"Elizabeth Hand - Calypso in Berlin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hand Elizabeth)

cheese while trains racketed overhead. The wall behind me was riddled with bullet holes. If this building
had been in the western part of the city, it would have been repaired or torn down. In the east there was
never enough money for such things. When I placed my hand upon the bullet holes they felt hot, and gave
off a faint smell of blood and scorched leather. I finished my lunch and picked up a bit of stone that had
fallen from the wall, put it in my pocket with some chestnuts I had gathered, and walked on.

The sun came out after a bit. Or no, that may have been another day—almost certainly it was. The leaves
were gone from the linden trees, but it was still lovely. The people were quiet, speaking in low voices.

But they were seemingly as happy as people ever are. I began to take my sketchbooks with me when I
walked, and I would sit in a cafe or a park and draw. I found that I could draw Philip from memory. I
began to draw other things, too—the lindens, the ugly modern buildings elbowing aside the older terraces
that had not been destroyed by the bombings. There were empty fountains everywhere; and again, here
in the eastern part of the city there had been no money to restore them or to keep the water flowing.
Bronze Nereids and Neptunes rose from them, whitened with bird droppings. Lovers still sat beside the
empty pools, gazing at drifts of dead leaves and old newspapers while pigeons pecked around their feet.
I found this beautiful and strange, and also oddly heartening.



·····


A few weeks after my arrival, Philip called. I hadn't replied to his e-mails, but when my cell phone rang, I
answered.

"You're in Berlin?" He sounded amused but not surprised. "Well, I wanted to let you know I'm going to
be gone again, a long trip this time. Damascus. I'll come see you for a few days before I go."

He told me his flight time, then hung up.

What did I feel then? Exhilaration, desire, joy: but also fear. I had just begun to paint again; I was just
starting to believe that I could, in fact, work without him.

But if he were here?

I went into the bedroom. On the bed, neatly folded, was another thing I had brought with me: Philip's
sweater. It was an old, tweed-patterned wool sweater, in shades of umber and yellow and russet, with
holes where the mice had nested in it back in the cottage. He had wanted to throw it out, years ago, but I
kept it. It still smelled of him, and I slept wearing it, here in the flat in Schöneberg, the wool prickling
against my bare skin. I picked it up and buried my face in it, smelling him, his hair, his skin, sweat.

Then I sat down on the bed. I adjusted the lamp so that the light fell upon the sweater in my lap; and
began, slowly and painstakingly, to unravel it.

It took a while, maybe an hour. I was careful not to fray the worn yarn, careful to tie the broken ends
together. When I was finished, I had several balls of wool; enough to make a new sweater. It was late by
then, and the shops were closed. But first thing next morning I went to the little store that sold only socks
and asked in my halting German where I might find a knitting shop. I had brought a ball of wool to show
the woman behind the counter. She laughed and pointed outside, then wrote down the address. It wasn't