There were neither shops nor people, only a kitten that crawled under a fence and, rolling out on my side of it, came over to play with my shoelaces. I looked down to see they were untied. The pure white kitten was fluffier than a cotton ball, and its tail was dancing as if it were a separate being. Rather than tying my shoelaces, I lifted my foot and circled it around. Delighted, the kitten kept on playing. Then another kitten, white like the first, crawled under the fence and started playing too—but with its sibling’s tail, not with my shoelaces. The first kitten twisted around and raised its short forelegs. Still another kitten slid under the fence—another sibling, no doubt. This one was apparently shy, for it simply watched the others play, making no attempt to join them until it was butted from behind by a fourth kitten and thrown straight into the melee. The fifth and sixth appeared shoulder to shoulder, competing to see who could get through faster. Their mother never came. All six were white all over, maybe because they were purebreds, a word that brings Nazi ideology to mind and is therefore no longer in use regarding humans; nevertheless, there are still people who think nothing of applying it to cats, which seems frightening and terribly cruel.

Suddenly all six kittens stopped moving and pricked up their ears, and a split second later they all took off in the same direction. They must have picked up some sound I couldn’t hear. Hurrying after them, I eventually found myself standing in front of a large restaurant rumored to have gone out of business a while back. Though I couldn’t remember the name, it was definitely something strange like “Rest House for Comedians.”

The spacious front garden was dotted with bushes, among which were several tables, and to the back of the garden was an elegant wooden villa. Its door was open, under a “Welcome” sign, so those rumors must have been incorrect, and since they’d made me wish I’d come here with her before it closed, this was a relief.

But then I had a terrible thought. Maybe I’d slipped back in time, back to when the restaurant was still in business. That would be really awful—if I were now on a different path from the one I’d taken, my fate would change, and she and I might never meet. Maybe I’d end up with someone else altogether, though perhaps that would be better, after all. If I were to ask that other person, “How about a coffee on Majakowskiring?” instead of putting me off with excuses like, “Why go so far for a cup of coffee?” or “I’d like to but I’m busy at work these days,” she might just come to the restaurant at the time we’d decided on, where she’d sit across from me while enjoyed our coffee, smiling, her eyes narrowing with delight as we chatted about things that were far from here, people who were elsewhere, or faraway countries. She might have the same sort of fondness for East Berlin as me, or perhaps she’d be much bigger, so huge that when she leaned way back in this armchair called Berlin her head would touch Poland, and if she yawned and stretched her fingertips would reach into Russia.