|
|
"The Far Side of Nollendorfplatz" When Philip arrived back at Nollendorfplatz from Potsdam around four o’clock, the sun was low in the sky, casting Massenstrasse all in shadow except the tops of the old brick apartment buildings on the far side of the street, which glowed that warm, muted yellow particular to late fall afternoons. It was a beautiful color to Philip, achingly so, filling him with yearning, and sadness, too, as it was the kind of light that signaled the coming of ends. Looking down the street toward home, he saw nothing to alter his melancholy mood. The maple and oak saplings that had given the street a modicum of color in summer and early fall had lost their leaves, and the window of the little Bäckerei where he bought a loaf of fresh, heavy brown bread every few days was covered by a grate cleaving the baked goods on display into hundreds of metal-edged rectangles. It being Sunday, the rest of the shops on the row—the ice cream stand, the shoe store, the bookshop—were similarly closed and barred. Except, Philip guessed, the dingy Kneipe on the corner of Winterfeldstrasse, next to his own building. That pub always seemed open—he couldn’t recall a single time he’d seen it closed—even weekday mornings when on his way to work he would pass its doorway, the dull reddish interior barely visible in the brilliant sunlight, and hear music still playing and people still talking. This incessancy suggested hipness until Philip ventured in one evening and confirmed that the age and dinginess suggested by the drab pink-orange glow dribbling into the street also suffused the walls, the tile floor, the two pool tables and dart board in the back, the old jukebox, even the few customers and the curmudgeonly-looking bartender. Still, the place was a constant reminder of all the famed Berlin nightlife Philip was missing. Didn’t these people have jobs? he wondered. And if not, how could they afford to party all night and day? He might have asked the bartender, Herr Hassenbach, who turned out to be not only the owner of the Kneipe but also the brother of Philip’s landlord, and also managed Philip’s building day to day. But unlike his brother, a decent but seemingly resigned man, this Hassenbach was as much a curmudgeon as he appeared. Somewhere in his fifties, he often stood in the pub doorway smoking and looking grumpy, and when Philip had had to ask him last week for the key to the cellar so he could store some coal there for the antique upright heating oven in the corner of his living room, the man had acted as though the young American were some criminal. First he denied he had the key, then he questioned Philip gruffly, and finally he called his brother to confirm. Granted, once down there Philip did find a few old needles as Oskar—which Philip dubbed him in his mind, as in Oskar the Grouch, or Oskar Meyer (i.e., a wiener)—stood behind him, blocking the light and muttering about how this was where addicts from Nollendorfplatz used to shoot up. But Philip was clean cut and considerate and friendly, hardly the criminal type, and Oskar’s attitude thus confirmed Philip’s instinctive dislike of such sauer (the German word being much more fitting, with its beginning z sound and accented, biting first syllable, than its English equivalent, sour), small-minded people who, so obviously scared of the world, responded by looking out only for themselves. Reaching Winterfeldstrasse, Philip glanced over and saw that this den of enmity was indeed conducting business, though Oskar wasn’t visible and the light emanating from within now jarred hotly against the falling darkness like some unexpected side door to Hell. Across the street ahead of him, by contrast, at the far end of Winterfeldplatz, stood Winterfeld Church, a tall, sturdy, red brick structure Philip had assumed was merely a historical monument until entering for a peek one Sunday morning and finding a mass taking place. Watching from the back next to a marble pillar as thick as a California redwood, he’d chided himself for being surprised that even in this island of hedonism—which was, after all, smack in the middle of a traditionally Christian country now lurching to the right after the fall of the Wall—some people still observed, in suits and dresses no less, sitting upright and attentive. Yet more surprising had been his feeling that he wanted to sit down and join in, despite his belief that religion was basically just weakness, a denial of the bleak reality of, well, reality. After a few minutes he’d quietly turned and left, fairly sure he had not been noticed at all. Now the setting sun gilded the church’s steeple in that same misty golden light, somehow warm and cold at once, both beautiful and saddening. Philip stood gazing at it, the few remaining pedestrians passing him without seeming to notice or care. Then, wanting to preserve the image in his mind, he turned away before it was swallowed by shadow, and walked toward his door. Muted rock music spilled from the Kneipe, along with the clink of glasses. Imagining the people inside drinking, joking, discussing Marx and Adorno, Philip saw no one as he turned his key and stepped into the entryway, a short concrete corridor. Thus he was startled to hear a meek voice peep, “Können Sie mir helfen?” (story continues...) ©2003 Eric C. Grunwald |
|
