When the Timing Is Not Right, Is the Opportunity Lost Forever?
This is not Mother’s Day in England. Mothering Sunday, as it is called there, was on March 27. When I was in England, I had a hard time remembering this. The decision that I had to make in the third week of Trinity term 1987 was whether to go to Berlin for the weekend with K.P. The rule that I had made for myself during Hilary term was that I would only see him once a week in a public place because he was married. I would have to violate that rule.
The 1987 May Day Riots in Berlin
The Marxist International Socialist Congress in 1889 had chosen May 1 for a demonstration on behalf of working-class demands for an eight-hour work day. Nearly a hundred years later, International Workers’ Day (especially in the Eastern Bloc countries) was still being celebrated as an occasion to air workers’ grievances. I had even attended a number of May Day demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin, before I came to Oxford because my housemate/boyfriend was a Marxist and pro-labor.
On May 1, 1987, a riot broke out in the Kreuzberg district of West Berlin. It began as a peaceful demonstration, but by night, the demonstration had turned violent—a supermarket burned down, whole streets were set on fire, and people were injured.
K.P. was going to Berlin to cover the story for his newspaper and as part of his Reuters project. He described Berlin as the “Paris of Eastern Europe,” a place where things were happening. I really wanted to go to Berlin. The problem was that I did not want to go with K.P. I didn’t trust him to get separate hotel rooms, and the fact that he was paying for the entire trip placed an uncomfortable obligation on me. So, I declined the invitation.
A Second Chance to Go to Berlin
Two years later, in the autumn of 1989, I was living in Zurich with my housemate/now husband and our 18-month-old daughter Helyn. I had received a research scholarship from the James Joyce Stiftung in Zurich, which was founded in 1985. The Stiftung provided us with a nearby flat on the cobblestone street called Niederdorfstrasse as well as a stipend for living expenses.
James Joyce lived in Zurich twice—once during World War I and again during World War II. He died in Zurich in 1941 and was buried in Fluntern cemetery. At the Zurich Central Library, I examined two books that he used as sources for Ulysses. However, I did not find any marginalia in his handwriting. As a contribution to the Stiftung, I created a database of books and articles about Joyce and gave my first lecture there. The most important thing though was that I had daily conversations with Fritz Senn, one of the world’s most eminent Joycean scholars.
The political events of November 1989 centered on what was happening at the Berlin Wall. My housemate/husband wanted to drive up to Berlin, an eight-hour drive from Zurich. I still wanted to go to Berlin, and this time I had someone who I wanted to go with. However, we decided that it was too dangerous to take Helyn into a potentially violent situation.
Helyn (now grown up) is one of the founders of the Once in a Blue Moon Café that will be at Glastonbury Festival (officially) for the first time this year. The café will also be at ten other festivals this summer, see list. Here is the story of the cafe.
Berlin with the Wisconsin UCC Gospellers
Twenty-seven years later in 2016, I had a third chance to go to Berlin. Some friends from the United Church of Christ (UCC) invited me to join their statewide Gospel choir for a singing tour in Eastern Germany. The Wisconsin UCC Gospellers were hosted by a sister choir in Eberswalde, Germany, where we rehearsed together before performing at a series of venues.
Although we flew into Berlin, we went immediately to Eberswalde, where we met our German hosts. Alicia and I were staying with Andreas, who would have qualified as a superhost if he had been on AirBnB. Andreas gave each of us a guidebook to Berlin and another personal gift. In my case, it was a blank notebook to use for drawing and journaling on the trip. For dinner, he grilled ostrich steaks and afterwards played the guitar and sang for us. Alicia and I were charmed and too excited to go to sleep until late that night. The next day, after rehearsal, he took us out to eat at a former monastery across the border in Cedynia, Poland.
I don’t remember exactly when Martin showed up. He must have been there from the very beginning as part of the Eberswalde choir. Both of us tended to migrate to wherever Andreas was sitting, so I assumed that they were friends. But at the same time, I wished that he would not be so ever-present because Andreas and I had no time alone to talk.
Midway through the tour, we had a day off in the quiet little village of Kollm, Sachsen. The village felt deeply familiar to me, as if I had seen it in my imagination while reading Tolstoy. I was filled with a vague, but intense feeling of longing. Instead of seeking company, I walked to the edge of the village, where I found a great manor surrounded by a crumbling wall. The manor was derelict and showed signs of having been used by the communists for communal purposes.
I took off my hat, sat on a bench outside the wall, and leaned back against the warm stones. The longing belonged to this place. I closed my eyes and imagined that I was a countess in the nineteenth century and that this was my home. I had no work obligations and could sit here all afternoon. Later, I would dress for dinner or perhaps attend a ball. I mourned the loss of a time that I never lived in.
I imagined that I knew how to draw and took out my notebook. I looked at the tall yellow wild flowers and royal purple larkspur along the edges of the field. The sky was at times clear and sunny, then pitched into shade by passing clouds. Ripples of wind across the wheat looked like ocean waves sweeping a bright line swell in a swoosh, then back like a rip tide.
I longed for someone to care enough about me to come find me. Perhaps I was hoping that Andreas would notice I was missing and set out to look for me. But I did not believe that would happen. I meditated for an hour or so until I was interrupted by the sound of people on the nearby path.
Andreas, Martin, and a German couple called out and motioned for me to join them on their walk. So, I left the place of longing. We were a merry band of wanderers. When we passed a cherry tree, I reached out to pick a ripe cherry. The Germans told me that the wild cherries were always bitter, but I ate it anyway. Then I clapped my hand over my mouth and pretended to collapse.
“Yah, yah, we told you,” they laughed.
“No, it’s sweet,” I laughed and grabbed a handful, “there must be something wrong with it.”
As we rounded the turn toward the village, I found myself falling behind. Martin slowed down to join me. We walked in silence because I did not speak German, and he did not speak much English. However, he did tell me the name of an aqua blue car that we passed: a Trabant, the East German “people’s car.” And later that night, when I sat down to dinner alone, it was Martin, not Andreas, who sat down beside me.
We parted company with the Eberswalde choir the next day and joined up with another gospel group for five days of concert performances.
On the last day of the tour, we were scheduled to spend the day in Berlin. Alicia was not feeling well, so she stayed in the room; Andreas had to work, so he did not come. The Wisconsin UCC Gospellers had lunch together at a restaurant, then dispersed. I went to St. Nicholas Church and spent an hour doing sketches of the tracery and designs. When I went to leave the church, I saw Martin sitting by the door waiting for me. He had come to Berlin and somehow found me. And by that action, I was completely won over.
Martin took me for coffee at an outdoor cafe, told me about his experiences with the Wall, and showed me Marienkirche, where his family went to church when he was a child. I finally got to see Berlin with exactly the right person.