Pankow

by Chiara Maxia

What am I doing in this apartment with you?

 The sky above Berlin is grey, the colours are sharp and dark. You fell asleep and your laptop keeps on looping a video of a 1930s cartoon whose black and white characters dance spasmodically to barely hearable techno music. Above you, there are pencil-drawn sketches mounted on the wall in the form of a storyboard. On your right, a chair with your clothes on it. On your left, the floor is an obstacle course of ashtrays, lighters, books, bottles of Sterni and Club Mate until the desk on which you give birth to your creations.

I met you on the train. You're mute. The fact that you wanted to communicate with me got me intrigued. Firstly, an alphabet of glances in the distance, then closer, then writing in German on a notebook. And to find out you had no other words to write in another language looked like a passionating challenge with mythological nuances. While the train ran silent and fast across continental Europe, we kept on talking: eyes, hands, glances, the few thin words I know in your language, drawings, tappings. Then I followed you in Berlin.

The mating ritual was short, but intense. When the word fails, there's a whole universe screaming in its place. Language is a structure as frail as a sparrow's ribcage, unfit by nature to carry the heaviness of emotions. Even trying in every way and with the best of intentions, feelings cannot be converted into words, it's never the same thing, and that's an objective fact like "water boils at one hundred degrees Celsius". One of those things you just have to accept.

We ended up on your mattress, looking at each other, communicating with our para-verbal system. I had an orgasm, then another, even if less strong. You too. We cuddled.

At the beginning, I was afraid, of course. I had the same fear of every girl grown up in the presence of mother, father, television, school, society. Warning. Beware. Beware of males, beware of strangers, beware of others, beware of everything. It's dangerous, you end up badly, dark alley, ambulance, hospital, morgue, obituary. You could have been anyone. You could have had a murky past casually picked among the thousands of stolen childhoods that subsequently evolve into misfits and malfunctioning adults. You could have been a thief, a killer, a rapist or, at best, a subnormal. Instead, I find out you're none of this.

You smoke weed and tobacco. You read Kundera. You go for groceries in the supermarket two blocks away, preferring vegan and cruelty-free products. You listen to Kraftwerk. You know who Klaus Nomi is, and you know why he's important. You find Bauhaus sublime, as well as the homonymous post-punk band. You love yoga, you hate fast-food restaurants. You're an artist. We're similar. You're not dangerous. You're not a maniac. You're not a thief. You're nothing. And after forty-eight hours, in spite of the linguistic impediment, we've already run out of things to say to each other. Bitter truth is that, if I knew German and your phonetic apparatus worked, we would have run out of them in less than two hours.

What am I doing in this apartment with you.

I smoke a cigarette looking out of the window. I watch the afternoon sky, the buildings, the street, bicycles, dogs, the Rewe, Turkish kebab shops, the lives of others. I turn around and look at you, in your quiet post-wine and post-sex sleep. I inhale the last drag and stub it out.

I silently collect my belongings, wear my backpack, my shoulder bag. I walk towards the apartment door and close it behind me. It is the right thing. Better if this short story we created together painlessly slides from sleep to death without having to submit ourselves to the humiliating ritual of goodbyes and explanations.

Stairs, main entrance, U-bahn. Bye.

BIO: Chiara Maxia is an actress and writer originally from the island of Sardinia, Italy. She has lived in different places includin England, Moscow and Paris, where she graduated in Film Acting. She now lives between France and Italy. Her work has appeared, among the others, in the Tint Journal, The Opiate, Open Door, and Our Verse Magazine.