SHOTS RANG OUT FROM A TOWER UP ABOVE. IT WAS nighttime and everything seemed grey and bleak. A man’s hands, pierced and bloody, gripped a barbed wire fence at the top of a tall slab of grey concrete. He was gasping; his face was etched with desperation and terror.
As a child, Ruby had sat with her father as he watched a film in the family room, and had ended up burrowed into his lap, too scared to watch the rest of the movie. Her father had told her it was about spies in Berlin, but she hadn’t really known what that meant. He had shooed her away, and she went off thinking that Berlin seemed like a horrible place. This early image of Berlin haunted her now, along with the romantic associations she had of her uncle, so she delayed her descent into the complete unknown by stopping over in Paris for a week to soak up the sights and sounds of the French capital.
Ruby touched down in Paris mid-morning, mid-week. Her parents had taken her to the airport the night before and there had been repeated teary goodbyes. Her first transatlantic flight had felt long and cramped, and it was a relief to disembark into the busy airport. Ruby had chosen a simple pension on Rue de Nesle on the Left Bank, and she admired the quirky decorations and artwork when she arrived to drop off her bags. There was no restaurant or café at the hotel, so she walked down the cobblestone road, which burst out onto a large square. She happily noted there were at least four cafés with patios stretching into its hub. She sat down at La Pleine Lune and soon she was munching on a chocolate croissant and sipping a grand crème as she took in her surroundings. She tried to imitate the French and their very essence of nonchalance by just glancing at the people all around her, but there was so much to see. She noticed a slight young man with wavy blond hair staring at her on and off from the other side of the patio. He waved at her. She waved back. As she got up to go, she wondered if he was from around here and whether she’d ever see him again.
Ruby hopped onto the Métro at Odéon and found her way to the Jardin du Luxembourg. The air was fresh in the park and the sun now high in the sky, casting thick rays of gold over the beds of flowers. She feasted on the bright array of colours as she strolled around. She bent to touch flowers as if she were talking to them. As she took in their scent she felt she was inhaling the promise of the city. It helped to lift the fatigue settling down on her, so she decided to remain in the open air and go on to Père Lachaise Cemetery. She had heard that it was beautiful, full of the graves of the famous amidst bounteous nature. In particular, she wanted to visit the graves of Colette, Guillaume Apollinaire and then Jim Morrison.
During the week that followed, Ruby always had breakfast at La Pleine Lune before heading out to explore the city. She loved Paris, but she began to feel lonely and wished she had someone to share her experiences with. How would she cope in Berlin? Her confidence began to ebb. Maybe she wasn’t quite as independent as she had thought. But she was determined not to go crawling back to her father so soon; it was important to prove she was capable of surviving on her own.
On the night before her departure, Ruby picked up some cheese, a baguette, some fruit and a bar of chocolate and went to the river. As she sat down with her picnic by the Seine, the same blond man she had seen on the patio her first day in Paris approached and joined her on the bench.
“At last,” he said in French. “No more waving. I can look you in the eyes and tell you how pretty you are.”
Ruby felt her cheeks warm as she smiled awkwardly at her new companion. His rather large nose reminded her of Gérard Depardieu, but his slate-blue eyes were welcoming, with a hint of laughter at their edges. His hair was so thick and wavy that she wanted to run her fingers through it.
“Yes, well . . . Um, what is your name?” asked Ruby. His accent seemed Eastern European, but she wasn’t sure.
“I’m Werner. You are not from here, I gather, though you speak beautifully. What is your name, my little American?”
“Ruby,” she said. “And I’m Canadian.”
He took her hand in his and kissed it and said, “Hello, Ruby, la Canadienne. Pleased to meet you.”
His eyes seemed to devour her. Ruby squirmed a little. “You’re not French, are you?”
“No, I’m German, from Stuttgart.”
“Oh! I’m going to Berlin tomorrow.”
“Berlin, eh? That’s where I live. Why are you going there?”
Ruby chatted easily about her life back in Don Mills and how her great-uncle’s time in Berlin had inspired her to travel, though she could see Werner struggling to follow.
Werner switched to English. “Do you speak German?”
“Nein. Not one bit.”
“Let’s go for a walk and I can give you a crash course in swear words, teach you how to count, that sort of thing. We can do at least that much in one night. Are you staying there for a while?
“Well, I don’t really know how long,” Ruby said, rising from the bench. “Maybe a year.”
“Then you must learn some German,” he said firmly, and took her hand.
Ruby laughed out loud. Somehow she felt comfortable around this man. He spoke simply and was straightforward and seemed genuinely interested in her. And he was nice to look at. Ah, what the hell, what harm can a little hand-holding do, she thought, wrapping her fingers around his as they headed off towards Notre-Dame.
“Why is your English so impeccable?” she asked.
“Impeccable?”
Ruby smiled and said, “It’s excellent.”
“I always had a thing for English and English literature, more so than French. We start early in school, and also I travelled to London a few times. What about you? How do you speak French so well?”
“My mother is from Montreal. I love the romance languages. French, Spanish, Italian—love them all.”
“What about your father, where is he from?”
“He’s from Canada. He’s Black.”
Werner nodded as if he had thought something like this all along. “Mischling . . . ,” he said.
“I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.”
“You’re mulatto.”
Ruby stopped and dropped his hand. “That word is offensive. It should never be used anymore. Call me Black, call me mixed, but not that!”
Werner apologized. An awkward silence fell over them.
“It’s okay. You couldn’t be expected to know how awful that word is.” Ruby took his hand again and they stood looking out over the Seine. The incandescence of the city stretched out before them, and she felt like each and every twinkle that lit the sky was something to be discovered. Werner began chatting about Berlin, and he too seemed full of light, matching the Parisian night.
