You Are Leaving the American Sector
Released under the Cr...
Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.
Trying something a little bit new. In contrast to my typical light, sardonic style here's a story that's a bit more traditional, a bit more wistful, and a bit more romantic. It's set in Berlin in 1965, a few years after the establishment of the Berlin Wall. Enter a tired, world-weary and broken man, looking for one last chance at the American dream, outside the American Sector... As always, please respond with criticism and feedback!
"You Are Leaving the American Sector," by Rob Baird
Now (10/2012) anthologized in the e-book Matters Out of Place, for happy portability!
Bracing myself heavily to keep from falling over, I splayed my fingers against the stained concrete and tried to figure out where things had gone so terribly wrong.
Probably, no small part of the answer involved alcohol; many problems in my life began that way. My memories were fragmentary: a raucous party, growing ever more raucous as the evening wore on. A new album -- Help! I think -- on constant rotation. A pair of very lovely and very overwhelmed BEA stews, looking nearly as lost as I was now.
Two servicemen, dragging me by the paw through the open door of a taxicab. Said cab, swerving at high speed along Mehringdamm past the Hallesches Tor. Promises of a great adventure. Disembarking from the cab; showing my passport to a bemused guard. An ominous sign, in block capital letters:
YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR VY VYEZHAETE IZ AMERIKANSKOGO SEKTORA VOUS SORTEZ DU SECTEUR AMERICAIN
Ah, hell.
At some point between this event and the present, I had lost my friends. It was now late -- a dark, black sky all at odds with the warmth of the early September night -- and, as I didn't remember crossing back over, I had to imagine I was still in East Berlin.
A quick check in the glass of a closed storefront showed me that I was, at least, in reasonably good knick. My hat remained precipitously threaded over my large ears (fashion be damned, we coyotes were never made for fedoras). I had my wallet, still, and my keys, and my passport -- thank god. And... I fished out a strange object and discovered it to be a canteen, whose origins eluded me. A cautious sniff revealed the contents to be water; I downed half of it in one long, desperate pull, and then set off looking for street signs.
The closest lit street was named Weber, and I walked up it until, at the Leninallee crossing, I realized that the signs communicated very little to me. People with better things to do than confusion passed by me in a rush, and I stepped back from the flow of pedestrian traffic to consider my options.
My friends, who were Air Force personnel, were under strict orders not to talk to East Berlin police officers. I was a civilian, and not entirely certain that the rules applied to me, but in any case I would have to trust that the policeman knew enough English to help me, since I spoke neither German nor Russian.
I turned off Leninallee onto a side street, hoping I could avoid drawing attention to myself, and looked along the shops for signs of activity. My plan was to find an open store, purchase enough goods to endear myself to the owner -- and then hope for a miracle on the language front.
But the stores -- a florist, a printer, a fruit vendor -- were all shuttered. It took a few minutes of searching to discover the coffee shop, its door still open to the evening air. Inside, a few patrons sat in bored conversation, but the counter was open, and I approached it nervously.
"Ja? Was möchten Sie trinken?" The woman behind the counter was young, and in remarkably good spirits for so late at night.
I opted to look as pathetic as possible, to draw sympathy -- my ears went back, and I splayed my fingers apologetically. "Ah. I -- uh -- I can, um, nein Deutsch. Um." I fumbled for phrases from the book I had ignored on the plane ride from London. "Spreche Sie english?"
She shook her head.
"French? Français? Spreche Sie français?"
"Französisch?" That seemed to fetch a glimmer of recognition. "Ja, bisschen französisch." She closed an eye, deep in thought -- trying, like I was, to remember the damned language. "Was vous voulez, euh, boire?"
My French was not worlds better than her own, but at least I understood the question. "Ah -- café? Oui? Quelque... café, uh, please? Bitte?"
The attempt fetched a wry smile from her, and she nodded briskly before stepping back from the counter to the machine. After a moment she set a mug of steaming coffee before me. "Mit Sahne oder Zucker?"
When I stared blankly at her, she indicated a bowl of sugar and a pitcher of what I guessed was milk. My stomach quailed at the thought, and I waved them away with my paw. "Uh, no -- nein. Nein, bitte."
I found myself hit by a barrage of rapid German, and the clerk looked at me expectantly. When I didn't answer, she repeated it, and then gestured to the old cash register. "Argent?"
Argent -- right. I fished out my wallet, and opened it to her. "Ja?"
A crisp nod. "Genau."
I counted out as many denominations of coins -- marks and dollars both -- as I could and set them on the counter, hoping some combination might do the trick.
She frowned at them, her ears lowering contemplatively. "Ach so. Vous avez quelque, euh... mark de Notenbank?"
I had the wrong money. "Ostmark? Nein."
"Ach so," she repeated, and resumed staring at the coins.
She didn't seem to be concentrating particularly hard, and after a few seconds had elapsed in silence I prodded the conversation back to life. "Ou est le secteur americain?"
"Mm? Secteur americain... vous êtes perdu?"
I was slightly discombobulated, and my French was all more than a decade old. It lived in the corners of my memory, back from when I was still young, still exploring the world -- not lost and half-drunk in occupied territory -- so it took a moment before I recognized the word for "lost." I nodded quickly. "Ja. Perdu. That's me, perdu."
She nodded, and finally tapped the American quarter I had set before her. While I collected the rest of my coins, she reached beneath the counter and retrieved a map, handing it over to me and dipping her head to indicate an empty table. I bowed, and made my retreat.
Fortunately, it seemed from the map that my adventures in wonderland had not left me particularly far inside the border. I could walk, I thought, to the Friedrichstrasse train station. From there it was just a matter of crossing back to Allied territory where, god willing, I could find a cab.
I drank the coffee slowly, savoring it, as though focusing on each sip might beat back the full-fledged hangover I was now dreading. I'd drunk half of it, or so, when I looked around to notice that the other customers had left, and the woman from the register was now busy locking the door. When she finished, she padded over to my table and took a seat.
