The Lonesome Berliner pt 1

I have an upstairs neighbor. He is German. I am not. We are friends. But not good friends. Whenever i sit down and close the blinds, roll a cigarette and begin to look out the window, he knocks on my door. He wants two slices of bread or just to say hello. This time he has invited me to go with him to a party.

"A party?" I say. "You know what will happen."

"Kommen Sie," he says, exaggerating.

""I'll be charming at first,” I warn him, “and energetic, but soon, I'll grow sleepy, I'll get the hiccups. I'll forget how to speak; how to walk and when I do that I think, I want to ask you if you could, this time, rather than hold it against me and hit me in the face, just put me in a taxi cab and forget about me for a few days."

"Kein problem," he says. He hasn’t understood what I’ve said.

We walk down to Petersburger Strasse and get onto the tram. It is Friday night and it is full of drunken Germans.

"Why is it," I ask my friend, "that all day long the trams and trains are full of people looking down, or up for Stasi controllers and then with night; everyone smiles and hums little songs?"

My friend holds up his beer. The Germans make good beer. The Germans make good and cheap beer. We have bought two for 50 cents each. That’s a couple of coins.

I have a jar in my hallway between my little room and my little kitchen with their little windows both that look onto the walls of the little buildings that stand day and night between me and the little sun. The jar is filled with coins. 10 5 cent pieces or 5 10 cent pieces, 2 20 cent pieces and a 10 cent piece or 2 5 cent pieces, are never missed.

The beer is called Sternburg and it comes in brown half liter bottles. Berliners collect them in their kitchens until they have enough to return them to the kiosk, trade them for 5 cents apiece and begin anew the collection process in the kitchen.

I have over 70 bottles in my kitchen and I’ve forgotten how to be happy without adding two or three to the collection.

The party is in a Turkish neighborhood and we get off the train thereabouts.

"I like the Turks," I tell my friend.

"Ich auch," he replies.

We lean against the wall, watch the prostitutes and finish our beers. Then we buy two more and watch the prostitutes.

"How much do you think one of them costs?" I ask my friend.

"Funfzig Euros," he says.

This is more than I can afford so I just watch the prostitutes. There is one in particular that I watch. She is older, very short, perhaps 40 and a bit chubby. She has on a very short skirt and fishnet stockings. I point her out to my friend.

"Sie ist nicht schon," he says.

"I know," I tell him.

We leave the prostitutes and begin to walk down the street towards the party, not talking to each other.

The streets in Berlin are cobblestone off the main roads. Sometimes they’re narrow. There are always apartment buildings, without an inch between them, looming 5 or 6 stories above and at night, people look down on you from their balconies but you don’t look up.

On every third corner there is a kiosk where a young or old Turkish man smokes cigarettes and collects the change from beer sales. Out of one these, carrying bottles, comes a blonde girl and a tall brunette toward us. My neighbor knows them.

He knows a lot of people. He has a full beard and mustache and his eyes are always white and blue. He is very good looking and whenever there is a campfire, he sings Nirvana songs with passion.

They hug and kiss him, smile and laugh. Each says hello to me and I say hello back but we don’t hug and kiss. They speak amongst themselves in rapid German which I can’t understand.

"They are coming to the party too," my friend says.

"Great," I say, halfway meaning it. They are good looking. But they are not very nice to me.

We walk down the street, the four of us. They continue their talk in German and I pretend to be interested in the architecture. We walk a few blocks like this before I run out of beer. I’m not drunk enough yet to talk anyway, so I run in to get another from a corner store.

The Turkish man behind the counter smokes a cigarette and smiles at me.

When I come out they are 100 yards down the street. They didn’t wait for me. I hurry to catch up but think better of it. I have my pride; I hang back. See if they remember me, I think.

I follow them at a distance for two blocks. They don’t look back. I hurry again to catch up. I don’t know the way, I reason.

I come up from behind and rejoin them with a whoop in an attempt to win them. The two girls shriek. My neighbor frowns at me. They discuss me in scathing tones. America is insulted. I am not offended.

We reach the building of the party and are buzzed in the front door. We climb 4 flights of stairs and enter an apartment. There is loud music. People lean against the hallway walls. My neighbor and the two girls squeeze between them. I follow, nodding at the revelers.