They sat outside Notre-Dame de Paris for a while, taking in its grandeur and murmuring about hunchbacks, and then they walked back through the streets to La Pleine Lune. After eating, they ordered drinks and sat chatting some more, the cool night air blowing gently around them. Ruby felt intoxicated in more than one way. Werner’s intelligence and sunny humour had cast a spell on her. After an hour or two of earnest talking, staring and hand-holding, Ruby felt she was ready to begin her journey into independence and liberation. She asked Werner, “Okay, your place or mine?”
“Oh, I like your style. Straight to the point.”
“Well, why bother waiting?” Ruby said. “Tomorrow I’ll be gone and we’ll have never known.”
“Never known what?”
“Why, how we taste . . . the best dessert of all.”
“Hmmm . . . I think I’m going home on the train with you tomorrow,” said Werner.
The two of them wandered down the road and quietly climbed the stairs to Ruby’s room. Amidst awkward fumbling and giggling, they doffed their clothes and drank in the essence of their dissimilar bodies. His was long and gangly, skin rough and mottled next to her rounded café au lait limbs. Werner struggled with her bra straps, yanking at them impatiently until they snapped against her skin. “Do you need help?” Ruby teased.
“German women don’t wear bras,” Werner said. “You’ll be rid of this contraption in no time.” They laughed as their bodies melded.
“Please, make me one promise,” Werner whispered as he licked her earlobe later on.
“What’s that?” Ruby asked.
“Don’t say ‘I love you’ to me tonight.”
Ruby giggled. “You must take me for a fool,” she said.
“But why is it that so many Americans always say they love people they are just screwing?”
“I don’t know about ‘so many Americans,’” Ruby replied, “but Canadians are different from Americans. Don’t lump us in with the Hollywood lot. Personally, I don’t know how you could tell if you really loved someone without having sex with them first.”
Werner began to massage Ruby’s feet. Then he took her big toe in his mouth and said, “Mmm, juicy, smoky and a little salty. Just like a piece of ham.”
“Are you calling me a pig?” asked Ruby as she wriggled around.
“I will worship them one by one, how do you say, until the cows come home?”
“First a pig, now a cow—Werner, you’re not very flattering.”
“This little piggy goes to market, this little piggy comes running all the way home. That’s right, come to Werner, baby.”
“Oh my god, get off my toes.” On and on they went through the night, with Werner joking all the way.
Ruby postponed her departure to Berlin. She and Werner spent the next two weeks wandering the streets of Paris together. At the end of it all Ruby was ready to leave for Berlin, with Werner in tow.
The train rumbled sluggishly through the flat and colourless countryside, having slowed measurably since they crossed the border into East Germany. Ruby chatted with Werner and with a young West German couple sitting opposite them. They all laughed at her attempts to pronounce the few German words she knew, the language sounding rough and angry to her untrained ear. Often she would open her eyes to see the young man and woman necking, hands caressing each other’s bodies without a care in the world.
Werner carried on trying to drill some German words and phrases into her, but Ruby was only half-interested. Then he said, “I think you should stay with me. Let’s take a chance on each other and see how it works out. Anyhow, where else are you going to go?”
“Well, I would have stayed in a youth hostel for a while. But thank you for asking me to stay with you.” Her first instinct was to go with the flow and say yes. It would be ideal for her, she thought, more than she could have asked for. “This will be true immersion in more than one sense,” she said as she smiled at Werner, who seemed both nervous and pleased about her answer. They pressed rather uncomfortably into each other and let the night fall upon them.
Morning arrived cheerless and dim; whistles blew and the train jolted to a stop. Ruby saw guards perched on towers, rifles slung over their shoulders.
“We’re here,” Werner said, yet there was no station or city to be seen.
Ruby leaned out the window and spied a group of soldiers in grey uniforms that seemed to match the countryside walking purposefully along the side of the train, reining in large German shepherds on leashes. The dogs sniffed at the underbelly of the train.
“What on earth are the dogs for?” she asked Werner.
“To check if anyone is hiding underneath,” Werner replied a little curtly.
“Anyone . . . ?” Ruby asked.
“East Germans, of course. We’ve been passing through East Germany and are about to enter West Berlin and no one from the East is allowed in. Some people will try any means to escape to the West.”
“Do they always do this?”
“Yes.” His voice betrayed exasperation with her naïveté. It was ironic to Ruby that she, for some strange reason, was taking a reverse escape route, from West to East.
A voice rang out. “Halten Sie bitte die Pässe bereit.” Get your passports ready.
The East German officers came through first, silently checking everyone’s papers. Then came the West Germans, in dark olive-green uniforms, looking every inch as dour and authoritarian as their Eastern counterparts. They asked Ruby which baggage belonged to her, and after Werner translated, she pointed to the blue knapsack on the rack above her head. Only when they had finished carefully thumbing through her passport and returned it did she realize she’d been holding her breath.
As the train took off again, she noticed a grey slab of concrete looming behind a tall barbed wire fence.
There it was. So plain, so simple, so ugly.
They chugged along parallel to the Wall for a while and then snaked towards the city through a dense forest. The leaves on the trees were a vibrant shade of green, and tree branches stuck out from every which way as they coursed along the rails towards the city.
“This is the Grunewald,” Werner told her. “Berlin has the largest urban forests in all of Europe.”
Ruby felt this was most appropriate for a city enclosed by a wall. Soon she was taking in the beauty of the cityscape that was gliding by her window, so different from the harsh regime that surrounded it. Church spires, intricate and colourful facades adorning tall buildings, a gilded palace. Against the grey hues, the place radiated a melancholy elegance.
The train screeched into West Berlin’s downtown station, Zoologischer Garten. Werner was telling her that he didn’t believe in phones or televisions and she would have to place any calls from the public phone down the road from him.
