Madness in Berlin
“Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn, elf, zwölf.”
Joanna began to teach me to count.
“Guys, you’re freaking me out.” Our friend, Cathriona, spoke German. We were riding Berlin’s S-Bahn on a snowy night just before New Year’s Eve.
“Counting in unison is freaky. And your accents are crap.”
Joanna ignored her. “So John, you can count to ten now, yes? Give it a try … eins, zwei …”
I began slowly in a suitable movie-German accent, “Eins, zwei, drei …”
“Vier.”
“Yes, vier. Nicely pronounced. Such clever lips.”
“C’mon, do you know how weird this sounds?”
If you haven’t guessed it already, we three were drunk and on the wrong train. We needed the U-Bahn to Schönhauser Allee and to the flat where we were staying for the week to celebrate the New Year. The bitter weather and the exceedingly good wine and absinthe led us to dodge onto the S-Bahn nearest the restaurant.
“Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn, elf, zwölf.”
We worked out the hysteria that comes from an excess of alcohol through our numbers.
“Eins, zwei, drei …”
“Guys, I’m staying longer than you two and have to take this train again.”
“Cathriona, you already understand German. We’re just counters.”
“Sure, but I know that the Germans on the train are saying you’re just bonkers.” She adjusted her glasses and placed a rigid hand on Joanna’s arm. “Guys, we’re the NO-counters. No counting, ok?”
“Eins, zwei, drei …”
“Give me the map. I think we need to get out here, but I don’t know the way from this station.”
The thin, cold air burned my lungs when we left the comfort of the train for a deserted station. We rose to the surface and looked around to orient ourselves.
Joanna pulled the map out and angled it toward a street lamp. “This smudge is the U-Bahn station where we should be.”
My attention drifted with the falling snow to the street, to the haphazard arrangement of lights, to the iron bridge and the train station beyond. “We’re near the right place, then?”
Cathriona turned the map around, held it up at eye level and lowered it again. “Somewhat. That’s an S-Bahn station on the other side of that bridge. We’re not that far away, but it’s off the map.”
She pointed to a two-storey, octagonal building propped over the side of a hill. A luminous green “S” glowed on the tower that rose from the top of the structure. I took immense pleasure from the crisp shadows of Berlin after dark. That night before New Year’s Eve, a fresh dusting of snow purified the filthy chunks of ice from a previous storm. Snow filled the potholes and covered the slushy gutters. Rubbish piles became prickly white blankets.
An elderly man in a thick coat pulled a cart with grocery bags that flapped in the wind. I remember thinking that just before midnight was a strange time to lug shopping around. As the man passed, I thought he muttered something nasty under his breath. He did not turn back to repeat his epithet, but rather continued along and passed into the haze of snow beyond the street lamps.
Joanna lit a cigarette. “Simple enough, we just find out which station that is and probably walk down a few more streets and we’ll be on course again.”
Solid, unevenly frozen ice covered the pavement. Joanna slipped several times. I lost my balance and gripped the iron railing of the bridge to steady myself. “Fit your feet into the footprints in the ice,” I said. “It’s easier to walk where someone else has already been.”
I read aloud the gothic letters on the front of the S-Bahn station: “Bornholmer Strasse”. Joanna and Cathriona brought the map to the railing and scanned the neighbourhood beneath the station where the tracks ran. Lights from construction sites silhouetted the contours of the city.
I heard a vicious whisper. At first I thought one of the women said something, but I stood too close to the road to pick up their conversation. The low tone hissed at me again. My command of German barely extended past the number six, but I knew this sound to be a single word. The voice wheezed repeatedly until the sibilants blended together. Another voice, pitched higher than the first, again spat out the word. I whirled around, but no one lingered near me. I circled around a pile of dirty snow in front of the station. It obscured a plastic, orange blob. From the wide and shallow depression on the side facing the road, I understood this to be a chair, though it looked more like a pop-art ashtray and bizarrely out of joint with the time and place.
I stepped close to the chair and heard the insistent voices clearer than before.
“Cathriona, the chair over here speaks. It’s talking.”
She and Joanna paused in their route plotting and slid over the ice toward me.
“It spoke to you did it? Far too much absinthe, clearly.”
“No, it keeps repeating something in German. I think the word is ‘Wahnsinn’.”
“What is the word?”
“Wahnsinn.”
Cathriona slowly approached the chair and stopped when it called out.
“I don’t believe it.”
“What?”
“The voice, no the voices are all saying ‘Wahnsinn’.”
“Which means?”
“Madness.”
The snow moved more than did we for some time. The chair accused us of madness? How dare a talking chair take such liberties? I found this outrageous and amusing.
Joanna lowered her chin and eyed me slyly. “The chair knows you so well, John.”
I didn’t like being analysed by a chair.
“Wahnsinn!”
“Maybe we should teach you to count,” I said in response to the chair’s accusation. “Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn, elf, zwölf.”
Cathriona anxiously pulled Joanna away and waved me to follow. “C’mon, no more counting. Let’s go home.”
Before I followed, I whispered my question to the chair: “What have you seen?”
“Wahnsinn.”
I left the chair to spew out its bitter sentiment alone. My feet fit uncomfortably into the frozen prints on the pavement, but they were enough to keep me from falling.