New Lives (64 page)

An hour later and we ran ashore at the lower end of the Kurfürsten-damm, where I found a parking place to squeeze into and a bank where we collected our “welcome money.” Then we walked up and down the Ku'damm, lost our bearings in the adjacent streets, and landed on another major thoroughfare with lots of stores. With Michaela in the lead we entered a bookstore where several stacks of a novel
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by Umberto Eco were sprouting from the floor. I had to laugh when I saw those oversize wheeled shopping baskets outside a supermarket.
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They instantly roused a desire in me to hoard supplies, so that I wouldn't have to leave the house for days.

Later we found ourselves in a department store in which it was way too warm and, with coats draped over our arms, we moved from floor to floor as if looking for some particular item. When Michaela suddenly got the idea to buy Robert a jacket for his Youth Consecration,
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we went our separate ways for forty-five minutes. She handed me two fifty D-mark bills and shoved Robert ahead of her to the escalator.

I watched them go, but I had no real desire to spend three quarters of an hour alone. I thought: You're free, freer than you've ever been before in your life.
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I was in the middle of West Berlin and could do or not do whatever I felt like.

I was most interested in the kitchen utensils and housewares—coffee machines, pots, tableware, and corkscrews, but there were also gadgets whose purpose I would have liked to inquire about. I definitely wanted to buy something for myself. Just for me. Suddenly I had an idea I couldn't shake—if I didn't spend the money now, it would be lost for good. At any rate, with much wringing of the hands, I searched for some perfect object. One moment I thought I had made a decision, the next I lost my confidence. I needed a Chinese teapot, I needed a windbreaker. I was already at the cash register with a Walkman when, tormented by regret, I stood there just shaking my head as if I didn't speak German, left the Walkman on the counter, and fled. If Michaela and Robert had been on time I would have greeted them empty-handed. But then, lured by a clutch of people, I began to rummage through a square box full of gloves. Large or small, they were all the same price. At first I tried thrusting my hand down into unexplored regions and trolled along the bottom, but all I brought to the surface was junk, children's mittens or singles, one of them a black leather glove that fit perfectly. I kept it on and searched for its mate, but in vain. Finally I conquered my aversion and considered those that other people had tossed back. It was difficult to try them on because each pair was sewn together at the wrist. Once you had pulled off the trick, however, you stood there manacled. I decided on a dark blue pair lined in a red and green plaid, and, properly handcuffed, walked over to the cash register.

“I thought you don't like gloves,” Michaela said. “Because I didn't have any,” I said. Robert was carrying a plastic shopping bag so cleverly crafted that rain couldn't get into it. Michaela confessed that she had only one D-mark left, but at least we no longer needed to worry about a suit for Robert to wear at his Youth Consecration.

I treated us to currywurst at a food cart. That improved the general mood.

After that I dialed Vera's number. It was the first time I had ever used a push-button phone and I felt like I was in a movie. I kicked the phone-booth door open again and asked where exactly we were. Michaela ran off to look for a street sign.

Vera had an answering machine. Her voice had a hard, stiff sound, as if the only calls she got were from total strangers. I was sure she would pick up the receiver as soon as she recognized my voice. I said, “Hello!” a couple of times and that we would love to have coffee at her place. I called the shop, and the male voice—presumably Nicola's—on the answering machine said in German that I was to leave a message after the beep, after which I heard what I presumed was the same message in Arabic and French.

The woman at the food cart explained how to get to Wedding.

It was already dark by the time we found Malplaquet Strasse. At first I couldn't locate Vera's name on the doorbell register because the name was reversed as Barakat-Türmer.

“They live in the rear building,” Michaela said, a fact that I likewise found disappointing. When I heard footsteps behind the main door I assumed it was Vera. All we saw of the short woman in an ankle-length robe was her face—she didn't bother to give us a glance—and she now retreated like a windup doll. The rather shabby corridor was crammed with prams and bikes, the main door sprayed with graffiti, the lighting dim.

