Berlin Syndrome

by Melanie Joosten

  They sigh in unison, happy to share their disgruntlement.

  ‘I used to try and imagine you,’ he says. ‘I would lie alone in this bed, knowing that one day I would meet a woman I could fall asleep beside every night. And I would try and imagine what she would be like.’

  ‘Was she anything like me?’ She wishes, just once, to sleep alone for one whole night, starfished across the bed.

  ‘No,’ he replies. His voice play-acts surprise. ‘She was not like you at all.’

  She does not believe this. Most women are much the same.

  ‘I had no idea what you were like. But now that you’re here, I cannot imagine not knowing you. Isn’t that strange?’

  She has become aware of his heat. It has made itself distinct from the rest of the atmosphere. A glaze of sweat lounges between her breasts and around her crotch. She would give anything for a breeze to sweep away the stillness, stir his pulsating heat back in with the surrounding air. She yanks the sheet from her body, and for a moment, as the sweat evaporates, cool teases her body. He takes the sheet and waves it back and forth so that it billows above their bodies like a parachute.

  ‘It’s too stuffy in here for sleeping.’ He lets the sheet settle and reaches for her hand. ‘Come on.’

  In the living room, he switches on a lamp, puts Nina Simone on the stereo. At the window she lights a cigarette, takes a drag and stubs it out. The television tower is unaffected by the misty rain that clings to the city. Clare is disappointed: she’d hoped that it would droop a little.

  ‘We can make a whole town,’ he calls out from where he sits on the floor. The book of Soviet architecture is open before him, and he is punching one of the flattened buildings from its moorings on the page. She crouches down beside him, and he plants a kiss on her shoulder. She watches as he tears the cardboard along the perforations, careful not to lose any tabs. He has chosen the Palast der Republik. Its shape could not be more simple, and in only a few minutes it stands on the floorboards like a grand shoebox.

  ‘Your turn.’

  She flips through the pages. She chooses the hideous People’s House in Bucharest. Too big for one page, it is drawn across a gatefold — it will dwarf all the other buildings. She folds along each of the lines with precision, tucks the tabs neatly into slots.

  ‘They had to build the central staircases three times,’ she tells him. Her memory takes her back to the pimply tour guide, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down above his red polyester tie, his skinny arms pointing at the twin staircases like an air steward indicating exits. ‘Apparently Ceausescu wanted to be able to walk down one flight, while his wife walked down the staircase opposite, with them looking into each other’s eyes the whole time. But his wife was taller than he was so the workers had to change the height of his stairs so she wasn’t looking down on him and so that they still arrived at the bottom at the same time.’

  ‘It’s always the short men that make trouble,’ he says, laughing. She does not agree.

  They carry on making the models until there is nothing left of the book, and the floor is littered with buildings. He has mixed mint juleps, and as the morning sun breaks into the room the dregs of mint in the jug and discarded glasses pass green shadows across the miniature metropolis. She watches the way Andi lines the buildings up with the floorboards, creating diminutive streets and boulevards. He looks to her every now and again, as though seeking her approval, and she finds herself giving it willingly. She recognises the emotion that loops itself about her ankles, climbs her legs to her hips, aims itself at her heart. She is content. But it is a feeling so close to happiness that she shakes it loose and goes back to bed.

  Clare’s accent is atrocious; it makes him want to laugh.

  ‘Ich möchte ein Kaffee, bitte.’

  ‘Nein, ich möchte ein-en Kaffee, bitte.’

  ‘Einen.’ She repeats his emphasis, smiling. ‘Because it’s accusative, right?’

  ‘Ja, sehr gut.’ He stands up from the table and bends to kiss her forehead. ‘A coffee it is, or would you prefer a beer?’

  ‘Hmmm … perhaps a beer. I’ve already had two coffees today — I’m pretty wired.’

  ‘A beer it is then, we can’t have you climbing the walls.’ He heads into the kitchen and takes two beers from the fridge. He feels as though this day could go tumbling on and on, and he would never want it to be tomorrow.

