The Berlin Paradox

by Alain Xalabarde

  I can’t help but sneakily ask him if the word “Bear” means anything to him. His mouth turns into an upside down smile and he subtly shakes his head. But the subject seems to inspire him to preach yet another one of his lengthy sermons. I’ve grown accustomed to them these last couple of days. He likes to talk, and I like to listen. This time he talks about how bears have repeatedly been used in Berlin’s coat of arms for centuries. He then points out that the bear has also been an iconic symbol of Russia, dating all the way back to the 16th century. The parallelism between these two facts seems to spark his curiosity. He asks me if I was given a codename. Before I am able to shake my head as a response, he has already suggested I be called “The Bear” from now on. My heart stops for an instant, but my face does not show it. For a moment I considering suggesting a different name, but I immediately stop myself. As if afraid that I may interfere with fate.

  I ask the doctor when I’ll be able to go out and have a walk. He says I should be patient. I need to recover. He joins me in the balcony and takes out a cigarette. We both stare blankly into the grey sky.

  He shares his opinion about the aura that floats over Berlin. I don’t quite understand what he means, so he begins to illuminate me on the suffering that the city has endured and the changes it must still go through. Its people. He says there are no other people in the world like Berliners.

  We take a moment of silence to ponder on everything he’s said. He interrupts the brief instance of meditation by adding that there are more dead Berliners right now than alive ones. He remarks that it’s only a personal guess. But he does say that in times like these, dead people have almost as much influence on the future as those who are alive. I feel like it amuses him to play with my head through the use of his words. Or maybe that’s just the way he talks. Who knows.

  Out of nowhere, he asks me when was my first time in Berlin. It then occurs to me: it is now. He is a little confused by my answer. He chuckles and says that, yes, technically this is the earliest I’ve been in Berlin and therefore it could be considered the first time. So he asks me one more time, this time specifying. When in regards to my personal lifetime. I give him the same answer, but I don’t think he quite understands what I mean. He asks if this is the first time I’ve ever been here. No. Yes. I mean. I’ve been here before. I’ve been here now. He thinks I’m the one playing mind games now and simply desists. I suggest we have a walk. He takes a moment to reply. He puts out his cigarette and drops it off the balcony.

  He walks back inside and tells me I should wear something discreet.

  * * *

  We walk in a hurry. The doctor has been trying to take breaks here and there, but I keep pulling him forward. I remember the name of a bakery. A bakery I loved. It will close down in less than a year. But I remember it perfectly. It was right in front of the pension where my mom and I stayed. We would walk down there every morning for some freshly-baked pastry. Her and I are probably taking a stroll somewhere downtown right now at this very moment. I can’t remember exactly where though.

  When the doctor and I arrive to the corner, we find the bakery closed. I stand before it, looking across the street. I can clearly remember the door to the pension.

  The doctor has been speaking all this time. Philosophizing mostly. I have limited myself to nodding. But his sudden silence catches my attention. I turn to him. He is staring down at me suspiciously. He asks me if there’s something bothering me. I rather not to lie, so I choose to keep silent. He takes a moment to read my face, looks at the entrance to the pension and then suggests that, if we’re going to wait, we may as well do it sitting down at a bar right beside us.

  We sit right beside the window, where I can have a clear vision of the pension. The doctor has chosen to join my silence. He has ordered a drink, brought out his notepad and scribbled on it for the past two hours. As for myself, I’ve ordered a drink but haven’t taken a sip of it.

  Finally, I see it. I see what I’ve dreamed of seeing for years. My mother walks down towards the pension. Her face is as intricate as I remembered, with subtle features I thought I had forgotten. A stream of hot blood rushes upwards through the center of my torso. I’d like to say it feels like she’s still alive and visiting this world again, but it actually feels more as if I were the one who was dead, and I was the one visiting her instead. This timeline is dead. It doesn’t exists anymore. I am a tourist in a dead world.

