Lights Out in Wonderland

by DBC Pierre

  “Where? Piko?” He halts his entry behind the wheel.

  “Pe-go. In der Brunnenstrasse?”

  The man stays hunched at the door, as if we might best abandon the mission. I’m not too put off by this; he’s from a generation retired from clubbing, and realistically, in a city riddled with venues, I allow for the Pego to have moved since the early nineties, even to have changed its name.

  For now I direct the driver to my old stomping ground, Prenzlauer Berg, home of the original Pego Club. Once nuzzling the Berlin Wall, this area’s stark decrepitude was a beacon that brought adventurers flocking after the German Democratic Republic collapsed in 1990, around the time I toddled into town. Postapocalyptic grunge became the cradle for a club scene still famous today, and still owing its spirit and style to the no-man’s-land between East and West, between past and future. Heady times, when I think about them; times when I wished I’d been older. What I now know is that history didn’t let Berlin catch her breath between eras. That’s why the district looked the way it did. Much of her battle damage went unrepaired after the war, and when communists then closed her to the West, ownership of buildings fell into a limbo as owners and tenants didn’t or couldn’t return. It’s no wonder that after the wall fell these borderline quarters of Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte became a playground for the likes of my father, with his acrylic shirts and bad teeth. At that time you could start a club by kicking out a factory window and phoning your friends to bring beer.

  A lump sticks in my throat as we pass into the old East. Cruising along, I see that stealthy proletarians have been replaced by stylish bohemians, goods carts by ergometric baby carriages, ruins by biological food marts. Whereas in my time it wasn’t unheard-of for balconies to snap off buildings and crash to the street with revelers aboard, today’s skyline is mostly sanitized, with shops and cafés bustling where shadows once lurked. What a feature of our hurtling age, and of Berlin’s, I reflect, that at twenty-five I can already say things were so different in my day.

  Even so, it still looks like a place for Frederick the mouse; though he’d now do as well with an espresso machine. All these sights prompt me to reflect on how mistaken our impression still is of Germany—although I grant that any German will call Berlin a special case. Nevertheless, it seems to be in the British interest to regard it as a dour, mechanistic, unromantic place, its peoples without humor or style. Yet the German language today is a softer one, a surprising one, vast and flexible, even whimsical, and the people meek and thoughtful, far from the Huns we’d still like them to be.

  Kastanienallee was my nearest thoroughfare as a child, a long and straight incline eventually dipping towards the center of East Berlin, where the blinking spire of the Alex stands. The driver slows halfway up the street, catching my eye in the mirror to ask instructions. I recall the club being somewhere on Brunnenstrasse, but he tells me it’s a substantial street, and rather than waste my money I’d do better to confirm the address and proceed on foot. The reasoning is sound. As I’m barely thirty minutes off the plane, and spying the Kastanienhof hotel up ahead, I tell him to drop me there. It makes sense to take a room, ask directions, and freshen up before meeting the über-sybarite Specht.

  “So then,” grunts my First Genuine Local, lifting the bulk of Marius. “Around here they’ll know more about the clubs.”

  “Danke,” I say.

  “At least more than me, I’m from Hanover.”

  With my local utopia thus slightly punctured, I step into the old hotel-pension. Of course, it’s not the Peninsula, but it’s clean, modern, and unusually comfortable in a way that suggests the staff have been here for years. It means they’re at home, their hospitalities have been tested over many a winter’s night. I learn, for instance, that I can borrow a chessboard from reception, buff my shoes while I wait for the elevator, and even smoke at breakfast in a dedicated smoking breakfast room.

  Pure civilization.

  But they know nothing of the Pego.

  Fear comes prickling when the phone directory doesn’t list it either. At least not under Pego. Then a minor revelation blows in, bearing good news and bad. I stand absorbing it at reception while another local man wafts in who hasn’t heard of the club. The good news is that this is Berlin—the more awesome a club, the less it seeks to advertise. In fact, just as I recall this, the local says there are still clubs around that only admit holders of tokens given out in the nineties. The bad news, however, forming the bulk of the revelation, comes from the same fact: the best things don’t advertise, the rare ones don’t seek members.

