23rd Hour, 23rd Psalm

Berlin 1969 - 23rd Hour, 23rd Psalm - continued

by R.W. Rynerson

In Berlin nights, some of the most candid conversations developed. And some of the most unconventional events turned out to be conventional in the logic of the night.

"And this is Michèle," our guide repeats himself. It's the first time this evening that the glib young man has showed nervousness. Our eyes follow his to Robert's companion, whose softly accented greeting and manner of dress establish -- certainement -- that she is French. This is a bit disorienting, as there is a well-established stereotype of the American with a German girlfriend in Berlin.

As our guide observes later, French women seem to be able to do a great deal in terms of style without wasting money. About 20% of German women appearing around us this evening seem to know how to do this, whereas -- he claims without reference material -- 80% of French women can add a scarf to a plain outfit and make it into a fashion statement.

Michèle's style tonight is disrupting traffic in the restaurant because she is wearing a maroon jumpsuit. None of the German women are wearing maroon -- perhaps Michèle chose it because it sets off her hair color, or perhaps she chose it because none of the German women would be wearing maroon.

The traffic disruption, however, is due to another feature. The well-fitted jumpsuit is held together by a torso-length zipper with a big, brass-colored pull ring. It is snug up to her throat. So... there are plus or minus twenty Berlinerinen still in the steadily emptying Alt Berliner Biersalon dressed for the night out that they are winding up -- all showing various amounts of flesh -- and their men keep sneaking looks across the room at modestly tailored Michèle and her brass ring.

In the nature of Berlin conversations, we notice that Robert, Michèle and our guide communicate in a mixture of English, French and German. It turns out that when one language doesn't work, they rewind the discussion and start anew in another language, or they reframe their sentences. They appear to be completely unaware of this. It's second nature, our guide tells us, for the international segment of Cold War backwater Berlin, because there are not enough foreigners of any particular nationality outside of the military and diplomatic housing areas and compounds to permit completely monolingual cliques to form.

The conversation revolves around what life in Berlin is like, or what if feels like to these bright, young pawns in the Cold War game of three-dimensional chess that they inhabit. Berliners, we conclude, have worked hard to make the place comfortable. But just when one starts to relax, someone with an issue comes along to demand attention. Some of those who demand attention are willing to pull a trigger, such as the neo-Nazi who shot a Soviet guard in the British Sector a year-and-a-half ago. Some of those who demand attention are not even clear as to what they demand, such as those behind the torching of luxury cars that recently has become a common occurrence.

Others -- such as the ruling circles in East Berlin -- could go on at great length and send foreigners digging for their dictionaries with what our guide calls "20-Mark words". All those words, of course, being lost on West Berliners when traffic signals at the Autobahn checkpoints suddenly turned red for the already jammed traffic at Eastertide. Communist rhetoric spun aimlessly when smirking guards smoked and chatted under the frozen stop signal.

We are just trying to learn a bit more about the couple who are going to guide us on the last leg of our nighttime traverse of West Berlin when a wave of customers of a different type flows into the restaurant. The new group draws the attention of the few customers who remain: the newcomers are painted ladies and their shifty-eyed pimps.

Robert, Michèle and our guide are all surprised by this. Not surprised that there is prostitution in West Berlin, but that this well-run restaurant turns out to be the spot favored by this branch of the demi-monde for a rendezvous. And it's a rendezvous in the same sense as the fur traders of the Old West understood the word. This is a business meeting, a social event, and a way of checking in and cashing out.

Robert, it seems, can explain what Germans call die Lage, the situation. We learn that he works for one of the many ad hoc and/or cut-rate intelligence operations spawned by Berlin's pivotal role in the Cold War. Because of the politics here, he explains, the Western Allies will not permit the West German style of organized, public-utility sex. Instead, in West Berlin this service is provided by unregulated entrepreneurs as in the United States, though more openly. When someone mentions that this tolerance policy is hypocritical, Robert points out that in East Germany the system goes beyond hypocritical by arguing that the problem cannot exist in a Socialist state. This does not account, he dryly notes, for the Berlin Brigade G-2 Patrols' reporting that clusters of tarted-up women could be seen loitering around the Ostbahnhof, perhaps waiting for their country cousins to arrive. Our table conversation turns to how social issues are dealt with in our different cultures.

