There was a grassy lawn the size of a soccer field on either side of the tree-lined avenue. Way back and over to the right somewhere there was supposed to be a girl named Berlin, but she was hidden behind the trees so I couldn’t see her from here. When I see big parks like this I feel free and open one minute and unsettled the next. Once a town starts forming, the land is covered with more and more houses, and though patches of open land might be left, surrounded by barbed wire, there usually aren’t any grassy fields that don’t belong to anyone. Could something be buried underneath? Sometimes parks are planted with flower beds in areas that were once borderlands. So maybe under this field is the blood of people who were shot trying to cross the border, I thought, but then decided I must be wrong. That couldn’t be it. The line of death that had separated East and West Berlin was along the river some ways away from here, while this whole memorial park is on the Eastern side.

People were lying on the grass gazing up at the sky; others—practicing yoga?—with their foreheads resting on their hands, flat on the ground, had their bottoms sticking up in the air. A couple sitting back to back, each reading a book, formed a perfect X when I looked at them from the side. No big, noisy groups at all. This was a place where people came to be alone, or alone with one other person.

I’d wanted to come here with her, but knowing she’d refuse, I hadn’t even bothered to ask. She wouldn’t want to come this far into the East. A grassy field in a park is just the same whether it’s in East or West Germany, but that’s exactly what makes the name of the park a sticking point. Traveling through this part of Berlin to get to this field would also be a problem—there’s way too much of that old Cold War atmosphere around here.

To the left of the tree-lined avenue I saw red and yellow flower beds and a fountain that took me back in time. This sort of park was often featured on old Soviet postcards. The pale blues, lurid yellows, and dark reds I remembered from printed materials back in the 1970s rose up, superimposing themselves on the scene before me. Of course, socialism didn’t change the colors of grass and flowers, but on postcards they certainly looked different back then. Even now, with Germany unified, those colors from the past will sometimes reappear, just for a moment, on plants.

Suddenly a strong wind arose, blowing the dark clouds that had been lying along the horizon up into the sky to hide the sun. When I looked around, the people on the grass had disappeared, and no one was cycling or walking either. Opposite the fountain, across the avenue was the main gate to the memorial park. There probably wouldn’t be any pavilions where I could take shelter in the park, but not wanting to just stand here getting soaked in a sudden shower, I hurried on, figuring that after meeting that girl, being rained on would be a little less miserable.