Tonight I saw a man pull over in his shiny red car – more small round bubble than lippy convertible – leave the car running in the empty lane of traffic, as Berliners sometimes do, climb out and stroll over to a tree I was approaching on my walk – a sidewalk tree outside a darkened school, turtlenecked in asphalt – pull down his tracksuit pants, piss, pull his pants up with a satisfied >snap<, climb into the vehicle and drive away.
Tag: Berlin
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to stars
In an unpretentious Italian restaurant where all the pasta had been made by hand, the chatting-family atmosphere fell into something much deeper and richer and darker. A cellist had walked in and in his overcoat sat down on a backless chair in front of the servery and began to play. Something, I don’t know what. He drove his fibres of unholy sound into the great grail of all of us, each of us, like an ochre long-blown off the palm of his hand. I saw the small boy with dark lozenges of eyes climb down from his chair at the corner table in the second room and go to stand, unconsciously in the waiter’s path, his head a jar for the tadpoles of surety this man was making for us. He stood and stood, listening and watching, lost to every other thing. Behind him his parents and their friend kept chatting and only the older, grizzled, quizzical looking man at another table let his gaze rest on the little music lover so fondly, brimming with acceptance, and I let my gaze rest on him in turn and the music rested on all of us, like snow, that spares no needle in the pine forest and lifts its shifting darkness turn to stars.
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eggshellac
Like a little eggshell in the sky. I have moved into my final Berlin sublet, just 3 weeks, and barely dare breathe. Everything is white down to the phone, painted roughly with house paint but still black on the inside when you pick up the receiver. In the little white bathroom a toilet with no lid and no seat. A tiny wooden vegetable brush perches primly across the back of the… mouth of the sewer. I said to my landlady, who is off to India for three weeks to translate Arabic manuscripts, “No toilet seat?” “Oh, did you notice that? Does it bother you?” “Well…”
She said, “I guess it’s a bit cold, and kind of uncomfortable, but it broke and I just realized, I don’t really need this.” I foresee that within a few years she will be living cross-legged on the head of a pin. The place is quiet and curtainless and resembles a tiny Buddhist monastery. Floorboards painted white. White rugs which, she showed me, she cleans with a little brush. She pulled out a rush cushion from under the low white bed to show me: “This makes a great table, for eating.” Then she set off in the November rain through streets full of sticky wet leaves to fly south, with one little blue bag, wearing a pair of socks inside white sandals. Mysteriously there is no mat at the front door, yet everything within is pristine. My landlady had also painted her little computer white, including all the keys, but then had to scrub most of them back to the original black so that she could see what they were. Her patchy keyboard in the chalky white room was startling, a giant crossword. We exchanged money and keys this morning and she showed me around. “I have these two spoons.” Four plates, two bowls, and a couple cups, no pepper, oils, pans, forks, knives. “Poor little flower,” said the friend who helped me carry my suitcases. “You get the feeling that a gust of wind would blow her away.” I on the other hand will not be having that problem. In just 18 months my pile of cases and boxes has swollen like paper in water to twice their original dimensions. I think of the old cartoon of a bag lady pleading not guilty on a charge of shoplifting “by reason of static cling.” To get home I will have to divest myself of a rowboat full of leaves, intricately rusted bottlecaps, brochures and books that I picked up and brought home because they seemed beautiful or interesting. This might be the perfect place to do it. In between, I will loll in the tub and read, an egg in an eggcup in a large eggshell in the grey, minimalist skies over Germany.
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on it, and in it too
Oh, gosh. A friend of mine is visiting Berlin from Finland with her young family, they came here instead of to Budapest so that we could catch up for only the second time since we were both 11 and schoolmates in Indonesia. We saw each other on Friday and again just now, they are leaving in the morning. What’s happend is her little diaghter, about the same age we were when we were close, fell in love with me and I with her and her mother and I meanwhile have grown apart, though with plenty of mutual liking awash between us and respect, I think; the two of us, plus her fourteen year old brother, had such a good time once we broke the ice the other day, talking to each other in ridiculous accents and assigning magical powers to such landmarks as the scrappy scaffolding you have to pass under in order to reach the supermarket. I say assigning, but it feels more like you understand some genuine enchantment that is lying there, like the face of the moon in a puddle which from another angle reflects only parked bumper bars and tyres, waiting for us to know it and see it as we blindly pass. The parents went methodically through the supermarket, trying to work out which margarine was best for the breakfasts this weekend in their holiday unit. It’s easy for me to be revelrous and unresponsible, rebellious and responsive, I don’t have care of any kids. The girl took me by the hand and towed me to the softdrinks section, which til now I had never penetrated, it is right up the back of the giant side room supplying local Germans with their alcohol. Her brother had found a new variety of Coke and wanted to show it off. Ooh, we said, in our arch voices, eet ees like we are in a seeeeety of all Cokka-Collar, eet ees surrrrounding us on all sides, we cannot escape. Like me the little girl enjoys rolling her Rs.
