Tomorrow Berlin

by Oscar Coop-Phane

  At the airport he kissed his sister and little Lucas, who was in floods of tears.

  As he went towards the security gate, he thought about his new life. But almost at once a feeling overtook him; he was doomed and he would carry that with him whatever he did.

  VIII

  Armand liked Emma’s intelligence because of the particular feeling it gave him; he couldn’t bluff with her, she understood him, she always would. But after a while, he no longer felt flattered by her intelligence. Emma understood him; she understood him too well. She had grasped him as a whole, he was a whole without mystery. She could spot his little lies immediately, his little embroidered lies that reshape stories in the telling, to make them funnier or stranger. What annoyed Armand was not that Emma no longer held any mystery for him, he hadn’t noticed that. What annoyed him more, though he couldn’t have put it into words, was feeling entirely understood, no longer seeing her eyes shining with admiration when he told her a story. She couldn’t be his fan any more since she had understood him. Armand felt hollow, like a man without secrets, an empty man.

  He was smoking a cigarette in a bar when he met Louise. It was a huge pleasure to be able to refashion his character. She was beautiful; she had that rare unselfconscious beauty. She looked at him wide-eyed, as though she wanted to touch him. Armand existed again. Louise was a fan of the character he thought he was.

  Without saying goodbye, he left Emma; he went with Louise to the Greek islands, where moist bodies take pleasure in intertwining.

  He was proud of Louise’s beauty, since he possessed it, and the men around her couldn’t take their eyes off her.

  When they got back to Paris, Louise rode around on the back of his scooter as Emma had done, but he didn’t think about her, because he was absorbed by pretty Louise. At least she didn’t understand him yet.

  Then Louise went back to her country and Armand found a little room on rue Oberkampf. He’d given up his studies to devote himself to painting. He thought that would only last a year.

  IX

  Franz met Martha. Martha Krüll, a pastor’s daughter. She was a year older than him, blonde, and her face possessed the radiance which Katherine’s had lost. Grace, that was it, Martha had inner grace. Venus-like, she passed though life as though it were a quest for purity. He was under the arcades of the overhead metro track, when he saw her go by and immediately grasped her appeal. She was on her own, without any obvious destination. Instinctively, he followed her for a while, without considering the consequences. The closer he got to her, the more he felt the grace that emanated from her, as though it had entered his heart.

  He approached her awkwardly. Martha could have ignored him or called him a lout, but she looked at Franz and saw in him what she had long been looking for: a good, sincere man, lost perhaps, but life-saving. A decent man standing in front of her under the girders of the overhead metro track.

  ‘I saw you go by and followed you. It’s uncivilised, maybe, but I had to. We have something in common. I feel it, I’m sure of it. I’d like to see you again. Will you give me your number?’

  ‘My diary’s full of numbers. They’re piling up. What are you doing tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow? I don’t know. It’s Saturday. I don’t know.’

  ‘We can meet back here if you like. At three. We can go to a café. I’m Martha. Martha Krüll.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Martha. See you tomorrow.’

  He went off. What an idiot, he thought, I didn’t even tell her my name. He turned round to go after her, but she had already gone.

  Never mind. He’d make up for it tomorrow. Oh Martha, Martha. He treasured her name as if he were already able to love her.

  Martha. Martha Krüll. What an idiot he’d been not to tell her his. Franz. Franz Riepler. Nothing to be ashamed of.

  They met again at three the following day. Franz hadn’t brought flowers. That wasn’t his style. But then it wasn’t his style to accost girls in the street. But here he was, ready to love her, and isn’t that better than pulling up some plants?

  They went to one of those cafés you find everywhere in Germany, well-heated, with armchairs and low tables with ashtrays on them. The kind of place where you linger for several hours. In Berlin there aren’t cafés you just drop in to; if you’re in a hurry, you drink your coffee from a paper cup as you go.

  The conversation took off. There was something obviously right about being there, ensconced in the velvet armchairs, face to face. Franz and Martha understood each other in a way that few people can.

  There was a sequence of these café visits, and then came the pleasures of the flesh, with the same sense of rightness, the same simplicity.

  Martha slept at Franz’s. Gradually she left her things there, then stayed there all the time, to feel closer to him. Franz was still working at Günther and Co. A serious guy, that’s what they said about him. But his life began in the evening when he was back with pretty Martha. Martha with her honey-coloured eyes, her pale skin, her radiant face.

  Their love became platonic, but still they felt satisfied.

  It lasted two years, and then it was as though the system broke down. They disentangled themselves and decided to go their separate ways. Martha went back to her father, Pastor Krüll. Franz went as far away as he could, all the way to Mexico.

  X

  Schönefeld Airport seemed very strange to Tobias. He understood the words on the signs, but they resonated subconsciously, like a language he had forgotten.

  He took the S-Bahn and then the U-Bahn – ah, so that’s what they call the metro! Zazie in the U-Bahn doesn’t have such a ring to it.

  He had to report to the office where he was going to work – that was the priority; his sister had given him some money, but it wouldn’t last long – once again, he needed to earn his living. What a strange expression that seems when you’re sad, when your soul wants to wander and your body is sick.

