Alain Xalabarde

THE BERLIN PARADOX

CHRONICLES OF A SOVIET TIME TRAVELER

To my wife; she who made me

believe in meaning again.

INTRODUCTION

Living in Berlin is like getting a hug from a hermit who hasn’t showered in months. It’s not very pleasant, but you know she has a good heart.

Berlin is a tough city, and it doesn’t treat its people with grace. But that’s just the way the city was raised. It had a hard life. It knows nothing else.

I’ve been no exception. Berlin hasn’t been easy on me, but I was already a lost cause. I fell madly in love with it as soon as I laid eyes on her for the first time. Like people, cities build strong personalities through suffering, and Berlin has a mesmerizing personality, if you have the stamina to discover it.

It was during my first winter in the city that I decided to create a game that would take players on a journey of the 20th century’s history through the eyes of its capital.

After many months of trial and error, I realized it didn’t make a good game after all. However, all that intense research had given birth to a story which I felt couldn’t be scrapped, and so, I decided to port it into a medium that would better suit its mood.

Five years later, and on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the wall of Berlin, I have an ode in my hands. An ode to rebuilding oneself. An ode to finding purpose. An ode to stoicism. An ode to Berlin.

If you love Berlin already, I hope you enjoy reading it. If you don’t, I hope by the end of it you will fall in love with this misunderstood monster.

1960

PROLOGUE

To be human is the struggle to be immortal, and it is that struggle that tests what part of our humanity we are willing to give up in exchange for immortality.

The day my father joined the army, he became immortal. He may not have known it at the time, but he left a permanent footprint on history books. Everyone he killed, everyone he spared, had an ever-lasting effect on the world today. His actions had a weight that new generations can only dream of having. I joined the air force right after school, but what is the purpose of joining an army if there is no war to fight? No ideal to defend. No history to change. It is selfish to desire conflict when we were just struck by the most brutal war in history. It is egotistical, stupid and even self-destructive. I should be grateful for our ancestors' sacrifice and appreciate these times of prosperity. But is it selfish to desire a purpose? Is it selfish to desire immortality?

That’s more or less what I told them when I volunteered for this programme, and it seems like it had the intended effect on them. I got in. And although yesterday was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life, if there’s something I have learned living in post-war Soviet Union it’s that happiness is never earned gratuitously. Every smile, every moment of joy, has a price. I was given both news only minutes apart. I was told Mother died early in the morning. Later that same day, Chief Marshal Vershinin officially welcomed us to the cosmonaut programme, finally revealing the real reason why we were brought here. Most of us had already guessed it weeks ago, but being here, now, makes it real.

I’ve been given permission to travel to my mother’s funeral, but I refused. I cannot leave this place. I cannot miss an opportunity like this. This is my chance to leave the footprint I’ve been longing for. The same sort of footprint my father left. It's the reason why I joined the air force, it's the reason I immediately volunteered for this program, and it's the reason why my mother's death takes a second priority, as harsh as that may sound. They have assured me that they will wait for my return. However, I know very well how these things are run. A single day away from this place will surely put me far behind all the other candidates. I will stay.

Unsurprisingly, my sister doesn’t agree. She demands an explanation, but I’m not authorized to give her one. At least not a real one. Despite the distance, it feels as if I have her head on my shoulder, her tears dampening my uniform. I can picture her alone in the cemetery a few days from now. My mother and her. No one else. Nobody left. At least my mother will have one person there to say goodbye.

My sister already bought the tickets from Berlin to Kaliningrad. She will be leaving tomorrow. She hopes to find me there. She will be disappointed.

I would later find out that my sister was caught on the border and didn’t make it to my mother’s funeral. Mother died alone after all. Her only company was an anonymous undertaker.

* * *

Only weeks after training began, the chief doctor calls me in. I sit in his office. It smells damp. He looks nervous. I’m nervous too. I think I know what he’s going to say, but I will not fully comprehend his reasoning.

My fears are confirmed. I’ve been expulsed from the Soviet space programme. They have found an anomaly in my blood. They ignored it at first, but have decided not to take any risks.

An anomaly in my blood. It sounds like bullshit. It sounds like something a scientist would make up in order to get rid of me. I suspect the real reason has to do with my father. Maybe the first Soviet in space shouldn’t be a direct descendant of a German. Even my mother’s pure Russian ancestry can’t save me from this fact. Or maybe I’m just overthinking it. Perhaps it’s an excuse. An excuse I’m making up to hide the fact that maybe I’m simply not good enough.

I pack my bags later that day, say goodbye to Dmitri. We first met each other back in Kirghiz. We practically learnt how to fly together. It’s not that I prefer him over the others, but we have inevitably grown closer because of our common past. To be honest, I wanted to leave Kirghiz as soon as I arrived. The city of Kant was far from what I had known until then. I have always felt like a foreigner, no matter where I was, but never as much as in Kirghiz. I wish Dmitri luck. Although I do not know this now, he will never go into space either, but at least he'd be smart enough to steer away from the scandals that would mean the expulsion of some of our other colleagues and to the infamous “Lost Cosmonauts”. Lost Cosmonauts? It's amazing the consequences a few drinks can have on human history. I say goodbye to the others and that same day I take a train back to Moscow.

Days later, the first thing I do when I arrive to Kaliningrad is visit my mother’s grave. I apologize for having missed her funeral. For letting her die alone in exchange for what I now know was a lost cause. I’m embarrassed to say it out loud, so I don’t. It doesn’t matter. She can’t hear me anyway.

When I visit our apartment, I find that someone else has already taken it. I am told that my sister finally did make her way to Kaliningrad. Late, but on time to do all the necessary paperwork. The man who lives there now with his family hands me a letter. It was left to him by my sister. At first I think it’s from her, but then I recognize the handwriting. My stomach burns. My heart accelerates. I should be happy that she left some last words for me, but instead I feel anxious. Ashamed that I will repay her unconditional kindness and thoughtfulness with nothing but silence.

Dear son,

If you’re reading this, you’ve returned to Kaliningrad a little too late. You probably haven’t even called your sister yet. That’s alright. Call her now. She’ll forgive you. You know she always will. She’s just like me.

Tell her you’ll be visiting her soon. Leave Kaliningrad, my son. There are only memories of death there. The city has been decaying since the end of the war. It too, will perish, like everything else. I urge you to join your sister in Berlin. There are opportunities there. Opportunities to start anew. The city is looking back at its past, lifting itself from the rubble, and creating a new identity for itself. So should you.

I’ve spoken much about your father’s hometown, although very little about him. I wish I had more time. There are things I couldn’t explain when you were younger. Things I couldn’t explain even now. Just know that your father was a good man.

Love, your mother.

“Your father was a good man”. It doesn’t sound like something my mother would say. Of course he was a good man. She has always spoken highly of him. Of his bravery. They both fled Germany before the war, during the communist persecutions. He’d later join the Soviet army and find death defending what he loved. What hasn’t she told me? There was nothing more to say.

My thoughts are interrupted by the new tenant. He holds an old book in his hand. He says my mother wanted me to have it. I ask about the rest of the books, but I’m told the pedagogical institute took them. She was an avid reader, and she shared her passion for history in the best way she could: becoming a teacher. Instead of fairy tales, she would put me to sleep with stories of Prussian Kaisers and anecdotes about how close Berlin was to becoming a socialist powerhouse before Hitler took parliament.

Although purely of Russian descent, she always had a special slot in her heart for Deutschland. Though her ties to my dad would bring her much distress after the war, she never let herself be put down. Always defended him. To the end. Always reminded cynics of the sacrifices he had made in the name of communism. He died here, in Königsberg, fighting against his own German people, a year before the city would be annexed by the Soviet Union and renamed to Kaliningrad. At the end of the war, my mother was faced with a choice. Her husband was deceased, and she had two children under her care. There was nowhere to go. The government was offering housing in newly ravished Kaliningrad. It was an opportunity to be near the place where her husband had died, a chance for a new life. Unfortunately, at the time the city was populated almost exclusively by outcasts and military personnel, but my mother was a warrior — a survivor.

I take a closer look at the book. It doesn’t take me long to recognize it. It’s the one she brought to our first and only trip to Berlin. She took it everywhere with her. We would walk for hours, until we’d eventually reach our destination. If we were lucky, the place she was looking for hadn’t been turned to rubble. She’d use the book as a reference and adlib the rest. She was so eloquent. I’d listen attentively, fascinated by how many facts she could fit in her head.

I walk away from our old apartment with the book and letter in hand. She might have a point. After all, I’m the only family my sister has left.

VII

I knew sister would want to celebrate my birthday, so I left the house. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Now I am completely drunk. Alone and drunk, which is the worst kind of drunk. I never drink, and I definitely never get drunk. But today was a special occasion. A stranger with a shiny bald head struck up a conversation with me at the bar. When he found out it was my birthday he bought me a drink. And then another. Now the night is over and it’s time to go home.

It’s dark out in the streets of Berlin. I don’t know the time. My eyesight is blurry. I can’t read my watch. Whatever the time is, it’s too late. Too late to change anything. Too late to keep trying. Too late for me.

What? No. It’s too late to be out in the streets at night all by myself. I can’t think straight. I don’t even remember if I’m still in the East. I hope so. It’s hard to tell without any physical border. I do hope I don’t stumble upon any officers before I get home. I don’t have my military identification with me. It’d be embarrassing to have my colleagues see me like this. What an idiot. It’s time to go home.

I find a couple holding each other close. They seem to be cold and trying to keep each other warm. Is it cold? I can’t feel it. Am I wearing a jacket? Fuck. Where’s my jacket? Wait, I’m wearing it. It’s not cold. Maybe it’s never cold enough for a Russian in Berlin.

The couple walks up to me. Don’t touch me, I think. They say something. I don’t catch it. I ignore them. The guy repeats what he said, this time louder. I still don’t get what he’s saying. I don’t speak English. I shake my head and walk faster, stumbling to the side and almost falling on my face. Don’t touch me.

