Leaving Berlin

by Britt Holmström

  On the first Sunday in her new place, without any clean clothes, she threw her full laundry bag down the stairs and slid after it on her bum, step by bumpy step, hung the laundry bag over a crutch and hobbled up to the Laundromat three blocks north. There she met a woman named Katrina, the only other person in the place, sitting as if alone at a party (apart from the book on her lap), dressed in a discreet grey dress accentuated with a white pearl necklace. Though she did not seem to appreciate the company at first, she got up and helped Doreen empty her bag into a washing machine.

  In response to Katrina’s queries, Doreen served up the usual lie. How could she reveal the truth? Katrina would have laughed her head off. She is far too sophisticated to indulge in fantasies. She wears pearls to the Laundromat for crying out loud.

  Katrina recently met a man at the art gallery where she sometimes goes on Saturday afternoons whenever there is a new exhibit. It’s something to do. The man struck up conversation in front of a piece of modern art depicting nothing but the artist’s bleak lack of talent.

  The man, honestly confused, wanted to know if she had the required knowledge to interpret that blue rectangle with its single dot of pink and splashes of yellow that looked as if the artist’s brush had dripped paint. The painting was called Home on the range. Which bit was the range, he wanted to know. Was it the blue or the pink dot? Should a range not be green?

  Katrina confessed to not having a clue.

  Her response cheered him, she could tell by his smile.

  Before she knew it, they were having coffee together in the cafeteria. A daring move, but as Katrina told herself, daring was supposedly what she aspired to. Besides, what could possibly happen in an art gallery cafeteria full of culturally minded people on a Saturday afternoon? The tables did not have quartz tops, it was not foggy outside. Several elderly women wore hats. No enemies lurked.

  She now wishes she had not responded so rashly to this man’s invitation, because he keeps calling to ask her out. He went through all the seventeen K. Fergusons in the phone book until he got the right one and was not the slightest bit embarrassed to confess to it. And Katrina likes him a lot, it’s not that. He is a very nice man.

  But he is absolutely the wrong type. He is talkative and easygoing. Laughter comes as natural as breathing to him. He grew up on a cattle ranch out west. She can tell he is not one to keep secrets. Nor is he in any danger. His type never is.

  She has succumbed and gone out with him a couple of times, but she is not sure what to do about a man like that. He plays the guitar and likes country music. Katrina cannot abide that kind of twangy racket. The confidence in his stride is unhindered. His eyes are open and blue. She will never be able to mould this man into her monochrome dreams where life is perilous and women wear stockings with seams. He doesn’t own a trench coat. She asked him and he looked puzzled, saying he had no idea what one looked like. He had, he said, never been in the trenches.

  She wishes she knew someone who likes this outdoorsy windblown type, because she wishes him well, she really does. He is kind and generous. He wants to take her to restaurants and feed her big steaks. “Put some colour in those pale cheeks,” he says, looking at her with manly longing.

  When he looks at her like that, her immediate instinct is to close her eyes. He is too overwhelming, this open-faced man, too real, made of such frighteningly solid flesh.

  His name is Bill.

  What should she do? Leave her dreams behind for the sake of this flesh and blood man?

  She has thought of mentioning him to Doreen, but the thing is, Doreen has a boyfriend already. Or a lover, more like it. Katrina is not sure how to label him, because when Doreen sometimes mentions a man named Chuck, she does so in a very possessive, off-hand manner that has Katrina convinced it’s an illicit liaison, that this Chuck is married. Thus the secrecy. She feels sorry for Doreen, stuck in a hopeless relationship. Men like that never leave their wives.

  Out of respect for her friend’s delicate situation she does not flaunt Bill’s existence.

  Doreen went out with a new man last week. She met him in a wine bar where she went with a bunch of people from work. It was something to do. She doesn’t usually frequent establishments like that if she can help it, she feels too out of place. She finds the piano music irritating, the urban decor disturbingly aloof, the clientele pretentious. Plus she is not crazy about wine.

