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guerasrammficTitle: On the Practical Application of Rhythm Ia
Author:laguera25
Rating: FRM/R
Fandom: Rammstein
Pairing: gen, mentions of Richard/OFC, Christoph/Regina
Warning: N/A
Disclaimer: Christoph Schneider is a real person with family and friends who love him. I am not one of them. This story and the events and attitudes therein are entirely fictional and should be read as such. Any resemblance to reality is pure, dumb luck. For entertainment only.
Summary: Christoph Schneider watches Richard dance and wonders just how it will all go wrong. It always does.
A/N: Takes place between chapters eighteen and nineteen of Die Sprache der Blinden
Christoph sits in the chair still warm with Richard's body heat, and watches. He's never been one for dancing, though he can swing an admirable box step thanks to his mother, who was determined that her son should have a few social graces. It's enough to get by, any road; he'd trotted it out on his wedding day, when he'd spun his Regina around a glossy parquet floor like this one, fingers interlaced with hers and supporting arm buried in lace and beaded silk. He'd been rusty, truth be told, his feet and knees popping high in anticipation of a kick pedal or a bass drum. To him, the dance had been ungainly, but Regina's eyes had been shining with happiness, and the rest of the wedding party had been too drunk and happy to care about his poor form, and so no ill had come of it.
He should have more affinity for dance, he supposes, since he is the inconspicuous metronome to which every body moves when the music swells, but at best, he can muster only a dim aesthetic appreciation for its form. Dancers are like dust motes drifting in the late summer sun, melancholy and illusory as they move through their paces. It makes him drowsy to look at them for too long, a bored student gazing into the square of light cast by a library window.
It's rhythm he understands, the relentless need to move in time. There is rhythm in everything, a sonic order that even the most brutish mind understands and to which even the most broken body must respond. Newborns suckle at their mothers' breasts in time to a rhythm that best suits their rudimentary need, and mothers, ensconced in their rocking chairs, respond in unwitting kind. Old men totter in time to the cane that bears up their softening bones. Tap scrape scrape. Tap scrape scrape as they shuffle down the sidewalk to the park in search of sun and greenery and a bit of companionship with which to wash down their blood pressure medicine. Paraplegics roll their chairs in time to the ebb and flow of arms that mimic the wheels that carry them through their waist-level lives.
Rhythm is the root of all life, the means by which it flourishes or falters. A heart out of rhythm is a heart without hope of tomorrow. Rhythm is life's first universal truth, and he feels it in his bones before it reaches his ears. He's felt it since he was a toddler, wobbling across the floor of his parents' modest but homey flat in his bare feet. For him, rhythm came from the sole up, slipped from feet to calves to belly to swinging arms. The ears were rhythm's last stop and the least important. If he went deaf tomorrow, his eardrums punctured by the finger of a capricious god, he could still keep the rhythm by the surge of it in his pumping feet and swinging arms.
Rhythm in his childhood treks across the parlor floor on his hands and knees, chubby hand followed by round, pink knee. Rhythm in his pounding feet as he chased his sister around kitchen table, reaching for the ribbons in her hair with mud-caked fingers, or his school friends around the linden tree of a city park, the summer leaves a splash of vivid green amid the greys and browns of city life. Rhythm in the fluid rise and fall of his knees as he pedaled his mother's bicycle through the streets, stretched long and lean over the handlebars as he leaned into the curves and savored the intimate card of the wind in his hair, clean and cool on his scalp. Rhythm in the tick of the clock and the muted clack of the teacher's shoes as he paced the classroom, in the monotonous rise and fall of his voice as he read from the state-approved texts. Rhythm in the scrape of his pencil as he copied letters and notes from the dusty blackboard or doodled in the margins of his paper.
Rhythm in the rush of breath from his lungs as he played football on a pitch at the local Sporthalle, in the jostling press of bodies as the defenders closed in, faces stippled with sweat and blotchy with exertion. The rhythmic bass thunder of the ball as leather met foot. Rhythm in the sidling twitch of the goalie's hips and thighs as he squatted between the posts, cleats digging into the soft grass and neatly-manicured earth. Rhythm in the laughter after the game was over, sweat-sodden jerseys yellow as the spring sunshine as they trooped off the pitch in a riotous gaggle of catcalls and good-natured profanity.
Rhythm in the movement of his fingers over the valves of his first trumpet, brass in his mouth and euphoria in his heart as he puffed and sputtered and bleated his way through his first lessons. The trumpet hadn't been his truest love, but it had been the first, and he'd spent hours in his small bedroom and in grim, windowless practice rooms learning its secrets and unraveling its mysteries. Like his dancing, his trumpeting skills have eroded badly with the passing of years, but for a time, the press of the trumpet's mouthpiece against his lips had been as familiar and intimate as a lover's and just as welcome, just as exhilarating. On good days, he could make it sing, bright and clear and brassy as the metal from which it was formed. On the best days, the sainted days where his hands moved without conscious thought and drew the music forth from his lungs and pursed lips with every exhalation and flutter of tongue, he could synchronize the trumpet's song to the rhythms of his body--the beat of his heart or the ebb and flow of restless, nervous energy in his veins and along his prickling skin, where the fine hairs of his arms rose like concertgoers held in thrall.
Rhythm in the portentous swell of the orchestra--the somnolent drone of rosined bows drawn against taut strings and the thunder of the drums as they rumbled like Titans shifting within the bowels of Tartarus. The exuberant whipsaw of the violinists' bow arms as they coaxed Chopin and Liszt from the strings and the more sedate drift of the cellists' as their instruments lowed and sobbed. Rhythm in the defiant bob of the conductor's thin, pale neck as it moved in time with his baton, his cravat askew and trembling beneath the scrawny knot of his Adam's apple. Rhythm in the flap of his coattails as he rose on his toes and sank to his heels again.
Rhythm in the swing of his arms and the snap of his wrists as he reveled in his first drumkit, a small secondhand set his parents had gotten him for his sixteenth birthday. A snare, an idiot cymbal that had listed to the right like a companionable drunk, and a tiny bass drum with a piebald mallet. Childish compared to the sets he would later own as an adult, when his talent had demanded more and money had been no object, but glorious to him as he'd squatted in front of it and examined it in awestruck detail. His first liaison with his true love, and to this day, he can recall the cool kiss of the snare against his reverent fingers.
For his parents, it had been a concession of defeat, and he still feels a fleeting pang when he thinks of his mother's wistful sigh and the slump of his father's shoulders when he'd announced that he wanted to take up the drumstick. They had hoped the piano, that instrument of maestros and visionaries, would replace the trumpet in his heart. The piano was respectable, a mark of culture and learning and an avenue to the storied concert halls of Europe. But he had had neither the patience nor the aptitude for the piano. The keys had been dead beneath his fingers, naught but pressed plastic. He could not make them sing no matter how much he coaxed and wheedled. He could only make them regurgitate the dusty notes of dead masters, a fumbling mimic without the requisite passion. He had persisted as long as he could, driven by filial conscience, but it was no use. The trumpet had lasted longer, and he has never forgotten it entirely. The finger movements have survived, have been incorporated into his warm-up exercises before a rehearsal or concert. But even it had held scant allure for him once he had discovered the drums.
For him, the drums had been the moment when all the rhythms of the world had harmonized. Sitting on a wobbly footstool with his knees high and jutting at awkward, untenable angles, he'd held the sticks and felt the world align and come into brilliant focus. He'd been possessed of an exquisite clarity that had left him breathless, and that had intensified with every snap of his wrists. It had been an all-encompassing high, sweeter and stronger than the weed he shared with his friends or the hit of Ecstasy he'd tried once in a hotbox discotheque crammed with drunken boys and nervous girl who wore their sexuality clumsily, children playing in their mother's clothes. He'd chased it with manic zeal, limbs flying and muscles bunching as he reforged the world with every strike of the bass mallets.
He'd chased it for months, sweltering and freezing by turns in his small bedroom as he'd practiced, balanced precariously on milk crates or the sagging edge of his bed. He'd fumbled and blundered his way at first, led by nothing but will and blind enthusiasm and tinny, worn tapes of John Bonham and Phil Rudd. His parents had borne his bombastic clatterings with gritted teeth and a healthy supply of paramecetol.
He's eternally grateful that they never ordered him to stop, never stifled him in the name of their sanity or to preserve the neighborhood peace. He's not sure he could have stopped, even if they'd told him to. He'd been lost the first time he'd picked up a drumstick and felt the seductive heft of it in his hand, beholden to a compulsion that had its roots in the soles of his feet and tugged from somewhere just behind his navel. The rhythms he felt in his veins and in his marrow had found an outlet, a voice that spoke in tongues of wood and stretched hide, the chattering, ancient click of Maoris dusted in a fine silt of drifting desert grit. He'd been desperate to hear them all, to learn the secret histories that lived in the clack of his teeth and the tramp of his feet, and so his practices had grown longer and longer until rhythm had been the only thing he understood.
