Human Behaviour

In the paved Hinterhof they cut yucca into thin slices of starch. Plopped it onto the hot oil. The good food aroma filled his head. Warm evening air rose from the concrete all around. He felt alert, dry palms, clear nostrils. There were eyes behind his eyes, gulping down what they saw.

In this city he fell in love with the side walls of houses; high planes of bare brickwork, nothing for the eye to fix on. He loved the deleted buildings on Berlin's streets, those missing teeth, the flash of sky like a lifted skirt. And in the little courtyards ragged weeds straggling up through the cracks.

This is not decay. This is the beginning.

"Here is Wilma, she studies sociosomething," said Klaudia. She was keen to find him someone interesting to talk to.

Wilma goes to mambo dancing classes.

Wilma plays the double bass.

Wilma makes green candles with flower petals embedded in the wax.

Wilma arranges pebbles at the bottom of thick glass containers.

"Hello Wilma," he said, taking her damp chubby hand. Was her name Italian? Her hard black pupils and gelled black hair confused him. She looked like she'd been licked into shape. The clean, new-born appearance disturbed his eyes. He felt he could not see her properly. A strand of hair or crease in her finger took all his attention. Her voice was quick, a little lilt constantly seeking assent.

"What are you doing in Berlin?"

"Looking around. Learning German."

She smiled and waited like she'd caught him speechless and knew it.

"But if you want to learn German could you not do it at university?" Making fun of him, perhaps. Or maybe such a thing is incomprehensible here.

"It's better to do it in the country itself. It's the only way to learn a language."

"You are right," she said after a pause. The yucca! She bounced over to the grill and took the pan off the flames. The grill was home-made, a small stack of reclaimed brick with a scrubbed iron grid on top. Hand-shaped patties that couldn't have been meat sizzled gently. We are all vegetarians here, Klaudia had warned him, half proud, half apologetic. Red and green peppers roasted along the edges of the grid. Wilma picked one up, slid the burnt skin off with one finger and ate the flesh. He tried it out, standing alongside her. Took a pepper off and tossed it from one hand to the other to cool off. The carbonized skin came away in one pinch. It was sweet and clean and fruity underneath.

The charcoal smoke curled lazily upwards in this chasm formed by the backs of houses. The smoke that makes neighbours lean over balconies and drives the flies into ecstasies of drowsiness.

Then he went to the bathroom and saw the contraceptive device. Took it in his hand. She had left it there, and could foresee someone touching it, if only to get at the antiseptic behind. Anyone could get a burn or a graze on a night like this. No one would mind a slight cut, a release of blood when it flows so warm and the skin heals over so quickly. She could surely foresee someone touching her device to get the antiseptic, or the plasters, or the toothpaste.

Could she foresee this? He zipped open his fly. Touched the little round ring to himself and watched a fold unstick in response. He walked out to the yard where the smell of cooking had thickened the air.

"Ah, Kevin, if you need to wash your hands go in the kitchen," Wilma called.

He remembered now, there had been no washbasin, only a bath and the toilet. Dutifully he went to the kitchen tap and ran cold water over his hands. The window sill had a motley collection of little things. A wire nest, a corkscrew, a smooth bun of stone with a dip in it. He placed his finger there, stupidly, there was only grimy cigarette ash. Again he turned on the tap. The jet slapped his hand to one side, curled on the enamel sink, and threw a splash over his T-shirt. What might have been the towel had an embroidered image of a sun-god on it, so he let it be. It was warm outside, it would soon dry.

"How is the socio-bio studies?" he asked her. She was caught by the abruptness of the question. Straightened up from the brick grill, surprisingly tall.

"I study history of art and art therapy," she said.

"Not sociobiology?"

"No, that's Wilma." She indicated with a nod. Wilma had put on a bright floral head scarf. Her thin black fringe jutted out below it. The scarf made her laugh. She put her hands to her cheeks, flicked four fingers with a dismissive gesture, like slapping a child's hand away. Perhaps it was an imitation of a peasant woman. There were photographs from Turkey in the kitchen, a pepper grinder with Arabic script around the base.

"Oh, I didn't actually meet you yet," he laughed to cover himself. She found a place to put down the tongs and gave him her hand. It was not as chubby as Wilma's, and her face was more acute, eyes a shade more grey than brown, nothing at all like Wilma in fact, but for an instant, distracted by the similar gelled black hair, anyone could be mistaken.

"Sylvia," she said with that initial eagerness with which people introduce themselves.

"Kevin," he said.

"It is interesting to meet you. You are the first Celt I have met."

He considered the implications of this.

"You are a Celt, aren't you?"