  Though God knows he is good-looking, this man, everybody has taken pains to point it out as though she is legally blind. But here’s the problem: he is a foreigner. Doreen has nothing against foreigners per se, she just gets insecure around people who can hold forth in languages she does not understand. It makes her feel excluded, as if secrets are being kept from her.

  He is from Switzerland, this man, from a city called Zürich. Doreen had never heard of the place until he mentioned it. She can’t pronounce it properly, she calls it Zoorick. A man sorely lacking equine ambitions, this enigmatic Swiss, he claims to never have been within ten feet of a horse. Nor does he plan to be. No, he told her when she asked, he would not dream of sitting on one. Why would he?

  Doreen is unsure where this man’s interests lie; he is annoyingly secretive. His job involves a lot of travelling, but he evades any mention on what it entails.

  Computers? Global corporate takeovers? Politics? Is he a spy? Gangster? Hired assassin?

  His lips remain sealed. It’s only work, he says. A man should never bore a woman with the tedious details of his toil. He is quaintly old-fashioned in his mannerisms. “I do not wish to bore you with my problems.” His voice was soft when he said it, his accent charming, his smile enigmatic.

  He does not smile very often, and when he does, his smile is always resigned, his eyes rather sad. But he appears genuinely taken with her. He buys her flowers. Red roses that look out of place in the Wild West.

  It’s certainly a dilemma. Doreen is fond of this man, but no more. How could she be, he is far too distant, downright ethereal at times. It’s as though he is not made of flesh and blood. Nor is he likely to ever burst into song.

  And his name is neither Chuck nor Buck nor Bill. It is Alexis something or other.

  Should she give up her dreams and rearrange her life to try and grow closer to this man?

  Introducing him to a more cosmopolitan woman, sure to appreciate this type, would solve the problem, but she can’t for the life of her think of any. She considered asking Katrina, of course, he would be just up her alley, but Katrina already has a boyfriend. Or lover. Once Doreen watched as she got some change out of her wallet and saw a photo of a man wearing a no longer fashionable trench coat. He looked almost old enough to be her father. Katrina never mentions him, which means he is married for sure.

  Women with married lovers keep their affairs to themselves to avoid humiliation. Married men never leave the comfort of marriage behind. Why would they?

  As she would not want to embarrass Katrina, she does not flaunt the fact of the enigmatic Alexis from Switzerland.

  Slouching on one of the plastic chairs by the window, the Perfect Beauty is looking bored, slowly chewing gum, eyes closed. Her sidekick is scrutinizing his dirty nails, chewing a bit off here and there. With their backs to them, defiantly, Katrina and Doreen begin to sort their lukewarm clothes in a sloppy manner. This is not at all like them. Both are expert folders and usually take their time smoothing and folding each garment as if persistent neatness might increase their chance at happiness.

  But not today. Doreen shoves her clean laundry into her canvas bag helter-skelter, knowing that by doing so everything will need ironing when she gets home. She does, she tells herself, not give a shit.

  Katrina takes a bit more care initially, but her folding quickly deteriorates. Halfway through she gives up and stuffs the rest of her clothes into her large tote bag. Then she bangs the door to the dryer shut. It’s an angry gesture.

  Doreen defiantly leaves her door open.

  Together they exit the Laundr
omat, heads bent in shame, or so it looks.

  “See you next Sunday?” Katrina asks as they dawdle on the sidewalk. She appears restless, in a sudden hurry, as if having just remembered something she must do before it’s too late.

  “I guess.” Doreen seems equally preoccupied. Looking tired and restless, she keeps fiddling with her keys.

  Katrina does not ask why this is. She feels weary and limp herself. The sky is overcast, growing darker by the minute. It’s going to rain finally. It has been hot and humid for the past month. The forecast this morning warned of thunderstorms in the late afternoon. Now the entire city lies quiet, bracing for the storm that will break the heat, wash it clean and make it new. Oppressive weather will frazzle even the most cheerful constitution.

  It is, they are both convinced, the humidity.