We stop in a kitchen, packed with people. My neighbor and the girls find the host there. They greet each other with hugs and kisses upon each cheek. My neighbor introduces me.

“Hallo,” I say, “Ich bin Ben. Freut misch…”

The host introduces himself. He begins to speak at me in German. I shake my head.

“I can’t speak German,” I say.

“Then why do you greet me in German?” He asks.

“To be polite?”

They don’t like this answer. They frown and look at each other.

“To show off,” I say. This is better. They begin to nod.

I leave them in the kitchen and retrace my steps back into the hallway. I find a bare stretch of wall and put my back against it. I nod my head to the music and smile. People pass me. I nod at them. Conversation swirls around me. I do not understand it. I smile and nod, and before long I begin to wonder what I’m doing there.

I always ask myself this question in the mornings and whenever I don’t forget to. The answer is always the same.

I met a girl in Australia. She was beautiful and I was beautiful with her. We fell in love and I went back to Seattle. I got arrested and they wanted to send me back to jail.

We talked on the phone, her and I. She came to visit. We drove down the coast in a school bus and we were still in love. We ate mushrooms beneath the redwoods, huddled in the cold and I could feel her breathing in my arms. ‘You’re like a little dragon,’ I told her.

“Just run,” she’d said.

“Where?”

“Europe.”

“What will we do there?”

“We’ll figure it out,” she said.

We came in the cold, to the little apartment with the coal oven. We ripped up the carpets and painted the windowsills. When it rained, we put down our books and made love on the floor.

Then we ran out of money. We ate all the peas and I got a job selling magazines. I called out to people in the street.

“Excuse me,” I’d say, smiling profusely, “Do you read the Ex-Berliner?”

“No.”

“That’s a mistake,” I’d inform them, holding the magazine in front of their face, “This months issue is about crime in Berlin. There’s a great article about a guy who ran guns before reunification,” I’d call after them as they departed.

I went for home with 50 cents. I owed 5 euros to the magazine, and on the way home I was caught riding the train without a ticket. I talked my way out of it.

“What? I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” The controller was tall with a threatening mustache.

“You don’t speak German?” He asked.

“No. You speak English?” My tone betrayed my dismay.

“Yes,” he said efficiently, “Show me your passport.”

“I lost it.”

“You must come with me.”

“Where?”

“To the Police Station,” He said.

“The Police Station?”

“You have no ticket, you have no passport; you must come to the Police Station.”

When he turned around to confer with his partner, I made for the stairs and took them two at a time. I sprinted down the street, cut down an alley and when I stopped to throw up, the tides turned.

There on the sidewalk, a beautiful orphan of chance; was a 2 euro coin. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I finished the throwing up and went on my way.

When I got home, she was there, in the kitchen smiling with a towel wrapped around her middle.

“Is that an apron?”

“I baked bread, kiss me,” she said. “Did you sell any magazines?”

“Not one,” I told her, “But, I found two euros on the ground.” I help up the coin for her to admire.

“Oh perfect,” she said, “you can go get some jam? The bread will be ready in a few minutes.”

I went for the jam. I came back and she took the loaf, steaming, from the oven. We cut it up and covered slices with jam and butter.

“This is the best bread I’ve ever had,” I told her.

“Me too,” she answered with her mouth full.

We ate 3 slices each. The loaf was half gone but the hunger had been beaten back and there would be more for later. I rubbed my stomach and I looked at her and loved her.

But then she cut another slice. She buttered it and spread the jam. Everything had been even up to then. I’d gone to work, she’d baked the bread, we’d each had 3 slices but now, she was taking liberties. This was more than her fair share.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough,” I’d said.




A new question comes to me then as I stand against the wall, ‘what the fuck is wrong with me?’ And I leave the hallway with this new one, sour on my lips.

I wander the apartment in search of a bathroom where I can look at myself in the mirror. There are 3 rooms besides the kitchen and the hallway, each one is full of people. I take a moment to peer into each one, looming in the doorway just long enough to feel excluded.

At the end of the hall I find the bathroom. I piss, wash my hands, and stare into the loathing eyes of the mirror until I notice that the bathtub is full of Sternburg. I fill my pockets and drink one half down in the bathroom. ‘Stop asking questions,’ it says, and I listen.

