Leaving Berlin

by Britt Holmström

  “Of course I do,” he confirmed. “And you can live in it too. It’s not that difficult.” He crossed his arms, standing before her like a proud master builder.

  She felt barren in the face of his splendour, having nothing to offer in return for having been allowed into the tantalizing bit of universe he had conjured up, with its apt sign on the door: Café Unwirklich.

  Yet the moment demanded reciprocation. She concentrated so hard her brain hurt. Luckily one single distant memory heeded her desperate call. She had not thought about it for years, but discovered during a run-through in her head that all the important details remained more or less intact. Just as well, it was the only unwirklich incident she had ever experienced. She decided to share it, blushing at first, thinking it was probably not enough, not very interesting, stupid even. He might laugh. For sure Pierre would laugh his head off.

  Or not. It had been a special moment in her life, so she gave it a try. “Your room makes me think the world is not at all what it seems.”

  “The world is not what it seems, Emma-gemma, don’t you know that?” And then, as if he knew she had something to share: “Please go on. What were you going to tell me?”

  This boy! So wise beyond his years! He would never laugh at her.

  Realizing that she was safe from ridicule gave her the courage to continue. “It reminds me of this one time when I was very little, one morning when my mother was taking me to my grandma’s on her way to work, the way she always did. I was sitting in the child seat behind her on her bicycle, so I must have been about three or so, I guess. Maybe younger. It was very early in the morning and summer, you know, just another day. We were going the usual route when all of a sudden the street disappeared. I swear, that is what truly happened. The street was there one second and gone the next, and instead there is my mom pedaling her old bike through an absolutely unearthly garden. Or forest, I’m not sure how to describe it, it was so green and dense, almost like a jungle, but there were flowers everywhere, covering the ground and the bushes. I could reach out and touch them, feel the dew drops on the petals, smell their fragrance. Leaves from branches overhead slid across my face. Their touch felt so nice and cool. They, too, were moist with dew.

  “But did my mother stop? Oh no! She was always in a hurry, having to get to work on time, so she just kept on pedaling. But I needed to know where we were and what was going on, so I leaned forward and asked her, ‘Mommy, what is this place?’ And she replied, ‘What do you mean? It’s the street behind the school, what’s the matter with you?’ ‘No,’ I said, thinking how strange that she wasn’t speechless with awe, ‘not the stupid old street. The garden!’ ‘Oh, stop talking nonsense,’ she said, not even slowing down to look around. Then I realized that she couldn’t see what I was seeing. I didn’t understand how that could be, so I never said another word about it. Until now, that is.

  “We never biked through that forest-garden-whatever-it-was again. It took only minutes, maybe less, and it was gone like a bubble had burst. It was a one-time event.

  “But wasn’t that weird? What do you think happened? My face and my fingers were still wet from the dew of the flowers after we returned to the everyday world.”

  Pierre was thrilled to learn about her experience, envious and impressed. But he could not explain what had happened to Emma that day, for which he was glad, he said, because he would not want to sully it with something as crass as speculation. A memory like that ought not to be tampered with.

  He did offer, “What I do know is that the brief visit to that place was a gift given to you because you’re special. And that you must never question.”

  Emma was delighted. She had proved herself to be in his league.

  The bond between Pierre and Emma remained firm over the next five years. During the last two of those years — years both short and long — they did not meet very often, but that was inconsequential. Their bond was elastic; it held. The relationship defied classification. It was not a boyfriend-girlfriend tie, nor was it a platonic friendship. Nor could it be pinpointed on any convenient scale in between. Like Emma’s ride through the dewy garden that was not there, it was not subject to speculation.

  Three years after Pierre started evening classes at the art school, he was awarded a scholarship and went off to a prestigious art institute in Paris to learn to do clever things with metals. Pierre, unlike the ragtag wannabe artists at Gunnar’s school, was blessed with unique talent, a gift he remained remarkably modest about, but which explained the ease with which he created illusions.

  Everybody agreed that one day that freaky boy would make a name for himself. Most said it without envy.

  In no time at all another two years had gone by. Then one evening Pierre called Emma. He had returned from France earlier in the day and was eager to hear her voice. It was a month or so after Emma herself had arrived back from Italy where she had worked in a bar earning money that she subsequently spent in other bars. In this manner she had been helping prop up the Italian economy for nearly four months.

  Pierre said he wanted to see her. Those were his words, straight to the point, wasting no time on chitchat: “Emma-gemma, I want to see you.”

  It was December already. They had not met since June. It had been a wet fall in Paris, Pierre complained. Grey and dismal, sidewalks full of umbrellas. Streets clogged with traffic, horns honking. He now needed the warmth and colour of her presence.

  Could they meet soon? Later that evening?

  Emma had never told him that if the colours of her presence shone brightly around him it was only because he inspired her to light up. The reason she never had said those words, and certainly did not utter them that day, was because he might take them the wrong way.

  There was something else she also did not tell him. Something important. She knew she would have to spill the beans before the conversation was over, it was only fair — if fair was the right word. But it would be difficult. How to explain that since they last met, life had rearranged itself in a pattern so extraordinary it would sever their special bond? For, sadly, this much she was aware of. Why it had to be so she did not know.

