by S J Naudé
Etienne opens his West Berlin u-Bahn map. Now he knows where to go. A café that Axel once mentioned in London as one of his hang-outs when he lived in Berlin: Anderes Ufer. The other shore. Where better to start his search? He has one photograph. It is in his pocket; his hand is resting on the little square of the Polaroid right now. Taken by a squatter at Axel’s exhibition of dead Victorian boys. Axel’s face is turned sideways, out of focus. There is a crowd in the background. He has a rare smile on his face.
At Mehringdamm Etienne changes trains; at Kleistpark station he gets off. He finds the small café, sits down, orders a beer. When the waiter brings it, he shows him the photo.
‘Someone you know? Or have seen around?’
The waiter, thin with a blond fringe and oily skin, takes it and studies it. ‘Yes,’ he says nonchalantly. ‘Everyone knows who this is. Axel.’ Etienne’s blood starts fizzing, his temples pulsating. The first person in this entire city to whom he shows the photo. And he recognises him!
He sits up, places a hand on the waiter’s arm. ‘Where is he? Has he been here recently?’
The waiter shakes his head, hands back the photo. His arms are too long for his body. ‘He’s living in London now. But I remember him from the old days. Many people know him in the night spots. Especially the gay places. He came back to Berlin a few times for visits. Sometimes hung out here—’
‘But he’s back here. He’s returned. And then disappeared. Surely he’d be visiting the old places again . . . ?’
‘The old places . . .’ the man repeats slowly, then shakes his head. ‘He’s not here. People would’ve known.’
‘Who would’ve known? Tell me more about his life here, about his friends. Please. I’m looking for him.’ Etienne’s hand grips the waiter’s wrist. ‘He is my . . .’
‘Your what?’ He extracts his wrist, places a slender hand next to Etienne’s elbow on the table. There is something elastic about the man. And Etienne’s anxiety is awakening something in him: his camel’s eyes are changing into those of a predator.
Etienne shakes his head. ‘I have to find him.’ He is trying to sound composed, but his urgency is impossible to hide.
The waiter raises his hand in camp defence. ‘I don’t know much about him, dear. He’s a wild one, that much I can tell you. Hasn’t been in this place in about two or three years. Will let you know if he shows his face.’ He tucks his fringe behind his ear. ‘Try some other places. Tom’s Bar, for instance. Or the clubs.’ He winks. ‘There are other places, of course, of which few people know . . .’
‘Which places?’ But the waiter is done with Etienne; he is looking at the bar counter, where orders are being prepared. ‘Wait, I’ll give you an address. In case you hear – or remember – something.’ Etienne writes down his Prenzlauer Berg address on a napkin. The man takes it like a feather with his fingers. He looks uncomprehendingly at the East Berlin address, then down at Etienne’s shoes. He pushes out his chin and walks away. Etienne is sure the man knows more than he is letting on. His urge is to follow him to the kitchen and bombard him with questions. To press his pale narrow hand against a hot stove.
Etienne stays, orders more beer. And then another. A different waiter is serving him now. He keeps showing the photo to people coming and going at tables around him. Everyone shakes their heads. No one recognises Axel. The dour-faced responses discourage Etienne. Just as he is getting up, and paying his bill, three men about his own age sit down at the table next to him.
He leans over for the last time. ‘Entschuldigung,’ he says. ‘Do any of you know him?’ He holds out the photograph.
Three pairs of eyes sparkle; muscles stir. One of them takes the photo, puts it down on their table. They study it with intense concentration, heads together. They look up simultaneously. ‘No,’ the first one says. The other two shake their heads. ‘Never seen him.’ Etienne gets up to leave, reaches for the photo.
‘I’m Matthias,’ the first one says.
‘Christof.’
‘Frederick.’
‘I’m Etienne.’
They shake his hand in turn.
‘We’re in a band,’ Frederick says. He presses the photo into Etienne’s palm. His own hand is large and wide, out of proportion to his muscled, compact body. Just like in London, Etienne thinks – everybody is in some sort of band. He knows the scenario well by now: almost without exception, seriousness and enthusiasm far exceed talent. He sits down again, looks sceptically at the three of them.