The long train ride had taken its toll, for her whole body ached as she lifted her knapsack onto her shoulders. She stepped onto the platform with the throngs of other passengers, Werner following her and offering to take her knapsack.
“We made it,” Werner said and smiled at her.
“That was quite some trip . . . and wow, I saw the Wall up close.”
“You’ll be seeing plenty of that while you’re here—it’s everywhere.”
Werner led her into the heart of the bustling station. He walked very quickly and she had difficulty keeping up with him. The subway was dirty and worn down, full of old men and women. They passed a group of young punks wearing studded leather bands, heavy black army boots, dog collars and safety pins hanging from their ears. Strips of hair split their shorn, shiny scalps in half. Two careening drunks waved bottles of beer like flags, shouting loudly at everyone and no one in particular.
As Ruby and Werner squeezed out the doors with the other passengers, an older man jostled Ruby and sneered something under his breath.
“What was that about?” she asked. “That guy bumped into me and then sounded really angry.”
“Oh, don’t worry. Our language always sounds harsh. It was nothing. Besides, Berliners are known to be grumpy.”
“Just what I need when I’m striking out in a new place.”
“Don’t be silly, you’ll be fine. But if you end up staying, you’ll have to learn German.”
The cool spring air had a peculiar sharp scent that Ruby couldn’t identify. The buildings were tall, grey and close together, blocking an easy view of the sky. Not far from the station, Werner steered the way to a sombre six-storey building with a crumbling facade. Through the entryway, a wide corridor led into a cement-paved courtyard surrounded on all sides by more decrepit buildings. As she looked up at the high windows, she imagined countless pairs of eyes staring down on her.
“I live in what’s called the Hinterhaus, or the backhouse. These courtyards were originally built so that a horse and buggy could come in, turn around and go back out. These houses are particular to Berlin—you won’t find many of them anywhere else in Germany. Come, let’s not stand here for too long,” he said, pushing her on. “My place is very small and there are some things you’ll have to get used to.”
Ruby didn’t consider herself a fussy person, but she was still surprised by the little closetlike chamber on the second landing, just large enough for a toilet, but no sink. When they reached the third floor, she was out of breath. As Werner unlocked the door to his apartment, he apologized that there was no shower or hot water; they would have to go to the public bathhouse down the road to wash.
“Of course I take sponge baths in the kitchen all the time, but every few days I go down the road and pay for a bath.”
Ruby laughed and said, “I know a few people back home who would have a problem with that.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that Americans are really obsessed with being clean and take baths every day.”
It occurred to Ruby that the meticulous, uptight German was just as much of a stereotype, yet she was too tired to ask whether that was just a myth. Inside the apartment, a short, dark hallway led to a kitchen barely wide enough for a table. From there, a door opened to a bed-sitting room with high ceilings. Werner had built a loft bed, leaving space below for a desk and sofa. Over the desk hung a print of Picasso’s Don Juan. In the corner stood a seven-foot-tall ceramic structure with two metal doors at the bottom and a third one in the middle. When Ruby touched it, the heat singed her fingers.
“What’s this thing? An oven?”
“That’s what heats the rooms in most of the old buildings like this in Berlin. You put bricks of coal on the grate inside that second metal door, light them and let them heat through. The ashes fall down below and have to be scraped out into a pail. That’ll be your job.”
“Jesus H. Christ. Now I’m Cinderella. Just what I always dreamed of.”
“Actually, it’s a great way to heat the room, even if it is a bit messy. People used to bake things on the shelf inside that middle door. I’ll bake you into gingerbread in there if you misbehave.”
“Don’t you be telling me how to behave, or else I’ll be the one shoving your head in there for some roasted Werner. Coal, huh? Is that what makes the air smell outside?”
“Yeah, this is mainly brown coal from East Germany, full of sulphur. You have to be careful when you light it that it burns properly, or you can generate poisonous gases.”
“So I might die while I’m sleeping?”
“Not too likely, but it’s possible.”
The rest of the walls in the flat were covered with shelves stuffed with hundreds of books. Most titles were German, but Ruby recognized the names of many authors, including a whole row of works by Marx and Engels and anarchist writers like Kropotkin and Malatesta. On the top of the shelves were several intriguing postcard-sized prints.
Werner saw her studying them. “Those are reprints of woodcuts done by various artists,” he said.
“What’s a woodcut?”
Ruby’s parents were all about music and the civil and human rights movements. Their children had not been exposed to the fine arts very much, though Ruby had a flare for all sorts of crafts.
“You don’t know? Where have you been all these years? How could you be so uninformed?”
“Werner, don’t be such a snob. Not everyone has had a chance to learn about and experience the arts in the same way.”
Werner shrugged. “I am not a snob—it’s simply a special technique where you carve out a design on a block of wood and use it for making prints. I can show you in some of my encyclopedias. Or better yet, we can check some out at one of the museums.”
“Sounds good.”
“So, what do you think?” he asked, gesturing out into the room. “Does it measure up to your standards, my princess?”
“It’s fine. A little dark, maybe,” she said.
“The other buildings tend to block out the sun unless you live very high up or in the front house, facing out on the street.”
It hadn’t escaped Ruby’s notice that he had been quick to close the blinds as soon as they arrived, leaving the flat very dark.
“Do you want to stay? Try it out?”
Ruby pursed her lips and thought for a bit. She didn’t feel that she had anything to lose by giving it a shot, and she liked that Werner looked nervous waiting for her answer. “Well, I think we should just go for it. Why not?”
“Great. I’m so glad you’ll stay.” Werner’s smile lit up the dark room. “What would you like to do next?” he asked as he placed her knapsack down on the floor.
“Sleep.”
“I thought we might go out for a walk.”
“Can we do that a little later? The train ride was unbearably long and I didn’t sleep much.”
Werner seemed a touch disappointed but said, “Sure, sure, go ahead and lie down.”