  Pierre did not raise his voice, but his unhesitating want pushed through the receiver like a moist breeze in her ear. It was not at all unpleasant, this want of Pierre’s. “What are you doing in the near future?” he asked. It sounded as if he had some suggestions, should she lack ideas.

  Oh shit, she thought. I have to tell him. Get it over with. I have to. Somehow. She felt awkward, like she had done something highly inappropriate. Committed a morally offensive crime. But why would it matter? They were just good friends, it was no big deal. He might be happy for her.

  “I’m moving to Canada.” She felt like a supreme twit hearing herself utter those words because, although true, they sounded ridiculous. It was not the kind of statement people went around making in those days.

  She could tell by unflappable Pierre’s dead silence that the sentence had thrown him.

  After he pulled himself together, he wished to know why she was moving to such a pointless place. He was the first to recognize that it was in vogue to travel to all kinds of far off countries, exotic, dangerous destinations cheap to survive in. Hot, poor, dirty countries riddled with incurable diseases.

  Nobody ever went to Canada. Canada was not exotic. It was just a wasteland on the map. Didn’t she know that?

  She said she did know that.

  It just so happened that Canada’s lack of danger and dengue fever was immaterial. Because it was not so much the where as the why. At first she did not dare tell him why she was moving to such an absurd place so unexpectedly, only she could not bear lying to him. He was her special friend.

  To be honest, he was more than a friend.

  Wasn’t he?

  Yes, she thought, somehow he was.

  Then it wasn’t as if he meant nothing to her, was it?

  No. But he was not her boyfriend, was he?

  Well, no.

>   So tell him then, for God’s sake! Don’t be so stupid.

  The truth — shameful all of a sudden — was that she was getting married. She was tying a respectable, legal knot with a Canadian graduate student she had met in a bar in Rome one weekend. But how to tell Pierre that she had fallen in love with a Canadian? Pierre had probably never met a Canadian. Emma had only met one and now she was marrying him — as if he was a rare specimen she must preserve like an insect in amber.

  How to tell Pierre that the object of her affection was good-looking and blue-eyed, and so normal and so conventional, so free of modern angst, so unconcerned about the meaning of life, that it made him utterly exceptional?

  How on earth to reveal that to Pierre?

  And then expect him to convey his heartfelt congratulations?

  For the thing was, she wanted his blessing. Needed it.

  She was at a loss as to how to go about telling him. In the end, what came out was, “Well, you see . . . uh . . . I’m kind of . . . you know . . . like . . . uh . . . getting married . . . He’s Canadian.” Uttered in the same manner you might when confessing to having contracted venereal disease.

  The description of her immediate future sounded bland when toned down to a vapidly stuttered utterance. At once she regretted her honesty. It was as uncalled for as confessing to dyeing one’s hair. Pierre was still very young. Well, he was not a child anymore, he had turned twenty-two. Legally that made him an adult, but “adult” is a loose definition at the best of times.

  Emma resented his weak spot for her. That too, was uncalled for.

  She should have told him that she was going to Canada to do anthropological fieldwork, or some such appropriate lie. Analyze the mating call of the prairie farmer. (She had scraped together a degree in anthropology along the way. It had proved a good background for hanging out in Italian bars.)

  The man she was going to marry came from a town in an area of western Canada called Alberta. It sounded effeminate, though her blue-eyed beloved had been quick to demand — with unexpected force — that she get one thing straight: Alberta was not effeminate, and she better believe it. Men are men in Alberta, make no mistake, my Swedish rose.

  She did not pass on these tidbits to Pierre for fear he might laugh. Never tell the whole truth unless your life depends on it.

  “Have a charmed life,” said Pierre, emphasizing the word charmed. His voice was so low she could hardly make out what he said, apart from that one word, charmed, which raised itself from the whisper with bitter resonance. Then he hung up. He did not slam the receiver, Pierre would never do that, he replaced it very gently, as if he had all of a sudden grown fatigued.

  Emma imagined his silver ring glinting on his hand, the secret in the green amber growing dark and melancholy. Waves crashing against a shore where an old man still sat alone in his cottage perfecting the shape of a silver ring, lodging in it a chunk of amber the sea had bestowed upon him. She thought of Pierre’s hands, how they were always so warm and inviting. She thought of how she had never seen him without that ring.

  And she thought how something important had just ended, quietly and without fanfare. Something she would have to do without for the rest of her life. Acknowledging the loss was a task she would have to work on.

  It was the last time Pierre called her. She did not call him, nor did she question why she sometimes stood and looked at the phone with palpable reproach.

  That aside, she was sufficiently in love with the conventional Canadian from the place with the feminine name that she sometimes managed to forget about her conversation with Pierre.

  No, to be honest, she did not forget, she never would. But she tried to rearrange the past to fit the future, making it easier for herself, for she had always wanted to be in love in the bourgeois manner that the general population approves of. She was under the assumption that conformist love lasts longer, buoyed by that very approval.