I go back to the hallway and my spot on the wall, but my place has been swallowed up by others. One is as good as another and I find one occupied by a pretty girl who is productively talking to a pretty friend, smiling and gesturing with her beer. I tap her on the shoulder.

“That’s my spot,” I tell her. She looks at me.

“This one?” She asks.

“That exact one,” I say.

She leans out from the wall, peers over her shoulder at the space behind her. She turns around. She smiles at me and shakes her head.

“You are American?”

I give a bow.

“What are you doing in Berlin?”

“I live here.”

“Why?”

“Exile.”

“Please?”

“Exile.”

“Why?”

“They chased me out…”

She looks me over, raises her eyebrows at my pockets. They are bulging. I shrug. “It is understandable,” she says. She points over my shoulder. “If you hurry…”

I look behind me, a space has opened. I fill it. She smiles at me and goes back to speaking to her friend. I sip my beer, nod my head to the music and smile.

The girl I’ve just spoken to has short brown hair. She’s wearing light colored jeans and a tight shirt. She has nice tits and a pointy nose. She sees me inspecting her.

She confers with her friend. After sighing and shaking her head, the friend pushes off of the wall, stares me down for a moment and goes off down the hallway. I watch her go then return my eyes to the one with pointy nose.

She produces a bottle of Schnaaps from her pocket. She unscrews the top and offers it to me.

“I shouldn’t,” I say. She frowns, puts the bottle to her lips and drinks. She looks around.

“Alright,” I say.

“Okay,” she says. She hands me the bottle. I take a drink. I hand it back. She begins to look around.

“What’s your name?”

“Dorothy,” she says. Though pronounced differently, that is the name.

“I’m Ben,” I tell her. We shake hands.

“You’re sure you are American?”

“I am,” I say, “Why?”

“You did not click your heels together,” she clicks her heels together and closes her eyes, “there’s no place like home,” she says.

“I’m not that clever,” I say.

“What do you do?” She asks.

I think it over. “Nothing really,” I say. She looks confused. I elaborate. “I sit in my room and try to think of clever things. Sometimes I go to parties.”

“What clever things?”

“To sing,” I say, “clever things to sing.”

“You’re a singer?”

“I would be if I could find someone to play the guitar.”

“You do not play?”

“No.”

“But there are many people who do,” she says.

“They never like me,” I say. She smiles at me. I smile back. She takes another drink from the bottle. She offers it to me. I accept.




My neighbor comes down the hallway, invigorated by the kitchen. He marches toward me, but sees Dorothy and comes to a halt. “Hallo Dorothy!”

“Hello Klaas,” she says. They kiss each other on the cheek.

“Spricht du mit Ben?” He asks her.

“Ja,” she says.

I take Klaas by the shoulder and turn him around until he faces me. “Speak English Klaas,” I say, “I know you can.”

He frowns. “Fine,” he says. He has a Midwestern accent.

Klaas sees me with the bottle. He wants it. I hand it to him. He takes a drink. He hands it to Dorothy. She takes a drink. She hands it to me. I take a drink.

“Cool party hey?” Klaas says. He leans against the wall next to me.

“You are neighbors?” Dorothy asks.

“We are,” I say. Klaas nods.

“Why do you not play the guitar for him?” She asks Klaas.

He looks at me.

“He has never asked me,” he says.

Dorothy smiles at me. I blush. Klaas looks at her and then at me. He smiles.

“Something funny is happening,” he says. He takes the bottle from me. “So Ben, will we go crazy tonight?”

I take the bottle back. I close my eyes. “It’s possible,” I say.

“What are you two saying?” Dorothy asks. She takes the bottle.

“Ben is a bad drunk,” he says, “he will go crazy.”

We have been out before. The last time, Klaas tells me, I left the party in a huff, two hours before him. And when he came home, I was standing outside my door, bent over and weeping, trying to get the key to go in the lock. He tried to help me. I accused him of sabotage. He was forced to hit me. I am not sure if his account is accurate. There is no way to know.

“Will you go crazy?” Dorothy asks me.

“It’s possible,” I say. She puts her tongue between her teeth when she smiles.

“I would like to see this,” she says.

Klaas looks at both of us. He grins. He stumbles the two steps across the hall and takes Dorothy behind the shoulder. “Go!” he says. He gives her a shove and she falls into me. I catch her. I hold her there lightly. She does not try to escape. She leans back and I put my arms around her stomach.