Shit. The couple was American. I’m probably in the West. Am I? Where am I? I shouldn’t be in the West. Not in this condition. How far did I walk? It’s too late to take the train. I can’t risk walking all the way to the station. There are probably no trains this late anyhow. Maybe sister can take me in today. It’s my birthday after all. She wouldn’t turn me away. Would she? Did she try to see me at my apartment today? I hope not. That’d be embarrassing. Either way, it’s less embarrassing than having my colleagues find me.

I need to see my sister. I can’t control myself. I can’t.

I aimlessly walk down a few blocks until I find a landmark. I know this place. I’m actually really close to my sister’s place. Why did I come to this neighbourhood? I hate this neighbourhood.

In the distance I find two police officers strolling down the street. This is not a good place to be in. I discreetly change direction and sneak into a side street. I think they saw me already and I just gave them a suspicious enough reason to go after me. I shouldn’t try to do this kind of stuff while I’m drunk.

I hear their hard shoes slapping against the cold, hard pavement, echoing down the whole street. I fall to the ground and roll under a car before they make a turn into my street.

The two officers have made the turn. They’re silent now. I can feel them looking around. Looking for me. They slowly walk in my direction. They call for me. They ask where I am. I guess Germany lost all their smart people in the war.

I see the officer’s shoes walking beside me. He doesn’t even stop for a moment. Completely walks on by, oblivious.

When they are far enough, I crawl out and stand up slowly, making sure no one is around. I need to get to my sister.

This unexpected rush of adrenaline helped me sober up. I can finally think straight. I feel the cold on the palms of my hands. Damn. It is cold. It’s very cold. My head, protected only by a short layer of hair, feels every slight breeze of chilling wind. God dammit it’s cold. I rub my hands down the sides of my legs, clench them into fists and start running. This will keep me warm.

I’m not far now. Right in front of that construction site. What a mess.

I reach her doorstep. Her windows are dark. All her lights are down. Is she home? Maybe she’s just sleeping. I ring the bell.

I wait. Nothing.

I ring again, a little longer this time.

I wait. A light turns on. I look up. I see her silhouette pop out the window, staring down at me. She rubs her eyes, takes a moment and finally recognizes me. She murmurs my name in surprise. Her whisper echoes in the empty street. She disappears and I hear her light footsteps scatter across the skeleton of the building. She’s coming down the stairs. She opens the door.

It’s dark, and I can barely make out her facial features, but her blue eyes sparkle in the darkness of the night. She repeats my name and hugs me. She says she came to my apartment. Shit. But I wasn’t there. Nevertheless, she asks me to come in.

Once inside I don’t want to talk. I know I have to, but I don’t want to. I take off my boots and lay on the worn-out sofa. She shoves my legs aside and sits next to me.

She’s speaking, but I’m not listening. It’s the same speech as always. I don’t blame her for it, but I don’t want to hear it again. She keeps silent. Rubs her soft hand over my head. I feel like I may scratch her delicate skin with my rough buzzcut.

She continues speaking about mom and dad, about the Air Force, about our new life here, about my new life. It’s the same old thing. I’m tired of hearing it again. We’ve been here for over a year now. Repeating it over and over doesn’t make it better. I get angry and I almost speak out, but I keep it in. It’s not her fault. It’s my life. It’s my problem. I have to deal with it.

I think she understands. She gets up, walks to the other room and returns with a blanket and a pillow. She puts the blanket over me and rubs my head again, like a stray puppy. I feel ashamed to admit that it felt good. It felt good to know somebody still cared that I was here.

She exits the living room and it suddenly feels empty. Finally, silence. I close my eyes. I quickly fall asleep.

VIII

It’s morning. The smell of something burning wakes me up in a fright. I have a sudden flashback of something I’ve been trying to forget, but I quickly suppress it and it goes away. It’s breakfast. She made it. Katya is an angel. I hope she meets the right guy, she deserves it. Maybe I hope she doesn’t. Maybe I want to be the only man in her life. Have someone who still needs me.

I keep still. Looking out the window, blinding myself with the morning’s first light rays. I know I need to move, but I can’t find the energy.

Soon Katya walks in. She brings a plate with a toast and a boiled egg. Not much, but still better than what I’m used to having lately. She puts it down in front of me, as well as a cup of coffee. The coffee is steaming hot. I can see little strips of vapour dancing above it.

Her voice ignites my ears. I finally hear the busy street outside; the cars, the people, Katya… wait. What did she say? She says it again. Shit! I’m supposed to work today! I have to be at my post in less than an hour, and I’m still two hours away from Wünsdorf!

I jump from the couch. I grab the boiled egg and devour it in two bites. I grab the slice of toast and begin to put my boots on. She continues speaking to me. She wasn’t expecting this sort of reaction from me. I sense disappointment in her posture. She asks me to take it easy. As soon as my boots are on, I pull her towards me and hug her. I make it last. I know she will like that. She does. She keeps silent. I make an awkward half-attempt to kiss her head. It’s enough for her. More than enough. She smiles, but I can’t tell if it’s real. I don’t have time to find out.

I run downstairs and dash out into the street. Fuck, it’s cold. Why is it still cold?

After running a few blocks down and dodging cars, I find a U-Bahn station. It’s so bright in this neighbourhood. I jump on the subway and hope I don’t get into any trouble. It’s the safer choice.

When I reach the train station, I sprint to the platform and barely jump on the train in time. I got lucky I guess, but not lucky enough. I’m still going to be extremely late. I’m sure my students will be fine without me, but tardiness is not kindly looked upon by my superiors. Seems like in the end I took my mother’s steps and found a calling in teaching. However, unlike her, I hate my job. I hate the repetitiveness, the meaningless social encounters with the rest of the staff, and the sense that all those I teach will reach further than I ever have.

I should have called the office from my sister’s house. Made up some excuse to explain why I’m not even in town. Too late now. I’ll have to deal with it when I arrive.

My heart is still beating agitatedly during the first half hour of the train ride, but I finally let the scenery outside the window soothe me. I think of my new life. How much things have changed. Only a few months ago I was ready to be shot into space. Now I’m living in a completely different country, working as a military flight instructor at a town in the middle of nowhere.

I do wish I could have stayed closer to Berlin. Not because it’d be near my sister, although that should be my first instinct, but because I’d actually feel closer to my father. Although he is dead, I still feel his presence every time I set foot in the city. Maybe I’m just becoming melancholic. I guess it comes with age. At the very least, Wünsdorf is buzzing with comrades. In fact, it’s the largest Soviet Military Camp outside of Russia. Passing by the statue of Lenin every morning makes me feels a little closer to home. I have spent most of my modern life in military bases. Maybe I wouldn’t fit in the city after all.

It’s only when the train finally arrives that I realize I need to go back home and change. It doesn’t take me long to reach the military base. Having an apartment only meters away from work actually turned out to be very convenient.

I unlock the main door to the building and run up the stairs, two steps at a time. I reach my apartment door and stop in my tracks.

The door is partially open. Did I leave the door open? How could I be so stupid? I couldn’t have.

I cautiously enter my apartment. My heart jumps when I find a young officer sitting on my armchair. He stands up in a rush, as if I had caught him doing something he shouldn’t. I don’t recognize him. I ask him who he is. He speaks, but does not answer my question. Instead he hands me a letter.

The bile in my stomach burns and I taste this morning’s coffee in my mouth. I grab the letter, the young officer bows and exits my apartment.

I open the letter and the first thing I read is the signature: Heinz Kessler, deputy minister of defence. Fuck. I had heard about Herr Kessler. He was a fierce German supporter of the communist party. He was first assigned to the Wehrmacht, the nazi air force, but then defected to the Soviets in 1940, with whom he fought till the end of the war. Now he was deputy minister. Our leaders truly know how to reward their most loyal members. It’s therefore strange that I still had to feel ashamed of my father. According to my mother, he was a defector, just like Herr Kessler, but we were never allowed to speak of it.

I’m afraid to read the rest of the letter. But the text is surprisingly short and I can’t help but read it. I must make my way to his office immediately.

I blew it. Again, I blew it. But why are my hands shaking? It just seems like an excessive measure. Are they planning something worse than getting fired? I haven’t given them reasons for harsh treatment. Then again, that hasn’t always been necessary. Was my father’s nationality going to emerge again? That has always been my first thought when I was about to get into trouble. Relax. Just take a breath. Follow your orders. Do your best to defend your stand and let fate take its course.

I quickly change into my military uniform and make my way to the address detailed on the letter. It’s hard to step into the building. My chest hurts as soon as my foot walks through the main door. I feel like everyone is looking at me. I feel like everyone knows I’m getting fired. It’s ridiculous, I know. It’s just my imagination.

Someone grabs my arm. My instinct is to pull away, but I remember that I am in a safe place. Am I? I turn around. It’s a man wearing a high-ranking uniform. I’ve never seen him before. He asks for my name. I state it fully. He then continues in Russian. Strange. He’s wearing an East German uniform. He doesn’t look Russian. He doesn’t sound Russian either.

He asks me to follow him. I am hesitant. I have a bad feeling about this.  We reach a meeting room and there I find Herr Kessler. He’s busy talking with other people. I salute him. He acknowledges me. I try to apologize for my misconduct and skipping work today. He interrupts me and tells me I am not needed here any longer. Did I just get fired? It feels worse than that. He tells me to go with the man who has brought me to this room. With that, our encounter is over. Herr Kessler continues speaking to the other men in the room.

I follow the man, as ordered. Why are they taking me? What have I done? What do they think I’ve done? I remind myself that I have nothing to hide. I try to sound convincing in my head, but I am not completely sure.

I’m afraid of asking where we are going. Just follow him. Don’t make it any worse. Show them you still have discipline. Don’t look suspicious. Why would I look suspicious?

