The train isn’t here yet and he takes his cigarette case out of his inside pocket. He has to unbutton his coat, feeling the autumn wind cold on his neck and chest. He’s got Davidoff Filters in his leather cigarette case; they’re the most elegant-looking. Long and white with a little gold band before the long white filter. And it’s appearances that count on this trip, as they usually do, and he’s thought about that often enough. He takes one glove off to smoke. His silver lighter feels cool on his palm. Twenty years ago he’d have put on a hat. Borsalino or something posh along those lines. No one wears hats these days, especially not in the trade, and especially not in the East.

He thought over and over whether to take the car. But his registration plates would have attracted attention, no matter whether he took the Bielefeld-registered Benz or the Audi from the city. And they suggested on the phone that they ought to take things slowly, said they had a driver anyway, the Colonel can guarantee everything but better to be safe than sorry what with the border so nearby, and so on. And he’d parked his car, the Audi, at a friend’s place in Neukölln. Took a taxi to Ostbahnhof, which they’re now calling Berlin Main Station. He thought briefly of having the taxi drive him all the way to the border town. But sometimes it’s good to approach things slowly. He hadn’t been in Berlin for a while, the last time was 1988, eight years ago, and no one thought the country behind the Wall would collapse a year later, as quickly and suddenly as a toy fort. The city is different now, feels different to then. But he’s never liked Berlin. ‘How’s business going?’ he asked his acquaintance.

‘Oh, these aren’t easy times, you know. The Russians, the Yugos, the Lebanese. Is there any room left for us? The old deals don’t count any more. But we get by. There’s enough pie to…’

‘There is, there is. Still is.’

‘And you? Gone East, I heard?’

‘That too. You know me.’

‘Come, let’s drink to that.’

‘Whisky at lunchtime. Nothing’s changed here.’ And they sat there in the dark bar in Charlottenburg and drank Johnnie Walker Black Label and talked about the old days, which got better with every glass, just as they got younger while the cleaning lady washed away the traces of the night behind them.

He watches the woman with the pram, standing a few yards away from him, smoking as well. He doesn’t approve of that. Mothers shouldn’t smoke. He’s old fashioned about that, or new fashioned, depends which way you see it. But who knows, maybe she only smokes two or three a day because she can’t quite manage to give up, and that would be OK. The girls in the East smoke like chimneys, more than the ones on the other side, where he’s from. He sometimes thinks. Seems that way to him. Could be wrong though. Because they all used to smoke in the old republic; politicians, prostitutes, actors, housewives. Once, not all that long ago, he slapped the cigarette out of a whore’s hand, she was six or seven months gone. An ex-whore, in other words. She didn’t work for him any more. Only up to the fourth month. Although there are clients into that kind of thing. Word soon gets round when a pregnant girl’s working. And then the clients come and they all want a go. Shoot their load on the big round belly. But not at his place. She did go on working, though, he found out later. So not an ex-. First freelance and then somewhere else. Pregnant and horny. He slapped her once or twice round the face. Because of the cigarette. Because of the baby. The rest of it was none of his business. But she’s sitting there in his lounge because she’s got papers to pick up from him or some other mess to clear up, needs a stamp and a signature and who knows what, and smoking one after another, with a belly up to her chin. Stupid cow.

He throws his cigarette on the tracks. He exhales the last puff of smoke, watching the woman with the pram; there’s not much else to see on the platform. Just a few people clustered by the timetables and benches. It’s dark between the iron arches, the afternoon light can barely penetrate the dirty glass roof. He glances at his Breitling, spots the woman pushing back her sleeve almost simultaneously and then leaning out over the edge of the platform and looking in both directions. She sees him, flicks away her cigarette and smiles. Come off it, girl, he thinks, I’m old enough to be your father. He’s not into young blood any more. A woman has to be somewhere between thirty, thirty-five and forty to get him interested. There are exceptions, of course. His common-law wife is forty-five and huddled in his residence near Osnabrück. No children, no wife. That’s been his maxim for almost… thirty years? He lights up another. Even though he wants to slow down with the smoking. They announce the train’s arrival at last. Almost on time.

