Love Stories In Berlin

 

His second Christmas in Berlin was much better than the first one. During that week-long break from Christmas till Sylvester, he wrote a love story. It is the twenty-first entry in a big notebook. For five days he wrote, fourteen hours a day, without stepping out of the apartment, living on bread, rice, yoghurt, leftover curry and ready-to-heat-and-eat packs.

That notebook has a queer feature that stands out. In spite of being handwritten, each and every piece remains in its pristine untitled first draft, unedited, without a single correction, with all the typos and other glaring errors. There is an irritating aspect too. At least half of that lot has a melancholic character recurring in some guise, always brooding about a painful memory.  These cathartic traits tend to put off readers. But an effort to break free of the past and the dear-diary genre is also evident.

This love story was supposed to be his Escape From Alcatraz moment. It has a melancholic guy with a painful memory, but thankfully that past is mentioned in passing and not spelt out in any great detail. To redeem himself or the story, the ‘hero’ metamorphoses into a less pathetic character but only after plodding around for long enough making a mess of the reader’s interest. There is a married woman without her husband, as it should be for a story not to lose steam. And the two have their Roman Holiday in a hill resort. When the holiday is ready to end, the husband appears on the scene, and without any grand speech or confrontation the two main protagonists live happily ever after separately with a memory good for future rainy days.

Many years later, with very different motives, he would rewrite that story, give it a title, add avoidable doggerel and make the marital status of the woman ambiguous. When he wrote that first draft of his twenty-first story, it must have been meant to remain in the realms of his daydreams especially because that notebook had always enjoyed the status of a personal diary. But like a dream, he got a reader. In fact, he got the reader of his daydreams.

He returned to office on the first Monday after Sylvester. She came back two days later, after a Christmas at home with her folks in the erstwhile Eastern bloc. They used to be the early birds in the department. As was their custom every morning, they chatted after she made her morning cup of coffee, standing near his office door. She told him about her ‘lovely’ vacation. He suspected that she made the picture rosier than it truly was. He let it be. He did not even rub her wrong for not bringing goodies for him. Christmas had never been good to him that way.

‘What did you do?’ she asked him.

‘Nothing much,’ he said.

‘Stayed at home?’ she made it sound half-tease, half-reproach.

‘Yes.’ Till that stage, he could have been evading.

 ‘And did nothing?’ she persisted.

‘I wrote.’

‘Novels…?’ That came as a full-tease.

‘Story.’ Now, one suspects if he had been laying the trap all the while.

‘Really… a story…?’ she asked.

He gave a polite shrug. She had no way out. Check-mate!

‘Can I read it?’ she asked politely. She had to, right?

He nodded.

Next day, he gave her the notebook. He bookmarked his last entry, his magnum opus, the love story. He had initially kept a bookmark with a picture of a young boy holding out a rose to a little girl-love. To seem reasonably sane, he replaced that with a plain piece of paper.

A day later, she used a greeting in the story, ‘Abhey, saala…’ and asked him what that means. He told her a polite version of the meaning. He noted that she had used a greeting between the male protagonist and his male friend. He hid his disappointment well. It took her a weekend to finish reading the story. The Monday after that, she returned the notebook and used the heroine’s greeting, ‘ah, my knight who refuses to fight…’ and he replied with, ‘yes, milady in shining armor…’ His spirits perked up.

She said little else about that story. It is a long story after all.

But she asked, ‘Can I read the other stories?’

‘Yes,’ he handed that notebook back to her.

A week went by, and another week too. She reached half-way through the book.

She accosted him one morning with, ‘Is this me?’

He shrugged his same old shrug. He did not have to ask her which story she was referring to.

She continued, ‘Is that what you think I think?’

He smiled, shrugged and then gave an ambiguous shake of his head. He knew that if that scene had happened in his fiction, his protagonist would have given one of many smart-ass replies.

The entry she was referring to was the following:

‘I am in the mood to write about something of no consequence. There is a difference between that and the ordinary. One might remember the latter for being a reassuring boredom or a melancholic treat of self-pity. Reading novels; flirting with friends; watching the searching looks of males that nearly strip you as you flick your hair or, knowingly chose to wear a dress of daring décolletage; or even the laughter at lunchtime, a trick that you learned to stay on top of men who usually associate laughter with submission and abysmal intellect. But all that is ordinary. I do it every day (nearly) and it is just sweet survival. But that is not what I want to think about right now. I want to think about a matter of no consequence. Let me define it as something which needs a bloody effort to be remembered. And in my diary why can’t I call it bloody though it seems to be a word raped by male domination over the centuries?

I joined this department few weeks back. I happen to be the only gal around. Even the stuck-up wallowing in self-importance has noticed my existence. And it helps to be a social animal. I go to the canteen with the group. For a few laughs and criticism about the state of my country, they keep the conversation centered round me. There are a few in the group who go for lunch separately – they look like misfits. One of them is ideal as a matter of no consequence.

During my first visit, I had an official meeting with him, a guy from the east, possibly India. He had done his homework to look a bit smart in my eyes. But I suspected that he knew of his own limitations. A typical one who liked my company because I am a woman, and I am sure he wished for friendship. He is not attractive. He does not speak well. He is not charming. He does not even have a smile I would like to look at. And the worst part is that he doesn’t seem to have qualities to dislike him either. I can never remember his name and he knows his state – he never introduces himself. I wonder how it is like to be somebody worse than ordinary, someone nearly invisible, a person of no consequence whatsoever…’

After sharing a quick laugh about their mutual acquaintance, the stuck-up wallowing in self-importance, that particular entry was laid to rest without any further discussion. She read the other entries.

They got closer. They talked more. They shared their views on books and music. They talked on the phone during weekends. He wrote another story about a girl lying in a bath tub reading that story. She did not comment on that. It was already a plot well-used. Theirs was a good friendship. He wondered if she would meet him for lunch some weekend. Theirs was just a good friendship. He never asked her. He knew that she went to church on Sundays and had lunch with other friends.

He thought about that entry in his notebook. He wrote that after he massaged her neck in his office. However crappy it might sound, for him it was actually a case of love at first touch. She had complained of a stiff neck that morning. He offered to massage her neck. Surprisingly, it worked and she looked relieved. She also looked shy and embarrassed. He kept a straight face and remained silent, quite like an accomplished masseur. That evening, or during the weekend that followed, he wrote about her.

Even a neutral observer might appreciate the fortuitous turn of events and classify the situation as rather cute, starting with that massage, then the writing and the denouement via the love story written during the second Christmas many months later. Maybe, such a person can also view the affair with a dispassionate critical eye.

For him, it was a love story that was not supposed to sound like a love story. He was quite sure of himself then, even though he presented himself as a goofy guy. And he dreamt of the day when she would read that story about her writing a story about him. He thought that his love for her was very clearly apparent, if not in the story, in the fact that he wrote about her. He should have clarified that with additional efforts, maybe, but instead he waited for her to reciprocate.

There was no chance for that because his plan had backfired. He was successful in making that love story not sound like a love story. She read it simply as a story about her writing about him. It did not cross her mind that it was supposed to be any kind of love story. And worse, she assumed that he actually thought of himself that way. She wanted him to know otherwise and became the good friend she turned out to be.

 In a sane moment much later, he reasoned that the fate of his love story could have been different if she had not read it soon after Christmas with thoughts of charity still in the air. But, even then, he did not think of writing a simple love story about her that really sounded like a love story.

They also lived happily ever after separately with their respective spouses, with a memory good for a stormy day, one of a friendship long dead and the other of a love that never sounded like love.