I’m on the move again. Travelling inside Lena’s new bag with a copy of the New York Times she managed to pick up at the train station. It’s the same journey from Berlin to Magdeburg that her grandfather made the day after the book-burning. It feels to me like we’re in that same expanding moment, as if the years keep swapping seats on the train until they eventually get to a carriage at the back called History. Each year brings events never before thought possible.
What can we do about the unimaginable?
Lena spreads the newspaper out on the table in front of her. She likes hard copy. I’ve heard her say to Julia that reading the news on the printed page makes it feel more truthful. As if the path of knowledge into memory is more secure when it has been converted into solid form. As if digital information is more equivocal and has the option of retracting the facts after they have been read.
As a book, I belong to the fixed-down world. Not yet deleted. The good news for me is that I have now been read by Julia and she loves the ending. She’s even decided to nominate me for her next book club.
From what I hear, Julia intends to hold her book club in a bar that has been devoted to Joseph Roth, right next door to where he once lived briefly with Friedl, where he paced up and down like a prisoner unable to check out. It’s a ground-floor café on Potsdamer Strasse, same side as the milliner’s where Yoko Ono buys her hats. It used to be an undertaker’s, where people got measured for coffins, and is now called the Joseph Roth Café. It’s a reconstruction from the 1920s, with old photographs of Berlin around the walls and chequered tablecloths and a large mirror from a theatre dressing room suspended at an angle. His books are stacked in piles around the café. Quotes from his work around the ceiling – Hyla Hyla, white geese, Hyla Hyla, on the Danube. There is a baby grand piano on a small elevated stage at the back and the menu offers good hearty food such as Wiener with lentil stew, at prices any organ grinder could afford. They open only on weekdays. Always busy. You can’t get in the door at lunchtime.
A buzzing inside the bag brings Lena’s hand down to take out her phone. She’s talking to Mike in New York. They say some intimate things to each other. She tells him that she’s on the train, heading down to see her uncle Henning in Magdeburg. Mike is having his breakfast. She takes out a pastry from her bag and joins him.
She finds herself telling Mike something she remembers from childhood. An incident when she was around twelve years of age, in Philadelphia, just before her father sent her to Ireland to live with her mother for a year. I put a big scratch on a brand-new car on the street, she says, totally deliberate, like I hated that car. It was a protest. I was on my way home from school. I saw this beautiful convertible, blue and shiny. I made a mark right along the paintwork with a coin, she says. The owner saw me doing it. Like, he was at the window watching his car all day and I looked up and smiled at him. Then I kept going, completing this piece of insane vandalism. He complained to my father, but I denied it. And you know what, my father believed me all the way. The owner of the car sued for the repair. It was his word against mine. A police officer came to the house and I pretended to be completely innocent. I was good at looking innocent. The police officer said – so you didn’t do it. And my father said – we have got to believe her.
Then I said – it’s a beautiful scratch.
That blew it, Lena says.
I bet it did, Mike says.
My father had to pay, but he went on believing me and said it was a terrible miscarriage of justice.
What else could he do? Mike says. You keep faith with your child.
I told him the truth later, Lena says, and I think he was so hurt by that. I should have kept it from him. He didn’t need to know, but it was on my conscience all the time. I wanted to be honest.
Bet he forgave you, Mike says.
How’s your mom doing?
Aw, I don’t know, Lena. It’s tough.
I thought the lawyer said it was in the bag.
Meant to be.
It’s a pushover, you said.
We asked for mediation. The neighbours refused to enter any kind of negotiation. Their lawyers are intent on going all the way to court.
And then, Mike says, out of the blue, while I’m down there, she came over one day. Lydia, next door. I answered the door and she was standing there all smiles, asking me to drop in to her house so we could maybe discuss this thing with the parking lot in a rational way, like friends. My mother didn’t want to go, so I called around myself. I thought this might be a chance of solving the problem amicably.
What a turnaround! She was so polite and friendly, Mike says. Offered me coffee. A slice of apple tart, which is not like me to refuse, but I left it, just to keep things simple. She introduced me to her father. I had met the son before a couple times, nice boy, Jake, out there in the parking lot throwing his basketball into a hoop all day.
