Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. Read online

  I celebrated my fourteenth birthday in May. My mom gave me a kiss and fifty marks. She'd cobbled it together out of her household budget. I was supposed to buy myself something that would make me really happy.

  That evening, I took the subway to where the dealers hung out at the Kurfürstenstrasse. I spent forty marks for a half-gram of heroin. I'd never had so much all at once. For six marks, I also got a pack of cigarettes. I smoked all the time now, sometimes even chain-smoking one after another. I could go through a whole pack in just a couple of hours. That left four marks for The Sound.

  I ran into Detlef right after I got there. He gave me a kiss (which was extra sweet) and wished me a happy birthday. I returned the favor, since his birthday was just two days before mine. He was a little disappointed at the time because his parents didn't even say anything to him on his birthday. Only his grandmother remembered. He had it worse than I did. I tried to console him by saying, “Don't read anything into it, just let it go.” It helped that I also had an awesome present for him. I bought him a fix. I had enough dope to keep us high all the way through to Sunday.

  After the double birthday party (which consisted of a huge snort for me and a decent fix for Detlef), we started dating seriously. Until then, Detlef had just gone from one casual date to the next, and I'd spent a lot of my time with Babsi and Stella. Now we spent as much time together as possible. Detlef had just quit his apprenticeship as a pipe fitter and was pretty much always free. When we had enough money, we shot up and got high together.

  SUMMER VACATION HAD FINALLY ARRIVED. On the very first day, Detlef and I and a few others from our group went to the Wannsee public beach, at one of the many lakes in Berlin. We were completely broke, as usual. But it didn't take long for me to learn how to snatch loose-lying valuables and then convert what I'd stolen into cash. We hung around in the back, near the woods, where the older ladies sat. (They were there for the shade because they couldn't handle too much sun anymore.)

  First, we started small and just took what we needed. So we'd go to a blanket with a cooler next to it, after the people sitting there had gone out for a swim. Then I'd say, “Where'd grandma go?!” and take a few cans of Coke out of the cooler. Then after that, I swiped a towel and a blanket. And then in the evening, I was able to grab a boom box and some other little things, and Detlef got a watch.

  Back at The Sound, I was able to sell the boom box in no time-and made fifty marks on the deal. It was an awesome day. And the way I saw it, it was only going to get better from that point on. When I had the money in my hand I told Detlef, “Enough of this snorting stuff. Today I'm going to shoot up instead.”

  Detlef put up a weak protest, just like he had before. But it was absurd. Whether you got high by snorting your dope or shooting it into your arm, it made no difference, really. The only difference was that when you were snorting, people didn't consider you a real junkie. As long as you were snorting, you could still consider yourself just an “occasional user.”

  We went to a hot spot just around the corner, on Kurfürstenstrasse. By now our regular dealer was able to spot us from pretty far away. He started walking over as soon as he saw us and then waited until the coast was clear to actually come and meet us. I bought two quarter-gram packets from him for forty marks. I was finally ready to shoot up. When you snort, it takes a while for the high to take effect. But when you shot up, people said it was like a hammer hitting you. I'd overheard some of the guys in our clique saying it was almost like having an orgasm. Without pausing for even a second, and without considering that this next step would also entail a simultaneous drop into wretchedness, I gave in to my basic, overwhelming desire.

  We walked to the public bathrooms near Potsdamerstrasse. It was a really bad area at the time. There were some hoboes and panhandlers hanging out in front, and in return for a pack of cigarettes, we got a few of those guys to let us know if they saw any cops. They knew the drill already and were always dying for cigarettes.

  We had someone else with us. Tina, a girl from The Sound. Detlef took a syringe, a spoon, and a lemon out of his plastic bag. He put the junk on the spoon, added some water, and then used a few drops of the lemon juice to help the heroin dissolve more easily (since it was never that pure). Then he held a lighter beneath the spoon until everything was boiling and drew the mixture up into the syringe. (Incidentally, the old syringe was covered in grime, with a point about as blunt as a knitting needle.)