Rhythm in the flex and surge of his hips in the humid darkness of the backseat of his father's Trabi, in the stretch and splay of his fingers as they carded through silky, brown hair or wrapped around warm, undulating hips. Rhythm in the slap of flesh and the plosive rush of breathy promises, in the creak and groan of failing shocks.
The needy, stupid rhythm of sex. The first rhythm, the rhythm from whence all others spring. Without the primal, unapologetic rhythm of sex, there can be no other. No hearts to beat within breasts, no legs to pedal bicycles through the winding streets or wrists to snap briskly on a snare. No feet to tap out the Morse code of a summer stroll or slap on the rain-soaked pavement during a spring jog. No lips to purse around the tart mouthpiece of a trumpet or hips to roll as he moved inside the woman splayed and slick and urgent beneath him. The rhythm of sex is the indifferent sweep of God's hand across fallow earth.
It's the rhythm of sex he's watching now, the slow, anticipatory waltz of foreplay. Richard and Calliope drift across the floor, foreheads pressed together and Richard's hand resting lightly on Calliope's hip as he guides her across the floor, leads her along a path only they can see. More sentimental eyes would call it courtship, and it is, after a fashion; even animals have mating rituals. But there is a simmering sensuality to their movements that speaks only of sex, whispers it with a sultry hiss. It's in the upward curve of Calliope's eyes and lips, sly and hungry, and in the avidity of Richard's gaze. He has eyes only for her, and whithersoever she goes, his gaze follows. His body thrums with need and longing even as he sways and turns, and desire rises from hers in a visible haze, powder and perfume on a Parisian courtesan. On the surface, this dance is grace and refinement, European civility and sophistication, but the surface is shallow. This dance is a pretense, the chaste preamble to a darker, baser rhythm steeped in chthonic dust and immutable bedrock. By the time the sun rises--and long before that, like as not--they will fuck, Calliope shorn of her simple cocktail gown and Richard divested of restraint.
When has Richard ever had restraint? Till murmurs inside his head, and he stifles a laugh and steals a furtive, guilty glance at Khira Li, who sprawls in her chair with loose-limbed grace, eyes glazed and nearly-empty wineglass listing in her unsteady grip.
Richard has always been impetuous, passionate and stubborn as he pursues his goal, whether it be a woman or an arrangement or the next step in Rammstein's evolution. What he loves, he loves without reservation, and he has little patience for the rest. He is wild and maddening and loyal as a mastiff. He is Rammstein's staunchest ally and his own worst enemy. He is infuriating and indefatigable, fragile and absolutely glorious, and Christoph's love for him is rivaled only by his desire to punch him squarely in the face.
He had heard of Richard before he met him. The music scene in the East then was small, the rock scene even smaller, and most bands had heard of each other. Richard had been with Orgasm Death Gimmick, slogging through the stifling clubs and the grotty, piss-damp beer halls and playing for whatever the club managers would pay. Most nights, he'd gone home with nothing but experience and someone else's girlfriend.
Christoph had been making the same rounds with Die Firma, banging grimly away on his skins while drunken kids got drunker on stale beer and desperate girls blew the promoter in his sweatbox office. They'd played the same shit clubs for the same shit pay, and it was inevitable that their paths would cross.
He hadn't been working the first time he'd seen Richard perform. He'd been at a grotty nightclub with his girlfriend, hoping to corner the promoter and peddle Firma. If he couldn't finagle that, then he'd hoped to score a beer and some sweet hash from the bartender, a reedy addict with bony, bruised arms and a nervous tic that made him curl his lip and scour his yellow teeth with his tongue. The club had been crowded with bodies and thick with the smell of sweat and pot and stale beer, and the sound had been too big for the small, cramped room, distorted by the stone walls and sharp corners and the knot of jostling people crowded in front of the small, rickety stage, which had creaked ominously beneath the weight of the instruments and amplifiers.
It wasn't the music that had captured his attention at first. It was the shock of bleached blond hair that sprouted from Richard's head in a scraggly tangle of dreadlocks. He'd been so surprised at it that he'd blinked in mute astonishment for several bewildered moments before he'd noticed the rest of him--the painstakingly-ripped jeans and cheap electric guitar and the bare chest covered in a sheen of sweat. Richard had resembled a caveman with his wild hair and broad chest, though Richard would confess much later that he'd fancied himself the embodiment of California cool, the perfect counter-culture rock god pinup.
He'd looked ridiculous, but it had soon become apparent that he'd also been possessed of charisma and an undeniable talent. The latter had been raw, but it had bled from his fingers with every pluck of the strings. He'd commanded the attention of everyone in the crowd, and never mind the screechings, preenings, and spastic gyrations of the singer. The women had gazed at him with open desire, reaching for the stage with outstretched hands, lips parted to reveal the glint of teeth. The men had looked at him with a mixture of envy and wariness, drawn to him even as they recognized the threat he represented.
And Richard, the vain bastard, had reveled in it.
Christoph had been mesmerized, had forgotten everything, including his unfortunate girlfriend. After the set, he'd gone in search of Richard and found him bulldogging the greasy promoter about his money. Richard had been unrelenting, and Christoph had gotten his first glimpse of his single-minded tenacity as he'd followed the shifty promoter down the dingy corridor, demanding payment for his night's work. He would come to love that single-mindedness in time, and years later, he would come to resent it.
That night, he'd simply been in awe of it. He doesn't remember now how much Richard hectored out of the promoter. Far less than the band deserved, he's sure, but far more than he had any right to expect. Enough to buy a small bindle of hash and half an hour of Richard's time. They'd hung out in the shadow of the club, had squatted in the dark and rolled joints on the dirty asphalt. They'd passed the stubby beadie back and forth and talked of music and mutual influences and mutual friends. Richard's bandmates had been there, too, flies circling them with greedy intent, reaching for the steadily-shrinking joint with spindly, impudent hands. He cannot recall them now, those inconsequential gadflies. They had been dreamers, not dedicated musicians, possessed of just enough savvy to recognize the true talent in their midst. Nor can he recall the girlfriend he'd so unceremoniously abandoned in his pursuit of Richard. He had never seen her again. Perhaps she'd found someone more attentive. Perhaps she'd ended up with one of Richard's bandmates, an unexpected boon at the end of a hard day's night.
Nothing had come of that first meeting. He had been gaining notoriety in Die Firma, and Richard had convinced that Orgasm's breakthrough was just beyond the next hill, obscured by the next shabby, seething club with narrow doors and beer-slick steps. They'd exchanged phone numbers and farewells and gone their separate ways, sharing only the musky sweetness of hash on their clothes. Neither had ever called the other.
Eight months later, Firma had been struggling and quietly unraveling at the seams, and he'd been drowning his sorrows with lager in a Bierkeller in Pankow. Alone this time, but hopeful that his luck would change as he'd sat at the bar and surveyed the room over the rim of his stein. He'd found no young Fraulein that night, but he had found Richard, dressed in a jean jacket and the same pair of artfully-ripped jeans and sporting the same mop of snarled blond dreadlocks. He'd sidled up, all faded jeans and nervous energy, and he'd been surprised when Christoph had bid him pull up a stool, as though he'd expected a rebuff rather than an affable greeting. They'd shared beers and war stories of life in dingy clubs and women who smelled of cheap powder and carnuba wax, and by the time they'd slipped off the barstools and into the Berlin night, they'd been joined at the hip, chummy and laughing and exchanging phone numbers for the second time. That time, he had called, and when Richard had mentioned that he was looking for a new flat, the invitation had slipped unbidden from his lips. The next day, Richard had turned up on his doorstep with a bicycle, two duffel bags, and a guitar case slung across his back. All his worldly possessions, as it had turned out, and Christoph, who'd had scarcely more, had laughed and shaken his head and ushered him inside.
Richard's arrival had taken Olli, his unsuspecting and long-suffering flatmate by surprise. Olli was long, lean and quiet, reserved almost to a painful fault and content to noodle on his bass and fiddle with his scavenged computer parts at the kitchen table, which listed to the left and wobbled deliriously beneath even the lightest touch, or hunched over the tiny desk in his room. He hadn't known what to make of the sidling, incessantly-jabbering kid with the tireless mouth and the shock of snarled, blond dreadlocks. He'd loomed in the claustrophobic hallway of the flat and surveyed the newcomer in doe-eyed silence, barefoot and scratching idly at his long, toned belly. Olli has never been a many of many words; he takes in far more than he gives out, and he'd been even quieter then, bludgeoned into silence by the torrent of gabble that had spilled from Richard's lips as he'd stood in their living room with his bags puddled around his feet and heaving peristaltically with every shuffle of his feet. Surprise and nervousness had made Richard nearly manic, and he'd practically capered among his bags as he'd introduced himself, a puppy leaping at the feet of his new masters. Olli had blinked and nodded and scratched ceaselessly at his belly, and all the while, he'd gazed at Richard in serene bemusement.
When Richard had scuttled off to install his bags in the room that was now half his, Christoph had braced himself for the inevitable remonstrance, but Olli had merely watched their new flatmate tramp down the corridor, peering into rooms as he went, and when Richard had disappeared from view, Olli had simply turned to him and murmured mildly, "This should be interesting."