  On the U-Bahn the passengers’ faces were different – it was subtle rather than striking, but he felt in the depths of his being that he was no longer at home. It’s not just what you see, of course; what you hear doesn’t have meaning for you either, so you look and listen like a naturalist. The three notes of the closing train doors sound like a melody. You don’t understand that the train is about to depart; it’s different from the metro. He checks the stations as he goes. Ah, they’ve put maps on the ceiling, there’s an idea, very practical. Plätenwald, Treptower Park, Ostkreuz. Yes, change at Ostkreuz and then take the U6 line to Alexanderplatz. Alexanderplatz, that was what the boss said in his letter. The translation bureau is impossible to miss; it’s at the bottom of the TV tower opposite McDonald’s. What does this TV tower look like? It seems it’s completely straight, like a cock that’s been stuck on the city. Ah, we’re coming out of the tunnels. The sky’s so grey here. No sun or clouds. And buildings, so shiny and low! It’s a far cry from Baron Haussmann’s embellishments. Everything looks like it has a use. It’s sad all the same, a city where everything is useful. What about poetry, where do they put that? Maybe they’ve made little parking lots for sonnets and hangars and factories for ballads.

  The S-Bahn train follows its route, a succession of waste ground, industrial units and a scattering of apartment blocks. At least they don’t seem short of space. There’s something galactic in the air. It’s not a city to stroll around. But what is he going to do, since the only thing he likes is walking? Maybe it’s not all like this; after all, this is the route from the airport – he’s still a long way from the city centre. No, hold on, here’s Ostkreuz on the map. So this is it, he is in the heart of Berlin! So where are the shops and the workers, the scooters and the bakeries? People here look like they do as they’re told. Sometimes they go for a walk in a car park full of poetry.

  Charm is what Tobias is after. Soon he’ll discover that here beauty is to be found among people and the way they live, and not as in Paris on facades and on the pavements.

  ‘Hello, I’m T
obias Kent. I’ve got an appointment with Mr Peter.’

  ‘Wait here, I’ll let him know.’

  Tobias waited in a little dark room, like a dentist’s waiting room with four regularly spaced chairs – no danger of your arm brushing against your neighbour’s – a glass-topped coffee table and of course piles of magazines – news, sport, women’s fashion – humanity divided into three categories. Like in Paris, you are either a woman, a sportsman or a man of the world. So what should Tobias read?

  ‘Mr Kent? Christian Peter will see you now.’

  Tobias got up, thinking about his new life.

  He had to translate instruction manuals into English, German and French. It wasn’t too badly paid – from Monday to Friday, eight till five with a lunch break.

  A life of spewing out copy; this was new to Tobias. But it would enable him to live – apparently that comes at a price. This would be his, from Monday to Friday, eight till five, with a lunch break.

  Tobias would have a small wooden desk with a shiny top. Mr Peter was insignificant, and nothing need be said of the secretary.

  Christian Peter could put a studio flat ‘at Tobias’s disposal’, as he put it. The rent would be deducted from his salary.

  Tobias took the flat. It wasn’t too far from the office; U2 from Alexanderplatz to Schönhauser Allee. There was also a tram, as Tobias would discover later. The underground is reassuring when you don’t know a city – all undergrounds are alike, there’s no scenery.

  At the exit from the U-Bahn, there was a big shopping centre unlike anything in Paris. The people seemed to be strolling around or drinking coffee from cardboard cups. A bit of bustle outside the shopping centre, someone selling Wurst, workers waiting for the tram, and then on the left, 72d, the building where he was going to live. It looked more like the kind of suburban block that has a fancy name; at number 72 there were four blocks which shared a courtyard full of bikes, 72a, 72b, 72c, 72d.

  Tobias took his little bag up to the first floor. One of those typical Berlin staircases with a big wooden handrail and lino-covered floor – a plasticky smell and the warmth of the building. You sense the winters here are hard, people are used to protecting themselves.

  The apartment was comfortable. Tobias would sort it out, construct what he liked to think of as a little nest, a shelter from other people, from their smell and their failures. Here Tobias would cook and read – he would live alone, and have nothing to do with sex bars and drugs. He was sick of them. It would be good to be a new man, a man with an ordinary face. He wanted to open up a little path for himself, only for himself, without detours and misunderstandings. He was hoping for a nice middle-class life. He didn’t want to feel ashamed any more when he took the underground in the morning; he would go to work, no thoughts in his head. He wanted to melt into the little world around him. Peace. He wanted to live like other people.

  XI

  Armand enjoyed striking an attitude: alone, melancholy and devoted to his painting. He smoked roll-ups and cherished his feeling of restlessness as the only thing that couldn’t be taken away from him. He crumbled cheap resin in the palm of his hand and thought about his woes as he listened to singers with gravelly voices. He hung around in cafés, scribbling a few sketches in a moleskin notebook. He tried to catch girls’ eyes and look proud of his solitude. There were always men around but he didn’t talk to them, so he felt this artificial solitude permanently assailing him from outside. He thought about it and displayed it like a conquest. He portrayed himself as withdrawn from the world, a lonely, hungry painter.