"Allo."
"Hello," I answered, and folded up the map to clear the table space. "Uh, thank you. Merci. Pour le... map."
She nodded, with a smile that briefly showed the white of her teeth. "Oui, et vous pouvez, uh... mm. Zurück, ja?" Her brow furrowed. "Retournez? A la americain sector?"
Could I go back? Oh. Yes, thankfully. "Ja."
She leaned forward, elbows on the table, resting her muzzle in her paws and fixing me with her inquisitive, dark eyes. Her fingers were long and straight, covered in the same tawny fur that marked her face and neck. Were it not for that color, she might almost have been a wolf -- instead, I guessed that she was probably, as it happened, ethnically a German shepherd. "Und vous êtes americain?"
"Ah, oui. Et vous? Allemand? Deutsch?"
"Genau," she nodded. "So je peut, uh, reste hier -- ici. Mais vous devez, um..."
"I have to go? Raus?" I pointed to the door.
She nodded, and when I stood to leave, folding the map and handing it back to her, she stood with me. She held the door open and, to my slight surprise, stepped out with me rather than remaining inside. "I can, uh... show you, ja? Si vous voulez?"
If I wanted? "Merci," I said, and gave an affirmative nod. It was, after all, the first interest anyone had shown in my company for some time.
She set a brisk pace, but the cooling night air was invigorating. Neither of us knew enough of any shared language for small talk, and she was mostly quiet -- but when I remarked on the street names that we passed, with my terrible German, she smiled softly and I caught the wagging of her tail from the corner of my eye.
Friedrichstrasse was calm -- the crossing was nearly deserted, at that time of night -- and when we had reached the station she gestured grandly to it. "Voila."
"Voila," I repeated. "Merci, madam."
"Anna."
"Merci, Anna. Je m'appelle Ryan O'Leary."
She echoed the name, and then, with a warm bow, excused herself and padded back the way she had come. I watched her go until I could no longer make out her silhouette, and then stepped into the station to look for somebody who could escort me back into the free world.
The hangover I had feared never materialized, and I awoke the next morning in relatively good spirits -- and on a mission. I found Mason Halperin at his desk in the media relations office, nursing a cup of coffee. It continued to hold his focus as the door clicked shut behind me.
"What the fuck, Mason."
He looked up blearily. "Hey. Glad to see you didn't get arrested."
I flipped him off. "What the fuck was that about?"
"It seemed," he mumbled, "like a good idea at the time. Why are you yelling at me? Don't you have a cow to be watching?"
Rolling my eyes, I grabbed the seat on the other side of his desk. "That's a good one. I've never heard that before." The name wasn't even mine -- I'd picked it a few months before, from the name of an old friend in the Air Force, and had never bothered to ask him whether people mocked it. "Did Greg make it back too?" Gregory Leigh was my minder, an arrogant if well-intentioned young man who constantly reminded me how much he was looking forward to 'real work,' when his assignment at Tempelhof ended.
"Yeah. We bailed after you took off running."
"I what?"
He shrugged, swallowed heavily, and drained the rest of his mug. "We was gonna just show you the other side of the Wall a little bit. Then you said you thought you could see an iron curtain descending, and you ran away from us. You're a quick little son of a bitch. Fuckin' coyotes..."
"Did you tell anybody?"
"Nah. I called my buddy at border control, and he said he'd you'd passed through Friedrichstrasse. I figured you were okay."
"Thanks, man."
Mason grunted, and turned to eye the coffee machine longingly.
Since I was mobile, I stood, grabbing his mug and pouring the rabbit a fresh cup. "I need you to do me a favor," I said.
He moaned unhappily, but took the cup nonetheless. "What?"
"I want to go back."
"Fuck off, Ryan."
"I'm serious," I said. "I want to go back. Without being drunk. And I want to change some money into Ostmarks."
Long ears splaying, Mason leaned back with a frown. "Why?"
"I met someone."
"Jesus Christ, O'Leary, I --"
"I'll give you twenty dollars."
The rabbit stopped his protests for a moment, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah?"
So it was that, the following evening, I found myself back at Checkpoint Charlie, with its stark reminder that I was LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR. Mason had agreed to escort me, although in trade I had to give him another five dollars, and listen to his incessant kvetching.
He was right, of course, that it was a fool's errand. But something about the shepherdess had caught my attention, and I figured that -- East Berlin or no -- it was better than killing time between acts in the lounge at Tempelhof. The BEA stews were long gone, anyway.
I found the café easily enough, and Mason disappeared in a fit of grumbling. It was early evening, and there was more activity -- but not so much that I couldn't spy Anna, working behind the counter.
When I entered, her ears perked, and her head tilted to one side inquisitively. "Perdu encore?" she asked.
Not hardly. "Nein. Der kaffee war gut." 'The coffee was good' -- I had committed this phrase to memory, marking as it did a good ten or twenty percent of my German.
Anna giggled. "Bien sur. So, einen kaffee?"
"Ja, bitte." I watched her turn to fetch it, the graceful movements of her body masked by the denim of her workman's jeans and a formless shirt she carried like a model. When the mug of coffee presented itself, I listened carefully for the price -- she said it in French -- and counted out the appropriate quantity of Mason's Ostmarks.
Her eyes widened; then she laughed again, and pointed to an empty table. "Un moment, s'il vous plait." She tapped a coworker on the shoulder, and from my vantage point at the table I could see the two conversing in animated German. She gestured to me; he looked from me to her and then shook his head -- doubtless at least as skeptical as Mason had been. But Anna made her way over to me, with a second cup of coffee, and took a seat.
"Allo," I said, and she answered in kind. We looked at each other for a few seconds; her warm, brown eyes danced, meeting mine, as we tried to think of how best to communicate. "Comment ça va?"