‘It’s my first time here. I’ve just arrived in West Berlin,’ Etienne says when they keep looking at him in silence. All three of them have dark, thick hair. Matthias’s eyebrows meet in the middle, Christof is lean, with a scar on his neck. Frederick is a head-length shorter, his eyes sky blue.
‘It’s an institution,’ Matthias says, ‘this place. The first gay bar in the city. It came to Berlin at the same time as good music, the gay—’
Christof sits forward, cuts Matthias off. ‘Yes, when Bowie and Iggy Pop came here in the late ’70s, the city was a desert – for music, gay stuff, all of it. A really drab place—’
‘How do you know? Weren’t you too young back then?’
‘My father told me . . .’ Christof looks sheepish. Etienne regrets interrupting him.
Frederick jumps in: ‘As Christof says, in the ’70s the real music was in Cologne and Düsseldorf. In Berlin it was all Kraut-rock and ambient electronics. Then Bowie arrived in ’76. And everything changed. In ’77 we got pvc, the first Berlin punk band, and not long after that so36, our punk club, opened. And then Anderes Ufer . . .’
Frederick orders four beers. Etienne looks from one to the other. They could have been three television comedians. But they are deadly serious while bubbling over with arbitrary and unsolicited information. He likes them.
Matthias again, now: ‘Our fathers were all in bands. Didn’t have much success. Still doing local gigs, though.’ He points to the other two. ‘We all grew up here in Kreuzberg. Our fathers were in the same bands at times. But their music . . . All Krautstuff . . .’
Frederick pulls a face. Christof slaps a faux-embarrassed palm over his eyes. ‘Yes, Berlin was a dreary place before Bowie came, I tell you. Decaying old buildings, and even worse, those drab blocks that appeared overnight in the ’50s and ’60s—’
Frederick sits up, his shoulders taut and dense with muscle. He cuts in again: ‘After Bowie a whole bunch of good bands came on the scene: Salomé’s Geile Tiere, for instance. And Malaria!, an all-female band—’
‘And Einstürzende Neubauten, of course,’ Matthias says. ‘No one had wanted to sing in German. Then they started singing nothing but German.’ He swigs beer, wipes the foam from his mouth. ‘So do we. Only German.’
Frederick: ‘Yes, Berlin is now a kick-ass place. Where everything happens. You’ll like it.’
They sit there in a row. Silent now, waiting.
‘I was in a band too,’ Etienne says tentatively. ‘In South Africa.’ Why he finds it easier to mention South Africa here in the two halves of Berlin, he doesn’t know. ‘American Rock. mor stuff. There we thought it was revolutionary, subversive. The most radical music people there could imagine was Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen. Or Tom Waits.’
The three faces in front of him simultaneously turn sour.
‘Pretentious hetero dreck,’ Frederick says and shakes his head. The other two nod.
They are like three early-morning birds on a branch, their hands and faces as agile as quicksilver.
‘I would guess you’re a guitarist,’ Christof pipes up. His neck scar moves along with the muscles.
‘Or a vocalist,’ Matthias adds.
Frederick isn’t far behind. ‘No. Definitely percussion.’
Etienne nods in Frederick’s direction.
They look excitedly at each other. ‘I don’t believe it,’ Matthias s
ays. ‘How fucking long have we been searching for a decent drummer!’
‘Our new band doesn’t have a name yet – for a while we were all in different bands. But things are on the verge of happening,’ Christof says.
Frederick looks right through Etienne with his bright blue eyes. ‘On the verge, yes.’ Frederick quickly glances at the other two, turns his gaze back to Etienne. ‘How about auditioning with us?’
Etienne takes a slow mouthful of beer. ‘What? Now?’ This kind of ritual he knows from his London days too. All the bands are constantly searching: for vocalists, guitarists, drummers, audiences . . . Everybody is always joining a band, or leaving one. Growing closer to, or apart from, their fellow musicians. Developing their style, finding their sound. Trying to track down a soul who can feel their vibrations, or getting rid of someone who is slipping out of synch.
Matthias nods. ‘Why not?’
‘Yes,’ Christof says. ‘We have a sound studio in Kreuzberg.’