Richard had brought an inexhaustible energy to their flat, an ebullience that had amazed and annoyed them by turns. He was indefatigable when it came to his passion for music and he'd ever been picking and strumming on his guitar and scribbling indecipherable notes in a small composition notebook, a relic from his bygone and unlamented school days. He'd sat cross-legged on the floor with his cheap acoustic and even cheaper electric and played for hours, arranging and rearranging chords until Christoph had heard them in his sleep, until they'd been assimilated into the rhythm of his life. Sometimes, Richard's single-mindedness had irritated him, but more often than not, it had soothed him to come into the living room and see that unruly mop of hair bent over a guitar. Often, Olli had joined him in the living room, bass slung low over bony hips and fingers dancing over the thick strings like restless spiders. Bass and guitar and a rhythm that found its way into the soles of his feet and seeped into the rest of him like the slow, honeyed burn of good whiskey. The flat had been too small to accommodate his small drum kit, and the thin walls would have invited the nettled critique of their neighbors, but he'd wanted to join in all the same, and so he'd coaxed the beat from the slat of a kitchen chair or the cheap metal of a stockpot or the meat of his thighs, and there they would sit, speaking without tongues and watching magic rise from their pores like sweat. They would play far into the night, stopping only to take a long pull of beer from bottles left by bare feet or on the damp-ringed edges of a scarred and splintery side table, and the next morning, they would open heavy, sleep-crusted eyes and shamble off to their day jobs. When night came, they would find their way into the living room once more, drawn there by compulsion and mutual need, and the cycle would begin anew.
Richard had been as fastidious as he was focused. By night, he would fill ashtrays with lip-damp butts and litter the floor with empty beer bottles. He would slough his clothes and leave them strewn over the floor or draped haphazardly over the back of their lumpy, rough-napped couched. One drunken night, he'd shucked his pants and underpants and sat naked on the floor, surrounded by clothes and beer bottles and scraps of paper from his composition book. He'd played the same chord progression again and again, oblivious to the thick shag beneath his ass or the cool curve of the bulky acoustic resting against his scrotum. He'd been fixated on the strings beneath his studious, persistent fingers, eyes closed and brow furrowed in fierce concentration as the chords had rippled over his bare skin. He'd paid no heed to Olli's amused hooting or Christoph's flummoxed grumbling. The guitar in his hands had been not just the omphalos of his world, but the whole of it as he'd cocked his head and rocked in time to a rhythm only he could feel, and Christoph had felt a pang of affection and admiration so fierce that he'd coughed in surprise. He'd been mesmerized by the twitch and flex of Richard's pale foot, so white in contrast to his sun-kissed calves. There had been a touch of the divine in him then, and as he'd watched Richard midwife new music into the dull, unprepossessing world of their living room, Christoph had had an inkling of his talent and how far it could take him, take all of them if he chose to cast his lot with them. The thought had made him giddy, and he'd laughed as he'd reached for his favorite kitchen chair and prepared to lay down the backbeat. Olli, too, had reached for his bass, and soon, Richard's fingers had slipped into the heretofore elusive groove. His furrowed brows had smoothed, and his body had relaxed, and he'd smiled, a loose, dreamy curl of lip that had made him impossibly young and exquisitely vulnerable.
That was the beginning, Christoph thinks as he watches Richard and Calliope drift across the floor like autumn fog, the moment when three amiable roommates became friends and then an unlikely family. The arrangement they had pounded out that night would become the bones of "Herzeleid", though it wouldn't have a name for months. It would simply be their song, the notes they reached for when night was bleeding into morning and the beer was heavy in their bellies and the hash was sweet and burning in their lungs, mingled with cigarette smoke and vinegar on their tongues. He's not sure Richard intended it for them when he'd sat down to it that night; in fact, he's sure he hadn't. He'd meant it for Orgasm Death Gimmick, for the men he called his band. But music is a strange alchemy, and extraordinarily finicky, and Christoph doubts it would have worked for them. In their hands, it would have become a different song entirely or--and this was more likely--have died altogether, cursed by inexpert hands and tin ears. He thinks Richard knew that, too, which was why he had never shown it to the members of Gimmick, or anyone else, for that matter. Not until Rammstein had been Rammstein and they'd been standing awkwardly behind microphones in an airless, makeshift recording studio with dust in their nostrils and stones in their bellies and Emu sitting stiffly behind the antiquated soundboard, one hand on the equalizers and one eye on the clock.
It was the family Richard was searching for, the sense of belonging. When he wasn't writing or practicing, he was looming on the periphery of his and Olli's vision, hands in his pockets as he sidled from foot to foot. He'd never turned down an opportunity to spend time in their company, and he was constantly offering them advice on the various conundrums with which they found themselves confronted. At least twice a week, they would come home to find that he had cooked dinner on the ancient stove, had pulled a surprisingly decent meal from the food he'd scrounged from their cupboards and barren, dusty larder. Pastas, mostly, but occasionally, he'd concocted a meat pie or a cheap roast, and they'd sat at the rickety kitchen table or on the lumpy sofa and eaten dinner off cheap ceramic plates and chased it with bottles of lukewarm beer. They'd given him no end of teasing, had called him their little hausfrau, but they'd secretly loved Richard's dinners, and Christoph had smiled whenever he'd come home to the sound of clattering pots and the pungent, swampy smell of pickled cabbage. Not that he'd ever told Richard so, of course. It would've been sappy and decidedly awkward, and he'd had no desire to endure Olli's relentless teasing about the happy couple. So he had never said a word, but he had never failed to clean his plate, and when there was enough to go around, he'd always accepted seconds.
Richard had endured the teasing with stolid equanimity, had given as good as he got, laughing and performing a coquettish prance whenever Olli called him a good little hausfrau around a mouthful of sauerkraut or spaetzle, but Christoph had sensed a heartbreaking vulnerability in him, had glimpsed it through the haze of cigarette smoke as he'd sat on the cheerless stoop of their flat with a cigarette clenched between his lips and his eyes fixed on the distant horizon. Richard had been loud and gregarious and brimming with bravado and impossible dreams, but he had also been lost and plagued by a terrible, yawning loneliness. While he and Olli had taken dinners at their parents' flats or tidy houses, Richard had remained at their shared flat, huddled on the floor with his guitar and his composition notebook and his mulish insistence that he would be fine, just fine. Christoph had invited him to dinner at his sister's house once. Richard had refused, but for an instant before his polite mouth had issued the demurral, the longing in his eyes had been so naked that Christoph had had to stifle a flinch. He'd thought of it over dinner at his sister's homey table, surrounded by the comforting smell of warm bread and the shrill, happy cawing of his young nephew, who'd been happy to stuff stroganoff noodles into his mouth with pudgy, sauce-smeared hands. He'd thought of it again as he'd watched Richard wolf down the leftovers as he leaned against the kitchen counter. He'd inhaled the noodles and meat and the slice of lingonberry pie with exuberant relish and a daintiness incongruous with his strapping frame, and when he was done, he'd washed the borrowed plate with persnickety care and dried it with their best towel, a hank of frayed cotton slightly less dirty than the rest. Then he'd set it carefully aside, far from the avalanche of greasy dishes and sauce-crusted pots that had choked their sink and told Christoph to thank his sister for the delicious food. So prim, he'd been, so fragile and astonishingly young, and Christoph had fought the impulse to reach out and ruffle his hair. Instead, he'd grinned and asked him if he wanted to jam in the living room, and before long, they'd been surrounded by music and cigarette smoke and the amiable jumble of their shared lives.
Richard had been curious about their families, had absorbed every proffered story with quiet intensity. He'd learned of trumpet lessons and younger sisters and first drum kits. He'd shared stories of his own sister, and of his escape into the West, but he'd been remarkably tight-lipped about his childhood or his parents. "My father is gone," he'd said brusquely when Christoph had broached the subject one previously-amiable night, and stoppered his mouth with a cigarette. Christoph hadn't pursued the subject, nor had he asked again. They'd sat shoulder to shoulder in awkward silence until Richard had ask him if he wanted a beer. He hadn't, but he'd accepted one anyway, and by the time Richard had fetched one from the refrigerator and tapped it against his knee, the tension had dissolved, a sigh released. When Christoph had spoken again, it had been to ask if Richard had managed to bed the airy-fairy rave child who'd turned his head the last time they'd ventured into a dance club.
Richard had shaken his head, eyes red and glassy from beer and whiskey and the joint they'd shared earlier. "No, but there's still time," he'd said, and he'd been so sly that Christoph had guffawed around a swallow of beer and sprayed his rumpled t-shirt with beer. Sly or not, the smug bastard had been right, because a week later, the rave child had stumbled out of Richard's bed with glitter in her eyelashes and eyeliner smeared on sleep-puffy skin, blouse in one hand and high heels dangling from the other. Richard had merely snuffled into his pillow and burrowed more deeply beneath the covers. No romantic, he, at least not then, and certainly not with her.
