042: The river.

I remember the night I first went down to the river almost as well as I remember the last.

I had been in the city for nearly six months, and apart from Herr Ritger and Frl. Schrader at the office and the woman at the shop where I bought my cigarettes, I hadn’t met anyone at all. I don’t think that anyone in the whole of Berlin knew my name.

It was July and the heat was rising. My tiny apartment over a café on the Jahnstraße was hot and cramped, and the only window opened out onto an interior courtyard where the bins were kept. I spent two sweaty, sleepless nights lying in bed, suffering the heat and the rancid stench from the courtyard, until, on the third night, I decided to get out and walk until the worst of the heat had passed.

It was a poor area, some way from the centre of things, and I worked most weekends, so I had seen very little of the city. I pointed myself west, away from the border, and walked. Everything was in-between states, either being torn down or built up. Now and then I would stop at one of those little shops Berlin is so well stocked with and buy a bottle of beer to keep me company. Then I’d keep walking, past the building sites and the rubble, past the barbed wire and the soldiers clustered on the street corners.

The bright lights of the Ku’damm made me feel lonesome, so I struck out towards the Zoo, keeping to the smaller streets, and then up into the Tiergarten, where it was cooler among the trees. The park was busy, although it was late, with men sleeping on the benches, and little groups of twos and threes, drinking and laughing, and that made me feel even worse. I cut back on myself and decided to walk as far as I could along the river before I reached the border. It was normally quiet, and I thought there might be at least the relief of a cool breeze.

As I reached the steps down to the towpath, I could see I’d been mistaken. A crowd of people were gathered under the concrete overhang, between the uprights that held the bridge. A string of lights had been rigged up, hanging loosely from hooks along the wall, and there was music playing from somewhere; Latin or South American music. Music like I’d never heard before. As I approached, I could see that the crowd was not a crowd at all, but a loose circle of people, and within the circle, there was dancing.

On one side of the group was a man leaning on a crate full of ice, with bottles floating in it. I still had a few coins in my pocket, so I nodded to the man and he fished me out a beer, and popped the cap with a flick of his nail. I was hot from walking and from the air, which didn’t seem to have cooled at all, although it was now quite dark. “Gut, ja?” said the man. I nodded appreciatively and emptied the bottle in a single draught.

I edged through the outer ring of spectators to get a better view. In the centre of the circle, couples danced, maybe 20 pairs, swaying and stepping in time with the music, each pair a galaxy, spinning independently of the others, yet locked in orbit, tied within the gravity of the circle. A strange combination of quick, staccato foot movements and long, slow, sensual embraces, where time seemed to slow and stretch, before snapping back to the rhythm in an instant.

Before I had left London I had been warned of Berlin, of its decadence and its loose morals, but in all my time in the city I had never encountered anything like this. Couples, legs and arms knotted tightly, a hand on a thigh, the stamp of a stiletto heel, a moment of tension, held — only for a moment but within that moment, a lifetime, locked in a tight embrace, cheeks pressed tightly together, nostrils flaring and then — at the sound of a trumpet, they are released, and the dance begins again. I was bewitched.

But then, as the music ended, each dancer took a step back, bowed, and the couples parted. These weren’t, as I had assumed from the intimacy of the dance, lovers, but partners for the dance only. As I watched, the groups rearranged themselves into different pairs, and as the music started again the dance began over, each participant now sharing the dance with someone new. Something about that made it even more thrilling; it was all so casual, so impersonal, and yet at the same time, so intimate, so sexy.

I don’t know how long I was there that night. Every few minutes the trains would rattle and roar overhead, pigeons would fly in, over the dancers to their roosts on the iron struts. Eventually, the music stopped and did not restart. The dancers and the assembled spectators applauded, and the barrel of cold beers emptied out quickly.

I managed to ascertain, by way of my faltering German, that they met each Tuesday, here on the banks of the Spree, between the park and the railway overpass, and from then on, it became my Mass, my sacrament. The week became divided into nervous anticipation of the Tuesday just to come, or the exhausted satisfaction of a Tuesday just gone. I never missed it.

After a few weeks, certain things became clearer to me. For example, there was an etiquette to the dancing. While the group were always kindly and welcoming, certain rules were followed by common consent. One had to wait for a break in the music to join. Entering the circle while the music played was verboten. If a dancer had no partner, or if their partner was sitting a dance out, it was necessary to wait at the edge of the circle until another dancer approached.

Most dancers came in pairs, young couples who seemed to have been dancing since they were born. They arrived, chatting and laughing along the towpath just like any other office workers, making their way home. But once they stepped into the circle, their true selves were revealed. Like bulls, they stamped and pushed, like serpents, they swayed and writhed.

