Cafe Babanussa

by Karen Hill

  Irina screeched, “Hey, way to go, Elke!”

  Dr. Heller frowned at Irina and scolded, “I’ll have none of that.” Turning back to Frau Jungblut, he said, “We’ll have to wait until your weekly appointment with me to discuss this further. You’ll need at least a few days to recover. I’ll be talking with your husband in the meantime.”

  Elke Jungblut’s face had turned red as a beet. “Doctor,” she whined, “you can’t leave me here with these, these . . . madwomen! Foreigners, stinking foreigners. And down the hall, the screaming. Please, I don’t belong here,” she wailed, her blue eyes full of fear.

  Irina jumped up off her bed and shouted, “Hey! Who you calling a madwoman? Who you callin’ stinkin’? You better watch your mouth, bitch, ’cause you’re stuck with us now.”

  Dr. Heller stepped quickly to the door and signalled for a nurse. Then he clapped his hands together twice and said, “Enough, Irina. Sit down right now or I’ll have you removed in an instant.”

  Dr. Heller waved a male nurse into the room. Throwing Irina a last glance of disapproval, he returned to Frau Jungblut’s bed. “Frau Jungblut, you are being unreasonable. You must not upset yourself and the other patients like this. It will get you nowhere. I don’t want to have you restrained, but if you force my hand, I will.”

  The old woman was now sobbing uncontrollably. Ruby rolled her eyes and looked over at Irina, who caught her glance and tossed back a wry smile. Dr. Heller ordered the nurse to give a sedative to Frau Jungblut. He watched while she swallowed her pill obediently and then rolled over to face the wall, sobbing. Ruby was relieved, though she also felt sorry for her. There was something ominous in other people having the power to control your pain.

  Dr. Heller went over to speak quietly to Irina now. There was a certain sorrow in his voice as he spoke, and she too was subdued, listening and nodding. Ruby wondered how many times she had been in and out of this place. Then Dr. Heller announced that a nurse would come in right after breakfast to tell them when their weekly appointments would take place, and left the room.

  A feeling of numbness began to wash over Ruby. She knew it was from the mega-doses of drugs the night before. Sure, she was back in the real world for now. But it came with a vast feeling of emptiness that swallowed her up.

  Irina’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Y’know, you just gotta learn to go with the flow here. It’s like Pavlov’s dogs—you’ll get rewarded for good behaviour and deprived for bad. You hear those screams down the hall earlier? Well, that’s the other wing. Only it’s not so far away. Got the real bad cases over there. You wanna make sure they don’t send you down there. You won’t get out too soon.”

  “Yeah,” Ruby mumbled, “I was wondering what that was all about.”

  “Listen, take some advice. I don’t know what you’re in here for—I don’t care really. But you just try to get along, and pretty soon you’ll be taking strolls out on the grounds, meeting up with friends in the Schlosspark for a bit, and a few weeks later you’ll be out on weekend passes. And you know, you can still get away with having some fun in here. Just choose your moments carefully.”

  “Fun?” scoffed Ruby. “I didn’t come here to have fun. Just to get better.” She looked down at her hands.

  “Meine Liebe, there is no quicker way to get better than with a little fun. Hey, I bring my guy down here all the time. You know, nooky-nooky here, nooky-nooky there.”

  “I wouldn’t know what that’s all about anymore,” Ruby said.

  “So why you here? You got a bad husband, too?”

  “No! I don’t know. Lots of things went wrong at the same time. My mind was like a closet with too many old clothes stuffed up in the corners, just waiting to tumble out. Then I couldn’t sleep. My brain was going tick tick tick all night long, all those thoughts going round and round in my head. Telling me things, making me see things and hear things. Couldn’t ignore them.” Ruby started to choke on her words. “God, it gets so scary . . . something so simple as lack of sleep . . .” Her voice trailed off into nothingness.

  Irina looked at Ruby as if to say, Yeah, I’ve been there too, but all she said was “Doesn’t sound to me like it was just lack of sleep. When are we going to meet this husband of yours?”

