Tomorrow Berlin

by Oscar Coop-Phane

  The work was unappealing; Tobias couldn’t have asked for better. He translated instruction manuals for machines he’d never use. It was a world he didn’t need to think about, he just made his little contribution.

  His apartment was coming together. He cut photos out of newspapers and stuck them on the walls; headlines, too, when he liked them. Titles in block capitals and funny little items of news: ‘72-year-old eaten by her cats’; ‘he smothered his grandmother because she confiscated his PlayStation’.

  Sometimes he received a letter from his sister. Little Lucas signed at the bottom right in his shaky handwriting. The weeks went by uneventfully, between the instruction manuals and 72d, between his discoveries and the habits he was forming.

  But there came a point when Tobias was no longer making discoveries; he had a season ticket for the underground, the old Turkish man instinctively handed him his packet of Blue Nile every morning, he knew the supermarket shelves.

  The day he realised this, Tobias was struck by a great sense of sadness. He felt stunned. What was he to do now that he had his habits nicely arranged around him? Should he content himself with observing them, all these little independent actions, so independent that they functioned by themselves, like motorised creatures that didn’t need anyone guiding them? He had polished them so well, held them so tight between his palms, that it was as though all these little everyday habits existed outside him. Enthusiasm for the ritual one has created can be destroyed by the sadness of the habit. And amid all these stale attractions, Tobias was getting bored.

  He remembered a tract from the Lettrist movement which Jérôme had read to him one evening: The adventurer is someone who makes adventures happen, rather than someone to whom adventures happen.

  XIV

  Perhaps Armand wanted to get away so that he could stop thinking about Emma and create a new personality for himself, far from his past.

  He could choose a new character, escape the role he’d played with his friends. He would only be able to forget that role if he left them and went off to something entirely new.

  Perhaps he’d go to Rome or Berlin; for now, he made do with talking about it. Departures had style; he would be accountable to no one, he could live out his idiosyncrasies as he saw fit. He’d be free, he wouldn’t have the incessant gaze of those around him weighing him down. Since he could not free himself from them while they were around, he would escape.

  How would he live? He didn’t have the slightest idea. Never mind, he’d always managed somehow. That sort of detail wasn’t worth getting hung up on. He’d put a bit of money aside; he’d be frugal for a few months. Then what? Then, time would tell. He got a job in the bar downstairs from his flat.

  He worked there in the evenings; during the day he was a school supervisor. Now, when Armand thinks back on that time, he remembers the lack of sleep and the smell of the metro. He got exhausted going from one job to another, and meanwhile he was thinking about his departure.

  Before he left, he wanted to see Emma again. They spent the night in his little bare room, as he had already packed away all his things in a friend’s cellar. They did some coke, and slept on the little mattress he used as a bed. He smelled her skin on the thin mattress and he swore he would leave and never come back.

  It was summer. Armand chose Berlin. He bought a budget ticket. It was so strange buying it just one-way!

  A few days later, he set off to live his new life. He was twenty.

  He was so preoccupied by tiny details of style that he forgot to feel afraid. He didn’t know where he was going to sleep; he had a bit of money in his pocket and a bag with a few things.

  XV

  Franz abandoned his thoughts of adventure. He took a job in a bar in the evenings in addition to his hack work in the office. He needed space, and money for little Juli, who was on the way.

  Franz could no longer read his books with the yellowing pages. Fate had caught up with him and he had to march to its tune.

  Juli was born. Juli Riepler. It was a joyful moment for them all, for Martha, for Pastor Krüll, and Franz too.

  Life was organised with confidence. They created a warm, pink room for Juli at the pastor’s house. Martha took care of it, along with the nappies and the feeds. Franz worked, he paid his share, and as soon as he was free, he picked Juli up in his arms, thanking that friend, Fate, whom he had hated a few months earlier, when he had grabbed him by the shoulder.

  In the bar where he worked, Franz was often asked if he knew someone to buy from. He didn’t understand at first. Buy what from? Drugs, of course.

  Months went by; sometimes he took them. Then, he made some good contacts. Juli was getting bigger; he needed more money. Franz became a dealer on the side to earn a bit more. Ecstasy and amphetamines made a good profit. It was a far cry from the nine-to-five.

  Business flourished; Franz got bigger. People liked him because he didn’t cut the product too much.

  Those were the salad days, of plenty of money and freedom. He had come a long way from Günther and Co. and the cocktail bar. He was his own boss; he sold to nightclub dealers who came to his apartment every week to stock up. Little Juli, raised on drug money. Every line done in a nightclub toilet, every pill swallowed meant a bit of comfort for Juli, money for her education, a new teddy.

  Then, as always in these stories, Franz got caught. Police. House search. Clink.

  XVI

  Tobias tried to see things outside so-called normal life. He went to sex bars and druffi nightclubs. He went back to the life he managed best wherever he was, the drug addict. He became friends with his neighbour on the second floor who offered him his couch. He gave up the instruction manuals and the apartment that went with them.