Along with these, there were a smattering of clumsy tourists, drawn in by the music, who, misunderstanding the sacred nature of the dance for some ad-hoc celebration, would launch themselves into the circle, attracting sharp, disapproving glances from the other dancers. We spectators would elbow each other, “Schau dir das an,” the old timers would say with a smile, and within a minute or so, the poor couple would stagger back out of the circle, sweating, cursing, exhausted. The remainder of the dancers were a few much older couples who had the natural, imperfect flow of the self-taught; relics from another era.

Many times I tried to summon the courage to step forward during the pauses between the dances, in the hope that in the melee I would find myself swept up in the frenzy, but I had not danced for some years, and never like this. My training had been brief and formal, stiff, ballroom styles that still pervaded the halls of England. But I had seen this thing. It was new and it was glorious and I wanted desperately to be a part of it.

Week after week, Tuesday after Tuesday I would make my pilgrimage to the river and watch the dance from the outside. I became friendly with Kurt, the beer salesman, and a few of the other regular spectators knew me by sight and would say hello when I arrived, but they were almost all older, potbellied men who came for the beer and for the spectacle. I could find no likely partner, and without a partner, I could not dance.

I began to wonder who else I might persuade to accompany me. One afternoon I struck up a conversation with Frl. Schrader. I mentioned the dance as casually as possible, but she furrowed her brow and scowled at me so fiercely that I hurriedly turned back to my work. I became acutely aware of women in the street, and fancied that I could tell which would be able to dance. Long, slender legs —  of course — and broad shoulders, but I lacked the courage to speak to them, let alone suggest anything as preposterous as to come dancing with me.

I began to frequent little bars and cafés in the evenings, hoping to meet someone, anyone, who I could ask to the dance, but whether it was because I was so obviously hard up, or because my German was still poor, even the working girls seemed to avoid my gaze.

Grete came to me on the last Tuesday of September. The air was much cooler, and the sun was already setting when I arrived. “There will soon be no more dancing,” said Kurt, popping the cap from a bottle and handing it to me. “For winter.”

I pushed my way through the crowd like a man dying of thirst and drank in the scene. Every second was vital to me, to see me through the long months of hibernation. I had come to rely on the dances so completely, the thought that all this energy, this life, could stop, could vanish, sent me into an immediate depression. The winter stretched out like a line of tombstones; an endless series of drab, grey, lonely nights, watching the damp patches grow on the walls of my apartment.

At the end of the first dance, I became aware of a figure at my elbow.

She was short and slight, with a cloud of dark hair as black as the soot on the old bridge, her clothes dark and loose-fitting, as if borrowed or handed down. Her face was hard to make out in the dim light, but her eyes shone like pearls at the bottom of the ocean.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi. Hallo,” I stuttered. She was such a diminutive little thing, a gust of wind along the river might have blown her away. In my surprise, my German completely left me, and I opened and closed my mouth, unable to find any words at all. I became extremely conscious of the empty beer bottle in my hand, and I made an awkward bow, trying to hide it on the floor behind my legs. It clattered as I dropped it and I winced, but she laughed, and I smiled.

“Grete,” she said, placing a finger on her chest.

“Ich heiße Stephan,” I offered, and raised my hand, but instead of giving me her hand in return, she pulled me into the circle. Before I had time to protest, the music started up again and we were dancing.

Despite weeks of watching the dancers, of yearning to be among them, I was, of course, a disaster. Clumsy, awkward, completely lacking in coordination and timing, I might as well have had arms for legs. I kept looking at the other dancers, trying to take my cues from their movement, but they seemed more distant, more otherworldly now that I was among them than they did when I was watching from outside.

Grete raised a hand to my cheek, pulling my head back to face her. She moved her hands to my hips, and began to sway. She moved lightly, stepping forward, quickly to the side, back and forward again. She paused, and I raised my arm for her to spin, as I had seen the dancers do so many times, and I caught her as she came back around. I was terrible, of that I’m sure, but Grete was masterful. She never put a foot in the wrong place. She held me, and with gentle pressure on my waist or my side, indicated where I was to go. Once I surrendered to her guidance, things improved. Slowly, gradually, we began to move as one, as part of the swirling, tilting, spinning miracle that I had watched for so long but never been able to join.

When the music stopped and the other pairs parted and regrouped, Grete clung to me jealously. I wanted to talk to her, to thank her, but she closed her eyes and pressed her face into the folds of my blazer. Only when the music started up again did she release her hold, and we began to dance again.

