Hand Me Down World

by Lloyd Jones

  The biggest human trafficker is Libya. Some blacks make it across to Europe. Lampedusa. If they were to consult a map before setting out they would see that Lampedusa is a tiny place. It is the stone the boot of Italy attempts to kick back across the sea. They step ashore into a detention centre. These ones have the semblance of human beings. They still have names. Soon they will turn into ghosts. There are so many of them that Europe has turned to Gaddafi. The self-proclaimed father of Africa has built a vast detention centre in the middle of the Libyan desert. The Africans who have made it to the shores of Europe now file into the holds of aeroplanes and are flown back to Africa, not whence they came, that would be too expensive, but to the detention centre in the Libyan desert. Here they turn into ghosts, some go mad and wander into the desert to meet their maker.

  So, when the authorities come to my office and ask for help to find a particular illegal immigrant I do what Europe does. I pretend these people don’t exist. I am not sorry that I cannot be of more help.

  There is one more thing. Before I entered the church I studied geology. An oil company made that possible. They hoped I would find oil for them in the future. Instead I became side-tracked by what I found. Did you know there was once a land bridge between Africa and Europe? This was many, many thousands of years ago. Back then, an African could have arrived in Europe simply by following the shoreline.

  ten

  A man by the name of Millennium Three

  I have not eaten since yesterday. That is a fact. Now a declaration. But fear of the inexplicable has not yet impoverished the existence of the individual. No. I don’t want any money. Not yet. I believe in the fair exchange of goods. I will accept your money but only as payment. So. What do I have to give? It is all up here in my head. Amazing riches. For example, you may have recognised the words of Rilke a moment ago. Listen again—carefully…But fear of the inexplicable has not yet impoverished the existence of the individual. And this—from the third stanza. Listen. We are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. It is not a very good poem in my view, but it contains some lines which I only have to recite and suddenly the spark they produce warms my insides. Rainer Maria Rilke. He is dead so it does not matter. The language belongs to the entire human race. Rilke is dead. Whereas I am very much alive and when in need of a meal I recite a few lines. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses: perhaps all of the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only wanting to see us once beautiful and brave...Yesterday I recited those lines without attributing their source and a woman wanted to take me to dinner. It was kind of her. But she misunderstood. I was not looking for kindness. I was after payment. She paid ten euros for a different poem, also by my friend and sponsor, Rainer Maria Rilke, this one about a dog.

  I choose my customers carefully. Rilke is not for everyone. Some of my customers prefer my flea joke. It is slightly risqué. It is not my joke, that is to say, I did not create it. I lifted it from somewhere, someone, I forget where or who. Jokes are like dandelions. They float across the world lifting away from our outstretched hands. No one remembers where the dandelion is from. No one thinks of its origin. But everyone instinctively reaches out to hold one. That is not Rilke by the way. That is me.

  Millennium Three? I changed my name by deed poll before coming to Berlin. You see how easy it is to become the other—to bloom with the same flower when grafted onto a shared stem. Rilke is my stem. But there are others too. My flea joke, for example, it has more universality than many of Rilke’s poems. Perhaps I will tell you the short version. The long version you will have to pay for. But let me go back to Rilke. The second stanza of the poem ‘Fear of the Inexplicable’. Where he says, If we think of the existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people only know a corner of the room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. These lines changed my life. These lines struck me with the force of a thunderbolt. My strip of floor was so meagre. It was pitiful. This is what it amounted to—a desk before a class of adolescents who resented my presence and who did not want poetry inflicted on their anorexic souls. In their eyes I saw myself as some kind of oppressor. But I continued. I persevered. At night I planned my lessons. I looked for poems that would break open their hearts and minds. But Rilke’s lines would not go away. In the end I tore up the floorboards of small existence. I changed my name to Millennium Three. I drew up a manifesto. From now on, no traps or snares. No fear of the inexplicable.

  I left my life in Paris and came to Berlin. It was that easy.

  I was in search of other free spirits. I found them late at night on the trains. Artists of one kind or another. Not the kind who puts pen to paper, though some did. Not painters or sculptors or filmmakers. I met a new kind of artist whose medium was not language or paint or film…but their lives. Anarchists. Some. Yes, why not? Late at night on the trains we found one another. We agreed on certain principles. One, borders are inherently evil. They create awareness of difference. We talked long into the night about the kind of difference we would tolerate. On the one hand, you see, we embraced indifference. On the other we abhorred the state-inspired delineations and definitions of difference. Borders. Citizenship. Rich. Poor. Entitlement. We forged political liaisons with other underground groups. The more radical were low-profile. By definition they could not be organised. Their spark was spontaneity. Our movements ignited into magnificent explosions of our ideas and values that showered down upon the sleepy roofs across Berlin. The idea was that the city would wake up feeling changed but not know how.

  Well, some were unhappy with this chosen invisibility. These ones exposed themselves by their demands, their cravings. They wanted notoriety. Presence. Headlines. Fame. They wanted to be talked about. The model was the FFF (Fuck the Fucking Fuckers). The FFF, in our view, were not truly anarchistic. They took part in May Day parades. They sold T-shirts and mugs. They marched under banners. In other words, they lived in their narrow strip of floorboard and in their small rooms huddled up to tiny windows dreaming of becoming what they were not. We decided to split. After that we stayed in the east and they went to the train routes in Mitte and pussy areas like Prenzlauer Berg.

