Act I: The Arrival
That's the first thing I recognise. The first truth that emerges. Slowly my eyes open and I try to make sense of the cacophony of sights, sounds and smells. A jumbled whirring of noise and colour, shapes and discord.
I remember something; a man. I can't make out his face but remember intently looking at his hands - stubby fingers topped with bitten nails that are holding a hand rolled cigarette.
'Sprechen sie deutsch?' A voice comes to me out of the ether and I try and focus on the direction from whence it came.
'Err... nein' I reply. My tongue feels heavy and too fat for my mouth.
'Oh good!' Comes the reply. 'My German is horrendous, though I am learning - just terribly slowly - but it's nice to meet someone who's even more alien than me!'
'Where...where am I?' My vision starts focusing more clearly and I can make out an impossibly glamorous woman who must be in her early twenties louchely decorating the end of the bed I am currently lying upon.
'Fraulein Thurau's guesthouse my darling, we found you slumped in the doorway late last night, well, early this morning. Passed out completely! Don't worry, I have been there myself...' she winked conspiratorially 'I always recognise a soul in need as a result. Can't tell you the number of situations I've been in where I've needed a kind stranger to set me to rights again, so I asked some passing gentlemen to help me bring you in and here we are! I've convinced the Fraulein that you're an old friend of mine who took a funny turn so she wouldn't ask too many questions... not that I don't have a few questions myself you understand.'
I try to hoist myself up so I can take in a better view of my surroundings. I couldn't tell if it was the speed and volume with which this creature on the bed was talking that was making me dizzy or if it was just a natural side effect of... well, of what I wasn't sure. Of whatever had caused me to be here I supposed. In this unfamiliar, odd, colourful room. Filled with colourful but odd and unfamiliar things I noticed. A gramophone? A fur coat draped over a chair? There was a painting propped up against a wall that looked like a genuine Gustav Klimpt...
'So what brings you to Berlin? Seeking fame and fortune? Been left bereft and broken hearted? Just wanted to be where all the action is? I would class myself as a little of all three truth be told darling!'
'I'm... I'm not sure... I still feel a bit dizzy'
'Looking at you, I'm guessing you're one of the broken hearted. There is nothing wrong with being a romantic my darling but you've got to learn to be pragmatic at the same time. A girl can't trust anyone but herself. That's always been my motto and it's seen me through thick, but mostly through thin!'
I said nothing but my heart twinged as she said all this. Another truth was trying to break free and see off the feeling of numbness but I fought against it. Whatever it was could wait until later when I had my bearings a bit more. It seemed she was waiting for a reaction so I laughed politely. Her expectant eyes seemed satisfied by this and she relaxed her heavily made up face into a smile.
'Drink darling?' she enquired.
'Umm... Water?'
'Psscht! Water! Not in this room! How about a scotch? That should put colour in your cheeks again darling!'
I acquiesced sensing that it was easier to comply than argue where this individual was concerned.
'Do you want a drop of water with it?' she sort of lightly said this, completely oblivious to the fact she'd denied seconds ago that such a liquid would ever be allowed to pass the threshold here.
'Sure' I replied, smiling gently. More of me was coming back now. Memories started rushing in to fill the gaps all at once: the man with the bitten nails gesticulating wildly with his cigarette, me hurrying past him and tripping over his feet or a tree root or something? It was all... it felt like one of those dreams that's very real at the time and then you wake up and think you're being silly for believing in it so much. It was like that but without the feeling silly.
'What year is this?'
'What year? Oh dear, maybe scotch is not a good idea for you after all' she said handing me a glass but furrowing her brow as she did so to let me know the level of her concern (I suspected the level of her concern rarely raised itself above a furrowed brow and a sidelong glance). 'It's 1931 darling, the most exciting time to be alive and we just so happen to be in the most exciting city to be alive in! Berlin has everything you could want, need, have ever dreamed of, never will dream of. It's fabulous!'
I downed my scotch in one go.
I had travelled through time.
What the fuck.
Act II: The Adventure
Margot was the perfect tour guide. If I were so inclined then I would have believed meeting her was fate. She was the perfect host to the Weimar Republic way of life. Known by everyone, adored by most (though not all); she knew where the action was taking place - and more often than not she was the cause of it. It took me a while to adjust. It wasn't just the shock of being in a different time; it was like a completely different world. The air itself felt different; crisper somehow, with a colder edge even when the warm sun danced around us. The smells were unfamiliar; everyone smoked for a start and tabacco seemed to be constantly lingering around me - it was like a ghost that followed me everywhere I went. Inside, outside - it was always there. Although German was the preferred method of communication it didn't really seem to matter where one was from. Even an English lass such as myself who would have been an enemy of this country little over a decade before (and soon to be so again as only I knew) was welcomed and encouraged to join in. Everyone under thirty seemed to have this mad passion for being alive. There was a constant whirr of activity - putting on shows, writing, debating, drinking, fucking, loving; everywhere you looked everything was attacked with an intense fervour. I guess they had seen with their own eyes the brevity and fragility of life and decided to make the most of it.
It was thrilling to be around.
