Naja Aidt - Baboon

* * *

He does all the talking. She smiles and her eyes move over him like caresses: his face, his hands, his chest. She beams at him. Then suddenly I can't see anything at all. I shake my head. A moment later my sight returns. He talks and talks, leaning forward, leaning back, the mouth going, hands gesticulating, taking off his glasses, putting them on again, then he leaps up and walks over to the stairs to the bathrooms. His corduroy pants divulge a wide ass. Over his shirt he's wearing a leather vest. His glasses flash for a moment, though I can't make out the source of light. He disappears down the stairs. She looks longingly after him. Then she starts tearing the napkin into tiny pieces. A moment later the waiter comes with tea. There are croissants and soup, and an egg as well. She gathers up the bits of paper in her hand and lets them float down over the table. A strange, stiff smile bares her front teeth, which turn out to be separated by a large gap.

The soup is for him. The egg is too, apparently. He eats greedily as she smokes, speaking as he eats; she watches him full of admiration, and the hand she's not smoking with moves closer to his arm, his elbow; without touching him, her hand rests on the tablecloth near the bend of his elbow, as if she were going to grab it, as if her hand were lying in wait. My vision fails again. My eyes burn and sting. I press them hard, turning my knuckles around and around. A moment later, I realize that the couple to the right of me has also noticed them. I'm sure of it. The woman whispers something to her husband.

* * *

I see his rounded back under the vest. I see his face in profile, the vague contour of his chin, lost with age. Then she bends forward and kisses him gently on the cheek. He grabs her hand and squeezes it. Their hands encircle each other's, resting quietly on the white tablecloth. I notice the taste of blood. I must've bit my lip, and with my tongue I find the piece of flesh and spit it out into the napkin. It's bleeding surprisingly hard. I notice how dark it's become. The rain's calming down. It's Saturday. Outside the cranes are glowing. I begin to think about something I read somewhere, "Berlin is a wound that no longer bleeds, but a wound that still needs to be scratched." It made me furious, how horribly pathetic that sounds. I shake my head. I unzip my bag. The tea cake has an overwhelming scent of vanilla. I search anxiously for my money and keys. Then I put the bag down on the floor. I raise my empty cup. And now they get up and move across the polished floor, in and out of the tables. The sound of her boots. She's really tall. He's a little shorter and stooped, and it looks to me like he drags one of his feet behind the other. I have a clear view of his left ear. I feel an affection for that ear. He pushes the door open, and she glides by him. I gather my things quickly and place myself in the window. They walk through the red light. He puts his arm around her waist. He squeezes and presses with his hand. They stop under the streetlight and kiss each other. She bends down to make herself shorter so that she can reach his mouth. He squeezes and presses and sticks his hand under her jacket.

* * *

It almost looks like she's gnawing on him. She's straightened her back and puts her arms around him, bends her neck, holding her head at an angle. It's a very long kiss. All the while he presses her up against the building. The yellow light from the street lamp falls on parts of their faces. He looks so small. The watermelon is so heavy in the plastic bag. I'm about to drop it. He's opened her jacket, and now he's kissing her neck. For a moment it seems like she's looking me in the eye, and then she throws her head back. She doesn't have a blouse on under her jacket. I get a glimpse of the skin on her stomach. He kisses her breasts. One of my legs is numb. I wiggle the foot but it won't go away. A young man stops and stares at them. She must've noticed because suddenly she closes her jacket. He looks around confused, and again there's that light reflecting off his glasses. She grabs his arm. The young man, who is now walking away, looks back several times over his shoulder. And they take off, arm in arm, Oranienburgerstrasse, cutting over to the S-Bahn, Hackescher Markt. I get a glimpse of her looking at him smiling, and of him putting his head on her shoulder. Then they're gone.

My left leg is asleep, there's a deafening noise around me: the sharp sound of metal and porcelain; high-pitched voices; turn around and the room seems overwhelmingly large, everywhere people are laughing and shouting and drinking, people crowding the bar, while the doors constantly open and close. The handle of the plastic bag cuts into my hand. There are some spots in my vision, making everything turn so white that I get dizzy, and when I take a step forward, I'm about to fall or sink. Is it roses? Is it paper? My dress rustles and screeches like chalk on a blackboard; a pervasive smell of wet clothes and damp wax paper cuts my nose. Then, suddenly, the boy in the last row who was always throwing small rocks is here; a rock hits and falls on the floor and it startles me. I reach out to stop myself from falling and grab hold of a man's shoulder. His face is blurry. He seems to be saying something to me while I cautiously begin to move slowly toward the stairs to the basement.

* * *

I look in the mirror. A face. Speckled, wrinkled. My eyes. A blond woman meets my gaze in the mirror. It stinks in here. My mouth, strangely thin. I splash cold water on my face, my blouse gets wet. Then I drop the watermelon. It rolls out of the bag and splits, revealing a burst of red flesh. The blond woman picks it up and hands it to me. She says something. Everything is blurry: a muddy picture, not of this world. But I can tell that I've received the watermelon. The woman puts her hand on my arm and says something else. I close my eyes and press the melon to my stomach. Fields of roses once more. Then my wedding bouquet as it is now, hanging in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen at home. I see it clearly through the flickering and snot. It's sharp and dry. The image disappears. I think about how it might feel to eat dirt.

* * *

Suddenly everything becomes completely clear. I throw the watermelon in the trash and wash my hands. I open my purse the music suddenly blasting. It's unpleasant. I have to pee. I and pull out a handkerchief. The scent of the tea cake is nauseating. I throw that out as well. Then I take the clip out of my hair, comb it with my fingers, twist it, and put it up again. It's completely clear that the steel frames he insists on wearing are ugly. He had on a different shirt this morning when I left home. And it's also clear that his hair hanging down like thin tassels from the top of his head means something particular and important about him, about his lifestyle, about his generation. About us. I've never thought about this before. When I at last sit on the toilet and pee, the relief is tremendous. On the way out I throw two coins on the bathroom attendant's saucer. She looks at me with a wry smile. It seems like she's spent far too many years down in the dark, where all that's revealed is a fraction of what there is. I place my yellow tulips before her on the table. Then I walk up and out into the dark.

On my first day in the city I couldn't get enough of walking around. As soon as I had checked into the hotel and set my suitcase down in my room — which turned out to be better than expected, spacious, with a large window overlooking the street, a good bed, thick green carpeting, and a comfortable distance between the bed and the bathroom, which neither smelled nor looked dingy — I decided to stay outdoors for the rest of the day. Elated by the quality of the room, but also by the fine weather, I set out for the city's snaking labyrinth of alleys and narrow passageways and steps. It's no secret that the city is set on a mountain slope, and I enjoyed these ascents and descents, the way the city constantly changed character depending on the height you viewed it from. The city — bathed in sunlight and a dry haze — reminded me in a moving and visceral way how everything depends on who is doing the observing and where you are observing from, and I thought: This is so incredibly banal, and yet it's so important .