A turkish fat guy comes to them, sit beside the woman. Only speaks in german and french, he doesn't want to drink from their beers, he only wants grass. The woman and the czech are making animal sounds, first like dogs, then like cats, finally like roosters. And the turkish guy with his childish face stares a little bit impressed. A bus is coming, he grabes the woman's arm before running. It was an impulse, they guess.
She takes out her blue harmonica and starts to blow sad festive music, her friend sings something in czech. They decide to go to Merringdham, there they meet two german boys hiding from the police. "Two weeks ago I insulted one policeman without knowing his job. After that, 10 of them punched me and now they are following me everytime". They are scared. The friends invite them some of their Astral beer. One says he is serbian.
- What do you think about Milosevic?- she asks to him.
- I believe that he wanted to do something good but he didn't know how.
- And in which year you were born?
He scratches his head.
- In 1994.
- Where?
- Here, in Germany.
- And you really think that he was working for the good? I mean, your parents obviously went out because of the war.
- Most of my relatives died, the army bombed their houses. It makes me uncomfortable to talk about this.
- I know that in Sarajevo there were serbians fighting against the yugoslav army...
- Yes, and all that effort was for nothing, it changed nothing. Almost every fighter died.
- I guess that in a macro political perspective, it changed nothing as you said. But for the minds and the drives of this people, to fight was to have hope and to offer the death to a cause. At least in Sarajevo they died in the name of protecting a multicultural community.
- Yes, but then in Kosovo everything crashed. It was the hell.
- The hell is the human stupidity. And the fear. Sometimes the fearful people is more dangerous that the object that causes their fear.
- Yes, the hell is to fear and to violent others because of the fear.
- Do you speak serbian?
- да. I am proud about it.
- Is good to be proud from where you come from. But I think Milosevic losted his honor.
- It was my honor to speak with you. Thank you for the beer.
And the two boys leave. They prefer the police than the past.
- This is wasted.
- Let's go.
Both friends ride again. They go to Alt Moabit, and then to Lichtesnstein. They get lost for a while and stop the ride for watching the Spree. The sun is next to come. In the kitchen they eat a hot soup and drink another beer. After some hours they are still talking about the virtues and chaos of passionated love. While remembering their pasts they find something together.
- I try to forget on purpose how does it feel to have sex, how does it feels even to love. I never stop feeling surprised about other's people bodies and about mine too.
- I don't know how to do that.
- That is why you still suffer, but is strange how, overall the past, you still trust others.
- I trust in others by placing myself as if I where within them.
They go out again in the bikes. She reads a text message from a dear friend.
- Hey Bea, an hurricane comes to Berlin, hope we both survive. Catch you soon. A.
"An hurricane", he repeats those words and both laugh with tenderness in their eyes. The czech rides as a black line moving so fast. They split at the Russian twin towers by waving hands, with a smile they say what they want to say. They had together, without even touching each other, something better than sex but even more dangerous. Something of their pasts has became mutual. She moves hardly against the wind, the wind is taking her apart from the road. She fights, "The air is like the life, but doesn't matter how difficult it comes, I know where I go", she rides.
She is in Brandenburg Tor when the heaven starts to fall. The hail cuts her face like little diamonds proving her will. But she can't desperate, she can't complain, she can't even cry. She made the journey in the name of a man, and every difficult situation worths it because she can feel and she can fight. She feels so proud, and the hail takes her back, she must move on, and the rain takes her back, over and over again. So she starts singing with all the strength in her lungs, and the raindrops and ice rocks stab her harder. When possible she takes a dark road beneath the trees, some little rabbits are running fast. She crosses an arm of the Spree, the water moves snappy and on it, the lights. A train is passing on an upper bridge, oh, the prodigy about time! The miracle about space!, she thinks. Two kilometers more and she will be at home.
She comes inside and goes to sleep. She dreams about long distance paradises and storms. She wakes up by the roar of the air and the crack of the tree branches outside her window; for a while she feels the man of her heart nearby her, she thinks that she is in his mind. Till she gets aware of present time and surrounding space. She watches how the branches are moving, and fighting for stand. She feels the tree as an extension of herself; her body and her feelings are moving too, dancing and twisting on the river of air. Saturnalia is getting closer. She holds her chest as if she were her beloved, and in that moment the first snowflake falls down, the second, the third, the forth... a cataract of snowflakes is spinning outside!, is the first time she sees snow in her life. No one could ever say to her, clearly, how beautiful it is. The morning is bright and the snow is falling down, fighting the gravity, turning into water on the ground.
The woman is amazed about how the love can help the creatures to fight the life, and to loose themselves into the power of memory and the tremble of dreams. The man was gone before she came, and she knew that also before. But she loves life, and she fights.
Lucía Joyce
