The Lonesome Berliner pt.2

We arrive at another building.  It’s an old building.  There’s no lock on the front door and no light in the hallway.  Klaas strikes a match, we stop for a moment to inspect the graffiti on the walls and then make our way through to the courtyard.  We park the bikes and climb a flight of stairs.

On the third level, loud music is coming from under a door, “It’s the Beatles!” I say, surprised.

“Yes, yes, the fucking Beatles,” Klaas says.  We have all sobered up after the crash.  The spirit has gone out of us.

“Let’s have a beer,” I say and pass them out.  We clink the bottles together unenthusiastically and take long pulls, trying to regain what was lost. 

Klaas comes up smiling, takes a deep breath, burps, sighs, and knocks on the door.

A young man answers.  He is short and has close cut brown hair.  He is wearing an overcoat and smoking a cigarette. He looks at us suspiciously.  “Hello,” he says.  His accent is American.

“Hi,” Klaas says, “I’m Klaas, my friend Katerina has called me from here, she said it was alright for us to come by.”

The young man looks Klaas over.  “Katerina?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” remains standing in the doorway.  He looks at me.  He looks at my bag of beer.  “Can I have one of those?”

“Sure,” I say, handing one across.  He cracks it open with a lighter and takes a drink.  He still stands in the doorway.  He looks at me.

“So you’re American?”  He says.

“That’s right,” I say.

“I’ve seen you before,” he says, “at the train station.  You were rapping with a boom box.”

“You saw me?”

“Yep.”

“Did you give me any money?” I ask.

“I didn’t have any,” he says.

“Fair enough,” I say.  He keeps looking at me then realizes he is still standing in the doorway.  He looks at his feet, thinks it over for a moment; looks each of us up and down.

“So you guys wanna come in?”

“If that’s alright,” I say.  The others nod and smile.

“I guess it’s alright,” he says.  He moves out of the doorway.

“That’s Stephanie, Dorothy, Klaas,” I say as they pass, he nods at them, “and I’m Ben.”

“Where you from Ben?”  He asks, closing the door behind me and following me down a short hallway.

“Seattle,” I tell him.

“Hmm,” he says.  “What are you doing here?”

“Nothing really,” I tell him.

He frowns at me, “What do you mean?”

“Hard to explain,” I say, turning away and going after the others.




There is only one room in Jonathan’s apartment.  It is a big room and there is nothing on the walls.  There is a mattress in one corner and a table in another with a laptop computer on it, and the speakers that are blasting out the Beatles, mostly treble.

There are 10 or 12 girls and guys, sitting around on the floor, passing joints around.  One of the girls stands up.  She is tall and has long black hair.  She is wearing a short black skirt, big black boots and a tight red shirt.  Her face is very thin and she has condescending lips.  There is dark mascara around her eyes. 

“Klaas!” she says.

“Hallo,” he says.  He goes over and hugs her. 

When he lets her go, she looks over his shoulder at Stephanie and Dorothy, “Ohh,” she swoons and they too rush over and hug her.  I hang back until my name is called.

“Ben!” Klaas calls to me.  I go over and am introduced to Katerina.

“I have heard about you,” she says.  I look at her questioningly and she smiles then looks at Klaas.  She leans in close as if to confide in me.  “Horrible things,” she says.

The people on the bed make a place for us and we sit down and are introduced to the others.

There are four guys with long hair sitting together in one corner, talking amongst themselves and passing a joint.  I smile at them and they look at me for a moment then go back to their conversation.

There are a few other guys and girls, whose names I pay no attention to, talking in German.  Klaas, Dorothy, and Stephanie sit around Katerina and they too begin to talk in German.

The American from the hallway sits down on the bed next to me.

“This your place?”  I ask him.

“Yep,” he says.

“What’s your name?”

“Jonathan,” he says and looks away, pleased with it.

I nod and drink my beer.  “What do you do?”  I ask him.

