Streets of Berlin E-Book

The Reader Berlin

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 172

Beschreibung

The Reader Berlin brings you ten award-winning contemporary short stories in this anthology of fresh and original writing. Compiled from the winners of 2014's Reader Berlin short story competition, these tales – selected by judges Laura Hassan (Guardian Faber), Brittani Sonnenberg (author of HOME LEAVE, Grand Central Publishing) and Florian Duijsens (Editor at SAND and Asymptote) - showcase the distinctive voices of ten emerging talents. United only by the city that inspired them, and ranging from the historical to the dystopian, the observational to the futuristic, they bear witness to one of the world's greatest most mutable cities: Berlin. Authors: Will Bentley Emily Cataneo James Carson Jessie Keyt Julia Lackermayer Alice Miller Lizzie Roberts Abby Sinnott Will Studdert Simon Ward

Leseprobe

The Reader Berlin PRESENTS

STREETS OF BERLIN: AN ANTHOLOGY

EDITED BY

Published by The Reader Berlin

Text copyright © individual authors 2015

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.thereaderberlin.com

CONTENTS

Editor’s Note

A Word from our Judges

Horst-Wessel-Stadt by Will Studdert

The Ambit by Will Bentley

A Monkey on a Horse by James Carson

Blood Red Oxfords, Size 39 by Emily Cataneo

Hunger by Jessie Keyt

One Thousand Nine Hundred Nineteen by Julia Lackermayer

The Jarsby Alice Miller

Junk for Suckers by Lizzie Roberts

Eclipse by Abby Sinnott

Gegen Entgegen by Simon Ward

Contributors

Editor & Judges

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank everyone at epubli for all their help and support. Furthermore, this book would not exist were it not for the valiant assistance of Michael Reid and the generosity of Florian Duijsens, Laura Hassan and Brittani Sonnenberg. Finally, much gratitude is owed to our sponsors The Curved House, Jamesons Whiskey, RSVP Berlin, SAND and The Circus Hotel.

EDITOR’S NOTE

It’s an honour to present such a strong collection of original stories. They are as unusual, as exciting and surprising, as the city to which they pay homage, and like Berlin they reward careful attention.

Having been part of this project from start to finish – from competition launch, to judging, to working with the authors to edit these stories for publication – it’s satisfying to see it reach its conclusion. I’m haunted by more than one piece which didn’t make the final selection, and am conscious of the editor’s burden, the continuing worry about whether I’ve served these tales as well as they deserve. I have respected the authors’ differences with regard to British or American English. If any errors remain I take full responsibility for them.

Books, I’ve learned, have two lives: the one prior to publication which is full of striving and struggle, and the one that comes afterwards in which they are free to wander the world, striking up conversations with strangers. It’s time to set this book free to find its readers. I hope it brings them as much pleasure as it has brought me.

Victoria Gosling The Reader Berlin July 2015

A WORD FROM OUR JUDGES

‘Holding a writing competition is a bit like going fishing in strange waters. You have no idea what’s out there, and that makes it exciting.’ So said Victoria Gosling, the founder of The Reader Berlin, when she approached us to judge The Reader’s Berlin Short Story Competition 2014. With the aim of discovering and rewarding emerging voices, the competition attracted a deluge of entries from countries all over the world, and as our deliberations progressed, it became clear that the catch was astoundingly diverse.

There were vignettes of a recognizably gentrifying Berlin; there were strange tales of freakish beauty; then came the historical, the futuristic, the ghastly, those that offered glances at Berlin’s many scenes, tales of outsiders looking in, and insiders looking out. The theme of Berlin sent writers on tangents that were wondrous to behold and testing to compare: a goldfish, a shark, and a mossy bicycle are all perfect in their own ways.

We were looking for distinctive voices and pieces that not only succeeded in avoiding obvious pitfalls, but were successful on their own terms, while staying true to the spirit of this city. We decided that we didn’t want a compromise solution; therefore, rather than awarding each story a number of points and seeing which one was the least offensive, each of us narrowed down our respective short lists to four favorites and prepared to slug it out.

But we all chose the same winning story. It was unanimous.

“Horst-Wessel-Stadt” by Will Studdert is a pitch-perfect evocation of wartime Berlin that draws on a fascinating facet of World War II history and goes for none of the easy or sentimental targets. With superbly written prose, a compelling voice, and a tone of escalating menace, the story – while ambitious – never tests credibility. It’s a sustained turn that never flags.

The nine finalists’ stories are also impressive, and we’re glad you’ve sought them out. These are writers whose work will create ripples.