So, I’m sitting there with Lydia, letting her know that my mother is a bit upset about this whole thing with the parking lot, naturally. It was the legal stuff without warning that gave her such a shock. And then Lydia starts apologizing. She had no idea. It was the way lawyers talk, there was nothing meant by it. She said she would speak to them and see if there was a different way of dealing with the whole thing. The last thing she wanted was to upset my mother. We shook hands and she stood at the door saying – tell your mom not to worry.
Big mistake, Mike says.
You will not believe this, Lena. No more than twenty minutes later, the cops called around to say they had reports of a disturbance. Our neighbour – Lydia, that is, the woman I’d just had a pleasant chat with over coffee – had called to say that I had gone around to her house and threatened her. I had been shouting. Using abusive language. She now felt unsafe. She was afraid to leave the house.
Three days later – listen to this, Lena – there was a letter from her lawyer accusing me of forcing my way into her home. She claims I pushed my way right into the living room and started shouting at her, so the lawyer said. They have video footage of me waving my arm. I can tell it’s been doctored. Speeded up a fraction to make me look aggressive. She’s a single mom and she now feels afraid to go about her business. Her lawyers advised me to desist from these acts of intimidation or else they would have no option but to seek a restraining order.
That’s so fucked up, Lena says.
I’m going to see the lawyers right now, he says, just to deny all of this. What exactly am I denying? It never happened. It’s like fake news, Lena. Some of it always sticks. How can you deny what is false?
She’s borderline, Mike.
Crazy is the word I had.
Keep away from her. She’s borderline. One hundred per cent. I know people like that, Mike. They can’t deal with reality. They constantly make things up. They will lie. It’s all a fantasy to suit their purpose.
Her word against mine, he says.
Some creative instinct gone wrong.
Let the lawyer deal with her, Mike says.
I’m serious, Mike. She wants to manipulate. She wants to micromanage the world. She wants to damage you. And your mother. For no reason other than to get some sense of achievement. Some victory. Imposing her invented reality to take control. Who knows what she might do next?
Look – it’s all going to be OK. Don’t worry, Lena. Got to go. Call you later.
Stay on it, Lena says. You’re doing the right thing.
I miss you, he says.
After she puts the phone down on the table, she begins crying without a sound. The landscape becomes blurred. The trees are like orange balloons. The fields have turned into waterways, the wind farms look like ships. A sandy path sways as it runs away into a forest. A level crossing surges up from under the earth with a group of schoolchildren waiting.
Lena reaches into the bag for a Kleenex and continues staring at the world travelling past. She feels the absence, the separation, the lack of certainty. She may be concerned about the direction her life is taking. Some unspecified anxiety. The motion of the train has left her exposed to a galaxy of memory. That’s what trains do. They put the passengers into a dreamy state outside time. That great human protector has suddenly lost its ability to shield her.
An older woman sitting opposite Lena asks her in English if everything is alright. Lena puts the inside of her sleeve up to her eyes and smiles back – it’s nothing. The woman says – it’s the distance. She begins telling Lena that she has a son now living in Thailand with his wife, Pla, he’s a guide on adventure holidays, taking tourists down the rapids. They have a small boy who is so sweet you want to sit all day and talk to him. They have a conversation twice a week on FaceTime. He sings pop songs to her. One minute he’s there in front of me, the woman says, then he’s so far away. She shows Lena a picture of the boy sitting at a table with plates of food laid out.
Is this your first visit to Magdeburg?
Yes, Lena says. I’m visiting an uncle.
Oh, that’s nice, the woman says. You’re from here.
No, Lena says. From the US. My father was from here. He emigrated after reunification.
The woman begins telling Lena some of the places worth seeing in the city. Such as the cathedral. It has two organs now, she says, one that was built during the GDR times in place of the one destroyed in the war. Now they’ve put in a new organ, in the nave, where the original one was, she says, because the one built in GDR times was in the wrong place. They could play both of them at the same time, theoretically, the GDR organ and the post-GDR organ. You wouldn’t know which is which.
It’s worth having a look at the famous sculpture of the happy maidens and the sad maidens.
And the green citadel, of course, you can’t mistake it, a crooked sort of building with trees growing out the windows and a waterway inside.
And there’s a small Stasi museum. If you have the time. It used to be an interrogation centre. On our way to school we passed by the gate where the flower delivery truck went in with the prisoners concealed inside. Our classrooms were directly overlooking the windows with the bars. But we never saw any faces.