Teufelsberg was no man’s land: a cyst on the earth built of the rubble left behind from bombs, covered
in grass and post-war buildings. There were prettier areas in Berlin, ones where trees lined boulevards and where
paths laced gilded palace grounds, but it was here that Tony would walk most
Sundays.
He would ride the train west from Kotti out to Teufelsberg. Devil’s Mountain, he’d translate to himself, always translating from one language to another. Always too many names in his head. Too many languages trying to give an object a name. He had good days and bad days but there was always an urgency to spit each
sentence out and get it right. Got to keep things straight. What does it mean -- was ist das denn -- a clanging in his head like the clanging of the train tracks.
There was never anyone else walking on Teufelsberg. Maybe some kids with cans of spray paint and greasy faux-hawks, hoodies and
leather jackets and none of them older than seventeen. But other than that, even the tourists didn’t get lost out that way, which was mostly why Tony liked it out there to begin
with.
And so Tony would climb up the man-made mountain and look out on Berlin. An unprotected expanse of grey concrete low above new-growth trees; the distant
TV Tower still watching over everything, that strange piece of architecture— like a knitting needle turned vertical, balancing a skein on its pointed end,
marking Alexanderplatz and the old, dead DDR.
They said that the Americans had used the man-made mountain to spy on the
Germans and Russians and whoever else needed watching after the war. But the Americans were gone now and the only people left watching were the
German polizei, always dressed in riot gear with muzzled dogs, patrolling the trains and
stations in the east, in the boroughs of Neukoelln and Alt-Mariendorf and other
places where the German cadence wilted under accents and where adjective
endings were often clipped short.
No one paid attention to Tony in these places. No one gave him a second look. But on other trains, on days when he’d go to the city center or elsewhere, he would notice people hold their bags a
little closer and most of the time the seats around him would remain empty. “Better just to stand,” they seemed to say and he could hear the other thoughts run through their
heads.
In the mornings when he sorted papers, making neat piles of Der Morgenpost, Der Tagesspiegel, and Die Welt, the Germans would just walk by.
“Morning,” he would say. And they would mumble something as the courtyard’s door shut heavy and he was left with only the magpies and stone walls.
He would deliver papers during the day and at night he would go to class.
Mondays and Wednesdays. Not at Humboldt or one of the other universities. Tony was already done with
that, had done his econ degree in Moscow where it snowed too much. Not like here. Here there were just the clouds heaved inland from the sea and the cold Polish
winds. Here, he’d sit in a class run by the state and a man with wire-rimmed glasses and rough
sandpaper skin would lecture on German history and German food and German
German-ness. But everyone in the class knew more about these things than the teacher. Maybe they didn’t know the specific dates or who crazy Ludwig was but they knew what the Germans
were. Still: no class, no test, no citizenship. So they sat and listened.
“If you want to live here, you must forget about what you used to do,” the teacher said as people took notes or sat cross-armed. “You live in Germany now. If you don’t want to assimilate, to fit in, go home.”
Some days Tony would go out with people he knew. They would sit at someone’s apartment and they would play American music – What I’m searching for, to tell it straight I’m trying to build a wall drifting down onto the street – and pass around plates of food.
They would buy cheap beer at Kaiser’s, where the anarchists and the homeless and the junkies hung out, and hop the
trains farther east until they eventually made it back to Kreuzkoelln several
hours later, where they would walk around looking for the right type of bar to
settle into until the night became morning. They would go to Moebel, where all the bartenders were women with mustaches. It was always busy there on the Thursday or Friday nights they went. And soon cigarettes from Tony’s friends filled the ashtrays and empty glasses began to collect and by 3 AM
someone had started a blunt circulating around.
“So why aren’t you going to the Montags demonstration?” Juergen asked, staring Tony straight on.
“Come on, that? You’re only going because your unemployment’s running out,” said Tony. “I’ve got a job, remember?”
“Shit, not any job I’d want,” said Juergen.
And Tony knew what was implied: that his job wasn’t any job for a German, not one who’d gone to University like Juergen. And how long had it taken him to finish? Too long, thought Tony.
Tony saw the headlines about the demo two days later, on schedule, while sorting
papers. Thousands of people countrywide. All protesting the Hartz IV law, marching to government buildings to demand a
higher minimum wage for less time worked.
Nice in theory, thought Tony, but nothing was going to change. The protesters had all banged drums and held up signs but the streets were quiet
again and people had turned their focus back on the small passings of each day.
And what had it all been for? Tony thought: get a job, do some work, and stop quoting Marx like scripture.
On other nights he would go to the doener stand past the canal towards
Hermannplatz. It was not the cheapest on the block but their food was the best and in his
frequent visits Tony now knew the entire Ates family who owned the place.
