Is it after the minimal techno starts again, that sound that reminds Less of old New York apartments, with the pounding of pipes and the throb of your own heartbreak—or perhaps after the organizer hands him the second “Long Island”? —that Bastian comes to him with a pill and says, “Swallow this.” It is a blur of bodies. He remembers dancing with the Russian writer and Frieda (two potatoes together, and they are trouble) as the bartenders wave their plastic guns in the air, and he remembers being handed an envelope with a check in the manner of a briefcase being delivered over the Potsdam bridge, but then somehow he is in a cab and then is on a kind of shipwreck where various levels of dancers and young chatting Berliners sit in clouds of cigarette smoke. Outside, on a plank deck, others hang their feet over the filthy Spree. Berlin is all around them, the Fernsehturm rising high in the east like the Times Square New Year’s ball, the lights of Charlottenburg Palace glowing faintly in the west, and all around the glorious junkyard of the city: abandoned warehouses and chic new lofts and boats all done in fairy lights, concrete Honecker residential blocks imitating the old nineteenth-century buildings, the black parks hiding Soviet war memorials, the little candles somebody lights each night before the doors where Jews were dragged from their houses. The old dance halls where elderly couples, still wearing the beige of their Communist lives, still telling secrets in the learned whisper of a lifetime of wiretapping, dance polkas to live bands in rooms decorated in silver Mylar curtains. The basements where American drag queens sell tickets for British expats to listen to French DJs, in rooms where water flows freely down the walls and old gasoline jugs hang from the ceiling, lit from within. The Currywurst stands where Turks sift sneezing powder onto fried hot dogs, the subterranean bakeries where the same hot dogs are baked into croissants, the raclette stands where Tyroleans scrape melting cheese onto the bread and ham, decorating it with pickles. The markets already setting up in local squares to sell cheap socks, stolen bicycles, and plastic lamps. The sex dens with stoplights signaling which clothing to remove, the dungeons of men in superhero costumes of black vinyl with their names embroidered on them, the dark rooms and back alleys where everything possible is happening. And the clubs everywhere, only just getting started, where even middle-aged married folk are sniffing lines of ketamine off black bathroom tile, and teenagers are dosing each other’s drinks. In the club, as he later recalls, a woman gets onto the dance floor and really lets go during a Madonna song, really takes over the floor, and people are clapping, hooting, she’s losing her mind out there, and her friends are calling her name: “Peter Pan! Peter Pan!” Actually, it isn’t a woman; it’s Arthur Less. Yes, even old American writers are dancing like it is still the eighties in San Francisco, like the sexual revolution has been won, like the war is over and Berlin has been liberated, one’s own self has been liberated; and what the Bavarian in his arms is whispering is true, and everyone, everyone—even Arthur Less—is loved.
Almost sixty years ago, just after midnight, a few feet from the river where they danced, a wonder of modern engineering occurred: overnight, the Berlin Wall arose. It was the night of August 15, 1961. Berliners awoke on the sixteenth to this marvel, more of a fence at first, concrete posts driven into the streets and festooned with barbed wire. They knew trouble would come but expected it in degrees. Life so often arrives all of a sudden. And who knows which side you will find yourself on?
In just such a way, Less awakens at the end of his stay to find a wall erected between his five weeks in Berlin and reality.
“You’re leaving today,” the young man says, eyes still closed as he rests sleepily against the pillow. Cheeks red from a long night of farewell, someone’s lipstick kiss still smudged there but otherwise unmarked by excess, in the way only the young can manage. His chest as brown as a kiwi, slowly rising and falling. “We are saying good-bye.”
“Yes,” Less says, steadying himself. His brain feels like it’s on a ferryboat. “In two hours. I must to put clothes in the luggage.”
“Your German is getting worse,” Bastian says, rolling away from Less. It is early morning, and the sun is bright on the sheets. Music comes from the street outside: beats from nonstop Berlin.
“You still to sleep.”
A grunt from Bastian. Less leans down to kiss his shoulder, but the young man is already asleep.
As he rises to face the task of packing again, Less endures the ferryboat’s tumble within himself. It is just possible to gather all his shirts, layer them carefully as pastry dough, and fold the rest of his clothes within, as he learned how to do in Paris. It is just possible to gather everything in the bathroom and kitchen, the mess of his middle-aged bedside table. It is just possible to hunt down every lost thing, to pinpoint his passport and wallet and phone. Something will remain behind; he hopes it will just be a sewing needle and not a plane ticket. But it is just possible.
Why didn’t he say yes? Freddy’s voice from the past: You want me to stay here with you forever? Why didn’t he say yes?
He turns and sees Bastian sleeping on his stomach, arms spread out like those of the Ampelm?nnchen who signaled East Berliners: walk or don’t walk. The curve of his spine, the glow of his skin, pimpled across the shoulders. In the big black iron bed of these last hours. Less goes into the kitchen and starts the water boiling for coffee.
Because it would have been impossible.
He gathers his student papers to grade them on the plane. These he carefully slips into a special compartment of his black rucksack. He gathers the suit coats, the shirts; he makes the little bundle that an earlier traveler would have hung from a stick over his shoulder. In another special place he puts his pills (the Head was right; they do indeed work). Passport, wallet, phone. Loop the belts around the bundle. Loop the ties around the belts. Stuff the shoes with socks. The famous Lessian rubber bands. The items still unused: sun lotion, nail clippers, sewing kit. The items still unworn: the brown cotton trousers, the blue T-shirt, the brightly colored socks. Into the bloodred luggage, zipped tight. All of these will circle the globe to no purpose, like so many travelers.
Back in the kitchen, he loads the last of the coffee (too much) into the French press and fills it with the boiling water. With a chopstick, he stirs the mixture and fits it with the plunger. He waits for it to steep, and as he waits he touches his face; he is startled to feel the beard, like someone who has forgotten they are wearing a mask.
Because he was afraid.
And now it’s over. Freddy Pelu is married.
Less pushes down the plunger as with cartoon TNT and explodes coffee all over Berlin.