Ghosts of Berlin

WHEN HE WAS THIRTEEN, DIMITRI had his first asthma attack. He was playing basketball in the school gym when all of a sudden he felt his windpipe contract, as if from the size of a firehose to the circumference of a straw. A doctor was quickly called to treat him, but the high dosage of cortisone pills he prescribed made Dimitri’s face swell up. The attacks became a regular occurrence—a smoke-filled kafenio or a swim in the sea could cause a bout so vicious that his friends would have to come to his aid and rush him home.

Dimitri’s grandmother was convinced that the water was to blame for his condition. She insisted that the family buy an eel for the well. “It’ll eat up the muck in there.” At first, his parents ignored her advice, but after he had several attacks in quick succession, Dimitri’s mother gave in. When he pulled aside the heavy slab that covered the mouth of the well, he’d see it down there—a long, thin shadow, swimming in slow circles at the bottom.

Though their cottage in the Pindos mountains now had cleaner water, Dimitri’s asthma didn’t get any better. One morning, Dimitri found the eel floating dead on the surface, and his father had to fish it out before it could contaminate the water supply. Dimitri’s mother, fed up with pills and remedies, finally made an appointment for him with a city doctor.

The doctor gave him two inhalers—a blue one for daily doses, and an extra-powerful red one for emergencies. For many years, Dimitri never left home without stuffing both of them into the pockets of his jeans.

Time passed, and Dimitri grew into an affable, if rather overcautious young man. He did quite well in school, and was accepted to the prestigious Athens University of Economics and Business. There he discovered that he not only had a knack for trade, but also an aptitude for languages. He was hired right out of college by the Athens office of an international industrial conglomerate based in Munich. Dimitri would often fly there for meetings, sometimes giving himself a few hours to explore the city or have a drink with his German colleagues afterward before catching a flight home. Though he rarely needed it now, he still stored the emergency inhaler in his briefcase so he’d always know where it was.

When the economic crisis got hold of Greece and wouldn’t let go, Dimitri’s cushy life came to an abrupt end. He received notification from his German employers that they were shutting down their operations in Greece, and that his position was to be terminated.

Some months later, when one of Dimitri’s former colleagues got in touch to check up on him, Dimitri confessed that he was making ends meet by managing a souvlaki shop. His colleague had moved to Berlin and suggested that his employment prospects would be better there, but Dimitri wasn’t so sure. Though he had a bit of money saved up to tide him over while he looked for a job, he was worried about his German. While it was good enough to get by in everyday life, he felt it was in no way adequate for conducting business meetings or negotiating deals. But his colleague insisted. He was about to leave for a sabbatical, and Dimitri was welcome to stay at his place while he was away. It would be a better investment to bone up on his German, his colleague said, than to pay rent.

Dimitri arrived to a city alight with an autumnal palette of browns and golds. They reminded him of the intense colors that swept across the mountains of his childhood home around this time of year. With every gust of wind, leaves blew down from the trees in shimmering cascades. A few tumbled onto the windshield of Dimitri’s taxi as it made its way to the north Berlin neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg. In front of the building where it dropped him off, a man was slowly progressing down the sidewalk with a leaf blower. He blasted a jet of air into the gutter, whirling serrated chestnut leaves all about the ground. A second man followed close behind, raking up the leaves and shoveling them into a bright-orange trash bag. The men paused to let Dimitri pass as he dragged his suitcase up to the marble entrance, fished the keys his colleague had sent him from his bag, and let himself in.

The apartment was a spacious studio. His friend had partitioned the room with the clever use of bookshelves and Japanese screens. Dimitri was anxious to get started on his plans. Even before unpacking, he had connected to the Wi-Fi and was on his laptop looking up classes. There was a language school that took rolling admissions within walking distance of the apartment. He could start the next day. Without a second thought, he paid for a two-month course.

This turned out to be a mistake. Though he had selected the intermediary level, the exercises were annoyingly basic—just conversations about the weather and food. After three days Dimitri’s patience ran out, and he asked for his money back.

The experience had discouraged him from enrolling in another school, so the day after he dropped out, Dimitri set off to wander around the neighborhood and plan his next move. He knew little about Prenzlauer Berg save that it had once been a popular spot for artists and bohemians, though everything around him seemed more expensive than any genuine bohemian could afford. On Pappelallee, a bustling thoroughfare, every other storefront appeared to house some chic café or boutique. BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes lined the street.

Dimitri found himself walking through a small park where young mothers and nannies sat on benches gently rocking the strollers in front of them. He noticed a cluster of weatherworn tombstones, which seemed out of place in a public park. At the far end, there was a nondescript building with the words Bibliothek am Friedhof emblazoned on its windows. The Cemetery Library? Was he reading that right? Curious now, he entered the building. Despite its name, the library’s interior was unremarkable. Two large halls full of books flanked the entrance, with computer terminals clustered in the middle. There appeared to be more visitors browsing the web than the shelves. It seemed like your run-of-the-mill library, right down to the silence that was policed by a stocky middle-aged woman just waiting for someone to violate the rules.

