On the night train to Rome I meet an Italian woman with two young boys who use me as a target for their invisible bullets flying out of tiny plastic guns, a Belgian girl who keeps talking about her Italian boyfriend yet smiles and winks at me like I should take her right there in the packed hallway filled with various sad passengers sleeping on the floor in all sorts of positions, and finally a couple from Richmond, Virginia, who get me high in the dirty, cramped toilet. I don’t sleep at all on the train, or the next night either, on the floor of the apartment of the pretty Polish girl I meet in a sculpture museum. She’s studying art in Rome and what do you do, she asks me, and I tell her that I study girls who study art in Rome, which she doesn’t really appreciate, but still lets me stay with her.
I don’t remember much after that, just tiny moments that come to me occasionally, where every second is preserved, the huge gaps in-between sacrificed for the memory of the sweet epiphanies, seconds of time more precious than the months and years slopped together, the tedium of existence, the mundane cycle of life, the Wasteland.
I recall the train to Budapest, bribing border officials to let me pass through Slovakia and Croatia without the proper visas, finally arriving to witness the city’s beautiful hills, buildings and women, so made supposedly because of their genes, dominated time and again – by the Turks, the Huns, the Russians, the Tartars – everyone making contributions, leaving something behind to be discovered by the curious, the observant, the lustful; the city teeming with cavernous underground bars and artists, moody yet magical, myself in heavenly hands, being led through the dark maze by my own product of domination I meet at a fruit stand, her with perfect English and soaring intellect, trading stories about politics and techno music while drinking strange combination drinks like red wine and Coca-cola, finally getting plundered myself in a gorgeous dirt-cheap flat by the river, although the trains outside do little for a good night’s sleep…
I remember the Turkish baths where men in loin cloths – myself included – stare at one another with questionable expressions, sitting in fiery saunas and cooling off in mineral baths, then massages by large friendly eager Hungarians, soaped up bodies, rubbing and pulling and pinching, not exactly what I consider relaxing or therapeutic, but still marvelous for the visual of the art-deco bath and brief participation in an ancient bonding ritual.
The next day it’s off to Prague, sharing a compartment with a chatty girl in overalls from St. Louis and two drunk yet amiable Australians, finally reaching the gorgeous candlyand for American expats and tourists. Poor, poor Kafka, I think, as I wander through the crowded streets, the packed cafes, the exquisite castle, his castle, still ominous and grotesquely beautiful, though dotted with people and bright firefly-like pops of camera flashes, with children screaming, though out of pleasure and not fear, unfortunately. At night and away from the center, however, the dimly-lit roads and alleyways can still lead one to madness, getting lost being much easier than finding one’s way, the cobblestone-laden, winding streets mimicking one another, the poor wanderer, hearing strange sounds from the shadows (police, cockroaches?). Here Kafka, dear Kafka, you are alive and well.
Prague is home to steely-eyed, black-haired girls with red lips and pointy teeth, vampires, seductive, beautiful and strange, pouring you Czech red wine that tastes thick and heavy and smiling yet taunting you for being in their homeland, you who walk around on long American strides and babble about how beautiful the city is and how cheap everything is, and how easily you could live here. To this last comment they smile again, bigger even, and pour you some more wine, wondering whether you will float or sink once they toss you off the Charles Bridge.
There was the night with the young Dutch philosophers, discussing art and music and love while drinking down twenty-five cent beers and the occasional shot of absinthe, not moving for the entire evening sans to piss or get another bottle, my involvement more as a voyeur, secretly drinking less, talking less, just observing the large articulate blonde boys weighing the fate of the universe against a pair of perfect breasts, these supplied earlier by Julie from Canada, six-feet of nature gal, big as an oak yet shapely, all of us (American, Canadian, Dutch, Swedish, Croatian, Czech) excitedly dancing to American top-40 in a dark crowded club, the night hot and perfect because we’re all drunk and in love, finally getting Julie into a corner, only to tell me she’s engaged. “Does this mean you won’t sleep with me?” I ask her. Yes, apparently, although she’s into snogging and keeps repeating how exotic and dark and beautiful I am, and how she’d love to make love only she promised herself she wouldn’t, and besides, there’s her future husband, who looks just like me, she says, although he’s blonde and Canadian. A disappointment, to be sure, but all good fuel for the Dutchmen, who turn it into a debate about morals and marriage and Canadians versus Americans and so on and so on, into the long hot night, until its morning and they’re serving us breakfast, we who incredibly have not run out of things to say and are still talking, although I can’t remember if any of it makes any sense…
And now I am on my way to Berlin, finally, city of cities, the most modern of them all, each day, week and year different in light of all the construction, the mood constantly changing, where Bowie and Iggy lived and worked side by side, where east and west still struggle, with memories of Hitler, genocide, communism and the wall, the glorious, ugly wall that still stretches through parts of the massive city, now the largest in Europe, the new capital of Germany, soon to be the center of Europe, if not the world. It’s here where I’m to meet Sol, my lost half, who I have not thought about very much, although it seems that my inflated desires were merely attempts to fill what was left open by her absence. It’s hard to say, and I don’t know what it will be like when we meet, although I am eager to see her.
When I reach my hotel in Kreuzberg there is a note for me from her. We are to meet at Checkpoint Charlie in a few hours, giving me time to shower and shave, which is good, but unfortunately not enough time to wash my clothes, which, like myself, have developed a rather questionable smell. I am eager to join the Love Parade as well, which is presently being held at the Tiergarten, a massive park in the center of Berlin. Throughout the city, on the television behind the reception desk of the hotel, on the radio at the newsstand I visit after my shower, from the stereos of the cars that speed through the streets, are the sounds of techno, the sound of Berlin, the city awash in its immediate, aggressive beat and hard, heavy bass. The air is charged with it.
I arrive at Checkpoint Charlie via the ultra-efficient U-Bahn, and find myself at the infamous crossing point while the wall was still up, which is now nothing but a skeletal gate, with a few pictures and signs left for commemoration. Across the street is a café, and as I’m early I order a beer from the tall hostess and sit at a table outside. At the next table are two middle-aged German women, with short dark hair and deep voices, who talk excitedly. One keeps looking back at me and I smile at her. She says something to me in German and I ask her if she speaks English, which apparently she doesn’t or doesn’t want to, as she turns back to her friend and continues talking. The beer arrives and I drink it down, then another. I haven’t eaten anything all day, and after the third am already drunk. Sol is almost an hour late, and the German women are looking at me strangely, as if I am insane to sit here, alone, while nearby over a million young people are dancing and celebrating.
With each passing minute I want to see her more and more. Everything about her that I’ve repressed for the past few weeks seems to rise up, all at once, and I suddenly miss her terribly. I wasn’t sure what to think about our reunion, but now, in a vast new city, without the pleasures of Prague or the charms of Italy, with cranes and construction everywhere, the entire thing in transition, the brutal, gutteral sound of German filling my ears, I feel very much alone. (Has it come down to this? Me finally where I want to be, where I would have been previously if I hadn’t missed my train, then delayed longer still for a girl, a girl who eventually I wanted to get away from, and who now I apparently need desperately, as I am unable to enjoy myself without her.)
After a while, as darkness falls, with the German women having left and my hostess reading my lost expression, asking me sympathetically if I want another beer, I know Sol’s not coming. Why not I cannot discern, although the thought that she has mixed feelings about seeing me begins to take shape. A helicopter buzzes overhead, and sitting across from Checkpoint Charlie, the wall, the blood and agony it represented for so many, I suddenly feel that I am in the Berlin of years back, the one I have read and dreamt about, the one we bombed to the ground, me a Jew to boot.
There’s nothing left to do but walk to the Love Parade. The Love Parade! What a joke, expecting so many to come together out of love, when it’s merely for drugs and sex. And techno music? How obnoxious and overrated! (How quickly our attitudes change toward life when we realize we’re alone).
But what else to do? I pay for the beer, check the location on the map and walk to the Tiergarten. I can hear the music in the distance, even see some of the people over the horizon. Will she be in there, somewhere, dancing, partying, loving? Will the scores of others I’ve met on my travels be amidst the crowd, looking for me, waiting to pull me in with them, so we can all enjoy the parade? I don’t know. I only know that I am alone, in ominous, enigmatic Berlin, and that soon I’ll be surrounded by thousands upon thousands of drugged-out young people and ear-splitting techno. My Swedish girl, my sun, lost to me.