"As far as I know all my parents and grandparents going way back are all Irish, yes."

"So you have original Celtic genes?"

"My grandparents and so on are all Irish as far as I know, so I suppose yes."

"What happened to your T-shirt?"

He rubbed the damp cotton, a bit pointlessly. "It's only water. When I was washing my hands."

"I can get you a dry one from my sports bag. I only wore it for a couple of hours."

She left him there with the tongs. He leaned over the grill to flip a few of the soya burgers. The heat passed through his damp T-shirt. He moved back, suddenly afraid that the wet spot would have evaporated entirely by the time she came back.

Meat contains toxins that accumulate. The liver has to work harder to purify the blood, the sweat smells and irritates the skin. Klaudia had explained this patiently to him, perhaps viewing him as a potential convert to vegetarianism. He still could not fathom this tall athletic German woman who had befriended him on his first day. She had invited him to her apartment for dinner. He arrived with a bottle of red wine and she sent him back out to the shops to pick up the ginger root she needed for her recipe. Then she sat him at a candle-lit table and proceeded to grill him about his parents, his brothers and sisters, his ex-girlfriends, his religion. He opened up freely, told her of the all-boys school he had gone to, his older brother's time in jail for possession of cocaine, his sister's flirtation with depression, his first girlfriend at school and how his parents reacted. She listened keenly, directing his account with a few probing questions. Tell me if you argue with your brothers, she said. Tell me if you visit your grandparents. Tell me how it is.

When she got up to make coffee he realized he had no urge to ask her the corresponding questions. Not even an elementary sense of fair play induced him to ask her. Ethiopian, Colombian, arabica or mild blend, she asked from the cabinet. Arabica, he said at random. Good, she said. Ach, Kevin, you have such interesting things to say about yourself.

He watched her now, this untypically freckled woman who knew him like a book, as she rearranged bark mulch around the miniature pine.

"Here," said Sylvia, handing him a brushed-cotton T-shirt. He unfolded it, brought it to his nose to better catch the scent.

"You have nice perfume."

"I'm not wearing any," she laughed, "that's my skin." She sniffed at the T-shirt. "No, no perfume except a tiny tiny bit." He stepped back, turned to one side. Whipped off the damp T-shirt, aware of his pale freckled Celtic skin, soft round arms that belied their strength, spidery chest hairs, each one curling away independently. His soft skin took on imprints easily; the band of a pair of trousers, strap of a shoulder bag, little twigs and grit if he lay down on the grass for a moment.

The fresh marine-blue T-shirt hugged him. He pulled down the hem on all sides. This taut material that pressed against him had hours before pressed against her breasts and stomach, sprung a crease where her back dipped between the shoulder-blades.

"Thanks," he smiled.

"It looks better on you."

"I'll give it back at the end of the night, though it might get stained by then." By way of answer she tugged the hem of her own top. A couple of charcoal marks criss-crossed it, a few tiny specks of oil from the spitting grill. She dusted off some carbon black. "Do you want me to keep an eye on them for a while?" he said taking the tongs from her hands. She took away a couple of the roast peppers on a plate and sat down on the grass. This back yard was a communal space surrounded on all sides by four storeys of eroded brickwork and rusting balconies. Courtyards in Berlin were always a flourishing amidst the ruins. An elevated rectangle of well-kept grass, a few miniature pines in barrels, a loose stack of old brick, a trough with a clear plastic cover - the herb garden. Klaudia came over with more neatly patted cutlets sprinkled with chopped basil.

"How do you know Sylvia?" he asked.

"We did music lessons together. She was in the same school as me before that but I didn't know her then," she answered.

"She's a good friend of yours?"

"Yeah, I can say so. We were all on a trip to Turkey last year." "Just girls on the trip or did boyfriends go?"

"Just girls. The boyfriends stayed at home."

"So she has a boyfriend?"

Klaudia opened her mouth to answer, hesitated, thought better of it.

"Oh Kevin."

"What?" he said indignantly, wanting to provoke a reaction, to see what that tone of voice meant.

"Why don't you ask her if she has a boyfriend if you want to know?"

He stared into the inscrutable eyes of this woman who had set about making him her friend in such a rigorous manner. It seemed to him her bare arms and legs were too firm to be attractive. They were beautiful in form like the limbs of a gazelle. He could picture him and her grappling in stylized moves, her hand under his elbow, his hand on her thigh, without the least trace of arousal. She was too clean, odourless. If he licked her she would be tasteless. When she had bent over to show a judo movement it was with neither coyness nor a girlish innocence. It was the action of someone who would find it faintly ridiculous - yet perhaps human in an old-fashioned sense - to be told this was erotic.

