Punker dog in Berlin, his hair matted and scrufflish, his gait insouciant. He has a green streak in his fur, top of the head between the ears, that matches the green quiff on his master. The thought of this dude dyeing his own hair like an old lady in a salon and then tenderly saying, Ok now we do yours, has undone me.
Back in Berlin for a few days: what a strange feeling. Now there is no snow on the ground and the trees have appeared from nowhere, they are green, green, green. We ate at a Turkish grillhouse where you sit around a glass-cased cooktop fired with coals, onto which four brawny and frankly handsome men in white shirts loaded blade after blade of minced meat, chicken wings, lamb ribs, skewer after skewer of whole, red tomatoes and prongs of scarlet peppers like jewels. They scoop the heat together in a bottomless tin of blackened aluminium. Everything stinks of cookstove fuel. We drank several copper tumblers apiece of ayran, the salty fresh yoghurt drink, eyeing the mirrored cabinet of meats: a tray of kidneys, maroon and flecked with gristly white, a tray of ribs ready to be sliced and grilled, a tray of chops, a tray of wings. Afterwards a long, long bicycle ride through the city forest which leads in from a smurfish village of cutesy summer houses with adorable, tiny gardens. The sign at the side gate says “Freiheit” but the “Freiheit” gate is locked. Everything as pretty as a thousand words and worth a picture. A young waiter smoking on the gingerbread verandah of his Black Forest-styled Gasthaus told us, using the informal “you”, “you can’t get out that way.”
Drank a beer, one of those long German beers, on board a boat on the river which has a wooden cabin built on it, housing the kitchen and bar. There is grass growing on the roof. Grass, and little purple flowers. I stood in front of it blocking the way with my bike saying over and over and over, “It has grass! On the roof!” I had never seen that before: grass! on the roof! I am tired from travelling and the temperature has dropped ten degrees. When Berlin’s petticoat woods tilted up to meet the plane I felt a rush of unaccustomed homesickness: Australia, be less far away. Australia, be less vast. I miss you though I had almost forgotten, persuaded myself I had forgotten. This big city is not my city and that river is not my river. Doch.
Things you can do in silence, in the dark. Cycling alone under trees, flicker, flicker. Watching petals fall in flakes of tiny silver alight on the black liquid wind. Swinging on a swing someone’s fixed to a low bough overhanging the water, the wind rushing gently and softly as cat’s paws past your ears.
On the lake, ducks and ducklings, geese and goslings, and a pair of swans bobbed about with the tiny grey morsels of fluff my dyslexic ex used to call ‘swanlings.’ “Look, Oel! A mamma and a pappa swan… and all the little swanlings.”
Guy sauntering through the pretty part of town with a flashing, winking keychain, silver and the size of a beer coaster, jouncing at his groin. Its flashing and winking caught my eye, and then he caught my eye, with a smug, knowing look which spurred the mean hope that he may never get close to any woman again.
Girl wheeling her bike alongside the lake, its rear wheel throwing up pinkish white blossom in tissuey arcs. I walked behind her like a bridesmaid, the bottoms of the green Spring trees stroking soft as mothers across the crown of my head.
I walked downstream to the picnic place where someone had made a heart of stones and filled it with pads of moss. The stones have gone now but the moss remains and some of it has taken root. A wet Spring. It makes not a green heart shape exactly, but something like. Heart like a blob. Heart like jelly, like a cloud.
By the river new wildflowers are now growing, the seasons progress with colour and line. Some of them are upright prongs of dark pink clovers and some, I suspect from the shape, might be buttercups. Buttercups are famous! I’ve read about them since I was a little girl, in English novels. But I think I’ve never seen one. Let alone the swards of white spear-flowers populating the nearby woods, which travel in a carpet as far as the eye can discern under trees…. On the river a lady duck surfs as lady ducks did on the swift green current with their husbands, three weeks ago. This one has babies aboard. They clutter her back, five dark brown bobbing heads, and she carries them smoothly and the water carries all of them, as time carries all of us, long may it be so if our enterprises and selfishness have not too deeply uncluttered the lifeless oceans and cluttered up the air and clogged with metals the water. Sail away, duck mum, smooth like a promise and find a better, greener place.
I was in a strange city recently, got lost, felt overwhelmed momentarily, & needed comfort. Ducked inside a Guitar Shop to touch all the guitars. You pluck one string and wait for it slowly to come into stillness. At the back a man in a fisherman’s cap was playing a song of his own, I think, for the politely-smiling Guitar Shop man… they sat on matching, facing stools and one leaned in and one leaned back. Leaving the shop I felt just that bit more tuned in to sounds and to music, the traffic seemed rhythmic and spare, I kept hearing in the street the repeated curve-notes of a wolf whistle from somewhere high, or far away. Five times, six times, seven times, eight: was it a nerdy, somewhat serious guy who having gotten up the courage to catcall was now determined the object of his passing affection would not walk by without learning how beautiful he found her? Actually it was two college girls, leaning out of a fifth-storey window wolf-whistling their friend who was unlocking her bike oblivious in a stand of bikes downstairs, her hair wrapping itself around her in the wind. Wit-wheel! Wit-wheel! is how my ex used to spell it (and say it): Wit-wheel!
I went into a crowded little food boutique that had a whole wall of small-brew beers. They had beautiful, grotesque, weird, colourful labels. They were honey-coloured, molasses-coloured, golden, greenish, dark. I bought a chocolate wrapped in sardine-printed foil for a friend who is overcoming a phobia of fish. I went to the back of the store and picked up the brown-paper packages of whole coffee beans and held them to my face and breathed in.
Sauntered past the op shop where I bought some stuff yesterday, in the sun this afternoon, whilst wearing most of it. A lovely lady with white winged arms and white winged cheeks (a Twenties bob) was sitting out the front, resting and sunning herself. She showed me by gestures and impenetrable dialect, O! You look good in that… thing.
That Thing is a cute pair of dark denim dungarees I found in the half-price pile, when it finally got too hot for the winter layers I brought from Melbourne in November. In English I told her, Thank you! Actually I bought these from you guys yesterday!
Ok! she said, fanning herself. And this, I told her, tugging at my skintight navy and white striped top underneath. Cool huh?
Ok! she nodded, plucked at the fabric, smiled. Is pretty! Very good!
See I’ve been travelling – from Australia – for so long now…. I only have winter clothes. I showed her my feet. See my winter boots? See? My winter socks?
Ah! she said, ok! I see! Is very good!
I love the church ladies. In Brisbane I lived round the corner from an oppie which was run by the Uniting Church and had a genius for fastening on the unlikeliest stuff to price very high (suitcase in the window like a large sucked caramel, its sign saying “$20. No less. VINYL.”) It was staffed by a wonderful variety of ladies and I wished every one of them could be my grandmother.