  They part without a smile, without looking at each other, as though they will never meet again but can’t understand why.

  Inside the Laundromat, the acned youth observes the two women indifferently. Just as they walk off in opposite directions, the first fat raindrops slam hard against the window.

  “D’ya see the way them broads kept starin at ya earlier?” He turns to his flawless companion, stares at the nipples looking perky under the flimsy top. “Like they wanted to, like, jump ya or somethin?”

  The Perfect Beauty — she has not paid the women any attention — forms her luscious lips into a pouty circle. From the centre of the circle emerges an expanding pink bubble. The timid pink of the gum clashes with the vivid red of her lips. Eventually the bubble bursts.

  “Fucken dykes,” she reflects, shoving the gum back in her mouth.

  THE COMPANY SHE KEPT

  * * *

  IMAGINE THEIR PLACE OF WORK, if you will, the way it was before the established order of life fell apart: a large office area on the fifth floor of a teaching hospital. Desks arranged to provide everybody with equal space, democracy measured in inches. Functional furniture, cheerful colours, all brightly lit. An unimaginative, generic habitat invented by experts in environmental psychology.

  Now imagine in this setting the group of women: Gertrude, Pat, Margaret, Irene and Jill. Gertrude at forty-four was the oldest, Jill at twenty-nine the youngest, Pat, Margaret and Irene scattered across the thirty something range, resulting in an average age of 36.6 years. They felt they had known each other forever. It’s like that, they would have said — had anybody asked — when you’re confined to identical desks in close proximity from nine to five, five days a week, when you see the same familiar faces every time you raise your head from whatever you’re doing. As time goes by you either end up despising each other or you forge a bond.

  All those touches added to give each generic space a human flavour become personal ads that say: “I thrive in pleasant surroundings.” (Potted plants: African violets and spider plants, the odd rubber plant. Crocuses and tulips in the spring, a poinsettia at Christmas.) “I’m a devoted mother: my children come first.” (Photographs of children, good luck charms, drawings, craft projects from school or daycare). “I’m divorced. I need no man in my life.” (Stark absence of photos of husband, lover, brief fling.) “I’m the plucky sort who has kept her sense of humour.” (Cartoons cut from newspapers and magazines, office scenes featuring the medical profession, taped to any available surface.)

  Over time they had answered each other’s ads. They had forged bonds.

  In short: they were all divorced, mothers of an average 1.4 children. Three of them, Jill, Margaret and Irene, were overweight, albeit not greatly. Pat and Gertrude were skinny. Their average weight was 142.8 lbs, average height 5 feet, 7¼ inches. None of them were beautiful. None of them were ugly.

  Being so soothingly alike, they spent a lot of time together outside of working hours with the consensus that it would have been foolish not to take advantage of a favourable situation. Also, getting together meant a more varied social life. Or a social life, period.

  What did they do during these get-togethers?

  They talked mostly.

  About what?

  You name it. This and that. Their children. Rehashed whatever had happened at work lately. Embellished the odd urban myth. Kept appetizing gossip alive. They did not aspire to great thoughts or daring actions, had no intention of discovering the meaning of life. They did not have the ambition, and besides they were too tired in the evening.

  Individually they nursed tender egos held in place with the frayed duct tape of optimism, but together those egos melded into one large entity, a cushiony shoulder that was a comfort to lean on.

  All in all, they were easygoing people. Tenacious survivors, the sturdy backbone of society, women who undervalued themselves as though it was their feminine duty to do so. Without the abundance of their ilk, women’s magazines would fold like a bad poker hand, cliché-riddled self-improvement books and guides to instant happiness would be shipped back to destitute publishers. There would be no foolproof new diets, no calorie-free food substitutes, no exercise programs targeting problem areas. The economy depends on keeping festering insecurities alive.

  The five women were well aware of these facts but never gave them a second thought, for the same reason they wasted no time reflecting on the fact that the earth is round.

  Then one day Kaye entered their lives.