Ruby climbed the ladder onto the loft bed and sank under the duvet.
When she woke an hour later, Werner was lying on the bed next to her, his eyes straying over her body. They snuggled close together. Ruby stretched herself out like a cat and began to take off her clothes. Werner practically jumped on her and was all over her and then in her in no time. Ruby was hot and bothered at first, but when they came to the finish line she began to imagine them rolling frozen grapes and ice cubes across each other’s bodies, with a squirt of chocolate sauce here and there. She remembered Pierre at university introducing her to frozen grapes. She loved it because you could eat them and they were so deliciously crunchy and sweet and would soften slowly in your mouth.
Werner interrupted her daydreaming and said, “How’d you like that?”
“It was fine, but . . .”
“But what? What’s wrong?”
“I would have liked some warm-up exercises first.”
“Warm-up exercises? What on earth do you mean?”
“Most women need a little more time and maybe even a few props to get going.”
“Ruby, I didn’t sign up for a cooking course, I signed up for you!”
“Well, you did such a good job on my toes before, I had different expectations of you. But we’re still just getting to know each other. Anyway, keep your mind open for me.”
Werner smiled. “Then, keep yours open for me as well. Just because you’re here doesn’t mean I won’t see other women.”
Ruby raised her eyebrow as she looked at him.
“I mean I have other friends. Women friends. We go out, and sometimes we sleep together, and I expect to be able to continue. Not that you can’t come along sometimes . . . I do want you to meet my friends. Anyway, the whole thing could be fun for both of us.”
“Well, thanks a lot! What you mean is we’re going to have an open relationship. Do I get to come along for the sex?” She laughed. “It sounds a little risqué, but I’m not really the possessive type and I’m pretty open-minded.” She was already having more of an adventure than she’d anticipated. “All right, let’s try it. Should we set out some rules?”
“Yes. We remain primary partners and we don’t bring anybody home with us.”
“You sound as if you’ve done this before. What happens if we fall for someone else?”
“No falling in love. This is strictly for fun.”
“It’s hardly something you can decide arbitrarily!”
“Do your best. I don’t mean that we’ll be out sexing every person we meet, but we shouldn’t have to turn down an exciting opportunity.”
“Right. I’m all for exciting opportunities. But do you really think this will work in the long run?”
“Of course. Just remember not to bring anyone here,” he insisted. “I need my privacy.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious. Don’t try to mix with the people here in the building and don’t hang around in the courtyard. The landlord is a fascist pig and there are quotas for foreigners in this part of Berlin.”
“Are you telling me I have to hide? I didn’t come here to be holed up in some shitty flat.”
“You should be okay because you’re Canadian. Even so, you look more like a Turk, and they’re the ones who have a lot of problems. The landlord treats the Turkish tenants like they’re ignorant, filthy children. Just try not to get involved with anyone. Anyway, I’m looking for a new flat, so maybe we’ll be out of here soon.”
Ruby mulled over the idea of an open relationship. Could she share Werner without getting jealous? Would he really let her wander, too? It would probably be harder in reality but she was willing to give it a go. This is what she had wanted, after all: to be free and have adventures.
Two days later, as they were heading out into the city, they met the landlord huffing and puffing up the steps, his fat cheeks bulging out of a purply-red face.
“Und wer is denn das mit Ihnen?” Who have you got with you here?
Werner smiled coolly. “Just a friend visiting from Canada.”
He said something, plainly rude. Ruby nudged Werner, who translated under his breath. “Since when did they make them like that in Canada?”
Ruby squirmed under the gaze of the landlord’s wormy eyes.
“Never mind, excuse us please. We’re on our way out.”
“Canada. Not likely,” the man harrumphed, squeezing his bulbous body flat against the dingy brown walls to let them pass into the courtyard.
“Whew. So that was him, huh?” Ruby said.
“Yeah, don’t worry. He can’t touch you. Just stay out of his way.”
“Damn right I will.”
They strolled through the side streets of Moabit and along the River Spree, passing countless buildings with banners hanging from them. Angry words were scrawled in red and black, punctuated at either end with an encircled capital A. Werner explained that the A stood for anarchy and that these abandoned buildings, marked for demolition, had been taken over by squatters. A massive housing shortage plagued West Berlin; many building owners wanted to renovate, and the ensuing increase in rents forced tenants out. People were rising up in protest.
Ruby and Werner crossed over the river and entered the Tiergarten, a vast park in the middle of the city with wide, rolling lawns, plenty of beautiful old trees and bike paths galore. They threaded through the English Gardens and then the Hansaviertel, a little community built around a square in the late 1950s that featured buildings by Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. Continuing along the path of the Strassenbahn tracks that passed overhead, they reached the Saturday flea market on Strasse des 17 Juni. As they passed stalls selling bratwurst and knackers on buns with hot mustard, the smell of cinnamon and other spices wafted through the air. Well-dressed people slurped hot mulled wine, taking a break from the crush of the crowd.
“This is the market that all the American tourists and soldiers come to and that’s why the prices are inflated,” Werner explained. “They don’t realize that what they are buying isn’t as antique as they believe.”
After much poking around, Ruby found some nice earrings.
“They’re lovely,” Werner said. “Do you like them? Here, I’ll buy them for you.”
She was pleased and put them on immediately. They stopped to get some mulled wine and she felt its warm spiciness flush her face. As they strolled arm in arm towards the end of the market, Ruby said, “What a beautiful day.” It was still early in the afternoon, so Werner suggested they head over to another market near Potsdamer Platz. They doubled back into the Tiergarten. Werner moved quickly, and Ruby struggled to keep up with him.