  East Berlin isn’t a client of the Master Limbo.

  I’m without an ally.

  A pang of reality grips me. On the East Berlin club scene, massive can actually mean bleak. Best can mean poorest, with the tiniest basement, and the least choice of drinks. A reverse ethic operates here. Specht could be a purist. And though I hold this to be a zenith of progress—it doesn’t help Smuts.

  I have slightly over an hour to call him, and now a master revelation starts to dawn. A format begins to emerge to these limbo days, a symmetry, as Smuts would say, which is this, just look: the fallout from my decadent limbo demands a wholly decadent solution. A capitalist solution. No amount of grunge or purism will help us; we need a vast hospitality venture, we need a capitalist who opens restaurants at the drop of a hat. We need the sheer grunt of the markets. I was helped by them in Tokyo to get this far—but now I need more, much more.

  Look at the symmetry.

  Ah, the markets. Finding the club is suddenly more daunting than not finding it. What if it’s a purist dive? I drop my bag in the room and step onto Kastanienallee, bringing along a bottle of Marius for either the purist or mogul Specht. My nerves settle somewhat with the sting of night air. In any case, mogul or not, after twenty years in business the man should at least be well connected. All we need is a good lead. These thoughts rebalance me as I dodge a tram and cross over the street. But looking up and down, I now have mixed feelings at seeing no Starbucks or McDonald’s. We don’t need Frederick the mouse, we don’t need purism. We need rampant consumption, we need excess.

  We need the Master Limbo of modern capitalism.

  On Kastanienallee the wandering population is in the process of dissolving between evening and night dwellers, and I scan them looking for vestiges of the old East—a plastic jacket worn too tight, a trouser too short—and though there are signs of Eastern chic, the air mostly hums with design projects on drawing boards. Designer stubble twitches with them in cafés and bars—not burning, obsessive projects, already seared by madness and solder, but projects fit to discuss over a cappuccino. Projects that harmonize with the modern soundtrack of Prenzlauer Berg, an endless wistful replaying of the Gulag Orkestar, of Gnossiennes, of Gymnopédies—of any melancholic lullaby that helps the new bio-bourgeoisie imagine its baby carriages amid rubble and daisies.

  Contentment fuels no excess.

  Ah, well. Passing a beardie who reminds me of my father as a young man, I enter a bar on the corner of Kastanienallee and Zionskirchplatz. Strains of the Deutsches Requiem seep from the church across the cobbled square.

  In the bar I order a beer, using its first exhilarating draughts to prepare an inquiry into the Pego. I don’t rush to the task in case Specht is too well known. Spies might report to him that I seemed too keen. This is my level of focus—witness it, will you—after the tumult of earlier. It even stretches to deciding that when I find the club, I’ll spend five minutes quietly scoping it, trying to catch sight of Specht. With his image and manner in mind, and having seen the space where our hopes lie, I can withdraw for a cigarette and muster a stance for an official pitch. Meanwhile, its clientele, the nature of its door staff, the music and decor will embed in me, inoculate me, like hormones in a Marius grape. Enthusiasms are a force that attracts like to like, so carrying a dose of the Pego is bound to help.
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  The Enthusiasms can be exciting, I muse. Like wearing a cape. I nurse my beer and order a schnapps and, when the barmaid returns with it, begin my inquiry in German:

  “Entschuldigung—”

  “What do you want?” she snaps in English.

  “I’m looking for the Pego Club.”

  “Piggo?” she says. “Piggo Club?”

  “Pego. Pe-go.”

  She shrugs, throwing the question to another waitress, who stares blankly back.

  “There’s still some hot clubs around,” a shaggy man calls along the bar. “But you really had to be here in the nineties. Is this your first day?”

  I look at the man. Though clearly German, he speaks American television English, and has the minor good looks, the studied unkemptness, of the full-time barfly, the career seducer of budget tourists.

  “I was here in the nineties,” I say. “Do you know the Pego?”

  “Dude,” he says with a laugh, “you weren’t clubbing in the nineties. How old are you? You were in bed with your teddy bear in the nineties.”