“I’m a writer,” he says.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you write?”  I ask him.  He looks at me suspiciously.

“Stories mostly,” he says, stands up, goes over to the table, changes the music then goes off and begins to talk to a couple of girls.  He doesn’t come back and I’m glad.

I turn my attention to Klaas and the others.  He smiles at me.  Katerina is telling a story in German.  I can understand some of it. 

There is a dog.  Someone or something has already been done.  It is dark.  Then the story ends.  Everyone laughs.  I laugh as well.  Then the girls begin again to speak in German.  Klaas looks at me.  He takes pity.

“Come,” he says to them, “let us speak English, Ben is getting sad.”

The three girls look at me.  “Aww,” they say, and they laugh.  Katerina holds out her hand.

“Hello, My name is Katerina,” she says.  I take her hand and shake it.

“I come from San Francisco,” Stephanie says, holding out her hand as well.

“Have a very nice day,” Dorothy says, she also holds out her hand and take them both at once.

“So I hear you are going crazy tonight,” Katerina says.  I look at Klaas.  She looks at Klaas.  “But to me,” she says, “you look very bored.”

“Really?” I say.  I think it over for a moment, and look around.  It is too quiet here.  The music just goes around them, I think. 

I look back at Katerina. “Maybe I am,” I say.

“That is too bad,” she says rising from her butt to her knees.  “Maybe you want to kiss me?”

I look at her to see if she is joking, but she looks serious.  I don’t know what to say.  I laugh nervously.

“Come on,” she says.

“I will kiss you,” Klaas announces.

She looks at him, “Oh but Klaas, you have kissed me enough.”

“I have not,” he says.

She touches him on the cheek.  “Ohh,” she says, “that is nice, but, I have kissed you enough.”

Klaas snatches her hand from his face, “No!” he shouts and pulls her to him; trying to kiss her while she screams and fends him off.  He gives up.

“Bad Klaas,” she says, petting his head.  He bites the air around her hand.  Katerina looks back at me.

“Klaas has slept with all of us twice,” she says.

I look at Klaas, he smiles and shrugs.  “Bullshit,” I say.

“It’s true,” she says, “even Dorothy.”

I look at Dorothy, she giggles.

“We are all trying not to be the first to sleep with him three times,” Katerina says.  Klaas reaches up and touches her face, “It is very difficult,” she says, pushing his hand away.

Katerina is silent for a moment then she looks at me again.  “Come on,” she says, “Don’t you want to kiss me?”  She puts down a hand and bends over, putting her face close to mine.  She has bright brown eyes and she smells like grass.  “Come on,” she whispers, she closes them.

I look at her.  I can feel her breath on my face.  I almost kiss her, but it is some sort of a trick. 

She opens her eyes.

“Hmph,” she says and sits back down on her butt.

“You should have kissed her man!”  Klaas says.  I look at Katerina.  She looks at me, bats her eyelashes.  He is right, I should have kissed her.

“umsay ortsay ofay ricktay,” I say.  I too can speak strange languages.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I say.

She looks at me suspiciously.  “Maybe I will give you another chance,” she says.  I look at her for a moment then take a drink of beer.

“You’re such a whore Katerina,” Dorothy tells her.  Katerina smiles at her and lights a cigarette.

“Let’s play a game,” she says.

“Okay!”  Klaas says, getting excited, “what game?”

“I don’t know,” she says, taking a drag and looking at me.

“Truth or dare?”  Klaas says.

“We are not children Klaas,” she says.

Klaas shrugs.  “We will play hide and go seek.”  She says.

“Here?”  Klaas asks.

“No, outside.”

“It is dark outside,” he warns her.

“It is better that way,” she counters.

“Alright!”  Klaas says, standing up.  “Who else will play?”

“I’ll play,” I say.

“Dorothy?  Stephanie?”  Stephanie stands up.

“I will play,” she says.

“I will play,” Dorothy says, standing up, “but I don’t want to be it.”