Though, Christoph reflects as Richard whispers into a beaming Calliope's ear, that might have changed. Time and bitter experience have a way of reshaping a man. God knows he's not the man he was then, lean and starving and convinced that the world was his for the taking. None of them are. Till is more introspective, disenchanted by success and the relentless demands of fame. Flake is more jaded, more convinced of the ugliness of the world and content to restore classic cars and wrest some beauty from the gluttonous, devouring maw of a transient, disposable world. Olli spends less time with computers and bass strings and more with his wife and infant daughter. That's as it should be, he supposes, though it's hard to reconcile this grave, responsible father with the scrawny, young kid who'd once fallen ass-first into a bucket, high and sniggering and naked as a jaybird.
Of them, only Paul has proven impervious to the ruthless machinations of time. There are more lines on his face now, and his hairline has thinned and receded, but not by much, and behind his eyes, an imp still dances, full of bawdy mischief.
Richard is still stubborn and opinionated and driven by a nervous energy that seldom lets him rest when he has caught the scent of creation, stronger than the acrid tang of the cigarettes to which he is so hopelessly addicted, but the bruises are more prominent now, more noticeable to those who care to look. The silences, when they come, are longer and heavier, and sometimes after an argument, Christoph swears he hears the grind of bone as Richard stalks off to vent his anger on a puff of smoke. Once, he'd wished that Richard would learn to keep his own counsel, to cherish the companionable quiet of the tour bus or the restless, fraught moments between one song and the next during rehearsals, but now that he has gotten his wish, Richard's moody silences unnerve him. He's too quiet, listless, a dog finally broken by one kick too many, and sometimes when Richard's hunched over his guitar and looking at anything but them, he swallows an inexplicable pang of guilt and wonders just when that one kick too many found its mark.
And who delivered it, of course. Always that.
Richard's single-mindedness had served them well in the long, lean days when no one believed in them but themselves and they were playing for anyone who would have them. His exuberance and fearlessness had dazzled dubious club owners into giving them the stage and the chance to get their name out. He'd been dogged and unwavering and unstintingly disciplined, had spent his free days cranking out grainy gig fliers on an ancient Xerox machine and his nights grinding out riffs and bandying about ideas for eye-catching stage shows and promotion. In the beginning, before Emu had taken control of the band's business affairs and run it with the ruthless precision of a military commander, Richard had been at the forefront of negotiations with tight-fisted bar owners and sleazy promoters, and he'd been first through the door when the latter had invariably tried to renege or otherwise give them short shrift. Not that his yelling had had much effect, at least not until Till's hulking presence had lent his threats formidable credibility. Still, he had been a fierce, redoubtable advocate and critical to their early success. His zeal had kept them going when spirits had begun to flag and thoughts had begun to turn toward easier, clearer roads, roads that led to steady jobs and soft-bellied careers behind a respectable desk.
Then the drugs had come, and the women, and the zeal had been tainted, warped into a compulsive mania that he couldn't control. It had consumed him, driven him. Exuberance had become frenzy, and confidence had become gnawing, relentless insecurity and white-knuckled, bloody-cuticled arrogance. Suggestions had become dictates and then wild-eyed ultimatums, and if the others defied him, he'd thrown petulant tantrums. When those had failed, he'd borne his rage into the nearest bathroom and emerged with wide eyes and a raw nose and spat bloody, chalky phlegm onto the mixing board, coughing and snorting and scratching incessantly at the demons that seethed beneath his flushed, crawling skin.
To be fair, they'd all been experimenting then, dabbling in drugs that had been beyond their means or hard to come by in the East. Till had been wallowing in booze and painkillers, and he had thrown himself headlong into Ecstasy and speed. The rhythms had been subsonic when he was on speed, faster than his tachycardic heart as his nerves had threatened to snap from the rush of too much adrenaline. He'd even tried heroin once, had snorted it at an afterparty in Kiev, but he hadn't like the soporific doziness it had induced, its way of muting the rhythms of the world, and so he had left it well alone in favor of more invigorating delights.
He'd dabbled in cocaine, too, had closed his eyes and given way to its seductive burn in his nostrils, but he had never come to love it, had never lost himself to it as Richard had. His had been a nodding acquaintance, but Richard's had been a torrid affair, as desperate and all-consuming as the doomed marriage it had propped up for a time. A toot after a show had become a hit before a show, and then one during, and then more than one. At his worst, Richard had disappeared into the bathroom or beneath the stage every half an hour, sniffling and coughing and spitting bloody phlegm onto the footlights, where it had bubbled and sizzled in the white-hot heat. They had all learned to recognize the signs of a comedown--vacant eyes and unsteady hands and uncontrollable shivering despite the flashpots and stifling costumes. Roadies had carried bindles of coke in their pockets to forestall the worst of them, and when all else failed, they'd kept buckets beneath the stage for when his stomach rebelled. Ever the professional even in the worst ravages of his abuse, Richard had never vomited onstage or passed out in public, but he'd come damn close on the latter, and Christoph had often stood beneath the stage and watched him dry-heave into a pail, bile dangling from his lower lip like spidersilk.
He wonders what Calliope would have thought of Richard had she known him then, had she seen him with blown pupils and bloody snot dripping from his raw nose. He wonders if she would be smiling so sweetly if she had heard him ranting and raving and seen him hurling furniture in a blind rage as he accused them of short-sightedness or bumbling incompetence, or, worst of all, indifference to their shared dream. Would she rest so easily in his arms if she had seen him throwing folding chairs against studio walls or kicking over Christoph's cymbals in a fit of pique when a take hadn't gone exactly to plan?
His addiction had been exacerbated by his relationship with Caron. Before her, Richard had been an addict, yes, but his addiction had been manageable, mortified but not indulged. Then Caron had come, with her New York connections and her exotic melange of South African roots and American insouciance. She had been beautiful and glamorous, sharp to the touch and smooth on the tongue, everything Richard, with his lazy eye and blue-collar East German roots had thought he was not. She was a black swan and he was an ugly duckling no matter how he arranged his feathers, and he'd been besotted with her from the first. He'd disappeared into the pulsing darkness of a Soho nightclub and reappeared twenty-four hours later with her in tow, ragged and bridling in the throes of a cocaine binge and giddy with declarations of love. They'd thought he was joking when he'd introduced her as his fiancee, that once he came down, he would make his excuses as politely as possible and bid her adieu. But he hadn't. Instead, he'd been connected to her at hip and heart, and she'd soon become a fixture at gatherings, sprawled on the nearby couch at band meetings and drifting through the crowd at afterparties.
It had been amusing, at first, to see Richard's inexhaustible passion directed at something other than music, and he and the other band members had sniggered at his obvious infatuation and called him "Romeo" and "Loverboy". Richard had paid them no notice, immersed in wedding plans and dreams of future domestic bliss. His every thought had been of Caron, of how to please her, how to coax laughter to her devilish lips. Richard had glutted himself on her, on the headiness of love in full flower, and for the first time, Rammstein hadn't been the apple of his eye.
Though they had thought him mad, no one had begrudged him. He was a man in love, and seized by an eternal giddiness that they had found endearing. So they had invited Caron into the fold and turned blind eyes to her faults. They grown accustomed to her throaty laugh and her long, lean legs and her angular face. They'd sat for sketches and paintings and exchanged idle chatter at dinner parties and watched Richard watch her from the corners of their eyes. His devotion to her had been absolute, and though the incurable romantic in Christoph had envied it and called it a fairy tale, he'd pitied him, too, pitied the lifelong loneliness and desperation that must have inspired it. Richard had been a starving child begging for scraps at the hem of a noblewoman's skirts, a wide-eyed waif in search of warmth and the sweet milk of human kindness, and when the light had struck him just so, Christoph had glimpsed the boy beneath the mask of cosmopolitan polish. Caron had seen it, too, he suspects. She'd been snide and loud and often coarse, but she wasn't a stupid woman. Her eyes had been hard and worldly and keen, and she had deftly manipulated his hidden hurts to her advantage.
And yet you did not warn him, his mother clucks inside his head, brisk and tinged with maternal affection.
Of course he hadn't. He would sooner have convinced the Earth to cease its rotation. Love made lunatics of the most rational men and reduced the most stalwart of them to needy, clutching creatures of stubborn hope and frustrated desire. Richard was bright, but certainly not rational, not hard and calculating like Flake or aloof and reserved like Till. Richard was wild, led by his fancies and lofty dreams. He was not a man of perhaps and possibly, but of naturally and absolutely and surely. He threw himself headlong into the pursuit of his dreams, headless of the bruises that throbbed and wept beneath his skin and the bones that shifted and ground with every step, and when the edges of his dreams brushed his grasping fingertips, he seized them with all the force of his nature, and never mind if they sank into his fingers like shards of glass and drew deeply of his blood. For the moment, the thrill of victory was always stronger than the pain. He was a god astride the mountain, and there he would remain until the next dream flickered on the periphery of his vision and beckoned him to the chase anew.
