Breakfast in Berlin
Water Casts No Shadow
I never imagined that I was being observed as I sat in The Cafe Wintergarten im Literatur in what should have been the height of summer but was unusually cool for the second half of July.
I sat with my teenage son in the bay window at the end of the gorgeous, empty dining room. When I say gorgeous, I mean fabulously over-the-top gorgeous. The entire building had been restored to its former glory, financed by the German government and the banks.
Huge graffiti-like portraits dominated the walls and the ceilings were extravagantly adorned with twisting, writhing, spiralling branches of gold.
All the other guests sat outside.
I munched the crispbread as we waited for the warm food and the taste reminded me of interminable boarding-school diets in my desperate and unsuccessful attempts to be thin.
I ate the fresh fruit salad, the quinoa cereal topped with a cape gooseberry and knocked back a couple of cups of coffee.
We ate hash browns and scrambled egg, this was a late breakfast and our hunger had been sharpened by the delay.
I had decided to eat inside after the outdoor waitress practically wrestled the (indoor) menu out of my hand as I descended the steps to the outside patio to confer with my travelling companions.
I quashed my resentment; this was Germany, there are rules and rules are there to be obeyed. The indoor menus belong indoors; the outdoor menus belong outdoors. Never mind that they are identical; rules are rules.
I had already decided to eat at Cafe Wintergarten and no officious waitress was going to stop me.
My son and I get on like a house on fire when it’s just the two of us and we chatted easily, delighting in each other’s company.
I especially enjoyed this moment because if his older brother is anything to go by, any day now, he may turn into a seething, verbally-abusive cauldron of churning testosterone.
The (indoor) waitress told us a little about the building and generally made an effort to be polite and helpful. I am a “difficult” customer; no sugar, no flour, no coffeine, no milk, kinda like Sally in “When Harry met Sally” but she took it all in her stride; she also spoke perfect English.
I had visited the cellar bookstore and leafed idly through “Goodbye to Berlin” before going upstairs to eat.
As I held Ishwerwood’s book in my hands I was reminded of a half-German boy I knew once.
I closed the book gently and pushed him out of my mind as I always do. He was far away in Munich or London and I hadn’t seen him for more than twenty years.
I talked and laughed unreservedly with my son and as I glance out the window towards the terrace I noticed a man staring at me.
I realized that he’d been staring for quite a while, for after all, what is more compelling than watching people who think they are utterly alone. Who laugh and talk and engage each other without the inhibitions that awareness of being observed presses upon them. Maybe he, too, had a wife and son, maybe far away. Maybe he’d never had a family and was imagining that we were his.
Maybe he got sucked into the easy intimacy that family members share and was enjoying it vicariously.
I walked close to his table as I left the restaurant. I caught his eye and for the second time that day I was reminded of the half-German boy I knew once; his soft and refined brown eyes, his well-groomed appearance, his gold-rimmed spectacles and his ethereal calm tinged with sadness.
He looked me directly in the eye, not aggressively or rudely or lasciviously but with dignity and understanding. He’d already seen the real me and was acknowledging the connection we’d made.
I nodded back, letting him know that I’d seen him watching us and understood it on some level.
I walked away, my heart beating just a little bit faster than usual.
You see, water casts no shadow.