Berlin, our guide quotes someone whose name we forget, is a city where restaurants, rather than coffee houses, are the home ports for many. Here on the Ku'damm we can sit for hours, analyzing the situation, gnashing our teeth at the weather, talking about friends or colleagues, and so forth.

I had finals and was exhausted from studies.
Think of Berlin from time to time The weather is wonderful here and we sit in the beer gardens and drink and laugh and enjoy life. Berlin! How much I love this city. Winter is horrible but summer is like paradise.
Student - Katja, June, 1996 on a bulletin board

Outside -- though it is still warm -- there are fewer pedestrians. Doubledecker buses that flowed in a yellow river past the windows of the Alt-Berliner now pass only sporadically. Inside, we're high on conversation, helped along by another dessert or another beer or another coffee or another.. Do the people around our table need to go to work tomorrow? (Well, not including the streetwalkers.) If they do, their heads will be somewhere else, perhaps still swirling through these conversations.

Our own table has covered so many things-- or perhaps uncovered them. With no agenda to follow, you may later realize, there is no responsibility to resolve issues or come to conclusions. This is at once charming to North Americans [and frustrating before the invention of Starbucks]. The idea that issues flow like an endless river is novel-- but alien -- to people who want to turn dinner conversations into a business meeting. If you had tried to take notes, here are topics that we may have covered.

      Notes from the Untergrundbahn - some things we talked about after midnight

      -- it's not alcohol, there are lots of ways of getting drunk

-- other restaurants and bars than the one we're in

      -- every month in Berlin was either August 1914 or September 1939 or August 1961

      -- friends

      -- loves -- people back home

      -- loves -- people here

      -- alert bell and alerts

      -- dying on the wire - is the Modern Wall more humane?

      -- a town with too much history and not enough men

      -- each day a Final Exam

      -- steam, steel and barbed wire - our trains and theirs

      -- Airlift remembered

      -- pushing the seat back ahead to help a BEA prop-jet Viscount off the runway at Tempelhof

      -- the hunger-days of stealing potatoes

      -- cigarette etiquette

      -- growing up

      -- radio wars - theirs and ours

      -- bullet holes in the facades

      -- Holocaust footprints - telltale traces

      -- wilted flowers at which memorials -- no flowers at which other memorials

      -- recovered fumbles:  Clay, Kennedy, Rogers

      -- media cynics

      -- so many foreigners to deal with, especially Germans!  -- Johanne,Ivan,Jack,Jean

      -- watching, being watched

      -- S-Bahn running like a steel thread through Berlin's history

      -- the 'shot' seen round the world - too many taking pictures at Checkpoint Charlie

      -- the road from Aachen to Koenigsberg - Reichsstrasse 1 - when would they change the signs?

      -- when or whether we would go home

      -- yet another story around the corner - um die Ecke

        -- list inspired by a question from Alice at the McCormick's Veterans' Day Dinner, 2004

And, we talk about the Berliners. That is not surprising, because there are so many of them. Or perhaps it is because Elisabeth came over to our table to say hello.

Elisabeth is a Canadian expatriate working for an American company in Berlin. She has a couple of academic degrees, but that has not dulled her common sense, our guide comments after noticing her. Somehow, he knows her, perhaps from standing in line with her at the Pan American Airlines city ticket office. That was one of the places where military personnel crossed paths with civilians. Our guide invited her to pull up a chair for a moment.

"These people," he points to us, "are visiting Berlin and trying to learn what the nights are like here. I've been taking them around to see what we military people are doing, but what are "normal" people talking about tonight?"

Elisabeth laughed and tossed back her head back in a way that showed off her dark hair. For a moment, Michèle was not the center of attention. A couple at a nearby table noticed us and began to furtively glance our way as Elisabeth proceeded to talk about "normal."

Click here for Elisabeth's description of "normal" life as an expatriate.

However, even the most determined conversationalists become tired. Or perhaps the cumulative effects of beer, pastries, coffee and tobacco smoke and the late hour is taking a toll. The streetwalkers and pimps have settled their accounts. Now, only the debris of diners past marks the tables where world affairs and community issues were being settled. As if on an alert bell of their own, the waiters are caught up in a frenzy of table clearing. It is time for us to go.

Continued....

Yes, the Alt-Berliner Biersalon is still there.

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