  “Oh, he’ll be here every day, knowing him. He’s a German guy. I met him when I first came to Europe, one and a half years ago. We got stuck on each other somehow.”

  “Goddamn Germans. They have a knack for making you fall for them. And look at what we have to put up with over there,” she said, nodding at Frau Jungblut. “Another German. Scheisse, every time I’ve been in here, there’s been someone like her around. Cursing the Turks or the Jews, talking about the good ol’ days with Hitler when they all had work and dignity. Man. They’re so intelligent, they had to go kill off everyone that didn’t look like them. Look what they did to my people! Executed as many as they could. And those who’re left? I know people who were born here, parents born here, grandparents born here. They still won’t give them no German passport. Just call us stinkin’ Gypsies.”

  “You’re right,” said Ruby. “All those old men and women on the subways. They just sit there complaining and hissing. It’s like it’s against the law to smile. And then the neo-Nazis and football fans storming down the platforms with their racist chants. But I’ll tell you one thing. Despite the fascism, I’ve never seen people take to the streets anywhere else like they do here. I never saw anyone barricade streets in Toronto like they do in Kreuzberg.”

  Ruby heard Irina snort and she rolled over to look at her. She was fast asleep, snoring away. Ruby sighed and gazed back up at the ceiling. I guess that’s all there is to do here, she thought. Talk, sleep, wait for meals, wait for visitors, talk, sleep.

  She looked at the clock on her bedside table. Only eleven. Lunch wouldn’t come for a while yet. She rolled over and picked up Langston Hughes’s book and flipped it open. She began reading softly out loud to herself, letting the words glide over her tongue like honey. “My People” was her favourite poem, gentle yet melodiously insistent. Poetry was the perfect antidote, as it didn’t require the extended concentration that a novel might. She closed the book when the last lines had crossed her lips.

  Ruby had always yearned to draw out her blackness, to place it front and centre. Here in Berlin, without her family around, she struggled to keep in touch with this part of herself. Perhaps this ambiguity had helped lead her to the psych ward. But there had been so many years of questions even before this: “What are you, anyway? Where are you from? No, that can’t be!” And it wasn’t only the endlessly stupid reactions of white people that bothered her. She had recognized early in her life that many of them couldn’t focus their lenses to include any landscapes beyond their own narrow borders.

  What was worse was the disdainful comments of Black people outside her circle of family and friends. She would return home with the words half-breed, half-black, yellow bitch seared in her brain. She knew the history of their anger. Her father had spoken often of the wretched comments of his own maternal grandmother, who advised her children to “marry light, but not white.” And she remembered his singsong words, “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.” He had never told her the rest of the lines until she was a young adult: “But when they get that black, they ain’t no use.”

  She had never thought of herself as more beautiful because of her light colouring. In fact, she had secretly wished she had been born darker, certain that this would have kept the questions at bay. Her father’s words, the familiar rhythm of his speech, would shore her up, reassure her. He spoke to her as his girlchild: “Darlin’, butterball, honeychile . . . Don’t let them take away who you are. Being black isn’t a monochromatic state. Just look at the rainbow of colours in our family. Being black doesn’t mean we’re all the same. We are many people, many colours, many cultures. And therein lies the beauty of it.”

  She loved her father dearly. Loved his wide open view of the world. She was
enthralled when he took his children to the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre and plunked them one after the other onto the knees of a Santa whose eyes looked so different from any Santa she’d ever seen before. She loved it when he took them to the traditional wedding of a Native Canadian colleague and spoke to them of their great-great-grandmother, an Algonquin woman who left her people to marry a Black man. He told his children that he himself believed in no god, but that they should accept other people’s right to believe.

  “Just tell them your mother’s white and your father’s Black” was his response to his children’s need for a simple answer to the constant queries of the people around them. For years she dutifully repeated his words to all who asked. Only as a young woman did she realize that describing her parents did not actually define who she was herself. She wished he had not left her to struggle with that damn puzzle all on her own. And now here she was, stuck in a Berlin hospital, the blackness and the whiteness, the days and nights, battling like knights and dragons over her true self.