“I feel funny Klaas,” I tell him. He looks me over.

“You will throw up?”

“No, I feel good,” I say.

“What?”

“I do Klaas, I feel alive.”

“Hah,” he laughs, “it won’t last.”

He swigs his beer and begins to sing. I have recently introduced him to Bob Dylan. “Well it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why Babe!” he sings.

I join him for the second line. “If’n you don’t know by now!” Dorothy joins us. “Well it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why Babe!” We are emboldened. The volume is raised. “No it will never do Somehow!”

Dorothy and I drop out for the next line, to see if it will go on. Klaas doesn’t hesitate to take it alone. “When your Rooster crows at the Break of Dawn!”

I take the next bit, “Look out your window and I’ll be Gone!”

We look at eachother. All three of us sing the next line and on the last line we are joined by a chorus of voices. A surprising number of people know the words.

“But don’t think Twice, it’s Alright!” A cheer is raised. People knock their bottles together. The three of us hug. I begin to like Germany.

“I will go find the girls!” Klaas shouts. He touches each of us on the shoulder, smiling broadly and stumbles off down the hall. People pat him on the back as he goes.

“Cool party hey?” I say to Dorothy, mimicking Klaas’ twang.

She nods and looks up at me over her shoulder. I look down and kiss her on the lips. Hers don’t move.

“Let’s dance or something,” she says, loosening my arms around her stomach. She starts down the hall and I hang back, injured, until she stops, looks back, smiles, takes me by the hand and we stumble down the hallway together.

We go to the room where the music is playing. It’s someone’s bedroom. A mattress leans against the wall and people are milling about, talking and drinking. It’s dark but there are flashing lights.

Dorothy leads us to the middle and once there, she lets go of my hand, takes a quick look around and begins to dance. She bounces from one foot to the other, disregarding the drums. She beckons me to join her but I hesitate. She shrugs and goes on dancing.

I look around the room. Fuck it, I think, and take a jump towards Dorothy. I land dancing.

Our arms flail, heads loll and I hear Klaas over the music. “Aha, I knew it! He’s going Crazy!” he screams. He brings one of the girls we met in the street into the room by the arm and they both join us. I ease up and watch them dance. They have intense looks on their faces. They stomp their feet and bang their heads. Perhaps this, I think, is the way to dance.

We move stupidly, staggering and bumping into one another. We swing our arms, stomp our feet, and close our eyes tight until the song ends, and we head for the corner.

“Stephanie,” The girl from the street says to me, “that’s my name, Stephanie.” She has long, bushy, curly blond hair. Her face is red and she is breathing heavy. She’s smiling. “And you are Ben?”

“I am Ben!” I shout, and grab her, pull her to me and hug her.

I let her go and she smiles at me, laughs and leans against the wall next to Klass. Dorothy is beside me. We are all breathing heavily.

I rush off to the bathroom and stuff my pockets again with beers. I bring them back to the others. We pop the tops and clink them together. Other people have taken our spots on what’s become a dance floor and we watch them, smugly, like spectators at a chess match between idiots.

Klaas phone rings and he rushes out of the room so he can hear. When he comes back he tells us urgently, “There is another party.”

“What’s wrong with this one?” I ask him. He looks around. He looks back to me and grins.

“Nothing!” he says. We lean back against the wall. I look at Dorothy standing next to me. I put my arm around her and she looks at me, blows a breath out through her lips, takes her shirt collar in her fingers shakes it, fans her face, smiles, and looks around.

“Where is it?” I ask Klaas who is watching the people dance.

“The party?”

“Yeah!”

“Not too far…Friedrichshain.”

Friedrichshain? I see in my mind the drunken crowds at the train station, the lofty forbidden balconies. Perhaps it will all fall into the place there, I think.

“Do you want to go to another party?” I ask Dorothy. She thinks it over.

“I have my bike,” she says.

“Leave it here,” I tell her. She frowns.

“Someone would steal it,” she says.

“Yes, someone would steal it,” Klaas says, “Not a good neighborhood for bikes.”

Dorothy looks up at me. She shrugs.

“Wait one moment,” Klaas says. He turns to Stephanie. “Do you want to go?”

