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1

Berlin

DONER KEBAB

A train moves toward Berlin. It speeds through wide-open spaces, past smoking fields. It’s fall. Sitting in a second-class car, head leaning against the window, is a slender young man, about twenty years old, traveling light, a book in his hands; I am sitting on the bench facing him. I decipher the title on the book’s cover—La cuisine de référence, the famous French handbook for culinary professionals—and see the three stylized chef’s hats drawn against a red, white, and blue background, then I sit up and lean forward, propelling myself into the book’s pages with their rows of illustrations and italicized captions, step-by-step photographs that feature no human face or mouth, only torsos and hands: precise hands with clean, neatly trimmed fingernails; hands holding metal, glass, or plastic utensils; hands plunged inside containers, hands wielding blades, each hand captured in an action.

The young man leafs through the book’s pages, consulting the table of contents and the glossary, the preface and the appendixes. He seems to be hovering around it without actually reading it, as if he didn’t know where to start. In fact, I think he doesn’t know much at all, not even what he’s doing on this train on this day at this hour, and if you asked him the question, if you put him on the spot and demanded, “Why Berlin?,” I imagine he would shrug, close his eyes, let his head sink back against the seat, and withdraw into himself. The only thing he is sure about is the fact of sitting in this car, immersed in its imitation leather and gleam of brass, in this atmosphere of confinement—damp warmth, detergent smell—his shoes touching this carpeted floor; the only thing he feels with any certainty is the steady power of the machine that carries him forward. A grayish blur through the window, the landscape is an old mattress; the boy closes the book and falls asleep.