“We could have taken the U-Bahn,” he said, “but in this city you’ll learn to walk a lot with me. My father used to take my sister and me out hiking in the hills every Sunday for miles on end, so I’m used to it.” Twenty minutes later, they arrived at a circular intersection in the park marked by a large golden statue of a man riding a horse. Four wide avenues branched off from the circle.
“That is the symbol of Bismarck defeating the French during the Franco-Prussian War, which happened on June 17,” Werner explained. “That’s the name of the avenue that the flea market was on.”
For a moment, Ruby felt she was being lectured by her father.
They continued through the park. Not even the Bois de Boulogne in Paris felt this big. After another thirty minutes, they came out of the park and walked along the Landwehrkanal. They left behind the trees of the park and approached a flat and dusty square filled with merchants. Turkish music blasted from tape decks as tattooed and pierced punks flogged metal-studded leatherwear and long-haired hippies offered flowing skirts and beaded chains.
Mixed among the punks and the Turks, Ruby noticed, were people milling around in red and orange garb topped by long necklaces. The necklaces held a picture of a man with frizzy grey hair worn down past his shoulders and an even longer beard. Henna-haired women wore skirts that reached the ground, while the men had matching flowing pants.
“Who are those people?” Ruby asked.
Werner laughed dismissively. “My god, haven’t you seen them before? How could you not know? They’re all over the place. The Bhagwan nuts. Followers of an Indian guru named Bhagwan Rajneesh who sucks their wallets dry.”
“Werner, would you stop talking to me like this? You’re treating me like a child. I’ve only been here a short while. I can’t know or have seen everything.” She doubled back towards where they’d come from. When she arrived at the park entrance she was unsure which way to go—it was all so foreign to her with streets that turned every which way, and they all looked so similar. She started down the road to her right and figured she’d ask some other pedestrian for help. But she knew it had been a convoluted walk they had taken.
Before long Werner had caught up with her. “I’m sorry, Ruby. I didn’t mean to be patronizing. I just feel like I have to look out for you. Berlin is a big city and it can be dangerous. Also you don’t speak any German—yet.”
“Werner, I’m a big girl. I don’t need another father. And it’s so hypocritical. One moment you’re suggesting a relationship without restraints, and the next, you’re trying to control me.”
“I will try to let go. I’m just a little protective, I guess. I’ll work on it, I promise. Now let’s go grab a Kaffee und Kuchen somewhere.” At Ruby’s look, he laughed. “Sorry, some coffee and cake.”
Ruby allowed a small smile in return, and as they walked down the street he began again to explain the sights along the way.
In those first days, Ruby felt as though she had stepped back into the early seventies. While most of the men she had known back home had already cut their hair short, so many men and women in Berlin still sported the long-haired hippie look. But she had to admit, she had also never seen so many punks, skinheads and new wavers colliding in one place.
Ruby’s explorations of the city were haphazard in those first few weeks. She was somewhat intimidated by her lack of German and spent as much time lying around and reading books as she did wandering the streets. Her great-uncle was ever-present in her mind when she was out wandering. She thought to be gay in the twenties and thirties must have been very difficult. Berlin, with its sexual openness, would have seemed very welcoming. Had any of the places she passed by been there at that time? She promised herself she’d find the places her uncle had mentioned in his letters. She quizzed Werner about older buildings of interest in Berlin.
“You might try the Gloria Palast theatre. There’s not much left of it, but in its heyday it was supposed to have been marvellous and was a very popular place to go.”
“Where is it?”
“On Kurfürstenstrasse. From there you can easily walk to the gay village and take a look around. In fact, you mentioned the Eldorado nightclub. It used to be on Motzstrasse, right nearby. I’ll take you to the library and we’ll pull out a few books and maybe find an address. But you can visit the foyer of the theatre any day.”
And indeed at the library they found many books with photographs showcasing the theatre. It had been built in a Neo-baroque style, with a mirrored winter garden and writing rooms inside, marble steps, crystal chandeliers. She tried to imagine the elegance of it all. It was bombed in 1943, and now a new cinema stood in its place, still trying to be grand.
“Who was this uncle of yours, anyway?”
“Great-uncle, on my father’s side. Don’t know much, except that he was gay and he studied here for a few years in the early thirties. When he returned home he and his German lover were practically driven into seclusion in his sister’s basement. He died young—of cirrhosis.”
The next day, Ruby took a bus downtown to go looking for the theatre. She was minding her own business in the almost empty bus when three muscular young men lunged on board. Ruby noticed the emblem of the Berliner soccer team on their jackets. She suddenly wished she were invisible. She had heard from Werner about racist soccer fans. Hair shorn to within an inch of their scalps, the trio belched and swaggered their way to the back of the bus and slouched down on seats directly opposite Ruby, blocking her view out the window. Ruby crushed the bag of doner kebabs into her lap with tight fists. She scanned the ceiling, then decided that staring at her feet was safer.
“I smell a Turk,” sneered the one in the middle, thumbing his nose.
“Smell?” said the guy on his right. “I see a Turk.”
The first guy snivelled, “Verdammte Türke—smell, see, what does it matter? If you can’t see them, you smell them. If you can’t smell them, you see them.”
The air burst with harsh laughter. Ruby looked up quickly towards the front of the bus. Just a few older women and a thick-set man, standing by the centre exit, his head turned away. No one who could help her. She took a deep breath and decided to stare them down. In their faces she saw grim mockery, eyes that avowed hatred for her and everyone like her. Ruby got up quickly, thinking, Move, just move.
“Kuck mal, Hans. Catch that, she walks. Scheisse, maybe she even dances. I like it when they dance.”
Ruby whirled around and yelled, “You little Nazi piss-heads, what the fuck would you know about anything?”
Swaying towards the front of the bus, she clamped a hand over her mouth, hoping to stop the surging of her stomach. The three punks erupted into a chorus, chanting, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.”
The driver looked up into the rear-view mirror and barked, “Quiet or you’re off the bus.”
