the little people

It’s nine years this July since I came to Berlin for a week and after 10 months away in Ghana it feels so very strange. This morning I got lectured for five minutes by a small child because I had committed some minor infringement. In Australia, in Ghana, this behaviour in a three year old would be a sign of some kind of psychosis. The lockdown has eased somewhat and I went out for a beer with a philosopher acquaintance and we sat in the late sunshine saying yes, it is really quite cold. Summer has gone. This place always seems to me balanced on a deep core of ice that defrosts only partially, for only a few brief weeks.

What was this morning’s minor infringement, you ask? I have set out, as is customary, about a hundred books in boxes on the pavement to give away. Berliners call it ‘zu Verschenken.’ I also propped up on top a feather pillow which has a water stain but is fluffy and clean and comforting. This little boy and his mother felt that the pillow was ‘dreckig’, a shaming word in German. It means filthy, repugnant somehow. I said, well, I thought as winter is coming perhaps one of these people in the homeless community might like this only I didn’t want to offer it to them personally, I thought if you needed such a thing it might be easier to just come and choose it for yourself under cover of the night.

I indicated a rowdy crowd of revellers who live around the church at the bottom of our road, one of them in a fragile house ingeniously made from a stack of opened umbrellas. Dreckig, the little boy said again. Das müssen Sie wegwerfen, you must throw it away.

I said, well, if after a couple of days no one has taken it, I will. But I think also the landfill… Dreckig, he said. Ohh, Germany. This was not the first time I had had the road rules, or communal expectations, explained to me by a three-year-old. Sitting with my friend in the penetrating wind I reflected bitterly how Berlin has allowed me to fool myself: it seems like a community of artists but is in fact a narcissist playground dominated by shallow extraverts. As I was thinking these dismal thoughts a blonde woman came bouncing up and stood in front of us. She was pretty like thistledown and behind her her friend sat sucking Aperol spritz through a stainless steel straw. My expression was unwelcoming and she seemed to falter, then spoke up bravely. Excuse me. I’m sorry to interrupt you. It’s just I had to tell you that I find you so extremely beautiful.