  I find myself bristling, and pause. How curious—I’m already possessive of Berlin. How dare he lay more claim to her than me? And to the nineties, for that matter. I churn for a moment, marvelling at this territorial quirk. With some discomfort I finally identify it as a quite British foible. It’s the jealousy of the Joneses on holiday, when a new ginger family pays too much attention to their waiter Miguel. Here they’ve carefully groomed him over a week between Saturdays, made his laughter theirs, and suddenly:

  Horrible fat new gingers calling him Manuel.

  “Is the Pego still around?” I stare into my schnapps. “Somewhere on Brunnenstrasse, I think it used to be.”

  “Wow, you studied your map, huh? Brunnenstrasse. Except we put more accent on the ‘unn,’ like ‘Brunn-en-sh-trasse.’ ” He shuffles up to join me. “Dude, if you’re looking for girls—”

  “I’m not, thanks.” I pay for my drinks and walk out.

  “Hey, my friend!” he calls after me. “My friend!”

  But I step into my own Berlin, spacious and tranquil, whining with trams. My lifelong Sunday, my stern old Frau.

  Two more bars and a kebab stall haven’t heard of the Pego, or of the colossus Gerd Specht. Four students I stop haven’t heard of them. Halfway down the street I find an Imbiss still open, and reason that this type of small shop, selling confectionery, cigarettes, and drinks, must be as good as a concierge’s desk for the district, news must surely gather here.

  But the man inside knows nothing.

  Ah, well. The time can come to any endeavor, as it does to believing in God, when your world hangs without factual support of any kind. I become aware of it just as my two hours are up. It’s early morning in Tokyo, and Smuts will be waiting. The Imbiss-keeper sells me a phone card. He seems to nod sympathetically as he hands it over the counter, maybe sensing that no laughter will flow from it. And curiously I don’t have the instinct to snort lines before calling. Perhaps uncertain news is never best delivered crisply. In fact, I haven’t felt the urge for oblivion since I landed. Even though limbo doesn’t seem to muffle me here.

  Even though I feel reality’s steel on my skin.

  Finding a phone booth nearby, I dial the police station in Tokyo, resolving for safety’s sake to drink more from now on. The duty sergeant answers, and after some grunts Smuts’s voice echoes through as if from the long past:

  “Putain?”

  “Smuts—I made it. Are you okay?”

  “Just tell me the deal—name of the venue, how many covers, et cetera. Things are hotting up over here.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “The old guy’s pals say he didn’t order offal. They say he was too drunk to order anything. Yoshida hasn’t given a statement yet, the lab’s still testing fish. I told the lawyer that you witnessed the guy ordering, but he says you’re not a Japanese speaker so it doesn’t count. Fuck knows what’ll happen. Balls are in the air. Things look fucked. I’m just keeping my head down, sketching up menus for Berlin. We managed to get a message to the Basque, he’s calling tomorrow.”

  “When exactly?”

  “Just tell me about the thing! Putain! What the fuck!”

  “Well, Smuts—I haven’t been able to see the man yet.”

  “What? Don’t tell me that. Don’t tell me that now.”

  “The thing is—”

  “I’m fucking begging you.”

  “Smuts, I’m on the case—it’s a Monday night, I’m fresh off the plane.”

  “You have to fix it up. And I mean fix it up. According to the lawyer a professional domicile in Europe is critical. Things are different for a visiting specialist than for an itinerant kitchen hand. I told him about Berlin. And he agrees that if we can get the Basque on board we should be fine—he supplied the fish, it’ll be in his interest to pull me out. But on both counts we need a venue by tomorrow. And Putainel—”

  “Hm?”

  “It needs to be fucking awesome.”

  12

  Morning is unwelcome. I find my blanket twisted in a pile.

  When I first step outside, yellow leaves blow up the street. The truth dawns on me that the Pego is dead. Gerd Specht long gone from the scene. Reality comes in the way it most loves, on a wind. Of course, there’s an outside chance the club might still exist somewhere—that’s Berlin’s nature. I know that besides this Eastern vestige she has quarters as charming as Paris, badlands as stark as Siberia, shopping as rich as New York.

