wasp joy

Written by Cathoel Jorss, published 6 years ago

This summer as the world goes to literal and immediate hell using bushfire and corruption, misogyny and greed, several small incidents have surfaced in my own daily life that help keep me afloat. I found a new bar, hidden behind a drift of trees, late last night as I was pedalling home from some arduous and exacting work that never seems to be done. I had passed this place half a hundred times but a man was sitting outside, on a comfy chair, his long legs crossed and his concentration sunk in a book. I went back around and locked my bike and walked inside, rather shyly.

They had faded couches and long rows of wine boxes lined with glinting bottles. I sat down and took out my book in turn. To be in Berlin, and be not the only person on the train, or in a restaurant, who’s reading. I read for about an hour. It slowly grew dark outside. The bartender came and squatted in front of me: what do you feel like? I’ll make you something nice. She made me something nice, involving cognac and whipped egg white, and I drank it very slowly and then got up and closed my book and went over to the bar. She was rattling ice cubes efficiently in a steel cocktail shaker. Ten euros exactly.

Oh, then… I gave her the note and held out my palm. Rather than picking through it vaguely to work out what might make a fair tip I would let her choose: so I informed her by my cheeky but underconfident smile. She dug in and showed me what she’d found. “Ich nehm’ ein Euro,” I’ll take one euro. We both smiled and I rode home to the pair of large ears which rise from the arm of the couch these days when I walk in. I have my little familiar, my smallest companion, the cat who was left behind in Brisbane six years back and finally got on a plane. She cheers me, too.

Today I sat in a quiet streetside cafe under the late summer trees. A leaf drifted by as I rode home last night and it’s unavoidable that winter will come. My subtropical heart quails each time. At the next table a beautiful man was reading. “Can I have your sugar?” I asked, without thinking, and his smile quirked.

“You can! the only problem is,” he said, in German, “a couple of wasps have been making it pleasant for themselves in there, so… I still took it.”

I opened the sugar and peered. Three wasps, butts bent up and heads gleefully sunk in the piles of golden sugar, made me laugh. The waitress brought me their largest glass filled to the brim with tap water. A car went past behind me very slowly. The cafe has scalloped blankets folded now over the back of some of the chairs. We will sit outside as long as we can, before it’s so cold and grey we have to turn for home and then never run into each other all the rest of the long Berlin winter, which is deadly low and close to the ground, obscures sun and stars, and lasts eighteen months of the year, I’m convinced of it.