“Can I help you?”

Dimitri cast a quick glance around the room before turning his attention to her.

“Yes, I hope so,” Dimitri said. “I’m looking to improve my German.”

“Well, we don’t offer language classes,” said the woman flatly.

“I’m not looking for classes. I am not that bad of a German speaker. I just want to polish it a bit.”

“I see,” she said. “We have language books and audio that you can check out, if you like.”

Dimitri envisioned himself sitting alone in his apartment listening to language lessons on his headphones. It was a depressing prospect.

“No, I don’t think that will do for me. Are there any other options? Some sort of study group?”

She looked at him over her glasses. Dimitri sensed that her patience was running thin.

“Well, what languages are you fluent in? English?”

“Sure. But my first language is Greek.”

“Then perhaps you can post a classified ad online for a tandem partner.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a type of language exchange. You meet up with someone who wants to learn Greek. You speak German; they reply in Greek. You correct one another as you go along. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

She looked at Dimitri expectantly.

“Those tombstones just outside. Are they real?”

“Of course they’re real.”

“It’s weird them just being in the middle of the park, isn’t it?”

“I guess. It used to be the Atheists’ Cemetery, if you want to look it up.” She gestured toward the shelves at the far end of the room.

With that, the librarian grabbed a handful of books from the returns pile and began typing away at the keyboard in front of her. She paused and gave Dimitri one final, resolute look.

“If you end up doing your studying here in the main library, please remember to turn off your phone and keep quiet. Danke!”

Late that night, Dimitri googled various groups for people looking for language partners, but no one seemed interested in learning Greek as a trade-off. Finally, he ended up on a message board for Berlin-based travelers. The site was entirely text-based. No images or animated GIFs, just messages requesting and offering all sorts of things: used armchairs, sex, exotic pets. He timidly typed in a simple message in English:

Greek seeking German for tandem language exchange over coffee.

Please inquire Dimitri Papadopoulos.

 He entered his email address and hit send. He briefly wondered if he had been too vague in his post, but resisted the urge to return to it. As Dimitri prepared for bed, he could feel his despair growing. He tried to shake it off by scrolling through news articles. The reports of the worsening crisis in Greece weren’t helping to give him peace of mind. He put aside his phone and lay there in the dark, trying to relax.

He was startled awake by the sound of an email arriving in his inbox. He grabbed his phone instinctively, squinting at the glare of the screen. It was from a stranger, a woman.

Dear Mr. Papadopoulos:

Many thanks for your message. I have been looking for someone to help me improve my knowledge of your beautiful language, and I would likewise be delighted to help you with your German. I only have free time later in the evenings, however, so I’m afraid meeting for coffee won’t be possible. If that’s not an issue for you, would you consider having dinner with me on Thursday at the Bateau Ivre on Heinrichplatz?

My best,

Lotte Wuttcke

Dimitri quickly wrote back asking if she could specify a time, to which Lotte replied with reciprocal speed:

How about 10:00 p.m.? I’ll put a white aster on the table so you’ll be able to recognize me. —LW

Dimitri checked the dictionary to verify that an aster was a flower. Then he replied to confirm the appointment.

That Thursday evening, a thunderstorm swept through the streets of Berlin. Dimitri held on tightly to his large beige umbrella as he ran from his front door to the bus stop two blocks away. By the time he got there, his leather loafers were soaked through with rainwater. Mercifully, the M29 bus pulled up at the little glass shelter only minutes later. He stamped his pass and sat down in the front row of the lower deck. The bus shot off, careening through the downpour at breakneck speed. A barrage of fat raindrops pelted against the dark windows, and though Dimitri could only dimly make out the street, he noticed the high beams of cars swerving to avoid the bus. Dimitri glanced out at the street again and realized the driver was steering the vehicle right down the middle of the road. A woman walked up to the front of the bus to complain about his reckless driving, but he ignored her. He was sitting hunched over, his hands clutching the wheel, like a coachman gripping his reins. When the woman kept up her protestations, the driver turned his head away from the road to glare at her. There were heavy bags under his eyes, the kind you tend to see in long-time drinkers.

Although he didn’t look especially angry, the complainant immediately fell silent and slunk back to her seat. Soon afterward, she pressed the green button, which let out a loud bleep.

The bus pulled over immediately. “Heinrichplatz,” a disembodied female voice intoned over the speaker. Dimitri picked up his umbrella. The door opened with a hiss and both Dimitri and the woman stepped out, heading off in opposite directions.

The rain had fogged up the windows of the restaurant. Inside, heads were bobbing to and fro as if suspended on long threads. While the guests were engrossed in conversation, a waiter made the rounds of the packed tables with a tray balanced on his hand. He too was reduced to a blurry shadow. Dimitri stepped through the door into the restaurant’s muggy clamor. Now he could clearly see the diners. He scanned the room for the white aster, spotting a flower with a ray of creamy petals on the table in the far corner of the room. Seated there was a delicate yet dignified woman with white-blonde shoulder-length hair. Her skin, too, was pale, almost translucent. He guessed her to be around his age, in her late thirties, early forties. He caught her eye and waved, making his way toward her.

“Frau Wuttcke?”

She smiled at him, revealing a fine mesh of wrinkles that made Dimitri begin to second-guess her age.

“You don’t have to be so formal, Dimitri,” she said in German-tinged Greek. “Lotte is fine.” She rose to greet him and gently shook his hand. It felt cool. She surveyed him, flashing a smile.

“You don’t look the way I imagined you,” she said.

“How so?” he replied in German, sitting down across from her. He was thinking the same about her.

“I imagined you would have a darker complexion.”

“That’s just a stereotype,” replied Dimitri. “There are Greeks who could pass as Northern Europeans. We come in many varieties.”

“Hmm. German men only come in two types, unfortunately.”

“Oh?” Dimitri asked. “And what are those?”

“Barbarians and bureaucrats,” she said with a wry laugh. “Not much of a choice.”

Her amusement had a contagious effect on Dimitri, who caught himself chuckling along with her.

“It’s a little peculiar to be here having a conference with a strange man like this.”

“I think you mean synantó—meeting someone—not synedriázo—which means having a meeting or conference.”

“Of course, how silly of me,” she said, slapping her forehead lightly.

“But otherwise, your Greek is very good.”

“Thank you,” Lotte replied. “So is your German.”

There was a momentary silence between them. Lotte took another sip of her wine, keeping her eyes firmly trained on Dimitri all the while. He breathed a sigh of relief when the waiter appeared. Lotte quickly snatched up a menu.

“You go ahead, Dimitri.”

“I’ll have the spätzle,” he said, gesturing for Lotte to order too.

“Could I have the steak?”

“And how would you like it?” asked the waiter, scribbling on his notepad.

“Could you serve it bleu?”

“We could, yes, but it will be cold inside. Is that okay?”

“That’s perfect,” said Lotte.

“What is bleu steak?” Dimitri asked.

“It’s raw steak,” she explained, “like tartare, but with a seared coating. It was my husband who introduced me to this dish. He always liked to order it.”

“Is he…”

“Deceased? Yes.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Dimitri gave Lotte a sympathetic look.

“It was many years ago. It makes me happy to speak about him. If that doesn’t bother you.”

“Of course not,” said Dimitri tentatively. “Tell me about him.”

“Well, he was actually the one who got me interested in Greece. You see, he was an archaeologist and spent a lot of time there working on excavation sites. I often accompanied him.”

“Really? Whereabouts?”

“He spent most of his time around Ioannina,” replied Lotte. “Beautiful city. Have you been?”

“Yes, actually, I’m from the Pindos region.”

“Such stunning mountains. We never got a chance to explore them, but you could see them from the house where we stayed. The lake too. What’s it called again?”

“Lake Pamvotida.”

“Right! I remember now.” Lotte nodded thoughtfully. “My husband worked on the Dodoni amphitheater site, not too far from town. I liked to stay behind and explore the shops across from the old castle walls. It was as if the place had been left untouched by the last century.”

Dimitri wasn’t sure what Lotte meant. During World War Two, Ioannina had been brutalized by the German occupying forces. There were monuments all over town in remembrance of these atrocities.

“It is peaceful there today,” said Dimitri, “but during the war, Ioannina and several of the towns surrounding it were…”

Was he crossing a line? How did Germans feel when the war was brought up? He hesitated, wondering whether he would offend Lotte.

“…devastated by the German army.”

Lotte nodded and lowered her eyes to the table.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying this.”

“It’s alright,” she said after a moment. “I know about it. The bombing raids, the massacres, the deportations. I meant that it is astonishing that the city should have recovered.” She paused. “In that way Ioannina is a bit like Berlin, where the remnants of history have even become tourist attractions. It’s incredible, considering the bleak past. I find that so interesting. My husband, on the other hand, wouldn’t have thought so. He preferred to focus on the battles of antiquity. Anything to do with the war wasn’t his thing.”

Lotte went quiet again. Dimitri wondered whether he had offended her after all, or if it was talking about her husband that was upsetting her. He took a slow sip of his water to give her a few seconds to gather herself.

“Lotte, are you okay?”

She raised her head and nodded at him, picking up on his unease.

“Well, now you know something about me. What about you?”