  Detlef went first, and then Tina. But then the needle got all clogged up—with absolutely nothing passing through. Or that's what those two told me, anyway. But maybe they just didn't want me to shoot up. But it didn't matter: Now I was more determined than ever.

  There was another junkie in the bathrooms who I'd just seen shooting up. He was a total wreck, all fucked up. I asked him if he'd let me borrow his syringe, and he did. But then a wave of utter horror, almost nausea, hit me when I thought about shoving that needle into the vein in my arm. I put the needle where I knew it was supposed to go but couldn't force myself to do it, even though I'd seen everyone else do it a thousand times before. Detlef and Tina pretended that it wasn't any of their business. So I had to ask the junkie for help. It was obvious that he knew it was my first time, and I felt pretty stupid having to ask someone with so much experience to help me out.

  He said it was a shame—a fucking shame—but then he took the needle from me anyway. My veins were pretty hard to see, so he had trouble hitting one. He had to jam the needle in three times before he was able to draw any blood (indicating that he'd finally hit the vein). He said again what a fucking shame it was, and then he slammed the whole quarter into my arm.

  It really did hit me like a hammer, but at the same time I'd always kind of thought that an orgasm would be different. I was totally numb in the immediate aftermath—I felt like I was dead. I was hardly aware of anything, and I didn't have any thoughts at all. I went to The Sound, slid down into a corner, and just sat there, drinking soda.

  So I was finally on par with Detlef—we were at the same level. We were bound together now, just like a married couple, pretty much—except of course for the fact that we weren't actually sleeping together. In fact, we had no sexual relationship whatsoever. I still didn't feel old enough for sex, and Detlef accepted that point without forcing me to explain myself over and over again. That's one of the things I really loved about him. He was an awesome guy.

  And anyway I was sure that someday I would sleep with him. And I was glad that I hadn't done that with anyone else yet. There was no doubt in my mind that he and I would stay together. When we'd been together in The Sound, Detlef would always walk me home. That'd take two hours. And then after he dropped me off, he'd hitchhike from Kreuzberg to Lankwitz, where he lived with his dad.

  We spent a lot of our time just basically daydreaming together. I'd lost my connection to reality. Reality had become unreal. I wasn't interested in yesterday, and I didn't care about tomorrow. I had no plans, only dreams. I loved talking to Detlef about what we'd do if we ever made a ton of money. We'd buy a big house, a big car, and the best furniture we could find. But there was one thing that never came up in our imaginary futures, and that was heroin.

  Detlef came up with an idea. If he could get an advance to buy a hundred marks' worth of heroin from a dealer, then he could divide it into ten packets and sell those for twenty marks each—so that when it was all over, we'd have made a hundred marks from the sale. With the profit, we'd buy another batch and double our take each time. I thought that was a great idea. That's how easy we thought dealing drugs would be at the time.

  Detlef really did manage to get that loan. Apparently, a few small dealers had just been busted, and they were looking for fresh new street vendors. But after we'd gotten the dope, we didn't have the courage to go straight out to the streets. Instead, we stuck to The Sound. Detlef (sweetheart that he was) kept approaching people who were already showing withdrawal symptoms—and who were obviously totally broke. He gave out the
dope on loan, and they never paid him back (of course). Half of the heroin disappeared just like that, and the other half we shot up ourselves. After all was said and done, we hadn't made a single cent.

  The guy who had advanced Detlef the dope was absolutely furious. But he didn't do anything about it. He probably just wanted to test Detlef, to see if he had the guts to deal on the street. And Detlef had proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that no, he didn't have any talent for it.

  FOR THE FIRST THREE WEEKS of that summer vacation, Detlef and I were in constant contact. We usually got together pretty early in the day, around lunchtime. Then we would spend the rest of the afternoon trying to scrounge up some cash any way we could. I did things that I never would've done when I was younger. I stole anything I could get my hands on—especially if I thought I could sell it at The Sound. Even when I did manage to sell something, though, it was hardly ever enough for two fixes. But we didn't need it on a daily basis yet. We could still do without it for days at a time; we weren't yet physically dependent.

