a novel in the making

Posts tagged “Berlin”

Sunday afternoon mood

As I am sitting here writing these lines, I’m looking over to the front door of the house across. A guy with a leather jacket and a hood on his head is pacing while smoking a cigarette and talking on his mobile. The mirror of a scooter is throwing the sky back at me while a young girl wearing a head cover and a blue coat walks past. The twigs and branches of the tree in the backyard are bouncing up and down in the wind. It’s the typical view from my desk. Nick Cave is howling out of the speakers left and right from my desk and it’s totally understandable how I can’t keep the words flowing. His voice drags me off the sentences and I feel inclined to listen to his lyrics. An old gnarly Turkish woman in a brown coat is trying to keep her skirt from falling down while searching for her keys. A woman around 30 with a boy of 5 or 6 step out of the house. She holds the door for the old lady. Now a couple of men walk towards the door, one of them with an orange plastic bag from the vegetable stall on the parking lot of the DIY shop two backyards from here. He has grey hair with black sprinkles and walks with no inclination to rush whatsoever. It’s 3 pm and none of these people seem to have 9 to 5 jobs. That’s my neighbourhood; it’s always in a Sunday afternoon mood. The sun is breaking through the clouds again. I can’t wait for the summer to be here.

Speaking of Nick Cave … the other day I posted about my rather sarcastic message to a seller of second hand books (read it here). They had sent me a really ridiculous book instead of the Nick Cave biography I ordered. To my surprise they actually answered. They told me that they didn’t have the book in stock after all, oh surprise, and offered to refund me. This is actually quite interesting, since I didn’t even ask for a refund. Maybe my sarcastic message had a certain impact.

Since I actually needed the book as research for my own novel, I ordered it new instead. This way I could only order a paperback edition though, since the hardcover seems to be out of print. However, now I feel generally really disgusted by the entire experience, since the new book arrived in a worse condition than I expect from a second hand book. The cover has dents, because of a sloppy binding and the paper is wavy as if it was lying in water for a while. The picture pages can hardly be peeled apart, because the book is such a shitty production altogether. I feel sorry for Ian Johnston, the author of the book, since Clays Ltd, St Ives have done such a despicable job of producing it. I sincerely hope that my own novel won’t suffer the same ill fate.

Speaking of the book. The delivery man caught me off guard yesterday, after a writing bout until 3 am. It’s a long way from the bed to the door. Yesterday evening I got the book from a neighbour, middle-aged with a friendly face, who came down to my door to give me my package. Apparently he also doesn’t have a 9 to 5 job. The neighbours here are friendly and sometimes you see them stop on the stairs to talk to each other. There is no rush.

The other day one of the neighbours’ boys waited for his friend outside the door of their flat, the one across from mine. He saw me coming up the stairs and got inside as quickly as he could. He was so quick that I couldn’t guess his age, but definitely young. The door was still open, but I couldn’t see him. He was hiding. I unlocked my own door and as I was closing it from the inside I saw the boy peeking at me from behind his door just as I was peeking at him from behind mine. One of the older neighbours’ boys, I can only guess as to how many there are, also once brought me a package over. A friendly guy, definitely working age, but younger than me. We had a quick chat and he was somewhat surprised, since he apparently didn’t know that I had moved in. Understandable, since Nick Cave howls far from the stairwell. A third neighbours’ boy leans out the window to smoke right now.

I once lived in a bedsit in a concrete block in Kaarst, a small town near Düsseldorf. The neighbour next door was a junkie just out of rehab. His girlfriend was trashing all of his furniture on the day after he moved in, at 6 in the morning. She was out of her mind on drugs. A few months later, just when I was going out, the father from down the corridor struck the junkie in the face, because that fucked up guy had hit his girl on the corridor during a row. He tried to justify himself. “She’s out of her fucking mind, taking heroin while carrying my child. She deserves it”! The father from down the corridor said “Don’t blame her. You’re the madman hitting a pregnant woman! You pick a woman, you live with your choice. Try hitting her again and I call the police”. Then he went back to his 2 room flat at the end of the corridor. They always had the door open, because there were at least 5 people living there, including a gnarly old grandpa with a cane. Of course it was a Turkish family. Generational family homes are otherwise uncommon in Germany.

My neighbourhood here in Berlin has a bad reputation. It’s supposed to be a place full of youths up to no good. However, I know what a bad neighbourhood is and this isn’t one of them. What I see is kids playing ball on the street, people who talk to their neighbours, families who take care of their elderly and builders coming home from work. I see a laundry delivery guy bringing a suit for someone in the house next door. I see a couple walking their two dogs while holding hands. I see the waitress of the café in front of the retirement home chatting to her girlfriends across the bar. Youths are always up to no good, but at least this is a neighbourhood in the real sense of the word, where neighbours talk, take packages for each other and, better still, where it’s always Sunday afternoon. Or was it Saturday? Ah, never mind, what day is today anyhow?

Homer Simpson: [lounging on the couch in his pajamas, drinking beer] Ah. I love these lazy Saturdays.
Marge Simpson: It’s Wednesday, Homer.