Now it was Dimitri’s turn to share a little bit about himself. He gave her a brief version of his life story, right up to losing his job and deciding to start fresh in Berlin. He also touched on Greece’s economic upheaval, with Lotte correcting his German at various points along the way. He was so absorbed in trying to put his thoughts into German that he didn’t at first notice Lotte’s leg lightly touching his.

“Such a shame you had to leave Greece,” she said, looking into his eyes. “It’s such a beautiful country, especially the people.”

“Yes,” he replied nervously. “It is a beautiful country. Just like Germany.” Only when he stopped speaking did he discover that she had not taken her leg away.

He felt his breath tighten.

“Will you excuse me?”

Dimitri got up and went to find the bathroom. He turned on the tap, cupped his hands, and splashed his face with cold water, taking a moment to regain his composure. After a few deep breaths he returned to the table to find that their food had come.

“This looks delicious,” he said, doing his best to sound casual. He quickly unwrapped his cutlery and started on his meal. Lotte sliced into her steak, which was garnished with fresh horseradish. She seemed very engrossed in the activity, wielding her knife with taut precision.

“You’re very hungry,” Dimitri said.

She looked up from her plate and straight at him. There was something resolute in her glance, as if her true nature was only now revealing itself. Her pupils were unusually small, her irises a piercing blue. For a moment, a thin layer of frost settled over their conversation. Phil Collins was burbling in the background, the nineties stuck in an endless loop. Lotte carefully put down her silverware. Her expression softened.

“I’m sorry—I sometimes lose myself when I eat. Probably not the best habit in a language partner.”

Immediately after they’d finished their meal, Lotte called over the waiter with an elegant gesture and asked for the bill. Taken aback by the abrupt end to their meeting, Dimitri handed the waiter his card. Lotte tried to protest, but finally relented. Then her face suddenly brightened.

“I’ve just remembered. I have something for you.”

She pulled out a package wrapped in oilcloth.

“I like to bake bread,” she said, somewhat sheepishly. “It’s one of my hobbies. But I always bake more than I can eat. So I thought you might like a loaf.”

She handed the bundle to Dimitri, who gave it a squeeze. It felt dense and heavy.

“What kind of bread is this?”

“It’s my special recipe. I won’t give away its ingredients, but maybe you can tell me what you think at our next synántisi?”

Lotte pulled out a leather-bound calendar book from her purse.

“Let’s say the same time and place tomorrow.”

She hadn’t presented it as a question, and without much thought Dimitri agreed.

It was just past midnight by the time he got home. The rain had stopped, and the streets were quiet outside his bedroom window. He lay in bed thinking about Lotte. Aside from what she had told him about her husband, Lotte hadn’t really shared anything about herself. It bothered him that he had failed to ask her more; he was usually very considerate about such things. And he was genuinely curious about her life.

Unable to sleep, he reached for his phone and googled Lotte Wuttcke. A Wikipedia entry popped up about an archaeologist named Heinrich Wuttcke, who had led excavations across Greece and into parts of Turkey. But Heinrich had died in 1946, over sixty years ago. Still, he wondered if there was some relation. On a whim, he searched for Heinrich Wuttcke+Lotte Wuttcke, but that only yielded some old photos of archaeological digs.

Finding himself still awake, he started clicking randomly through YouTube videos. He landed on one clip titled “Squirrels Play a Slot Machine. You Won’t Believe What Happens Next!” He clicked on the link. A small red squirrel was lowered into a Perspex box with chutes on both sides. “In a recent study,” a male voice began, “scientists tried to discern whether squirrels are intelligent. As you can see, there are two buttons in this box. They both light up once an hour. Pressing the blue button always guarantees a nut. Pressing the red button produces a jackpot of nuts once, but then never again.” Dimitri watched as a squirrel hit the red button. An avalanche of nuts came tumbling out of the chute. The squirrel was shown gobbling up its bounty and then maniacally pawing the red button for more. “Once a squirrel has seen the deluge of nuts, it will ignore the blue button from then on. It will keep hitting the red button until it has starved.”

Dimitri slept fitfully and woke up feeling tired and hungry. There was coffee in the house, but not much food. He glanced at the wrapped bread Lotte had given him. He pulled back the cloth to discover something more reminiscent of a clod of dirt than a loaf of bread. Its crust was a dark brown, while the inside was almost gray. It didn’t look very enticing, but Dimitri was too hungry to care. “Food is food,” he said to himself with a shrug. He spread some butter on it that he had found in the fridge, followed by a glob of acacia honey, and took a bite.

It tasted revolting. The bread was bitter, with a loamy texture and small, light-colored husks that got stuck in his teeth. He tore off a paper towel from the roll on the kitchen counter and spat out the half-chewed mouthful. Then he gulped down some coffee to get rid of the bad taste and swore in Greek. Dimitri picked up the loaf to examine it. It didn’t smell bad, and he couldn’t see any mold. He pinched out a white chunk and rolled it around between his fingers, trying to discern what it was. Forced to admit defeat, he took the loaf and threw it in the trash.

