It’s early evening here in Berlin, so it must be lunchtime where Mike is now. Lena has got herself ready for a video call. She’s put on a small bit of make-up. She’s wearing a blue shirt with yellow dragons, or trumpets, or maybe it’s birds migrating across her chest.
Mike – is that new?
Lena – just got it yesterday.
Cool.
I like your beard.
I want to give you one of my bear hugs.
Come over, she says. You’ll love Berlin.
Mike is a hard worker. He loves nothing more than getting things done. His work in the area of cyber fraud has made him a contemporary detective. A sleuth who never leaves his desk. He has uncovered some major scams in recent years and been hailed among his colleagues as the new Sherlock Holmes. His knowledge of coding makes him almost clairvoyant.
At times, Lena wonders how he can know things about her that she has not told him yet. She even wonders if he has hacked into her phone, though she would never accuse him of that. It would break down that level of trust between them to suggest he might be keeping an eye on her.
My bag got stolen, she says. I lost the book. My precious book. Then, luckily, a very kind young man came to the gallery and handed it in.
Armin, this guy from Chechnya.
She changes the subject and tells him about all the historical landmarks in Berlin she wants to show him when he comes over. Mike tells her that when he was growing up in Iowa City, he had the feeling it was one of those cities that had been bombed during the war. Which, of course, it hadn’t. He had read too many stories about the Second World War and began to imagine ruined cities everywhere. He believed Iowa City had been destroyed and rebuilt from nothing.
I’m here with my mother right now, he says.
How is she? Lena asks.
Guess what, Mike says. I get here last night and find all this mail that she’s been sent from a firm of lawyers. She refuses to talk about it. You won’t believe this, Lena. It’s the neighbours, right next door. They’re suing my mother for trespassing. They claim she has no right of access to the parking lot at the back. I don’t know if you remember, we park around there all the time, we come in the back door, we’ve been doing that ever since I was a kid.
Sure, I remember, Lena says.
Yeah, so it’s these new neighbours. They want to squeeze my mother out of her legal right to park there. They’ve been living there now for how long, five years, Mike says, not a word. Then suddenly all this legal stuff, like a hand grenade thrown in the door, saying she’s been trespassing on their property all this time.
That must be so stressful for her, Lena says.
It’s killing her.
What’s she going to do?
She wants to do nothing, Mike says. She wants everybody to be friends and just get along.
This is the last thing she needs at her age.
It’s the legal stuff that gets to her, Lena. The language they use. Makes her feel like a criminal. Trespass. Words like desist. Encroaching. Invalid. With immediate effect. Terms she’s never used in her life before.
Where does she stand?
Solid. Rock solid. It’s in the deeds. Goes back decades. When the property next door was a bar. I remember growing up, watching people out back from my window, coming into the parking lot, staggering, laughing. I would see couples kissing. Some of them going a whole lot further. Couples arguing and screaming at each other. The fights. The cops coming. It was better than TV.
Then the premises next door turned residential, people did their drinking downtown, or out of town, who knows, the owners sold up and the parking lot was empty. Only the adjoining residents still had the use of the bays, one each. Three others apart from my mother have all been put on notice.
Why are they doing this?
We even have a photograph of my father painting in the white lines.
They won’t get away with it.
My guess is they want to build on that lot. She’s a real estate agent, the woman next door. Lydia. She sees a big opportunity here. She wants to build, or maybe she wants to sell up with increased value, vacant possession, no encumbrance, whatever you call it.
They’re just trying it on, Lena says.
Exactly, Lena. They’re hassling the neighbours in the hope they’ll run scared.
She’s got to fight this.
Well, here’s the deal, Mike says. She doesn’t want to. She’s afraid of going to court. To her, it’s like going into a casino. You never know when your luck might run out, you can’t bank on winning, no matter how good the odds are.
The other neighbours are fighting this all the way, Mike says. I spoke to one of them at the back, a retired cop. Dan Mulvaney. He says to me – what are these people doing, pushing us out. He’s in his seventies, around the same age as Mom. But he’s much more aggressive. He’s used to the rough side of the world. He’s seen it all. I swear, Lena, he had all this white spittle around his mouth. He was sweating heavily. He’s going to fight this tooth and nail. And if he doesn’t win, he said to me, there are other ways.
Other ways?
My mother is freaked out hearing this.
What other ways?
He didn’t say, but you can imagine. He says he’s not going to get pushed around by some Russians. He’s got all these guns in the house. We ended up talking about hunting – he goes up to Montana a lot. Said he would love to take me out there. The only thing he hasn’t shot is moose.
Now he wants to shoot the neighbours.
We’ll see, Mike says. I’m going to speak to the lawyers now, this afternoon.
I thought they were so friendly next door.
They were, Mike says. That’s what I can’t get my head around, Lena. Christmas, they came around with a gift for my mother. They celebrated the New Year with her. The most perfect neighbours you can imagine. Always greeting her in the morning, asking if she needs anything. Lydia, her father is a good handyman, he fixed the washing machine for my mother, he mows the lawn for her.
Like they’ve been trying for five years to get close to her. Not a word. Everything is fine, he carries out her garbage one evening and next morning, wham. The legal letter arrives. Like a punch in the stomach.
Tell your mom I’ll camp out in that parking lot day and night with a big protest sign.
Let’s see what the lawyers say.
You’re going to win this, Mike.
How’s your art going?
Not bad, she says.
Listen to this, Mike. You know what I saw yesterday. I was in this café, right, and there’s a wedding going by on the street. A big stream of cars with ribbons attached, all of them honking. And then, guess what, they stopped. For no obvious reason, like there was a sudden traffic jam.
I saw the bride getting out, Lena says. She looked amazing. People with their shopping bags were staring at her standing in the middle of the street. And I’m thinking – why are they getting out here, this is a big shopping street. I couldn’t believe it. The wedding guests all started dancing, Mike. Right there on this busy avenue, with a couple buses held up behind them. The car doors were left open so they could hear the music, a solid beat, these woofers going, it’s like a nightclub. What a sight! The entire wedding party dancing in a wide circle. Big men in black suits linking up with their pinkie fingers in a chain. Some of the women were shrieking, she says. It was like a wedding taking place in a small village somewhere in Turkey, everybody standing by to watch. And the traffic was backed up all the way down the street.
Try that on Fifth Avenue, Mike says.
Nobody was complaining, she says. No cops. No sirens. Like they had permission for this street performance, in front of all those shoppers with their bags standing by. It lasted for about two or three minutes, then they got back into their cars and drove off again. Racing away with the tyres squealing. All honking at once. One of the women was riding shotgun with her butt out the window.
No, Mike says. Can’t see it taking off here.
It’s a regular thing here, Lena says. They even do it on the autobahn. Everything comes to a standstill. There’s not a whole lot the cops can do. Or maybe even want to do. A joyful act of civil disobedience, that’s what Julia calls it. All the inhabitants of Berlin forced to join in that moment of happiness before it’s gone again.