FlorianDuijsens, Laura Hassan and Brittani Sonnenberg

Horst-Wessel-Stadt

Will Studdert

The wee small hours of Saturday, 9 December, 1939 (I cannot see the clock)

Old Man Winter finally dug his blasted heels in tonight & yet fool that I am I smoke at my leisure & wander the Milky Way from my little balcony here in Horst-Wessel-Stadt. The blackout is a grand thing for us amateur astronomers & the firmament is positively aflame. It is worth braving the cold for this marvel. I do hope you can decipher my hand wherever & whenever you are, dear Snooper – no man is a calligrapher in the midst of a blooming blackout & shivering does not help. Surely even you must grant me that.

Rather sloshed, to be perfectly honest with you. Yes, I am here at the arse-end of a night on the razzle-dazzle, chiefly with the Brit. & the Yankee orphans this time. A motley crew of chancers & expats & political refugees who wound up stranded in Berlin at the Radio in some way, shape, or form & we have been so busy of late pushing the kraut line over the wireless to our respective homelands & had little reason to meet outside our stuffy offices at the Funkhaus before. The happy occasion of our all meeting at once like this was a last-minute invite to an afternoon screening at Goebbels’s private cinema out by the lakes somewhere. (Babelsberg? My geog. here is wretched.) A little treat for us propagandists. Back-to-back Chaplin flicks, of all things! Comfortable upholstered seats & Armenian brandy & Swabian cake, both pictures good as ever (I am fond of CC) & I could judge from the silhouetted elfin ears & the greasy head periodically tipping back in mirth five rows ahead of us that old Joe shares my guilty pleasure. No interval, then led out to the courtyard for starchy official greetings amid potted winter shrubs & gravel & statues (near the gate I spied the arrogant nose of der alte Fritz – or Frederick the Large, as my secretary called him just the other day). A bevy of awkward salutes & then we were whisked away back into the city in a convoy of Mercedes-Benz 770s with tinted (I think bulletproof) windows.

It is a jolly crowd, the Radio lot. Muddling thru in adversity, stranded together in foreign fields, that sort of thing, tho I must confess the handsome Ministry salary does improve a man’s disposition & serve as admirable recompense for the discomforts of exile. I shared my seat with a sly-looking fellow named Jenkins, all Oxford tweed & insinuation. Made conversation as the blackening lakes rattled past beyond the inky panes. Jenkins works on the Reich’s religious programming to Blighty, appeals to C of E pacifism & Home Counties housewives & all that. Talks every Tuesday & Thursday for 25 minutes at 6:30 p.m. on the 20-metre band & even if he really is a Christian, I daresay he’s as damned as the lot of us. Swears like a cabby & his vowels spiced with badly suppressed cockney. Girls this & girls that. He explained to me that the petite & somewhat equine archivist named Mary riding in the car behind married a blackshirt in Lewisham & they had to leave Blighty at the double when the round-ups started last summer in order to avoid a holiday at His Majesty’s Pleasure. & to top it all off he (the blackshirt) has now gone AWOL & Jenkins fancies she barely seems to care, a strange one is Mary (says Jenkins). Keeping herself above water with some paper-pushing for the Radio, she speaks risible German & laughs quickly & nasally. There you have Jenkins & Mary, dear Snooper. In the third car was riding a New York newspaperman named Koerner, worked on a Hearst paper back in the day, you see, but has Jerry blood somewhere back down the line & went quite mad for Hitler, which sold badly to the East Coast.

As our colourful convoy rolled into town past a smattering of blacked-out pubs & moribund cafés with the awnings still up, Jenkins said there’s an idea, how about a beano. I said why the heck not, Berlin is (still) a fine town for carousing. Jenkins asked why I choose to live in wretched Horst-Wessel-Stadt, a worker’s district (& they say that back in the Weimar days when it was still called Friedrichshain, it was firmly in the hands of the Reds), rather than out west where all the other Radio people live. I said it was a girl (it is always a girl), but I left it at that. I’ve no interest in ever discussing the Maria debacle or how I happened to end up here in Germany in the first place, let alone discussing it with bloody Jenkins. He said OK George, why don’t you show us your side of town, girl or no girl. So I said OK Jenkins & he smiled a curious smile.