  So it is in Berlin. A club could move and not be heard of again.

  Or it might simply die where it sits.

  Passing an outdoor table on Kastanienallee, I see a blackboard offering Big Breakfast and Little Breakfast. My gut forces me to stop. I choose Big Breakfast, hoping to fortify myself for the day, but when it comes I sit staring at the plate.

  Nearby is Choriner Strasse, where I stayed as a boy. I can’t bring myself to look for my old building. I should feel charmed to be in East Berlin again, hearing bicycle bells on the street. But I haven’t the luxury of charm. Under this cool morning my death wish seems like masturbation. This feels more like a city where if you want to die, you just put out the recycling, water the herbs, cancel your Süddeutsche Zeitung subscription, and die.

  In any event, I spend the day going through the motions of a hunt. The sky stays overcast. After trying all the Spechts in the phone directory, I mount an assault on Brunnenstrasse, Rosenthaler Platz, and Torstrasse, sweeping up and down in my greatcoat, drinking coffee and smoking, because in Berlin you can smoke. At great length I’ve been told that Berliners don’t ignore the European ban because they smoke more; rather because nobody again will tell them what to do.

  Still, twenty Gitanes Blondes bring me no closer to the Pego.

  I find a Soviet army surplus shop where I thought it used to be.

  After this the day quickly passes into night.

  I shiver. Futility comes to me in one of those floods that can seize a mood. Among the short residential streets that run like spokes off a square is Swinemünder Strasse, and I head down it. In my mind the word Swinemunder translates into Swine World, and for that bitter omen alone I take the route. Barely a hundred steps away it hits Granseer Strasse—Grand Sneer, in the same monkey tongue, surely describing the veal-like lips of nature. The street runs beside a small park, charming but with nothing unusual to recommend it, past typical five-story blocks standing one behind the other with a garden in between, the Vorderhäuser and Hinterhöfe where Berliners mostly live.

  Then up ahead I detect a spill of light and noise. One of Berlin’s delights: a café-bar nestles for no good commercial reason in the ground floor of a quiet residential block. Whereas in Britain this would be an outrage to business modeling, a lethal snub to t
argeting and demographics, in Berlin the idea is simply this:

  If you feel like a coffee, we can make you one.

  Drifting toward the light, I realize I’ve been strangely relaxed in the capital of the world’s third-largest economy, notwithstanding my mission. Despite its being a larger and healthier economy than Britain, I find that my guard is down, the perpetual buzz of frustration and fear is gone. Perhaps because no business I’ve entered has been founded on a need to expand to fifty outlets by next year. No staff member has been primed to manipulate more sales from me than I intended to give. No cameras suggest I might flee without paying. No signs warn that I’m about to be affronted in a way liable to make me resort to threats, violence, or abusive language. No unit of my space or time has been seized under a philosophy that the tiny fraction of people who respond by weakness or mistake to a trick are a valuable target group. That work of bacteria in suits, involved in nothing but the business of themselves and of human decay, seems largely absent here.

  I’m not part of a sales curve.

  I’m not presumed a thief or a fool.

  And a coffee’s not a lifestyle choice.

  It’s a coffee.

  Three figures sit smoking in front of the tiny bar. They watch me approach, drawn like a midge to the light. A Latin American man smiles and stands to greet me.

  “No, but this was a seriously big business,” goes his conversation with two grayish men. “Really one of the big banks.” The two men are locals of roughly my father’s age, though still wiry and strong. They wear modest clothes, neither colored nor uncolored, that say nothing about them. Our host brings three shots of Peruvian pisco, courtesy of the house. I order a beer before he goes inside to tidy, leaving me with the pair of sandblasted faces. We hunch smoking, watching shadows play among the trees.

  “Is this still Prenzlauer Berg?” I eventually ask.

  “No, Mitte,” says the craggy man. “Though it depends what you’re thinking, because if you mean the Prenzlauer Berg of the famous Berlin Wall, then this is still considered it.” He raises his beer and points across the park: “A couple of blocks down is the wall. Those buildings at the edge were only for Stasi agents and other trusted officials. They could see the West from their apartments.”