A book knows. I’ve seen that look crossing the room between Effi Briest and Major Crampas. It’s there in the glances of Madame Bovary. In Molly Bloom’s thoughts. It’s there in thousands of novels, the libraries are full of chance encounters, new beginnings, those breathless possibilities of attraction, people running towards each other with a huge volume of little things unsaid. It’s there in many of the books written by Joseph Roth. In the story about a man falling in love with a woman who is brought to his house in shock after surviving a nearby train crash.
They spoke in English. Lena pulled Julia over by the arm and made Armin tell the whole thing again from the start, how he had found the book in the rain, how he had discovered the flyer for the exhibition inside. Julia shook hands with Armin and Lena offered him a drink. She held me under her arm as she carried over glasses of red wine. I could feel the excitement in her lungs.
Two people brought together by a book.
In the follow-up conversation, after Julia had gone to introduce more people to one another, Lena told Armin how I had been rescued from the book-burning by her grandfather, and now, obviously smiling at the coincidence, she said I had been rescued all over again. Making that direct link between Armin and her grandfather seemed to say that she was welcoming him into her family.
My father gave me this book, Lena said, before he died. He told me to look after it like a little brother and I went and lost it. I’m so grateful to you, Armin. She began leafing through to find the hand-drawn map at the end and said – look, this little map, I want to find out where that is.
The manner in which she moved closer to Armin and held the page out for him to see appeared like a gesture of intimacy. She might as well have been holding his hand.
I’m sorry, Armin said, somebody cut a page out in the middle.
How did that happen?
It’s a long story, he said.
She waited.
My sister’s boyfriend. He’s not much of a reader.
Don’t worry, she said.
As they continued talking, I found myself taking on the role of intermediary, turning loss into luck, matching the finder with the seeker.
Lena revealed that she had read me in translation before she left New York, though sometimes, she said, you can find yourself reading a book without knowing what to look for. There was warmth in her voice. She said it was a sad story, but somehow uplifting in the end. She wondered if you could still find a barrel organ in some antique shop.
You want to buy one?
See how much I can make.
Why not?
A woman playing a barrel organ, she said.
You’d clean up, he said.
The story of the organ grinder had finally become relevant to the living world. She said she loved the part where he’s in prison, when he finds a section from a newspaper in the exercise yard and brings it back to his cell to read the announcements in the personal columns. Like he’s smuggled in a piece of the outside world. The people are brought to life as he calls out the names.
The engagement between Fräulein Elsbeth Waldeck, daughter of Prof. Leopold Waldeck, and Dr. med. Edwin Aronowsky. Between Fräulein Hildegard Goldschmidt and Dr. jur. Siegfried Türkel. The bank manager Willibald Rolowsky and his wife Martha Maria, née Zadik, announce the birth of a son.
Then he sits in his cell and gets depressed. He feels excluded from their joy and cannot be part of their celebrations. He might have been better off not finding that page of the newspaper.
Armin said he loved the passage where the barrel organ player asks for a ladder to be brought to his cell so he might feed the sparrows at the window. The request has to be made in writing. The organ player is given pen and paper. That gives him hope as he crafts the letter. But after careful consideration his request is denied on the grounds that it would be inappropriate for a prisoner to have a ladder in his cell and that feeding birds would violate the principles of punishment.
Lena suggested going for a drink. A couple of us are going to a place down the street from here, she said. The gallery crowd and the artist. A small celebration. Would you like to come with us?
Sure, thanks.
It’s a nice evening. We can sit outside.
Sounds good, he said.
They spoke only very briefly about where they were from. He told her he was from Chechnya. She tried to discover more but he said it was a long time ago, he came to Germany as a child. She told him that she was living in New York and had come to Berlin to track down some relatives.
There was a warm glow in the sky. Waiters coming to take orders. People eating schnitzel. Beer being brought to tables and empty glasses ringing. A woman slapped her ankle and said she was being bitten. A man was overheard saying – OK, I’m going to say nothing more. There was music coming from inside and a string of festive lights hung between two trees. The tables were set out as though they were on the deck of a ship. While they were waiting to be seated, Julia said she had something to show them. She linked arms with Armin on one side and Lena on the other.
Come on, she said. A small touristy thing.
She brought them both inside the building to show them the ballroom upstairs. A tango lesson had just come to an end and the dancers were standing around talking. It was a spacious room with high ceilings and giant mirrors. She pointed at the bullet holes in the mirrors, dating from the Russian conquest of the city at the end of the Second World War. The cracks in the mirrors were like huge cobwebs radiating out from each bullet hole. Imagine them coming up the stairs in their heavy boots, she said, drinking and dancing and firing off their weapons.