“Of course,” she says and he rushes out of the room.

He comes back holding up a set of keys. “I have another bike,” he says.

“There are four of us,” I say. He looks astonished.

“We will ride double!” he says.

“Hah!” I look at Dorothy. She does not look surprised.

“It can be done,” she says.

“Fine,” I say, “Where is her friend?” I ask, gesturing to Stephanie.

“She is kissing some guy in the kitchen,” she says, rolling her eyes, “like always.”

Klaas eyes her excitedly. She looks at him suspiciously. He throws his arms around her. He puts his hand over her mouth and begins to kiss it. He dips her and holds her there, squirming. He let’s her up and she slaps him on the arm, blushes.

“Come, let’s go!” Klaas says, beaming.

We get our coats. I go once more to the bathroom and stuff my pockets with beer. I find a paper bag and stuff that as well.

“I don’t know how I’ll carry it,” I say to Dorothy.

“It is okay, I have a basket on my bike.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Of course,” she says.

I close my eyes and click my heels together. She pinches me.

We go downstairs and Dorothy finds her bike. Klaas and Stephanie go off and come back with a bike of their own and we line the two up outside the front door.

“Will you drive? Or will I drive?” I ask Dorothy. She looks me up and down.

“You’re very drunk,” she says, “I think I will drive.” I look her up and down.

“You’re very drunk too,” I say. She laughs.

“Yes, but I have experience.”

“I can ride a bike,” I tell her, thoroughly offended.

“Do you ride a bike in America?” She asks.

“No.”

“Do you ride a bike here?”

“No.”

“When was the last time you rode a bike?”

“July 12th 1989,” I tell her. She nods.

“I will drive,” she says.

She sits down on the seat and takes the handlebars. I put the beers into the basket. “Get on,” she says, and I climb up behind her. Klaas watches us and then turns to Stephanie.

“Can you drive?” he asks her. She pats herself down and then looks at him.

“I think so,” she says.

“Good!” he says, “We will have a battle, you and I,” he says, looking at me seriously.

He and Stephanie board their vehicle and we both push off, wobbling to a start and then straightening out as we gain speed. We ride down the street, whooping and screaming and then something hits me in the forehead.

“Yeeha!” Klaas cries. I look over at him. He has another coin raised. I scream. He throws it, but this time misses.

I frantically check my pockets… Nothing

“Do you have any money?” I ask Stephanie.

“Why?”

“So I can throw it at Klaas.” Another coin whizzes by us.

“You wish to throw my money?” Dorothy asks, astonished. I shrug. “No,” she says, “find another way to protect us.”

I look at Klaas. He has another coin at the ready. He throws it. It strikes Dorothy in the neck. She screams.

“Oh you Bastard!” She yells. Klaas laughs maniacally.

“Can you get us closer?” I ask Dorothy.

“I can try,” she says, bites her lip, and veers toward the other bike.

“No! No! Stay away,” Klaas yells. Stephanie maneuvers to put distance between us. Klaas raises another coin and throws it. It hits me in the chest.

“Closer!”

Dorothy turns the bike. I try to slap Klaas but he is still out of reach.

“Closer!” Dorothy veers closer.

“Stay away!” Stephanie yells.

I reach out and slap Klaas’s hair. He pelts me with a penny.

“Oh shit,” Dorothy yells. We have come too close. We run into Klaas and Stephanie and the two bikes become tangled. They crash, riders and all, to the ground.

There is a moment, between midair and ground when things become clear to me; comings and goings, love, finance and God are all laid out obediently before me. Look at them there! I think, they’re not so tough.

But gravity, faithful friend of the gods, swoops down and restores them. And as the sound of screams and broken glass spread out around me, they retreat behind their veils and there is only the street.

I hit the concrete, lay there for a moment and then sit up. The four of us look at each other and laugh. Stephanie lifts up her pant leg. Her knee is bleeding.

“Oh you poor thing,” Klaas says.

“You assholes,” she says sternly to him and me then laughs and stands up. “Let’s go,” she says, picking up the bike, “and no more pirates.”

Klaas and I look at each other then bow our heads. We gather the beers. Only two have broken.

“It was worth it,” Klaas says to me, confidentially, and together in feigned meekness, we rejoin them atop the righted bikes.