drunk early morning after dancing all night at Dschungel, two old guys sat alone with their beer by the window. At the jazz bar A-Trane, the only local nightclub to survive the change, musicians warmed up before an audience of four. He looked in automatically but continued toward home, pulling his jacket collar up against his neck.
He took his mobile phone out of his pocket and checked for messages but there weren’t any. The display told him only that it was 9:17 P.M. When he’d lived with Heike, the weeks had gone by quickly: Monday to Friday, Friday to Sunday. The past few days now seemed longer to him than the entire two years they were together. Her house keys jingled in his pocket as he walked. Finally liberated from the shackles of his bad attitude, she was probably out at a club in the East with some skinny guy her own age. He pictured a room of young people in I LOVE NY T-shirts, rocking out to show their solidarity with heartbroken widows and children five thousand kilometers away, then stopped at the corner of Schlüterstrasse, dizzy and out of breath. He bent over and inhaled deeply. In a third-floor apartment above his head he could see the silhouettes of a couple getting ready to go to sleep and felt a sudden, urgent longing to join them. He could just curl up and sleep at the foot of their bed, he thought. They could sing to him. He wondered if they knew any American lullabies. His mother’s singing voice had been higher than her speaking voice but clear and pretty. “The river Jordan is deep and wide.” That’s how it went. “Milk and honey on the other side.” By the time the light upstairs switched off and the window went black, tears were burning at the back of Walter’s eyes.
His gaze fixed at street level, he forced himself forward to the next block, where a policeman paced in front of what appeared to be a residential building, hands clasped behind his back. He was the same cop pacing most Friday evenings in this spot, half asleep in his silly green uniform and cap. Only in Germany did the government play down the authority of the police by making them look ridiculous. In that outfit it was hard to imagine this man tackling terrorists or dismantling a bomb. That his very presence was more likely to attract attention to the synagogue hidden behind the front door than protect it was something the city never seemed to consider: it was a matter of pride and principle that Jewish organizations deserved state protection. Walter leaned against a wall and wiped his eyes. The door of the synagogue looked like any other, but it was just a false front, like a city backdrop on a film set. Only once had he ventured close enough to see the freestanding building inside, its stained-glass windows and a small front garden. To be allowed in you had to show identification and register with security, which he had never done. He had only hovered here at the edge of the block, listening closely for the cantor’s melody. He liked to imagine an old woman standing alone in a cool dark room, singing with her arms out and her eyes closed, but he was unable to picture the congregation. The only local Jews he was aware of were the glamorous Russians who double-parked their cars on Fasanenstrasse while they ran into Gucci, people who surely had something more exciting to do on a Friday night. The very thought of joining the mysterious men and women inside the temple made him feel ashamed. How many of his acquaintances claimed to have had a transformative experience in Israel? How often had he heard someone refer to himself or herself as twelve percent or even five percent Jewish? What did that mean? It was a contemporary German cliché, he thought, to wish for salvation if not merely comfort, or acceptance, from Jews. The cop came back Walter’s way and thrust out his chin, to remind him that he had no business here.
As he headed home reluctantly down Schlüterstrasse, Walter had the eerie feeling he was leaving his last
He took his mobile phone out of his pocket and checked for messages but there weren’t any. The display told him only that it was 9:17 P.M. When he’d lived with Heike, the weeks had gone by quickly: Monday to Friday, Friday to Sunday. The past few days now seemed longer to him than the entire two years they were together. Her house keys jingled in his pocket as he walked. Finally liberated from the shackles of his bad attitude, she was probably out at a club in the East with some skinny guy her own age. He pictured a room of young people in I LOVE NY T-shirts, rocking out to show their solidarity with heartbroken widows and children five thousand kilometers away, then stopped at the corner of Schlüterstrasse, dizzy and out of breath. He bent over and inhaled deeply. In a third-floor apartment above his head he could see the silhouettes of a couple getting ready to go to sleep and felt a sudden, urgent longing to join them. He could just curl up and sleep at the foot of their bed, he thought. They could sing to him. He wondered if they knew any American lullabies. His mother’s singing voice had been higher than her speaking voice but clear and pretty. “The river Jordan is deep and wide.” That’s how it went. “Milk and honey on the other side.” By the time the light upstairs switched off and the window went black, tears were burning at the back of Walter’s eyes.
His gaze fixed at street level, he forced himself forward to the next block, where a policeman paced in front of what appeared to be a residential building, hands clasped behind his back. He was the same cop pacing most Friday evenings in this spot, half asleep in his silly green uniform and cap. Only in Germany did the government play down the authority of the police by making them look ridiculous. In that outfit it was hard to imagine this man tackling terrorists or dismantling a bomb. That his very presence was more likely to attract attention to the synagogue hidden behind the front door than protect it was something the city never seemed to consider: it was a matter of pride and principle that Jewish organizations deserved state protection. Walter leaned against a wall and wiped his eyes. The door of the synagogue looked like any other, but it was just a false front, like a city backdrop on a film set. Only once had he ventured close enough to see the freestanding building inside, its stained-glass windows and a small front garden. To be allowed in you had to show identification and register with security, which he had never done. He had only hovered here at the edge of the block, listening closely for the cantor’s melody. He liked to imagine an old woman standing alone in a cool dark room, singing with her arms out and her eyes closed, but he was unable to picture the congregation. The only local Jews he was aware of were the glamorous Russians who double-parked their cars on Fasanenstrasse while they ran into Gucci, people who surely had something more exciting to do on a Friday night. The very thought of joining the mysterious men and women inside the temple made him feel ashamed. How many of his acquaintances claimed to have had a transformative experience in Israel? How often had he heard someone refer to himself or herself as twelve percent or even five percent Jewish? What did that mean? It was a contemporary German cliché, he thought, to wish for salvation if not merely comfort, or acceptance, from Jews. The cop came back Walter’s way and thrust out his chin, to remind him that he had no business here.
As he headed home reluctantly down Schlüterstrasse, Walter had the eerie feeling he was leaving his last
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