There was no way that I, molly coddled white privileged and middle class I, could understand what these people had been through. Not just losing an entire generation of men - fathers, husbands, brothers, friends - but the years of hardship that came after it as well. When money cost so little that it would take a wheelbarrow of notes to buy a loaf of bread. When we have everything we could ever desire at our beck and call nowadays it was incomprehensible to me to think that most of the people stood round me had endured a poverty so consuming and insidious that they could not, would not, take anythign for granted.
And yet here I was; it front of all this spectacular derring-do, watching people genuinely live for the moment, watching them 'persevere and continue working' as the Max Planck adage goes, and I was nursing a broken heart.
My lover hadn't died, he hadn't run away, he hadn't been beaten to a pulp by creditors coming to collect what they felt was owed them; he'd just broken my heart. Very simply that was what haunted me. Such a boring, usual story; he'd betrayed me and it hurt. I was tired by even the idea of it. Everyone gets hurt in some way at some point in their lives but I hadn't seen it coming from him. All I wanted was to not be thinking about it any more. Margot sympathised for all of five minutes and then felt that I needed to 'get under someone to get over him'.
I wasn't so sure but smiled and nodded just to keep her happy. Although it seemed silly to be in a hive of decadence, fun and creativity and not sample some of the delights that were on offer I was happy to just observe these frolics, I felt no desire to become a part of it.
Which ran quite counter to the ethos of the Weimar children, in their dingy little shabbily chic clubs filled to the brim with the freaks and the geeks who drink and laugh and frequently fuck - those that didn't fit anywhere else in the world (though I was starting to suspect no one felt like they belonged anywhere and that was part of why they'd created this completely new society, to build a home for those that felt like they'd never had a home before) - who seemed to be all about living fully in the present. The past was boring and ugly. The future, well that would take care of itself (...to a degree I felt like telling them). The present was were it was at. Working, playing, they were considered of equal value. They wanted to do as much as they could, create as much as they could, lest it all disappear in front of their faces again.
Of course it wasn't all fun and games, the air didn't just hang heavy with the stink of cigarettes but also political ideology. Not everyone had taken the lessons of the first world war to mean the present should be celebrated and enjoyed. That one should pursue one's passions and create as much art, science, music, psychological theory, thatre, comedy, as one could manage. Some people decided that fear and oppression would save them. These people, I suspected, also seemed to feel rudderless and metaphorically homeless. Instead of building a new way of being like Margot and her friends were doing they wanted to take from what other people already had. They weren't about building from the ground up, they just wanted everything they'd never had and didn't care who they had to hurt to get it. They wanted the easy option rather than the more difficult, working for it and earning it and making it yourself option.
I worried that this was also my way of dealing with pain and fear and hurt. Wanting everything to be better right now and not caring about how I got from here, where it hurts, to there, where it doesn't. Any time I felt these thoughts get too heavy for me to carry Margot would appear and make me feel light again: 'Christopher Isherwood is here darling, didn't you say he's a writer you admire? Let's go talk about how devine it is to prefer boys to girls'
And so we would.
But no matter how impressive the person she introduced me to I still found myself watching more than joining in. There was an essential part missing and I didn't know what it was. My heart ached and I didn't know how to heal it. I was starting to suspect that this adventure was caused by me desperately trying to escape. I had willed myself away, hidden myself from the world I knew. That's how it felt. I was in the place and time I'd always wanted to be. And now I was here I realised how futile that was. However exciting it may have been, how ever many lost souls there were crowding the cabarets and bars, this for me was all wrong. I needed to do the harder thing, the thing the Weimar freaks were doing, what Margot was doing; live in the present. My present.
And work at this until it's worked out. Build something new and fabulous that was like nothing that had gone before it. Persevering no matter what had happened before.
That was my only option.
Act III: He Returns
I don't recognise him at first.
He stood under a tree in a shady spot maybe 20 paces away. He seemed to be picking at his hands while a hand rolled cigarette dangled from his lips. It was the focus he was giving his hands that drew my attention to them...
And then suddenly it all came back.
His hands. His cigarettes. The stumble I'd taken.
He looks up at me and a flash of recognition passes through both of us. It's him. My lover. The one who betrayed me. He's found me here, in the past.
He walks up to me slowly, shyly, 'Hi', he say softly. 'I have been looking everywhere for you.'
'So it would seem' I ravenously search his face with my eyes. The slight stubble, the squareness of his face, those dimples. I devour every inch.
'I would go anywhere for you. I have gone anywhere for you. To here, where it's impossible for either of us to be. I'm sorry for what I did, but we can work through this.'
'How did any of this happen in the first place?' I mean both the betrayal and arriving here. I find each of them equally perplexing.
'I don't know' he sighs. 'But I think we can figure it out together. I think we can figure anything out together.'
I launch myself at his face and kiss him hungrily.
Persevere and continue working says Max Planck. Whatever it is, whatever you want to achieve; persevere and continue working at it. That's the only way. That's what the kids of the Weimar Republic are doing. I pull away from him and see his beaming, beautiful smile.
'Where shall we go now?' I ask.
'Anywhere you want. We can go, anywhere you want.'
Persevere and continue working.
Always.