  Autumn arrived and soon it was November, the most beautiful month for melancholia. As a result of displaying his sadness, Armand came to believe in it. He lost his sense of humour.

  During the day he worked as a supervisor in a high school, and in the evenings, since he was no longer painting, he drank beer and smoked weed.

  He watched himself walk, so he thought, the solitary path of his destiny.

  But he wasn’t really so isolated; he’d go walking with his old friends, the fraternity he’d chosen, and they’d all smoke cheap resin and talk about their melancholia and the imaginary woman they’d like to fall in love with.

  The little band of lost boys met at Armand’s place or in a bar, to smoke or drink, to do something, to talk, have a laugh.

  At first, Armand enjoyed these affectations of despairing youth, but he quickly came to believe them to such an extent that they became banal. He wanted to escape them but couldn’t, the habit had got under his skin.

  He read all day at his job at the school. Mid-century authors who, like him, had just one obsession: finding a place in the world, a role to play in life. He discovered Bove, Calet, Dabit and Hyvernaud, Guérin and Calaferte. But he loved Charles-Louis Philippe more than them all. Then, he imagined himself contracting syphilis at the start of last century – it was certainly classier than AIDS – falling for a tart from the boulevard Sébastopol, living a bohemian life in a brothel, as a small-time dealer in vague artistic desires. He felt nostalgic for an era he’d never known; he envied that type of poverty for being much more romantic than his little part-time job in a Catholic high school.

  Yes, he worked in a Catholic high school; the ultimate anarcho-betrayal, a religious institution of the state that was authoritarian and repressive. But it earned him some money and all he did was read and smoke.

  Sometimes he painted. Then he felt the return of the strength he’d been lacking. It would make him forget, stop him watching himself living. His thoughts exploded. Hunched over his canvases, he used his brush as though he were jabbing a wall – he was living for himself at last. He forgot his pose and found his inner self, so close to his gut that he could smell his own shit. He spewed forth his judgement.

  From time to time, he screwed a pick-up from the bar. And then he felt calmer for a few days.

  It was in mid-winter that Emma’s shadow came to haunt his vision. She cast a veil over his eyes, the pretty Dunhill blonde. Since he was tired of envying periods of history he had never known, he returned to his own past.

  He’d been so happy when he was in love with her! He understood now that he wasn’t made to be alone. He needed to be entwined with a woman, specifically Emma.

  He thought about seeing her again, but didn’t call. Perhaps he was ashamed of his cowardice, of how he’d left her. When things went on too long, he couldn’t stop himself running away. He could have thought ‘fuck it’, but the memories of the mean things he’d done hit him like a big block of guilt.

  He was ashamed, his body felt sick. To get rid of it, he ran away again.

  XII

  Franz drank a lot in Mexico. And there were joints, crappy dancing, nights when you tried to forget yourself. There were conquests in bars, and then it was time to go home; the date printed on the plane ticket had come round already.

  When he got back, he had an irresistible urge to see Martha. You don’t forget a woman you have loved after just a few glasses of warm beer.

  The pastor was away, so Franz was able to visit Martha at home. He was touched by the sight of her childhood room, her serious soft toys, the little bed where she’d had her nightmares. They made love, hurriedly, as a sort of way of saying goodbye. Then Franz went back to his apartment, his life as a single man, the Günther and Co. files, the second-hand books, the whole thing.

  Mexico had left a taste for adventure at the back of his throat. He wanted to resume his studies, fashion design, a school in Paris. His application was accepted; in two months he’d be off.

  The plan was perfect. Escape. Except Franz had forgotten destiny, the old enemy who grabs you by the shoulder. Martha was pregnant. She wanted to keep this child, Franz’s child. Martha, Martha Krüll, the pastor’s daughter, would not have an abortion; that was out of the question.

  XIII

  For the first time, Tobias had arrived in a new city alone. He knew no one; he couldn’t use his mother’s or sister’s apartment as an anchor. There was on
ly 72d on Schönhauser Allee, a little impersonal one-bedroom place, a testament to his solitude. But because he was truly alone, because the faces around him did not look at him, he didn’t experience it like that.

  The simplest things had a particular appeal because he was doing them for the first time. His disorientation kept him busy. He didn’t know what to buy in the supermarket; he didn’t know what to do with underground tickets. It was as though he were a stranger to the pact with the city; he had to discover its customs. So he walked around, eyes wide open, trying to understand, to blend into indifference. He developed a little repertoire of the ways things were done; people here didn’t cross when the red man was on or walk on cycle paths.

  He rediscovered the language of his childhood more easily than he expected.

  When he wasn’t working, he walked the streets and travelled the tunnels of the U-Bahn. He visited museums and monuments. Occasionally he went to the cinema.

  He loved being in this state of discovery. He walked instinctively since he needed to understand, and above all create new habits. Maybe that’s why he started smoking again, so that he could go to the same kiosk every day, and the old Turkish man who ran it would reach for the packet of Blue Nile from behind him without Tobias even asking.

  He didn’t worry about running into friends or lovers; he wanted to make a life for himself as a solitary man with his work, his cigarettes, his supermarket.