Here in Berlin by Cristina Garcia

Author:Cristina Garcia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2017-10-10T04:00:00+00:00

Theo Hass

Antiques

Time is our enemy, Dear Visitor, yours and mine; even now, as I try to hold your attention for our first few minutes together. Who cares for real stories nowadays? Titillation? Yes. Melodrama? Natürlich. But a lifetime’s regrets? Who wants to hear about that?

My biological mother was Cuban, but I have no idea whether she’s dead or alive. I learned of her existence at my father’s funeral, which also happened to be my twentieth birthday. A colleague of his, a medievalist by the name of Helmut Popp, blurted the truth before passing out from an excess of schnapps. Er hatte einen Affen, everyone said. When I shook him awake an hour later, Popp denied what he’d said and begged me not to trouble him again.

I harangued my poor mother—the one who raised me, that is—until she revealed everything that Father had made her swear to keep secret. That my birth mother was from Havana. That she’d come to East Berlin in the sixties to study agricultural engineering. That she’d taken a poetry seminar with my father and become pregnant by him. That one cold March night, when the snowdrops were in bloom, Mayda Acevedo surrendered her child (me) to her professor’s wife and left Berlin without a trace.

Mutti cried as she told me the story. Her biggest regret was not my father’s infidelity—after all, it had produced me, the love of her life—but that she’d been unable to conceive. For her, this was a tragedy, as she’d been raised with the mantra of Kinder, Küche, und Kirche, auch genannt die drei K. She, too, had been my father’s student, a bright star who’d dropped out of college to become his third wife. In an ironic twist of fate, I grew to look like her—fair and big-boned, with the same pale, untidy mouth.

Ah, Dear Visitor, I’m overwhelming you with the disorders of too much history. May I bring you some tea and ginger cake? Nichts zu danken. By now, you must be wondering: Well, then, who are you, Theo Hass? Nobody special, I assure you. Middle-aged, as you can see. An amateur violist. I’d even venture to say something of a flâneur. There’s nothing I love more than strolling the streets of this city. For me, the highlight of these summer weeks are the weekly lunchtime concerts at the Philharmonic. Yes, we must go together sometime.

Just yesterday, a delightful quartet—bandoneón, violin, piano, and a sublime bass clarinet—played modern tangos. In the north end of the foyer, a striking couple danced to the music, precisely yet with abandon. The woman was statuesque, with lithe, expressive legs. Her partner, upon closer inspection, was also a woman, dressed as an Argentine sailor. The two were mesmerizing, hallucinatory, more than equal to the music.

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