  The second half of that summer vacation, I was supposed to go to my grandmother's place in Hessen.22 She lived in a small town. It's funny, but I was really looking forward to it. On the one hand, I couldn't imagine two or three weeks without Detlef, or The Sound, or the glitter and bright lights of the Kurfürstendamm —even for just a couple of days. It was unthinkable to me. On the other hand, I was looking forward to being around the kids over there, who'd never heard of drugs; I was looking forward to outdoor treasure hunts, to splashing around in the stream nearby, and to horseback riding. Between these two conflicting ideas, I couldn't figure out which one should get priority. I didn't know what I wanted.

  Without thinking about it, I'd already split myself into two completely different people. I wrote letters to myself. That is, Christiane wrote letters to Vera. Vera is my middle name. Christiane was the fourteen-year-old who wanted to visit her grandmother; she was the good girl; Vera was the druggie. And they fought with each other through these letters of mine.

  As soon as my mom put me on the train, I was only Christiane. And when I sat in my grandma's kitchen, it was as if I'd never been in Berlin. I felt instantly at home. My grandma gave me a feeling of comfort just by the way she sat there, all calm and relaxed. I loved my grandma, and I especially loved her kitchen. It was straight out of a picture book—an authentic old farmhouse kitchen with an open hearth, and huge pots and pans that were always cooking something. The whole atmosphere was unbelievably cozy and comforting.

  I got along really well with my cousins and all the other kids in the town who were around my age. It was as if I'd never left. They were all still real kids. And I was, too! For the first time since I don't know how long, I felt like a kid again. I threw my high-heeled boots into the corner, and depending on what the weather was like, I would either borrow sandals or rubber boots from the others. I never even touched my makeup because here I didn't have to prove anything to anybody.

  I went horseback riding a lot, and together with the other kids, I'd go on treasure hunts both on horseback and on foot. Our favorite playground was still down by the stream. We'd all grown a bit since the last time we were together, so the dams that we had to build needed to be huge. They caused little reservoir lakes to form behind them, and when we cut a breach into the dam at the end of the day, a torrent of water at least ten feet high shot down the stream.

  The other kids obviously wanted to know what Berlin was like and what kinds of things I did when I was there. But I didn't tell them much. I didn't want to think about Berlin at all. It was crazy, but I didn't even miss Detlef. I didn't even write him once— even though it was originally my plan to send him a letter every day. Sometimes I tried to think about him at night. But I had trouble imagining what he looked like. He was like someone from another world—a world that I no longer understood.

  In my bed at night, I had these weird nightmarish visions— and they only got worse as summer vacation neared the end. I'd see the guys from The Sound like ghosts before me, and the thought that I'd soon have to return to Berlin left me almost paralyzed with fear and anxiety. That's when I considered asking my grandma if I could stay with her. But how could I have justified that to my mom and grandma? I would've had to tell them all about the drinking and the drugs in Berlin. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I was also afraid that my grandma would drop dead on the spot if I told her that her little sweetie was already shooting dope.

  So in the end, I had to go back to Berlin—back to the noise, the lights, and all the frantic activity. But everything that I used to love about Berlin got on my nerves now. I could barely sleep at night because of all the noise. And on the Kurfürstendamm, between the cars and the mobs of people, I started to have these kinds of almost panic attacks.

  I didn't even try to get used to things, because I knew that a week after I got back, there was a school vacation planned, and my whole class was going. Although my grandmother had given me fifty marks as a present, it didn't even occur to me to use it for drugs. I didn't look for Detlef either, and the only thing I'd even heard about him was that he didn't go to The Sound anymore. I stayed totally clean until I left for the Black Forest23 with my class.