She grinned, and stroked her muzzle thoughtfully. "Bien, mais... étrange" she finally said -- it went well, but strange. I could hardly argue. "Et vous?"
I made a show of looking around the walls of the café, and then back to her. "Oui, bien."
More silence -- both of us trying not to break the spell that had emerged. "So," Anna finally said. "Vous êtes americain? Wo in Amerika kommst du?"
I didn't understand the second sentence, so I responded to the first. "Ja. Americain."
"Wo?" she repeated, and when I didn't get the message she padded off, returning a minute later with a small notepad and a pencil. She scribbled quickly, and then held up a remarkable facsimile of the continental United States. "Wo in Amerika?"
"Where? Ou? California." It wasn't strictly true. I was from Kayenta, on the Navajo Indian Reservation. But I'd left as soon as I could, in search of what I naïvely considered opportunity, and in any case I'd spent the last few years in Oakland. I tapped her drawing along the west coast, to indicate the general area.
She cocked her head. "Hollywood?"
"San Francisco." When this didn't provoke a response, I held out my hand for the pencil, and sketched the outline of the Golden Gate bridge.
Puzzled, she turned the drawing over. "Montagnes?"
So much for my drawing skills. "Nein. Uh..." I knew the word -- I'd heard it just the other day. "Brück? Ein brück?"
Anna looked from me to my drawing, brow furrowing before enlightenment struck. "Ah! Ja, ja, eine brück, genau! Goldenes Tor, oder?" I nodded, and she took the pencil back, setting to work quickly. A minute later she had replaced my drawing with one substantially more faithful, the suspension cables falling neatly from the sloping arches of the bridge's frame. She drew over my sketch, which was fortunate -- it kept me from having to compare the two.
I was transfixed, and shook my head, indicating the paper with a finger. "Du ist schön," I said; the last word, meaning 'beautiful,' I knew from Schönefeld, the communist airport to the south-east.
She smiled, and I thought I saw the hint of a blush darken her tan fur. "Das," she corrected softly. "'Das ist schön.' 'Du' ist... ah, en Français c'est 'tu,' oui? 'You.'"
"Ah..." I scratched behind one of my ears, fidgeting. That wasn't what I had meant, but... "Peut-être aussi, ja?" 'Maybe that too?'
Perhaps not strictly. She was undeniably fetching, with her warm eyes and the way her teeth flashed when she grinned, but her bearing was too effortless, too genuine to be beautiful. Nor was she thin enough for the catwalk -- but then, neither was I. In any event she took the compliment with a quirky smile, and self-consciously made a few adjustments to the shading on the bridge.
"Du ist..." I had been trying my best to speak something that approached German, but there were constant roadblocks. "Artist? Artiste?" I said again, in French.
"Künstler? Ja, ich bin Künstler. Und du? Ein Soldat, ja?" When I stammered at the word, she drew a quick picture of what was unmistakably a Sherman tank. "Soldat?"
"Nein." I watched her continue to improve the sketch as I tried to piece together the German I knew. "Ich war ein Soldat. Nein in... um... the Army. Nein Army. Damn it. Um. Amerikanisch luftwaffe?" I tried, using my paw to pantomime a landing airplane.
"Ach so." Anna stopped work on the tank, and her pencil slashed the fat lines and distinctive twin tails of a B-24 Liberator onto the notepad. She turned the drawing around, for my approval, and grinned lopsidedly. "So du hast Berlin schon gesehen?" At my expression, the joke having stumbled, she chewed on her pencil for a moment. "You see here, Berlin, ah... 'schon'..." She muttered and, failing to find the word in her English, tried in French. "Déjà?"
"Before? I've seen Berlin already? Yes -- ja." Well over a decade before, when the city was still dark and cold.
"From over?" She pointed upwards. "Yes?" When I nodded, she resumed work, adding open bay doors and the outline of a falling bomb.
"Ah... un moment..."
She looked up from her drawing, that wry smile having returned. "B, euh, vier und zwanzig, oder?" She repeated the numbers, holding up four fingers for 'vier' and ten for 'zwanzig,' closing her fists and then opening them again for a second ten. Four and twenty, like blackbirds. Then she whistled, in a falling tone, making a fist and then splaying her fingers out quickly, with the sound of an explosion. "Oui?"
It was a fatalistic sort of humor -- certainly, at least, she didn't seem terribly offended by the concept. I hadn't flown in the war -- too young -- but as a kid I had of course wanted to be able to bomb Berlin. Things are different, seen through the eyes of youth. I shook my head, longing for telepathy. "Nein. Nicht bomb. Uh. Coal?"
I wasn't sure if they were cognates, and for her part Anna didn't seem to know whether or not I was trying to speak German. "Kohle?" she repeated confusedly, with her head cocked. She sketched a dark lump and then, after a moment, the outline of a stove.
Nodding my head, I then dragged my finger between the coal and the B-24. "Ich habe Kohle," I said, and tried to match her inflection.
Her eyes widened, and spoke quickly -- far beyond the reach of my understanding. She was several sentences in before she noticed my bewildered expression, and held up a paw. "Einen Moment." She scribbled over the B-24, and flipped to a blank page. Another airplane -- seen from the side and slightly below, as an embarking passenger might perceive it. Two engines on each wing, and that thick, graceful fuselage, so unlike the blunt lines of a bomber...
I nodded again, to encourage her, and tapped the quick lines she drew for the cockpit. "C-54," I said. "Mein flugzeug. C-54 Skymaster."
She pantomimed hands on a steering wheel. "You drive it?"
"No, I navigated. Navigated," I repeated, to a blank look. "Navigate. Uh." I dragged the word for 'map' from memory with an effort. "La carte?"
