Solidarität

Last night I went to a "soli" party at a squatted housing complex. "Soli" is short for "Solidarität" and means that the proceeds from the party go to some political cause. "Solidarity" means "unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on community of interests, objectives, and standards." Indeed, the party was like a herd of sheep, except that one couldn't just piss wherever. While manouvering myself toward the bathroom, or anywere else, I was pushed and shoved the same way I used to be while getting on a crowded bus in Russia, except there the point wasn't to have fun and solidarity was not a cause but a mandatory fact of life. In both places, however, each little push and shove contained the potential to blow up the basis of civilization, I felt. After about an hour, I asked myself, "why am I here," and left. Solidarity is a nice concept but uncomfortable in the flesh.

I'm sorry for my German.

Two winters ago, I read an article about Haruki Murakami's routine of sitting down to write every morning for several hours, even if he had nothing to write and indeed wrote nothing at all. I was inspired to do the same and started a story called "I'm sorry for my German," which began with the mistaken reading of a sign on the other side of the river I used to run along that said "Anlegestelle." For weeks I had thought it said, "Angelnstelle," which I thought to mean a place for fishing, and wondered why I never saw anyone fishing there. Somehow the story developed into Otto wandering aimlessly in Vienna and then abruptly ended when, being driven nearly mad by the noise from the neighbors above me, I fled to New York to stay at my grandmother's empty house, where I discovered the terrifying loudness of solitude.

I don't remember what I meant by the title, "I'm sorry for my German," but I liked the sound of it, and that's approximately how I felt at the time, or maybe more accurately sorry about my German, and sorry about many other things as well.

But now I remember. I thought that my writing would inevitably contain some German words and phrases for which I couldn't find appropriate English translations and, knowing that this might be annoying and even come off as pretentious, I wanted to apologize from the get go. At the same time, it is true that here in Germany I often did feel sorry for those who had to endure my imperfect German and wanted sometimes to tell them, "I'm sorry for my German."

Today, while walking home from the U-Bahn station where I had sat for a while listening to the cellist, I thought that the inclusion of German words and phrases in my posts could be a theme for my blog. Thinking of the cellist, whom I gave 10 Euros, I thought of writing that maybe "das war ein bißchen übertrieben," although I actually don't think so at all. This time he didn't play any Bach, but what I once paid $10 for at The Stone, I thought, wasn't at all necessarily better.

Home

After three weeks in New York, I returned to Berlin today. Because I had spent the entire flight reading Janet Malcolm's book on Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, I was tired and slept through most of the sunny, warm afternoon. When I got up, I had a coffee and decided to go have a soup at Kottbusser Tor.

In the entrance to the U-Bahn station at Schlesisches Tor, a young man dressed like a squatter, in thick grey cargo pants and a canvas military cap, was playing the prelude of Bach's Cello Suite No. 1. He was not bad, and the sound filling the entrance way, usually full of people who are drunk or scalping used Fahrscheine (U-Bahn tickets), was full and sweet, as if he were rehearsing in an old, stone chapel in the French countryside. I wanted to put money in the open cello case in front of him but the smallest denomination I had was a 5 euro bill which seemed too much although really it isn't.

While waiting for the train on the platform upstairs, I noticed a young, blond German man talking with a young, fat man with dark hair. The blond man was neatly dressed and carrying a full backpack. The fat man was wearing thin, white cotton pants and a red t-shirt, both of which were too large even for him. What I first noticed about them was that the fat man was speaking heavy slang, but the blond man was answering him in crisp and clear Hochdeutsch, in a very friendly even interested way. I wondered whether they knew each other.

When the train arrived, the fat man and I got in the same car and, as he sat down on the bench across from me, I realized he was inebriated. His right pant leg was ripped on the inside from the crotch to his knee. Underneath, he was wearing black tights. He was carrying a bottle of Moskovskaya vodka, and the man next to him, drinking beer, remarked with a smile, with what I think was a Russian accent, vodka. The fat man said, no, not Vodka, and then read the label, Mos, Mos-kov, Mos-kov-ska, Mos-kov-ska-ya. He put a heavy arm around the Russian and suggested they drink together. He opened the bottle and took a swig, appearing to gather all the strength he had to swallow. There was not yet enough alcohol in the Russian to have purged him of suspicion, and the fat man said, what, it's a new bottle, I just opened it, there isn't any poison in it. The Russian took a sip of his beer. They compromised by knocking the bottom of their bottles against each other. The fat man turned to me and said what sounded like Shingling and something I couldn't understand. I looked at him and looked away. The man spoke to me more, apparently offended that I did not respond, and all I could understand was Shingling. I looked at him again as if to signal fearlessness, thinking to myself, I'm from New York, he doesn't know that, he thinks I would feel unsettled by such a situation, although he almost certainly wasn't thinking anything at all. He turned to the Russian and said, what, his name is Shingling isn't it, don't you know? Getting no response, he turned to the woman on his left, whose face was red and creased. I wasn't sure whether her frown expressed a less jolly shade of inebriation or the despair of intermitten sobriety or that she was just utterly downtrodden. She ignored him, too. I'm not sure she could have done anything else. At Kottbusser Tor, the fat man got off and so did I.

I had planned to walk home after my soup, but because I had to pee, Bierhimmel was too empty for me to inconspicuously use their restroom, and the train was approaching Goerlitzer Bahnhof just as I was, I ran to catch it and rode it home. When I got off at Schlesisches Tor and walked down the stairs, I heard the cellist still playing Bach's cello suites. This time I had a 2 Euro coin and some change. I took it out and held it in my hand even before reaching the bottom of the stairs. As I was approaching the open cello case, I saw a woman standing in front of me with short, silver hair, wearing a black, trench coat and carrying a black bag which she was rummaging through presumably for her wallet. As I walked by, I dropped the 2 euro coin and change in the cello case. I noticed that it was about 10 times as full as before. I imagined that the woman, surprised to hear Bach at that U-Bahn station, of all places, played by such a young man, of all people, would give maybe as much as 5 euros. I wondered then whether the cellist had considered that the few people there who would appreciate Bach would give money out of sheer surprise which would be lacking in more affluent neighborhoods. And yet, there are enough people here in my neighborhood who do appreciate Bach for it to be worth the cellist's while. As I walked toward my apartment, I thought that I was home.

Otto Malik

Otto Malik is the name of a character I've been thinking about for roughly a decade. In the beginning, his name was Otto Oderberger, after my then-favorite street in Berlin, then Otto Ödemann, because Otto was öde. Since then, he's probably had a few other names as well, but I don't remember now. Malik I got from the Russian word for boy, "malchik," which is what strangers called me on the streets of St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1992, 1993 and 1996-97, when I was 18, 19, and 22, respectively. "Mal" being the root meaning "small," the diminutive "malchik" means "little small." Malchik became Malik to sound less Slavic, like it came from a part of the world where names shift as readily as the political borders, somewhere between Hungary and Slovakia, for example. It was partly the ambiguity of the name that inspired the rumor that Otto's father, having been sent as an Austrian soldier during WWII to the Russian front, stayed in search of his roots, leaving Otto fatherless. Fatherless is how I first imagined Otto. Little did I know that "Malik" is actually an Arabic word meaning King, who almost by definition is fatherless.