  She did so without fanfare, standing before them one Monday morning dressed in an unassuming blue knit dress accentuated by a maroon leather belt, her neck, ears, arms and fingers free of jewelry. She was slender and willowy, her complexion translucent. Her eyes shone. Whether they shone from expectation or some kind of inner joy was impossible to say.

  “I’m the new temp,” she announced by way of greeting. Her smile was on the shy side, but friendly; she posed no apparent threat. How could she, she was a temp. She was there to fill in for Sharon Voss who started maternity leave that day.

  By fault of design Sharon’s desk was halfway in, halfway out of their enclave, the shorter part of a large L-shaped area. The longer part of the L, the territory around the corner, was inhabited by six women too young and callow to appreciate the finer points of their older colleagues’ gathered wisdom. Sharon had, despite the angle of her desk, belonged to the greenhorns. She was only twenty-two.

  Kaye, on the other hand, was no greenhorn. She could have been twenty-five or thirty-five, it was difficult to tell. She had a breezy air of mature sophistication about her. Therefore, as she appeared promising enough, the five invited her to accompany them to the cafeteria on the ten o’clock break. She was under no obligation to accept the invitation, she could as easily have gone with the greenhorns.

  Or, as Pat later suggested, she could have taken tea with the Queen of frigging Sheba.

  But she did not, she accepted their extended hands of friendship, if not so much tagging as sauntering along as if on a catwalk before an appreciative audience, hips jutting left and right with the ease of conceit. She made no effort to take part in their chatter as she sipped her herbal tea, looking quietly amused.

  Why did she bother to join them, when in between broad smiles she turned out to be decidedly standoffish, dropping ill-disguised hints that their company was not quite up to her lofty standards?

  “I mean, it was like the bitch was humouring us,” said Irene.

  “Like we were drooling imbeciles,” said Pat.

  After four days they found themselves more or less apologizing for being so formidably dull, never once asking themselves why they took to sweeping under the rug all talk of humdrum subjects like their lives and their children. Already they were behaving as though having procured offspring was nothing but proof of some mental deficiency or a social faux pas.

  For years they had taken their corporate identity for granted, had assumed that due to its deep-rooted ordinariness it was beyond reproach. Now suddenly every faction of this identity was cast into doubt. They became insecure, started to fret, to suffer mental turmoil. They no longer knew what to wear when getting d
ressed in the morning. Their clothes had turned treacherous and frumpy in the darkness of their closets. Hairstyles were scrutinized in bathroom mirrors and discovered unsuitable for their particular features, shades of blush and lipstick re-evaluated and tut-tutted. In the beginning they didn’t even realize they were doing it.

  “Sorry,” they would say, individually or in unison, and for trivial reasons.

  With a flutter of a white porcelain hand Kaye would implore them not to worry about it, whatever it was.

  Margaret, the most even-tempered, succumbed to dishonesty one day and felt forced to point out that they were not all that worried, thank you very much. Why would they be? “And say, where are you going next, Kaye? Your time’s up soon, isn’t it?”

  The pinprick was wasted on the balloon of Kaye’s confidence. She merely released a little sigh. Her sighs, although of a delicate nature, were such that each exhalation made her look thinner.

  “I simply can’t decide,” she confessed, looking relieved to finally be able to share a cumbersome burden. She was forever being deluged with offers of permanent positions and the offers put quite a pressure on her. At the moment she was tempted to accept one of them, though if she did, it would put an abrupt end to being a free spirit. And she so treasured her freedom, that was the thing, she was sure they understood, but on the other hand, the position was so well paid it would be damn near criminal to refuse it. Not only that, it involved a lot of travel. Kaye had a passion for travel.

  So did Gertrude. “Really? What countries have you visited?”

  “Well, you name one, I’ve probably been there.”

  “India?”

  “Five years ago.”

  “China?”

  “Last year.”

  “Tierra del Fuego?”

  “Oh, I just love Terra! I went to Club Med there two summers ago.”

  Gertrude shut up and got busy stirring sugar into her coffee, forgetting it was not her habit to do so.