"Ach so." Anna laughed softly, and began adding more details -- rivet lines, the thick wheels of the main landing gear; the edges of the lowered flaps. She tapped the drawing with her pencil. "I see this and see this. When I am a girl, my mother in the aeroplanes work also," she said, and sketched a woman near the lowered cargo door to illustrate this. "Father is todt. Euh... mort, okay?"
"Dead?"
"Ah, genau, dead." She acted this out for emphasis, head limp and tongue lolling, and then laughed. "Nicht der Krieg," she reassured me -- 'not the war,' I knew that much, but when she followed it up with "ein Fahrunfall" I was lost. This didn't bother her; she simply shrugged, and went back to her story. "I am with only my mother, so, I am also at Tempelhof. And when I go to this aeroplane, the Amerikaner have chocolate. Hershey chocolate, I remember..." Her smile became more wistful, and she set the pencil down. "Ah, das war vor über zehn Jahre... it is over ten years. Very friendlike, Americans."
That was us, I guess -- folks who, a couple years after the end of the war, would be putting our all into that airlift. I wondered if the goodwill might have ebbed with the raising of the wall, but Anna's warm grin suggested it had not. "Very friendlike," I agreed. "Berliners also."
"What work are you now?" She was pencilling in a heavy shadow under the C-54's belly, so that the drawing of her mother stood half in darkness. "Still navigated?"
"No." Christ. I had neither the words nor the will to explain my present occupation. Once I wanted to be a pilot, I didn't tell her. Then I thought I could be a writer. Then I thought I could be a craftsman, because I'm good with my hands. Now, mostly, I drink, and... "I'm a magician. Sometimes I tour with the USO."
"Magician?" Her pronunciation told me she was simply repeating the word; there was no glimmer of recognition.
Unfortunately for her, I had no idea how to say it in French. I splayed the fingers of both hands, turning them back and forth to imply no trickery, and then reached across the table. My paw brushed the velvety fur that downed her ear, and when I drew my fingers back I held a coin in them. "Magic."
Anna giggled, and her white teeth flashed -- and again, when I snapped my fingers and the coin disappeared. "This is your work?"
"Yeah," I said. "My life is basically pretty fucked." Nothing in her demeanor suggested that she understood my meaning; she was still smiling, and there was something infectious to it. I was torn between trying to explain and... no, why bother? I smiled back to her, and held her gaze for a moment -- long enough to press my paw into hers, leaving the coin there.
"This is how you tip?" Her eyes sparkled, and her grin widened.
"No. If I was tipping," I said, and placed my other paw under hers to hold it in place, rubbing the coin lightly with my free thumb. "I would be more generous."
"More general?"
"Generous," I repeated. "I would give more. Like this." I stopped rubbing, and gave her paw a quick tap that covered it with my own, so that when I leaned back from her she could see that the shiny half-dollar had been joined by a second, identical one.
Anna was enraptured. "This is greatness!" She set one coin down carefully on the table and lifted the other up into the light. They were just ordinary 50-cent pieces, but I assumed that she, like most, was trying to see if it was somehow special -- somehow faked. We crave myth and mystery, and spend our days trying to destroy them, always assuming that what's behind the curtain must be better still. Then I saw that she was looking past the coin. "It's new?"
"No. I've had them almost twenty years now." They had been given to me in near-proof condition, on my 16th birthday -- some of the last of the Walking Liberty coins. I had kept them in pristine condition since.
"It is like a, ah... a Spiegel," she said.
That was the name of a newish magazine I'd seen at the airport, so I knew the word. "Yeah. Mirror."
"Mirror," she nodded, and leaned in to look at the flawless surface of the coin. "Mostly they draw an old man on one side. They must make a... I don't know what the word is." she tapped the silver lightly. "One of this. Eine Münze. They must make one where the old man side is a mirror instead. Then it's more handsome."
"That depends on who's holding it. If I did it, it would just be me looking back."
"Genau." Anna laughed, and handed me the coin back. "I say this already." From back behind the counter, somebody called her name, and she turned to shout back. "Einen moment!"
I wrapped the coins back up in their velvet. "You have to go back to work?"
"Yes." Her ears lowered. "It's... very many people here."
"It's okay. It was good to see you again."
Anna chewed on her lip for a moment, and then gave me a slightly hesitant, slightly quirky grin. "I, ah, I work not tomorrow."
"Yes? I don't either."
"Can you go to Warschauer Strasse? You must not make any change from Friedrichstrasse, I think."
"Tomorrow?"
She nodded. "Sixteen hours?" Her coworker called her name again; her ears flicked, and she glared at him for a moment before looking back to me hopefully. "Yes?"
"I'll be there," I said.
Anna grinned, and gave me a quick hug; her arms were light, and her fur smelled faintly of summer. Then she was gone, padding back behind the bar -- no doubt, from the animated conversation that ensued, being lectured much as I knew that I would be.
Mason was incredulous, and when he failed to persuade me he called Airman ("Airman Second Class," as he always corrected) Leigh into his office, gesturing at me disgustedly. "Talk some sense into him."
Gregory arched an eyebrow, and looked between the two of us. "What's he doing?"
"Emigrating," Mason said.
"I'm visiting East Berlin," I clarified. "It's an interesting city."
"He has," Mason growled, "fallen for one of the locals. It's our fault, though. We left him in the city and some kindly frau rescued him."
Greg looked on me tiredly, and I got the sense that the fox had seen such things before. "Is that so?"
"Maybe."
He sighed heavily. "Lord in heaven. This is not what I signed up for. O'Leary, if you needed to get off you could've just asked me to find somebody for you. Mason, for example."
I ignored the rabbit's cursing. "It's not about getting off, Greg. She's a nice person, I don't have that much time left in Berlin, and I'd prefer to spend it there rather than in the NCO club."
Greg looked to Mason, who shrugged helplessly. The fox eyed me like a troublesome piece of machinery -- which, I guess, I sort of was. "Don't you think you're taking things a little seriously?"