& there was really only one thing for it: Café Atlantis, just over the river. I forgot to describe the Atlantis to you last week & so here you are, dear Snooper. It is a ghastly dive entrenched in a neat three-storey corner building, conveniently at my end of Horst-Wessel-Stadt with a view to the cream- & maroon-coloured trams which rattle gaily down Warschauer Straße to the bridge & back. Now they cease at blackout, of course, so that Tommy planes can’t do us all a mischief from their stupid glow. So if you read this without my permission (& how else can one read a private diary, dear Snooper?) & should want to come looking for me, keep a watch out for the curious neon sign, unilluminated these days amidst the crumbled façades & dead-eyed stucco cherubs. It is wretched but it is cheap enough & the jazz is the best you will find this side of Kantstraße. Heavy wooden door (no. 33) & no real doorman but a tall beast in a cloth cap with a Desperate Dan jaw who mills on the pavement smoking & pretending not to look. He knows me from sight & frowned the lot of us on thru, unfriendly as you like. Of course the beast will let any old riffraff in & is really only there to keep out government spies who will snitch on the hot music & are so square & badly dressed you can spot them a bloody mile off.

Inside – dark wooden panels & gloomy bare tables & tea lights asphyxiating in scrubbed-out jam jars. Said tables were full & girl-boy ratio was more than acceptable for obvious reasons. We took up with two Italian dance musicians from the house band & a dark slick Bavarian percussionist named Eddie something. Gin & introductions. Above the chunky door is a bell which tinkles pronouncedly when it (the door) is opened. We drew some queer looks at first with our mob all chattering loud Englisch. But I know the proprietor thru the Schwarzmarkt & smoothed it over a dream with a handshake & a pat on the (unshaven) cheek. Propaganda Ministry is one heck of a calling card, after all.

I admired the painted winter girls in imitation fox furs who wink & sip & subtly conduct the raucous proceedings, which are only contained from bursting & spilling into the streets by the heavy blackout curtains. A matronly sourpuss ferociously tended the Garderobe in the corner as usual, snatching tickets & coats from a peculiar assortment of youngish blondish chaps in off-the-rack evening suits. Hadn’t seen them before & couldn’t tell who or what the fellows were, for the Atlantis is egalitarian & no khaki or Party insignia is allowed. The beast will not have it & neither will the winter girls, nor even the sourpuss.

Wartime 1 o’clock city curfew came & went & the band was fine & we were all still swinging regardless of everything. Room was revolving on its axis & I seized a small toothsome thing & fox-trotted her into oblivion. She danced rigid as a pulled wire – Antje or Anke or somesuch. Asked me in the din what I am doing & I said I talk on the Radio to Britain for the Ministry & she was impressed & told me I must drop by the women’s hats section of Webers on Große Frankfurter Straße sometime when I have a moment & we shall have champagne & oysters at the bar. Well, I should like to know how they find fresh oysters these days, short of dredging the wretched things up from the bed of the Spree. But it seems the ladies have me marked for an international playboy. After three mad sets, the laughing band was spent or the audience was spent or perhaps we were all just bleeding drunk & the air was so thick & dank you could peel your clothes right off the skin & it was time to sit down.

The cold air drew more & more people out into the night & more tables became free & a waitress in a stained apron hobbled about the place on one good leg to replenish tea lights. The beast now had stepped inside & was drinking a tall Schultheiss against the wall & tho he was completely still, his eyes searched the room for something. I was gossiping with Jenkins about Edward VIII at a little table in the corner & he suddenly dropped the subject & whispered in nudge-nudge-wink-wink tones that Eddie the Bavarian told him that our beer-drinking, door-tending beast is a Red & was a bodyguard with Thälmann on the day he was arrested back in March ’33. Gosh, I said, but one should not be surprised a jot in this place. I am bored of politics, especially tonight & vermouth had dulled my curiosity yet further. So I told Jenkins that unlike Haw-Haw I do not mix work & alcohol & then I fell silent. After an awkward moment, Jenkins said sulkily that a man of my profile & line of work might still like to watch his own back just in case.

& soon thereafter I took my leave. It was a fine cold night so I intended to meander back to my new digs the long way, over the red-crowned bridge into Kreuzberg & back just for the heck of it. I drank the sharp air & watched the crystalline stars shimmer over Horst-Wessel-Stadt. They shine so much brighter for the booze & the blackout & a moon shadow cut the Schillingbrücke in half & swam on the Spree’s dark surface. I looked at the water a while as I used to do the Thames at Hammersmith outside the Blue Anchor in another life.

- Ah yes, hullo, hullo.