  Ruby heard the carts rattling down the hall and checked her watch again: 11:30 a.m. Her thoughts drifted to easier questions, such as what lunch would taste like. She checked the card she had filled in at breakfast time, full of tedious little boxes lined up next to equally tedious selections: yogurt, porridge, cheese, white rolls, brown rolls, sausage, rice, soup. She had been given the option of deciding one day at a time what she wanted to eat, or selecting foods for a whole week at a time. She chose the soup and the sausage and rice, as she was tired of cheese and rolls and sticky porridge.

  Emma poked her head into the room and waved. “Hiya!”

  “Oh my love, I’m so glad to see you,” said Ruby. They hugged for a long, long time.

  “So, you’re in the loony bin. How do you feel?”

  “Tired and scared. Wondering how long I’ll be here for, wondering when I’ll have my mind back.”

  “Ruby, just so you know, I don’t think you really belong here. I’m sure you’ll get out soon.”

  “I wish I could just snap my fingers and it would all be done with.”

  The two women carried on together for an hour. Emma had brought wool and knitting needles with her and showed Ruby how to cast on and off and do a simple knit stitch. They chatted about their friends and about planning a trip to the East. When Emma was ready to go, she said once again, “You don’t belong here, Ruby. Come home soon.”

  Ruby nodded and waved goodbye, sorry to see her friend leave.

  The clattering food carts neared their room again. Irina and Elke began to stir in their beds, pushing sheets aside, rubbing their eyes. Ruby wondered if they felt the same panic she did every time they woke. “Where am I? Why am I here?” followed by the realization that she was adrift in this sea of strange faces, sounds and sights. Irina sat up, swung her feet out over the floor and stretched both arms up over her head. Thick, mottled scar tissue zigzagged around both wrists. She saw Ruby staring at them.

  “Yep, these are my battle scars.” She laughed. “Been here a few times.”

  Ruby looked down at her hands in silence.

  “Hey, don’t be sorry for me. Every time I’ve been in, I’ve gotten out. Besides, my honey’s coming to see me today. I bet yours will be here soon, too.”

  Ruby smiled at her, glad at the chance to talk about something else. “Who’s your honey?”

  “His name’s Niko. He’s a beaut. Just you wait and see. He’ll be in here every day, bringing me things, taking care of me. I’ll be out in no time. Mmm! Can’t wait to get some more of his stuff.” Irina thumped her hands down on the bed next to her hips and shoved her pelvis into the air.

  Ruby blinked in astonishment and then laughed. She could see that Irina would breathe a lot of life into this place.

  “Excuse me!” Frau Jungblut’s voice exploded through their giggles. “Would you refrain from making such crude gestures in my presence!”

  Irina shot off the bed and stamped her foot on the ground. Ruby shook her head at her and pressed a finger to her lips. Irina glowered at Frau Jungblut and marched off to the washroom.

  “Ja, sicher. Of course, meine Dame. We’ll just have to take it out to the hall.”

  Two aides pushed lunch carts into the room. Ruby lifted a tray off one cart and opened the lid gingerly. Three compartments divided the servings: sausage, rice, mixed vegetables. She pushed a slice of sausage into her mouth. Frau Jungblut took a tray, but left it resting on her lap.

  “You should eat something,” Ruby ventured. Although she didn’t really care for her, she couldn’t stand the thought of being locked up with this woman without being able to have a sensible conversation with her.

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  “You’ll feel a lot better if you eat. Try it. I’ve seen worse.”

  Ruby chewed slowly and watched Frau Jungblut hover her nose above the food on her tray, nostrils flared.

  Just then Werner strode into the room. He held one hand behind his back, and with the other he brushed back a lock of Ruby’s curly black hair as he bent over to place a kiss on her cheek.

  “Ta-da!” He handed her a bouquet of red roses. As Irina let out a loud whistle from her bed, Ruby’s face flushed.

