Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

More documents

Recommendations

Info

128 VII. Somehow I knew not to tell Dr. G. about Klaus, the way a teenage girl knows not to tell her parents about the boy with the leather jacket and jacked-up Camaro. I knew she'd disapprove and didn't feel like having to argue with her. Instead I casually mentioned that I was thinking of returning to East Berlin to visit a few more museums. Klaus phoned at the pre-arranged time on the night before our date. Luckily Dr. G. was working. Her eight-year-old son handed me the phone. Klaus and I exchanged small talk, confirming the time and place of our meeting. Then he said something that made me uneasy. "I'll be wearing my safari suit. What will you be wearing?" "I. . . I don't know," I said warily. "Probably jeans and my white sweater. Why?" "It's best to be safe," he explained. "I don't want to lose you in the crowd." VIII. Riding the train into East Berlin the following morning, I couldn't shake off a mild sense of foreboding. Why had Klaus asked what I was going to wear? Had I made a mistake not telling Dr. G. about our rendezvous? Was I doing something stupid? It didn't help when, just moments after my arrival in East Berlin, as I searched for Klaus in the sparse crowd milling around outside the Friederichstrasse station, two thugs grabbed me and shoved me against a wall. It happened so quickly, I wasn't sure if I was being mugged or arrested. "What are you doing here?" the dark-haired thug hissed, frisking me like a policeman. "Where did you come from?" his blond companion demanded, clutching a fistful of my white sweater. "West Berlin," I replied shakily, in my unmistakable American accent. "Ich komme aus West Berlin." This ominous chit chat was interrupted by Klaus's sudden appearance on the scene. He stepped between me and the thugs, a commanding presence in his freshly pressed safari suit, and barked at them to leave
I3O "It's best to do it in winter," he explained. "The sea is so rough, they don't even bother to patrol it." I glanced around uncomfortably. The passengers within hearing range sat stone-faced, like New Yorkers ignoring a beggar. "If a storm comes up, that's it," he said with a fatalistic shrug. "But I'm getting older. I can't live like this much longer." XI. On the way to his apartment we stopped at another outdoor cafe and had a few more beers. Then we visited a small grocery store that seemed to have nothing in stock except for case upon case of orange soda in unmarked bottles. Klaus lived on the top floor of a four-story building on Chopinstrasse. We stopped in the foyer so he could check his mail. He stared at one particular piece for a long time. "Oh no," he said softly. "What?" "It's from the police." "What do they want?" "To talk to me." All the color seemed to have drained from his face. "They want me to clear something up." "Is that bad?" He looked at me for a long time. "It's not good." A disturbing thought slowly took shape in my mind. "Is this about me?" "I don't know," he said in an unconvincing tone of voice. "It might be." XII. I waited on the couch while Klaus ducked into the bedroom to change his clothes. The apartment was small but cozy. He owned a lot of books. I didn't want to be there—not in Klaus's apartment, and not in East Berlin. By that point in the afternoon, I was mildly drunk, thoroughly disoriented, and more than a little frightened. Concern for my own safety mingled uneasily with guilt that I might be the cause of Klaus's new round of troubles with the authorities. All I really understood was that I needed to get back to West Berlin as quickly as possible. Klaus's shirt was off when he returned from the bedroom. He locked eyes with me and slowly removed his belt, as though performing a striptease. Then he unzipped his pants and let them fall around his ankles. I remained motionless on