Where’s she going? Definitely not from the East. He’s got enough experience to tell now. Not that it matters. He has to concentrate. He’ll need a clear head in two hours’ time. He hasn’t got much luggage with him; he reckons on one or two days. He thought about taking some artillery along. The border’s a dark place, wild lands, mist above the river and deep woods on the other side, primitive locals, even seven years after the Wall. But you have to reckon on getting checked. He did used to have a gun possession card and a gun licence, he’d got it issued in Osnabrück in the early eighties, he had good connections to politics and the authorities, he was often in Hamburg, on business, and things started getting pretty hot there in the mid-eighties, dark days, dark nights, mist coming off the sea. Though it was nothing compared to the craziness that seemed to sweep through the cities in the early nineties, like an epidemic of greed and violence, but what can you know, 1996, even though he thought he had a feel for the times and the people. He doesn’t even know if the licence for his gun is still valid. He throws his cigarette on the tracks, sees the train still a little way off, tracks and buildings and the sky getting greyer and greyer. Maybe it’s another train, for another platform. He sees the cigarette end smouldering between the sleepers. But he wants to cut down on the smoking anyway. His eighth today; he’s started counting. He can still feel the six whiskies he drank with his acquaintance Moon-Eye. Actually he’s almost a friend. A good one in fact, thinking about it. Six whiskies, six Davidoff Filters. He shakes himself, shuts his eyes for a moment, sees the lights of the train through his closed eyelids, pulling in from the dark afternoon to the gloomy platform with screeches and hisses, hears the voice from the tannoy again, strangely distorted, barely comprehensible, and his friend’s eyes shimmer in the dark of the bar, which won’t open up again until the evening.

He’d never had much to do with him but now he it feels like they’re oddly close, he wants to ask his advice about his big trip, but doesn’t in the end. Sometimes he wonders why he didn’t move to Berlin, why he’s never had anything going on in Berlin, nothing big anyway – but it just wasn’t his city. Munich, Neuss, Bielefeld, the Ruhr Valley, Hamburg, that’s where he feels safe. Usually. And now in the city in the East as well, his new branch office, his annexe for the past few years. But Berlin, such a big, ragged city, which now seemed even bigger and even more ragged…

‘Moon-Eye,’ he said, ‘we’re living in strange times.’

‘The times are always strange, either way. You know, it’s only my old lady calls me that now.’

‘Sometimes I think we should all just pack our bags and bugger off to South America.’

‘And surrender everything to the Mongolian hordes?’

‘You’re right, Moon-Eye. What would the ladies be without us…?’

‘Nothing, my friend, nothing. They’d be weeping. And the cops as well. And Inland Revenue.’

He gets a flash of dizziness as he boards the train. Just for a second, or even less, something inside him cuts out, in his head, as if the system were briefly interrupted, a black, no, a white space, a fraction of a second of nothingness. Then he’s back, clutching the handrail next to the door, feeling someone behind him, feeling that someone touch him briefly before he gets into the carriage. He jerks the sliding door open and sits down on the first vacant seat. The case parked between his feet. His heart beating normally. Everything’s fine. Boom. Boom. Boom. The platform is empty, the window dirty. A few figures walk past him. Then the train sets into motion. Jolts. Halts for a moment. Rolls on again. He takes the newspaper out of his coat pocket and puts it on the little table beneath the window.

It occurs to him that he bought a first-class ticket. Later, when the conductor points it out, he says, ‘I’m fine sitting here.’ It sounds funny, he realizes, but the conductor nods and walks on. He doesn’t feel like getting up. He’s a little tired. They’re moving through rain; he sees the forests blurred, villages. The train makes a lot of stops. Stopped a lot in Berlin as well. Lots of building sites there. Huge cranes behind the buildings. Construction ditches by the side of the roads. Half-finished castles of glass. He could have invested in construction companies, he thinks, if he’d been stupid. Better in building land, but that could have gone wrong as well, a million today, a hundred thousand tomorrow. They were building like crazy in the city in the East as well, in his new annexe. The grey there was gradually disappearing, still. The banks were handing out loans like sweeties. But when the air came hissing like a huge fart out of the big real-estate godfather who’d bought up half the city – what a stink that was! – when the banks dropped him all the way down to jail, he was glad he hadn’t invested in a construction company in the city in the East or a piece of real estate in the bright lights of the city centre. He knew things would work out that way. The quicksand principle. Dominoes toppling. And he invested early enough in the right properties, and the prices and the price slump in the city centre regulated the market the way he needed. On the edge of town. Construction land. Motorway access roads. The Fort. A big deal. Cost energy and time and money. He got loans as well. He has a good reputation. Did some building with his people in Bielefeld, even invested in Neuss years and decades ago, has shares and percentages in Frankfurt am Main and elsewhere, not bad ones either. And with your own construction company you always have to make sure you get the right contracts and deal with the right people. That would have been doable. With or without a godfather. The new land is big enough. But ultimately it’s just peanuts. It’s just that desire for something solid that everyone has sometimes, everyone who feels the endless flow of the money and the market almost painfully after all the years. Digger daydreams. Like he used to build little houses in the woods with his brother, out of wood and rocks and clay. He’s often thought about that and remembered it. But he’s the man with the plan. The man who contracts out the contracts. The man with the good nose for business, who looks after the money and invests it. His brother’s. His people’s. The company in the background. The silent partners. His firm. The red-light-sector share. And now the border.

‘It pays to be big.’ He’d said that himself. ‘The bigger the company, the better the profits. Think big, as our friends from the finance world say.’

That must have been two or three years ago now. He always has that kind of patter going, to impress people. He was the man with the plan. The man from the West. Not one of those small-time pimps, the street investors who got fished one by one out of the big goldfish bowl of the Emerging East, where even the godfathers could drown.