Ruby grabbed the pole next to the driver’s seat, the steel like ice in her hand. Next stop was hers. As the bus lurched to a halt, the driver apologized. She nodded bleakly and stepped off the stairs. She felt like throwing up and stood where she was for a few minutes, trying to calm herself down. There was a bench down the road and Ruby went to it and sat down. She pulled out a cigarette, placing it between her still-quivering lips. She drew in the smoke and held it for a long time, just sitting there. She had never been exposed to such blatant racism, not even in Toronto. She didn’t think this would have happened had she been with Werner. With him she was like an exotic appendage, to be stared at but not approached. Ruby sighed and tossed the cigarette butt to the ground. She still felt unsteady but got up anyway and set about on her way to the theatre.
There was not much left of the original building at all, but the facade and foyer had been maintained. She thought of the photos she had seen and imagined her uncle streaming in among all the others to see Germany’s first major talkie, The Blue Angel by Joseph von Sternberg, or René Clair’s Sous les Toits de Paris. Next she found the building where the Eldorado used to be. There was nothing there to suggest the hub it once was. But Ruby fancied watching her uncle come out of the club with his friends. He would have stood out with his brown skin, and Ruby wondered what tips he could have had for her about being a foreigner among Germans. She wondered if he, too, had been spat at and yelled at like she had and what he had done. She wished she could turn to him for answers.
When Ruby got home that afternoon, she was still feeling shaky.
“How’d it go?” Werner asked.
“Well, that depends on what you mean. The theatre was fine, but . . .” Ruby slumped into a chair and told him her story.
“I can’t believe that actually happened. That’s awful! But I told you that you’d meet all types here. There are lots of neo-Nazis floating around, so you better get used to it. That wouldn’t have happened if you’d been with me.”
“Is that all you can say?” Ruby stuttered. “Just ‘Get used to it’? Those guys almost trampled all over me. Don’t you have any kind of office where you can report racist incidents? Like a human rights commission or something?”
Werner laughed and shook his head. “Nothing like that here,” he said.
It was Ruby’s turn to express disbelief. Maybe there would be some agency working with foreigners and newcomers that knew about these kinds of things. She would have to find out.
Ruby enrolled in night school language classes, hoping not just to improve her German but to make some friends. Her German teacher was a laid-back young guy with cascading brown hair who wore flowing pants and loose cotton shirts. On the first night, she met Emma, a young British woman with spiky, copper-coloured hair who lived in the same neighbourhood. They chatted as they ambled back home after class. The next week, Ruby went home with her and met several Brits who were hanging out in her apartment. The place reeked of stale beer, curry and dope, but the conversation was sharp and cutting. Punk music rocked the air waves with an occasional interlude by Lee “Scratch” Perry and other reggae dub masters. She met Emma’s neighbours, two men, Smithie and Jack, who ran a bar nearby. She met Lina, decidedly waifish, with raven hair and black clothes to match.
“The most important thing you need to know about me,” Lina told her, “I think in Italian, I dream in Italian, I eat in Italian, but I love the words of Apollinaire. The second most important thing—I am a follower of Leon Trotsky. Are you a capitalist? I am not. If you understand this, Miss Canadian, we can be friends.”
Despite the mournful clothes, her liveliness was a welcome relief from the uncommonly morbid and sarcastic quips swirling out of the mouths of the others. The unfamiliar humour seemed raw, but Ruby soon grew comfortable among her new British friends.
It was not as simple with Werner. Ruby knew that he was attracted to her because of her biracial background, and she resented his tendency to patronize her, often downplaying her experiences and those of her family. Despite growing up in white-bread Don Mills, she had been schooled in Black American literature and the politicians, activists and leaders of the civil rights movement. And jazz music flowed like a river through their house. But outside of family and friends, there was little tangible exposure to Black people beyond books and discussions. She had always related more to the Black side of her “split identity.” Yet here she was, out of sync with her raciality, slowly fading and subverting itself as she steeped herself in the Berliner culture and her relationship with Werner.
One day when he caught her humming a Marvin Gaye tune, he shrieked: “Oh my god, you don’t like that Motown stuff, do you? It’s not the real thing!”
“What on earth is, then, the real thing?”
“More obscure stuff than that. Like Stax. Motown was all just commercial trash.”
Ruby wondered why there couldn’t be a lot of “real things,” and knew at the same time that he was expecting her to know about all other artists out there. He seemed to have studied Black music and literature, but when Ruby asked him if he knew any actual Black people besides her, he shook his head uncomfortably. Ruby stopped singing Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell or the Four Tops in front of him, but carried on just the same when she was on her own.
She regularly met with the Brits, and Werner went along with her from time to time. But while he enjoyed their company, he wasn’t willing to stay out late partying, even when Ruby decided to remain with her friends rather than return home with him.
“I don’t like you staying late on your own,” he said sternly.
“Why not? What’s the harm?”
“I’d hate to see you start up smoking dope, or anything else, god forbid.”
“What’s wrong with dope?”
“It will make you paranoid and make your mind lazy so that you can’t do anything else.”
“Jeez, Werner, you should have been in Reefer Madness—you’d be a good propagandist for the government. How does that sit with your anarchist ideals?”
“How can you possibly mix these things up?” he blustered. “They don’t have anything to do with each other.”
“Well, I think it’s a major contradiction, but you’ll have to figure that one out. Just go on home. I’ll be along later.”
When she got home later that night, Werner was pacing restlessly. But rather than say anything more, he just hugged her like a bear and they went to bed.