"What," I asked. "You mean as opposed to pulling a dove out of my hat?"
I was not to be dissuaded and eventually, proclaiming that his talents were being misused in managing me, Leigh told me to "do whatever the fuck" I wanted. Deprived of an ally, Mason agreed to take me back across -- for, he said, the last time. I resolved to make the most of it.
On the far side of the checkpoint, walking up towards the East Berlin subway stop at Stadtmitte, I tried to decide what it meant to be "leaving the American sector." It was meant, I suppose, to be ominous: "beyond this line lies the end of all that you hold dear. Baseball, blue jeans, and apple pie if you turn back around."
But mine was a restless generation -- the beats, adrift and unanchored. I was too young to have fought in the war, and too young to have cared about going to college -- happy enough, like my boyhood friends, to be off the reservation. And when I got out of the service, I went in search of whatever came next.
I tried bartending, I tried washing dishes and driving taxis. I became a fisherman, first on a slime line in Valdez, under the midnight sun, and then on a salmon boat, where the long hours were only slightly more uncomfortable than the waves. I worked on radio towers, I worked on construction sites, and I tried to find something that made life seem worthwhile.
I guess at some point I gave up. Houdini had interested me, as a boy, and at kid's parties and nightclubs magic paid the rent -- at least better than not working did. A friend put me in touch with the USO, and they were willing to pay a stipend, which made it an easy choice.
They'd asked if I might be willing to wear a ceremonial headdress and describe my act as "you know, Indian stuff." I wasn't as spiritual as my parents, not by a long shot, but some lines have to be drawn -- thus was Ryan O'Leary born. Whatever. I told myself I was doing it for the money. That, and the willingness of bored soldiers to buy me drinks.
It certainly wasn't for the moral support. Mostly, the kids at Tempelhof were bored by my act. They were jaded -- and nervous, about the brewing situation in Viet Nam. So they heckled me, and threw things, and I carried on not because I cared but because I had nothing better to do.
I'd given up, but I decided that I would keep my promise to Anna -- because she believed that I would, and the essence of magic is belief. Really, it is the essence of all things. I had lost it at some point, in that aimless sea of unfollowed dreams and unpersuaded crowds.
I transferred at Alexanderplatz, and sat through the short ride to Warschauer Strasse in quiet reflection. I was off the train, and trying to orient myself, when I noticed the tall, burly man walking in my direction. He had on a uniform, and my ears lowered. I had avoided contact with the authorities mostly through good fortune; I clung to this desperately, hoping I looked inconspicuous and he might simply pass me by.
No such luck. His eyes locked on mine, and he put a massive paw on my shoulder to keep me from moving. He was, I think, a very large dog, or possibly a bear, and his voice was a rumbling growl in a language I didn't understand.
I shook my head. "I don't speak German."
"You are English?" he said -- the tone made it seem like an accusation.
"American," I offered.
This fetched a grunt. "American. Passport," he demanded, and held out a paw the size of a pieplate. When I gave it to him, he riffled through the pages slowly. "American," he said again. "I know American. See the USA in your Chevrolet," he sang, in a heavy Russian accent -- the notes and much of the cadence completely wrong. "Why here? Army?"
"Ah, no, not army." I gestured to my satchel, lifting it up a bit.
His short muzzle lowered, eyes narrowing on the leather case. "Spy?" he suggested -- his voice was cold, and gave no hint of any humor.
"No -- no, no, no. No spy."
The haste -- and slight panic -- in the words drew a raised eyebrow from the man, and he lifted my passport up to scrutinize it more closely. Then he looked back to my satchel. "Open bag." This did little to satisfy him. "Black market?"
"I, uh, I'm meeting somebody," I stammered. My stomach was, for the first time in East Germany, twisting itself into knots. "A friend here."
"Who?"
I glanced around, and saw Anna, some distance away, walking towards us up Warschauer street. Some change in my tone made the guard turn to follow my gaze. He looked at her for a long time, and then back at me, and I wondered if I had, perhaps, condemned us both to the gulag.
Instead, his expression softened. "Ah. This for her?" His paw rummaged through the contents of my satchel -- though I noticed that he took a little bit more care.
"Most of it. Not the Jack Daniels." I had added that as an afterthought, in case I lost my nerve -- and at that moment I wanted badly to down the entire bottle.
He handed me my passport, and I replaced it in the inside pocket of my jacket with unsteady fingers. "Why you do not say this? Ah, it is different." He pulled out his wallet and withdrew a small photo. The figure, in black and white, resembled Anna a little, with soft eyes and a warm, hopeful smile. "Katya," my companion said. "We are from Zelenogradsk."
I nodded. "She's very pretty."
"We cannot see each other so often. Zelenogradsk," he repeated, as though I knew the name. Then he clapped me on the shoulder and started walking. "Come! So you are American. You drive Chevrolet?"
"Ford," I said.
"Hmm," he grunted, and I gathered from the brief silence that followed that he did not immediately recall any jingles for the company. "Ford is better?"
This was a can of worms I had no intention of opening. "Some say. Mercedes, though: better than Ford and Chevrolet."
"Ah, yes. Mercedes."
"ZiL," I continued, testing my luck. "Better than Mercedes."
He stopped, and his big head tilted. "You have ZiL in America?"
No. I had ZiL, the Soviet car maker, only as the punchline of a joke in my act. But what are magic tricks, in any form, but well-meant lies and misdirection? "Very rare. I have to come to Europe to see them."
He grinned, now, for the first time. "And to see also your friend. You know her for many years?"
"Two days," I admitted.
The grin widened further. "Ah, yes. You will go then to La Nuova Toscana, of course? You have not known this? Mm. It is the other side of the bridge, on the river. Italyanski. It is very busy, but, you say only Volodya Chernye has sent you."