“No, no,” says Klaas, “that will not do.”  He pats her on the head.  “Sometimes you have to be it.”  He looks down at her.  She sighs.

“Good, alright,” he says turning his attention to the room, “Who else will play?” 

“What?”

“Hide and go seek!”

A murmur goes up.  People stare.  Jonathan gives me a dirty look.  We are interfering.

“No one?  Fine,” Klaas says, looking knowingly at the four of us, “come, let us play this hide and go seek.”

I pick up the rest of the beers and we all follow him out, nodding goodbyes to Jonathan who nods gravely.

“Not it!” I yell when we get outside.  They all look at me.  “Hmm, you don’t know that way here?”

“What way?”

“I say, “not it” and everyone else has to say ‘not it.’  Whoever says it last, is it.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

“Not it!”  Klaas cries.

“Not it,” I say.

“Not it,” Katerina calls.

Stephanie and Dorothy say nothing.

“You must say, not it,” Klaas tells them

They look at him.  He urges them with his hand. 

“Not it,” they both say at the same time.

“It’s a tie!” 

“Rock, paper, scissors,” I say.

“Is that what you call it?”  Klaas asks.

I nod at him.  The two girls face each other.  They pound their fists into their hands and on the third one, Stephanie brings down scissors.  Dorothy looks sadly at her hand.  It is paper.

“I am it?”  She whimpers.

“You are it,” Klaas tells her.

“Then I don’t want to play,” she says defiantly.

“Oh Dorothy,” he coos, taking her face in his hands, “you knew this might happen.”  She pouts.  “I’ll tell you what,” he says softly, “I will be it with you, this time.”  He looks at us.  “Is that okay?  That I am it with her?”  No one objects.

“Thanks Klaas,” she says.

“Think nothing of it,” he tells her.  “Give me one of those,” he demands, pointing to the beer.

“We will count to 20,” he says.  “Ready?  Close your eyes Dorothy, that’s right.  Ready?  Einz, Swei….”

“Wait,” I stop him, “what are the rules?”

“What rules?  You hide, we seek.  Very simple,” he says.  He closes his eyes.  “Einz, swei, close your eyes now Dorothy, drei…..”

Stephanie laughs, pulls back her hair and runs off into some bushes.  Katerina looks at me.  She takes me by the arm.  “Come with me,” she says, “we will hide together.”

She pulls me down the street behind her.  I hear Klaas counting behind us.  Katerina keeps walking.  I keep following her.  “There is a very good place to hide up here,” she says.  We keep walking.

After awhile, I realize that the count must be finished.  “Shouldn’t we hide?”  I ask her.

“It is just up here,” she says.  We keep walking.  After a few blocks I pull her to a stop.

“This feels more like leaving,” I tell her.

“No,” she says, “this is hiding.  Remember, there are no rules.  Give me one of those?”  She points to the beers.  I hand her one and open another for myself.

She takes a drink.  “Come on,” she says, and we begin walking again, side by side.

“What is America like?” she asks, turning to look at me.  I take a drink of beer.

“Which part?”

“Where are you from?”

“Seattle.”

“What’s that like?”

“Charlottenburg,” I tell her.

“Really?”

“Parts of it.”

“Boring?” 

I nod.  “What do you do?”  I ask her.

“I study.”

“What?”

“Franz Kafka.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” she says, “do you know him?”

“I do,” I tell her.  “What do you do?  Just read his stories?”

“Hmm,” she says, “Kind of, I try to discover what he means.”

“You are a psychic?”

“What? No, what do you mean?”

“You speak to him?”

“He is dead.”

“You are a psychic?”

“What? No.”

“How will you find out what he meant?”

She stops and looks at me.  “I will read his stories.”

“You think it’s in there?”

“Of course…”

“You don’t think he was just a weird guy who liked to write weird things?”

“That too…”

“But not all?”