  The eternal return. His life resumed its original cycle. For him, this was normal life.

  XVII

  Two years in prison leaves its traces on a man’s face: marks of submission, fear and humiliation. Franz did two years, since he was unable to hold out and grassed up his suppliers, some Poles, who were much bigger fish than him.

  When he got out, he wanted to work. No one would take him on; his face was puffy with the marks of jail. Juli no longer recognised him; he couldn’t buy her a new teddy any more. He was done.

  He did a few jobs on a rehabilitation programme, scraping posters off walls, checking tickets on the U-Bahn. He gambled the money he made in slot machines. Most of the time he won. He doubled his stakes, tiny amounts.

  He was able to see Juli, Martha and Pastor Krüll again. He tried putting make-up on the lines on his face. What would Katherine, Sir and Madam have thought if they’d seen him in this state? The Institute’s uniform was falling to pieces, it no longer covered his body.

  Franz partied on. At least in that world no one asked him questions about the lines on his face. At parties that went on for days, that existed outside time, his past didn’t matter.

  The druffis welcomed him. They gave him tobacco and put him up. They were his family now.

  PART TWO

  ‘Door Closes Automatically’

  Berlin

  There is something so new about Berlin it’s frightening. The walls of the apartment blocks are not burdened with stones, but poured from concrete, smooth or rough-cast, like the slabs between the windows of apartments. Here, apartment blocks are not like women lying down or standing up, but seated, neither tall nor short; they don’t offer you their thighs, but simply remain there, at rest. It would be hard to know what to say to these women without realising they are the product of a terrible history, that they have been seated there, on these broad armchairs, so that they can once again welcome men freed from their demons. Since they provide warmth cheaply, little groups of artists take refuge in them. They don’t create anything, but it doesn’t matter; they live, going from one space to another, picking up furniture that they find on the pavement. They go cycling, their children following on their little bicycles without pedals, alternately balancing their little legs against
the ground. In winter, when the pavements are snow-covered, the children are pulled along in sledges with a piece of string, like Inuits. These children look happy since people have time to take care of them, and their parents’ faces suggest they are carefree too.

  The streets are wide and people walk around, as though nothing could happen to them, as if here more than elsewhere people take time to live. People are a bit skint but they get by. The soups are good. People smoke in the cafés since it would be crazy not to. They work away on a laptop at some obsession. You sense Europe is around you, all its languages mixing and answering each other.

  Idleness is king. Sometimes, it ruins men; excess hollows the cheeks of those who don’t have to get up in the morning, the dark circles round their eyes look carved in. Some party until they can take no more – there is always somewhere open here to welcome them. It liberates some and crushes others. Freedom demands strength; some are weak and quickly lose their way. But around them, others continue with their bike rides, their tram journeys and their nice lives. It’s simple enough; these are men whom Work has not crushed. This is a situationist city.

  I

  Since he was going to experience new things, Armand felt that he should write about them. He took a small black notebook and slipped it into his pocket along with a pen. When he was alone, he would make a sort of record of his existence.

  A notebook for Berlin. Write down a thought, a story, a joke every day (one page, as a discipline). I’m leaving tomorrow. There are some things I shall miss; but my excitement has the upper hand. Today, writing emails and carting things around, a scooter too. Leave the fewest traces possible, not contacting E or L. Leave alone, without ties, because that is ultimately what I wanted. A little adventure with all my twenty years of wisdom.

  Don’t make a song and dance of it, though. I’m going to live somewhere else, but like here; there’s nothing very disorientating about it. The language maybe, the signs, the street names and surnames, which I’ll have to decipher letter by letter like in primary school. Some customs will be different but maybe no more than in another district in Paris.

  I’ll no longer be at home and I can hardly wait. The streets will have no associations; I shall have to construct new memories.

  I’m sitting outside a café opposite V’s place, V who offered me his couch; the horrible rue de Baby-lone where I’ve had so many different experiences. Over there, all that will end. I understand why people talk about a fresh start.

  All the threads I have woven will disappear, that’s a therapeutic virtue.

  Where will I be this time tomorrow? In a street with an unpronounceable name, in a café again. That would be good.

  Where will I sleep tomorrow? No idea. In a bed probably. Places change; the same things happen. That’s no surprise really. It’s reassuring. But also troubling. So that’s life. That is how all future days will go. Cafés and a mattress at the end, alone or with a girl. Every night I’ll sleep on a bed or a sofa, on the ground, in the dirt. There is no surprise, no surprise parcel to open.

  Yes there is: death. Talk about a surprise!

  It’s the first day of the autumn term. I’m leaving. People in the street are rushing about, thinking about the new (academic/office) year. Their arms are full of new things and their heads are buzzing. A new timetable, a squared A4 notebook. Same old shit.

  They look happy to be resuming the course of their lives. I’m leaving, and you won’t be seeing me again.

  I only despise them insofar as I’m like them.