A car awaits for us. I get in. At first I think they will drive me back to my apartment so I can pack my things, but that’s not the case. We drive away from the site. Out of town. Too far for my comfort. The man keeps silent. So do I. I prefer it that way.

We drive south. My thumbs are fiddling with each other. After an hour of driving I finally summon the courage to ask where we are going. The man who guided me to the car says he is not authorized to answer that. He is just following orders.

I finally start putting the pieces together and realize we’re driving to Berlin. Back to Berlin. I can’t believe I had been here this morning and I was now returning for no apparent reason.

Once in the center, we pass by Volkspark Friedrichshain. We stop right beside it. This seems like an odd place to stop. I get off the car and follow the stranger. He tries to walk with me, side by side, but I keep allowing him to stay a step ahead of me. We reach the end of the trees and the broken-down Resurrection Church rises before us. It was heavily bombed during the war, and it’s still in ruins. Hasn’t been touched. Obviously, Berlin has other more important things to worry about than God.

We walk right by it and enter the cemetery beside it. What are we doing here? I follow obediently, but alert. Looking at the gravestones reminds me of my mother. It’s sad that this will now represent her.

We reach a small mausoleum with a pyramidal cupola and two infant angels mourning melancholically. He opens the door to the mausoleum and we enter the humid interior. They’ve dug up the floor and a ladder leads further down into the ground. I am nudged to climb down. We reach the bottom, and I set foot on what seems like a hidden chamber, where two soldiers are standing, patiently waiting for us. They let us in through a large, crumpled hole in a cement wall. It seems out of place, as if someone was trying to cover something up. Unlucky for them, someone found a sledgehammer and I can tell they had a blast breaking through the dubious-looking wall. Inside of it, on the other side, is a heavy metal door. It also looks like it doesn’t belong in a mausoleum. The man presses a button resembling some sort of bell, but it is silent. He waits. I wait with him. Where the hell is he taking me? What is this place?

The metal door screeches and finally opens. The uniformed man turns around and leaves. Should I follow him? What is this place? Why am I here? Why did I let myself get taken all the way here? My eyes follow the stranger as he walks away.

I turn my head forward. The door is now fully open. Behind it is an attractive, blond, German woman in her late thirties. She welcomes me in German, but wears a serious face. Behind her is a long, rudimentary tunnel, lit only by working lights hanging from the sides.

I step inside. But why? Maybe it’s because she’s a woman and I’d like to be polite. Maybe it’s because I find her attractive. I don’t know... yes, I do know.

The door slams behind me. She turns her back to me and walks deeper into the tunnel. I follow her cautiously, trying to avoid tripping over the uneven floor. She wears very casual clothing. It’s hard to make out what she is doing here or what her role is. I thought I would be able to find some clue as to what was happening at this point. I still don’t. It is getting too weird. I feel uneasy. Too uneasy. I reach my limit. I realize how bad this situation is getting — it might even be too late. I stop walking.

The woman notices and stops too. She turns around and asks if there’s a problem. I reply with a question. I demand some explanation before I continue. She says that I need to speak to the Doctor for that.

The Doctor? What Doctor? Before I am able to react, she has already turned around and continues walking down the eery tunnel.

IX

It’s humid. It smells like this tunnel has been closed for decades. I lose count of the corridors and corners we take, and of the metal doors we cross. I am trying to make a mental map, but it is very disorienting. I would never have expected this sort of structure built under a graveyard. Although, at this point, I’m not even sure we’re directly under the cemetery anymore.

Finally, we enter a bright room. Looks like an office. My eyes adjust and I make out another person in the room. A slender man is standing with his arms crossed. He is clearly waiting for me. His casual clothing is made up of at least five different tones of brown. I get a glimpse of a smile on his face. I think it’s a smile. I’m not sure.

He takes a step towards me and stretches out his hand. I shake it politely. His hand is freezing cold, like a cadaver. He pronounces my first name with a perfect accent. He is Russian. I can tell.

He pulls up a worn-out chair and lets me sit on it. I suddenly realize that the female I walked in with is not in the room anymore. I look around for her, but she has vanished.

The man leans against an old desk, crosses his arms and stares down at me. I wait for him to start talking, but he doesn’t. His eyes are scanning over every detail of my body. It makes me very uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable than I already was. I need to stay strong. I stare back at him, defiant.

I win the battle. He talks. He speaks to me in Russian. He introduces himself as Doctor Vodnik. He doesn’t look like a doctor. He doesn’t speak like a doctor either. He explains that he is a scientist. He came from Russia to work exclusively on a very important project. Sure. It’s always an important project. He stops there and lets his words linger.

He grabs some papers from beside him, puts on a pair of glasses and reads from them. He mentions my hometown, my military training, my mother and even my father’s full name. It’s at that point that he looks back up at me. He asks me what happened to my father. I would imagine he has this information already and is probably testing me. I have nothing to hide, so I give him the answer he wants to hear. I tell him my father died in Königsberg, fighting for the red army. The doctor asks me where I got this information from. I pause for a moment, confused by his unusual inquisition. Before I am able to reply, he asks me if my father had ties to the Nazi government. My blood boils. How dare he? I’ve had to put up with these accusations my whole life. I’m about to give my many-times-rehearsed speech on how my father was a hero when he stops me in my tracks. He fiddles through the papers and says there are no records of my father fighting for the red army. I am speechless. That can’t be true. He must be missing some documents. However, the doctor doesn’t seem to give it any importance. Instead he says he knows the remote Russian town my mother was born in. He has been there. I take a breath and try to calm myself down.

He assures me that I need not to worry about my father’s past. He holds the papers up in front of me. He can ask the KGB to forget about all this if this meeting goes well.

Why is he telling me all this? Is he blackmailing me? A moment ago I had nothing to be blackmailed for. Has the KGB fabricated claims about my father in exchange for something?

He asks me about my experience in the Soviet Air Force. I don’t answer. I don’t want to talk about it. I definitely don’t want to talk about it with him. I want to find out how much he knows.  He asks me how I like my current job at the GSSD (Soviet Armed Forces in Germany). That comment painfully hits me straight in the lungs and I don’t know how to react. He asks me if I like working there.

I choose to keep silent.

He asks me if I like it back here in Berlin. He asks me if my father’s hometown is everything I expected. He asks me if I’d rather be in Moscow. He asks me if I rather be back there training. How does he know this last bit? Or rather, why does he know this? The space program is top secret. What does he want with it? My palms are sweaty, but my stern face shows no emotion. He asks me if I am disappointed that I wasn’t given a chance to prove myself. He asks me if I would like another chance. I feel like my whole body is shaking, but I’m sure it isn’t.

He reminds me about all the extensive medical tests, and how they didn’t give me any coherent explanation for my expulsion. I look away. He tries to convince me it wasn’t political, but that just reinforces my doubts.

Where is he going with this? I haven’t said anything in a long while and I am getting very annoyed at his blabbering. He asks me if I ever had any blood problems? I don’t know what he’s referring to. He explains that my blood test results showed a very unusual blood behavior. They thought it wasn’t safe to send someone off into space with such an anomaly.

I remember the moment I was given this speech.

However, he says my blood is exactly what they are looking for. I am worried. No one knows where I am. How could I be so stupid? How did I get myself in this spot? A fugitive drop of sweat runs down my forehead and hides behind my eyebrow. I think he can begin to tell I am getting nervous.

He lightens the tension by changing the subject. He mentions that, back at the space program, Gagarin seems to be the favorite. Yuri and I got to know each other well during our training. Good guy. I’m happy for him. Maybe not happy. But I agree with their decision. The doctor tells me that I may not be suitable to travel through space, but I am still a quintessential specimen for an even more extraordinary program. I don’t like the fact that he uses the word ‘specimen’. He tries to add something else but cuts himself early, as if he were trying to censor his own words. What did he want to say?

Dr. Vodnik calls me by my last name and tells me if I would like to be part of what he jokingly calls, “Soviet Time Program”. He says it is highly confidential and he can’t give any more details until I accept. He knows it is an unreasonable offer to accept without knowing any further, but describes it as a risk I’ll have to take. If I’m interested I’ll have to join blindly. He doesn’t reiterate the fact that the KGB is in possession of my family history, and the fact that all of that could go away if I only accepted his offer. But the thought lingers in my mind, and he knows it. I am intrigued, but also skeptical, and scared.

The doctor says he knows my answer already. The way he says it doesn’t seem to be a figurative speech. However, he adds that he will give me a day to come to my own conclusion, but not without reminding me that it’s a chance to change history. This last sentence strikes a chord inside of me, and he smiles, as if he knew exactly what words to use.

X

It’s morning. The first glimmer of sunlight enters my apartment back in Wünsdorf. I’m laying on my bed. I haven’t been able to sleep. Something has been bouncing frantically inside my head all night. I can barely think anymore. I stare at the moldy ceiling.

I think I know the answer to Dr. Vodnik’s offer, but I am too afraid to say it out loud. What am I so afraid of? Why am I hesitating? What else do I have? It then hits me! I haven’t heard from work at all. Am I fired? What happened? Will I still be able to return to work tomorrow? I mean, today. I must have been so distracted that I completely forgot. Do I even care? Maybe that’s why I haven’t thought about it until now. Maybe it’s not important anymore. Maybe that’s a sign. A sign… how ridiculous. I don’t believe in god, why would I believe in signs?

Why am I so scared of change? Change is what my whole life has been about. Why am I still scared of it?

I can’t lay down any more. I get up. It’s cold. My apartment is always cold. I go to the tiny kitchenette and look around. Not much to eat. I grab a slice of bread. I eat it without tasting it. There’s some coffee already made. When did I make it? How old is it? I don’t care enough. I heat it up on the stove and drink it. No milk. I don’t have milk. I should do some shopping. Wait. Why am I thinking about groceries? I’m trying to distract myself to avoid making a decision.

Do it. That’s it. Done. Do it. Let’s go.

