Free Tomorrow Berlin by Oscar Coop-Phane

history and biology, though he’s thirty-five.
    He’s making dinner. He didn’t know if Tobias would be back, but he made extra, just in case. Tobias introduces Armand as a good friend.
    Otto invites Armand to stay to dinner. If he likes, he can also stay the night; he looks tired. Tomorrow they can talk about renting the room.
     
    Dinner is fun. They speak English. Armand enjoys the realisation that he’s not the same person as when he speaks French. He doesn’t have the same character; he doesn’t make the same jokes. It’s nice to be able to change your identity temporarily.
     
    Armand takes a shower, then falls asleep between clean sheets.

IV
    The next morning, as always, there are pancakes and café au lait. The Germans know how to live at home. Maybe because of the harshness of the winters. They have lots of accessories: to froth milk, to keep tea hot, to be comfortable at home without having to go out to the café.
    The breakfast is nice. They smoke roll-ups, eat bacon. Tobias and Armand tell Otto about their evening. The three of them are like a family, sitting at the bar in the kitchen.
    Otto feels it too. He likes Armand, this young Frenchman who has come here to paint, and why else? Hard to say. Perhaps it’s his restlessness that has brought him to this unknown city. He reckons they’ll be able to get along, that Armand, because of his youth and his character, will be an ally in the order of his existence. With friends, like in love, you can tell the ones who are going to be on your side.
    If Armand likes the room, it’s his. The rent is modest; it includes electricity and internet.
    Agreed! Armand will live here, put the few possessions he’s brought with him in the empty room – it’s more reassuring to know they’re there than in the Berghain cloakrooms.
    They celebrate with another round of pancakes.According to Tobias, Otto is cool. He gets high too. He was married to a really beautiful girl, an American; but she left because the two of them had got stuck in a rut. Since then, Otto has surrounded himself only with people who are passing through. He chooses foreign flatmates; he’s putting Tobias up for a few weeks.
    He’s a generous guy. Tobias, for example, knew from the time he had problems that he could count on Otto to lend him his sofa and feed him. Yes, he’s a truly special guy, Tobias says. I’m pleased the three of us are going to live together; it’ll be a good laugh.

V
    A white room: tiled walls, tiled floor. A guy in a white coat comes in. Franz is sitting in a hospital chair with armrests.
    ‘O-positive. That’s good. Maybe more for us than for you. You’re fit, which is good. Just relax. We’ll take ten tubes. And afterwards, you can have a sandwich. It takes it out of you, you know…’
    ‘Yes, I know,’ Franz replies.
    Franz knows the drill. Every month he comeshere to sell his blood. He knows they’ll put a tourniquet on high above his elbow and it’ll be too tight, that the needle will slide into his vein easily and that the tubes will fill up, one by one, until there are none left.
    Then he’ll roll down his sleeve, someone will bring him a sandwich, attentively, as though he were ill. The guy on reception will give him a twenty-euro note in a brown envelope and off he’ll go with the money in his pocket.
    Yes, he knows the drill.

VI
    It’s dark in the living room. Armand’s smoking in an armchair. He sniffs the edge of a yellowed book. These are the only movements permitted by his state of mildly depressive contemplation. He looks as though he’s resting after what he’s been through, now that he’s alone at last. But his features betray a little hint of eagerness, like the adventurer’s satisfaction in his new environment. He hasn’t yet found the treasure, but he senses it’s there, within reach, since he has travelled the whole path. He’s a young man at rest.
     
    At the same moment, in an over-the-top rococo basement, Tobias is going from one