We were close enough, now, that Anna had spotted us, and she closed the distance quickly. Volodya, whose grin had not yet ebbed, spoke to her in German that was so heavily accented I could make none of it out -- not even when he gestured to me, and I watched the fur of the shepherdess's face darken with a deep blush. He turned, and gave me another pat on the shoulder.
This caught me off guard, distracted as I was by Anna's quirky smile, but in deference to whatever he had said I opened my satchel and fished out the bottle of whiskey. "From America," I said, and pressed it into his hand.
He beamed. "Thank you, America. Good evening, comrades."
Walking south, across the bridge, I turned to Anna with a raised eyebrow. "What did he say?"
She shook her head with a quiet laugh. "He say that you stop him for being lost, and ask where is the beautifulest girl in Berlin, and so..."
I chuckled. "It didn't take him long to find you."
Now the blush returned; her fur was dusky, and hid the color well, but it was unmistakable around her ears. "Did you really ask this?"
"No. He wanted to see my passport. And my bag... I got you something. Ich habe für du... um. Something." I held the satchel out to her, and she took it lightly.
We stopped, halfway over the bridge, while she undid the clasp and peered inside. It took her a second or two -- then her ears pricked forward, and she gave a little shouting laugh. "Ach so! Hershey chocolate..."
"My friend bought every one in the base exchange," I told her with a grin. "No more chocolate at Tempelhof."
She held the satchel close, a soft smile flicking over her muzzle, and turned to lean against the bridge. The late September afternoon, as it slid contentedly into early evening, was warm and gentle, and it was there, over the Spree, that I took Anna's paw, and gave it a soft squeeze that she immediately returned in kind. "I go to the river," she said, dipping her muzzle down towards the deep black water. Her voice was quieter. "Most Saturdays. So if I do not meet you at the café, still I go to here today, but, only by myself."
I laughed softly, and thought of what it meant for me. "I would be in the airport lounge. Drinking, probably. So this is different."
"Different," she echoed, and her fingers intertwined with mine. "But it is good, then, the past, you cannot change it..."
"No," I agreed. "Just the future, yeah?"
"Genau." She turned to me, away from the water, and grinned. "So, what is the future?"
I cocked my head, as though thinking, and then gestured expansively to the city beyond the bridge to the south. "Dinner?"
We found La Nuova Toscana after a brief search, every bit as busy as the guard had made it seem. I felt a little silly, using his name, but I told the host that Volodya Chernye -- Vladimir the Black, which I suppose suited his fur -- had recommended the place.
"Your friend?"
I shrugged noncommittally, but Anna nodded, and explained further in German -- which I did not understand, but persuaded the host with such vigor that he gave us a light bow, and showed us to a table in the corner.
Over mussels, when Anna chided me teasingly for being stopped by the guard, I tried to explain what had made me come back. So I tried to explain not Ryan O'Leary the tired magician but Ryan Tsosie, the young man whose parents brought him up to honor tradition even after the government killed their flock and forced them to live on welfare. I tried to explain how my brother Rick had joined the Marines to escape; how instead of becoming one of the Code Talkers he had died with countless others as cannon fodder on the beaches of Peleliu.
But I had enlisted anyway, because I believed in the American spirit. The war was over then; it was only by chance that I found a home in the new Air Force, fighting America's newest foe in the Berlin blockade. I tried to explain how much I had learned, then, about the world, about the Germans I had wanted so much to kill scant years before, about my own country and the strange vagaries of time and fate. All the while Anna sketched in her notepad, to show that she was following my narrative.
I talked about Korea, and leaving the service to find that the government was digging up my home to look for coal and uranium. I talked about the aimlessness that followed, drifting from place to place and job to job, trying to find whatever it was that let my comrades settle and put down roots while I wandered, fading away like a figment of the American dream.
And so to Berlin, and a sign that cordoned it off like the end of the earth, hoping for that one last chance; hoping that I might not be consumed by the ghosts of everything that I had failed to do.
When I had finished, Anna was quiet for a long while. "The world is this," she finally said, and held up the pad -- dense now with drawings; my life, rendered in graphite. "You know." She traced her pencil in rough chronological order -- an army helmet, an airplane, a fishing boat. A cup of coffee. A bar of chocolate. "Your story."
It looked more eventful, drawn out like that, if not more meaningful. "Yes," I agreed.
"I have one as well. It is not like this, exactly, not all the same drawings. But the same..." The shepherdess's brown ears swept back as she thought, fumbling for a word. "The same filled page. But the world is not just that, you know? It's this, also." She turned the sketch, revealing crisp, pristine paper.
"Unwritten?" I suggested. "A blank slate."
"For now. That, you must understand. It is... 'blank slate'? I like that. When you have a blank slate, that is a chance to draw something new. It asks for it. A blank slate needs you to be drawing -- anything."
"Like dinner at an Italian restaurant?"
Anna laughed; her smile was lopsided and warm. She sketched out the table -- the wineglasses, the plates, the food -- and held it up for my approval. "But this, it is your or my story?" She tapped at either side of the table on the drawing.
"Maybe they're the same?"
"Maybe," she said, smile widening. In the candlelight, her tan fur seemed to glow. "A good idea. It needs fewer paper..."
"Well. For other reasons, too..." I started to explain, when a clock began tolling from a tower down the street. I glanced at my watch and recoiled. "But I... I guess I should probably be headed back to the checkpoint."
Anna lifted an eyebrow, and turned another page in her notebook. At the top, in quick lines, she traced the outline of a guardpost, and a heavy barricade, and a sign. "YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR," she wrote, for effect -- and then patted the paper decisively. "This story? Not for tonight. Tomorrow you write this. Now..." She flipped back to the sketch of the table, and indicated the white space beneath. "Blank slate."
"Perhaps. But then where do we go from here?"