He considered canceling his meeting with Lotte and turning in early. But when he opened his email, he found another note from her telling him how much she was looking forward to their next rendezvous. He realized he wasn’t going to be able to wangle his way out of it so easily. He wrote back, asking if there was a café somewhere closer where they could meet, preferably a little earlier in the evening? He wasn’t feeling well, he added, and wasn’t up for another late night.

As usual, Lotte took only minutes to reply:

Lieber Dimitri,

Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I had such a delightful time last night, and was so looking forward to seeing you again. Unfortunately my job does not allow me to meet before 10:00 p.m., but I’d be happy to come to your place if that would work better for you. — LW

He hadn’t expected her to be so forward. But he didn’t want to offend her, and having to find a new language partner seemed like a hassle. He only had limited time in Berlin. If he failed to become fluent in German, it would be difficult to find work here. That could mean returning to Greece, which seemed to be descending further into chaos by the day. Dimitri wrote back a short note agreeing to her suggestion and giving her his address.

Despite what he had told himself earlier, about half an hour before Lotte was due to arrive, Dimitri caught himself making more of an effort to look nice than the occasion strictly called for. He put on a navy-blue cashmere sweater, fastidiously brushing it to remove any lint or stray hairs. Then he applied some moisturizer to his face, sculpted his hair with wax, and sprayed eau de toilette on the sides of his neck.

Around 10:00 p.m., the doorbell rang. He opened it to reveal Lotte in an elegant shift dress with an Asian pattern, made from a fabric that shimmered between black and dark purple.

“Du siehst gesund aus,” he said, which made Lotte chuckle.

“I think you mean: Du siehst umwerfend aus! I look fabulous, not healthy. But thank you.”

Dimitri felt embarrassed to be corrected on a compliment, and sheepishly asked Lotte if she would like a drink.

“I’d love a glass of white,” she said as she prowled around the apartment, reaching out to examine various objects. He uncorked a bottle of Chardonnay and poured them each a glass.

Lotte had returned to the kitchen and began surveying the shelves. “I hope you haven’t eaten, because I’ve brought dinner. Another specialty of mine. Is it okay if I start cooking?”

Dimitri was still nauseated at the thought of his aborted breakfast. Without waiting for his response, Lotte started tapping away at the oven display. It seemed to confuse her, and he felt the need to step in. He took a big swig of his wine and walked over to Lotte.

“To be honest,” he said, pushing various buttons, “I’m not quite sure how it works either.” Nothing about the stove seemed obvious. One button turned on a timer that refused to be set. Another, with a pictogram that resembled a stovetop, switched on the fan.

“Well, at least we know how to cool things down,” said Dimitri. Lotte let out an incredulous laugh.

“And they say technology will only make our lives easier,” she said, bemused. “Do you have the instructions?”

“I could look them up online.”

“Great,” she said. “I just need the stove top, a frying pan, and oil. I’ve already prepared everything else.”

Lotte rummaged around in her purse, pulling out a package wrapped in plastic and paper. With a quick motion, she unfolded it to reveal what appeared to be a fish sculpted out of grainy dough.

“Surprise!”

Dimitri stared at it, unable to hide his bewilderment.

“Is something wrong?”

“I’m—just trying to figure out what this is, that’s all,” he said, navigating around his dismay to spare her feelings.

“It’s mock fish!”

He shook his head, still dumbstruck.

“It’s my take on mock hare, which is just breaded ground beef mixed with other ingredients to give it body. Americans call it meatloaf, the English refer to it as haslet. I’m sure there is a Greek version.”

“We call it rolo,” said Dimitri, somewhat reassured.

“Right, so here’s my take on it. Instead of making a hare, I’ve soaked ground feed corn in cod-liver oil to make mock fish! Just wait till you try it. I’ll just need a frying pan and spatula if you can find them for me.”

As Dimitri searched the kitchen cabinets, Lotte scooped up the wrappings.

“Where is your trash can?”

“It’s here,” Dimitri said, pulling out a drawer and immediately spotting the discarded loaf. He’d forgotten to get rid of it, and now there was no way to hide it from Lotte. In a split second, she was there dropping the paper into the receptacle.

“I see you didn’t like my bread,” Lotte said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Dimitri had been caught. He looked up at her, momentarily at a loss for words, but to his surprise, Lotte was smiling.

“Don’t worry about it—it’s an acquired taste. It’s made from acorns. They’re very nutritious. They contain six percent fat, roughly the same amount as oats. I’m gathering them right now, in October. They begin to drop as early as September, but it’s the same as with apples and plums: the first to fall are mealy. You have to let them lie.”

“Is it a Berlin specialty?” he asked.

“You could say that.” Lotte laughed. Her voice sounded slightly strained.

“It was—interesting…Just a little bit bitter,” Dimitri said.

