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things i remember about germany …à changer mon pot de chambre en un vase de parfum. Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann Spargelpisse, which took me back to Germany, white and green asparagus laid out in a Munich market, extravagantly-priced bundles of sticks. I turned them to watery risotto for our hosts: we slept in their bed, they slept on a couch in the corridor, when I did the washing-up I broke most of their possessions. My dear, the noise, and the people! And the smell… I stood by the sink, looking at the little fragments which took me back to a month or so in St. Petersburg, one of those months, totalled, dead in unlust, an older German woman, with another life manifest in her sudden absences, trips to the south. She brought back tiny delicate vodka-cups from Elista, and one morning we woke up to desolation. Tja. Breaking these unnecessary fragile things. Memory is a kind of heredity, which took me back to a photo she described to me once, her and her cousins in a cornfield, all of them tall with cornblond hair. Na ja she said, thoughtfully. Not good. 64
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oliver and the bears Empirically-minded little bastard, he’s stamping on the cracks between the stones. A stamp, a pause, he looks around. ‘No bears. No bears, papa!’ Of course there are no bears. It’s quiet today, the police have shotguns as Oliver and I walk slowly to the market. He’s laughing: I don’t really want to laugh; he glances slanting and hangs from my arm. I caught on TV this morning half a sentence of unwitting metre, a lop-eared alexandrine: We may not know exactly who we need to kill… Now I think about it, a complete sentence: it doesn’t matter who was speaking. Oliver wants to watch a street magician hide himself in a box and disappear. A good trick if you can sell it: mirrors? Mass hypnosis? I’d like to know, today of all days. ‘Come on now, Ol, there’s no time, we’re busy.’ There is time, but crowds make me uneasy. A police car driven through the crowd, clicking like a gunmetal dolphin. Everything uncomfortable, the world slightly at a slant to itself, balancing on its own edge. You feel you need to be ready. Oliver impatient now, pulls at my sleeve, a pivot against the news dragging me outwards. The necessary anchor. ‘Papa, papa!’ He’s pleased with himself; he’s worked it all out. ‘Papa, papa!’ The self-belief of childhood, unaware of the joy it inflicts on others. ‘Papa, papa!’ ‘What is it?’ ‘Papa, no bears!’ I lie and say: ‘You’re right. No bears. No bears.’ November 2015. Europe 65

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things i remember about germany

…à changer mon pot de chambre en un vase de parfum.

Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann

Spargelpisse, which took me back to Germany, white and green asparagus laid out in a Munich market, extravagantly-priced bundles of sticks. I turned them to watery risotto for our hosts: we slept in their bed, they slept on a couch in the corridor, when I did the washing-up I broke most of their possessions. My dear, the noise, and the people! And the smell… I stood by the sink, looking at the little fragments which took me back to a month or so in St. Petersburg, one of those months, totalled, dead in unlust, an older German woman, with another life manifest in her sudden absences, trips to the south. She brought back tiny delicate vodka-cups from Elista, and one morning we woke up to desolation. Tja. Breaking these unnecessary fragile things. Memory is a kind of heredity, which took me back to a photo she described to me once, her and her cousins in a cornfield, all of them tall with cornblond hair. Na ja she said, thoughtfully. Not good.

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