I exit the apartment. My body feels soft and tingly. I haven’t slept, and I am still skittish. My legs are not in the mood to walk, but I force them. My whole body is begging to go back home, but I push myself forward.

I take the train back to Berlin. What time is it? Am I too early? It can never be too early. Not for something this big.

There are only bizarre people on the train at this hour. I try to avoid eye contact with them. I think some are staring at me. Why are they staring?

I take the tram and make my way to the cemetery. I see the crumbling church again. The heavy damage it has endured during the war has left it in desperate need of repair. The shattered ruins rise into the sky, looking down at the street. It looks a lot more commanding in this twilight than it did yesterday in plain daylight.

The doctor is having a smoke in front of the mausoleum, as if expecting me. Am I that predictable? He greets me good morning, throws away his cigarette and ends his conversation with a square-faced comrade. Before leaving, he courteously introduces us. He gratefully specifies that Dr. Khariton has offered invaluable consultation to the project I’m about to join.

Back in his office he confesses that the reason he knew I’d come back is that he is quite sure he has seen me before. I say it is possible. We live in the same city after all. He shakes his head. He says he saw me ten years ago. When I was a child? Where? In Kaliningrad? Why? No. Not in my hometown. Not when I was a child. He says I looked different, but I was the same age I am now. What? That’s ridiculous.

Maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe this old man isn’t as coherent as I had hoped. Maybe I made a big mistake. It’s too late now. I gave my word. Let’s give this delusional scientist a chance.

He takes a deep breath, gets up from his chair and walks around his small office nervously. First time I see him nervous since we met. I stay seated, turning my head towards his direction and following every single minuscule movement, trying to figure him out.

It is taking the doctor a long time to explain what I am here for. He seems hesitant. Maybe he is probing me. Is he testing whether I am the right candidate after all? Is he regretting his choice? Should I be regretting it too?

He asks me if I like reading science fiction. The question catches me by surprise. What does that have to do with anything? He asks if I have read anything from René Barjavel. I haven’t. Never even heard of him. I don’t read a lot of fiction. I only read non-fiction. Facts. Maybe it wasn’t the answer he was hoping for. He is trying very hard to think of good questions, but he was obviously not born to be an interrogator.

I finally break the awkward conversation. I rarely break out in this manner, but this decision has kept me up all night. I don’t want to think it was the wrong move. It has I have enough doubts of my own. I don’t want him eroding my confidence on the project this early on.

What does he want to know? I ask him directly. I accidentally interrupt him in the middle of a sentence. He doesn’t seem to mind though. I acknowledge his concern for security and secrecy, but I assure him that the only way to make this work is to start building a trustworthy relationship. I accidentally sound a little arrogant, so I take a step back in my tone of voice. I explain that there are traitors everywhere, and some are professionally trained to deceive our intuitions. I tell him he will have to take that risk, no matter who he chooses to be part of his project. As a scientist he should be aware that he cannot be one hundred percent sure of anything. I am competent. That is all he needs to know. He now needs to take a leap of faith.

I sound like I am actually talking to myself. As if I were trying to convince myself of it.

He smiles patronizingly. He assures me he is certain that I am trustworthy. He is not doubting whether I’m the right candidate, he is only having trouble finding the words to explain what follows. His body relaxes back on the chair and he opens up to me. He calls me by my first name. It makes me feel like we’ve known each other for a very long time.

He begins.

He tells me that Hitler’s regime performed all sorts of extraordinary experiments before the end of the war. As the final battles were coming to an end, they attempted to erase every record of many of these scientific ventures. He says Berlin was host to one such major endeavor.

Clues regarding this project were found soon after the war by the soviet army, but were inconclusive. They kept all findings strictly confidential, away from the eyes of the allies. The place we are currently standing on was the first piece of this puzzle. Its purpose was unclear a priori. All documents had been burned. All personnel had evacuated and vanished. It took a long time to gather snippets of information and put together a glimpse of what all this was about.

I look around the room. The walls are made of concrete. All still in great condition. It’s like this underground fortress was never aware of the brutal war that had taken place just above the surface.

The doctor continues. They found two other bunkers, very similar to this one, in other remote corners of the city. One lays right in the heart of the West. The soviets found it before the city was split between the Allied Forces and they have kept it secret from local authorities to maintain control over the findings. I am reminded, of course, that this is strictly confidential information.

He takes my nodding as a pause. I force him to continue by asking what these bunkers were built for.

He warns me that it may sound a little… unbelievable at first — and in fact, it may indeed be inaccurate information, but he also points out that we won’t know for sure until I take part in the experiment.

He uses complex scientific terms to describe the purpose of the bunkers. I do not understand a single word. He knows, so he repeats it in plain words. They are nodes used for communication throughout space and time. I still don’t quite understand. Is it used to send messages? Like a telephone? He shakes his head. It’s to transport things, objects, even people. Like a subway system? No. it’s remote transportation. No tunnels or cables. Things are transported from one bunker to another through, what sounds like, pseudoscience.

To be honest, it sounds quite stupid. The Nazis were known to carry out impossible experiments. Hitler was a nut. He veneered dark magic and the paranormal. This place is simply the debris of a delusional mind.

The doctor adds something that makes it even more unbelievable. He says its purpose was to transport not only through space, but time as well.

Now I know for sure — this is a lost cause.

I play along, however, curious to find out how deep this rabbit hole goes. The doctor carries on speaking. His vocabulary becomes more and more sophisticated and eventually my mind wanders. I begin feeling a faint sense of panic. Even if this is all just crazy talk, I am now part of it. I may not take it seriously, but these people obviously do. I wouldn’t dare defy their beliefs. I know how the system works. So now the question is, will my job be dangerous?

I interrupt the doctor and ask him about my role in this experiment. I would be assigned as a ‘Chrononaut’, he says. The term sounds ludicrous, as if taken from one of those sci-fi novels he so fondly mentioned. I try not to smirk as he says it. Instead I rephrase what he said — I would be a time traveller. The doctor nods and falls dead silent for the first time in our meeting.

I do not understand why I was eligible for the project, so I ask. He answers that, besides having a special blood type that is believed to be critical to the experiment’s success, I also have an excellent training as a cosmonaut. In essence, it sounds like I’m a well-bred guinea pig.

I continue extracting information about my specific tasks and responsibilities. He explains that it’d be very similar to that of a cosmonaut. I need to be in top physical condition, get acquainted with the equipment, study the technical specifications and above all, maintain a strong mental health. He also explains that, if the experiment were to be successful, I’d also need to quickly adapt when appearing in a different time in history. He is unaware of the specific time I’d travel to — which makes me feel uneasy. The more he talks, the more evident it becomes that they have no idea what they are playing with — but for some strange reason, I am aroused by the uncertainty.

He points out that my German and Russian are native, which allows me to fit in whenever I happen to arrive — in the past or future. However, this brings up the issue of running into dangerous situations, as we do not know who will be waiting for me on the other side. This, of course, is assuming that the travels will keep me within the Berlin metropolitan area. All these stipulations are based on vague evidence they found in old, crumpled, damp papers.

He complains that the project is dangerously underfunded.

Sounds like an uncoordinated mess.

It’s too late to back out now. I take a moment to digest everything we’ve talked about. I can feel him staring at me, worried about what I may be thinking right now.

After a minute of pure silence, he can’t help but ask me if I am still interested. To my own surprise, I compliantly nod my head. I ask him what the primary objective is.

He says they have a strong suspicion that the Nazis did get to send a human through time. There are numerous mentions of someone under the codename “The Bear”. We must find whether they were successful, and if so, track him down.

He adds that they have yet another disadvantage. In order to travel to a particular date, a custom code must be used. They call this code a “seed”. However, unlike the original German scientists, we have not fully cracked the codification system. Plus, the original creators rigorously destroyed all existing documentation. However, Dr. Vodnik has been successful at partially recreating some seeds. He explains that it’s been easier to decipher seeds of years that are rounded to the nearest decade. He points out the current year, 1960 as an example. Other seeds seem to be too complex to reverse engineer.

He gets up from his seat and puts his hand on my shoulder, inviting me to follow him.

I am transferred to a medical room where a woman waits for me. She’s the one I met on the very first day. For some strange reason, it seems like she’s trying to avoid me at all times. The very few times she makes direct eye contact her eyes wiggle around my face, as if I were a map and she was trying to find directions. I get the feeling that she sees something in my eyes that not even I am aware of.

She takes a blood sample carefully. I hate needles. She stares at the blood, as if she were able to see its particularities with the naked eye. I look at my own blood. Looks normal. Then again, a lot of unordinary things look normal at first sight.

We go through a few other physical tests. At no point do I get any hint of whether I am ticking the right boxes or not. She analytically takes notes on her wooden clipboard after every result, no matter how small it is.

We share no words except for the aseptic pre-scripted series of standardized questions and answers. I wish I could ask her more, but I fear she might repulse any amiable sign of warmth. Strangely, I feel an uncontrollable attraction by her presence. It may be her slick hair, or the way she holds everything with nothing more than her fingertips, making everything seem featherweight. Maybe it’s her hush voice and precise pronunciation.

I lift my arms up in the air and she stares at my chest as I breathe in and out, as she asked. Takes some more notes.

I finally gather enough courage to make a flirtatious remark about her eyes. She catches my intentions immediately. She dismisses my attempt by clarifying that she’s married and that I’m too young for her taste anyway. She’s into older men.

The rest of the hour continues in almost perfect silence, with furtive mumbles that help communicate where to sit, how to hold my arm and when to take a deep breath.

The following two weeks are going to be exhausting. For some reason they want to begin the experiments as soon as possible.