Author:
laguera25Rating: FRM/R
Fandom: Rammstein
Pairing: gen, mentions of Richard/OFC, Christoph/Regina
Warning: N/A
Disclaimer: Christoph Schneider is a real person with family and friends who love him. I am not one of them. This story and the events and attitudes therein are entirely fictional and should be read as such. Any resemblance to reality is pure, dumb luck. For entertainment only.
Summary: Christoph Schneider watches Richard dance and wonders just how it will all go wrong. It always does.
A/N: Takes place between chapters eighteen and nineteen of Die Sprache der Blinden
Christoph sits in the chair still warm with Richard's body heat, and watches. He's never been one for dancing, though he can swing an admirable box step thanks to his mother, who was determined that her son should have a few social graces. It's enough to get by, any road; he'd trotted it out on his wedding day, when he'd spun his Regina around a glossy parquet floor like this one, fingers interlaced with hers and supporting arm buried in lace and beaded silk. He'd been rusty, truth be told, his feet and knees popping high in anticipation of a kick pedal or a bass drum. To him, the dance had been ungainly, but Regina's eyes had been shining with happiness, and the rest of the wedding party had been too drunk and happy to care about his poor form, and so no ill had come of it.
He should have more affinity for dance, he supposes, since he is the inconspicuous metronome to which every body moves when the music swells, but at best, he can muster only a dim aesthetic appreciation for its form. Dancers are like dust motes drifting in the late summer sun, melancholy and illusory as they move through their paces. It makes him drowsy to look at them for too long, a bored student gazing into the square of light cast by a library window.
It's rhythm he understands, the relentless need to move in time. There is rhythm in everything, a sonic order that even the most brutish mind understands and to which even the most broken body must respond. Newborns suckle at their mothers' breasts in time to a rhythm that best suits their rudimentary need, and mothers, ensconced in their rocking chairs, respond in unwitting kind. Old men totter in time to the cane that bears up their softening bones. Tap scrape scrape. Tap scrape scrape as they shuffle down the sidewalk to the park in search of sun and greenery and a bit of companionship with which to wash down their blood pressure medicine. Paraplegics roll their chairs in time to the ebb and flow of arms that mimic the wheels that carry them through their waist-level lives.
Rhythm is the root of all life, the means by which it flourishes or falters. A heart out of rhythm is a heart without hope of tomorrow. Rhythm is life's first universal truth, and he feels it in his bones before it reaches his ears. He's felt it since he was a toddler, wobbling across the floor of his parents' modest but homey flat in his bare feet. For him, rhythm came from the sole up, slipped from feet to calves to belly to swinging arms. The ears were rhythm's last stop and the least important. If he went deaf tomorrow, his eardrums punctured by the finger of a capricious god, he could still keep the rhythm by the surge of it in his pumping feet and swinging arms.
Rhythm in his childhood treks across the parlor floor on his hands and knees, chubby hand followed by round, pink knee. Rhythm in his pounding feet as he chased his sister around kitchen table, reaching for the ribbons in her hair with mud-caked fingers, or his school friends around the linden tree of a city park, the summer leaves a splash of vivid green amid the greys and browns of city life. Rhythm in the fluid rise and fall of his knees as he pedaled his mother's bicycle through the streets, stretched long and lean over the handlebars as he leaned into the curves and savored the intimate card of the wind in his hair, clean and cool on his scalp. Rhythm in the tick of the clock and the muted clack of the teacher's shoes as he paced the classroom, in the monotonous rise and fall of his voice as he read from the state-approved texts. Rhythm in the scrape of his pencil as he copied letters and notes from the dusty blackboard or doodled in the margins of his paper.
Rhythm in the rush of breath from his lungs as he played football on a pitch at the local Sporthalle, in the jostling press of bodies as the defenders closed in, faces stippled with sweat and blotchy with exertion. The rhythmic bass thunder of the ball as leather met foot. Rhythm in the sidling twitch of the goalie's hips and thighs as he squatted between the posts, cleats digging into the soft grass and neatly-manicured earth. Rhythm in the laughter after the game was over, sweat-sodden jerseys yellow as the spring sunshine as they trooped off the pitch in a riotous gaggle of catcalls and good-natured profanity.
Rhythm in the movement of his fingers over the valves of his first trumpet, brass in his mouth and euphoria in his heart as he puffed and sputtered and bleated his way through his first lessons. The trumpet hadn't been his truest love, but it had been the first, and he'd spent hours in his small bedroom and in grim, windowless practice rooms learning its secrets and unraveling its mysteries. Like his dancing, his trumpeting skills have eroded badly with the passing of years, but for a time, the press of the trumpet's mouthpiece against his lips had been as familiar and intimate as a lover's and just as welcome, just as exhilarating. On good days, he could make it sing, bright and clear and brassy as the metal from which it was formed. On the best days, the sainted days where his hands moved without conscious thought and drew the music forth from his lungs and pursed lips with every exhalation and flutter of tongue, he could synchronize the trumpet's song to the rhythms of his body--the beat of his heart or the ebb and flow of restless, nervous energy in his veins and along his prickling skin, where the fine hairs of his arms rose like concertgoers held in thrall.
Rhythm in the portentous swell of the orchestra--the somnolent drone of rosined bows drawn against taut strings and the thunder of the drums as they rumbled like Titans shifting within the bowels of Tartarus. The exuberant whipsaw of the violinists' bow arms as they coaxed Chopin and Liszt from the strings and the more sedate drift of the cellists' as their instruments lowed and sobbed. Rhythm in the defiant bob of the conductor's thin, pale neck as it moved in time with his baton, his cravat askew and trembling beneath the scrawny knot of his Adam's apple. Rhythm in the flap of his coattails as he rose on his toes and sank to his heels again.
Rhythm in the swing of his arms and the snap of his wrists as he reveled in his first drumkit, a small secondhand set his parents had gotten him for his sixteenth birthday. A snare, an idiot cymbal that had listed to the right like a companionable drunk, and a tiny bass drum with a piebald mallet. Childish compared to the sets he would later own as an adult, when his talent had demanded more and money had been no object, but glorious to him as he'd squatted in front of it and examined it in awestruck detail. His first liaison with his true love, and to this day, he can recall the cool kiss of the snare against his reverent fingers.
For his parents, it had been a concession of defeat, and he still feels a fleeting pang when he thinks of his mother's wistful sigh and the slump of his father's shoulders when he'd announced that he wanted to take up the drumstick. They had hoped the piano, that instrument of maestros and visionaries, would replace the trumpet in his heart. The piano was respectable, a mark of culture and learning and an avenue to the storied concert halls of Europe. But he had had neither the patience nor the aptitude for the piano. The keys had been dead beneath his fingers, naught but pressed plastic. He could not make them sing no matter how much he coaxed and wheedled. He could only make them regurgitate the dusty notes of dead masters, a fumbling mimic without the requisite passion. He had persisted as long as he could, driven by filial conscience, but it was no use. The trumpet had lasted longer, and he has never forgotten it entirely. The finger movements have survived, have been incorporated into his warm-up exercises before a rehearsal or concert. But even it had held scant allure for him once he had discovered the drums.
For him, the drums had been the moment when all the rhythms of the world had harmonized. Sitting on a wobbly footstool with his knees high and jutting at awkward, untenable angles, he'd held the sticks and felt the world align and come into brilliant focus. He'd been possessed of an exquisite clarity that had left him breathless, and that had intensified with every snap of his wrists. It had been an all-encompassing high, sweeter and stronger than the weed he shared with his friends or the hit of Ecstasy he'd tried once in a hotbox discotheque crammed with drunken boys and nervous girl who wore their sexuality clumsily, children playing in their mother's clothes. He'd chased it with manic zeal, limbs flying and muscles bunching as he reforged the world with every strike of the bass mallets.
He'd chased it for months, sweltering and freezing by turns in his small bedroom as he'd practiced, balanced precariously on milk crates or the sagging edge of his bed. He'd fumbled and blundered his way at first, led by nothing but will and blind enthusiasm and tinny, worn tapes of John Bonham and Phil Rudd. His parents had borne his bombastic clatterings with gritted teeth and a healthy supply of paramecetol.
He's eternally grateful that they never ordered him to stop, never stifled him in the name of their sanity or to preserve the neighborhood peace. He's not sure he could have stopped, even if they'd told him to. He'd been lost the first time he'd picked up a drumstick and felt the seductive heft of it in his hand, beholden to a compulsion that had its roots in the soles of his feet and tugged from somewhere just behind his navel. The rhythms he felt in his veins and in his marrow had found an outlet, a voice that spoke in tongues of wood and stretched hide, the chattering, ancient click of Maoris dusted in a fine silt of drifting desert grit. He'd been desperate to hear them all, to learn the secret histories that lived in the clack of his teeth and the tramp of his feet, and so his practices had grown longer and longer until rhythm had been the only thing he understood.
