And while I’m talking to Manfred, she’s looking back at the elevator we have just come from, staring at the old-fashioned dial above the doors, maybe wondering if that’s how Manfred guessed we were on our way down. It’s one of the features of the old Adlon which they have reinstated in the new Adlon. Like in the Hitchcock films. A dial pointing to the different levels like a clock, letting you know where the elevator is, in case you want to know.
Here, let me take your mother, Manfred says.
He grabs the handles of the wheelchair out of my hands and away she goes, wearing her cap and her red canvas shoes, holding the clear, see-through bag with all her belongings, nothing hidden. Down the marble wheelchair ramp at the side, through the automatic doors, out under the red canopy towards the tour buses waiting in the street. Manfred pushes her over to the car and opens the sliding door. And after she’s got into the car I discover that the sliding door closes electronically. Please leave it alone, Manfred says to me when I try to close it myself, manually.
In the square in front of the Brandenburg Gate there is some kind of demonstration going on. A small gathering of people with placards, more policemen than demonstrators. It’s all very calm, a lot of chanting, I think it’s for Tibet.
And Manfred is right, absolutely, she was like a mother. She gave advice like a mother, she asked questions like a mother, she bossed people around like a mother. You can’t have cake for your main meal, with beer. Eat something decent, Liam, look at you, the vultures would pass over you. That kind of thing she would say. As if she was responsible for me. But she would let you have anything you want after all, you could always get around her, and she insisted on paying for everything. She had a mother’s way of stepping into your life and giving a running commentary on everything that was going on, telling you what you were doing right or wrong while you were doing it. She cross-examined you like a mother, holding your arm and looking inside your head and saying out loud all the things you were keeping to yourself. She could guess what you were thinking. No wonder everyone thought she was my mother. She was like a mother to everyone. Indiscriminately. Even Manfred, the driver, she held his arm while he was helping her into the car, asking him questions until he told her that he was half-Turkish on his mother’s side and married with three children under ten. She said she was a hundred percent Irish and she would love to be half something else.
Maybe that’s what happens when you have no children of your own, you turn everyone else into children. She even spoke like a mother about Tibet.
God love them, she said, they only want to be themselves.
So we’re sitting side by side in the back of a large grey-coloured car and she’s telling me about the opera, Don Carlo. She’s saying it’s basically a big family story, not unlike her own. The conversation we have is quite random initially. She’s wondering about her dog. Will Buddy be all right, Liam, do you think? Yes, he’s perfectly happy, I assure her. She tells me to remind her about the sheets. The sheets, Liam, don’t let me forget the sheets. Because she has everything planned out in advance and it’s her intention to buy a new pair of sheets in Berlin to bring home with her to Dublin.
Manfred is taking us through the big park, past the golden angel, it’s been seen in lots of movies, and music videos. The day is sunny and there are people out walking with take-away coffees. Running with bottles of water. And dogs. Running with dogs. Cycling with dogs. Look at that, she says, pointing to a man cycling with a child inside a trailer cart attached to the back of his bicycle. Or is it two children? That’s not something you see very much of in Dublin, she says. She talks about the amount of women on bicycles without helmets. Right out in the middle of the traffic. She says you wouldn’t find her cycling without a helmet in any city now. We come out of the park and pass by a large yellow brick building in a modern design that looks like a pirate’s hat, she says. It’s the Berlin Philharmonic. Another place she would love to include on the list.
Then she tells me why she loves Don Carlo.
The plot is a bit complicated, from what I remember. It’s about a father killing his own son. The King is forced to hand over his son in order to keep his reign, that’s the outline in a simple sentence. It’s set in Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. The King is trying to bring order to the world by force and his son Don Carlos is against all that brutality, he wants to stop the killing and everyone to go home and live in peace with the person they love. Power is all that matters to the King. He’s addicted to power and he’s got to do everything to keep it, including killing his own son. It’s a terrible decision he has to make and he’s full of guilt and remorse, going against all his instincts as a father. There is an added problem. The son, Don Carlos, is in love with a French woman, but his father has already married her by force and made her the Queen. She still loves Don Carlos and Don Carlos is heartbroken. That gives his father a further reason for mistrusting his son and getting him out of the way. I know it sounds a bit simplistic, but that’s it, more or less, a big family drama.
He must kill the love within himself, she says. The King has to kill the love inside in order to kill his own son.
The opera keeps reminding her of her own family, that’s why she’s so keen on seeing it again. It’s the story of every family, she tells me. That’s why Don Carlo has remained so popular over the years, because we can all read our own lives into the story, it’s universal. Every time she goes to see it she cannot help thinking of her own father and what happened to her brother, her little brother. It’s the power of the drama that makes you think it’s your own story which is being portrayed on stage, she says, you become part of what’s happening right in front of your eyes. She says her imagination is too big. She’s like a girl again, watching the story of her family unfolding around her. She’s so taken by the opera each time that she can see her brother coming back to life on stage. Her father killing the love inside himself. Her brother being taken away in the end. And she’s completely helpless, trapped in her seat, listening to the music. There’s nothing she can do to intervene.
We used to go to the theatre together, the odd time in Dublin. She would be given complimentary tickets and ask me to go with her, as a companion. We would have an early meal somewhere and get to the theatre with time to spare so she could meet people. You could see them nudging each other, the lips moving. She would disappear into the crowd, pulled along by one handshake after another, passed on from one group to the next, until she needed to escape. Just when they were beginning to tell her something about herself that she already knew, she would point to me standing at the bar and tell them that she had somebody waiting for her. All these theatregoers she knew, I wouldn’t have a clue who they were, other writers, journalists, TV personalities, faces that everybody knows. What I remember most is people coming up to her at the interval saying they had read her book. And she would hunch up with all that praise, like a light was hurting her eyes. A woman once turned around and stood right up in her seat and reached back across two rows to shake her hand and say thank you. That’s all the woman said to her, thanks, for being so honest, for being herself, for writing the story of her life and her family without hiding anything.
It was mostly families we talked about in Berlin. We talked about Don Carlo and fathers and mothers and brothers. We talked about men and women and aunts and uncles and children and Jesuits and love and weddings and life and friends and lovers, the whole lot, I suppose. The things that happen in families. Which includes almost everything, doesn’t it? We were going around the city looking at the sights and telling each other these stories. Family stories and love stories come right and wrong, she said.
Is