PFANDI

My relationship with my bottle deposit pile, or “Pfandi” as I call it, is complicated. It’s grown so large that I don’t know how to get rid of it. Simply throwing it in the trash isn’t an option; I’m too broke for that. There’s probably almost €15, no, €20 lying there, staring at me with a crumpled, desperate “finally release me.” And I would, in fact, I solemnly swear, I would have done it long ago, but in this precarious living situation, it’s just not that simple. Because every time I returned the deposit bottles, which I’d stashed away in my opaque bag, it was an act of defiance against the prevailing social structures. A class struggle. I felt like I was already a full-fledged member of the June 2nd Movement, that’s how much I rebelled against the system.

When I first moved here, into the unfamiliar circles of the well-to-do, I brazenly walked the five hundred meters to the local supermarket with a large, transparent garbage bag full of plastic coins. Transparent! My God, how naive I was! Out onto the sidewalk, and I was immediately met with disdainful stares. Those who don’t return bottles for the deposit. Those who don’t need them. The Roman upper class. Gods of Berlin mythology. An older woman almost tripped over her walking stick when she saw my bag. “Really?” she muttered, shaking her head, before creeping on. For me, back then, it didn’t cause as much confusion as you might think now. After all, it’s Berlin; you’re not afraid of disapproving looks, and everyone gets a bit of a huff anyway. No one was safe. A hundred meters further on, I was jolted out of my reverie when a man tossed a can onto the sidewalk. Without so much as a flinch, just like that! And yet, every serious bottle collector should know that a can, with its considerable value of twenty-five cents and its small size and weight, is practically the holy grail of making money. It’s only surpassed by those little smoothie bottles, which have an even smaller packaging volume. But this man threw the can away like a used cigarette. Disdainfully. Contemptuously. I bent down, and a large bead of sweat trickled heavily down my temple, whereupon it fell to the ground in slow motion, so that the glaring ray of sunlight reflected in the sweat briefly revealed the man’s hunched face, and I could see him spitting on the ground beside me. He walked on, and I picked up the can. Well, that’s strange, I thought to myself. Oblivious, I straightened up and quickly wiped my forehead to avoid another bout of strange, sweaty hallucinations. Perhaps, I thought, it was nothing more than an illusion. A misunderstanding. The man hadn’t said anything, and if he had truly disapproved of me and what I considered a noble act, he surely would have made himself known. A slight clearing of his throat. A hint that what I was doing wasn’t exactly welcome in his world and in the social circles of this neighborhood. But he didn’t. So I heaved the bag over my shoulders and trudged on toward the bottle return.

A little later, two boys…men…boys (?) approached me. I hesitated because they were just on the cusp of adulthood. Not teenagers, but not men either. Caught between school and tax bracket. Our eyes met, and I watched in despair as their expressions shifted from lighthearted and carefree to utterly incensed. In true schoolyard fashion, one of them bumped into me, sending my bag tumbling to the ground, spilling out a few empty bottles and shattering one or two. I was furious, but it could have just been an accident. Nevertheless, I heard a shrill laugh, not from the boys, but from an old man on the first floor, smoking a cigarette on his balcony, who had witnessed the whole spectacle. Outrageous! Just as I was about to shout back, one of the boys approached me, picked up a glass bottle, took two steps toward me, and held it out. So all is not lost after all! But as I reached for it, the boy pulled back and tossed the eight cents into the air. The bottle flew and flew, higher and higher, and my narrowed eyes followed it with maximum intensity, hoping to possibly save it, like a true Jedi Master, with the Force from the impending fate of the glass bottle’s typical May Day death.

However, I hadn’t factored in the man on the first floor for this surreal fantasy, because he suddenly pulled out a baseball bat and, with a crash, smashed the bottle to pieces, shattering it into thousands that rained down on us like tiny snowflakes. “Homerun, homerun!” he shouted in his raspy, smoker’s voice. He was actually right, because it was a truly impressive hit. But that didn’t bring back my bottle-collecting luck, and I was starting to feel like an outcast in this neighborhood, the kind who gets locked in a locker in the school hallway if he doesn’t hand over his lunch money. The two boys laughed derisively, waved me off condescendingly, turned around, and walked away. One of them kicked away another of my beloved bottles, and I tried to gather up all the remaining ones as quickly as possible so that the shame of this obvious torment wouldn’t increase even more. Why should I have to experience something like this as an adult?

A few meters further on, I’d finally managed it. Almost, anyway. The supermarket appeared before me, its mighty gates of salvation opening wide. On the way to the bottle return machine, I dragged the bag behind me like a corpse in a sack. Residual liquids oozed out, creating a bloodstain-like scene that would have any detective thrilled with the irrefutable evidence. In that sense, what I was losing was nothing other than the blood, the soul, of my deposit bottles. I, the murderer. The merciless executioner, dragging the half-dead bodies to the slaughterhouse. Suddenly, a pungent odor filled the air, and as I rounded the last shelf, I saw the gateway to hell. The bottle return machine. All sorts of other creatures were already swarming around the little man’s ATM like flies. It was a disgusting gathering of strange figures. A gigantic, snail-like monster rummaged through its slimy crevices, snatching one empty bottle after another and, with sloppy noises, maneuvering them into the all-devouring machine, which, like a feudal lord, beeped itself into a frenzy of lust every second, reaching a frenzy of orgasm. I tried to stand inconspicuously beside it, but a heavily breathing boar grunted aggressively at me, so I had to settle for the space behind it. After it had swooped past me, its snarling tusks bared, it was my turn. Now that it was finally happening, I felt almost a little wistful. Sadly, I looked at my body bag. How much we had been through! The two of us, the outcasts of society, through thick and thin. But I had to go through with it, I had to throw the ring into the volcano to end it all. The torment, the shame, the disgust, the violence. I couldn’t endure any of it again.

And so, tears streaming down my face, I shoved the deposit bottles into the greedy machine until my arm went numb and I had to make change. Completely out of breath, I reached into the bag, only to find the empty, sticky inside. The job was done. The deposit slip appeared with the rewarding sum of €18.52, and I grabbed it like a little boy grabs a free sausage at the butcher’s. Exhausted, I collapsed and slunk through the aisles of the bustling supermarket. On my way out, I spotted something on a shelf near the checkout that I knew I would definitely spend my hard-earned money on: tear-resistant, opaque, black garbage bags with a 120-liter capacity.