The next day, Ruby went to the Beate Uhse sex shop near Bahnhof Zoo. It was time to spice things up with Werner. She stood outside to look in the windows for a long while. Once in, she was like a kid in a candy store. There were a couple of men in the store, but mostly it was women oohing and aahing over all the goodies. She herself was looking for handcuffs and anything else that might catch her interest. She found a few hanging on the far wall, but they were all furry and fluffy. She went to the counter, her voice shaking just a little. “Ich suche . . . Hand . . .” Ruby made a gesture, interlocking her hands.
“Möchten Sie die Handschellen sehen?”
“Ja, handcuffs,” said Ruby.
The clerk, a young brunette with long, silky hair, nodded with a smile and took her back to the same wall.
“Da sind sie.”
“Nein. No fur . . . Metall,” said Ruby.
The clerk was unsure of what she meant. Ruby tried to pronounce the word metal like she imagined it would sound in German. It worked.
“Ach, vielleicht meinen Sie diese?” Maybe you mean these? A little farther along the wall, below Ruby’s sightline, hung some plain metal handcuffs.
Ruby grabbed a pair and smiled at the clerk. “Ja, diese. Danke sehr!”
She kept poking around in the store. She heard two women guffawing and she followed their voices so she could see what was so funny. The young women were comparing different types of Thai balls to put in your vagina. They came in several different sizes and materials. The women were holding a set of wooden balls. Ruby thought she understood one saying to the other, “These would get lost inside me, or maybe they’d just fall out.”
She reached in between the women and took a set of silver-coloured balls the size of large grapes. “You gotta squeeze really tight,” she said slowly in English, “walk around and exercise your muscles. Like Kegels.” She didn’t know if she would be understood, but judging by the snorting and giggling that ensued, she had been.
Ruby was on a roll and so she looked around and found a small black leather whip, a chocolate-coloured vibrator and a butt plug. Thoroughly satisfied with her extravaganza, she left the store fantasizing about how she’d use these new acquisitions. Her uncle would be proud of her, exploring her sexuality. Werner wasn’t home when she got there, so she got the Thai balls out of the bag and climbed up on the loft bed. She took off her jeans and popped one inside. She lay there for a few minutes just trying to see how it felt and if she could move it easily. She moved it up and down and then side to side. She popped another one in. Her body was getting tingly all over and she felt warm inside. She climbed down the ladder and stood doing Kegel exercises to hold the balls in. She was prancing around the room, bottomless, when Werner walked in. She stopped, let go, and the balls slid out.
“What the hell is that? What are you doing?” he yelped, a mixture of distress and bemusement on his face.
Ruby laughed. “Come on, baby, I have some presents for the two of us.”
Werner gave her a quizzical look. “Before you take one more step, tell me what those balls are and why they fell out of you.”
“They’re Thai balls—good for exercising your pelvic muscles. I bought some fun things today for us. Come see.”
Werner approached her hesitantly.
She shook the bag of goodies in her hand. “Reach in there and pull something out.”
He took out the whip and cracked it in the air. “I see. So now you’re my slave?”
“Don’t even go there. No slaves here. We’ll share it. Just fun. We’ll alternate with spanking,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. Werner reached in again and pulled out the handcuffs. “Wow, you really went on a spree. Yeah, we can try these.”
Ruby slipped her hand into the bag. “Ta-da!” She waved the vibrator in the air.
Werner fell silent for a moment. “It’s brown,” he finally ventured.
“Yup. So it is.”
“Do you have a problem with the colour of my dick?”
“Oh god, no, Werner. Of course not. This is just a little affirmative action at play.”
“What?”
“Oh, never mind,” said Ruby. “I thought it would be fun to have a Black penis to play with. It’s just a toy.” She was hoping he would just say “Whatever turns your crank” and get on with it.
“Well, as long as it doesn’t take precedence over me . . . I guess,” he said.
The last item was the butt plug. Werner gasped in mock horror as he examined it and then said in a serious tone, “You are not putting that thing anywhere near me.”
“God, Werner, if you can put your thing up my ass, why can’t I try this in yours? Affirmative action and sexual equality, that’s what I want.”
“No, no, no. You’ll have to tie me down.”
“Ooh, bad idea. I’ve got handcuffs right here.” She picked up the butt plug and pointed it his way, bobbing it up and down in front of him. He scrambled away, and she chased him around the room waving the handcuffs and butt plug in the air. Finally, Werner collapsed into a chair, and Ruby climbed on top of him. “Shall we start now? There’s no time like the present.”
“Oh my god, you and your sayings.” Werner pulled her down and kissed her mouth. “Here’s to expanding our sexual horizons,” he said.
Ruby clapped her hands in glee and twisted off her top. Werner, wriggling underneath her, did the same with his pants.
An hour or two later Ruby whispered in Werner’s ear. “Do you know why I like you?”
“No, why?”
“Because you are funny. But mainly I know that you have a big heart, a good heart. I always think of little old Frau Menzer. Almost every night you’re out there helping her down the steps to the toilet. Or you’re cleaning up after the drunks who piss by her door. Very gracious and thoughtful.”
“My parents taught me well.”
“I like you because you are articulate and intelligent and thoughtful.”
Ruby cared a lot for Werner and she knew that he looked after her well, despite his foibles. But was it love? She couldn’t say for sure. Not yet. She would stick it out, though, and see how far and how long they could go.
They spent much of their free time walking across town to weekend flea markets and checking out the plentiful all-day and all-night repertory cinemas where popcorn was replaced by beer and boisterous crowds. The crowd seemed to be there as much for the infamous Marlboro Man cigarette ads as for the movies. The ads played before each screening, and sometimes there was the Camel guy, too. One always seemed to be trying to best the other with new and ever more dangerous escapades. As the audience watched the Marlboro Man gallop across canyon floors, muscles always bulging and ten-gallon hat on tight, they whistled and howled and chortled loudly. Ruby was surprised at the intensity of their hilarity, but it was clear that to them this was merely yet another representation of American society—modern, macho cowboys hustling after the American Dream.