  When I first saw her I was on a train. Naturally. It was at night, in May. May? If not, early June. No, I think this is incorrect. The evenings were still crisp. I will say May. On the platform people stood by themselves, collars turned up. Occupying their holes in the night air. Is that an expression? I think Rilke would accept it. So. The train sweeps in and gathers up the crowd, and then it is like a sleeping sickness: the train sways, the people sway and nod off like babies in their cribs. Crib. Bassinet. Same thing. It is all the same word. The head of a sleeping man fell against her and she got up and moved to the standing area by the doors. But for that sleeping man’s head I might not have noticed her, but for that acorn, that apple…I would not have looked up from my own sleeping sickness and moved my knees for her to get past.

  We are drawing into the next station when a ticket inspector enters our carriage. There is, as always, a rise of tension. I get up to make my move, and that’s when I see the black woman making her way to the next carriage…and I know. Many get on the train without a ticket, especially late at night. This morning, for example, there was a stampede. I looked up from my stolen newspaper. It was a Chinese woman. She ran down the carriage. She looked like she was fleeing fire or the Japanese. The ticket collector calmly followed. He looked prepared to let her get away. I have seen young girls sitting with their knees pressed together, their heads lowered in shame, some in tears. I’ve seen so many escorted of
f the train. Tourists, as well, looking baffled and enraged. I can usually see at a glance who has a ticket. Who does not. But this woman…

  She is dressed in a smart blue coat. Very stylish. Italian design. Her face has an earned dignity. I would not have picked her. In the next carriage I find her near the doors, a nervousness twitching in her now. Standing right behind a tall, thin guy with his eyes closed. So, she is not alone. At Alexanderplatz we all dash out. In the crowd and in the rush she drops something. I’m the one following up behind so I pick it up, a plastic bag which I hand to her. She snatched it back. Snatched is a word? Then, realising I am not a thief, she managed a ‘thank you’. And with it an ease crosses her face as if to make an adjustment from the moment of accusation just a second ago. I am used to these corrections. My customers always see a thief, an opportunist, before they see the helpful tradesman that I consider myself to be, a fixer of souls, a mood regulator, all of which I achieve with the proper exchange of goods and services.

  Now. Why? I don’t know. Even now I cannot say why. It just erupts from me. I tell her, My name is Bernard. For eighteen months I have been Millennium Three. I have not used the name Bernard once. Why? Why just then, at that moment? Inexplicable? Yes. I think so. It is a confusing moment. And there we stand, facing one another, as if there should be more, that something else should quite naturally flow from this encounter. The other passengers have pushed past us, the train has left, and now quite naturally we walk together to the top of the escalators. Nothing is said. Yet we are in step. We come out of the station to the plaza. There is a number of wurst stands. I am not hungry. I am rarely hungry. Hunger is just a physical fact. If you cannot move beyond it then you cannot hope to live as we do. But you see, at that moment, the Bernard of Parisian existence has emerged from the rubble of my new being. Bernard knows what to do in a way that Millennium Three has forgotten. He—that is I, of course—he asks if she would like a wurst. To my surprise—Millennium’s, that is—she agrees. She ate two. While she is eating I manage to get a proper look at her. It’s clear she has nowhere to sleep. No roof or bed. She has just got off a train from somewhere and is new to the city. So the next thing is very obvious really. I take her under my wing. Again, nothing is said or proposed. It just happens, like the weather.

  We leave the wurst stand, wait for a tram to crawl by, cross the tracks to the station, climb more escalators. A two-minute wait on the platform during which time nothing is said, nor is there a chance to feel the cold; then the usual carriage smell of coats, beer, ash. We are on the S-Bahn heading to the east of the city. At Warschauer we get off the train and I lead her into my neighbourhood, if I can claim any as my own. Actually, this happens to be an FFF neighbourhood. But those of us who eschew the narrow floorboard have settled a spacious abandoned warehouse. This neighbourhood and the one of cobbles, trees and cafes is connected by a hole in a long wall. I show her where, and lead her through the darkness, past the fires.

  I must admit it is nice to have someone’s company. Someone to lie beneath the night with. I have a mattress and a pillow. I build a small fire. I still have a bottle of Grand Marnier given to me by a grateful woman who had wept at Rilke’s poem ‘Loneliness’. She also gave me some euros. As you know I insist on proper exchange of goods and services. The Grand Marnier was a gift.

  At last I have a name. Ines.

  Ines does not want to drink. She is tired. She just wants to lie down. I make sure she has the good side. I take the lumpy side. I give her the pillow but not before I slip it inside a clean T-shirt that I stole from the Turkish market that morning. It is red and has the Turkish crest.

  In the morning I wake to find her still there. Her African face looks beautiful against the Turkish red.

