Free Just Call Me Superhero by Alina Bronsky

aside. Friedrich’s chuckles were the last to die down. They looked at me as if I was the ghost of their dead aunt. I looked at them through the viewfinder. They were playing cards. A bag of gummi bears was being passed around.
    I pointed the camera at Janne. She was shuffling the cards and looking at her hands as she did. I had the impression that she was trembling slightly. Maybe it was just the vibrations of the old train. Her wheelchair was folded up and propped between the seat bench and the door.
    “You guys are having fun, eh?” I asked in a funereal tone and filmed as guilty looks spread across their faces.
     
    There were fewer and fewer buildings and people outside. I stood in the corridor and filmed the birch trees racing past and the long lakes. The guru turned up next to me and took the camera away.
    “The battery doesn’t last forever,” he said.
    He stood next to me and leaned on the handrail exactly the same way I was. I didn’t look at him. I felt like getting out at the next station and hopping on the next train back to Berlin. These local trains stopped in the most godforsaken places. The isolated figures who got on at those places looked somehow deformed. As if I of all people could complain about that. Behind me bubbled Janne’s laughter. I would really like to have taken a machine gun to the whole scene, and I wasn’t even embarrassed by that thought. I should have learned a lesson from Marlon: disgraced down to the last bone in his body and yet still cool.
    “This week is going to change lives,” said the guru from next to me.
    To be honest I wasn’t the slightest bit interested what the guru hoped to gain from this week. But I still asked, “Yours or ours?”
    “Both,” he said.
    I tried not to smile too broadly. “Inflated expectations have never helped anyone.”
    “I’m a little bit scared,” said the guru.
    “Of what?” I stifled a yawn. “Of us? It’s too late for that.”
    He exhaled loudly and looked really depressed as he did.
    “It could still end up being some interesting footage,” I said with a sudden flash of sympathy.
    He nodded again. His face betrayed the fact that he was assuming the opposite would be true.

 
    G etting off the train, unlike getting on it, went pretty smoothly. Taking a cue from Richard, we had formed a line in the corridor in advance. Everyone listened to him, and the guru seemed grateful that somebody who was up to the job was taking over the steering wheel. Friedrich carried Janne’s wheelchair and looked really proud. The guru shouldered Friedrich and Marlon’s luggage in addition to his own.
    Marlon’s hand was on my upper arm again. I could barely stand it. I hated being touched. The sudden solidarity of our disabled troop made me want to escape. All for one and one for all. I didn’t want that. Not with these people or anyone else. I was already sick of it.
    In no time at all we had lined up on one of the two platforms of the tiny little station. The only thing missing was for us to be put into pairs and told to hold our line buddy’s hand. The guru counted heads. Sweat dripped from his forehead. Friedrich opened the wheelchair as if he had been doing it his entire life. Janne smiled down at us from Richard’s arms. The sun shone.
    It turned out we had about a twenty minute walk to our lodgings. The guru had arranged transportation for the luggage but he didn’t seem to believe that it would come. We were waiting outside, sitting on our suitcases, when a tractor rattled into the parking lot pulling a trailer. At the giant steering wheel was a boy who couldn’t have been older than twelve and next to him was a shaggy bear-sized dog. The two parties looked at each other curiously for a while until the guru realized this was the transportation to the farm.
    We threw our bags into the trailer and the tractor chugged off. We walked around the station building and found a paved path that curled into the woods. The guru compared