We had to climb to the fifth floor. There was no one at home, but there was something special about just seeing her door and her doormat.

On the back of the receipt for Robert's suit I wrote, “Greetings from your Altenburgers.” I folded the receipt and stuck it in the crack of the door.

Michaela asked if I would invite her and Robert to see
Batman.

I let them out in front of a movie theater near the Zoo Station and drove off to find a parking place. I got lost several times during the endless odyssey. I didn't really care about the movie, but I panicked at the idea of missing the beginning and I was afraid they would wait for me. Every parking space proved too small. I was lucky nothing happened when I drove through a red light at a pedestrian crossing. Finally I hit it right just as someone pulled out. I parked with my right rear tire up on the curb. The cold air did me good. The exhaust in West Berlin really did smell like a pungent perfume.

I was surprised when the woman at the ticket boot told me I was just in time.

Michaela and Robert were sitting near the entrance. Given the plush armchairs I at first thought we were in a private box. But then the lights went on, and Michaela burst into laughter as a vendor appeared beside us selling the same ice cream we had just seen advertised. I couldn't get my head around the notion that we were allowed to eat ice cream while sitting in such plush seats, and in the dark besides. Calculated on the basis of what money I had left, one movie ticket plus ice cream cost as much as my gloves.

After the movie Robert was as happy as could be, and Michaela seemed to be too. From the map the woman in the ticket booth had given Michaela free of charge we saw how easy it was to reach the autobahn. Michaela played navigator. Robert had turned on his cassette recorder and, to the accompaniment of Milli Vanilli and Tanita Tikaram, gave us a detailed plot summary of the film, as if we hadn't just seen it. When he was done he demanded we all list our favorite scenes. Five minutes later we were at the autobahn. With the lights of the Funkturm rising up in the background, I merged into traffic. After a couple of hundred yards I changed to the middle lane.

Michaela shouted for me to be careful and not to drive so fast—this was absolute madness. “What do you mean?” I exclaimed. “What else can I do?” I wanted to hit the brakes and slow down but I didn't dare risk it. Next to us, in front of us, behind us—we were racing along with them, faster than I had ever driven in my life, a pack of wild dogs, with us in the middle. I tried leaving more space in front of me, but immediately a car would shoot in from another lane and just make things worse. I had no choice, I had to drive like everybody else. But since everyone was driving at that speed, it couldn't be all that dangerous, or at least not as bad as we feared. I gradually calmed down.

At the airport exit I realized we weren't headed south but north. Michaela was also aware of our mistake. Trying to find a more comfortable position, she stretched out her legs. Robert had fallen silent and, propping his elbows on the backs of our seats, stared straight ahead.

We sped along through wide curves and tunnels—a little like a roller-coaster ride. Instead of driving on to Hamburg I followed the sign for the last exit before the border and turned around. We had an even longer stretch of asphalt autobahn before us now. The music on the radio was seldom interrupted.

During the trip back I kept thinking about the sea, I pictured ships crossing the ocean and I made a list of harbors: Hamburg, Hong Kong, Valparaiso, New York, Helsinki, Vancouver, Genoa, Barcelona, Leningrad, Istanbul, Melbourne, Alexandria, Odessa, Singapore, Auckland, Marseille, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Aden, Bombay, Rotterdam, Venice. I saw these giants of the ocean anchored beside garland-trimmed seawalls. The radio reception had grown worse and worse, but there was one AM station that held a signal—music and words sounded equally magical and distant. I saw terraced cafés above a town, with day-trippers and lanterns and fireworks. I was already traveling in some foreign region of the world. Just as Jim, the slave in
Huckleberry Finn,
believes he can see the lights of Cairo and the pyramids in the distance, I wouldn't have been surprised if suddenly a road sign had announced St. Louis or New Orleans.
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I no longer know what I saw as I steered the car through Leipzig. The first thing I can recall is a gesture of Michaela's hand that passed directly from the light switch to my forehead as we stood in the entry hall. “You have a fever,” she said, and showed me the sweat on her fingertips.