  I am surprised. But only for that moment. Then I am surprised that I am surprised. Why not? Why wouldn’t she be there? I slip outside for a pee. The fires have burnt down. Across the landscape people are sleeping. A woman wriggles out of a sleeping bag. It is like watching a caterpillar emerge from its cocoon. She is naked, and as she squats her dark pubis spreads. Behind her, sleepy young men stand around peeing carelessly. As I am peeing I realise I’m happy. Which is interesting. Very interesting to me. Because if I am happy at that particular moment, what was I before this woman arrived in my life? Briefly I reconsider my entire philosophy and political liaisons—but only while I am peeing. The crisis soon passes. The moment I do up my trouser buttons all is forgotten, all that questioning, and I return to the inexplicable arrival of this woman into my life and these new inexplicable feelings.

  For the next eight days we are together. There is no sex. At night, when we lie down together, she will allow my hand to rest on her hip. Sometimes she will talk in her sleep. I listen carefully. But it is in a language that I don’t know. We have to speak in English. She has three French words. Bonjour and merci beaucoup. She manages them quite naturally, unlike English people, who after uttering these words stand there beaming as if they require a medal to be pinned to their lapel.

  For those eight days we are together almost twenty-four hours a day. Except for two hours every afternoon when she leaves me. I don’t know where she goes or what she does. Once I tried to come along. She told me—No—she must go alone. She did not explicitly tell me not to follow. And I don’t, don’t even consider doing so, until she arrives back from these journeys in a state. The first time I can see she has been crying. She refuses to say why. Then, another time when she is late arriving back I find her sitting by the wall and sobbing; her face is in her hands. She refuses to take her hands away. She will not let me into her misery.

  So, is her mysterious journey for a liaison? I thought, well, that is her right, in which case I should not be following, but I do. I follow her along the tramlines, down side streets, onto another and another, through the maze of Kreuzberg until we end up at the canal. There is a cycle path, some trees. There’s a wurst stand on the corner where the traffic comes off the little bridge.

  I stay back on the other side of the canal. I am close enough. I can see perfectly well. Ines is standing beneath the trees gazing up at a third-floor window. Inexplicable? Yes. A mystery. A complete mystery. Of course I want to find out. I must. This is our nature. We do not walk away from mystery. We are drawn to it like moths. Time passes. Half an hour. Five minutes. It is all the same. Then, as I am watching, a man emerges from the building. A black man. Well dressed. A white satiny buttoned-down shirt. Dark trousers. Expensive-looking shoes. He walks briskly across the cobbles to where my Ines is beneath the trees. For the next few minutes they talk. The man is very animated. Well, I would say angry. He towers over her, trying to intimidate her. But at the same time he is not comfortable with the situation because he keeps looking up the street, both ways—he is afraid of being seen.

  Ines is also a bit animated. More so than I have ever seen her. She has to talk up to him; he is tall. Now they are both talking. Both of them talking over the top of one another. When she begins to beat her fists against his chest he doesn’t move away. If anything he moves a little closer, looks up the street, down the other way. He gives her a shove. The force causes her to step backwards. Then she comes forward beating her fists against him. Now I can hear her, a faint cry above the traffic.

  On the third floor a window is raised. Something is shouted down at the street. Then the sash is dropped. That all happens in such a hurry that after I can’t recall if I actually saw anyone at that window. When I look back at the two figures under the trees he is hitting her. I don’t stop to think. If I did it would have been to remind myself to remove myself from my own narrow board of existence. I am not a fighter. I am a poet. Well, a poet-thief. But there I am running across the bridge, across the traffic. I am running, and then I am flying like a bird, a thin under-fed eagle, and I crash against his shoulder and send him sprawling to the ground with me on top of him. I hit him on the side of his head. He tries to bite my hand. I knee him in the balls. He sticks his thumb in my eye. I grab
his ear and twist it until he squeals like a piglet. Then I hit him in his mouth. Again and again. Then he hits me in the temple until, my God, the bells are ringing in my head, all the bells in Paris and across Germany are ringing in my head. Then I remember. I am not in Notre Dame. I am not in the Berliner Dom. I remember to hit him. He tries to get up. This is something which I must prevent. If he is allowed to get up he will hit Ines. So I drag him down to the ground and we roll under the trees over the dirt and the dog shit. We claw at each other. He is trying to press his thumb into my eye again. I punch his nose and his mouth until he removes his thumb. He grabs my hair and pulls and twists. I hit his nose, and knee him in the balls again, and we roll over more dog shit. I am suddenly aware of a cycle wheel and another and another. A party of cyclists has stopped to watch. By now I am out of breath. My enemy is also panting. We hit one another when we remember to, or when one of us has found the extra energy from somewhere.

  Then a woman begins yelling. A black woman. Not Ines. The man rolls away from me. This woman is yelling at him and at me, but with me her voice changes pitch. I am a dog she has pulled off her prize pedigree. She would like to shoo me away, chase me off with a stick, that is, until the man, my enemy, holds up a hand to silence her. There is a thin line of blood trickling from one nostril which I am unwholesomely thrilled about. There is dirt on one cheek. His expensive shirt is torn, which I am also very happy about. I wonder what Ines will make of this, what she will say.