“Yes, it is a bit pikró.”

“To be honest, I was worried that it might be spoiled. I found these white chunks in the loaf.”

“Oh, that’s the chalk. It adds a bit of flavor and makes it easier to digest.”

“Chalk…like in school?” He wasn’t sure if Lotte had chosen the right Greek word.

“Right, or like an antacid. That doesn’t bother you, does it?”

He pictured her kneading the dough and crumbling a long stick of blackboard chalk into it.

“I suppose not,” he said, closing the trash can with the bread still inside.

Luckily, Lotte’s mock fish turned out to be a bit better than her bread. They had nearly finished the bottle of wine, and the conversation was less formal than it had been the day before. Dimitri had wanted to ask her more about Berlin, the culture, things he ought to know about, but somehow the conversation drifted back to Lotte’s experiences in Greece. “Unemployment was high, economic growth was low,” she recalled. “Restaurants had rolled down their shutters and grocery stores had aisle after aisle of empty shelves. People were starving.”

Dimitri was curious about what period she was referring to. Greece had a history of economic ups and downs—that had been the case for many years. But thinking back to his youth, Dimitri could not recall starving people. The only stories of famine he had heard were those his grandmother had told him about the time of the occupation, when the Germans had seized all the food supplies. Even fishing had become a punishable offense.

“I wish you could have met my grandmother,” Dimitri said. “I think you two would have gotten along.”

Lotte bent over and looked at him, intrigued.

“Oh, why is that?”

“She has—and you’ll have to forgive my German—the same peculiarities as you do. She was very resourceful and liked to make her own things, like recipes and remedies using unusual ingredients.”

“Tell me more,” Lotte said.

“As a child I was terribly asthmatic, and my grandmother suggested putting an eel in our well as a cure for my illness. And the funny thing,” Dimitri said, starting to chuckle, “is that we actually tried it.”

Lotte joined in his laughter. “Did it work?”

“Of course not! But not all of her ideas were wacky. My grandmother was a formidable woman. She could create a meal out of nothing and had cures to ease the discomfort of an empty stomach. That’s something she taught herself during the war. The Germans, as you may know, purposefully starved everyone because they thought Greeks were work-shy, as they put it, and didn’t deserve to eat.”

Dimitri thought back to his grandmother’s stories of seeing people die in the streets, bodies that were scarcely more than skeletons collapsing on the spot. Her recollections were often laced with contempt for the German people. Dimitri wondered what his grandmother would have thought of her grandson moving to Berlin. What would she have made of Lotte? He looked over at her. There was a strange gleam in Lotte’s eyes. Dimitri shifted in his seat. Had he touched a nerve?

“Go on!” she said, somewhat impatiently. “How did your grandmother survive?”

He thought for a moment.

“My grandfather had close ties to the black market, and was able to obtain food and cooking supplies. Olive oil was most valuable—it was like gold. On one occasion my grandmother found herself faced with a real dilemma because of that. A German soldier, a mechanic I think, pounded on their door one night. A car radiator had burst all over his arm and the side of his face, and he demanded to be helped. So my grandfather took him in and tried to use cold water to alleviate the pain. But the soldier begged for something better, so finally my grandfather took out the hidden olive oil and poured some onto the man’s burns. Can you imagine? Such a precious substance used to treat the injury of an enemy?”

Lotte looked at him, transfixed.

“Go on!”

Dimitri paused. He wasn’t sure he wanted to tell her.

“Well…the soldier demanded more oil to take away with him. My grandfather got angry and refused. And the soldier pulled his gun on him and forced him to back down. Then he grabbed their entire supply and took off.”

“What happened next?”

“I don’t remember. But one of their children didn’t survive the war.”

He stopped. Lotte had turned away from him. Her shoulder was shaking.

“I have to go,” she said, her voice thick with tears.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I know you didn’t.”

Before he could blink, Lotte had jumped up and grabbed her coat.

“Please stay,” he said, helplessly.

She looked at him with red eyes.

“I can’t,” she choked out, before disappearing out the front door. Dimitri heard her heels clicking down the stairs. He went to the window and looked down onto the street. It was drizzling outside; the glow from the streetlights was reflected on the slick asphalt. After a few seconds, Lotte appeared, clutching the collar of her beige trench coat. Dimitri watched as she made her way down the sidewalk. At the corner she suddenly paused and held a hand to an advertising column to steady herself. Then, as Dimitri watched, she slumped to the ground. It happened so slowly that at first he didn’t comprehend what was happening right in front of his eyes. He stared, expressionless, at Lotte’s motionless body.

Then he suddenly jerked out of his stupor and, without thinking, sprinted out into the stairwell, taking the stairs three at a time. Outside a mist of fine rain sprayed his face. He ran up to the advertising pillar, but when he reached it no one was there. He looked around. The street was empty.

“Lotte!”