“Tony,” Marcus’d say from behind the counter. “How’s it going?” And Tony would start talking about this or that as Marcus shaved meat from the
large piece that spun on the spit. Marcus’d hand Tony a doener and Tony would lean against the computerized slot machine
as he ate, methodically disappearing the flat bread, meat, lettuce, tomatoes,
raw onions, and red cabbage.
Marcus would clean up and get ready to close, putting away the leftover kefta
kebabs and halloumi and baklava, and they would talk about how Hertha was doing
this season while eyeing the girls that walked by.
“Got a new piece I’m gonna get up tonight, if you wanna come with,” Marcus said, pulling out of his pocket a folded sketch for a wall.
“Yeah, sure,” said Marcus. “Someone’s got to watch out for the polizei.”
“Them, yah. But it’s not like anyone here’d care.”
“I guess not,” said Tony.
And so they found some clean wall somewhere, the street mostly quiet except for
Marcus occasionally rattling an aerosol can.
“You should have brought a camera,” said Tony when they finished. “To take a picture of it before someone tags it up.”
“I don’t need a picture of it,” Marcus said. “Got it up here, in my head. And that’s not the point. It lasts for how long it lasts and then -- what will be, will be, na?”
“I guess,” said Tony.
“Everything changes,” said Marcus. “Why wouldn’t this?” And Tony just nodded his head and stared at the piece, the colors and lines
still crisp and unmarred.
Even after nights like this, on Sundays when his head hurt from too little
sleep, Tony would go sit at the top of Teufelsberg. Go look out on the city and imagine all the movements of its people. He would try to see what they were all doing from his seat on that condemned
land, try and see how they all lived. And he wondered if other people were sitting elsewhere doing the same, looking
out on Berlin.
There were times he wondered what made him come here every Sunday. But it was something he could never really put words to. It was like a small pilgrimage, cathartic. Because the farther he got from the city center, the more even his thoughts
became. No one noticed him here because there was no one here to see him. And a new weariness would set into his body, one earned from the road when you’ve almost made it home, replacing the weariness from constantly being stared at
and talked to like a child.
Sometimes he would walk and see how close to the buildings he could get. There was an old ski lift from a failed 1960s venture; the rumored ECHELON
tower. Buildings boarded up and encircled by old barbed wire like the thorny briers
that surrounded Sleeping Beauty’s castle in the old Grimms’ tale. He knew these stories. But the fairy tales here were different than those he’d grown up with, the bright Disney versions where there was always a happy
ending, or the Anansi stories his mother had told him during their London
years.
The old stories here were unsettling, far darker than Hawthorne or other
American stories he had read, and their endings were always less just than the
Russian stories he had been told at the corner store in Moscow where he would
buy meat or cheese for dinner before settling into a night of textbook reading
and problem sets.
He’d read Der blonde Eckbert for class once -- “Typical of the Romantic period’s literature,” the teacher had said -- which began normal enough. A couple stay the night by a friend and over dinner he tells them a story. He tells the story of a brother and sister who didn’t know they were brother and sister and unwittingly marry each other. “This is only a fairy tale,” the storyteller says in the beginning. “And it only sounds as if it’s real.” But by the end, Tony wasn’t sure, and there were days when that’s how it seemed life simply was. Days when four-men parades would march down his street playing Columbian music
and holding hats out to neighbors collected in doorways.
In the story there was no division between the real and unreal, and Eckbert was
doomed from before the story temporally began. Nothing he could have done would have changed his tragic end. It was beyond being fated or destined -- it simply was so and there was nothing
that could alter that fact.
“What can be done? What can I do?” Tony often heard this in his class. Visa problems, bureaucratic problems. Tony had it easy compared to most and he knew it; it was nearly ten years that
he’d been there now. “You’re so German,” people would tell him during their break or after class. “You’re much more German than I.” And then side arguments would break out dissecting in what ways they were all
German.
Sometimes they would talk about the problems becoming German.
“...and he won’t sign the fucking paper,” Daria said. “He sits in jail -- hasn’t even seen his son in twelve years -- and he won’t sign the goddamn paper saying I’ve raised him here. Even though I have, and without a penny from him. That lousy signature’s all we need to get citizenship and passports and he’s set on ruining life for his son. After he turns eighteen, my son -- everything will become so much harder for
him.”
For some, the problem was wondering if they wanted to be German.
“My cousin Gamze said that she doesn’t want the German pass, that she’s never going to apply for it. And she can’t see why I’d want it. And now I don’t really know if I want it or not, it’s all been such a hassle -- can’t even have passports for both countries. They don’t even want me to be German anyways -- I was born here, you know, my mum too --
but being Turkish we don’t get a passport automatically.”
And others found it to be impossible.