Rhythm in the flex and surge of his hips in the humid darkness of the backseat of his father's Trabi, in the stretch and splay of his fingers as they carded through silky, brown hair or wrapped around warm, undulating hips. Rhythm in the slap of flesh and the plosive rush of breathy promises, in the creak and groan of failing shocks.
The needy, stupid rhythm of sex. The first rhythm, the rhythm from whence all others spring. Without the primal, unapologetic rhythm of sex, there can be no other. No hearts to beat within breasts, no legs to pedal bicycles through the winding streets or wrists to snap briskly on a snare. No feet to tap out the Morse code of a summer stroll or slap on the rain-soaked pavement during a spring jog. No lips to purse around the tart mouthpiece of a trumpet or hips to roll as he moved inside the woman splayed and slick and urgent beneath him. The rhythm of sex is the indifferent sweep of God's hand across fallow earth.
It's the rhythm of sex he's watching now, the slow, anticipatory waltz of foreplay. Richard and Calliope drift across the floor, foreheads pressed together and Richard's hand resting lightly on Calliope's hip as he guides her across the floor, leads her along a path only they can see. More sentimental eyes would call it courtship, and it is, after a fashion; even animals have mating rituals. But there is a simmering sensuality to their movements that speaks only of sex, whispers it with a sultry hiss. It's in the upward curve of Calliope's eyes and lips, sly and hungry, and in the avidity of Richard's gaze. He has eyes only for her, and whithersoever she goes, his gaze follows. His body thrums with need and longing even as he sways and turns, and desire rises from hers in a visible haze, powder and perfume on a Parisian courtesan. On the surface, this dance is grace and refinement, European civility and sophistication, but the surface is shallow. This dance is a pretense, the chaste preamble to a darker, baser rhythm steeped in chthonic dust and immutable bedrock. By the time the sun rises--and long before that, like as not--they will fuck, Calliope shorn of her simple cocktail gown and Richard divested of restraint.
When has Richard ever had restraint? Till murmurs inside his head, and he stifles a laugh and steals a furtive, guilty glance at Khira Li, who sprawls in her chair with loose-limbed grace, eyes glazed and nearly-empty wineglass listing in her unsteady grip.
Richard has always been impetuous, passionate and stubborn as he pursues his goal, whether it be a woman or an arrangement or the next step in Rammstein's evolution. What he loves, he loves without reservation, and he has little patience for the rest. He is wild and maddening and loyal as a mastiff. He is Rammstein's staunchest ally and his own worst enemy. He is infuriating and indefatigable, fragile and absolutely glorious, and Christoph's love for him is rivaled only by his desire to punch him squarely in the face.
He had heard of Richard before he met him. The music scene in the East then was small, the rock scene even smaller, and most bands had heard of each other. Richard had been with Orgasm Death Gimmick, slogging through the stifling clubs and the grotty, piss-damp beer halls and playing for whatever the club managers would pay. Most nights, he'd gone home with nothing but experience and someone else's girlfriend.
Christoph had been making the same rounds with Die Firma, banging grimly away on his skins while drunken kids got drunker on stale beer and desperate girls blew the promoter in his sweatbox office. They'd played the same shit clubs for the same shit pay, and it was inevitable that their paths would cross.
He hadn't been working the first time he'd seen Richard perform. He'd been at a grotty nightclub with his girlfriend, hoping to corner the promoter and peddle Firma. If he couldn't finagle that, then he'd hoped to score a beer and some sweet hash from the bartender, a reedy addict with bony, bruised arms and a nervous tic that made him curl his lip and scour his yellow teeth with his tongue. The club had been crowded with bodies and thick with the smell of sweat and pot and stale beer, and the sound had been too big for the small, cramped room, distorted by the stone walls and sharp corners and the knot of jostling people crowded in front of the small, rickety stage, which had creaked ominously beneath the weight of the instruments and amplifiers.
It wasn't the music that had captured his attention at first. It was the shock of bleached blond hair that sprouted from Richard's head in a scraggly tangle of dreadlocks. He'd been so surprised at it that he'd blinked in mute astonishment for several bewildered moments before he'd noticed the rest of him--the painstakingly-ripped jeans and cheap electric guitar and the bare chest covered in a sheen of sweat. Richard had resembled a caveman with his wild hair and broad chest, though Richard would confess much later that he'd fancied himself the embodiment of California cool, the perfect counter-culture rock god pinup.
He'd looked ridiculous, but it had soon become apparent that he'd also been possessed of charisma and an undeniable talent. The latter had been raw, but it had bled from his fingers with every pluck of the strings. He'd commanded the attention of everyone in the crowd, and never mind the screechings, preenings, and spastic gyrations of the singer. The women had gazed at him with open desire, reaching for the stage with outstretched hands, lips parted to reveal the glint of teeth. The men had looked at him with a mixture of envy and wariness, drawn to him even as they recognized the threat he represented.
And Richard, the vain bastard, had reveled in it.
Christoph had been mesmerized, had forgotten everything, including his unfortunate girlfriend. After the set, he'd gone in search of Richard and found him bulldogging the greasy promoter about his money. Richard had been unrelenting, and Christoph had gotten his first glimpse of his single-minded tenacity as he'd followed the shifty promoter down the dingy corridor, demanding payment for his night's work. He would come to love that single-mindedness in time, and years later, he would come to resent it.
That night, he'd simply been in awe of it. He doesn't remember now how much Richard hectored out of the promoter. Far less than the band deserved, he's sure, but far more than he had any right to expect. Enough to buy a small bindle of hash and half an hour of Richard's time. They'd hung out in the shadow of the club, had squatted in the dark and rolled joints on the dirty asphalt. They'd passed the stubby beadie back and forth and talked of music and mutual influences and mutual friends. Richard's bandmates had been there, too, flies circling them with greedy intent, reaching for the steadily-shrinking joint with spindly, impudent hands. He cannot recall them now, those inconsequential gadflies. They had been dreamers, not dedicated musicians, possessed of just enough savvy to recognize the true talent in their midst. Nor can he recall the girlfriend he'd so unceremoniously abandoned in his pursuit of Richard. He had never seen her again. Perhaps she'd found someone more attentive. Perhaps she'd ended up with one of Richard's bandmates, an unexpected boon at the end of a hard day's night.
Nothing had come of that first meeting. He had been gaining notoriety in Die Firma, and Richard had convinced that Orgasm's breakthrough was just beyond the next hill, obscured by the next shabby, seething club with narrow doors and beer-slick steps. They'd exchanged phone numbers and farewells and gone their separate ways, sharing only the musky sweetness of hash on their clothes. Neither had ever called the other.
Eight months later, Firma had been struggling and quietly unraveling at the seams, and he'd been drowning his sorrows with lager in a Bierkeller in Pankow. Alone this time, but hopeful that his luck would change as he'd sat at the bar and surveyed the room over the rim of his stein. He'd found no young Fraulein that night, but he had found Richard, dressed in a jean jacket and the same pair of artfully-ripped jeans and sporting the same mop of snarled blond dreadlocks. He'd sidled up, all faded jeans and nervous energy, and he'd been surprised when Christoph had bid him pull up a stool, as though he'd expected a rebuff rather than an affable greeting. They'd shared beers and war stories of life in dingy clubs and women who smelled of cheap powder and carnuba wax, and by the time they'd slipped off the barstools and into the Berlin night, they'd been joined at the hip, chummy and laughing and exchanging phone numbers for the second time. That time, he had called, and when Richard had mentioned that he was looking for a new flat, the invitation had slipped unbidden from his lips. The next day, Richard had turned up on his doorstep with a bicycle, two duffel bags, and a guitar case slung across his back. All his worldly possessions, as it had turned out, and Christoph, who'd had scarcely more, had laughed and shaken his head and ushered him inside.
Richard's arrival had taken Olli, his unsuspecting and long-suffering flatmate by surprise. Olli was long, lean and quiet, reserved almost to a painful fault and content to noodle on his bass and fiddle with his scavenged computer parts at the kitchen table, which listed to the left and wobbled deliriously beneath even the lightest touch, or hunched over the tiny desk in his room. He hadn't known what to make of the sidling, incessantly-jabbering kid with the tireless mouth and the shock of snarled, blond dreadlocks. He'd loomed in the claustrophobic hallway of the flat and surveyed the newcomer in doe-eyed silence, barefoot and scratching idly at his long, toned belly. Olli has never been a many of many words; he takes in far more than he gives out, and he'd been even quieter then, bludgeoned into silence by the torrent of gabble that had spilled from Richard's lips as he'd stood in their living room with his bags puddled around his feet and heaving peristaltically with every shuffle of his feet. Surprise and nervousness had made Richard nearly manic, and he'd practically capered among his bags as he'd introduced himself, a puppy leaping at the feet of his new masters. Olli had blinked and nodded and scratched ceaselessly at his belly, and all the while, he'd gazed at Richard in serene bemusement.
When Richard had scuttled off to install his bags in the room that was now half his, Christoph had braced himself for the inevitable remonstrance, but Olli had merely watched their new flatmate tramp down the corridor, peering into rooms as he went, and when Richard had disappeared from view, Olli had simply turned to him and murmured mildly, "This should be interesting."
