Alain Xalabarde - The Berlin Paradox - Chronicles of a Soviet Time Traveler

Finally, I see it. I see what I’ve dreamed of seeing for years. My mother walks down towards the pension. Her face is as intricate as I remembered, with subtle features I thought I had forgotten. A stream of hot blood rushes upwards through the center of my torso. I’d like to say it feels like she’s still alive and visiting this world again, but it actually feels more as if I were the one who was dead, and I was the one visiting her instead. This timeline is dead. It doesn’t exists anymore. I am a tourist in a dead world.

Beside her is a young boy in his late teens, holding her by the arm. He seems energetic. Full of ambition. But his head hangs low, staring at the ground. Thinking. I wish I knew what I was thinking at that moment. It’s strange. It’s me, yet I have no idea what is going through my mind at this precise moment.

The couple enters the pension and they disappear behind the door.

When I come to my senses I realize Dr. Vodnik has been attentively staring at me all this time. I am discomforted by his intensity. He rhetorically asks if it’s someone I know. His questions end there. He says I may need some time on my own. He understands. He asks to pay for his drink. He puts his small notebook back inside his long coat and before he leaves he reminds me not to do anything stupid.

I am alone in the bar. The doctor has left a spare set of keys to his house on the table. It’s the first time he has shown a genuine gesture of trust.

I take about hour to recompose myself and collect my thoughts. Eventually I get up from my seat and exit the bar. I am about to walk away when I see my mother exiting the pension. I don’t recall her going out by herself. What was I doing at this time? Maybe I was reading. I used to read a lot back then.

She looks around nervously and strolls away with a quick pace. I adjust my scarf, trying to cover as much of my face, and follow her from a distance. This is stupid. Stupid. Just go home. But I can’t resist. I can’t resist spending one more minute near my mother. Just keep your distance. Keep your distance.

I follow her to a nearby park. I try to stay far enough from her and blend with the scarce pedestrians in the streets. She reaches what’s left of a fountain and stands beside it. Dotted holes decorate the remaining stone that were probably once part of a beautiful monument. It’s not uncommon to find evident manifestations of the war in Berlin, even back in the sixties. All buildings and monuments are scarred with bullet holes.

She waits impatiently. But what for? Or who for? I thought we spent the whole time together during our visit, but I obviously didn’t pay as much attention as I should have.

Not long after, a tall figure emerges from one of the paths that lead to the ruined fountain. She turns to the stranger in fright. Her eyes are wide open, sparkling with the tears that are building up in the corners. The man wears a black hat and it’s hard to make out his face under the shadows. My mother runs to him and they embrace. The man holds her face with his black leather-gloved hands and kisses her passionately.

My legs want to run to them and intervene, but I order myself to stay put. I mustn’t interfere. I stare in rage, channeling all my anger through my clenched fist.

As soon as their kiss ends, my mother speaks. I haven’t heard her voice in over a year, and it soothes me immediately. But unfortunately, the sense of tranquility only lasts but a moment, until I discern what she has said. She has pronounced my father’s name.

It can’t be. That can’t be my father. My father was dead already. How could she…? How did she never tell me about this encounter!

The man takes his hat off and I can now clearly see him. He looks different, but he is definitely my father. There is no mistake. But he is different. Very different. His well-combed hair is all gone. In fact, it’s hard to even make out his eyebrows. He is completely hairless.

My mother has returned to the pension. I have decided to follow my alleged father instead. I waited patiently as they spoke and kissed for over an hour. I tried to avoid staring at them when they showed signs of affection, but still maintain a steady eye on them.

I don’t know where my father is walking. It’s as if he has no destination. Night is falling and the streets are sinking into darkness. I try to keep my distance from him, but the more scarce the light becomes, the more I’m forced to shorten the distance between him and I. I suppose the doctor must be concerned about my whereabouts, but I don’t suppose he’ll be looking for me in the streets, checking every random street. I’m sure he’ll still be at home by the time I get back. Maybe a little angrier than I’d like, but it’ll be for a good reason.

My father turns the corner. I speed up, not wanting to lose track of him. Already I’ve almost lost him twice. He doesn’t seem to walk; he floats.

I stick to the wall and take a peek around the corner. A hand reaches out over my neck and pulls me towards the dark shadows of a new alley. My father has me pinned against the brick wall. He pulls a knife out and jabs at my neck. I grab his arm in mid-air and stop him. I struggle against his strength — he is a lot fitter than he seems. His eyes sparkle in the dark as they scan my face. After a moment he whispers something in German that sends chills down my spine. He threatens me to stay away from him. That he doesn’t want to kill me, but that he will if he has to.

In an unpredictable move, he knees me in the stomach. I fall to my knees, gasping for air, as he runs away. By the time I inhale my first breath, he is already far gone.

I didn’t tell the doctor about my encounter. I kept it to myself. In my head I kept revisiting that moment, when my father looked me straight in the eyes. I’m trying to figure out of whether he recognized me or not.

The doctor brings me a cup of tea and recommends I don’t walk about Berlin at this late hour. After a moment he asks me about my mother. I tell him about my first trip to Berlin. About my mother. Where she was born. How she met my father. And there I tell myself to stop talking.

He waits for a moment, then nudges me to continue talking about my father. I am hesitant to reply. Anything I say may give away what I just experienced. I don’t think it’s wise to do so. I simply tell him what I knew before tonight. I simply tell him that my mother said he was a German deserter who fought for the soviets.

As if suspecting something, the doctor asks me where my father is now. Maybe he doesn’t suspect anything after all. Maybe I’m just being paranoid. But I do find myself confused when considering what “now” is. I suppose he means “his” now. Right now. I stutter for a moment and finally reply that he died in the war, not fully believing the words myself.

The room falls silent for the next half hour. The doctor smokes a pipe. I am hypnotized by the smoke emanating from the beautifully carved pipe. He says he bought it from a craftsman in Poland. He corrects himself and specifies that the craftsman gave it to him. It was shortly after the war. Apparently the doctor volunteered to reconstruct a small village in Poland. He served as a medical doctor for six months before making his way to Berlin. There he met a woman. She was the wife an artisan, renowned for his whittling skills. The man was mortally wounded after the war, and his condition was only deteriorating since. The doctor spent many days at their house, taking care of the dying man. Making sure it was as painless as he could make it. During this time he got to know the wife very well. She would thank the doctor by cooking him dinner. The craftsman wasn’t able to get up from his bed, so the doctor and the wife would be the only ones having dinner at the dining room table. The relationship grew to the point where they eventually found themselves sneaking away to the basement and engaging in sexual intercourse. In silence, in secret, without the knowledge of the dying man upstairs. This became a routine and it kept going for weeks. The toughest part was making sure that their seven year old daughter wasn’t around when they had their encounters. One day — the last day, in fact — the artisan asked the doctor to close the door to his bedroom so they could speak in privacy. He asked the doctor to sit beside him and held his hand tightly. He knew. The artisan knew everything. The daughter had innocently told her father what she accidentally saw in the basement. But, to his surprise, the artisan smiled. An honest smile. He told the doctor that he was happy to know that there would be an honest man who would take care of his family after he passed away. The doctor kept silent. Too embarrassed to speak. The craftsman then asked to be left alone so he could sleep. The doctor stood up and walked out the door. With his eyes closed, and on the edge of sleep, the artisan muttered that the doctor was a good man. Those would be his last words. He would perish that very same night. Two days later the doctor was on his way to Berlin. The artisan’s wife stayed in Poland and her daughter died of pneumonia the following winter.