Anna's apartment was next to the Strausberger subway station, but we chose to walk, as Berlin slowly cooled around us. It was dark outside, and the sticky evening had finally drawn itself together for a storm; the first drops were beginning to fall, as we stepped into the apartment building and she guided me up the steep staircase to the third floor.
It was small, and she had turned the main room into a studio; sketches and photographs littered the walls in patterns I could not possibly divine. Some things I recognized -- bridges, churches, trains, people. Others were fantastic and wild, portals into completely alien worlds.
"Coffee?" she asked, her head tilting lightly. She had turned towards the kitchen, but her paw was still clasped in mine.
I grinned. "That was the first thing you said to me, ever, you know? 'Was möchten Sie trinken?'"
"Your German is better already."
I chuckled, and put my arm behind her, drawing her closer. "I have a good teacher." Our muzzles were separated by inches, and her warm breath ruffled my whiskers. But that's not what you'd draw in a sketchbook -- you'd draw what happened next, when I pressed my muzzle to hers in a soft, lingering kiss. Anna let out a sigh, as though the tension had left her body and -- coffee forgotten -- she wrapped both her arms around me, the touch light but firm and teasingly, intoxicatingly warm.
A peal of thunder drew us apart, several seconds later, and Anna's laugh was a breathless giggle. "Maybe the coffee, ah... another time?"
I tried to answer, but the sound came in a rumbling growl. Rather than making a second attempt, I kissed her again, and she canted her head to deepen the contact. When I obliged her, she drew her breath in with a gasp, and I felt her claws bunching the fabric of my jacket, kneading into my back and shoulderblades. I had desired the shepherdess for days, now, but this touch -- this fervent, raw contact -- was, I think, perhaps what I had been searching after for years.
That was all in the past. My tongue teased at her lips, and she parted them for me obligingly, letting me slip forward to explore her muzzle heatedly. Anna's paws left my back; I heard a dull thud, as she let my satchel fall to the floor, and presently I felt the touch of fingers, unfastening the buttons of my jacket.
For my part I was mapping out the shepherdess's body by touch. Her face and cheekruffs were so well-groomed that I hadn't noticed at first, but her fur was abundant and soft -- even trapped beneath her shirt as it was, I could feel the plush fluff yield beneath the stroking of my paws.
My jacket fell away, and a moment later she pulled away from the kiss, stepping back to take my paw firmly. She stuck out her tongue teasingly and drew me into her small bedroom without further ceremony.
To my credit, I lasted until she was seated at the edge of the bed before I found her muzzle to steal another kiss; this time, as our tongues met heatedly, she got hold of my brushy tail and, with one paw there and the other at my shoulder, pulled me down and atop her. When we broke apart, finally, we were both out of breath and panting.
She muttered something to me in German, and I replied in English; neither of us understood the other, and both of us were well beyond concern. We found other ways of communicating -- whatever she had said, my answer spurred her to unbutton her blouse. I helped, at first, until enough of the shepherdess's tawny belly fur had been revealed that I could run my paws through it, luxuriating in the soft warmth and the ticklish squirming that my fingers drew from her.
The plain, functional East German fashion had done her no favors, and when she had wriggled from the shirt I spent a long few seconds in paying penance to her form, stroking the thick, fuzzy fur over, and over, tracing the curves of her body until my fingers found a stark boundary at the waistband of her skirt.
For now, muzzle locking to hers in another deep kiss, growling in pleasure as her tongue slipped forward and into my waiting muzzle, I let my paws wander. I found the catch to her bra and, with a little assistance, unhooked the garment; she arched her back awkwardly, to keep from breaking the kiss, but with a little effort the damnable thing was gone, fallen away past the edges of our understanding. I smoothed the silky fur of her ample breasts, reveling in the soft moan she gasped against my lips, and each subsequent one that followed.
We were growing drunk on each other's bodies; her fingers were insistent and swift as they undid my shirt, and I stopped teasing her long enough to let her get it off me. Then I sank down next to her on the bed, pulling her close while she hooked her leg about mine. Her fur was warm and soft as it parted between my fingers, and as I teased the small of her back, tracing over her spine, she arched her body, hips pressing to mine in a firm, insistent grind.
I worked her skirt down quickly, and although the closeness -- and her wagging tail -- made the process more difficult I had it down by her knees soon enough. She kicked it away with a giggle, and drew away from the kiss to nip my ear, purring huskily there.
"Ich verstehe nicht," I mumbled breathlessly -- which I hoped meant 'I don't understand,' and which in any case I accented with a firm squeeze to the shepherdess's rump, still shielded by the thin cotton of her panties.
Anna laughed, shaking her head. What was there to understand, anyway? She uncurled one arm from around my back, and a second later I felt her paw between my legs, hot and insistent as she gave me a grope that drew my breath from me in a deep groan. This seemed to please her; she did it again, and I felt her thumb tease firmly against the catch before it suddenly released, and the constriction of my jeans went with it.
My paws were still in the area, and I worked her panties down quickly; she got the idea soon enough, and we disentangled long enough to shuck the sad remains of our clothing. Then, urgently, she pressed herself back to me, our bodies flattening against one another, and her hot breath tickled inside of my ear with one word. "Bitte," she murmured. Please...
I hooked my arms about her to roll her, easily, to the middle of the bed; as I pinned her, she let out a giddy little bark, and I licked the rim of her ear affectionately. The rest I did by feel -- nudging her thighs apart and shifting my hips until I felt the tip of my shaft brush over moist, inviting heat. We both gasped, at that first contact, and she drew her breath in sharply as I started to push inside. When my hips nestled against hers, and my length was hilted deep inside her, she let that breath out in a shuddering moan that I answered in kind.
I held myself there for a moment, adjusting to the wet heat that wrapped about me like a snug embrace. When I started to pull back, Anna gasped again, a sighing moan that sounded almost like disappointment, and her claws dug sharply into my back when I rocked myself back inside her.