Richard had brought an inexhaustible energy to their flat, an ebullience that had amazed and annoyed them by turns. He was indefatigable when it came to his passion for music and he'd ever been picking and strumming on his guitar and scribbling indecipherable notes in a small composition notebook, a relic from his bygone and unlamented school days. He'd sat cross-legged on the floor with his cheap acoustic and even cheaper electric and played for hours, arranging and rearranging chords until Christoph had heard them in his sleep, until they'd been assimilated into the rhythm of his life. Sometimes, Richard's single-mindedness had irritated him, but more often than not, it had soothed him to come into the living room and see that unruly mop of hair bent over a guitar. Often, Olli had joined him in the living room, bass slung low over bony hips and fingers dancing over the thick strings like restless spiders. Bass and guitar and a rhythm that found its way into the soles of his feet and seeped into the rest of him like the slow, honeyed burn of good whiskey. The flat had been too small to accommodate his small drum kit, and the thin walls would have invited the nettled critique of their neighbors, but he'd wanted to join in all the same, and so he'd coaxed the beat from the slat of a kitchen chair or the cheap metal of a stockpot or the meat of his thighs, and there they would sit, speaking without tongues and watching magic rise from their pores like sweat. They would play far into the night, stopping only to take a long pull of beer from bottles left by bare feet or on the damp-ringed edges of a scarred and splintery side table, and the next morning, they would open heavy, sleep-crusted eyes and shamble off to their day jobs. When night came, they would find their way into the living room once more, drawn there by compulsion and mutual need, and the cycle would begin anew.
Richard had been as fastidious as he was focused. By night, he would fill ashtrays with lip-damp butts and litter the floor with empty beer bottles. He would slough his clothes and leave them strewn over the floor or draped haphazardly over the back of their lumpy, rough-napped couched. One drunken night, he'd shucked his pants and underpants and sat naked on the floor, surrounded by clothes and beer bottles and scraps of paper from his composition book. He'd played the same chord progression again and again, oblivious to the thick shag beneath his ass or the cool curve of the bulky acoustic resting against his scrotum. He'd been fixated on the strings beneath his studious, persistent fingers, eyes closed and brow furrowed in fierce concentration as the chords had rippled over his bare skin. He'd paid no heed to Olli's amused hooting or Christoph's flummoxed grumbling. The guitar in his hands had been not just the omphalos of his world, but the whole of it as he'd cocked his head and rocked in time to a rhythm only he could feel, and Christoph had felt a pang of affection and admiration so fierce that he'd coughed in surprise. He'd been mesmerized by the twitch and flex of Richard's pale foot, so white in contrast to his sun-kissed calves. There had been a touch of the divine in him then, and as he'd watched Richard midwife new music into the dull, unprepossessing world of their living room, Christoph had had an inkling of his talent and how far it could take him, take all of them if he chose to cast his lot with them. The thought had made him giddy, and he'd laughed as he'd reached for his favorite kitchen chair and prepared to lay down the backbeat. Olli, too, had reached for his bass, and soon, Richard's fingers had slipped into the heretofore elusive groove. His furrowed brows had smoothed, and his body had relaxed, and he'd smiled, a loose, dreamy curl of lip that had made him impossibly young and exquisitely vulnerable.
That was the beginning, Christoph thinks as he watches Richard and Calliope drift across the floor like autumn fog, the moment when three amiable roommates became friends and then an unlikely family. The arrangement they had pounded out that night would become the bones of "Herzeleid", though it wouldn't have a name for months. It would simply be their song, the notes they reached for when night was bleeding into morning and the beer was heavy in their bellies and the hash was sweet and burning in their lungs, mingled with cigarette smoke and vinegar on their tongues. He's not sure Richard intended it for them when he'd sat down to it that night; in fact, he's sure he hadn't. He'd meant it for Orgasm Death Gimmick, for the men he called his band. But music is a strange alchemy, and extraordinarily finicky, and Christoph doubts it would have worked for them. In their hands, it would have become a different song entirely or--and this was more likely--have died altogether, cursed by inexpert hands and tin ears. He thinks Richard knew that, too, which was why he had never shown it to the members of Gimmick, or anyone else, for that matter. Not until Rammstein had been Rammstein and they'd been standing awkwardly behind microphones in an airless, makeshift recording studio with dust in their nostrils and stones in their bellies and Emu sitting stiffly behind the antiquated soundboard, one hand on the equalizers and one eye on the clock.
It was the family Richard was searching for, the sense of belonging. When he wasn't writing or practicing, he was looming on the periphery of his and Olli's vision, hands in his pockets as he sidled from foot to foot. He'd never turned down an opportunity to spend time in their company, and he was constantly offering them advice on the various conundrums with which they found themselves confronted. At least twice a week, they would come home to find that he had cooked dinner on the ancient stove, had pulled a surprisingly decent meal from the food he'd scrounged from their cupboards and barren, dusty larder. Pastas, mostly, but occasionally, he'd concocted a meat pie or a cheap roast, and they'd sat at the rickety kitchen table or on the lumpy sofa and eaten dinner off cheap ceramic plates and chased it with bottles of lukewarm beer. They'd given him no end of teasing, had called him their little hausfrau, but they'd secretly loved Richard's dinners, and Christoph had smiled whenever he'd come home to the sound of clattering pots and the pungent, swampy smell of pickled cabbage. Not that he'd ever told Richard so, of course. It would've been sappy and decidedly awkward, and he'd had no desire to endure Olli's relentless teasing about the happy couple. So he had never said a word, but he had never failed to clean his plate, and when there was enough to go around, he'd always accepted seconds.
Richard had endured the teasing with stolid equanimity, had given as good as he got, laughing and performing a coquettish prance whenever Olli called him a good little hausfrau around a mouthful of sauerkraut or spaetzle, but Christoph had sensed a heartbreaking vulnerability in him, had glimpsed it through the haze of cigarette smoke as he'd sat on the cheerless stoop of their flat with a cigarette clenched between his lips and his eyes fixed on the distant horizon. Richard had been loud and gregarious and brimming with bravado and impossible dreams, but he had also been lost and plagued by a terrible, yawning loneliness. While he and Olli had taken dinners at their parents' flats or tidy houses, Richard had remained at their shared flat, huddled on the floor with his guitar and his composition notebook and his mulish insistence that he would be fine, just fine. Christoph had invited him to dinner at his sister's house once. Richard had refused, but for an instant before his polite mouth had issued the demurral, the longing in his eyes had been so naked that Christoph had had to stifle a flinch. He'd thought of it over dinner at his sister's homey table, surrounded by the comforting smell of warm bread and the shrill, happy cawing of his young nephew, who'd been happy to stuff stroganoff noodles into his mouth with pudgy, sauce-smeared hands. He'd thought of it again as he'd watched Richard wolf down the leftovers as he leaned against the kitchen counter. He'd inhaled the noodles and meat and the slice of lingonberry pie with exuberant relish and a daintiness incongruous with his strapping frame, and when he was done, he'd washed the borrowed plate with persnickety care and dried it with their best towel, a hank of frayed cotton slightly less dirty than the rest. Then he'd set it carefully aside, far from the avalanche of greasy dishes and sauce-crusted pots that had choked their sink and told Christoph to thank his sister for the delicious food. So prim, he'd been, so fragile and astonishingly young, and Christoph had fought the impulse to reach out and ruffle his hair. Instead, he'd grinned and asked him if he wanted to jam in the living room, and before long, they'd been surrounded by music and cigarette smoke and the amiable jumble of their shared lives.
Richard had been curious about their families, had absorbed every proffered story with quiet intensity. He'd learned of trumpet lessons and younger sisters and first drum kits. He'd shared stories of his own sister, and of his escape into the West, but he'd been remarkably tight-lipped about his childhood or his parents. "My father is gone," he'd said brusquely when Christoph had broached the subject one previously-amiable night, and stoppered his mouth with a cigarette. Christoph hadn't pursued the subject, nor had he asked again. They'd sat shoulder to shoulder in awkward silence until Richard had ask him if he wanted a beer. He hadn't, but he'd accepted one anyway, and by the time Richard had fetched one from the refrigerator and tapped it against his knee, the tension had dissolved, a sigh released. When Christoph had spoken again, it had been to ask if Richard had managed to bed the airy-fairy rave child who'd turned his head the last time they'd ventured into a dance club.
Richard had shaken his head, eyes red and glassy from beer and whiskey and the joint they'd shared earlier. "No, but there's still time," he'd said, and he'd been so sly that Christoph had guffawed around a swallow of beer and sprayed his rumpled t-shirt with beer. Sly or not, the smug bastard had been right, because a week later, the rave child had stumbled out of Richard's bed with glitter in her eyelashes and eyeliner smeared on sleep-puffy skin, blouse in one hand and high heels dangling from the other. Richard had merely snuffled into his pillow and burrowed more deeply beneath the covers. No romantic, he, at least not then, and certainly not with her.