  ‘So you’re quite good at teaching German. Is it easier than teaching English?’

  ‘I don’t know about easier,’ he replies, returning to the table and handing her a beer. ‘But I definitely find it preferable.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ She takes the beer and clinks it against his own.

  ‘Because I get to teach it to you.’

  ‘Right answer.’ She smiles. ‘But I’m confused — how did you learn English? I would have thought they only taught Russian at school?’

  ‘We did learn Russian, it was compulsory. But, to be honest, no one was really interested. English was offered, and even though nobody thought the Wall would ever come down, it seemed obvious that English was going to be the more useful language.’ He sits and traces his finger, wet with condensation, around her hand. She has such lovely hands. ‘And I suppose it was because of my father being an English teacher — though he was more interested in the literature than the language.’

  He remembers his father sitting in his reading chair, lamp on and book open in his lap. He was always reading English books, but Andi never asked what they were about. Novels, he assumes, but cannot be sure. These days his father buys all of his books online and is amazed by the speed with which they arrive.

  ‘There’s a book on absolutely everything, Andi,’ his father told him, enthused. ‘You type in any topic you can think of and someone will have written a book on it.’ It is as though his father has only just discovered a world outside of his own.

  ‘That’s how they met, my parents. He taught her English at university.’ Andi takes a sip of beer. ‘Once dinner was finished, they would sit at the dining table and read stories and poetry in English and German to each other.’ He has not thought about it in a long time, but when he describes it, he can almost hear their voices.

  ‘My mother’s accent was nowhere near as strong as my father’s,’ he recalls. He didn’t recognise it then, but he knows it now. She probably has no accent at all anymore. ‘I suppose she was quite a bit younger than him when she began learning. Well, she was always quite a bit younger than him; he’s more than ten years older. Was it the same with your parents? Or were they the same age?’

  When she doesn’t answer, he realises she is probably thinking about how long it has been since she has seen her mother, how her father is of no age now. He makes these slips every time he loses himself, allows himself to think that things are working out okay. Every time that locking the door behind him each morning seems like the most normal thing to do in the world, and when he cannot remember what it was like to fall asleep alone.

  ‘Perhaps she always felt he was too old. She left him —’

  ‘The same age,’ she interrupts him. ‘They were born in the same month and the same year.’ She looks at him and smiles. ‘They always had a birthday party together. Mum would make Dad a cake; he would buy her flowers.’ She pushes her chair out and stands. ‘I’m going out for a walk.’ She leaves her beer on the table, and he hears her grab her jacket from where she has hung it next to his in the hallway. There is the sound of the bedroom door closing, and he knows she won’t come out until it’s dark.

  She wonders whether he shows these photographs to anybody.

  ‘Look at me.’

  She looks at him.

  ‘Smile.’

  She does not smile. Andi presses the button, and the camera flashes its response. She blinks, and he takes the Polaroid that slips out of the camera and shakes
it in the air.

  ‘I’ll be home late.’ He continues to shake the photograph, addressing Clare’s foggy apparition. ‘Is that okay?’

  She nods, and her image surfaces on the Polaroid film, nodding in unison with Andi’s shaking hand. He takes yesterday’s photograph from his diary, puts today’s in its place.

  ‘Your hair is getting long, Clare.’ He studies the two photographs before closing the diary, leaving one image on the table. ‘I’ll see you later, baby.’

  He kisses her on the lips. She kisses him back. She does not want him to leave. He leaves.

  She wanders to the window, rolls a cigarette, lights it and waves it in front of her face. She does not inhale. She wishes the tobacco would make her thoughts spin faster, but it does not. The cigarette smoke butts up against the closed window, searching for release as it does every day. She returns to the table and picks up yesterday’s photograph. Her hair is getting long; she will need to cut it soon. She looked happier yesterday. Was she?