“I'm ill,” I replied.

“No need to shout,” she said.

“I'm ill,” I repeated, and immediately whispered it again, as if I dared not forget it.

“I'm ill” was the expression I'd been looking for in vain over the past several weeks. I quickly washed my hands and face, undressed, and took to my bed, from where, with ample time and no disruptions, I would finally be able to marvel at all the ships and cities of the world.

The next day I awoke alone in the apartment. I had the feeling it would take hours before I had assembled enough willpower to spread a sheet over the couch in my room as well as transfer my pillow and blanket from the bedroom. I knew that this would be the last chore I would accomplish for a long time, and closed my eyes.

And with that I've really said it all. Because it's impossible to describe my condition. Words don't come close.

My dear Nicoletta, looking back on it now, I am writing to you from terra firma. Anyone who can tell about his own adventures didn't perish with them—a certainty that in fact stands everything on its head. Besides which, the logic of dreams is hidden from the eyes of those who are wide awake, just as sunlight obliterates an image on film.

If I had lost the
sensibilità
one needs for this world—in lesson
14,
Signore Raffalt
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says that a corresponding word does not exist in German, only to translate it boldly one sentence later with
Resonanzfähigkeit
—it was not because I had become numb, callous, and apathetic, but simply because I was a broken man. There was no me left.

Do you understand, Nicoletta? Everything that had defined me since that first Arcadian summer, everything that had interested me, had kept me alert and alive, had now been rendered immaterial by the last few weeks and months.

The vast emptiness that had taken my place corresponded exactly to the overwhelming endlessness of time in which it floated. I was amazed at what an infinity lay hidden in each day. No, it wasn't that simple. I lay in bed, getting up only when I had to go to the toilet and sipping at the tea Michaela placed beside the bed every morning and evening. I dozed off and woke up, dozed off and woke up, and wondered what was keeping Robert, why he hadn't come home from school yet. But it wasn't just him, Michaela kept arriving later and later. It seemed to me that the longer I waited, the greater the probability, yes, inevitability of some kind of trouble, maybe even an accident of some sort. When I finally brought myself to fetch my watch from my desk, it had stopped at half past nine. But my touching it had started it up again. Later—it was still light outside—I managed to make it to the kitchen. The clock above the door read twenty till eleven, the same as my watch. I lay there in bed, filled with amazement at what had become of minutes and hours, at what monsters they had turned into. I sneered at the thought of what all I could have accomplished in a single morning. I could have easily written one story per day, taken care of household chores as well, watched a little television, and read. Now that all that was of no concern to me, I had a godlike dominion over time. Not even eleven o'clock yet! Imagine that you've just had a long dream, a very long dream, one that unfolds into further dreams. When you wake up you're certain the alarm will ring at any moment, when in fact not ten minutes have passed, and all the lights in the building across the street are still on.

I counted the seconds it took for me to take a breath in order to get some sense of what a minute, what five minutes meant. As soon as I laid my watch aside, I was convinced that I could break every diving record. Another experiment, one that I had often performed as a child in the hope of speeding up time, proved less successful: with the help of a magnifying glass (Robert has one for his stamp collection) I watched the minute hand. Yes, I saw it move, but that was no help.

At some point pain paid me a visit. I have to put it that way, the toothache seemed like a guest in my void. I was grateful. Closing my eyes, I tried to discover where it would settle in, for at first it darted about like a will-o'-the-wisp, bounding upward, plunging downward, now on the right, now on the left. But then it found its spot, lower left. To help you understand I probably have to express it this way: I clung to this pain. Or better, it has to be put like this:
I
was the pain. Outside it, there was nothing. And so it was only natural for me to try to nurse it. I watched it constantly, the way a child watches a hamster on that first day, and gave myself over to time beyond all measure. The greater the pain, the smaller the void. It first had to take total possession of me, and only then, as the capstone of my torment, did I want to see the dentist. I kept losing myself in the details of an agonizing session in the dentist's chair.