We walked up and down, having assured ourselves that the lake ice was solid and not likely to break. Snow had erased the contours of the paths through the wood, rendering them indistinguishable from the surroundings, but the footprints of people and their dogs were outlined sharp against the whiteness. Wild rose bushes hung with small, hard, red fruit formed a low hedge, and every time the wind blew the high, snow-laden branches quivered and creaked ominously. Hulking crows perched on ice-covered branches that glittered silver when struck by the low, slanting rays of the winter sun. Soon, though, swiftly gathering clouds obscured all traces of its presence in the sky. It looked as though it would snow again that evening. Joachim was walking about three or four paces ahead of me. He said that if he’d known how to skate he would have borrowed a pair and gone out onto the ice right now. I’d learned how to skate when I was eleven, I told him, but that it was so long ago that I wasn’t sure whether I would remember how, and besides, it was so cold right now that I wasn’t thinking about anything at all. We resumed our silent walk. We felt the cold stab of the air entering our lungs as a physical impact, and if we coughed the steam of our breath came out white. I asked Joachim if he was cold without a coat, but he just shrugged in reply. When we came up to the lake caretaker’s hut, a humble shack made of yellow bricks and wood, he suggested that we’d walked for long enough now and might as well head home. We found Benny waiting for us at the hut, fixing us with his faithful stare, almost as if he feared that we might disappear if he didn’t keep us in sight. The return trip was colder than the way out. I was all but running. We decided that it was too cold to walk all the way, and took the tram. Benny’s dislike of the tram was plain, but he flattened his body to lie obediently under the seat when Joachim told him to. Every time Benny jerked his head up, clearly ill at ease, Joachim produced a dog biscuit from his pocket and held it out to him. Benny would then settle down again, bury his face under the seat and chew his biscuit. The thought only then occurring to me, I asked Joachim if he’d bought a present for his parents. “A book and some perfume,” he replied briefly, adding that he hadn’t bought anything for his brother.
“In that case I guess I can get something for him.”
Joachim assured me there was no need, although I suggested that going empty handed to a Christmas dinner made me feel uncomfortable.
“Besides, you can’t,” he grinned. “All the shops will be closed now, you know. I mean, where are you going to get a present from?”
In that case there was nothing to be done. We went home, Joachim ironed a shirt to wear that evening, and I made a simple Chinese noodle dish for lunch. After I boiled the water for the noodles according to the instructions, scooped them out with a sieve and drained them, I fried them in the big wok together with a jar of bean sprouts. According to Joachim the wok had been a real bargain, something he’d gotten off his friend’s Vietnamese neighbor. Once the noodles heated through, I dished them up and finished them off with a sprinkle of salt, some garlic, and Thai chili sauce. The radio was playing Christmas songs back to back, many of them with practically the same melody, so we switched over to a news program, made some jasmine tea, and ate lunch. The tram rattled by outside. On the news we heard that the snow had caused many accidents on the motorways, and that there were floods in southern Germany. Once he’d finished the dishes, Joachim flopped down on the sofa, yawning, and began to browse one of his many train magazines—he couldn’t get enough of them—while I flicked through the television channels. The Christmas-themed programming was ubiquitous—Christmas carols, Christmas films, Christmas Mass, Christmas cooking, Christmas plays, Christmas discussions, etc. On the table there was a silver box of chocolates with some left over, and a book Joachim had been reading, General Physics Theory with Mathematical Proofs. He’d already passed the basic physics exam in his first term, but had apparently forgotten almost all of it and so was looking over it again. Benny was lying by Joachim’s side; Joachim had the magazine in one hand and held Benny by the scruff of the neck with the other. The small, snow-covered road that ran through the backyard was visible through the high glass window. Lined with individual gardens known as “small gardens,” it led to the local cemetery. The winter landscape was unchanging, and would remain so at least until the Christmas and New Year holidays were over. Every morning after breakfast we read a book, prepared something simple to eat, and watched some monotonous TV program; at night we listened to the radio, and three times a day we took Benny out for a short walk. In between that, we passed the time by doing the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, and taking the tram into town if there was something we needed to buy. Switching over to MTV, I stretched out on the bed, a wave of drowsiness surging over me. I’d barely gotten any sleep the previous night, having arrived at Joachim’s in the early hours of dawn after a six-hour train journey. I’d flown into an airport outside Berlin, which meant two train changes with all my luggage, though Joachim had met me at the airport and helped carry the heavy bags. Arriving back in the city after a three-year absence, the first thing I saw was the night bus-stop near the station, in the falling snow. I sat on a suitcase while we waited for the bus; they came every half hour. The snow was falling heavily, too heavy for an umbrella or hat to be of much use. The roads had completely iced over because of the sudden drop in temperature. The train had been delayed by around two hours and after catching the bus we had to change again to take the tram. It was the Christmas holidays, and on top of it being late at night the snow was really coming down, so there were barely any passing cars even on the main road. The first thing that struck me was how unimaginably cold the bus stop was. That infinite, embalmed silence, the frozen torpor of the season, compounded by the extreme cold, pincered the heart in a viselike grip. Snow, rain, agonizing cold, the blank sky, the air heavy as if weighted down. Even when we got back to Joachim’s and got into bed the cold still did not completely dissipate. The sound of the wind continued until morning, and until the sun trembled over the rim of the horizon, rising as cold as the thin layer of ice that rimmed the outside of the window, I couldn’t shake myself free from the memory of the airplane’s narrow seat, the continuous roaring of the engine, the vibration of the train as it rattled over the tracks. And so of course I was incredibly tired, and just as I was thinking to myself how tired I was, I fell asleep.
When I woke from sleep I was at a loss to say where I was. The room was so dark I assumed it was the middle of the night. It was completely silent, the curtains were drawn, and there was no sign of either Joachim or Benny. It had been a dreamless sleep. The only source of illumination was the light from the TV, showing a live broadcast of a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic. Karajan’s face appeared on the screen. Only when I looked at the hands of the clock on the bedside table did I realize that I’d only slept for three hours. It was unusually dark for daytime; when I opened the curtains I saw that the whole city lay overshadowed by black clouds, from which the snow had slowly started to fall. The Berlin Phil was doing Rossini’s William Tell Overture. Perhaps Joachim had changed the channel and left it on when he went out. Unfortunately, it was almost at the final movement, and after a brief commercial the program continued with Ravel’s Boléro. I wasn’t fond of the Boléro. It was a shame I hadn’t woken up a little earlier, when the William Tell Overture was still on. I must have slept in an awkward position, because my right arm and my entire torso were tingling. I lay there in the bed and stared at the old ceiling. Originally there’d been an electric bulb suspended from it, but now all that was left was a short wire. Joachim had thought the light made the room too bright, so he’d pulled it out. As a replacement, he’d put a desk lamp on the small table that could be used for reading and writing, and there was a stand by the bed. The bookcase was filled with magazines and dictionaries, along with several volumes on physics and art theory—no different from when I first came here three years ago. Several old magazines had disappeared and been replaced by new ones, and the collection seemed to be missing several Baedeker guidebooks, plus two or three books on maths or physics which I remembered from before, but apart from that almost nothing had changed. Novels were represented solely by the English-language versions of the Harry Potter Series and American Psycho. Those were inside the wardrobe, where we’d put my suitcase yesterday. I opened it, took out my books, and put them on the bookshelves.