‘Sort of a studio,’ Matthias says.
‘Well, I can’t, I’m afraid. My drums are still in London . . .’ He had never picked up his drums at Patrick’s in the Square. When Etienne left for Germany, Patrick undertook solemnly to look after them. Whether the drum kit – and Patrick himself – is still there in the Square is an open question. ‘And I live in the East.’ Etienne quickly adds: ‘But because I’m an exchange student, I can come and go as I wish.’
Frederick shakes his head, eyes closed. His index fingers and thumbs are moving as if drumming. ‘We have everything you need. And we don’t care where you live.’
Matthias calls the waiter, pays for the beers, which they haven’t finished. Etienne stands around for a few moments, wondering whether they are taking the piss. Are they planning to rob him? Surely only swindlers can make you feel comfortable so quickly. Then he gets into a taxi with them, all four of them in the back like sardines. They head to Kreuzberg.
Etienne misses his drums. He didn’t want to keep them in the Bermondsey Street house. After Axel left, the house was claimed by his erstwhile disciples. And the elements. Anyone felt free to come and party or stay there, whether for a night or weeks on end. At some point, the back door disappeared, some window frames were removed. The worst of winter was over, but spring was cold too. Towards the end, the tin bath in the kitchen had gone, so too the banister. People would smoke and listen to music in the attic; beer bottles were flung from the roof. One evening, when Etienne was sitting up there among strangers, a girl asked him: ‘Who are you? Where do you live?’ He didn’t have an answer.
As he looks at the West Berlin streets through the taxi window, he remembers how impatient he was for the last few months of his London studies to be over. He found out from cosawr that he would be able to get asylum status in Germany too; he could, it turns out, have accompanied Axel. Even so, he had only his scholarship money to support himself. And that was dependent on his studies. He was trapped in London. There was a deep grief about Axel in his bones. The streets of London felt more desolate than ever . . .
The taxi drops them in a street with a row of bars. Oranienstrasse, he reads on a sign. They enter a courtyard through a rusty gate. Unlike in East Berlin, where there isn’t so much as a paint mark on any building, the graffiti has built up on these walls in dense layers. There are also corroded pipes, through which gas or steam must have been pumped once. Piles of rubble in the corners, grass pushing up through the paving.
They walk through a tiled corridor, past yet another courtyard, to an abandoned factory space with glass panels in the roof. In the middle there is a collection of instruments, both traditional and improvised. Pipes, an oil drum. Iron rods that look like sections of a train track. Parts of a lorry or locomotive engine. An anvil sits in a container filled with old motor oil. They take their places, the quasi-triplets. Etienne looks on. Matthias is the vocalist, Christof the guitarist, Frederick on the synthesiser. When they start playing, the main influence is instantly apparent: Einstürzende Neubauten. Etienne knows the band; his neighbour in the Square who used to weld iron sculptures was a fan.
Etienne is touched by their utter seriousness, the absolute intensity. Imitative nevertheless, he thinks, without the brutal charisma or the concentrated menace of the original. They stop, look enquiringly at Etienne. ‘We’re a bit stiff,’ Frederick says. ‘Things will warm up.’ Etienne approaches, his footsteps hollow against the bare walls, and sits down at the drums. He taps with his stick on a drum, then lets go. He is out of practice, and the drums are not the same quality as his own. He tests the pipes and rods. The oil drum, an engine block.
The others join in. They look at each other. They improvise, they jam. Then all four of them cease playing at virtually the same moment. Etienne rests a hand on the cymbals, dampening the resonance. The sound lingers, then fades into the concrete, like a dying factory siren.
The three of them look needily at Etienne. In this light Frederick’s eyes are more grey than blue. ‘What do you think?’ he asks. ‘Would you like to make us a foursome?’
‘Shall we start a shockwave?’ Christof asks.
‘Turn it all around? Make everything new?’
It is as if they have just auditioned for him. As if they are being tested. He is moved by these three men. Boys, really, with their hungry eyes, their bodies tensed in anticipation. Like receptive triplets, the same clear current flowing through all three of them. It feels as if they are his lovers. Or his brothers. He doesn’t believe in their music. Or not yet. But he believes in them. Why they are pulling him into their midst – with such suddenness and surrender – he has no idea.