There was no reply. He tried to call out again, but he felt his windpipe beginning to constrict. He grabbed his throat, gasping for air. Only when you’ve had an asthma attack do you realize just how many muscles you have in your torso. His breathing was growing more labored by the minute. No matter how hard Dimitri’s muscles worked, it was a struggle to get any oxygen into his lungs. As he sucked desperately at the air, he realized that he had left his emergency inhaler in his suitcase back in the apartment.

Eeh-uh…eeh-uh, his bronchial tubes rasped.

He almost dropped the keys as he was trying to open the front door. Once inside, he had to grab onto the bannister to stay on his feet. His apartment was on the fourth floor and he wasn’t sure he was going to make it. He gripped the railing tightly and pulled himself up, one step at a time. Brown spots were dancing in front of his eyes. Dimitri was afraid that he was going to pass out, but he somehow made it to the top of the first flight. He looked up at the next set of stairs and, gathering his strength, began ascending them as well. When, after what seemed like ages, he got to the next landing, Dimitri pitched forward headlong to the floor and stayed there, lying flat on his stomach, opening and closing his mouth like a fish thrown onto dry land.

Eeh-uh…eeh-uh…

As he began to feel himself blacking out, an uncanny calm grew within him like a tiny flicker of light in a pitch-black room. Summoning his last bit of strength, he picked himself back up and continued his climb, dragging himself up the final flight of stairs. On the top floor, he found his door open and his red inhaler lying neatly in a bowl on the entrance table. He spotted it immediately and, taking it into his hands, pushed down the canister and inhaled the cortisone mist. He coughed, feeling the stranglehold around his throat beginning to loosen. Relieved, Dimitri sucked in air. After his breathing had stabilized and his muscles had relaxed, he sat down on his couch, focusing his attention on his inhaler, trying very hard to remember when he had taken it out of his bag.

The half-moon jutted out above the clouds like a crooked menhir. As Dimitri made his way through Prenzlauer Berg, the navigation app on his phone led him down Raumerstrasse, which was crammed with tourists and young people. He elbowed his way through a throng of Asian tourists wearing black hoodies and thick glasses. He couldn’t tell if they were students or artists, or composites of both. One of them was rapping in English, his breath fogging in the icy air. Dimitri shivered.

He finally arrived on Helmholtzplatz, and recognized it as being in the same area as the library he had walked into a few days earlier.

Sitting on a bench beneath a streetlight was Lotte. When she looked up to greet him, he could see dark shadows under her eyes. Despite the cold, she was only wearing a raincoat.

“You’re shivering,” Dimitri said, rubbing his arms with his hands.

“I hadn’t expected it to get so cold so quickly,” she said.

“Should we go find a warm bar to talk in? I’ve been so worried about you!”

“I have another place in mind,” she said. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

She got up and gave Dimitri a frail smile as she put her arm through his. He was surprised by the gesture, but found it comforting at the same time, and let her lead the way.

“I just don’t want to go to a bar today,” she said after a moment. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Of course not,” Dimitri said. “Whatever you want.”

After two or three minutes they had left the brightly lit square behind and drifted together into the darkness. They weaved their way through Prenzlauer Berg, fin-de-siècle apartment blocks rising up on either side of them. An empty tram came clattering past them on Pappelallee on its way to the depot. They reached a wrought-iron gate that opened onto a park. Lotte silently gestured at a rusted copper plaque. Dimitri read the inscription:

Schafft hier das Leben gut und schön, kein Jenseits ist, kein Aufersteh’n

“What exactly does that mean?”

“It translates roughly as: ‘Make life here good and beautiful. There is no life beyond the tomb.’ ”

Dimitri thought about this for a moment. Like almost all Greeks he had been baptized, but he felt bewildered by the pomp and circumstance of the Orthodox church, by the priests with their long beards and the cloying haze of incense. Once he’d breathed in a lungful that had caused an asthma attack so severe the sexton had to call an ambulance. His parents never took him to another Liturgy, nor did Dimitri ever feel the desire to return. He found himself sympathetic to those who lived for this life only.

“I like that there’s no mention of God,” he said after a moment.

“You’re quite right. Why make reference to God if you don’t believe in God’s existence?” Lotte replied. “Come, I want to show you something.”

She gave him a gentle tug toward the gravel path. Around them gray tombstones protruded out of the ground, some bearing names, others left blank. Now Dimitri recognized where they were: it was the same park where he had seen the women with their strollers the other day. Only now it seemed much more like a cemetery.

Lotte stopped in front of a marble slab embedded in the ground. “This is my husband’s grave. He didn’t want any kind of religious symbolism at his funeral.”

Dimitri was surprised that they even still performed burials here. He looked around him. Right across from where they stood was a playground, and down the path was a coffee stand. The air was freezing. Suddenly Dimitri felt a tickling in his nose and sneezed loudly.

