A Guide to Berlin Read Free Page A

charming appeal to an inner self, so primly defended. Nothing much at this time merited her full attention. The city was mysteriously closed in hibernation, and somehow inaccessible. Her vantage was one of ignorance, and her intuition was that whatever was concealed would take time to unconceal. She had come to Berlin to write, an ambition as vague as it was hopeful, verified only by her saying so. There was no evidence of her writing, for she had not yet begun. Her torpor would eventually – necessarily – lift. But she was a kind of tourist, after all, and bent on swift amusements. The weather oppressed her. She sensed herself frozen inside. She was like one of the ubiquitous cranes located high on building sites in Mitte, a stiff shape merely, stuck mechanical in mid-air.
    Cass wondered what happened at the meetings, sometimes held in coffee shops, sometimes in empty apartments to which Marco had access. She was without friends in this city, aimless and contingent: why not follow the possibility of a literary fellowship? Marco said that the meetings so far had been rather anarchic; they were all a little odd, he declared honestly, and none of them were really ‘joiners’. At the next they would begin a ‘speak-memory’ game, in which each would introduce themselves with a densely remembered story or detail. They had made a kind of pact, a narrative pact, to speak openly and freely. There was nocompulsion, Marco insisted. No pressure or obligation. But each would try to speak with candour in whatever manner or genre they chose. Victor had offered to go first.
    Outside the bar, on the footpath, they murmured shy farewells. Marco scribbled an address on a piece of paper.
    â€˜Oblomov,’ he said.
    Cass had no idea what he was referring to.
    â€˜Five pm, tomorrow. Please join us. Please.’
    He seemed reluctant to leave. They stood motionless for a few expanding seconds. Cass half expected another fire-engine to appear and zoom past, since the world was like that now: Berlin was already declaring itself in replications and convergences. Blue U and green S signs seemed everywhere suspended, faces were not entirely distinctive, the same yellow bus roared everywhere between orange LED-lit signs. Colour drew her attention; any interruption to the overall grey caught her gaze. She had noticed too the surreal apparition of fibre-glass bears - life-sized and brightly decorated, standing in erect human postures – a ubiquitous public art of comic-book taste.
    Prone to awkwardness in these situations, Cass spun on her heel with what might have seemed a decisive impertinence. She pushed away from Marco into the freezing air, feeling the turbulence, and the faint thrill, of scarcely admissible feelings.

4
    The central heating was on and the apartment was cosy.
    Cass placed her paper sheath of tulips near the doorway so she would not forget them. She loosened her scarf and removed her gloves and coat. This was the repetition that a European winter imposed, this on-again, off-again, this robing and disrobing.
    Mitsuko, acting like a hostess, handed Cass the mysterious drink and led her with a delicate touch at the elbow into the sparsely furnished room. What struck Cass most were the empty walls and the pale squares and rectangles where once had rested paintings. Oblomov’s disappeared images were now secretive shapes. There was a black leather lounge and two matching leather armchairs, but no coffee table, so that the drinks were served on the floor. There were two vintage standing lamps, of enamelled green metal, Venn-diagrammatically arranged to pour rings of light where a coffee table might have been. Cass recalled the squat she lived in when she had first fled home – sitting on the floor around candles in bottles and dope in plastic bags, and the queasy joy of having only a few books and a duffelbag of scant possessions. She had followed a boyfriend to London and her parents and brothers