The guy working the counter wakes me up reluctantly and points to the door. “Tut mir Leid, Kumpel,” he says. Sorry, buddy.
I say no problem and head out into the train station. The cops seem busy expelling everyone who’s still inside, so I keep my eyes down, shoulder my backpack, and head for the exit. Of course, it’s still raining. The nasty, sentient kind of rain that seems to intentionally alter its trajectory to find its way inside my collar. Instinctively, I hunch my shoulders up and wish to the gods a hat or newspaper would come blowing by on the wind. I round the corner from the train station and walk along the perimeter of the zoo. There’s a fence around it, but a small margin of shrubs and trees sits between the fence and the sidewalk and I look around for someplace dry enough to bed down. Most of the choice spots are already taken, but then I see a fat maple tree with a low, heavy limb that looks just right. I pick my way toward it through the bushes, but as I sit down, I hear a woman’s voice hiss at me, “Raus hier!” Get out of here!
I look over and see two white eyes peering at me from under a tarp worn like a hood. A thin hand reaches out and motions for me to go away, then returns to its place cradling a bundle held against the woman’s chest. I look closely and see the bundle is a child of maybe three or four, black hair peeking out from under the edge of a dirty towel used as a blanket. The kid’s mom looks up at me, and in the scattered light, I recognize frightened eyes.
“I’m just looking for someplace to sleep,” I say.
“Not here, addict. I don’t want trouble.”
Quietly, I start to move away, but against all logic and reason, I stick my hand in my pocket and come out with a thick wad of the money I’d gathered, a mix of euros and dollars. I hold it out to her, but the white eyes stare back suspiciously. “Please,” I say. “Take it.” But she must sense a trick is coming and just glares at me. I set the money down on the ground before her and leave.
There are simply no good options, and I know I’ll have to give the Sofia passport a try at a hostel eventually. I wander for a while, considering where and how and what I’ll do if the desk clerk calls the cops. I head back toward the train station and notice an underpass. I sneak underneath, relieved to be out of the rain, and lean against a wall to think.
A woman in a short blue skirt and bare legs enters from the far end, blond hair pulled back in a greasy ponytail. She puts a cigarette in her mouth as she stops in front of me, then pats the pockets of her leather jacket.
“Hast du Feuer?” she says. Then, as if on a hunch, she says, “Spichki?” The Russian word for matches.
I answer back in the same. “I don’t smoke.”
“Then what use are you to Marina?” she says, and walks away.
But before she makes it to the end of the underpass, a car enters and slows to a stop in front of her. The woman bends over, leaning into the open window.
I push off from the wall and head in the other direction. Then a shout echoes off the tiles of the underpass. It’s high-pitched but more angry than frightened. I turn and see the woman pulling hard to get her arm out of the open window, bracing her other hand on the door for leverage.
Without thinking, I bolt back toward her. When I reach the car, I seize the driver’s hand, pulling back his thumb where it’s digging into her jacket sleeve. I shove the woman back and find enough room to drive the heel of my left hand forward, slamming it into the man’s chin. He lets out a yelp, and suddenly the woman and I fly backward. We land together on the sidewalk.
The tires of his car chirp just as I’m about to jump back to my feet, but the car is already speeding down the tunnel, the roaring of its engine vibrating off the walls.
“You okay?” I ask the woman in Russian as I climb to my feet.
“Fine.” She searches the ground for something, then picks up a tiny plastic bag between thumb and forefinger and holds it up in front of her, inspecting it for damage. “Answer me this—how desperate does he think I am? A blow job for ein wenig Gras? Fucking loser.”
I take her hand and help her to her feet.
She shoves the little bag of weed into the pocket of her jacket and looks me over. “So, novichka”—newcomer—“what are you called?”
“I’m called Sofia,” I say.
*
The deal Marina and I strike in the underpass outside the Bahnhof Zoo is a straightforward one: twenty euros a night for a place on her couch until I run out of euros or she runs out of patience. We ride together on the subway to her place, far to the east of Berlin center.
It’s dangerous, this arrangement. But it’s also anonymous with no passport required. And I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some comfort in Marina’s presence. Her age is hard to guess, but she’s definitely older than me by, what, five years? Even though I’ve lived lots of places, I was the coddled child of a diplomat, and the streets of Berlin may as well be another universe. This is Marina’s territory, and she knows the strange physics here, which direction gravity goes, and whether two plus two equals something other than four.
“Novichka,” she says from across the aisle of the empty car as she scrapes at something under her fingernail with a key. “Where you from?”
“Russia,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “No shit.”
So she thinks I’m for real. Cover identity rule one: Go native when you can. “The south,” I say. “Armavir, it’s called. By the Black Sea.”
“Near Sochi?”
“Six, maybe seven hours by bus,” I say. Cover identity rule two: The believability of your story is in the details.
“Practically in Turkey,” she says. “That explains it, then.”
“What does it explain?”
“When I first saw you, I thought, this Sofia, she’s a Jew. And that’s fine. Jews I don’t mind so much.” Marina leans forward in her seat. “But now I’m thinking, this one’s a Muslim. So don’t bring any of that jihad shit into my house, got it?”
“I’m not Muslim.”
“I’m talking generally. Whatever jihad shit you’re carrying—religion, politics, someone after you—everyone seems to be on some holy war. Just don’t bring it near me.” She stands, grasping the handrail, and comes across the aisle, the better to glare down at me. “Too many refugees lately, which means too many cops. Too many cops means trouble for Marina.”
“Got it,” I say. “No drama, no cops.”
“Just so, novichka,” she says. “A few more months, I’m going to be a bartender. You know what kind of money bartenders make?”
“And—what do you do now?”
“Fuck for money,” she says.
The words shock me, and Marina grins when she sees me flinch.
“You got a problem?” she says.
“No,” I say. “Absolutely not.”