The weeks flew by and became months, until suddenly it was December. Ruby’s first Christmas Eve away from home was spent sloshing back a tall bottle of yeasty beer while watching flesh-eating zombies feast away in Night of the Living Dead. Christmas Day she wrote a long letter to her parents, telling them how much she was enjoying Berlin. She didn’t linger too much on the fact that the weather was so grey and depressing, or that she missed them. Then she took her collection of coins to the phone booth down the road and called them.
“Mom? Put Dad on the extension. Dad? Merry Christmas! I love you and I love Berlin, too. It’s fantastic here, so full of history. I’ve met a man. I think you’d like him. He’s very sweet.”
“That’s wonderful, Ruby,” said her mom.
“When will you bring him here?” asked her dad.
“Well, I don’t have money for more travelling just yet. I hope to find a job soon.”
“What will you do there?” her father asked.
“Oh, there’s all kinds of odd jobs to be done. I’ll find something.”
“I miss you, Ruby,” said her mom. “So does your dad.”
“I miss you, too. I just wrote you a long letter. Write me back. Gotta go, my change is running out. Love you.”
She hung up and was surprised to feel a tear trickle down her cheek. They were so far away and she missed them more than she had expected.
Ruby’s German was quickly improving under the tutelage of her charming night school teacher, so she felt confident enough to look for work. She had no official visa, so whatever she did would have to be paid for under the table. Scanning the ads in the city’s newspapers, she found the most common unskilled labour for women was cleaning houses or apartments. Within a few days she found a cleaning job.
Her employer, a wiry woman of seventy-six with a voice as deep as Marlene Dietrich’s, lived in a grand old home in the southern reaches of the city, replete with an indoor winter garden, a library and a huge kitchen with a walk-in pantry. This was a Berlin full of old women, their men lost to the ravages of two wars, and Frau Herzog was no exception. Ruby could tell that she had been a beauty, despite the wrinkles that now crisscrossed her face. She dressed stylishly and she seemed friendly; however, suspicious whether a young Canadian could keep up with German expectations of cleanliness, she gave Ruby specific orders and closely monitored her work. Windows were to be cleaned with rags soaked in vinegar and water and dried with newspaper and then again with soft leather cloths so no streaks marred the ingress of sunshine.
Ruby loved the winter garden. She had never seen anything quite so big. The room was wide and very long and on three sides it was glassed in, ceiling to floor. Plants of all species, sizes and colours covered much of the floor, with two pathways dividing the room. There were philodendrons, jades, crotons, ficus, pineapples and all manner of ferns, with their gentle tendrils swirling every which way. The different shades and hues of green held her fascination. But most of all she loved the flowering plants—bougainvillea, hibiscus, azalea, amaryllis and wonderful orchids galore. It was basically a greenhouse within a house—it reminded her of watching her mother’s svelte body bend and swivel in her garden back home, and she felt happy in there as she washed the cool ceramic floors and the windows. The air felt humid and lush. She hummed her mother’s favourite songs and sang to the plants as she dusted their leaves and spritzed them and checked the soil. One time she was singing “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” her voice growing louder and louder without her noticing. Suddenly Frau Herzog stood in front of her, arms crossed.
“Ruby, what are you doing?”
“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry, Frau Herzog, I just got carried away.”
“My dear, you have a fine voice, but we’re not in the theatre and I didn’t hire you to sing for me. There’s no need to bellow. Please, just pay attention to your work.”
“Yes, of course,” Ruby mumbled.
She had gotten off lightly that time.
Week after week, Ruby mopped floors, cleared and dusted attics and picked cherries from atop unsteady ladders. Then one day, Frau Herzog ordered her to climb out the window of a third-floor sitting room onto the roof and scoop the leaves from the eavestroughs.
“Here, we’ll just tie some rope around your waist and attach the other end to the tree trunk over there. Don’t worry, I know my knots,” she said, smiling at the dismay that crossed Ruby’s face.
Despite the trunk’s apparent sturdiness, Ruby had visions of crashing through the window, flattened like a coyote in a Road Runner cartoon. Nonetheless, out the window she went, and she inched around the roof’s edge, trying not to peek at the ground far below, grabbing and bagging leaves and cursing her inability to speak up for herself. She needed the money, and as an illegal worker she felt she had no rights.
The following week, Frau Herzog insisted she clean the living room windows from the outside. She tied Ruby to a chair in the dining room, from which she was to climb out onto a ledge that overlooked the driveway two storeys below. But the chair was not anchored to anything, and again it seemed she was placing her life in the hands of Frau Herzog.
When Ruby told Werner about her day at work, he exploded.
“How could you let yourself be treated that way? You have absolutely no insurance, nothing to protect you if anything happens. You’re such a fool!”
“Maybe so, but she can be like a Nazi sometimes . . . Is that it? Are all older Germans former Nazis?”
“Well, many were at least part of Hitler’s machinery. But you know, many Germans did not want to fight a war, but they felt there was no choice. People did fight against the Nazis, in the resistance. Still, in the end many became enmeshed in the regime.”
Listening to Werner, she thought of her own parents, and what they would think of her job. Her father would say of her time in Berlin that she was aimless, rather than getting a global education. She was simply sponging up all that the city and Werner had to offer. But it was all so new and different and exhilarating. Work was difficult, but she knew she would eventually find something better. Her uncle was with her in spirit, and he was right: there was something special about this city, and she wanted to open herself up to it. It was as if within the Wall someone had put a 33 LP on and then changed the speed to 45 rpm. Everyone was dancing to a song that had no end while the rest of the world looked on. She wondered about life on the other side.
As the day receded into the blackness of night, she dreamed of walking the length of the enormous wall that enclosed the city, climbing to the top, stumbling along its concrete edges, discovering how it felt to balance West against East.