Yet when he looked now at her high arched eyebrows and narrow nose it was obvious she was good-looking. A natural straw blonde, with fine wintry hair, a shapely ear that was unaccountably flushed pink.

"Your ear is red - do you have the 'flu?"

"What?" She touched her earlobe and her face looked pained. "Yes, it happens sometimes when I am a little run down."

He looked at her and tried wilfully to see her in a different light. To feel the heat of that earlobe on his lips. Press with his hand her breast, naked behind her coarse cloth blouse only inches in front of him. He imagined touching the space between her legs in an action devoid of intimacy. Her eyes narrowing to bring out the oriental tinge of her features. He felt the stirrings of interest, a tentative rising in his loins. And if she saw it? Oh Kevin, she might say, in a reproachful tone.

---

The kitchen / living room is long and cluttered with wickerwork, books, little objets d'art, CDs and plants. There behind the table he sees her sports bag, badminton, she said she played. Through the window he sees the steady curl of the grill-smoke, hears the thin voices of summer. The bag is half open. He takes her shorts and sports bra, feels the limp texture of things that someone has worn. The clean feminine scent makes him sleepy. He could lie down on the sports bag and close his eyes, drowsy with a fast-beating heart. But this is a time for action. The firstlings of thought must be the firstlings of his hands. He zips open his fly, presses the damp delicates against his crotch. He feels purified, filled with confidence. Now he is ready, now he has abandoned himself to hunter's magic.

He walks straight up to Sylvia where she's flipping burgers on the grill, puts his hand over hers and steers the movements of the spatula, like someone teaching a child.

"Hey, cut it out," she laughs. He takes a burger and walks off.

Wilma, where is rubber ball Wilma? He scans the back yard, the window into the living room, the doorless sheds where the bicycles are kept. Wilma with the damp hands and cherry dot scarf. The only thing slowing her down was her bulging bosom. He felt an obscure sympathy for a girl who has to carry the burden of heavy breasts, deep folds trapped under a tight bra, perspiration enclosed in the sweltering weather. He pictured again the way she had chased a roast potato before it rolled off the concrete. Wilma, where has Wilma gone? "She went to an apartment upstairs so she could phone her school. She has no phone here," says Klaudia. They drag the table out from the kitchen and eat off plates. The sun has dipped below the tall apartment houses. They talk about people they know, what work they are doing and what countries they have visited recently. They chat about old friends from the schooldays.

It is time to go. They shake hands, give a small hug.

"I am glad you have met my friends," laughs Klaudia as they walk back towards Prenzlauerberg. "Now you know more about me." Out in the wide streets the night air has turned chilly at last. "I left my T-shirt behind," he says. "I'll have to go back."

"It's not so important," says Klaudia.

"But I'm wearing Sylvia's T-shirt. I don't know when I can give it back."

And so he runs back; runs first, then walks slowly the last stretch. Loses heart, walks by the door, resolving to leave it for another day as Klaudia suggested. But the same Klaudia waved him off with the T-shirt. He had to return it.

Sylvia is still there. Wilma says, no, it is not late at all, come in, did you come back the whole way. The last inch of wine is in the bottle, the cups and plates piled on the sink. He goes to the dark end of the kitchen, excuses himself, and changes T-shirt. Half-heartedly offers to wash it, smiles at Sylvia, holding her eye, and she smiles slowly back. Something is understood between them. He feels physically weak with anticipation. The breath trembles in his lungs. He feels a need to cling to her to regain balance, a need so strong he laughs at it, strokes her arm with his fingertips.

She moves away, picks up her sports bag, swings it deftly over her shoulder.

"I have to go now. I'll leave you kids alone. See you tomorrow or whenever." She smiles the same knowing smile, gives a significant wave to both of them.

"Wilma," he says when the door closes, "I missed you when you disappeared today," presses against her in the hallway, their mouths meet, her full breasts warm as kittens against his chest. She throws off a scent like spiced tea.

"Really?" she says, surprised, "Really?"

They struggle onto the sofa, push the table away with their legs, striving against each other for release from their physical natures. See! he says, I can touch you all over. See, she says, I can touch you wherever I want.

Afterwards she pads over naked to the fridge, adjusting the brassiere she hasn't taken off, and returns with a carton of juice. "What are your long-term plans in coming to Berlin?" she asks. "What is your relationship with Klaudia? What activities do you do?" And then: "Are you a moral person? Would you cheat at work?"

He yields to the barrage of questions with a resigned feeling of deja vu. "You're so strange," she says and flicks him. "I don't know what you're thinking."

"Strange?" he says puzzled, intrigued even, "In what way strange?"