  “Thank you,” she murmured. Lifting the roses to her lips, she kissed a petal. She let her fingers graze the tip of each flower, carefully avoiding Werner’s eyes.

  “Eleven,” Werner said, interrupting her counting. “You always give an uneven number of flowers.”

  Ruby sighed and laid the bouquet beside her on the bed. “Yes, of course. You’ve told me that more than once already.”

  Werner’s eyes narrowed. He grabbed her hand. “Come on. Let’s go find a vase for these.”

  Ruby pried her hand loose and lifted the tray off her lap. She shifted her feet into a pair of paper slippers the hospital had provided. She moved to stand up. Her legs felt rubbery, as if they couldn’t carry her weight. Werner took hold of her arm and guided her out of the room. He stopped just outside the door and took both her hands in his.

  “What happened?” he asked, when no one could hear them.

  Ruby looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Last night. The doctor told me you had another fit.”

  “Oh. So you were talking to him already?”

  “Yeah. Tell me what happened.”

  She thought about the visions she’d had and looked into the face that had stalked her at night. “Just like the doctor said. I had another fit. I don’t really want to talk about it.” She didn’t like the way he was looking at her with such intensity. She couldn’t shake the thought that he was really out to get her. Could all those visions be wrong?

  She moved away from him. He pulled her back.

  “Listen, it’s better to talk to me than to some group therapy nuts.”

  “Werner, I just want to forget about it. Besides, I don’t have to do the group therapy stuff if I don’t want to. I can just see Dr. Heller.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Werner, I’m still feeling pretty shaky. Can we go back?”

  Werner shrugged. “Okay. Just wait here a sec while I get the vase.”

  Ruby leaned up against the wall and watched him march down the hall and disappear into the nursing station. He came out and waved a white porcelain vase in the air, his lips stretched into a thin smile. Back in the room, Werner put the flowers in the vase and placed them on the night table. Then he pulled a chair up next to the bed.

  “I’m going to need a few things from my place,” Ruby said.

  “I know. I brought some paper and a pen so you could write a list.”

  “The doctor put me on some stuff to stop the shaking, but I guess it’ll take a while to kick in. Can I just dictate the list to you?”

  “Sure.” Werner printed at the top of the paper, in neat, block letters: list of things to bring to the hospital. Then he drew three columns, printing at the top of them Toiletries, Clothes, Miscellaneous. Ruby wait
ed for him to finish organizing the page. Then, column by column, she rhymed off the things she thought she needed.

  Irina was listening carefully. “Boy, are you guys ever organized! I just threw whatever I could find into my suitcase.”

  “Being organized is his specialty,” Ruby said, nodding at Werner.

  “Well, of course,” said Werner, looking sternly back at Ruby. “How do you expect me to sort through all your things and know what to bring without a list?”

  “Werner, give it a rest, okay? Anyway, it’s finished. I can’t think of anything else I need.”

  There was another knock at the door. Irina yelled out, “Come on in, don’t bother knocking.”

  A short man with dark hair slicked back off his forehead came into the room. He wore a bright orange shirt unbuttoned to his navel, black pants and pointy black suede boots. Ruby stared at the thick mat of hair that covered his chest. Irina bounced up and down on her bed, shouting, “Niko, Niko, I knew you’d come. Darling, come here and let me kiss you!”

  Looking a trifle embarrassed, Niko flashed a bright smile at no one in particular and went over to Irina’s bed. She threw her arms around his waist and shimmied up against his furry chest. Werner looked at Ruby and rolled his eyes in disdain. Ruby ignored him and smiled, enjoying Irina and Niko’s reunion. The two lovers got up to leave the room. Irina turned to wink at Ruby as she passed through the doorway. She whispered, “Remember what I said about having fun?” Ruby laughed and said, “Go for it!”

  “Did you see the clothes the guy had on?”

  “Yeah, I saw. So what? They’re in love,” Ruby said almost accusingly.

  “They look like a couple of wackos, if you ask me.”

  Ruby changed the conversation. “How’s my sister?”