  But she was aware, despite all the conventional pre-approved love, that life would never be the same. It might be a happy life stretching ahead, decades of placid contentment filled with the pitter-patter of little Canadian feet, Alberta drenched in sunshine or snow or whatever the hell such a place is drenched in, but it would not be charmed. This was the word that sat lodged in her heart, impairing its beat ever so slightly. That quality, charmed, required a talent neither she nor her normal, pleasant Canadian beloved were equipped with.

  Through the years she often wished that Pierre had not left her under the curse of an impossible word.

  Emma does love him though, now, years later. Pierre, that is. Somehow. Still. Retroactively, if that’s possible. Years later, thousands of miles away, Emma sits thinking of Pierre, thoughts tinged with a contained, persistent nostalgia. It’s sometimes very faint, sometimes nearly nonexistent, but it’s always present.

  She polishes the memory like she would some old trinket discovered to be a valuable object worth a small fortune. Like the green amber in Pierre’s ring and what it held, the prehistoric ant of sorts, a secret, and the little point of light that resembled a sunny meadow in some distant dimension. Like one of the objets d’enchantement he used to keep, the boxes carved and painted, his paintings, statues, flowers and marbles swirling with colours. Something to take to The Antiques Roadshow for admiring comments and the pleasant surprise of a generous appraisal.

  Had she stayed in her hometown, and had she gone to see Pierre that day of his last call, there is no telling where she would be now, but strangely, inexplicably, it would not be with Pierre. That was not meant to be. She never loved him like that. There had been times when she wanted to, but you can’t force love. Nor can you mould it into a specific shape to reflect your own needs or somebody else’s.

  Fate had saved Pierre for something more lasting.

  That was always her explanation and it will have to suffice.

  So she polishes her trinket. Polishes and polishes. It sparkles and shines, and still she keeps polishing as if trying to penetrate the shine to reach another layer, to discover what is hidden underneath. She thinks of all the objects with which Pierre created the illusion of magic in the drabness of everyday existence.

  At the art school Emma had assumed herself to be in love. Not with Pierre, that was something different, her relationship with Pierre had its own unique importance. No, the object of her assumption was a young man named Leo. It was Pierre of all people who brought him to the school, Pierre who introduced her to him.

  Yet Leo is absent from Emma’s bouts of nostalgia, which is strange, considering that he was the one strumming the strings of her heart until she was convinced she heard a melody. So it goes. When the sand of time runs through the hourglass, some people are left untouched, others are buried. Some people matter, others do not. Leo was irrelevant despite his kinky auburn hair and funny green eyes.

  Or were they brown? Grey?

  It doesn’t matter. He is buried in the sands of time. Should Emma try, she would be unable to see as much as an outline of his face in those endless dunes. Where he could have been, might have been, the winds of eternity have whistled by, hardly stirring the surface.

  The man from Alberta, Darryl, mattered for a long time, might have mattered still had he not been more concerned with football than with marriage. Not the kind of football Emma was used to, which was called soccer in this new country. Darryl’s obsession was with the North American variety where padded men lined up facing each other, only to hurl themselves into large heaps of arms, legs, and helmets. When she pointed out the homoerotic aspect of this game, Darryl was horrified, insulted, outraged. It was tantamount to being called a fag, he informed her coldly. He refused to speak to her for a week after that. Emma realized that being called a fag was something he abhorred. Perhaps when coming from a place with a feminine name, men had to try harder.

  Emma remained married to Darryl for ten years. After a decade, to continue the relationship would have been meaningless. Having been more or less accused of being
a fag, he never looked at her the same way again. Eventually he turned to women with bigger hair and larger breasts. In their arms he found the respect a man deserves.

  After the divorce other men were invited to visit Emma’s life periodically. First there was Jerry what’s-his-name, the camping fanatic. That was when Emma learned that she did not like to sleep in the close vicinity of large bears and small insects. Jerry was followed by Colin the chemist, who was humourless, but a gourmet cook. Then there was Marshall the poet who was sensitive, not only needier than a newborn but proud of it. After Marshall came Neil the lawyer. She stayed with him for four years before breaking it off. Years of unsuitable men. None of them mattered in the end.

  The main problem was this: their lives were not charmed.

  Emma has not had a man in her life for quite a while now. She likes it that way.

  Pierre, ageless wherever he is, still matters. Unlike the others, the shifting sands of time are powerless to contain him.

  So how can Emma not love him — for lack of a better word — as the sun sets on another Alberta day? She needs something to shine a meaningful light on her life. It cheers her up. And what could be more meaningful than a person in whose heart she will remain eternally young and beautiful?

  If and when he ever thinks of her, that is.

  But he does.

  She knows he does.

  Not every day, that would be disturbing, but at special times. For example: when he buys a cardboard Easter egg for his children. Or grandchildren.

  Yes, that is for sure when Pierre will think of Emma-gemma.

  There had been no outrageous people in Emma’s hometown back then. “Outrageous” as in exotic, avant-garde, fuck-the-status-quo. It was a respectable place, her hometown. Staid. A place where you could only be different if you were different in the same predictable manner as everybody else.

  Some people nibbled at the edge of daring only to spit out the pieces, finding it did not agree with them. Most did not bother.