XI

I’ve pushed through three weeks of intensive training and, although we’re technically on schedule, this whole thing seems too rushed. Maybe the reason why I’m the only one who feels this way is because I’m the only one whose life is at stake. I’ve been hearing rumours of a previous experiment done with animals — a dog, to be precise. The poor thing never returned. The doctor tries to convince me that it means nothing. The animal completely dematerialized, meaning that the matter must be elsewhere; somewhere we cannot measure just yet. Knowing this still doesn’t soothe me though. The more I know, the worse I feel about it. I think I’ll stop asking questions of that kind.

It’s the night before the big day and he’s invited me for a drink in the lab. I call it our last drink, but he quickly shakes his head and assures me that it won’t be. I’m afraid to ask why he is so confident. I assume he has good reasons for feeling that way.

Although he may seem like a strange man at first glance, he has been very attentive with me. I have been given a new place to stay in Berlin. My sister was happy to hear that, but I’m afraid I haven’t had a chance to visit her as often as she had expected. I couldn’t invite her over to my new apartment either, as Dr. Vodnik was very persistent about the secrecy of this location. He said the apartment would always be available for my own personal use, no matter when I travel. As in, he’ll make sure it’s vacant for as long as he can, but I must always keep its whereabouts confidential.

By the time I realized I hadn’t planned a goodbye meeting with her, it was too late. Well, to be honest, it wasn’t too late. That’s just what I told myself. I was simply too ashamed of having ignored her for so long. I instead wrote her a letter explaining that I will be away for a long time. I didn’t specify why, but I insinuated that it had something to do with the army. Why did I write that? She’s probably worried sick. It’s too late now.

The doctor hasn’t asked many questions about my personal life since our first interview, but he seems to know a lot about me. The KGB must have done a good job.

Early next morning, I find myself naked in the room. I’d feel embarrassed if it wasn’t for the fact that the doctor and the blond woman (whose name I still haven’t dared to ask) have made themselves very familiar with every corner of my body. I have nothing to hide — anatomically at least.

I am guided inside a metallic cabin, very reminiscent of Berlin’s iconic phone booths. For a moment I wonder if they have scraped off the yellow paint and repurposed it. My suspicion is quickly debunked as I walk inside of it. This is much smaller than a regular phone booth.

I turn inside the small cubicle and the doctor closes the door in front of me. It is dark inside. There is only a small, round porthole at eye level through which I can see the doctor, mouthing something I can’t hear. It is completely sealed-off and sound-proof in here. He smiles and flicks his neck. I guess he owes me a drink when I get back.

His face disappears from the porthole. The soles of my feet are cold against the slick metal. I keep my arms close to the sides of my body. Although I try to lie to myself, I cannot hide it — I’m nervous. No. Worse. I’m scared. I know I’m scared. I say I’m only nervous to help calm my nerves. I distract myself and remember something about Berlin being home of the first phone booth in history. Somehow I feel like we may write history today too, also in a phone booth — or at least something that looks like it. What a stupid thought. I should be thinking of all the things the doctor asked me to remember. I should go through the list in my head and make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. Eat salt, he said. Eat salt as soon as you arrive. That’s the most important thing. The machine has trouble with sodium, for a reason I care not to learn. Find the seeds. That’s the second most important thing. Each seed is essentially a key to a new date in which we can travel too. They are extremely complex to generate from scratch, so it is vital I gather as many as I can. That’s if I ever stumble upon any, of course. Nevertheless, without the right seeds I will not be able to make my way back home. The seeds. The seeds. The seeds. Most of them were destroyed by the nazis — although some may have survived. Perhaps I can even find them before they are destroyed. It sounds like such an abstract idea in my head. The third is… the third is… what was the third thing?

In the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of the blond woman staring at me through the porthole. She has no expression on her face. I stare back, not knowing how to react. Did she say something? A second later she dramatizes a big breath. Hold your breath! I take three short breaths and a final big one, holding the oxygen inside my lungs.

I feel the pressure inside the booth begin to decrease. My ears pop. I discover a new type of silence. I can’t even hear my own heartbeat. My vision goes blurry. I desperately try to regain my sight by blinking and shuffling my eyes around, trying to focus on the porthole where a smudged image of a beautiful woman stares back at me. I feel ants crawling inside my skin. My spine is struck by lightning and I fall to the ground.

I can’t hold my breath any longer and I quickly exhale and inhale. The air is thin. Humid. The walls of the booth are covered in a thin layer of water, like the one that gathers up around a glass of cold beer. I am awkwardly crawled up on the floor. My ass is slipping against the cold metallic surface.

I get on my feet, but my knees are shaky. In fact, my whole body is shaking, as if I had just eaten a bag of coffee beans. At least it soothes me to hear myself breathing. Deep, anguished breaths. It is dark, however. Pitch black. Have I gone blind? I tap around me, feeling the booth with my fingertips. The wheel handle should be somewhere here. Here. Here it is. My hands slip as I turn the wheel handle. I don’t remember it being so tight. Maybe I’m just feeling weak.

The lock finally gives in and the door pops open, bringing a cold rush of air inside the booth. I wasn’t aware of how hot it had gotten in there. I stick my head outside the booth and still, I see nothing. Oh, wait. Now I can. Now I can’t. Now I can. Now I can’t. A red light is blinking beside the time booth. Every couple of seconds, for a brief moment, I get a glimpse of the room.

I slowly and carefully make my way around the room, trying to find an exit. It looks similar to the one I just left seconds ago, but with a different layout. It also seems as if it has been abandoned for a long time. Dust and spider webs stick to my moist skin. I hear tiny rummaging under one of the counters and for a brief moment I feel something hairy crawling and brushing my feet. I don’t dare to look down. I try to keep calm.

Slowly but steadily I begin to have a feel for the room and finally discern something that looks like an exit. I cautiously walk towards it, my eyes open wide, hungrily taking in any minuscule amount of light. I finally reach the door and open it.

Behind it is an even darker corridor which looks like it’s in a worse condition than the previous room. Part of the ceiling has caved in and there are scattered puddles of dark water. Where the fuck am I? And most importantly, how the fuck do I get out of here?

A loud rumble shakes the ground below my naked feet. Dust falls from the walls. I hear faraway footsteps splashing on water. Before I can even decide which way to run, an artificial ray of light cast by a flimsy flashlight shines like a curious squirrel around the corner. I take cover behind a pile of rubble. I find a small plank of wood and grip it firmly in my hand.

The steps get closer, and the flashlight shines wider. I wait. A stranger’s voice calls my name in the loudest whisper I have ever heard. He has an accent, but I can’t put my finger on it. He calls again, adding a German curse word to the end of the sentence for good measure. His voice seems to be losing patience. I look at myself, completely naked and vulnerable. My balls dangling like wet tea bags. I can’t tell whether this person is armed, nonetheless, I have no chance against him in this state. My only option is to trust him.

I answer back with a question. I ask who he is. He says his name is Burak. His voice has a casual tone, as if we had known each other for years. I can finally pick-out his accent. Arab. Maybe Turkish. Probably Turkish.

He turns the corner and finally finds me, his flashlight beaming straight into my eyes, blinding me. I can’t see his face. I stand before him like a shaved rat, shielding my eyes uncomfortably. He throws some clothes at me and asks me to put them on. I gladly comply. I put on some jeans, a thin shirt, a thick jacket and a pair of hefty boots without socks. He apologizes for forgetting to bring socks. Before I’m able to acknowledge, he offers me a bag of peanuts. I tell him I’m not hungry, but he insists. I dip my hand inside and feel that it is mostly filled with salt, with only a few peanuts hidden inside. I take one out and dust it off. Burak tells me I should be eating the salt. The peanuts are just to make it easier to swallow. He knows. Who is he?

I do as he says, shoving a peanut in my mouth and mixing it with a large pinch of salt. It’s not the pleasant snack I was hoping after a long trip. I can only discern his silhouette in the dark. His head thrashes from one side to the other as if someone else were about to walk into the derelict building at any moment. I ask him how did he know I was here. He says I told him. What?

I’m about to ask him something else when he pulls me by the arm and leads me to the exit.

1970

XII

Berlin looks pretty much the same at first glance, but I will soon find out that it isn’t the same at all.

Burak has led me through the sewers and out into a remote alley of Kreuzberg. He seems quite young to be involved in something like this. I have the feeling he may be even younger than I. He’s surely no older than thirty. Probably mid twenties.

We are nowhere near the cemetery I entered just minutes ago. In fact, we’re about five kilometers away from it, near what I’d later learn to be Wrangelbrunnen fountain. The sun is bright outside. I have no idea what time of the day it is. Maybe morning. Maybe late afternoon. How did I get all the way to Kreuzberg?

Now that we’re outside I feel the unforgiving cold scratch into my scalp. I run my hand over my head and feel nothing but skin. My hair is gone. I touch my eyebrows. Nothing. They’re gone too. The doctor said nothing about this. I look at myself on the reflection of a store’s window. It’s amazing how different I look without any hair. I don’t look like the same person. I am unrecognizable even to myself.

Burak slaps me on the shoulder and signals me to keep walking. I try to keep up with him. We walk past a couple of streets more and he enters a grey apartment block. He runs up the stairs, expecting me to be as energetic as he is. Unfortunately, I can barely bend my knees. He takes my arm over his shoulder and helps me up all the way to the second floor. He rummages in his pocket and takes out a set of keys. I hear babies crying next door. I can smell a distinct, pungent, sour food in the whole staircase, but I’m not sure what it is.

First thing Burak does when we enter the house is shout out for his mother. He also says something in Turkish which I cannot understand. A woman appears from behind a door frame. She is covered with a long, black hijab and it’s hard to tell her age, but her voice is mature and rugged. She gives her son a quick answer and quickly disappears back inside the room.

The corridor is packed with small boxes along the side of it that go all the way to the ceiling. Burak opens the door to a room and we both walk inside. He opens a drawer and throws me a pair of socks. The room is also riddled with small boxes. I find a couple of open ones and peek inside. They carry vinyl records, jeans and porn magazines. I ask him if all these boxes have the same contents. He nods and says that it’s his business. I don’t quite understand, but I decide it’s the least of my concerns right now. I have bigger things to ask.