I turned to see Jenkins, who explained he was vainly looking for a taxi back west, where (he told me earlier) he lives in a grand Jugendstil place on the first floor, rooming with the widow of a Prussian-somebody-or-other. Funny thing is he seemed to have deflated & I wondered why he did not simply sneak past me as he was no longer in such fine fettle as he was back at the Atlantis. The man who only two hours ago was regaling the womenfolk with obscure bon mots about how he reads Gogol to maintain his equilibrium, which nobody understood but everybody laughed at, for Jenkins seemed just that kind of an odd chap & it was infectious. Now he seemed to have crumpled into himself & looked distracted & almost nervous. At length he took out a packet of Garbáty Golds & sheepishly offered me one & I said don’t mind if I do. Even tho I preferred to be alone, a smoke is a smoke, especially these days. We lit up & watched in silence for river traffic. There was none.

A painter tasked with rendering Jenkins would no doubt notice first the purple patches under his eyes & conclude that lack of sleep & over-familiarity with the bottle has done the man a violence. To pass the time I asked what vintage he is & he said he is a ’91. Well, looks older is all I can say. The river winds all the way up to the crowded rabbit holes & drinking dens of Alexanderplatz & I tried to detect the outline as we looked west. No luck.

Jenkins settled against the railings of the bridge.

- You know, old boy, I happen to like your programme. Gives the Tommies what they want. Music, dirty jokes & then rant on about the plutocrats & the Jews for a bit in between & the Ministry gives you your bread at the end of the month. You’re right popular with the boys back home, they say.

- Well, that’s nice. It’s a breeze & it keeps the fellows happy.

- Telling them their birds are going behind their backs with other chaps while they’re stuck out there in France?

- Pinch of salt, Jenkins. They understand that it comes with the territory.

But I know it all, of course. My little chats have already been denounced in radio pages of The Times & my censor at the station tells me that The Mirror has started a pretty little petition to have me hung by the neck until dead if Hitler loses this thing. Needless to say, mother & Steven are less than thrilled at having a celebrity in the family & doubtless the hacks are banging down the door every other day for an interview. MY SON THE NAZI PROPAGANDIST! Read all about it. Still, maybe they’ll make a few bob off it & can finally fix the bloody roof, if the Luftwaffe doesn’t take it right off again.

Down below on the invisible quayside, a drunk was intoning something that sounded a bit like Ave Maria but was not. I shuddered & regretted accepting the cigarette. There to the right of the river behind the smokestacks were my lodgings & tho I still had to retrieve coal on this coldest night of the year, I looked forward greatly to my rickety camp bed which groans in the night & my book & a sleep-inducing libation of sorts & tomorrow I shall wake fresh to hack out the next script on my trusty Imperial. But still bloody Jenkins loitered in the Here & Now, wanting to talk & yet not to talk.

Somewhere the distant Lazarus Church struck 3 & Jenkins glanced up at the sky. Queer thing about the blackout is how the eye is so quick to make friends with it. I can detect now infinite shades of black & someday shall perhaps get around to naming them. I could see apartment rooftops inked jagged against the turquoise of the night’s canvas & even make out the corner building close to Atlantis, a grand Bohemian-looking affair.

- You think the RAF will make it over here one day, bomb us to smithereens?

- You heard what Goebbels said today. It’ll all be over in a year. I’d rather think about that dreamy maidservant in the pinafore at his place this afternoon.

- The curly one?

- Right.

- She was fine, fine. But think about it – all this…

Jenkins gestured at the grand void surrounding us & sighed theatrically.

- Look at it.

- Look at what?

- Imagine it then. I am fond of this place, our Athens on the Spree. & I fear that maybe we are experiencing the last days of Rome. These buildings are but fragments of a departing dream & soon none of this & none of us will even exist.

- You, Jenkins, are drunk.

- Maybe I am. & maybe I’m just losing the old marbles & none of this exists at all anyway. Maybe the brain has just deteriorated into a parade of marvellous illusions & I’m lying in an Islington hospital with a cold compress on my noggin & a pretty nurse by my side.

He laughed & recovered his composure.

- But I was after a taxi. Perhaps I shall have more luck back on your side of the river.

With outstretched hand he bade me a sudden goodnight & with the other slipped a pack of those Schwarzmarkt Garbátys into my right pocket. I watched him retreat, a strange, shambling figure negotiating the icy bridge back into Horst-Wessel-Stadt in search of his ride home. & yet a car glided past just moments later with dimmed headlights, looking curiously like one of the 770s from our earlier convoy to Goebbels’s place. & perhaps it is all irrelevant & he is right & Horst-Wessel-Stadt is just a dream & we are just characters in some stupid dream that will someday be over. But the cold felt real & it will soon bring the night’s snow.