Renate joined her man at the window.
“How beautiful. Greenery everywhere. And a ray of light in the sky.”
The sky was predominantly grey but there were streaks of blue if you had a sharp eye.
“True,” Arno said and put his arm around Renate’s shoulders. “Well, it is Tierpark.”
Eventually they left the room, going further into the nooks and crannies and grey concrete alleyways of East Berlin, venturing about like secret agents. The lived a low-key, heroic, operational life, existing in the reality of Memento Mori, Assuming Responsibility and I Am.
They were in Berlin. During the Imperial, Democratic and Nazi eras this was the nation’s capital, with a short break for Weimar between February and August 1919. The then, new-style government wanted the Thüringian town of Weimar, with its memories of Goethe and Schiller, to symbolise a break away from Berlin’s stifling imperial traditions. But it turned out that this move was impractical, so they moved the government back to Berlin in August 1919.
After World War II, Germany was divided into a western and an eastern part, and the national capital, the venerable Berlin, underwent a similar fate. As a whole, it was located in what was to become East Germany, and specifically, the city was divided into one western and one eastern sector. The western section therefore became an enclave, a western island in a communist sea. But there were both roads and railways leading there as well as flights. And the West German government in Bonn supported the city in various ways so that it wouldn’t go under.
They were in Berlin. Renate and Arno left the area at the Tierpark and eventually, after some more scouting, they left East Berlin entirely. Now Arno had a recon mission in West Berlin at Potsdamer Platz. This old focal point was now a vacant lot of mythical dimensions, located just west of the Great Wall. Right on Potsdamer Platz’ deserted plains sat a Gothic ruin, the war blasted remains of the Anhalter Bahnhof Station. The structure’s pointed arch windows crowned by round windows indicated the theme.
Arno and Renate approached the ruin. The sky was grey, the perfect climate for this city that was said not to be a place but a state of mind, a mental way of being: equanimity, overcast sky and mental zero. And this, to Arno and others, wasn’t an entirely unpleasant atmosphere. It could be fruitful. There was of course a vibrant cultural life in the western sector, partly also in the East. Many writers, musicians and painters lived in Berlin. They found the inspiration to live on this island of nowhere.
Arno sat down on a fragment of wall. He looked out over the deserted square, over the surrounding, enigmatic houses, and over the Wall which ran to the east. He remembered how he had fought near this city, remembered the operations at the Müggelsee in 1945. And now he was here, in Berlin, in the divided post-war Germany in the year of 1966.
Renate had gone some distance in advance. When she saw that Arno had halted she did the same. She stood in the vacant space and just stared, looking at him with an inscrutable expression in her eyes.
“What’s the errand? Why are we here?”
“What?” Arno said. “Indeed, what.” He looked up into the sky, letting the grey emptiness reflect his own mind: psychic zero. The more he looked at the sky, the more he saw that it wasn’t uniformly grey. For against a silver background thin rags of cloud drifted by, grey ghosts. And over everything was playing a Wagner Theme: Trauermarsch aus Götterdämmerung.
They went towards the remnants of Anhalter Bahnhof’s station complex. Once inside they were fascinated by the arches, pillars, water puddles and echoes of the past. Arno received visions from his dreams and his past, visions of archaic temples, Ringo Badger, smoke-covered battlefields, howling Sturmoviks in the sky, pine forests rattling with bursts of automatic fire, burning meadows, a grey castle with a garden outside, and all in one and one in all.
They headed up a staircase and along a gallery in the half-ruined house. Renate and Arno. Arno had heard that a certain figure lived here, nothing to do with the reconnaissance of the current criminal case, but important for his own past.
They came to an intersection with corridors going off in several directions. By instinct Arno took the one that led to a backdrop window that gave guiding light. Halfway to the window opening he came to a doorway on his right. In there, a light shone. Accompanied by Renate Arno went inside, saying, “Hello, is there anybody in here?”
He found himself standing in a large room furnished with assorted debris. The walls were dark. In the middle was, however, a light from a candle. And behind a desk sat a man with long unkempt hair and glowing eyes. In front of him was an open book in which he was writing.
Arno had received tips about the man. And he knew who it was: Lieutenant Tanz, the Platoon Commander he had in the Kharkov operation in 1943, well before he came to Battalion Wolf. The madman Tanz. The man who openly said he was crazy, even in 1943.
“Please, sit down,” Tanz said and looked up with an enigmatic gaze under his bushy eyebrows. He pointed at two chairs at the table. Arno took them out and gave one to Renate.
“I’m Arno Greif,” our hero said. “This is Renate Schmetterling.”
“I’m pleased to hear,” Tanz said, smiling at Renate. “And you, Mr. Greif, I remember, you were with me at Kharkov and elsewhere. We had a conversation about madness. And I’m still crazy. Whatever that means. I Am what I Am. I am Tanz.”
“What are you writing about?”
“I’m writing a book about characters in the flurry of existence. Environments, neighbourhoods, lines, moods, and all in one and one in all.”
“Fine,” said Arno, in a conciliatory tone.
The wind moaned through the corridors of the ruin. Arno asked about the location, if Tanz actually lived there. At this, Tanz lit up and said:
“Indeed I do. This is a zero location, a nowhere place. No Man’s Land. I get on rather well here.”
So Tanz was now a tramp, Arno thought. Well why not, if he liked that. Maybe he’s a rich bum, a Shadow Land aristocrat. Maybe he ambles looking for junk he can use, maybe he has a small bank account that he can live on. Perhaps the unkempt appearance was deceptive. Maybe he’s just another bohemian Berlin artist, happy with his pen and his work.
Renate asked Tanz to read a sample of what he wrote. The man got up and searched among his papers. He was dressed in a robe of silk. The white hair was tousled. But this was the genius look, Arno thought: long hair, crazy countenance. A murky madman and proud of it.
Tanz returned to the desk with a piece of paper. He paused and then he read the following, of a visit in a dream city:
“He walked through dense forests, over quaint meadows and past over-flowing watercourses. He came up in the mountains and saw a sky of azure and carnelian, mother of pearl and silvery auras – and there, on top of the mountain, he saw a shimmering city that took his breath away with its magnificence. He approached its delicate silhouette, wandered among the palaces with their footbridges and pinnacles and towers, the structures in their unearthly whiteness, marble and crystal and some other indefinable materials.
“He stopped in a square, a plaza surrounded by temples and palaces of silver and gold, coral and azure and opal. In the farthest part of the square was a palace that surpassed them all, the enthroned Tronadon where dreamlike building elements created a harmony beyond human comprehension. He fell into a trance, he fell to his knees, worshiping this unearthly palace.”
Tanz stopped reading. Arno was surprised. This wasn’t crazy, not clinically insane anyway. It was quite captivating, much like one of his own, more beautiful dreams. Renate for her part was enchanted, her eyes twinkling like a schoolgirl’s. Arno looked at her and he thought: if you can get that kind of reaction, then you know your stuff as a writer. Although personally Arno felt that this text was a little saccharine.