Though, Christoph reflects as Richard whispers into a beaming Calliope's ear, that might have changed. Time and bitter experience have a way of reshaping a man. God knows he's not the man he was then, lean and starving and convinced that the world was his for the taking. None of them are. Till is more introspective, disenchanted by success and the relentless demands of fame. Flake is more jaded, more convinced of the ugliness of the world and content to restore classic cars and wrest some beauty from the gluttonous, devouring maw of a transient, disposable world. Olli spends less time with computers and bass strings and more with his wife and infant daughter. That's as it should be, he supposes, though it's hard to reconcile this grave, responsible father with the scrawny, young kid who'd once fallen ass-first into a bucket, high and sniggering and naked as a jaybird.
Of them, only Paul has proven impervious to the ruthless machinations of time. There are more lines on his face now, and his hairline has thinned and receded, but not by much, and behind his eyes, an imp still dances, full of bawdy mischief.
Richard is still stubborn and opinionated and driven by a nervous energy that seldom lets him rest when he has caught the scent of creation, stronger than the acrid tang of the cigarettes to which he is so hopelessly addicted, but the bruises are more prominent now, more noticeable to those who care to look. The silences, when they come, are longer and heavier, and sometimes after an argument, Christoph swears he hears the grind of bone as Richard stalks off to vent his anger on a puff of smoke. Once, he'd wished that Richard would learn to keep his own counsel, to cherish the companionable quiet of the tour bus or the restless, fraught moments between one song and the next during rehearsals, but now that he has gotten his wish, Richard's moody silences unnerve him. He's too quiet, listless, a dog finally broken by one kick too many, and sometimes when Richard's hunched over his guitar and looking at anything but them, he swallows an inexplicable pang of guilt and wonders just when that one kick too many found its mark.
And who delivered it, of course. Always that.
Richard's single-mindedness had served them well in the long, lean days when no one believed in them but themselves and they were playing for anyone who would have them. His exuberance and fearlessness had dazzled dubious club owners into giving them the stage and the chance to get their name out. He'd been dogged and unwavering and unstintingly disciplined, had spent his free days cranking out grainy gig fliers on an ancient Xerox machine and his nights grinding out riffs and bandying about ideas for eye-catching stage shows and promotion. In the beginning, before Emu had taken control of the band's business affairs and run it with the ruthless precision of a military commander, Richard had been at the forefront of negotiations with tight-fisted bar owners and sleazy promoters, and he'd been first through the door when the latter had invariably tried to renege or otherwise give them short shrift. Not that his yelling had had much effect, at least not until Till's hulking presence had lent his threats formidable credibility. Still, he had been a fierce, redoubtable advocate and critical to their early success. His zeal had kept them going when spirits had begun to flag and thoughts had begun to turn toward easier, clearer roads, roads that led to steady jobs and soft-bellied careers behind a respectable desk.
Then the drugs had come, and the women, and the zeal had been tainted, warped into a compulsive mania that he couldn't control. It had consumed him, driven him. Exuberance had become frenzy, and confidence had become gnawing, relentless insecurity and white-knuckled, bloody-cuticled arrogance. Suggestions had become dictates and then wild-eyed ultimatums, and if the others defied him, he'd thrown petulant tantrums. When those had failed, he'd borne his rage into the nearest bathroom and emerged with wide eyes and a raw nose and spat bloody, chalky phlegm onto the mixing board, coughing and snorting and scratching incessantly at the demons that seethed beneath his flushed, crawling skin.
To be fair, they'd all been experimenting then, dabbling in drugs that had been beyond their means or hard to come by in the East. Till had been wallowing in booze and painkillers, and he had thrown himself headlong into Ecstasy and speed. The rhythms had been subsonic when he was on speed, faster than his tachycardic heart as his nerves had threatened to snap from the rush of too much adrenaline. He'd even tried heroin once, had snorted it at an afterparty in Kiev, but he hadn't like the soporific doziness it had induced, its way of muting the rhythms of the world, and so he had left it well alone in favor of more invigorating delights.
He'd dabbled in cocaine, too, had closed his eyes and given way to its seductive burn in his nostrils, but he had never come to love it, had never lost himself to it as Richard had. His had been a nodding acquaintance, but Richard's had been a torrid affair, as desperate and all-consuming as the doomed marriage it had propped up for a time. A toot after a show had become a hit before a show, and then one during, and then more than one. At his worst, Richard had disappeared into the bathroom or beneath the stage every half an hour, sniffling and coughing and spitting bloody phlegm onto the footlights, where it had bubbled and sizzled in the white-hot heat. They had all learned to recognize the signs of a comedown--vacant eyes and unsteady hands and uncontrollable shivering despite the flashpots and stifling costumes. Roadies had carried bindles of coke in their pockets to forestall the worst of them, and when all else failed, they'd kept buckets beneath the stage for when his stomach rebelled. Ever the professional even in the worst ravages of his abuse, Richard had never vomited onstage or passed out in public, but he'd come damn close on the latter, and Christoph had often stood beneath the stage and watched him dry-heave into a pail, bile dangling from his lower lip like spidersilk.
He wonders what Calliope would have thought of Richard had she known him then, had she seen him with blown pupils and bloody snot dripping from his raw nose. He wonders if she would be smiling so sweetly if she had heard him ranting and raving and seen him hurling furniture in a blind rage as he accused them of short-sightedness or bumbling incompetence, or, worst of all, indifference to their shared dream. Would she rest so easily in his arms if she had seen him throwing folding chairs against studio walls or kicking over Christoph's cymbals in a fit of pique when a take hadn't gone exactly to plan?
His addiction had been exacerbated by his relationship with Caron. Before her, Richard had been an addict, yes, but his addiction had been manageable, mortified but not indulged. Then Caron had come, with her New York connections and her exotic melange of South African roots and American insouciance. She had been beautiful and glamorous, sharp to the touch and smooth on the tongue, everything Richard, with his lazy eye and blue-collar East German roots had thought he was not. She was a black swan and he was an ugly duckling no matter how he arranged his feathers, and he'd been besotted with her from the first. He'd disappeared into the pulsing darkness of a Soho nightclub and reappeared twenty-four hours later with her in tow, ragged and bridling in the throes of a cocaine binge and giddy with declarations of love. They'd thought he was joking when he'd introduced her as his fiancee, that once he came down, he would make his excuses as politely as possible and bid her adieu. But he hadn't. Instead, he'd been connected to her at hip and heart, and she'd soon become a fixture at gatherings, sprawled on the nearby couch at band meetings and drifting through the crowd at afterparties.
It had been amusing, at first, to see Richard's inexhaustible passion directed at something other than music, and he and the other band members had sniggered at his obvious infatuation and called him "Romeo" and "Loverboy". Richard had paid them no notice, immersed in wedding plans and dreams of future domestic bliss. His every thought had been of Caron, of how to please her, how to coax laughter to her devilish lips. Richard had glutted himself on her, on the headiness of love in full flower, and for the first time, Rammstein hadn't been the apple of his eye.
Though they had thought him mad, no one had begrudged him. He was a man in love, and seized by an eternal giddiness that they had found endearing. So they had invited Caron into the fold and turned blind eyes to her faults. They grown accustomed to her throaty laugh and her long, lean legs and her angular face. They'd sat for sketches and paintings and exchanged idle chatter at dinner parties and watched Richard watch her from the corners of their eyes. His devotion to her had been absolute, and though the incurable romantic in Christoph had envied it and called it a fairy tale, he'd pitied him, too, pitied the lifelong loneliness and desperation that must have inspired it. Richard had been a starving child begging for scraps at the hem of a noblewoman's skirts, a wide-eyed waif in search of warmth and the sweet milk of human kindness, and when the light had struck him just so, Christoph had glimpsed the boy beneath the mask of cosmopolitan polish. Caron had seen it, too, he suspects. She'd been snide and loud and often coarse, but she wasn't a stupid woman. Her eyes had been hard and worldly and keen, and she had deftly manipulated his hidden hurts to her advantage.
And yet you did not warn him, his mother clucks inside his head, brisk and tinged with maternal affection.
Of course he hadn't. He would sooner have convinced the Earth to cease its rotation. Love made lunatics of the most rational men and reduced the most stalwart of them to needy, clutching creatures of stubborn hope and frustrated desire. Richard was bright, but certainly not rational, not hard and calculating like Flake or aloof and reserved like Till. Richard was wild, led by his fancies and lofty dreams. He was not a man of perhaps and possibly, but of naturally and absolutely and surely. He threw himself headlong into the pursuit of his dreams, headless of the bruises that throbbed and wept beneath his skin and the bones that shifted and ground with every step, and when the edges of his dreams brushed his grasping fingertips, he seized them with all the force of his nature, and never mind if they sank into his fingers like shards of glass and drew deeply of his blood. For the moment, the thrill of victory was always stronger than the pain. He was a god astride the mountain, and there he would remain until the next dream flickered on the periphery of his vision and beckoned him to the chase anew.