He hands me a newspaper and lands it on my thighs. He says Dr. Vodnik thought I’d like to see it. I open the newspaper up. On the front page I see a cosmonaut. At first I think it’s my old friend Gagarin — he finally made it to space after all. I guess this is the doctor’s way of telling me I made it to the future. Something doesn’t seem quite right about the picture though. I quickly notice an american flag on the cosmonaut’s shoulder and a sandy surface beneath his feet. That’s not Gagarin. I read the title. It’s in English, but I can understand a word: Moon. I search for the date at the head of the page. 1969. It’s 1969? How long have I been asleep. Burak tells me the newspaper is actually a year old. It’s 1970, and he points out that I haven’t been sleeping.

I feel lightheaded and weak. Burak sees this, puts his hand in the pockets of my jacket and pulls out the salted peanuts. I eat a few more. He says I should eat the whole bag if possible.

He clears his bed of crumpled clothes and invites me to take a nap. I do feel tired. As I drift off I hear him say that he’ll wake me up in a couple of hours to cross the border. I don’t quite understand which border, but before I am able to question him, I have fallen asleep.

* * *

Two hours later, on the dot, my shoulder is shaken. My sticky eyelids flicker open and I see Burak’s dark eyes staring at me. I carefully sit upright, regaining consciousness. Burak seems to be in a constant hurry, ever since I first met him. It’s like he’s always got some place to go.

He pats me on the back and asks me to grab a box. He does too. Together we walk out of the apartment. He exchanges some indiscernible words with his mother and he closes the main door behind him.

Outside it is getting dark already. I follow Burak down the street where a small Citroën 2CV panel van is waiting for us like an obedient dog. I would say it was pistachio-colored, but the abundant rust now dominates as the principal color.

Burak opens the back doors and we place the boxes inside, where others have already been carefully loaded. He walks around to the driver’s seat, opens the door with a strident squealing emanating from the old hinges, and sits inside, shaking the flimsy car from side to side as he accommodates into the small seat. He opens the opposite door and I enter the car too. It is even colder in the car than it is outside. How is it possible? Burak starts the ignition and the car coughs as if it were an old man with the flu. The engine finally kicks in and roars like a lion cub.

Burak drives down the dimly lit streets of Berlin without saying a word. I thought of striking up a conversation, but I can tell by the look on his face that he is deeply brooding about something else. I don’t think it’d be a good thing to break his concentration. It also allows for me to have some time for myself. It is then that I realize I have no idea where we are going or who this man truly is. I’d be worried if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve gotten used to the idea of trusting strangers using basic intuition.

He spits out a sound in Turkish that can be nothing else but a curse word. He reaches into his pocket and hands me a west German passport. I open it and find my face on it. He tells me to keep it. I take the opportunity to ask how long we’ll be driving for. He says it’ll be only a few blocks away. I’m about to ask about the border he mentioned before I fell asleep earlier, but the road ahead of us holds the answer. Not far now, I see a grey wall looming across the buildings. This wasn’t here yesterday. By yesterday I mean years ago, back in 1960.

We reach a barricade guarded by two soldiers. Burak greets them. One of them is also of Turkish descent. They shake hands amicably. We drive only a few meters further and we stop at a second border. There, Burak’s stance is more formal, patiently waiting for the guard to walk up to the window. He then offers him an envelope and they both nod. The security bar is raised and we drive through.

I look through the rearview mirror as the ugly cement wall disappears in the distance. I ask Burak when the wall was built. He says it was in 1961, briefly after I travelled. He attempts to quickly explain the politics behind it, but his sentences tangle into a messy construct, leaving me without any clear picture of what actually happened. He is quickly aware of his rambling and stops himself, only to point out that I cannot easily cross from one side of the city to the other anymore.

The lights seem different in the east. It’s darker. Even the weather seems to be colder. I’m sure it’s only my imagination. But I do feel more at home here. The tenebrosity is my friend.

As Burak drives I soak in the beauty of the city. I do notice some minor changes. New residential buildings mostly. But the essence — the spirit — is still untouched.

After what seems like ten minutes, we arrive at the Resurrection Church. It has been partially renovated, but not enough to reflourish its former glory. Burak stops the car a few meters away from the entrance, right below a broken lamp post that now only casts a shadow on the vehicle. I take the gesture as a sign for me to get off. His engine is still running though, and his hands are firmly holding onto the steering wheel. I push myself off the low seat and onto the pavement, taking one more look at Burak before I leave. He wishes me good luck with a neutral tone. I ask if we’ll see each other again while I close the creaking passenger door. Through the open window he replies that he is certain of it. The engine coughs and he drives away.

I am left in the silence of the night with no one around. My only choice is to walk towards the cemetery. I walk to the mausoleum and try to open the door. It is shut. I knock. Nothing. I pull the handles. They won’t budge. I knock again. No signs of anybody. I return to the church. It’s too dark, and the cemetery is creeping me out. I look up and down the street and see nowhere to go. I only wish Burak would have waited for me to enter the building before driving off.

An unforgiving breeze forces me to curl up on the floor, besides the main door to the Resurrection Church. I close my eyes, burrow my head in between my arms and wait for morning, hoping for the best.

XIII

I am awoken by her. Her head blocks the sun and all I can see is her silhouette. A rim of light around the edges makes her blond hair glow like the moon during an eclipse. She whispers and caresses my face. I’m still half asleep. My eyes still sticky. I take my time to accommodate to the brightness of the new day. She doesn’t wait. She grabs me by the arm and forces me on my feet. Her soft manners suddenly turn aggressive. Or maybe it’s just me waking up and being more aware of reality.

She asks me what I’m still doing out here. I explain her about last night. She curses Burak and assures me that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to go down. She taps my jacket with the palm of her hand, dusting it off. We leave.

She’s obviously older than the last time I last saw her — in her forties, I’m guessing — but she stills maintains an enchanting attractiveness through the years. I ask her where we are going. She says they’ve relocated their laboratory to a safer location. I ask her if I can stay at her place tonight, or at least until the next trip. She points that her husband wouldn’t be happy about it. Ok, she’s still married.

We get into a car. She drives. She drives south. She doesn’t speak. We drive by Treptower Park and it reminds me of my childhood. The very first time my mother brought me to Berlin. It was years after the war. Years after the death of my father. I was already in my late teens. My sister was studying and couldn’t join us on this trip. On the second day of our stay in the city, my mother brought me here, to the Soviet Memorial. I must have been seventeen at the time. I remember the feeling as if it were happening right now. It was the most impressive thing I had ever seen. She held me tightly by the arm and we walked. From the weeping statue of a mother to the heroic pedestal where a soldier held a child in his arms. My mother kept silent the whole time. She didn’t speak a word until we exited the grounds. She limited herself to reading the inscriptions and taking a deep breath once in awhile. Her eyes seem to be lost somewhere. The trip was intended for me to learn about my father. Though she never actually said a word about him. It was almost as if she just expected me to intuitively understand who he was by simply walking around the city. I desperately looked for clues, but I never got a concrete answer. A week later we were on the bus, on the way back to Kaliningrad. Back home. Having learnt nothing new about my father.

The blond woman parks the car and asks me to follow her. She takes me through a lush park. Incidentally, there seems to be a lot of people taking the same route. Most of them holding children by the hand.

A few meters later I understand. They’ve built a new theme park. Never seen it before, but apparently it’s here to stay. Kulturpark Plänterwald, they call it, and it’s yet another proof of East Berlin’s prosperity. However, I can’t help but wonder what the blond woman and I are doing here.

She buys two currywursts and we calmly walk down the park. I ask her when I will get to speak to the doctor. She says the doctor has disappeared.

I stop in my tracks. She looks at me intently but nudges me to keep on walking. I continue following her.

I ask her what she knows. She says that, one day, he simply never showed up to work. I throw my currywurst in a garbage can and grab her by the arm. Why has nobody told me this yet? She says it’s not important. I know she is lying — it has affected her more than she would have liked. She contains her emotions and assures that the project is still functioning as usual. She is running it now.

I try to find out when it happened and she dismissively says it was only a couple of weeks ago. I ask her to tell me more about his disappearance, but she says it’s not a good idea. She says I could be tempted to change the past somehow. We don’t know what the consequences of something like that may be. She keeps walking forward.

Her hope is that he is only missing temporarily, but she expresses her worry that someone may have been trying to sabotage the project. They think it may be western spies, but nothing is confirmed. The GDR themselves don’t know what we’re doing — it is very unlikely that the West would have found out. Could be an inside man. Someone working for the USSR maybe.

She repeats that they’ve relocated the central laboratory. I know this already. She explains that they’ve found yet another portal underneath the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The Soviet government has procured the area and turned it into a hospital for Russian soldiers, which will allow us total discretion. This newly discovered underground site has also revealed undamaged documents that may prove very helpful in our search for other portals.

I tell her I’m not sure about travelling again. I point out the loss of my hair, my non-existent eyebrows and the fact that my stomach is still churning. She says it’s fine. She’s seen me in this state before. It’s a natural part of travelling via the booth. What does she mean she’s seen me like this before? I ask her. She sighs, shrugs and says it’s better not to talk about this sort of thing, as it may have unpredictable consequences. I guess that means I’ve seen her before too. Or, rather, that I will see her again. I can’t help but ask when was the first time she saw me. I believe that’s more important. She hesitates for a moment but finally confesses that it was in 1950.

1950? That’s before I even signed up for this! She says the doctor and herself had already seen me, but thought it’d be safer to not influence my decision. After all, it seems as if fate was unavoidable anyhow.

I am eager to visit the new laboratory but she says we should wait for noon. The hospital is too busy in the morning.

She offers getting on the ferris wheel. Sure. Why not.