  They come from Bon Marché, carrying big orange handbags and wearing really expensive perfume. Rive gauche. That isn’t mine. No, it’s not my element. I may like it nonetheless, the women are prettier there.

  Does Berlin have a Left Bank?

  So many lives I will not touch, that I’ll never understand. We want to write about men.

  As if it were a matter of experiencing something, we leave, tail first.

  When Armand arrived in Berlin, it was raining. The grey dome over the city was spitting out its regularly spaced phlegm. It was almost possible to believe that you could avoid the raindrops by darting between them. The sky is mocking you, that’s an omen. Armand’s sky was rainy but intangible, the sort of rain that doesn’t soak your head. But at some point a fat drop forms and hits the tip of your cigarette with its full weight. Sometimes, with a bit of luck, you just end up smoking something slightly damp, but other times, fate strikes so hard and so accurately that the cigarette has had it. You take a drag, and all you get is a sappy taste through the filter. You light up another and life goes on. Nothing has changed; but it’s there, the little taste of artificial sap tickling your throat. At least there is that nice sound, the psst of water on the tip, like when you toss a butt in a plastic cup at a student party. It’s one blini among many, a toast to be savoured.

  Armand was walking through the raindrops, a new cigarette between his lips. He’d got off the plane and collected his bag. That weighed him down a bit but not too much; it was very flimsy material from which to construct a new life: some books, a computer, trousers and a pair of shoes.

  He thought about taking a taxi. But what address would he have given? He’d take the underground. At least you could trust it; there were maps, a vague idea of the city – the names of stations. Some inspire trust and others don’t. Armand’s drift through Berlin would be psycho-geographical. He wanted to lug his bag where his spirit led him, follow streets that would inspire him, avoid others, no regrets, and never go back.

  He took the S-Bahn, watched the passengers, counted stations. He’d get off at Mehringdamm; he’d been told that Kreuzberg was a nice area.

  When he came out of the U-Bahn, it was still raining, still morning. Armand was hungry. He took shelter under the frontage of a fast food joint. Enthusiastically, he ate a hamburger alone, right up at the restaurant window, watching the rain. The scene should have been desperately sad, but Armand liked it; he was free, no one watching him, in a new city.

  The rain was easing off nicely. Armand put down his tray on one of the trolleys that a cleaner would have to move later. He left the burger joint.

  He walked for a bit. Then, as it was still raining, he found a café. He ordered an espresso and a croissant. The barman realised he was French.

  Armand went to the room upstairs, where you could smoke.

  Arrived in Berlin today. It’s raining. Finally found a café where you can smoke. It’s not unpleasant. Four blondes bedside me. I should describe it better, but what’s the point since this notebook is only for me?

  Just because, for form’s sake; a purely personal aesthetic; a way of imagining one’s existence; nothing more. Yes, it may be as simple as that, imagining the aesthetic direction of my own life.

  This place is quite nice (the upstairs room, I mean). Smoking, drinking coffee among German girls.

  Sense that all my habits (rituals would be more flattering) will be reproduced but without giving me the same feeling. It’s different because the places themselves are different.

  A nice city where the girls are pretty. Yes, I’m staying, that’s for sure. How long I don’t know. But I’m definitely staying.

  To be able to watch girls smoking in cafés at last!

  All afternoon he walked around, forgetting the weight of his existence. When it got dark, he looked for a youth hostel. He had written down some addresses on a piece of paper. He did the rounds. They were all full. Where would he sleep? In the underground?

  A friend in Paris had told him about the Berghain, a club that stayed open from Friday till Sunday night. He went there because he didn’t know what else to do, because he wasn’t tired.

  The bouncer didn’t look surprised when he turned up with his luggage. Armand went in. Two men searched his bag and his pockets.

  He paid his admission, and the Berghain opened before him.

  Berghain-Panoramabar

  When you come out of the underground, it feels like you’re in an in
dustrial district. There’s open space, some huts made of sheet metal, ugly apartment blocks fitted with big pink pipes that run along the outside. You still have a few minutes’ walk. It’s exciting and disagreeable. You prepare yourself for not coming out the same day – you’ll dance until you drop. The party will kick off soon. But first, you have to brave the passers-by. They look at you. They know where you’re going. They must be able to tell from your face that you haven’t slept in twenty-four hours. They’re off to do things you never would, off in search of a nice, ordinary Sunday.

  In the distance, you can hear the jerky rhythm of robotic music.

  The club stands out like a cube of concrete, so grey it’s almost beige. The building is colossal; it used to be a factory. At the entrance, people are filtered, then searched. A sign in five different languages says that cameras are forbidden. It’s like a military sign.

  A huge hall serves as a cloakroom. People rest here too, sitting on sofas. The music is quieter here, you can still talk. Next you have to climb metal staircases.

  Then, after the back rooms, the main hall opens before you. On the left are the toilets and on the right a deserted bar. An immense dance floor, with the DJ at the back, druffis moving around. Stroboscopes and green neon lights. The music is brutal. It’s mainly gay. Leather and moustaches. Welcome to Berghain.