  Beside her is a young boy in his late teens, holding her by the arm. He seems energetic. Full of ambition. But his head hangs low, staring at the ground. Thinking. I wish I knew what I was thinking at that moment. It’s strange. It’s me, yet I have no idea what is going through my mind at this precise moment.

  The couple enters the pension and they disappear behind the door.

  When I come to my senses I realize Dr. Vodnik has been attentively staring at me all this time. I am discomforted by his intensity. He rhetorically asks if it’s someone I know. His questions end there. He says I may need some time on my own. He understands. He asks to pay for his drink. He puts his small notebook back inside his long coat and before he leaves he reminds me not to do anything stupid.

  I am alone in the bar. The doctor has left a spare set of keys to his house on the table. It’s the first time he has shown a genuine gesture of trust.

  I take about hour to recompose myself and collect my thoughts. Eventually I get up from my seat and exit the bar. I am about to walk away when I see my mother exiting the pension. I don’t recall her going out by herself. What was I doing at this time? Maybe I was reading. I used to read a lot back then.

  She looks around nervously and strolls away with a quick pace. I adjust my scarf, trying to cover as much of my face, and follow her from a distance. This is stupid. Stupid. Just go home. But I can’t resist. I can’t resist spending one more minute near my mother. Just keep your distance. Keep your distance.

  I follow her to a nearby park. I try to stay far enough from her and blend with the scarce pedestrians in the streets. She reaches what’s left of a fountain and stands beside it. Dotted holes decorate the remaining stone that were probably once part of a beautiful monument. It’s not uncommon to find evident manifestations of the war in Berlin, even back in the sixties. All buildings and monuments are scarred with bullet holes.

  She waits impatiently. But what for? Or who for? I thought we spent the whole time together during our visit, but I obviously didn’t pay as much attention as I should have.

  Not long after, a tall figure emerges from one of the paths that lead to the ruined fountain. She turns to the stranger in fright. Her eyes are wide open, sparkling with the tears that are building up in the corners. The man wears a black hat and it’s hard to make out his face under the shadows. My mother runs to him and they embrace. The man holds her face with his black leather-gloved hands and kisses her passionately.

  My legs want to run to them and intervene, but I order myself to stay put. I mustn’t interfere. I stare in rage, channeling all my anger through my clenched fist.

  As soon as their kiss ends, my mother speaks. I haven’t heard her voice in over a year, and it soothes me immediately. But unfortunately, the sense of tranquility only lasts but a moment, until I discern what she has said. She has pronounced my father’s name.

  It can’t be. That can’t be my father. My father was dead already. How could she…? How did she never tell me about this encounter!

  The man takes his hat off and I can now clearly see him. He looks different, but he is definitely my father. There is no mistake. But he is different. Very different. His well-combed hair is all gone. In fact, it’s hard to even make out his eyebrows. He is completely hairless.

  V

  My mother has returned to the pension. I have decided to follow my alleged father instead. I waited patiently as they spoke and kissed for over an hour. I tried to avoid staring at them when they showed signs of affection, but still maintain a steady eye on them.

  I don’t know where my
father is walking. It’s as if he has no destination. Night is falling and the streets are sinking into darkness. I try to keep my distance from him, but the more scarce the light becomes, the more I’m forced to shorten the distance between him and I. I suppose the doctor must be concerned about my whereabouts, but I don’t suppose he’ll be looking for me in the streets, checking every random street. I’m sure he’ll still be at home by the time I get back. Maybe a little angrier than I’d like, but it’ll be for a good reason.

  My father turns the corner. I speed up, not wanting to lose track of him. Already I’ve almost lost him twice. He doesn’t seem to walk; he floats.

  I stick to the wall and take a peek around the corner. A hand reaches out over my neck and pulls me towards the dark shadows of a new alley. My father has me pinned against the brick wall. He pulls a knife out and jabs at my neck. I grab his arm in mid-air and stop him. I struggle against his strength - he is a lot fitter than he seems. His eyes sparkle in the dark as they scan my face. After a moment he whispers something in German that sends chills down my spine. He threatens me to stay away from him. That he doesn’t want to kill me, but that he will if he has to.