My rhythm was unsteady at first, but I found the right tempo quickly -- fluid and firm, bucking against her hips in deep, full thrusts. At first the shepherdess confined herself to stillness -- eyes closed, muzzle parted and tongue lolling -- but soon her paws were stroking my sides encouragingly. Then she was moving with me, arching her hips to meet my driving, inward thrusts, crying out heatedly as I filled her.
Her nose was pressed up against the base of my ear, and I groaned helplessly as her gasps and moans poured out against the sensitive fur. My tempo started to build, and she cried out hoarsely. I couldn't understand her strained, panting words -- so I took my cues from the way they rose in tone and pitch; the way she started to shudder and tense up beneath my rocking hips.
I was trying to hold back, to distract myself, and it was the noises of our mating that caught my ear. It was all synchronized -- the slick, wet sound as she parted easily around my thick shaft, my heated snarls, muffled against the sheets, and, as my pace shifted, the tortured creaking of the bedsprings.
My thrusts were hard, now, quick and primal. My knot was swelling quickly; I growled urgently to Anna, between gasps: "do you -- want me -- to tie with you?" It's not a question they teach in English classes, I guess, so the phrase was futile -- but the tone was clear. So was the way her legs wrapped about me, keeping me from withdrawing too far, and the wanton grinding of her hips as I pressed inside her.
Then I was without rhythm, guided by feral ancestors. My hips rocked firmly, toes pressing against the bed to drive myself deeper into the shepherdess. When I pulled back, I felt her squeeze the base of my knot reflexively. I pushed forward again, harder, tip nudging at her deep inside, and this time when I tried to withdraw there was no give.
My hips worked in rapid, powerful bucks, as my muscles started to tense; Anna's cries became more guttural, and her claws dug into my shoulders. That touch was all it took; raw, atavistic pleasure spread through me with the suddenness and the grace of lightning. I drove my hips against the shepherdess and went rigid, trapped length jerking with the first hot spurt of coyote seed that painted itself against her inner walls.
Anna yelped, a quavering, canine exultation of bliss, and a moment later I felt her grip my twitching shaft tightly. The pressure ebbed a moment, then resurged, and she howled a wavering moan to the ceiling of her small apartment. The howl broke -- there were words, which I didn't catch, and a desperate cry of my name.
I returned it in a similar spirit, gasping it against her ear, urgently, between less dignified grunts as I pumped my come deep inside her, filling her with warm, thick spurts in time to the spasms that milked my shaft.
It took several moments before I regained control of my muscles, and then I slumped forward heavily. Panting and out of breath, I managed to support myself on one elbow. Another few seconds passed, after this, before I felt the grip of her fingers relax, and I wondered if she had drawn blood.
Now the shepherdess looked for all the world like a discarded doll; except for the rise and fall of her chest she was motionless, and her head lolled. When I prodded her with an outstretched finger, murmuring her name, she answered in a muzzy grumble. I grinned, and licked her ear.
This was not sufficient to rouse her. That took a dull pounding from the floor below us, and a muffled voice. One of the shepherdess's ears quirked -- then her eyes widened, and she batted at the window by her bed until it opened. "Entschuldigung!" A deep blush was visible beneath her fur and along her ears, and it deepened further with whatever the first speaker said next. "Leider -- nein!" Anna shouted, and then batted the window again until it slammed shut.
"What was that?"
She buried her muzzle in the crook of my neck, her ears still red. "Frau Koch," she mumbled. "She is under me one stairs. She wishes if we are now finish."
My snicker, I noticed, did nothing to help the blush. "What did you say?"
"Apologies. Then, so..." Anna bit my shoulder, gently, muffling her voice. "She asks if I can at least borrow you to her for some minutes."
I leaned back, and kissed the top of her nose. "Was that the 'nein' part?"
"Yes."
I hugged her close for a moment, and when I let her go -- seeing that her own embrace kept her anchored to me -- I fished about for the edge of the comforter. Drawing it over the shepherdess and I, I gave her nose a kiss. "Danke schön. I'd rather not go anywhere."
Not that I could anyway; Anna and I were still tied, and I wasn't even certain that I had the strength to walk down the stairs. Instead I yawned, nuzzling her between the ears.
The exchange with Frau Koch seemed to have sapped the last of her energy. With my yawn, she gave a muffled sigh. Her paws wandered down my back, stroking the thick brush of my tail. She petted me lovingly, but the movements of her paws slowed after only a few minutes, and she was still.
I took her ear gently between my teeth, and dropped my voice below a whisper, enunciating as best I could: "ich liebe dich." Je t'aime. Ya tebya lyublyu.
I love you.
She didn't answer, so I returned my muzzle to its place between her broad, pointed ears, and let unconsciousness take me.
In the morning, I woke to find her still asleep, eyes closed against an encroaching sunbeam. I didn't rouse her; the light would do that soon enough. Sunrise, like fate, is inexorable. We're not, after all, the only artists in that sketchbook that is our life. Sometimes we turn the page and find it already filled in.
The future held the heated argument with a border guard as I negotiated passage back on an expired permit. It held my return visit, and the one after that, and the tense, fraught escape that brought us both into West Berlin. It held our plans and our journeys, our shared hopes and our shared arguments.
And it held the things beyond us. The escalating Viet Nam War that would, in 1968, take Gregory Leigh's life. The fortification of the Berlin Wall; the acrimony, the despair, and the eventual reunification. The fall of the Soviet Union. The closing of the mines had had displaced my parents. There would even come a day, not yet written, when the sign at Checkpoint Charlie would be a tourist destination and not a dire warning.
All these things would come in their own time. But for now, in a quiet apartment well beyond the American Sector, I was content to watch Anna -- dreaming of possibility, and the blank slate of our tomorrows, aching for an artist's touch.