‘Yes,’ Etienne says. ‘Everything new, all from scratch. Let’s start with the name. We’ll call ourselves Stunde Null. We’ll make music together, music that no one has ever heard before.’ Like wild children, he thinks. Like gods. Like guides in the dark.
They squirm with delight, the three dark-haired men. Frederick wipes his fringe from his face, embraces Etienne without warning. The other two hug him too. Etienne stiffens slightly; the intimacy is so unexpected. And yet so unforced. For the first time since his arrival in Germany, he feels cherished. In this dripping factory where something like bombs or helmets or boots was once manufactured. Where his new friends’ shuffling feet are echoing, where the rustling of their clothes against his own sounds louder than the music of moments ago.
Chapter 21
From the western side, Etienne takes a different route back through Friedrichstrasse – through more corridors, past more guards. He is thinking of his new band, of his conversation with them about Axel. After the audition, they made him sit down among the instruments. They wanted to know about the Polaroid photo, about the man looking out beyond the frame, laughing. He started telling them, gaining pace as he progressed: of his and Axel’s first meeting, their time together in London, the disappearance. Too much, he knew. Too fast and too easy. His growing wariness had been causing him to bottle things up. Like a true East Berliner, he had instinctively started withholding, had stopped trusting anyone with information. There in the factory, two courtyards deep from Oranienstrasse, in the face of their intensity and the echo-like silence, he opened up. It was as if he were telling a story about strangers to strangers.
When he had said all there was to say, he suddenly thought of his mother’s letters. He had brought them to Berlin. He had promised he would notify Patrick of his German address; Patrick would then forward correspondence and ship his drums. A month has passed, yet he hasn’t contacted Patrick. His mother doesn’t know he is here. Apart from Frau Drechsler, Nils and the personnel of the two film schools – and whoever monitors 72 Stargarder Strasse’s Hausbuch – no one knows where he is. He is travelling towards oblivion, becoming a swift pencil sketch, a silver shadow. Patrick is his only contact in London, and his only link with his mother. Patrick, who could himself at any moment float into the ether, drift away like mar
ijuana smoke.
Here in Friedrichstrasse’s underground labyrinth, Etienne suddenly feels light and free. And lost.
After the three West Germans had heard the story of the disappeared Axel, in an ever denser cloud of cigarette smoke, they were full of ideas. If was as if the search was their own biggest problem. Frederick promised to ask around in Tom’s Bar and other places in Motzstrasse and Kreuzberg. In so36 and also straight clubs like Park and Jungle. In cafés like Slumberland and Die Rote Harfe. The bandmates wanted to take the little Polaroid photo, but Etienne couldn’t part with it. They would pin notices on community noticeboards. And place a classified advertisement in a paper. Bild would be too expensive – rather the Berliner Morgenpost. Frederick did the writing, while Etienne dictated: ‘Missing: Axel . . .’ He stopped, remembering that he didn’t know Axel’s surname. ‘Axel from London. Etienne is urgently looking for you in Berlin. Last contact 12 December 1986 . . .’ Etienne wanted to leave money for the ad. They refused.
In the East German passport official’s little booth, there is the usual confusion about his travel document. He puts the bag of items he bought on his way to the station down by his feet without speaking. With the titre de voyage open in front of him, the guard gets instructions on the telephone. There has to be a hidden camera somewhere: it is clear the person on the phone can also see the document.
After a customs official has carefully sifted through Etienne’s shopping, he withdraws his Ostmark at the currency counter. At last he makes it across the platforms, past the barriers and counters and control points, through the tunnels and cubicles and corridors with their pale green tiles. When he counts his money outside on Georgenstrasse, Goethe and Engels are staring up from the twenty- and fifty-mark notes, past him, towards the East Berlin sky. He has to orientate himself after the maze of the station. He opens his nostrils, lets the fumes of Trabants and Wartburgs in. He listens to the trams, looks up at the sky – murkier on this side, the colour of congealed fat. Maybe, he thinks, he prefers things so dreary: here in the East graffiti is written on your guts, and you wear invisible tattoos.