  In an unpredictable move, he knees me in the stomach. I fall to my knees, gasping for air, as he runs away. By the time I inhale my first breath, he is already far gone.

  * * *

  I didn’t tell the doctor about my encounter. I kept it to myself. In my head I kept revisiting that moment, when my father looked me straight in the eyes. I’m trying to figure out of whether he recognized me or not.

  The doctor brings me a cup of tea and recommends I don’t walk about Berlin at this late hour. After a moment he asks me about my mother. I tell him about my first trip to Berlin. About my mother. Where she was born. How she met my father. And there I tell myself to stop talking.

  He waits for a moment, then nudges me to continue talking about my father. I am hesitant to reply. Anything I say may give away what I just experienced. I don’t think it’s wise to do so. I simply tell him what I knew before tonight. I simply tell him that my mother said he was a German deserter who fought for the soviets.

  As if suspecting something, the doctor asks me where my father is now. Maybe he doesn’t suspect anything after all. Maybe I’m just being paranoid. But I do find myself confused when considering what “now” is. I suppose he means “his” now. Right now. I stutter for a moment and finally reply that he died in the war, not fully believing the words myself.

  The room falls silent for the next half hour. The doctor smokes a pipe. I am hypnotized by the smoke emanating from the beautifully carved pipe. He says he bought it from a craftsman in Poland. He corrects himself and specifies that the craftsman gave it to him. It was shortly after the war. Apparently the doctor volunteered to reconstruct a small village in Poland. He served as a medical doctor for six months before making his way to Berlin. There he met a woman. She was the wife an artisan, renowned for his whittling skills. The man was mortally wounded after the war, and his condition was only deteriorating since. The doctor spent many days at their house, taking care of the dying man. Making sure it was as painless as he could make it. During this time he got to know the wife very well. She would thank the doctor by cooking him dinner. The craftsman wasn’t able to get up from his bed, so the doctor and the wife would be the only ones having dinner at the dining room table. The relationship grew to the point where they eventually found themselves sneaking away to the basement and engaging in sexual intercourse. In silence, in secret, without the knowledge of the dying man upstairs. This became a routine and it kept going for weeks. The toughest part was making sure that their seven year old daughter wasn’t around when they had their encounters. One day - the last day, in fact - the artisan asked the doctor to close the door to his bedroom so they could speak in privacy. He asked the doctor to sit beside him and held his hand tightly. He knew. The artisan knew everything. The daughter had innocently told her father what she accidentally saw in the basement. But, to his surprise, the artisan smiled. An honest smile. He told the doctor that he was happy to know that there would be an honest man who would take care of his family after he passed away. The doctor kept silent. Too embarrassed to speak. The craftsman then asked to be left alone so he could sleep. The doctor stood up and walked out the door. With his eyes closed, and on the edge of sleep, the artisan muttered that the doctor was a good man. Those would be his last words. He would perish that very same night. Two days later the doctor was on his way to Berlin. The artisan’s wife stayed in Poland and her daughter died of pneumonia the following winter.

  Then the doctor falls silent and takes another puff from his exquisite pipe.

  I am perplexed by the story. I do not attempting to make sense of it, but I do try to make sense of why the doctor has told me such an intimate story. Maybe he feels like he owed me something, since I had shared something intimate. Maybe he just feels pity for me. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe he still thinks I’m hiding something, and this is his way of bargaining for more information. But if there’s something I am good at is keeping silent. So I do. I stare at his pipe and admire the smoke protruding out of it like a ghostly belly dancer.

  VI

  My mother and I have left Berlin today. I followed her again before we… they left. But my father never showed up again. She waited in the park yesterday, for a whole hour, but he did not return. I was tempted to walk up to her and question her. I deserved some explanations, but I would only scare her away. Besides, I’m not sure I am ready to face whatever it is she’s been hiding all these years.