‘I’ll take a look at it. Might turn out well. Might get big. Looks that way at the moment. The timing’s good. The right people. The right information. A lot of money in it. Needs a lot more money put in.’ And now he’s on the way, on the trip. He wanted to do it himself, like in the old days.

You have to find something, in the dark, on the margins, and then light the lights there so it shines all the way to the centre like a giant Christmas tree! His partner in the city in the East knows that. His partner has his own construction company. Among other things. His partner listens to him. Invests in property. Among other things. A young man with a vision. With plans. A man who believes in the red-light-sector share. Thirty-three years old. Or thirty-four? Doesn’t make any difference, not the exact age. And a man on his way up. Willing to learn. Learn, learn, and once again learn. (They both laugh because that was Lenin. And they raise their glasses and forge their pact. Up in that hotel, the bar on the twenty-seventh floor.) A man who forges and extends contacts. Manages information. Has a monopoly on model apartments, or is on his way to one. A man who reminds him of his own youth. Even though his was different. Of his own path. His own energy and drive. Initiative. The will to build something up, create something big, in a market now surviving only on its myths, that could suddenly be formed here in the East after the big zero hour. And the boy was in on it. He’d started with a couple of amusement arcades, so they said. Invested money in apartments. Knew from the very beginning that there was only small change to be made on the street. (And they look out over the evening city and dream of the red-light-sector share, the serious market in bodies. And the old Bielefelder forgets for a moment that he had plans far beyond this collaboration, that the lad was just the means… and the city, his annexe in the East, glitters darkly in the evening light like a heap of brightly coloured marbles.)

Forests, fields, villages. Dilapidated farmhouses and farmyards in the rain. And the evening sets in fast. Never mind South America. What does it have to offer him? He has a little house near Osnabrück where his wife sits it out, the woman who’s not really his wife. She’s only ever said something once, about getting married. He’s surprised she doesn’t put the screws on him, after all the years. Or didn’t. Because she comes from a very middle-class family. Small town. Almost a village. And her parents didn’t think much of him. Even though he had a von in his name. But what difference does that make? And he’d changed his name, years ago now. Told her one time though. He couldn’t keep up the legends anyway. They used to call him ‘the Count’ in the seventies. He went drinking with ministers, with and without von in the name, because it’s only about money anyway, and shook the big bankers’ hands, cut ribbons and held topping-out ceremonies with press and celebs. Whorehouses, sauna clubs, model apartments, call the girls! And he’s met the biggest bourgeois types in the trade, knickknacks in their cabinets and white three-piece suites and child seats in the car. He hates that family shit. His partner in the city in the East is starting something up. Starting a family as well. Doing it right. But what difference does that make?

He built the house at the end of the eighties, when he met her. She was still a teacher then. Primary school. Bit of a caring one. Studying sociology at night school. Even that made her exotic in that small-town dump. It seems ugly to him now, left over from another time, long ago. The house. Flat roof. Little garden. All white. Out there, one of those dilapidated farmyards, that’s what he ought to buy. For his retirement. And do it up. Digger daydreams. Somewhere to retire to. With or without her. He’s not bothered. It’s a bloody long time to go. You can always find someone. Cold heart. But he needs the business. The city. The cities. The Fort. The clubs. The women. The money. The market strategies. The competition. The speculation. The investments. The information. The players. The flow. The glances into the future. And the looks back. His brother is as cool as a cucumber (now) and makes good money in Bielefeld. Growing up together near Stuttgart. He’s often thought of those days recently. He was eight years older than his brother, sent to boarding sc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• PRAISE
• TITLE PAGE
• CONTENTS
• EINS, ZWEI, DREI
• THE LONG NIGHT OF THE RIDER
• IN THE YEAR 2525
• – MANDY, THE BED IS BREAKING! – NO, MISTER, IT’S NOT THE BED, IT IS A BAND FROM MY HEART, WHICH WAS PUT THERE IN MY GREAT PAIN.
• AMALGAM
• ETERNITY TWO
• ON THE BORDER RIVER
• THE CONFERENCE OF THE WHORES
• LIGHTS IN THE CATHEDRAL
• MY HUCKLEBERRY FRIEND
• STEEL TOWN
• THE COLUMBUS BUTTERFLY
• TOKYO, YEAR ZERO
• EARLY EVENING IN EDEN CITY
• THE GREAT COUP (THE LONG DISTANCES BETWEEN THE STATIONS)
• IMPORT / EXPORT 90
• FACES
• BEHIND THE MIRRORS
• DEAD PIGEON ON FLUGHAFENSTRASSE
• THE REINHARZ DREAM
• TRANSFER (BYE-BYE, MY LADYBOY)
• I’D LIKE TO GET A HORSE, ONE DAY
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING BOOKS BY FITZCARRALDO EDITIONS
• COPYRIGHT