“This weather…” said Lotte sympathetically, reaching into her coat. She pulled out a flat metal box and pressed it against his chest. The object radiated a pleasant heat that spread in broad ripples through his body.

“Here, this’ll warm you up.”

“What is this?” he asked as he felt the warmth return.

“It’s a nifty little invention: a pocket warmer heated by a burning charcoal stick.”

“But what about you?”

“I’m fine, really. We can pass it back and forth.”

Dimitri wondered why there was no smoke coming out of it. He was about to ask Lotte, but she appeared to be lost in thought.

“I remember,” she said after a while, “attending parties where everyone would have to bring a coal briquette as the entrance fee. They’d use them to fuel the stove, and then people would dance and sing until everyone was sweating from the heat. It was lovely. Perhaps a little dance now might keep us warm.”

Lotte began to sing an old Berlin tune: “Lampenputzer ist mein Vater / Im Berliner Stadttheater / Meine Schwester hat’n Luden / mit drei jroße Seltersbuden.”

She gently took Dimitri by the hand and drew him close to her. He gingerly put his arms around her hips. The earth was frosty beneath his feet. When she stopped dancing, they remained in each other’s arms. She looked up at him out of the corner of her eye. Dimitri felt an impulse: now or never. He cautiously kissed her on the mouth. For a moment, they remained locked in a tight embrace. Then Lotte gently pushed him away.

“I think I should be honest with you.” Lotte paused, looking for words. “What I mean is that I owe you an explanation.”

She let go of his hand and looked down at her shoes. “The story you told me yesterday moved me deeply. The havoc the Germans wreaked in Greece during the occupation…When you read that at least a hundred thousand people starved, and possibly even more, many more than that—those are numbers I can’t even fathom.”

“It’s a very long time ago now.”

“Maybe for you.”

There was silence for a moment. Lotte took Dimitri’s hand. She quivered, on the brink of tears, but taking a slow breath, she pulled herself together.

“Did you know that during the war, we were gorging ourselves here in Germany on the food that had been requisitioned from occupied countries? But we paid for it. After the war we had to go hungry ourselves. There was almost nothing left—no crops, no infrastructure. 1946 was an especially harsh winter. We had to be resourceful in order to survive. People tore down their wallpaper and boiled it because there were nutrients in the glue. Others ate boiled leather or sawdust. People chopped down trees in the Tiergarten park to fuel their stoves. By then we had been forced to return to Berlin.”

“We?” asked Dimitri, suddenly incredulous of her story. Lotte smoothed down her hair. She stared off into the distance.

“Heinrich had been away working in Greece for so long. When we got back, we could we only find a small apartment with no garden where we could have grown vegetables. So I crafted meals out of whatever I could salvage. I was able to survive, but Heinrich just couldn’t bring himself to eat some of the things I served up.”

Dimitri prickled with sweat. The tenderness that he had felt for her only moments ago had given way to a more apprehensive feeling.

“People don’t understand what it means to starve,” she continued. “It hurts terribly.” She pointed at her stomach and midriff. “Here…and here. Your teeth become loose from the vitamin deficiency. Your stomach bloats up. You lose hope in your fellow man, you lose faith in God, you lose everything, until you are nothing but bones and skin.”

Dimitri wanted to put his hand on her shoulder and comfort her, but her outburst made him hold back.

As he cautiously turned toward her, he saw something scuttle past them down below. Lotte spun around. Her febrile tension only heightened Dimitri’s sense of unease, but he couldn’t help but follow her gaze.

“A rat,” he muttered under his breath.

“Look, there’s another!”

Dimitri spotted the second rat, scurrying from the opposite direction. Both rats seemed to be drawn to something hidden between the tombstones. Lotte chased after them, leaving Dimitri standing alone. He swore to himself and at all the atheists buried beneath his feet, then followed Lotte. When he reached her, he saw that she was holding something cupped in her hands—a rat frozen in rigor mortis. Its head and claws were twisted at crooked angles, its lips curled back to expose two needle-sharp teeth and a sliver of purple gum. Only its tail was slack, dangling between Lotte’s fingers like a fat grub.

“Lotte,” Dimitri said softly. “What’s going on?”

Lotte held the rat out toward him as if it were a dead child. She gave Dimitri a challenging look.

“My love, where do you draw the line? At bread made from acorns? Fish from cattle feed? Horse meat? Dog meat?”

Somewhere in the distance, a fire truck howled past. Lotte was briefly still, fixating on the rat with a feverish glint in her eye.

“Aftó pou epiválame se állous laoús, tha éprepe na eímaste se thési na to antéxoume kai oi ídioi!” she called out to Dimitri in flawless Greek. What we inflicted on other peoples, we should have been able to bear ourselves!

With a squelching sound, Lotte bit into the rat’s hairless torso. A colorless liquid ran out of the corner of her mouth. Then she vomited.