  The doctor says I’m ready to travel again. We’re under the Resurrection Church. The blond, young woman is undressing me. There is nothing erotic about it, so I stop thinking about it before I unintentionally do make it erotic.

  The doctor reminds me that I still need to find the rest of the time-booths, locate the wireless energy source and, in general, collect more information so that our great nation may take advantage of this wondrous technology.

  Just like the last time, I do not know the destination. All he can assure is that it’ll be at the start of a decade. As the blond woman mentioned earlier (or later), it’s the only seeds that were easy enough to crack.

  I am naked in the booth once again. I can tell that the color of my skin is changing. It’s irregular, with some patches slightly darker than others. My body feels nauseous already, as if anticipating the inevitable.

  I breathe in hard. The door locks in front of me. I thought I’d be getting used to this, but I’m only getting more anxious with every trip. I look out the porthole. The doctor stares back at me. But only for a moment.

  A rush of blood flows into my brain, knocking me out of balance and making me fall on my ass. I should just sit on the floor next time.

  I go through the motions, getting up slowly. I try opening the door, but it’s jammed on the other side. Fuck. I push harder. Nothing. I feel extremely weak. I’m not sure I’m even posing that much force upon it. I take a minuscule step back, take a deep breath and barge against it. It opens. Slightly at least. I stick my foot out and feel the ground with my toes. I slip out of the booth and tap the object that’s jamming the door. It’s a wooden table. I can’t see much. I keep touching the table with my hands. I feel a cylindrical object. I grab it. Feels like a flashlight. There’s no way the batteries are still working, but I flick the switch anyway. Inexplicably, it turns on. I use it to light the room. It’s a lab, no surprise there, but at least it looks like it’s a new location. I aim the torch on the table and find a pile of neatly folded clothes. Are they for me? Beside the garments is a note and some sort of ticket. I grab the note and I read it. The stranger tells me they’ll see me after the show. It isn’t signed. I look at the ticket. It’s a movie, or a play. I’m not sure. The title reads ‘Auf der Mauer, auf der Lauer’.

  I try the clothes on. They fit me perfectly. It makes me feel a bit more secure knowing that they were purposel
y my size. Then again, maybe I’m just trying to convince myself that they were left for me, and not someone else with the same size. A moment after, I realize the jeans are a little too tight, and the leather jacket is disproportionately larger. But the boots, the black boots, are definitely my size.

  In the jacket’s right pocket I find a bag of peanuts. It’s been filled to the top with salt. I eat half of the bag in less than a second.

  I use the flashlight to guide me through the labyrinth of dark corridors and abandoned rooms. I reach a dead end. There’s a steel ladder. I climb up and struggle to open what seems to be a manhole. It finally budges and I push it aside. I begin to hear a loud noise, but I can’t recognize the source. The noise is only getting louder every second. I cautiously stick my head out and a fierce wind current forces me to duck down just on time as a train dangerously propels right above my head. The ground shakes around me for a moment. I close my eyes as dust and debris is flung around under the speeding train.

  Once it’s gone, I stick my head out again. This time more cautiously. At a first glance I assume it’s night time. After a moment I realize I’m actually underground. The manhole leads to a dimly-lit tunnel. In one direction, the tracks continue infinitely into the darkness. On the opposite side, the tracks take a gentle corner before they disappear. Unsure of where to go, I walk down the latter. My ears are alert, in the lookout for any sign of oncoming trains.

  After only a few minutes, and after dodging two trains, I see a light. I follow it and soon I arrive to Hansaplatz station. I jump on the platform as a group of teenagers stare at me, speechless. I walk past them and they begin to giggle among themselves. I should be the one laughing though. Their hair looks as if they’ve been hit by lightning. I’ve never seen this hairstyle. This is definitely some time in the future.