Today I caught up with them after their river cruise, my friend texted to say We are still climbing, can you come down, the kids want to show you their moves. I remember how passionately I fastened on any Lady produced by my mum’s social life who had qualities I could identify as those I wanted to embody when I was grown. How I longed to tuck my hair behind my ears with bobby pins, like our first-grade teacher. I went down to the climbing centre built round an old watch tower in the grubby club park. My friend’s daughter came and grabbed me. She was leaner and faster than her brother, both climbing astonishingly like insects climbing water, up and over the sloping walls which lean over forbiddingly, studded with holds. It was fantastic to watch. When her mother said it was time to go she put her regular shoes on and took me round to show all the climbs she had executed earlier, each one a higher grade colour of difficulty than the last. “I did those ones, too,” said her brother, “…. but not that other one.” I ruffled her silky hair. She has slanting Finnish eyes, a witching snow princess. “You’re like Tank Girl,” I said, passing on a compliment somebody paid me when I peeled off all the sweating layers of wool at the end of a not so long forest hike yesterday. “No,” she said, her eyes bold and secretive, her bow-legged aristocratic accent reappearing, “Iiiiii… am: a Niiiinja.”
You are, I said. I see you are. We all walked up the street together, past the two tall punks begging for their Saturday night beer money at the video store, past the guy who sits cross-legged by the bus stop and does not beg at all. The little ninja spurled her spiels about each local artefact that caught her eye: mostly, people, and their behaviour, alongside reminders of the games we had invented walking two days ago and that had sunk into her imagination. The green signal man in the traffic light who is so busy, so so so busy, who appears to only have one arm and whom we had mimicked, hurrying so-busily over the crossing with our bodies bent forward. The red signal man with his arms spread wide who appears to be blessing the waters. They decided they would eat at a restaurant my friend had noticed. When it became clear I was not planning to join them, my little friend drooped, everything about her sagged. I felt tearful. “Why you not longer?” she said, with her hand on my arm. My eyes met her mother’s. The invitation had been there but wan. Or possibly I was just feeling over-sensitive: very often that’s the explanation. “Because,” I said, “I feel like… this is family time, it seems like you guys have had a big day, a big weekend, and everybody’s tired, maybe people are getting grumpy. Her mother, my friend, did not demur. “I’m not tired!” she said, “I’m not grumpy!” “Oh…” I cast about me, I don’t know why I had to escape. We had our arms around each other by this time and I was crouched so as to enfold her as completely as possible, my little familiar, little kindred spirit, I didn’t want to leave. I told her I would write to her and asked her to write back. Then I came home and phoned a friend and cried about it for a time. “You know how…. some children…. are just so…. special,” thinking how when I was a girl I would have given anything to get to know just one adult who seemed to still have humour without teasing and intrusion, who was like me, who liked me, who had the keys I had myself, given by god or whatever inanimate coincidences take the place of god, the power of noticing and knowing that you cannot know, the feeling that the trees also know you as you know them when you step amongst them on a night when the road seems to lead off right into the sky, the curious power of finding out coded language in the stones and in the curve of the street, I don’t know how to say it and have probably never described this before but I will go to my grave knowing this is what we are for, this is who we truly are, this is what we’re waiting for, the world of moon that is waiting for us despite flags and currency, despite gossip and news, despite additives, work choices, busyness, boredom, underneath and in spite of and above everything, and in it too.
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little flower
Went onto the market, transformed now with its leafiness half on the ground, and half overhead; I wanted parsley, and something else leafy, maybe spinach, and potatoes. So many types of potato, each ugly in its own precious way, it would be nice to buy one of each and label them with toothpicks (i, ii, iii… xii, xiii, xiv) in order to find out once and for all how in flavour and texture they veer. The buying of parsley I always find a puzzle here: what is the German for a bit, or a bunch? I didn’t like to ask the grumpy lady in mittens who served me today smilelessly. At the smoked fish van in dappling shade I hesitated over the golden reams. A guy was playing steel drums in a kind of trance, which he had transmitted to the several small families swaying in front. I said to the fish seller when he came back in, I’d like a couple of those fillets please. I said, ein Paar: a pair, a married couple, a few. He picked one up in his long curving tongs, like a beak. How many is ein Paar? he asked. Well, I said; actually, two. Ah, he said, laughing: so an actual pair! He began wrapping the fish, chuckling softly to himself. Ego stung me and I wanted to find a cunning way of letting him know this is a second language for me, over just a few sentences people don’t always pick it up. You know, I said, artlessly, guileful: This everyday stuff is the part I find hardest, in German. How many is a few? How much parsley do I need? Is it a posy, a bouquet, a… well, ein Bisschen: a little bit?
He knotted the paper bag and spun it with that deftness so stylish in stallholders. He was considering my question. Well, he said at last, you can’t go wrong with a little bit. Ein bisschen. It’s not a posy or a “little flower” (“Blümchen”, I had said). Ein Stück, a piece… yes…. you can always buy a piece of parsley.
