On Saturday, Martha and I decided to brave the chill, gusting rain and the impermeability of a new art scene and go to an opening. We got a tip from a friend to check out the Horton Gallery in Kreuzberg.
We tried the classic “Come here often?” approach on a few lone hipsters to no avail. Luckily, a dog walked in. He was a whippet -- a skinny little thing with expressive round eyes who was strapped into the same drab green trench coat that half of the gallery clientele was sporting. The uniform for a class of art survivalists. Long, rainproof armor for those who weather a lot worse than a summer storm to stake their flag at this cultural watering hole. The dog introduced us to his owners and we were in.
She was a Polish artist whose crocheted still-lives were hanging in the show. He was a musician and sound engineer from Cincinnati. We stepped out of the bright gallery into the courtyard to talk with Martha and their painter friend from Dublin. “It’s nicer out here,” the musician said. The gallery-goers huddled around puddles, encircling them in halos of smoke. The air was savory from the spicy sausages and corn that sizzled on the grill despite the rain. I was wearing my only jacket over my heaviest sweater and I was cold. I nodded. Nice.
Dragonek the whippet followed us out but turned on his heels when he felt the rain and pranced back inside. He did one spastic shake to dry himself.
“You are smart to come here in the summer!” the textile artist said. Her delicate features always electric -- vacillating between delight and concern without stasis. She leaned in close to me and lowered her voice. “My husband gets very sad in the wintertime. He is not used to it.” But before I could respond, she was flocked by fans and whisked back inside.
I thought back to Ohio winters -- certainly nothing to scoff over. Having spent January term at Oberlin working on an independent study, I know how the whole landscape drains of color and warmth – the steely sky fusing with the pavement, the concrete buildings, the frosty ground.
Her girl friend from Dublin, the only woman in heels, nodded. “I moved here two years ago during the worst winter they’d had in thirty years. We didn’t see the sun for three weeks once. Just an endless twilight that would brighten and fade.”
“Yes,” the musician agreed. “That was the time when we had icicles on the insides of our windows.”
“Do you remember that New Years?” the Dubliner prodded.
“Oh God,” he recalled with disgust. “On New Years here everybody -- and I mean everybody with two legs -- gathers as many fireworks as they can carry and brings them out into the streets. Then they set them off in any direction indiscriminately. They don’t put them down or anything, just launch them from their hands. Big mother fuckers too. I don’t leave my room.”
“Yeah,” the Dubliner said. “I got hit in the arm. Right here,” She massaged her shoulder. “At close range.”
“By the end of the night it looks like Berlin 1944.” He shook his head. “Missiles and debris everywhere. Broken glass and rubble. No one can clean it up because the next day it starts snowing.”
“It started snowing that night!”
“You’re right and in a few days there was a foot of solid ice above it all. This much.” He shows us how much with his hands impressively far apart. “A clear block of ice. And no one does anything about it because the city is too poor.”
“No salt?” I implored.
“Are there snowplows?” Martha ventured.
They looked at us with kind pity.
“I fell 6 times in 5 months that winter,” the Dubliner said. I knew not to question her figures.
“So many accidents that year. It was dangerous just walking Dragonek. The seasonal depression was severe.”
“Elevator suicides,” she added. (I don’t know how these are orchestrated but am going to go with messily.)
“Icicles killed many people. Then, in April, when everything started to melt, the smell was unbearable. Wretched dog crap and soggy New Years paraphernalia everywhere. It took two or three weeks for anyone to pick it up.” His eyes glazed over for a second as if lost back in that time. Then he hunched his shoulders in a slight shutter.
“When I fist came to Berlin,” he continued, “I was touring with a band that had festivals here for three months during the summer. I thought -- this city is fantastic, all this art and music and cafes and reliable trains and the people are so free and there was all this weird shit. Like, no matter what your tolerance for weird, they had something four or five nights a week.”
“Yeah,” I confessed.
“The second time I came to this city was in late November, back on tour with the same band. I was psyched. Got off the plane and boarded the U8 train, ready to jump back in. It was one of those trains with big glass windows. I could see all the way up to the first car and down through all of the cars behind me. But something was wrong. Everyone’s head and eyes were downcast. Their shoulders stooped and their faces so deeply crestfallen I thought I was being put on. Not a glimmer of life from the lot of them. I thought it was a joke. That maybe I was on candid camera and at any moment someone would jump out at me and yell, ‘Gottcha!’ But people boarded the train and people got off and nothing changed.
“So then, five or six years pass. One morning I’m riding the U8. Midwinter. We go under a tunnel. The windows go dark and turn into mirrors. Suddenly, I can see my face -- the grimace, the dead eyes -- and I know I’ve become one of them.”
We nodded solemnly.
Just then his wife returned, talking so quickly I couldn’t make out the language, and her smiles shook us out of our state. She held up a postcard of patterned wallpaper to Martha and me. “You are coming here?” she asked. Martha and I looked at each other. I pictured the Gilman story.
“No. I don’t think we are,” Martha said cautiously.
“Oh but you must! You will come with us!”
So we piled into their car and found ourselves at another opening, this time among friends with whom we could debate the work, the seductions of selling out and the time-consuming nature of our artistic processes and we did so until Dragonek, having had his fill of sniffing shoes and winning the hearts of all manner of alternative folk, walked over to where I stood and collapsed on my feet with an ungraceful thud. His parents took the cue. We headed out into the night, pulling our jackets tight around us.
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