Germania
by John Holten

Gouache. The only word that would come to me. Opaque pigment. The wall I faced was brazen almost, framed as it was by pure white snow. Snowflakes fell silently all around me; the whole city seemed deserted, it was quietly celebrating a routine public holiday... The wall was a canvas: I would learn to see many like it while in Berlin. Communist kitsch commodified. Raw unfinished plaster, dull pastel colours, brightened and politicized with a tag, a graffiti mural. The Cacodylic Eye.

My father had lost his pleasure for life the same day he sold the house he had raised me in, the house he had loved his wife in for twenty five years, the house he had cultivated his memories in over dinners he had cooked with ingredients he grew himself in his little square vegetable patch. I had moved out long ago to create my own memories I suppose, and my mother had died around the time I had moved back to Dublin after five listless years in London. We were both struggling, and maybe the mirror we became of each other’s situation drove us to prove our worth.

Gauche: that was the word for me and London had nearly suffocated me.

I had been standing outside the café off Prenzlauer Allee for a couple of minutes inspecting the wall and its graffiti: this was a long time to be standing around in such coldness. I was in Berlin to see its art, meet its artists; I was also in Berlin to do business and to meet my father's new "lady-friend". Lots to do but there I was frozen, freezing, to the spot, not wanting to finish what I had to do. At last I tugged my scarf tighter and pressed my gloves down between my fingers and slouched off.

My own situation was unspectacular. It had sunk down to quiet nothingness: a return to Ireland and to nothing, to little prospects of a golden career or indeed welcoming friends. The country had moved on, as had my existence. Where it had moved to I did not know. By moving on again hope could be regained, for both father and son. In Berlin I would enquire about jobs and check out the galleries in person. A career could be thought of once more as a possibility. Arandt und Partner, Vonderbank, Haas und Fuchs, Thumm: names not places: Would they ever exist for me as anything other than in an index to my hobby and interests?
I would also meet Sabrina, the lady-friend, in person and talk over the details of my father’s investment. It was the least I could do for him. We never once talked of Sabrina as a partner in love, a soul mate, a replacement. Did he think of her like that or did I? Was it possible that we could have shared a thought in common? I felt that in five years our lines of thought had diverged completely: we were strands of opinion opposed to each other that only intersected by sharing the same familial plane. Perhaps that was all there was to it.

One city or another, and yet not a substitution: I could tell myself it was an advancement for the two of us, embracing our own lives’ projects as I’m sure some German philosopher would term it. The-project-at-hand.
Further pseudo-philosophy comes to me: future orientated I had lost the present. All I could do was wander aimlessly around Mitte thinking of my father and Sabrina and their unwanted business. In him my own ruined, neglected vegetable of a life was reflected. I wanted to help him. In me he found, I'm sure, the impetus or even the need to find love.

He would have no wish to linger on alone, like his son was doing in his middle years, too lazy with life to want for love and companionship. I'd traipse on toward the next gallery space though lose interest in finding it and make a detour, intruding into the nearest kneipe bar.

It wasn't just a case of avoiding an opportunity to be cynical you understand, I was afterall trying to have a genuine experience in a special time and a strange place. Space and time, two things communism feels free to abuse, or rather doesn't commodify. Walking toward the heart of Mitte to pull off the meeting with Sabrina, going further north than was necessary in order to kill some minutes, the vast expanse of space unused was clear and striking. It moved out away from the lonely buildings and isolated cranes and existed there, unused, unquestioned and unaccounted for. The city was constricting itself, aims, projects they were all to be reshaped and remodeled in it. Space to be filled, the future to be lived in. Nothing was going to come of the meeting with Sabrina.

I watched East Berlin as it lay open. Thespace held potential to a Capitalist's eyes I am sure: the bald simplicity of the vast parade streets and the large anonymous facades asked to be invigorated and be filled with something to carry the eye toward, a place to buy something and visit and do what we all know best to do in commercial city centers. There wasn't much room for cynicism, the city didn't allow for it; my father's situation certainly didn't allow for it and the more I thought of the fare he had suffered from life during the last twelve months the more my resolve weakened to resist the maternal affability I was expecting from Sabrina. Snow, brown and dirty, piled up along the footpaths: it made me hope for another snowfall during my trip to clean the city and smoother the burning traces of my reluctance toward making the trip in general. I missed not knowing the forecast and found myself resisting asking some stranger in my halting German. But then there was nobody on the streets.

My father was old and beyond potency I often thought. His new relationship was raising questions for me. To go on in life on your own, free of familial obligation, children, an heir, or search out a partner to confide in during the dark time of sleepless midnights? I welcomed the chance for him to start again. There was inspiration to take from it, this rejuvenation. But then getting started, that was always the difficulty for me with my failed networking. And there I was spending time in Berlin, acting as broker or buffer, or as some sort of charming intermediary between a man and a woman so old they were once again shy and timid like faltering adolescents. But then who could blame them, who could be sure-footed about co-habitation?

