grappapa

I found a bar lit solely by candles. To get there I had to pass twenty-five Christmas trees, laid out to die on the stones. A wax-stick notice scribbled in the window of a nearby cafe said, Be at least epic. I found a bar I liked and it took me two passes to work up the courage to go in. The barman was Spanish and wearing a beautiful waistcoat. He brought me a clean glass of water, a fresh white napkin, a glass bowl of pretzels, and an ashtray. He folded his hands and said, Was darf’s sein?

I said, I’ve had a fight with my boyfriend and we’re living in one room, I’ve got nowhere to go so I came here. No, actually, I said: have you got some kind of grappa, or something? Sure, he said, and poured me a large measure. He swung the bottle between his middlemost fingers, to show me it now rung empty. “That would be it,” he said. Some more Spanish guys came in and the world was lost in embracing. I saw them pull out their tobacco pouches and grabbed my drink and took it right up the back. Couches. Little spindly tables. Candles.

There was a note written on a napkin framed on the wall. I translated it for myself. Dear Sebastian. Once again we have to find ourselves another bar. This sucks. This is the 85th time! Please let us know when you are opening once more. Next to it a sampler stitched in cursive said, Liquor. I got out my notebook and started to analyse. Last night was his fault, and he’s apologized. This one was probably more to do with me. I guess I overreacted. We neither of us do well with sharing the one room: us and the dog. Two individualists sharing four walls. Baby, I was born to run.

Last night a quarrel blew up over dinner, a civilized affair involving a bottle of red wine from Spain I’d fetched and some luscious spaghetti he had made. I couldn’t stand it, simply just couldn’t stand it. “What is the matter with you?” I asked him. He went out to drink a beer with his friend, a darling man whose snarling cat has just died. I mean, just in the last week. “Tell him from me I’m sorry, very sorry about the little one. Don’t let anyone tell him it’s only a cat, or he should get another one. Love hurts.” “Ok, I’ll tell him.” When he got back I had just finished my book – Robinson Crusoe – and was disposed to complain. “It starts out so adventuresome then it ends in a ten-page account of his tax debts and financial affairs. Ducat by ducat.” He said, “Didn’t anything exciting happen?” “O yes,” I said, shrugging, “I suppose – he and 12 other people got set upon by 300 wolves in the Pyrenees. But it somehow made dry reading.” He sat down beside me and stroked my hair. I said, “I can’t believe he went into all that detail about his monetary decisions and didn’t mention one word about how it felt when he left his island, where he had lived alone for almost 28 years!” He swung his long legs up beside me and opened his own book with one elegant finger. “I wish I could read you some of this,” he said. “But I think you’ve already read it.” I lay my book on his chest so that it slid into his lap. “Read me some of this,” I said, wheedlingly. I felt so baffled by Berlin. I felt homesick but hardly knew for where. The point of the city began only gradually to seep back into me as I strolled this late evening, my fury settling, looking in the windows of bars. I felt transplanted, my roots snapped and shrivelled. That tiny village of a few hundred souls where we had made our home – unexpectedly, unplanned, sleepily – since just before Christmas was gone. I needed to be held.

So he took up the book I had offered, a novel from Mills and Boon. Gravely he read me the title and author and all of the details on the inside sleeve page. “Towards the Dawn, by Jane Arbor. First published 1956. This edition 1969.” I curled into his belly and listened there to the secondary rumble of his voice. The soft hesitancy of his European accent that executes perfectly the French towns and train stations and hesitates over words like “battleaxe” (pronounced “battle eggs”). A few pages in the girl alights at an unknown French provincial station. It is late and dark, the station sign almost seems to swing overhead. We had ourselves just recently alighted from a long European rail journey, all the way back to Berlin through the night from his family to our tiny apartment. As she looks blankly round the empty platform, a shadow looms. “‘Mademoiselle finds herself in difficulties?’ he asked.” He stopped reading and we both indulged a romantic shiver. “He….!” he said, just as I said, “He!” I confided, “I can tell you how to tell if this is the hero. If he’s charming and frank with her, he is just an obstacle the hero will remove. But if he is grumpy and has no patience with her, if they strike sparks off one another… that means he’s definitely the one.” “I see,” he said, nodding as if wisely, taking up the little book and slicking back its page. I coiled into the doona and listened and he picked his way over the words written long, long, long before my parents were courting. Another world. Reminder of the true world we’re in. The book has yellowed stiff pages and its cover is printed dark pink. I took up one of my heavy bedtime plaits and dropped it over my eye so that the bed light wouldn’t disturb me. I started falling asleep. As I fell I remembered another gentle man I had loved in the past who once when I could not sleep at all drew barely a sigh when I woke him for the dozenth time, saying patiently, “Alright listen. I’ll roll over and you cling onto me and off we’ll go into sleep together. You ready? Hold on tight! You hangin’ on?”