Our carriage rises up into the cold sky. The wind swivels our flimsy metal box. I thought I’d be ok with this, but I’m not. It’s strange. I remember going through nerve-wrecking tests at the Space Program. I passed them all without fail. Maybe it’s the fact that one was built by scientists, while the other is a dingy money-maker that has little concern for the rider’s safety. Or maybe I’m just exaggerating.

Beside me, the blond woman holds her hair down, protecting it from the wind. She must be almost fifty years old now, but her scent intoxicates me. She turns to me. I turn away, pretending to glance at the landscape. I make out the wall in the distance. It’s about a kilometer away and cuts all the way towards the center of Berlin. From up here life seems to be the same on both sides of the wall. There aren’t any glaring differences, or any reasons to believe that they are two completely different countries.

I take this opportunity to learn more about her. I make sure that my tone is strictly professional. I don’t want her to think I’m hitting on her. I casually ask her if she’s from Berlin. That should be a good conversation starter. She nods her head. I ask her if she was here during when the Red Army arrived. I immediately realize it’s probably not an appropriate question, but she answers nevertheless. She sighs in relief and says her parents left long before that, back in 1934. They saw how Germany was changing, and they didn’t like where it was going. Both of them had communist ideas, and they even taught her some Russian. So they decided it was safer to simply move somewhere more suitable. This place happened to be Vienna. Or as it was known at the time, Red Vienna, for its well-known left-leaning government. Unfortunately, it only took four years later for her parents to return to their home country. Not because they had actually moved, but because Germany had annexed Austria. Her father and mother were lucky to stay under the radar and carry on with their lives as normally as they could. A couple of years later she left school and joined university. At the same time, her father was conscripted into the army, much against his will, only to be killed in a matter of months. Her mother immediately fell into a deep depression and died soon after. She suddenly found herself completely alone and in charge of her own survival. Although her parents had left her some inheritance, it wasn’t enough to support her university studies, so she got a job in a coffee shop and continued going to classes. That is, until the siege of Vienna. With the Soviet forces at the gates, and having heard of the sexual misconduct by many of their soldiers, the owners of the coffee shop offered their pantry as a hiding spot for young girls such as herself. However atrocious, it was during this tumultuous time that she met her husband. At that very same moment, her mouth opens to speak, but no words come out. Instead she turns her head away and looks off into the distance.

I ask her when and how she returned to Berlin. She says she was offered a job during the Soviet occupation of Austria. She knew Berlin well, she spoke Russian, and had the right education. It just made sense.

The wheel comes to a stop and we both get off. After the ride, we walk back to the car and head towards the hospital.

When we arrive, my first impression is that the building is not in great condition, but it functions well enough. I guess that’s the Soviet way. I follow her inside as she salutes the hospital staff. I hear the monotonous moans of the patients and smell the aseptic stench of the halls.

We reach the emergency stairs and walk down to the bottom where a shiny steel door has been precariously installed. She opens it with a set of keys that she has been keeping in her pocket all this time.

We walk down a dimly-lit tunnel to a familiar-looking room. Gadgets have been installed in the same manner as they were in the previous location. She shows me a time booth and explains that they have deciphered the seed for the next trip, but we ideally need the doctor’s authorization before embarking. I ask if she knows what year I’ll be going to next. She says she doesn’t know, but that she supposes it’ll land on the beginning of a decade, as usual.

I observe a map hanging on the wall. It has been marked with pins. From what I gather, they seem to represent the locations of discovered time booths. She walks beside me and I smell her sweet perfume once more. She points at the map and explains that they are trying to find a pattern that may reveal the location of the rest of the time booths. We are currently at the time booth labelled as B-SO. She says the “SO” stands for “south east”. That part they’ve easily cracked. The main question lies in the “B”. Some booths are labelled “A”, others “B”, and there is no clear reasoning. They’ve tried to connect the locations via triangles and rectangles, trying to form some sort of logical pattern, but so far they just seem to be scattered randomly across the city and they have no idea how many there may be in total.

I stare at the map for a little longer. She asks me to remember it, as I will have to communicate the locations when I travel back. I am a little confused though. Didn’t she say we shouldn’t mess with the past? She does, however, admit that I may have told them already, and that in this case, messing with the past would actually mean not telling them about the locations. It’s a little hard to keep track of all this. My brain takes a break for the time being.

She places her hand on my bald head and tells me to take some rest. Dr. Vodnik had planned for me to make my next jump in three days, but there’s no way of knowing what his specific plan was. However, I am secretly determined to find out what happened to the doctor. I don’t tell her this, of course.

The following day, I leave the hospital early in the morning. Early enough that nobody will question it. The blond woman gave me some new clothes, and I found some money inside the jacket. I’m not sure if that was intentional or simply a coincidence. I put on a hat, a scarf, and use the money to make my way back to the center, in search of the apartment Dr. Vodnik had arranged for me. Maybe he’s left a note or some sort of an explanation there.

When I arrive the building entrance, I turn around and find the park just in front. I walk to the stone under which I should find the key. It’s in a remote corner of the park. Away from the benches. When I arrive, I realized that the stone has been slightly moved. I pick it up and look underneath. Nothing. All I find is a patch of dead grass and some insects that have decided to made a home underneath the rock.

I walk back to the apartment building. I stand by the main door patiently. Someone is ought to walk in or out eventually. Only 5 minutes later, an old lady exits the building. I greet her politely and sneak in before the door slams shut behind her.

I walk up the stairs to the third floor. I nudge the door, and to my fortunate surprise, it gives in. Although... knowing now that it was already open makes me feel uneasy. A stench fills my nostrils and I cover my mouth with my sleeve.

The apartment is quite empty. Not a lot of furniture. It doesn’t take me long to find the doctor’s dead body. It looks like it must have been here a couple of weeks. I suppose the neighbours must have been turned off my the smell, but were too afraid to intervene.

Deep down I feared something like this, but hoped it was only me being paranoid. I didn’t get to know the doctor well enough, but his death still hits me like a ton of bricks.

I walk closer to the body and notice a broken lamp beside him, and blood underneath him. His neck has been severed. With a knife, I assume.

I shouldn’t linger here for too long. I search his pockets, but I find nothing of interest. In fact, his wallet is missing. Did he get robbed? It makes more sense that someone made it look as if he had been robbed. After all, who would storm into this apartment? Who would use such extreme measures to subdue a weak old man?

I need to get out of here. I leave the apartment and close the door behind me. There are no neighbours around. Good.

Once in the street, I search for a phone booth. I call the police and anonymously report the doctor’s death. All I tell them is that there is a strange smell coming from the apartment. I’m sure they’ll figure out the rest.

It takes about an hour for the police to arrive. I cautiously hang about when they do. I make sure my scarf and hat are hiding my face. From afar I am able to hear one of the neighbours testifying to the police officers. She describes a suspicious man she saw a couple of weeks ago. She describes him as bald and pale. I feel a cold electric shock rush through my body when I hear this. My first conclusion is that it could have been me. But that can’t be. Why would I want to kill the doctor? What did he do? What will he do? What’s clear is that his plan did not work. I cannot make use of this apartment. Its safety has been compromised. But now the seed of doubt has been planted inside of me. I will most likely meet the doctor again, and when I do, I will not be able to look at him in the same way.

When I return to the hospital, I learn that the blond woman has been asking about me all day long. I walk into the main hall, she grabs me by the arm and pulls me into a secluded office. Before asking me anything, she angrily points out that I can’t just leave the premises as I like. She’s partially right. It was risky of me to venture into this new decade with anyone to guide me. However, as soon as I give her news of the doctor’s death, she seems to completely overlook my lack of discipline.

She takes a step back and sits on the desk. Her chin trembles for a slight moment, but she closes her eyes, swallows her tears and gets back up. She asks me if I know who did it. I lie and tell her that I have no idea who could have done it.

I ask her if we can search the doctor’s office. She walks me there. The room is a bit of a mess. Although that may only be so from my point of view. Maybe it’s in perfect order in the eyes of someone with a privileged brain, such as Dr. Vodnik’s.

I ask her if he had written down the last seed he cracked. The blond woman hands me a napkin. A number has been hastily written on it. Underneath it, the doctor also wrote “The Bear”. I ask her what he meant by that. She shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head. I ask her where he got the seeds from. She explains that it’s a complex method of manually scanning through whatever remaining documents we have found, look out for patterns and use them to create a seed. Each seed is a string of what seems like a series of random numbers and letters. But within this seed is an encrypted algorithm. Sort of like a puzzle. Once the doctor was able to crack the algorithm, he’d use segments of the numbers as starting points, and that would give him a final result: a seed. This only reinforces the doctor’s overwhelming talent. Issue is, every seed has its individual decryption algorithm. She points out that, although she’s able to decode a seed once the algorithm is decrypted, it is a lot more difficult to actually find the individual algorithm for each seed.

What’s clear is that the doctor intended to use this seed in our next trip, but he’s no longer here to authorize it. The decision now lies on his assistant.

XIV

Staying at the hospital has turned out to be a good idea. I was able to talk with the veteran soviet soldiers and hear their tales of the war. I kept asking if any of them knew my father. The chances are slim, but it’s worth trying. It’s also good to speak Russian again. It’s like being back home. I wish I could have had a chance to get out of the premises and visit my sister, but even I know that’s not a bright idea. I just feel bad that she hasn’t seen me in ten years. Then again, has she? How can I be so sure there’s not another version of myself from the future out there right now? Maybe I did return to her after all. Maybe she’s with me right now. Or maybe I never did return to her. That sounds more akin to something I would do. I would be too ashamed to show my face after so long, and the longer I spent not seeing her, the harder it’d be for me to gather the courage. I wonder if she’s married. Hopefully to a nice man. She deserves a good man. Someone better than her selfish brother. Maybe she has kids. In fact, maybe she’s completely moved on. Maybe she’s too busy to keep looking for her brother. I hope that’s the case. On the other hand, I also selfishly do hope she tells my nephews about me.