  I'd been looking forward to the trip, but after a couple of days, I started feeling pretty bad. I got stomachaches after eating and could barely make it through the hikes. As we were sitting in the bus to go take a tour of a chocolate factory, Kessi, who was sitting next to me, suddenly said, “Oh my God, you look completely yellow. Probably hepatitis.” She actually moved away from me. I thought the ground was tilting. Sooner or later, every junkie gets jaundice or hepatitis, just because of all the dirty old syringes that keep getting passed around. For the first time in a long time, heroin was back on my mind. I immediately thought about that filthy needle that I'd borrowed from that disgusting old junkie at the public toilets.

  But then I realized that Kessi had been just joking—she wasn't serious about the hepatitis thing. And I thought that it couldn't be possible anyway, after just a few shots—and after all, that was months ago now.

  From a sausage booth in front of the Suchard factory, I grabbed myself a plastic spoon, and then we entered a crazy, chocolatey, fairy-tale world. I dipped my spoon into any vat that contained anything looking even halfway appetizing. If it was good, I distracted our guide with questions so that I could sample it a few more times. By the end of the tour, I'd also swiped so many bars of chocolate and other kinds of candy that my jacket, which was knotted together into a kind of bag, was overflowing.

  Back on the bus, I swore to myself that I'd never touch another piece of chocolate again, and when we got back to the hostel where we were staying, I got really sick. My insides seemed to give out, suffocated by all the junk food I'd been pigging out on.

  Now even our teacher noticed how yellow I was looking. A doctor came to see me, and then an ambulance took me, sirens blaring, to the university hospital in Freiburg. The isolation room in the children's ward was spotless and white, but only just about big enough for a bed. No pictures on the wall, nothing. The nurses silently brought me food and medication. Occasionally, the doctor came by to ask how I was feeling. That went on for three weeks. I wasn't allowed to leave the room, not even to pee. Nobody visited; nobody talked to me. I didn't have anything interesting to read and no radio. I thought I was going to go nuts.

  The letters from my mom were the only thing that kept me from losing my mind. I wrote to her, too. But more than anything else, I wrote to my two cats—the only pets I had left. After I'd written the letters, I would put them into tiny little envelopes that I folded myself.

  Sometimes I thought about my grandma and the kids in that town and the stream and the horses, and sometimes I thought about Berlin, about The Sound—about Detlef and about heroin. I didn't have a clue who I was. When I was feeling really depressed, I'd think: You're just another heroin junkie, and now you've got your first case of jaundice. Congratulations. When I was im
agining living at home with my cats and trying hard in school, I'd be thinking about spending every vacation at my grandma's. This went back and forth for days. Sometimes I wouldn't think about anything for hours; instead I'd just stare at the ceiling, wishing I were dead.

  After a while, I started to worry that the doctors would figure out how I'd developed my case of jaundice in the first place. But the track marks had healed over the last few weeks, and I didn't have any scars or thromboses24 yet. Anyway, who would think that the children's ward in Freiburg would have a heroin junkie in its ranks?

  After three weeks, I had to practice walking again, a little at a time. Then—finally—I was allowed to take a flight back to Berlin. (The insurance paid for that.) Once I got home, I had to go right back to bed. I was glad to be back home with my mom and my cats. I didn't think about anything else.

  My mom then told me that Detlef had stopped by a couple of times and asked about me. My mom told me he'd looked really upset because I'd been gone for so long. After that, I started to think seriously about Detlef again. In my mind, I pictured his beautiful wavy hair and his kind, sweet face. It made me really happy that someone had been worried about me, that I was loved by someone. By Detlef. And I felt really guilty that, for a couple of weeks, I'd almost forgotten all about him.

  After a few days, Detlef somehow found out that I was back and came by to visit. I was in for a shock. When he came around to the front of my bed, I was left absolutely speechless.

  Detlef had lost so much weight that he was nothing but skin and bones. His arms were so thin that I could easily reach all the way around them with one hand. His face was hollow and white as a sheet—but even so, he was still beautiful. His eyes had somehow become larger and sadder. All the old emotions came rushing back: I was in love with Detlef again. It didn't bother me that he'd become so emaciated. And I definitely didn't want to think about what had caused his physical deterioration.