TE16 Turkish Delight

Hakan Günday the pavement along with the butt. He walked. The bag hanging from his left shoulder swung with every step. He felt like taking out and putting on his kimono and attacking the first person that crossed his path. Berlin was in the first throes of the evening hours. It was getting dark. He should go home. Since he had spent the previous night at a girlfriend’s house without letting his mother know, he could safely assume that she had called the police, the fire station and all the city’s hospitals. But he didn’t care, because he walked like Marlon Brando in the movie The Wild One that he had seen last week at the theater in Nollendorfplatz. He decided that he wouldn’t go home tonight either. There were a hundred and twenty marks in the inside pocket of his coat. He was sure of the exact amount because it was the price of the two amphetamine pills he had sold that morning. He caught a taxi and said “Kreuzberg.” He had a bizarre habit that stemmed from his equally bizarre hatred for taxis and taxi drivers. He limped elaborately into the vehicle as though his left leg was heavily handicapped and got off just as slowly, lifting his leg out of the door with both hands and pitching himself out onto the pavement. Naturally he kept up his little game until the taxi was out of sight. It wasn’t that he enjoyed limping, no. It was just that wasting the driver’s time soothed him, because every useless second he spent with Koma meant one less mark in his pocket. His struggle was against taxicab meters. He waged war against anything that counted meters and minutes. For he

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