March 20, 2012 | Categories: meta | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

character development in the subway

Did you ever notice that there much more crazy people in big cities? Well, yesterday I was on the subway here in Berlin and was suddenly surrounded by all sorts of strange characters. It was about 8pm on a Friday night and I was on my way home from buying a new desk. So we had:

  1. the junkie
  2. the dog
  3. the dog hater
  4. the dog owners
  5. the dog lover
  6. the homeless man
  7. the bottle collector
  8. the asshole
  9. the friend of the asshole

Now, let me just paint the picture for you:

1. the junkie

He looked almost young, but he had extremely weird bags under his eyes that were as pale as the rest of his skin. He had unwashed thin brown hair that almost reached his shoulders. He was wearing mascara combined with army boots, black jeans, a brown leather jacket of indefinite age, mismatching ski gloves – one brown one black – , a weird black women’s hat with a grey hatband behind which he had stuffed a tea spoon. He had also over-sized yellow children’s sunglasses lying on the rim of the hat that suggest his origin in the punk scene. Apart from that he sported the most bored look imaginable that would still dart from one person to the next.

2. the dog

An old female German shepherd’s dog with brown fur, slightly hanging ears and rather melancholic eyes. Several times she tried to escape out of the grip of the male dog owner.

3. the dog hater

Arab with a white beard who was sitting down. As soon as he saw the dog standing next to him he reacted as if he was offended, stood up and left.

4. the dog owners

A man and a woman. He sported indefinite male looks with indefinite clothes, rather indiscriminate. He was standing and kept the dog locked between his legs. The woman was blond with chin long hair, a Scandinavian face, boots and a good coat. Both youngish, probably early 30s. She sometimes started talking to the dog and made noises to get her attention.

5. the dog lover

Indefinite male character, starts asking questions about the dog, for example whether he is afraid. The owner now starts making sure that the stranger knows that the dog is female. A quick superficial comment of the dog lover says that it looks as if the dog was afraid, since the male dog owner has to keep her between his legs.

6. the homeless man

He is far to the left, so I neither see his face nor his clothes. He sports a slurring voice that suggests how unhealthy it must be to live out there in the street while it’s as cold as it is now. He desperately tries to sell his homeless magazine for the price of “only 1.50€” and “maybe you can also spare a few cents so that I can wash my clothes”. When the homeless man gets onto the subway the other passengers scurry away as if they were dealing with a leper. I can hear their thoughts “Oh god, I hope he doesn’t touch me.”

7. the bottle collector

The reaction of the passengers to him is similar to that towards the homeless man. They scurry in all directions when he sits down, the female dog owner gets up and the bottle collector takes her place. He has a little shopping cart, like the ones old ladies use, and a plastic bag from a cheap supermarket is tied to its handle. It gets dislodged several times and falls to the side, which he is trying to prevent while mumbling to himself. When he got the bag under control he puts his hand deep into the shopping cart as if he was artificially inseminating a cow and produces a bottle of beer. It is obvious by now that he’s staggeringly drunk. He gets the bottle opener out of a front pocket of the shopping cart fiddling a long time to find the pocket, finding the bottle opener in the pocket and struggling not to let it slip out of his hand. After he has opened the bottle the opener disappears more quickly back to its original place. The unshaven face of the bottle collector scrounges up as if he’s eating a lemon when he is drinking from the bottle. Apparently he doesn’t like beer. A shame really, since that’s all he can afford.

8. the asshole

He is wrapped in stylish attire, or what he thinks that entails. Padded running shoes that honestly look silly, but which are probably incredibly expensive, jeans of a tight, but not too tight fit, with the tag of one of the expensive brands, a jacket that is hardly enough for the weather but looks expensive. His face is red, as if he’s too warm or on weird drugs. He’s young, but older than his friend, maybe 25. Short spiky hair cut with about a ton of hair gel in it, eyebrow piercing. He probably has a distasteful tattoo somewhere under his clothes too. Every couple of minutes he speaks on his smartphone which is for some reason pink. First I think that he might be gay since he’s paying too much attention to his clothes, but then he doesn’t quite have the right style and shouts too loudly while he’s speaking on the phone. After his first phone conversation he says to his friend. “That was my half girlfriend. You met my proper one, but you gotta meet her too, she’s gorgeous. A little stupid though.” Yeah, you gotta be talking, idiot! Later on the way out he shouts at random strangers that he finally has arrived. Definitely drugs, but no idea what kind.

9. the friend of the asshole

He sports the gangster style, baggie clothes, instead of a coat he wears one of those sports jumpers into which two guys of his stature would fit. He has a baseball cap sideways on his head. About 18, seems almost shy, but he might be played down by his cocky friend. His comments are short and I can’t hear them from where I am sitting. When they leave the train he trots behind the other guy like a silent shadow.

Obviously the junkie, the bottle collector and the asshole left more traces in my memory, but this doesn’t mean that they are good characters for main protagonists. They are too far removed and it’s hard to feel empathy for them without further characterization. I feel compelled by the male dog owner who remained somewhat indefinite, since he didn’t speak and had nothing special about him. Also the friend of the asshole seems worth exploring. How and why does he cope with that cocky bastard? However, these passing characterizations might actually be enough to make a subway ride more vivid, maybe that’s enough already.

So, now I know it: Next time I need some character meat I just get on the subway for a while and watch people.

February 18, 2012 | Categories: writing process | Tags: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments