Berlin Blues by Sven Regener

Author:Sven Regener [Sven Regener]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2004-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

10 THE KUDAMM

SOME WEEKS LATER, when Herr Lehmann got to Wittenbergplatz, where he maintained that the Kurfürstendamm began, although at that point it was still called Tauenzienstrasse, his spirits were at a low ebb. He was on the way to see his parents, who were waiting for him at their Kudamm hotel. It didn’t matter too much that he was rather hung-over and had slept very little; that was a normal problem. No, what mattered was that he had been compelled to leave Katrin asleep in bed, and that had hit him hard because he didn’t see her as often as he would have wished and was invited to spend the night with her less often still, and he’d have liked to spend the morning with her as well. ‘Pity,’ she’d said when he told her he had to go out early to visit his parents in the Kudamm. ‘We might have been able to do something together in the morning,’ she’d added, but not with any real regret. Herr Lehmann, who regretted it very much, had – not for the first time – pricked up his ears at this, and he would gladly have spent the trip from Görlitzer Bahnhof subway station to Wittenbergplatz subway station debating what on earth he could do to transform Katrin and himself into genuine lovers and not just participants in a casual affair, which was what they’d really been for some weeks. It was as if nothing at all had happened between them, which Herr Lehmann found almost worse. After all, he’d briefly reflected in the subway train from Görlitzer Bahnhof to Wittenbergplatz, who likes to starve with a well-stocked refrigerator within reach? But he promptly discarded that metaphor. It’s an unromantic way of looking it, he told himself, and was forced to concentrate once more on other matters.

Because everything was going wrong on other fronts as well. He hadn’t had time to buy a subway ticket because the train was pulling in just as he got to Görlitzer Bahnhof, which meant that he’d been compelled to travel without one, and that he thoroughly disliked. He was always unlucky on such occasions and already had one minor conviction for evading payment, but he’d had to board the train at once, it being essential for him to get there on time, not because his parents would have minded his being late, as they naturally would have, but because he was always on time. He hated being late, he hated it even more than travelling illegally, and he hated it even more when other people were late, not that it really mattered to him. What mattered was to be punctual himself, and he always was. So he’d had to board the train at once, even though it was early – too early, strictly speaking, because he’d got to Görlitzer Bahnhof just before ten and his parents weren’t expecting him until eleven. That gave him plenty of time to get to the Kudamm, even by way of Line No.

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