the couch, trying to maintain an expression of polite neutrality as he stood before me in his skimpy underpants. "I'm going on a date tonight," he said, long after the silence had grown untenable. "My girlfriend's a doctor." XIII. There was an angel on top of his TV, a two-foot tall porcelain statue of remarkable delicacy. Klaus lifted the angel off the set and presented it to me for inspection. "It's beautiful," I said. It was, too. The angel's wings were outspread, and a serenity radiated from its perfect face that seemed wildly out of place, almost surreal, in that apartment, in that city. "It belonged to my parents," he said. "I want you to have it." I was touched and puzzled by the gesture. This angel wasn't the kind of thing you just gave to someone, especially someone you hardly knew. "I can't," I told him. He seemed startled. "Why not?" "It's too generous." "But I want you to have it." "Klaus, I can't. I'm traveling with a backpack. It'll break." "Are you sure?" I imagined myself passing through the checkpoint with a large white angel in my arms. "I'm sorry. I really can't accept it." With apparent reluctance, he took the angel from my hands and returned it to its place of honor atop the primitive-looking TV. Then he selected a fat volume from his bookshelf. "Then take this," he said.
Page 1 and 2:
TRANSLATION SECTION TRY COAST TO CO
Page 3 and 4:
Editor-in-Chief LORI SODBRLIND Exec
Page 5 and 6:
ELIZABETH MACKLIN SAMN STOCKWELL DA
Page 7 and 8:
IO her with broken locks on pill ca
Page 9 and 10:
o a: ID u. O >- IT 0 in on his face
Page 11 and 12:
18 or his daughter. He said north o
Page 13 and 14:
in charge of the lifted-up-spirits
Page 15 and 16: The wife says, "Oh, shut up, won't
Page 17 and 18: then sits down, clutching the baske
Page 19 and 20: 34 They all drink. The wife's head
Page 21 and 22: Liliana Ursu, a native of Bucarest,
Page 23 and 24: De la fereastra Ingerului Fan, iarb
Page 25 and 26: The Key to Mystery Hot is my body a
Page 27 and 28: 5° Everything Kobo Abe ever wrote
Page 29 and 30: T. 54 "How ironic," the man said, l
Page 31 and 32: GWYNETH LEWIS Whose coat is that ja
Page 33 and 34: o < s 0 o In his poem, "Strange Mee
Page 35 and 36: O o 66 So this is the man you dream
Page 37 and 38: ELIZABETH MACKLIN The Secret Note Y
Page 39 and 40: When a woman loves a man, they have
Page 41 and 42: TERESE SVOBODA At the Castle To say
Page 43 and 44: JUDITH BAUMEL Hot One moment it was
Page 45 and 46: JEAN MONAHAN The Concert —Isabell
Page 47 and 48: One of the Last Days As through a d
Page 49 and 50: only to lift their branches for one
Page 51 and 52: 98 always looked at curating as col
Page 53 and 54: 102 structure versus vertical, hars
Page 55 and 56: LINDA BIERDS The Breaking-Aways —
Page 57 and 58: KAY RYAN Weakness and Doubt Failure
Page 60 and 61: DANIEL TOBIN At the Egyptian Exhibi
Page 62 and 63: NATALIE KUSZ After Bedtime At night
Page 64 and 65: Q. Z 3 ID 124 me to visit a squat i
Page 68 and 69: 132 It was an illustrated history o
Page 70 and 71: i36 day might have been some kind o
Page 72 and 73: 3 140 XIV. He must have been there
Page 74 and 75: o z 111 o 144 smiled; she even got
Page 76 and 77: I48 Mostly things are quiet on the
Page 78 and 79: 152 the grass. I imagined him still
Page 80 and 81: 156 other on a mother's shoulder. I
Page 82 and 83: o X < If) 160 us from behind. It wa
Page 84 and 85: (tt> RK60T IB/ER EVEN PTWWNmoW XTSH
Page 86 and 87: Dykes To Ulatch Out For AS THE RE W
Page 88 and 89: "IF OMUY HE HAt> ONt \NTo THE WU «
Page 90 and 91: working on Hula in story form, you
Page 92 and 93: i8o Cinematically, there is the req
Page 94 and 95: WINTER COMPETITION MICHELLE MITCHEL
Page 96 and 97: and she looked at him for hours, an
Page 98 and 99: u in O cc a. H LJ D. o a hi 192 "Co
Page 100 and 101: IT < < o 196 I heard the car door s
show all

Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?