  She takes the photograph to the bathroom and compares it to her reflection in the mirror. She looks the same. But she cannot be the same. She is a day older and she is no longer just herself. She is pregnant.

  She holds the Polaroid next to her face, and her eyes flick from one to the other. She tries to catch her similarities out. Or her differences. In the photograph, she is not looking directly ahead; she is looking to the left. She had been looking at the table when he took the photograph yesterday, trying to see whether the newspaper headline had a ‘c’ in it. She needed a ‘c’. In the mirror her reflection stares straight ahead without fail. She cannot catch it out.

  She stubs her cigarette out in the basin and walks back down the hall into the living room. Taking a drawing pin from the tin on the bookshelf, she reaches up to pin the photo to the wall. She started from the skirting board, the Polaroids evenly placed, crawling up the wall like ivy on a lattice. She has grown up past her own waist, beyond her head. She has not counted how many replicas of her populate the wall, but if she should reach the ceiling, she will begin again, filling in the gaps. Each image looks identical to its neighbours, but if she looks at one from the bottom and one from the top, she can see they are quite different. Her hair a little longer, her skin a different colour. The faces from long ago don’t look like her at all. Or is it the faces at the top, the more recent ones, that are unfamiliar?

  She steps back to survey the wall. It is like a line-up, a gallery of mug shots. What sort of crime does she look like she has committed? She does not appear drunk and disorderly, perhaps just a little dishevelled. The gallery regards her with reproach. It’s his crime, she pleads with them. But she knows that it is hers, too. The jury waits for her justification, expressions inscrutable. Her face has become thinner. That’s what it is. And her freckles have faded. But which one does she resemble the most?

  She looks down at her legs. Her thighs are lined with silvery scars. Her shins are hairy, and the skin beneath is dry. What did she use to look like? Tears well up in her eyes, and the heat of shame creeps up her neck. She takes a deep breath. Why can’t she remember what she looked like? She lifts her arms, examines her hands. They look like her hands. But have the freckles faded there, too? And her muscles? Did she use to have more muscle? She flexes her leg, watches closely. Her muscles flail beneath the surface of her skin then fall back in relief.

  She lifts her t-shirt, looks at her stomach. She tries to imagine it growing, the skin stretching, and she cannot. All she can think of is the baby trapped, desperate to get out. Her periods, so regular, have stopped. She feels ill in the mornings. She wants there to be another cause, but she knows that there is not.

  She runs into the bathroom. She strips off her clothes. Her pubic hair has grown. She looks in the mirror. Are her shoulders more stooped, less? Her eyes appear panicked — is she? She turns around, tries to catch her back in the mirror. She can see the pink flush of a pimple rising on her shoulder. How many of those has she had and not noticed? It suddenly seems imperative to document herself. She doesn’t want to change, but she knows that in the coming months she will. She doesn’t want to forget what she looks like.

  She understands, now, the photographs Andi takes. She thought it was sweet at first. ‘I want the most up-to-date picture of you with me every day,’ he had said. ‘I want to be in love with the you of right now, not yesterday.’

  In the living room, she takes the Polaroid camera from the shelf. It has been a long time since she has held a camera, and this one feels like a toy. It has a rainbow stripe running beneath the lens, and the word ‘Presto!’ flags the red button. Her own cameras are still in their bag. They are useless here — no darkroom, no computer. Which is why Andi had been so pleased when he came home with the Polaroid camera. ‘It just makes total sense,’ he said. ‘It takes the photo, and there it is.’

  She holds the camera with both hands and aims it at her feet. She presses the button, and the bulb flashes. The paper pushes out from the slot. She bends over further and takes a photo of her knees. It will be upside down, but she does not think that will matter. She straightens up a little and takes a photo of her faded pubic hair. Her stomach, which appears just the same as it always has, so calm on the surface. Her breasts that look as though they belong to someone else. As the photos spew out, she tosses them on the table without looking at them. With one hand she takes a photo of her other hand. Her elbow. She swaps the camera to her left hand and does the same again.

