Nein, keine Zeit

Her voice is tremulous – unremarkable; pleasant. Her expression is open-mouthed, startled, as if a ghost had put a hand on her shoulder. She stops after a stanza. It’s not as if a spell is broken. Abruptly, she’s now someone else: cheerfully inadequate to the demands of laying a table.

–––

‘Mmmm.’

I feel fraudulent chewing on vegetables. I’m not convinced they’re real food. A heap coloured by Parmesan and pesto, mixed with fettuccine.

‘Next time, I’ll make daal,’ she says, as if she’s consulted a crystal ball.

•

I see myself in the bedroom’s pink glow. I see her pale body in the mirror. I have no inkling of what might happen next.

I realise, later, I’ve seen many Birgits. They splayed across the evening like playing cards, some of which I studied more closely than others. Or it was as if smaller dolls had emerged from a Russian doll over two hours, each the same as the original, but, seen at different spots in the room, requiring fresh perspectives.

•

After dinner, we listened to a bit more music. It sounded autochthonic now, the 80s rock: something that emanated from a cave. There was a process of conversion going on, a waiting and seeing if I was ready to enter the cave with her.

•

On my way back, I’m lost briefly before I find the tunnel. This has been happening – not the loss of a sense of direction, but a dispensing with memory of recent events and things I’ve grown up with. For instance, it occurs to me that, while I discussed food with Birgit, and music, I told her very little of my life. It wasn’t as if I kept my life from her. I simply forgot about it. It was like it never happened. When I’m lost these days, as I am on my way to Warschauer Strasse, I don’t feel anxious because the streets are familiar. Where I find myself is related to the return of some old memory. I don’t know what the memory is, but I recognise where I am. On the other hand, I’d say the world I belonged to, the one I came from, has little veracity any more. It began to vanish in the eighties and nineties. I don’t feel lost in Berlin – here, I’m in the present. I’d say the same of Faqrul: that, if he went back home, he wouldn’t find it there. There’s more of that home in Berlin now – in Wittenbergplatz; Görlitzer Bahnhof. We have an appetite for home, as flies do for food. We find it unerringly.

It’s snowing. When I return from university, I see the grass around the building is two inches white. I step in, wondering if my boots will withstand the plunge. I leave behind crevasses.

•

The Böll Professor’s apartment is an oasis. Grunewald approaches. Like my shoes, the apartment is impermeable.

•

Birgit calls.

‘Have you seen Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham?’ I think I’ve heard of it, I say.