The Berlin Wall

I arrived in Berlin, trying to forget a man, whose name I wanted to shout from the rooftops. I wanted to cry him out, to shout him with words, to hear out with music.

Everything in this city sounded like him. He had lived here and I knew where he walked, where he was looking at the sky, where he was arrested with stoned Portuguese and where he lived with Ukrainian stripper. I walked those streets, looked into those windows, trying to find his traces or just make sure that he didn’t come back.

I listened to the music of this city at every turn, trying to fill the gap somewhere on the left side of the chest. I heard funk on the street fests and blues in the suburb bar. I listened to a man in velvet suit who had a schizophrenic video projection on his body while singing strange songs. I hung on music at the flea markets, digging in jazz vinyl records.

On my last day in Berlin I reached the East Side Gallery – the part of the Berlin Wall. It was the day of my birthday. It was sad, that a man, who broke my heart, decided to congratulate me. It was good, that I was alone in Berlin and didn’t have to pretend to be happy.

I walked along the Wall, examining every picture. When I approached the painting with a famous kiss of Brezhnev and Honecker, I heard a beautiful music – a guy was singing some “singer-songwriter” stuff. Simultaneously with music I discovered the lettering on the picture: My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.

I felt my heart beating fast. I quickly followed the sound until I saw a young musician. His eyes were so bright that did not even reflect light.

I sat right on the asphalt, the road around was raging and the orange bridge that led to the tragic eastern part of the city was seen. Along with the music I listened to my tachycardia, which calmed down in a while. I began to hear Berlin. Now it didn’t have the voice of the man from my past. It sounded different – like combination of trains, river channels, languages of immigrants from around the world. Berlin became the way it really was – it acquired human traits, became the immigrant, the inhabitant of the world. It became me.

There, at the Berlin Wall, I buried my feelings with the hind legs. Saving the memory of a man who would never belong to me. And the memory of the city that is forever mine.

Two hours later I was traveling to Budapest by train, watching this surreal city disappearing from my sight.

Berlin didn’t save me from love. It gave me a hope to find it.