  She aims the camera at her arse, presses the button. At the backs of her legs, which is less successful. How to photograph her back? She tries a few possibilities, waves her arms around fitfully. She takes one photograph from below, one from above. She photographs the back of her head. When she is done, she realises she is cold. But she is no longer panicked.

  She showers, rubbing soap all over her body. When she dresses, she is thankful that her body disappears beneath the clothes, avoiding further scrutiny. At the table, the Polaroids have all been exposed. She still cannot tell if she has changed, however, because she has nothing to compare the images to. But at least she has this record. She gathers up the photographs; they are such a little stack and yet they are her entire body. She stands in front of the bookshelf and wonders how to choose. Eventually she closes her eyes and picks books at random from the shelf. Into each one she places a Polaroid body part. For Klimt she offers up her breasts — she thinks he would like that.

  As she puts the books back on the shelf, she reviews her invisible work with satisfaction. Swinging her arms, she walks to the window where the television tower greets her.

  ‘Hello,’ she says. Her voice is unfamiliar. It sounds different when she is alone from when Andi is there. ‘Hello, tower.’ She sounds a little forlorn.

  She wonders what she sounds like to Andi. People’s voices never sound to themselves the way they do to others. She knows this from the message she recorded on her own voicemail. Her recorded voice sounds lower than — lower than what? Lower than it should? Lower than it sounds to her? What is more true: the sound of your voice to your own ears or to someone else’s? What would it be like to have company, other than the plant? Someone to answer her questions, to listen to her voice and tell her if it sounded wrong.

  ‘Is this my voice?’ she asks herself aloud. ‘Or is this my voice?’ And when she finds herself waiting for an answer, she shakes her head. ‘Fuck, I’m going mad.’

  She is lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling. He crosses the room to the stereo. There is no record on the turntable, but the volume is turned to the max. It’s like being inside a conch shell, surrounded by the sound of the ocean. He switches off the amp, and the whisper and crackle of the speakers is silenced.

  ‘Clare?’

  She has not moved. She lies on her back with one hand behind her head. The other lifts a cigarette to her mouth. She holds it there, near her lips.

>   ‘Yes?’

  She is dressed in one of his t-shirts and a pair of her own knickers. Two grey woollen socks cling to her feet.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  She lifts one leg, places her foot flat on the floor. Stubs her cigarette out in the teacup beside her and puts both hands behind her head. ‘I’m waiting.’

  He stands next to her, his feet by her bent elbow. ‘What for?’

  She looks at him, indifferent. ‘For you, Andi. I am waiting for you.’

  ‘Well, you can stop now.’ He steps over her, one foot on either side. He offers her a hand, but she does not reach to grasp it. ‘Come on, Clare. Get up.’

  She doesn’t. This annoys him. He nudges her with his foot.

  ‘Clare.’ He tries to keep his voice friendly. ‘Clare, come on.’

  She won’t move and she won’t look at him. She won’t acknowledge his presence.

  He kneels, one knee either side of her. Holding her gaze, he undoes his belt buckle and his jeans. He is already hard; he wants to make sure she knows he is here. He leans forward and puts one hand by her head, uses the other to pull himself free from his underwear. It is an awkward movement, and it irritates him to think that she will have noticed this. Still she has not moved.

  He leans down and kisses her neck. Moving his knees further apart, he settles himself down onto her. He cannot see her eyes now and he is glad. He closes his own. He pulls her knickers aside with one hand and finds her wet.

  ‘You were waiting for me,’ he whispers and he enters her quickly, thrilled with the way her body welcomes him. He pushes against her. His knees are uncomfortable on the floor, but her body is giving. And, too quickly, he lets himself come; he does not try to slow down, he just lets everything go and falls onto her, spent. He lies there, waiting for his breath to catch up to him, listening to the silence of the apartment, and then he stirs himself, lifts up off the floor. He moves to one side of her and stands, doing up his jeans.