Lost, much further north than was necessary, I moved away from the empty space of open land and found Oranienburger Straße U-Bahn. From there the café was close-by and asking a girl directions I could make my way quickly and make a late entrance, though it was not very fashionable I am sure. Indeed I was aware how I seemed probably more disheveled and beleaguered than hard and uncompromising once I entered the narrow, well-lit space. Haggard, unorganized and altogether gauche: it occurred to me I had nothing to offer, I didn't even wish to attract anyone anymore; my life was passing-by without consequence or, damn it, any sort of nobility. God knows there had once been pretension.

Das Jüdische Café was an establishment that had grace: I couldn't help but feel I had disturbed it and its patrons somehow. Who was I to hinder any confluence, I thought, no matter how absurd or unseemly? It was other people in their last, cruel stage in life: why shouldn't they move abroad together and live carefree in this city so full of the past and the future? Time fixes mistakes and there would always be a little left to hold onto, no matter how disastrous the course became: we gain something, some morsal or other, rewards as well as scars, from all we do, from everyone we love. It makes life joyous; it makes life harrowing. I sat down, relieved and softened.

She was a tall woman with dyed blonde hair that was let loose above her shoulders which toke the attention away from her sharp facial features, what I'd call later her "pointed-aspect". I'd say she was once pretty, now though she seemed a little overly tousled, unkempt even and, as far as I could tell, behind somewhat in caring for the latest of lady's style or good taste. But that wouldn't phase me: or anyone in Berlin for that matter. Fashion found itself here, somewhere between idiosyncrasy and practicability : there were still perhaps too many raw financial considerations and a more static imagination to allow for crass advertisement and Americanism to change reliable, honest ways. I had become susceptible to trends that were of no business or interest to me: it was clear that I was fit only to look on as everyone else played their exclusive game of cool clothes and attractive styles. But what the hell did I know, I asked myself? Once more I was passing nonsensical, misinformed judgements were I had no right to. I shook her hand and grimaced at my stupid thoughts. Shut up, I said to myself before I had managed to get a single, pleasant word out. She beamed back, disarming the perturbed expression I am sure my face must have been making.

I liked her instantly, she was fresh and carefree and radiated honesty through the animated gesticulations of her long arms. Shrinking into my seat, I pulled my hands into my jumper sleeves.

There is no conversation more boring I feel than the price of property. This is an absolute when the fact of any disability to afford property is considered; right then though I was privy council for those who could, bartering the financial worth of it and doing my utmost to ignore the emotional symbolism of it. Ireland shocked me in this: a country of apparent fine conversation, not contingent upon anything at all, succumbing to conversations that rested on property fluxuations for its inspiration and subject matter.

We talked about the area around Südstern U-Bahn stop where I had been the day before and the advantages to the old man buying his love-token there. The conversation was easy going and we talked about Kreuzeberg and the apartments I had seen there because that was what we were there to do. Business was evidently business, but as the emotional fact remained that I was my father's son she wasn't going to stay very long on tedious economics I could feel. Business was business and she was getting through it efficiently, marking down my comments and appraisals, attaching a star to one of my calculations I read from my scrap of paper, in order to move on to the humane, the personal, and sure of course, what we could call the polite ends of conversation. She wanted to get to know this wandering, scattered son of her boyfriend's. A long forgotten feeling came over me : I was enjoying a conversation with someone I had never met before. Meandering, relaxed chat didn’t seem beyond me; even if it was business and property prices.

However the building I had followed and got lost in at the Tempelhof Flughafen came up: never had I encountered such a monolithic building, it was truly vast. Its meaning or possible use was lost to me. There was relief in moving off the subject of purchasing property. We could both feel it. I was supposed to be the bobo aesthethe afterall, here we could both engage our passions

— Ah, she said with a swoop of her arm, that is old national socialist Berlin. Ja, it was going to be a part of a greater city, built by Speer

– you know Speer, Hitler's architect?

– well, genau, it was going to destroy the whole city. Um, ja, built in a north-south, east-west axis, two huge boulevards you couldn't imagine, a hall for speeches to fit 100,000 persons. Templehof is huge, from the sky I know that it spreads out in a design. Of course it was never completed you know... Ja, it was to rename the city, they would call it Germania and it would be more beautiful than Paris! She laughed lightly and then added : have you ever been to Paris?

— No, I replied, taken by the idea of this unfinished plan to fashion a monumental city. I was smiling.

— Ah you must go, it is wonderful, she sat back and looked off into a middle distance.

— I will, I said after a moment, knowing well that I would never make the trip.

John Holten Jan-Feb 2006

John Holten is a philosophy student in his final year. He writes for his university newspaper in Dublin and is deputy-editor of the indie magazine REDSQUARE.
www.johnholten.com