“No,” she says, thinking it over, “he must have meant something.  I am taking an entire course about it at university.”

We walk on for awhile, drinking our beers.

“Do you think they are still looking for us?”  I ask her.

She thinks this over as well.  Her eyebrows come together.  She puckers her lips.  She looks at me.  She looks at her watch.  She looks at the sky.  “It is almost day,” she says, “they will wait for the sun to assist them.”

“Do you think we’re that important?”  I ask her.  She looks at me.

“I cannot speak for you,” she says.

“You are very beautiful,” I tell her.

“You’re very drunk,” she says.

“And you?”

“A little maybe,” she says.

“Drunk enough to believe me?”  I ask.

“Drunk enough not to,” she says.  I try to put my arm around her, she gets out of the way and smiles at me.

“You will stay in Berlin a long time?”  She asks.

“I don’t know,” I tell her. 

“What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”  She stops walking and looks at me.

“I came with a girl.”

“Oh,” she begins to walk again, “An American girl?”

“No, Australian.”

“Where is she?”

“France,” I tell her.

“What happened?”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re almost there,” she says.  “What happened?”

“What happened…..”



There is a closet at the end of the hallway.  It is big and green and she’d opened it up, climbed in and closed the doors behind her.  There was weeping from the inside.  I tried to coax her out.

“What the fuck are you doing in there?”  I asked.  The crying intensified.  “This is fucking ridiculous,” I reasoned, but the crying continued so I went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

I drank the tea and she hadn’t yet come out.  I stood in the hallway and faced the closet.  “I’ve gotta go to work,” I said to it.  There was no response.  “What about my coat?  Can I have my coat?”  The door opened.

She was sitting on the bottom shelf with her knees pulled into her breast.  She took a deep breath and stopped crying then looked up at me.  The light from the hallway glistened against the tears still on her cheeks and the snot that pooled above her nose.  Her face was fraught with fear and bewilderment, sorrow and love.  And her begging eyes pulled like lukewarm fingers at the middle of my back.

I looked at her for a moment then took my coat from the rack.  As I went out, I heard the closet door shut and the crying begin anew.

The city was undergoing an urban renewal.  All the old apartments were being repainted and fitted with new windows.  Broken steps were repaired, balconies were made sturdy and rents were doubled.

I was working as an assistant for a Korean artist.  After I’d swept her apartment and went to the store for two bottles of Diet Coke, I took the metal cart she’d stolen from the bottle shop and pushed it up and down the streets until I found a building that was being renovated.

The old windows would be stacked up in the courtyard and I’d wait outside the door for a resident to come out or a guest to go in then catch the door, wedge it open and push my cart into the courtyard.  I’d fill my little cart to its brim with the old windows and push it out the front door, regaling the street with a deafening rattle as I muscled the cart down the cobblestones.

When I got back, I carried the windows, one in each arm, up 4 flights of stairs.  After I’d stacked and cleaned them, she lay them down on the floor and traced the nude photographs she’d taken of her friends onto the glass in permanent pen. 

“Oh,” she’d say over her shoulder, “you can go,” hand me the 10 euros I’d earned and lean her new creation up against the wall where the next day someone would gaze at it.

“Oh, I just have to have that,” they’d say.  And she’d stand humbly while they wrote her a check for 20,054 euros.

I bought 2 beers with my pay.  I put one in my pocket and drank the other one in the park.  I drank it slow with my coat pulled around my neck, smoking cigarettes and listening to the trains in the distance.

I walked home and climbed the steps to our apartment, jolly with the money in my pocket and beer on my breath.  We’ll be happy, I thought. 



I found her sitting on the corner of the mattress.  There was blood from the cuts on her thighs running down her legs and into the sheets.  She looked up at me and smiled.

I cleaned her up with a wet towel and we sat twined together in the corner without speaking.  We turned off the lights and pulled the blanket over us.  A tree branch scraped at the window and she put her head on my shoulder.  I shivered as her lips touched my neck and when we made love, the cuts reopened and I fell asleep with blood smeared across my stomach.