Peter Pepper. I took the parcel of fish and stowed it with the parsley in my bag. Thanks, I said. He handed over my change. “And now, you get ‘a little bit’ of money back, too,” he said, using the familiar form of “you”, which gave me a warm feeling as I stowed the piece of money in my pocket and wandered back past all the closing stalls with their shrieks and two for ones.
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the godfather underground
Riding on the train underground I feel like a caterpillar carving through the belly of the city. The hungry metallic smell of the train’s breath is become familiar as I jog down the steps to Underworld. Sitting and writing and sitting and writing. I glanced up and caught the eye of an elder gentleman standing with his son against the glass doors, watching benignly. He said, across the carriage, “Schoene Schrift!” Lovely handwriting. Oh! I said. Thank you. And he nodded and nodded. I went back to my page. Filled it and turned to another and smoothed it down. Finished what it was I was saying and capped my pen and slipped the book into my bag. The doors opened onto the platform and this man and his son, my age, were standing beside me. He stepped back to let me past. “Alles schoen aufgeschrieben,” everything nicely written up, he said, with great satisfaction. Unintrusive and approving, like a kind of fairy godfather.
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reeky dog
Such a pretty day. When I came out of the Underground station the sky had filled with these tiny white, flat-bottomed clouds, as though they were puffs of steam that had popped up from the chimney of some hidden machinery. It was a pleasure to reach the outdoors. Jumping onto the train I caught the eye of a raddled punk, crouched over his big brown dog. He was petting and soothing the animal, lovingly. I smiled and he smiled. The doors slid shut. But what was that… awful smell? Oh, god, it’s the hound. A guy in workout gear looked over and made an expression of disgust. I looked about me. People were wrinkling their noses. The smell filled the cabin and was unendurable.
I got up and slid down the far end of the train carriage. Within seconds that end of the carriage was full, as though the track had tilted: the punk and his dog sat up on a vinyl bench by themselves, unsurrounded on all sides. The dog was emitting these edgy, whining noises. Everyone looked strenuously away, in a body, as though they could dissolve him by pretending he wasn’t there.
The punk guy shrugged at me, the only person making eye contact. “Der reitet nicht gerne,” he said. He doesn’t like to ride. I said, “Tcha…” I was revolving in my mind the most inoffensive way to mention it to him, trying to translate: dude, your dog really reeks.
The smell was unbearable, a creature rotting alive, I was breathing in little shallow gasps. We pulled in at the next station and the carriage emptied within seconds. Seven people ran pelting down the platform and leaped into the carriage behind. There they stood doused with disapproval, that righteous German indignation people can excite by basic inconformity. Even in a punk city, even in Berlin. I followed, laughing helplessly. Och, the poor old punk with his mangy, stinking, poor terrified animal. The long-term neglect, the isolation. You know that kind of released and loose laughter that feels like crying, feels almost like sex. It was kind of sad but wonderful and could only happen here. All the way home I was remembering him and the confederacy of perfumed people locking him out of their secret, hidden glances. I remembered and kept glancing out the window and smiling to myself. The poor smelly dog and his misery, the poor old drug-fucked oblivious punk who maybe thinks people reject him because he’s rejected society, thirty years ago, with his haircut and his piercings. Making up his stories to himself of why people can’t bear him and will not come near. An almost unbearable ecstasy of shame pierced me, that I had not spoken, that my German is laborious when it counts, that I couldn’t find the words. Berlin, decorous and louche at once. You big old mess of freaks.
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night witches past
Cycling through the park. It’s very dark but the sky is purple. Passing alongside the old Bahnhof I see the lights leap from one long window to the next. The medieval bridge with its turrets, the dark towers, the choppy dark water. The entrance to the park is guarded by forty black men. They own it, they share it, they deserve it. This is how you make your living until citizenship arrives. Their faces are hard to distinguish in the shadows. Alles klar? they say, cheerfully, Alles klar? It means, all clear, which means, is everything clear? do you need anything? do you want to buy drugs?
All clear, and I’d like to keep it that way. Danke, danke. The trees along the broad straight path lean over me as I speed along in a gust of wind, gathering and whispering like old women with long fingers.
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beware of the god
I passed a Turkish döner shop where they carve shreds of meat from a large, limb-shaped conglomeration that’s turning very slowly dripping grease into the grill. In front of the low window sat a patient Alsatian. His nose was lifted towards the man sunning himself on his elbows, dreamily staring along the street while the meat crisped up behind him. I said, indicating the dog, “Er hat Hoffnung.” “Is he yours?” the man said. “Oh no, he’s not mine, but I think he has hopes.” He was already dipping his curled fingers into the tray of meat shards, peeling off a long strip and lifting it over the sill. He threw the meat and the dog caught it. Gulp. Gone. I said, “Wow, aren’t you nice.” As I got back on my bike the man was delving back into the gleaming pile of flesh and the dog was gazing at him as at a temple statue that has moved and revealed itself a god.