Chapter 57 56

June 23, 1924 Berlin, Schöneberg district * She watched the shadow of the streetcar gliding across the pavement, its wheels clattering across a junction in grooved tracks with a clatter of steel.The tram stops.Woman looking at white sign with number 8 written on it. She started jogging, pressing the hat on her head.A leather folder was tucked under her arm, and the camera slung over her shoulder bobbed against her back.The driver watched her board the trolley and set the folder against the wooden siding.The woman took out her purse and gave a coin with a curious expression on her face. Does the tram go to August︱Victoria Square?

The driver judged her to be French by her accent and strange attire.Although he didn't like the French, he told her that the tram would stop at Place Auguste Victoria.He told her the fare due.Since the serious inflation of the paper mark 9 a year ago, the fare has risen to 150,000 marks, the driver has become accustomed to informing passengers of the fare. 9. Papiemark, the currency used in Germany from 1914 to 1923.Later, due to the extremely serious inflation in 1922-23, a new national mark (Reichsmark) was issued to replace it. The woman pays the driver and enters the aisle, clutching the rail above her head.An old man got up, took off his soft felt hat, and offered to give her his seat.

Please sit down. She smiled and said she would prefer to stand.Although the old man didn't believe it, he put his hat back on and sat back down.The woman turned around, shifted her weight to the armrest, and looked at a young girl in the opposite seat.The girl was wearing a white dress with a long blue ribbon tied around her neck; she was holding a china doll whose face had all its paint worn off.The woman tried to guess the girl's age, but finally found that she lacked the ability to judge in this area. She frowned and looked out the window, at the faces of people on the sidewalk.Her mind returned to the old question about the characteristics of the Teutons.Is the facial expression alone enough to make them so serious?The Germans were still an enigma to her, and over the years she had seen them as another race, with some structural difference in nerves or glands that enabled them to deal with the problems encountered in the world, Work through every difficulty you come across in a systematic way, even in this impossible predicament.She had always admired that aspect of them, which was what made them different from her.But is it true?Perhaps there was hardly any difference, or perhaps she just saw the faces as different from the ones she had seen in Copenhagen or Rotterdam.Her eyes followed a man walking briskly down the sidewalk.Is he German? Can she tell just from the back?His full shoulders looked familiar; the odd angle of his gray felt hat; his stiff gait.Could it be Anton?Of course not, because the last time she heard from Anton, he said that he was already in Brazil.

She moved her gaze down sadly, looking at the cuffs of a young man's trousers and dark black boots with shiny palms.She imagined the trolley passing the man on the sidewalk; she imagined the familiar figure getting closer, the closest they had been in years, and now that they were staggering, the distance would only grow further apart.Now she is sorry, even a little ashamed.For her, there is nothing she loathes more than fragile relationships, especially love.She always felt that way.When she was a child, she never understood what other people's love was like. Those people shared the same bed for several months or years, but ended up separated in pain, and when they met on the road, they were just passing strangers.She felt that was not love.That's fickle; that's capricious.That is not love.

But then she also ran into it.She slept with them; they hugged each other, promised everything, past and future.And now they are nothing to each other, or like two people who never speak again.How little remains of these relationships in the end, hazy memories can only be seen through fragments of evidence found years later: a business card dropped in the back of a closet; a pair of never-worn earrings in a silk gift box.Although she was still very young, she could barely remember what happened in her youth because she tried to recall the same scene so many times that the images became blurred.Anton had never been her lover, yet his phantom still made her fidget, as if two people who were not as close as before would be embarrassed when they saw each other again.

All that's left is memories.Now she only lives in one apartment, the furniture is rented, and even the pictures on the wall are very strange. Those rented pictures include the portraits of the vanished young noble families in Germany, and the scenery of Saxony Switzerland. She has never been.She comes and goes in the world without even a suitcase for souvenirs.But that's all she wanted.This is the life she chose. She always told herself to keep in touch, to turn love into bland familiarity, and as the years passed, correspondence became less and less, and the content became more and more superficial, so it would be worse.Sometimes, however, she is extremely skeptical.She occasionally has dreams that feel completely real and lucid, dating ghostly lovers who promise that all past events are resolved, all obstacles are cleared, and they can finally see each other all the time.These dreams were so perfect that they would turn into nightmares when they woke up, because in the morning, in her room, she would immediately see again how powerless her life was now.She would feel compelled to find the ghost, rush to the post office to send a telegram, catch any train or ship or plane to meet him.She must find him.

But in the end, she couldn't do it.There are reasons for their separation, and those reasons don't go away with time.In addition, human emotions are always capricious: if their feelings fade, others will intervene, or will intervene in the future.At least she could write a few words to say that she thought of him.But to love, the only proper response is equal love; and once that love is gone, all that remains is trifle and tragedy.Better not write anything, better just remember the episode where he was at their happiest, like a sliding spotlight on them for a while.So she would struggle to shake off the dream, and spend the day in a cloud of gloom and sadness, waiting for small but definite joys that would allow her to continue living like this.Until that dream reappears.

The palm of the car tapped the woman's shoulder.She looked up and saw the towering spire of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church; they had reached August-Victoria Square.The woman grabbed the file folder, sidled past the passengers, and got off the tram in the square. She shuttled among cars, pedestrians, and bicycles to a coffee shop on the east side.A dirty young man selling bootlaces blocked her on the sidewalk and held up his wares at her.The laces were waxed and shiny, and came in flat or round styles, in shades of black or brown. Just ten pfennigs.he pleaded. The woman shook her head, but the boy insisted, and she chose a pair of bootlaces.All she had was a fifty-finny piece.The boy said he had no change, so she ended up buying five pairs of boot laces and asked if she could take a picture of him in return.She removes the camera from her shoulder, and the boy asks her how to pose.The woman smiled and told him not to pose.

She opened the bellows of the camera, turned a small key to advance the film, then guessed the distance, turned the focus scale to two meters, checked the shutter speed and aperture, and finally raised her head to face the sun.There is plenty of light.Woman holds camera at waist, pulls shutter lever, looks at spirit level.In the small viewfinder; there is an inverted image of the boy holding up his bootlaces.She presses the shutter. The woman smiles, thanks the boy, folds the camera, and crosses the street to the café terrace.Under the long rain canopy, the coldness of the morning still persists.Waiters, some with long hoses spraying the tiled patio, and others arranging bentwood chairs and round marble tables.She pushed the revolving door into the café.A waiter comes over to greet her, and seems to know her, pointing directly at the man sitting alone at a table with his back to a large mirrored wall that extends to the ceiling above.

Woman hangs coat on rack.A disheveled newspaper delivery boy passed her with a newspaper held in a long wooden clip.The woman asked him what French newspaper he had, and all he had was Le Temps, and she shook her head politely. She walks over to the man sitting alone.He was reading a newspaper, which must have been his own, for the paper was not held in a wooden clip.He didn't look at her until she pulled up the chair. you found me.he said with a grin. The men wore specially tailored high-breasted blazers with narrow lapels.His bow tie was tied into two symmetrical triangles, and his blond hair was pomaded back.The woman smiled and tossed a pile of bootlaces onto the table.The man shook his head.

You don't even have a pair of boots. The woman laughed and said she had several pairs elsewhere, but hadn't seen them for a long time.The waiter came and took the woman's order.She ordered a cup of black coffee, then changed her mind and ordered coffee with milk.The man nodded to the folder leaning on the chair.He asked if he could see the content. OK.She said: Wait until the coffee is finished. Men also feel that it may be too early.The waiter placed a set of white glasses and saucers in front of the woman.Holding a pot in each hand, he poured steaming coffee and milk in proportion.Women want men to keep reading the newspaper.He held up the newspaper again. The woman takes a sip of coffee.She took a flat bootlace and tied it into a pretty bow.The man glanced at the bow tie and smiled.He held up the newspaper and folded it, flattening the middle. As she drank, the woman read the other side of the man's newspaper, yesterday's "New Zurich Zeitung." She glanced at an article, then turned her face away to the terrace of the café.A waiter with a black tie and a white apron was sweeping the floor with a wide broom.The woman's eyes returned to the newspaper, and she held it steady with one hand.She told the man not to flip.Her eyes were wet, and it was difficult to read the tightly printed Gothic lettering across the table.Then she let go of the newspaper. You can't go wrong. The man asked her what she said, but the woman said she was just talking to herself.The man folded the newspaper exaggeratedly and placed it on the table. Do you want to speak English? No, she said: I hope not. do you miss of course. The man frowned.He called the waiter and ordered a second cup of coffee.The woman gazes at the folded newspaper, but does not pick it up.When the man noticed her tears, he got up and gave her his handkerchief.The woman refused. take it.He said: You got your hands wet. The woman shook her head, then turned to the terrace.Unsure of what to do, the man stood for a while before returning to his seat.The waiter poured a second cup of coffee with two jugs.He notices the woman crying, looks away, and takes the jug back to the bar. The woman stands up as if to go.She wiped her face with the back of her hand, but couldn't stop the tears.The two waiters were whispering behind the bar, peeking at the couple.The woman picks up the folder.The man spoke softly to her, and stopped to stare at the bustling waiter.The woman bites her lip.While the man spoke, the woman looked absently into the square.Finally the woman sat down again. What's wrong?the man asked.tell me. The woman picked up the cigarette case the man had placed on the table and opened it.She pulled up the small silver rod and put a cigarette in her mouth.The man wanted to get his lighter, but she got it first and lit the cigarette.She held the cigarette in front of her face and looked at her hands.Her milky skin was streaked with moisture, and there was a gleaming teardrop in her jaws. nothing.she says.