In the morning we packed her bags and took her to the train station.  It pulled away and I watched her face in the window.  And when she was gone, I stood on the platform, lit a cigarette and coughed in the gray afternoon.





“It didn’t work out,” I say to Katerina, she nods, and we walk on in silence.

She stops in front of a building and leans against the wall.  I stand in front of her.  She finishes her beer and sets the bottle on the ground.  The sky has grown light.  A police car drives by.  They slow down and look at us. 

Katerina watches them pass.  “I am sorry you did not go crazy,” she says. 

“Have you been bored?”  I ask her.

She yawns and looks at me.  “No,” she says.  “I am tired.  This is my house,” she looks up at the building behind her, “You can kiss me now.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” she says, looking at me.  She has her hands in her coat pockets and she pushes them towards me.

I take a step forward and stand there for a moment, looking at her face.  Her pink lips tremble in the gray air.  I could take most of what she has should I touch them.  But I don’t want it.  I step back.

She stands expectantly with her eyes closed and when nothing happens she opens them and looks at me.  She frowns sarcastically, smiles and scratches her nose.  She looks up at her building and then back to me.  She knits her eyebrows.

“Good day,” she says, holding out her hand.  I take it.

“Good day.”

She shakes my hand, turns around, opens the front door and goes inside without looking back.  I stand there for a moment, look at the sky, drink some beer, take a deep breath, and head for home.




On Warschauer Strasse, I see a tram approaching.  I throw the bottle and run to the stop.  I make it, out of breath. 

I get on and look around; I look at my reflection in the window.  I look the same as always. 

The other passengers eye me blankly for a moment, and then look down at the floor or out the window.  I have no money for a ticket so I hum a little song to forestall the day, and the Stasi controllers that frequent it.

We rumble down the middle of the street.  I watch the foreboding city stranded out the window, dull with the implications of morning; the bums collecting bottles, newspapers abandoned on the sidewalk.

I get off the tram by my house and run to my building.  I climb the stairs and get to my door.  I look for my key but it’s not in my pockets.  I check them again, curse, and check them again.  They are really not there, I think, fuck.

I climb the next set of stairs and knock on Klaas’s door.  I wait a few moments.  There is cursing from inside.  The door opens.  Klaas stands there naked.  He is very hairy. 

He glares at me then sees the bag of beer.  “Give me one of those,” he says.  I hand him one.  He touches me on the shoulder.  “Haha!” he yells, “you are it!”  I can only accept it.

“Come in,” he says and stands back.  I go in and he closes the door behind me.  “You bastards, where did you go?”  I shrug.

I go into his room.  Dorothy is sitting on his bed, naked.  She sees the bag of beer.

“Oh can I have one of those?”  She asks, smiling.  I stare at her tits for a moment then look into the bag.  There are two beers left.  I hand one to her and open one for myself.

“I have lost,” she says.

“What?”

“I am the first to three,” she looks at me, “you won’t tell will you?”

“I won’t.”

I turn to Klaas.  “I’ve lost my keys,” I tell him.

“You idiot!  Did you go crazy?”

“Not really,” I tell him.

He goes and sits on the bed next to Dorothy.  “We did,” he says.  She blushes.

“I’m tired,” I tell him.

He points to the couch.  “Sleep on the couch,” he says. 

“Thanks Klaas,” I say.

“Kein problem,” he says.  He turns to Dorothy and says something in German.  She laughs.  I sigh.

“It’s over isn’t it,” I say to myself.

“Was?”

“Nothing,” I say, take a big drink of beer and go lay down on the couch.  I close my eyes.  On the bed behind me, Klaas and Dorothy begin to have sex.  I take another drink of beer.  “There is no place like home,” I say.

There is laughter from the bed.

“It’s a very nice day outside,” I say.

“Shut up!”  Klaas yells.  I do.