Patterns of movement - this week in Berlin
Dateline: Berlin
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(In this letter, I have included links to a single poem by each of the poets I mention.)
Saturday
Coming towards me on the quiet road where I live was a light pink umbrella. I stepped to the right.
Stepping to the right is something I still have to remind myself to do. Even our patterns of movement are determined by where we grew up.
‘Igit!!’ said a voice from under the umbrella.
‘Igit’ is the German word for ‘yuk’.
The voice was speaking to me. The umbrella had stopped. ‘Igit,’ said the woman again, lifting the umbrella a little and revealing her smiling face. In Germany, unlike in South Africa, one does not smile and greet a passerby on the street. No eye contact.
I smiled at her, squinting through the mizzle. What’s the right way to respond? I drew on my non-existent Britishness.
‘It’s supposed to be like this until Monday,’ I said.
‘I want to be in my garden,’ she said. ‘Na ja,’ she shrugged.
‘Na ja’ is ‘oh well’.
‘Igit,’ she said, again, and went on her way.
I rode the underground eastward. I found the Museum of Silence after walking in the wrong direction for half an hour. The Museum of Silence was closed. I made a coffee, loo and wifi stop in Tucholskystraße. I had a short relationship once with someone who adored Kurt Tucholsky’s writing and urged me to read him. I never did. The same man bought me a book of poems by Pablo Neruda translated from Spanish into German. I fell in love with Neruda in German.
I rode the underground some more to get out of the drippy weather. I went to Potsdammer Platz and walked a block or two to Gropius Bau to see whether the bookshop there had a copy of a journal I wanted to look at. It did.
When I came out, the slick streets around Potsdammer were full. Police vans everywhere. Police officers standing around. Relaxed. A fire truck was parked across the street, preventing traffic from coming this way. In a deep doorway, a cluster of fire officers leaned away from the chill. One of them had rainbow hair and a nose ring and their nails were painted dark blue. Perhaps this was not the Feuerwehr. But the uniforms…?
‘Staying Alive’ began to play near the underground’s entrance. People dressed as insects began to dance in step. There was also someone in a pink poncho and someone in an apple-green rain hat. Flash mob?
But why the police?
A tumble of coppery curls intercepted me. Did I want to know why those people were dancing, the owner of the curls wanted to know? Yes. I did.
‘Did I know…in Germany…make representation directly to…what you can do to help…’
Her gleaming teeth looked newly hatched. Her lips and eyebrows were rose gold like her hair. She wore no make-up. Her beanie was hand-crocheted. She spoke so fast, I understood nothing. She smiled. Her spiel had been short. I said thank you and smiled back. She did not have a crease of concern between her eyebrows. There was no zealotry in her mien.
She gave me a pink pamphlet.
The dance was over. I found the entrance to the underground. A dragonfly in petrol-coloured tights was wrestling a coat from a backpack so urgently her feelers were bobbing. Her bag was being held open for her by a man staring at a bee whose furry torso looked warm and cuddly.
The insects were dispersing in different directions.
As I descended the steps towards the train, a rolled-up flag sticking out of a backpack almost poked me in the eye. I ducked. The flag transporter turned again and saw me. Sorry, sorry, he said, and made a joke about his backpack’s antenna.
Such sweet protestors. No wonder all the muscle surrounding the area looked so relaxed.
In the train, I looked at the flier.
‘A good life isn’t possible without diversity.’
‘Save what we love and need.’
In the top right corner of the pink flier was a circle with a stylised hour-glass.
Next to it was written ‘Extinction Rebellion’.
Monday
I took the U-Bahn and changed at Bismarkstrasse and admired the tiles again.
I was going to She Said on Kottbusser Damm. She Said is a book shop ‘for female and queer authors’. It was full of people on a Monday afternoon. Not all of them looked female or queer – though how do ‘female’ or ‘queer’ look? – and some of them were small enough to fit into prams and wear mittens as big as the palm of my hand.
Cakes were home-baked. There were tampons in toilet. The music was good.
One shelf was a ceramist’s dream. And a book lover’s dream.
Tuesday
We walked all over the place. I told the person I was with about the delicious dolmades I’d bought on Kottbusser Damm.
You shouldn’t go there! It’s dangerous!
Later, in the train, this person bumbled into a minor political rant that began with there being a place on earth for all God’s creatures – they didn’t say it like that; they are too modern to bring God into it – but why did some people have to be so over-the-top? Why the naked asses at parades? Why destroy art? And what is it with these women who think it’s okay to be so fat?
This is usually the beginning of emotional conversations that go nowhere and leave me upset and feeling impotent, and the other person feeling attacked. But I was calm. I was able to counter it with something small and unthreatening and they said, well, I haven’t thought about it like that before…
I’ve been teaching myself political tolerance.
Wednesday
Antje was back in Berlin for the day. We had coffee from a wide window seat that overlooks the baboon enclosure of the zoo. I am less entranced by baboons than she is, especially since my recent brush with their insouciance.
We visited a wool shop. She knits the most spectacular things. I knit scarves. Sometimes I even finish them.
Later, we went to Literaturhaus Berlin for a conversation between the author of Age of Vice, Deepti Kapoor, and a German crime writer. We all had dinner together afterwards. A long table of people who all work with books meant a long list of reading recommendations.
Thursday
Haus für Poesie is situated in a sprawling building that used to be, I think, a brewery. I went to listen to a discussion between translators of the work of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.
Going there, a busker was playing a saxophone at a busy transport node. A woman of about 80, small and lithe, began to dance, holding in one hand a glass of white wine and in the other, some silky rhythms. She spun open-armed and graceful, her bun releasing wisps of grey hair. Her short red coat was open and revealed a bright dress. She wore red tights with vertical stripes in green, and leather ankle boots. She looked neither drunk nor self-conscious. People took videos. Maybe one day I will find them online.
Leaving later, I had to change trains several times due to work on the lines. A tall, slim man about my age climbed on and off trains with me carrying what looked like an old doctor’s bag. He was wearing knickerbockers, burnt orange knee socks, a short tweed jacket buttoned up, a bow tie, short brown boots, small round silver glasses. A two-inch grey beard stood out from his square jawline. There was no moustache. No hair on his cheeks or chin.
He was not wearing stage make-up. I think this is just his style.
On coming home late
The night has become a foreign country for me in recent years. I am travelling in it now again.
Stragglers on buses and trains coming home late, keep to themselves. Young women lost in their books. Queer people, bejewelled and made-up, staring at the ceiling with their earphones in. Dark-skinned boys alone, playing games on their phones.
I feel so safe all the time that I don’t know how to arrange my senses. I am always the most alert person in the carriage. I still get my keys out a stop before I need to get off and arrange them like claws between the fingers of my right hand.
When we get to a stop, the men saunter off.
The women stalk off, fast and focused.
There are patterns of moving determined by sex, not geography.
I love travelling with you. It’s so vivid.