She was so light, I often felt as if she were not touching the floor, and more than once I tried to catch sight of her feet to be sure, but I couldn’t see through the mass of her hair. It was only when I lost my footing, or turned left when I should have moved right, that I felt her hand on my side, correcting me, reminding me who was in control.

I was giddy. Elated. We danced and danced, and for that few hours, nothing else in the whole world existed. The rest of Berlin and it’s crumbling ruins could have come crashing down around us and we wouldn’t have looked up; Grete wouldn’t have missed a step. One dance followed another and I held her, cradled her in my arms, until at last the music stopped, the crowd began to cheer and clap, and it was over.

The applause faded and she pulled away from me. “Thank you,” I said, out of breath. My vision was blurry, everything was vague but also vivid, as if I had been crying or in a dream. We held her hands for a few moments, panting, our breath making clouds in the night air, and I finally had the chance to see her properly. She was petite, her size emphasised by the bagginess of her clothes. She wore a navy dress with brass buttons in two rows down the front, and an off-white cotton blouse with a black cardigan. Beneath the mass of hair, she was very pretty, but without the long legs and broad shoulders I had considered essential to being a good dancer. I could see the spots of the rope lights reflected like stars in her brilliant green eyes.

As the crowd dispersed, someone blundered into me from behind. I stumbled and turned to complain, but when I looked back Grete was gone. I pushed my way through the crowd, and ran up and down the river searching for her, but she had faded back into the darkness.

The next Tuesday couldn’t come soon enough. I struggled through the intervening days in a state of nervous desperation. At the weekend I walked to the river just to be near the spot, to be ready, but the area where the dance was held was deserted, as if mocking me and the idea that anything so wonderful could ever happen here, on this cold stretch of concrete.

When Tuesday finally came, it rained. I woke to the sound of it pouring down and all day, sat in my little booth in the office, I watched the sky out of the window, over the head of Frl. Schrader, and prayed for it to stop. At five o’clock I rushed home, skipping through the drizzle, leaping over puddles. After all, I reasoned, the dance was held under the overpass. There was no reason why it couldn’t go on in the rain. I caught the S-Bahn, an extravagance, so that I would arrive dry, but when I came down the steps at Bellevue, I saw straight away that there was no crowd, no dancers.

I moped along the footpath, looking for Grete along the path and up on the raised walkway. Kurt was there, with his kart pushed right under the bridge, where it was dry. The crate of ice and beers was gone, replaced with an urn of coffee, but the few people who passed had their collars up and their hats pulled down against the rain, and took no notice. I bought a cup from him we listened to the trucks rumble along the Kaiserdamm, filled with soldiers and coils of barbed wire. I asked Kurt if he knew Grete, if he’d seen her before or knew how I could contact her, but I couldn’t give much of a description in German or English. He shook his head. The rain worsened and after a couple of hours of miserable waiting I said goodbye to Kurt and walked home.

The following Tuesday was the same. I hoped against hope that I’d arrive to see the dancers, but it had become much colder and I passed another sad evening drinking coffee with Kurt. The following week I made the same trip, but only from habit. By then I knew that the dances were over for the winter and I had given up on the idea that I might see Grete there.

Berlin continued to change. The border had closed and work on the wall had begun in earnest. A week after I stopped going to the river, there were soviet tanks on the Friedrichstraße. The company I was working for got spooked and I was called back to England; they didn’t want to risk anything happening to me. I suppose it would have cost them more on their insurance premiums to leave me out there.

I swore I’d go back the following spring, when the dances would surely start up again on the banks of the Spree, but six months later, the world seemed changed all over again. I was busier than ever, with my own office and a secretary, and Berlin seemed very far away and a long time ago.

There are times when I’m walking along the Thames at dusk, when I find myself whistling a tune I can’t quite remember. A sharp pain in the bottom of my stomach, and the memory of that summer comes back to me so suddenly and so forcefully that I have to stop and hold the rail to steady myself, and I can almost see Grete’s wide, sad eyes staring back at me from the shadows.

---

---

You can now show me how much you care and support my dangerous caffeine addiction AT THE SAME TIME! THANK YOU! x

---

---

Tom Cornfoot is a writer, designer, and illustrator. He’s spent over 30 years carefully developing a style of handwriting that’s almost illegible, doodling and failing to learn to play the guitar.

These stories are plucked from the air, like everything else. There’s no consistent link or thread, unless of course you find one, in which case, it was entirely planned that way.

Words and pictures © 2024 Tom Cornfoot

---