What am I saying? I don’t even know if she has children at all, and I’m already behaving like an uncle. Besides, she’s always been a free spirit. Most likely, she’s still single, focusing on her career rather than getting involved in mindless love affairs. All I really hope is that my superiors at Wünsdorf gave her a good explanation for my disappearance. Best explanation they could have given her is that I am dead. It’s the only way she’d be able to move on in the long run.

Stop talking bullshit. Focus. There are more important things to worry about. We’re back in the booth. Remember. Salt. Salt. What else? Salt… Seeds. Yes. Oh, the map. Map.

Her beautiful face pops into the porthole. She’s smiling. She winks. It’s hot inside here. It’s getting hotter every instant. It seems different than the last time. It’s too hot now. I’m burning. And then, out of nowhere, a rush of ice cold air blows my body against the back wall.

I am crawled up like a wounded animal. I feel even weaker than in the last trip. I try to open my eyes, but my eyelids are too heavy. I look up at the porthole above me. I see some light coming in. At least this time there’s someone waiting. Wait! Who’s waiting?

The door opens and a cold breeze dries the sweat on my naked body. Two white coats stand before me. I look up. It’s blurry. I don’t recognize their faces. One of the figures speaks in German. Wait. Is that…? I recognize the voice. I call out Dr. Vodnik by name.

Silence.

After a moment he replies, in Russian. To my surprise he asks who I am.

I ask what year it is. He refuses to reply and insists I first answer his question. I state my full name. As my eyes adjust to the light, I am able to make out the laboratory behind him. It’s a little run down. I wonder what location we’re at, and what year it is.

I am shivering. I ask for a blanket. The doctor waves behind him and a make out the shape of a soldier approaching. The doctor stretches out his hand towards me. I hold on to it and he helps me stand up. I walk out of the booth and immediately realize the room is lit up by working lights, all connected to generators.

The doctor keeps asking me questions at a rate that I can’t keep up with. The blanket finally arrives. I regain some consciousness and recognize the second person in the white coat. She is young and radiant. Possibly in her late twenties. Not much older than I am. Unlike with her, it’s hard to tell the doctor’s age. Dr. Vodnik has reached that age when old people are simply permanently old.

I come to my senses and immediately ask for salt. The three witnesses are taken aback by my request. I insist and explain that it is vital. The doctor motions the soldier once again. He nods and exits the room.

The doctor holds me by the shoulders and queries if I’m a German soldier. I shake my head. I now realize this is the first time they’ve ever seen me. I explain that I am not from the past, but from the future. I describe in detail how he hired me for the position and what my purpose is.

He’s skeptical. I can tell. But intrigued nevertheless.

I take advantage of the doctor’s pensive silence and ask about the current year. He says it’s 1950. I ask for the location, and although he’s hesitant at first, he reveals that we’re under the Resurrection Church. It looks very different though. They’ve only recently discovered it and had just started cleaning it up. They have no idea what this place was. Most amazingly, they’re baffled by the fact that the time booth turned on by itself, as there is no running electricity in the whole facility. He blabbers on about the possibility of wireless electricity, the Tesla coil and how there may be an undiscovered source of energy. He then immediately asks if I know of other locations. I slowly get on my feet and walk towards a worn-out map. I point with my finger the different locations that I can remember.

He takes a pen out of his pocket and marks the spots with an “X”.

I soon realize it wasn’t a good idea to stand up yet. My vision blurs and a moment later I pass out.

1950

IV

It’s strange to have the chance to spend time with a dead person. Looking at the doctor and knowing that he’s already dead is an unsettling feeling. I am tempted to disclose the details of his future, but I recall the dangers of revealing the future. I do get the impression he senses I am hiding something. At the same time, I try to find out what could have driven me to kill him. But maybe it’s too early. Maybe he doesn’t even know it himself. I decide to trust this earlier version of the doctor for the time being.

He’s been kind enough to let me sleep in his own apartment. Then again, maybe he only agreed to it so that he could drill me for information. Unfortunately I don’t have answers to most of his questions. I explain that I am only a traveller. I have not developed this technology nor have I directly been involved in its research. I playfully remind him that he’s the genius here, not me. He will just have to wait and discover the answers during the following years.

I haven’t left the house in over a week. They brought me directly after I passed out at the lab. We do have a good view of Berlin from here though. The doctor has settled in an impressive apartment in Prenzlauer Berg, with a balcony that oversees the Wasserturm, Berlin’s oldest water tower. Unfortunately it was also the location of the very first nazi concentration camp, only a few years ago. From what I can discern in the distance, beyond the tower, Berlin is in an even worse state than it was in the 60s. Reconstructions are still taking place and most of the city still shows traces of the heavy bombing suffered five years ago.

I can’t help but sneakily ask him if the word “Bear” means anything to him. His mouth turns into an upside down smile and he subtly shakes his head. But the subject seems to inspire him to preach yet another one of his lengthy sermons. I’ve grown accustomed to them these last couple of days. He likes to talk, and I like to listen. This time he talks about how bears have repeatedly been used in Berlin’s coat of arms for centuries. He then points out that the bear has also been an iconic symbol of Russia, dating all the way back to the 16th century. The parallelism between these two facts seems to spark his curiosity. He asks me if I was given a codename. Before I am able to shake my head as a response, he has already suggested I be called “The Bear” from now on. My heart stops for an instant, but my face does not show it. For a moment I considering suggesting a different name, but I immediately stop myself. As if afraid that I may interfere with fate.

I ask the doctor when I’ll be able to go out and have a walk. He says I should be patient. I need to recover. He joins me in the balcony and takes out a cigarette. We both stare blankly into the grey sky.

He shares his opinion about the aura that floats over Berlin. I don’t quite understand what he means, so he begins to illuminate me on the suffering that the city has endured and the changes it must still go through. Its people. He says there are no other people in the world like Berliners.

We take a moment of silence to ponder on everything he’s said. He interrupts the brief instance of meditation by adding that there are more dead Berliners right now than alive ones. He remarks that it’s only a personal guess. But he does say that in times like these, dead people have almost as much influence on the future as those who are alive. I feel like it amuses him to play with my head through the use of his words. Or maybe that’s just the way he talks. Who knows.

Out of nowhere, he asks me when was my first time in Berlin. It then occurs to me: it is now. He is a little confused by my answer. He chuckles and says that, yes, technically this is the earliest I’ve been in Berlin and therefore it could be considered the first time. So he asks me one more time, this time specifying. When in regards to my personal lifetime. I give him the same answer, but I don’t think he quite understands what I mean. He asks if this is the first time I’ve ever been here. No. Yes. I mean. I’ve been here before. I’ve been here now. He thinks I’m the one playing mind games now and simply desists. I suggest we have a walk. He takes a moment to reply. He puts out his cigarette and drops it off the balcony.

He walks back inside and tells me I should wear something discreet.

* * *

We walk in a hurry. The doctor has been trying to take breaks here and there, but I keep pulling him forward. I remember the name of a bakery. A bakery I loved. It will close down in less than a year. But I remember it perfectly. It was right in front of the pension where my mom and I stayed. We would walk down there every morning for some freshly-baked pastry. Her and I are probably taking a stroll somewhere downtown right now at this very moment. I can’t remember exactly where though.

When the doctor and I arrive to the corner, we find the bakery closed. I stand before it, looking across the street. I can clearly remember the door to the pension.

The doctor has been speaking all this time. Philosophizing mostly. I have limited myself to nodding. But his sudden silence catches my attention. I turn to him. He is staring down at me suspiciously. He asks me if there’s something bothering me. I rather not to lie, so I choose to keep silent. He takes a moment to read my face, looks at the entrance to the pension and then suggests that, if we’re going to wait, we may as well do it sitting down at a bar right beside us.

We sit right beside the window, where I can have a clear vision of the pension. The doctor has chosen to join my silence. He has ordered a drink, brought out his notepad and scribbled on it for the past two hours. As for myself, I’ve ordered a drink but haven’t taken a sip of it.

Finally, I see it. I see what I’ve dreamed of seeing for years. My mother walks down towards the pension. Her face is as intricate as I remembered, with subtle features I thought I had forgotten. A stream of hot blood rushes upwards through the center of my torso. I’d like to say it feels like she’s still alive and visiting this world again, but it actually feels more as if I were the one who was dead, and I was the one visiting her instead. This timeline is dead. It doesn’t exists anymore. I am a tourist in a dead world.

Beside her is a young boy in his late teens, holding her by the arm. He seems energetic. Full of ambition. But his head hangs low, staring at the ground. Thinking. I wish I knew what I was thinking at that moment. It’s strange. It’s me, yet I have no idea what is going through my mind at this precise moment.

The couple enters the pension and they disappear behind the door.

When I come to my senses I realize Dr. Vodnik has been attentively staring at me all this time. I am discomforted by his intensity. He rhetorically asks if it’s someone I know. His questions end there. He says I may need some time on my own. He understands. He asks to pay for his drink. He puts his small notebook back inside his long coat and before he leaves he reminds me not to do anything stupid.

I am alone in the bar. The doctor has left a spare set of keys to his house on the table. It’s the first time he has shown a genuine gesture of trust.

I take about hour to recompose myself and collect my thoughts. Eventually I get up from my seat and exit the bar. I am about to walk away when I see my mother exiting the pension. I don’t recall her going out by herself. What was I doing at this time? Maybe I was reading. I used to read a lot back then.

She looks around nervously and strolls away with a quick pace. I adjust my scarf, trying to cover as much of my face, and follow her from a distance. This is stupid. Stupid. Just go home. But I can’t resist. I can’t resist spending one more minute near my mother. Just keep your distance. Keep your distance.

I follow her to a nearby park. I try to stay far enough from her and blend with the scarce pedestrians in the streets. She reaches what’s left of a fountain and stands beside it. Dotted holes decorate the remaining stone that were probably once part of a beautiful monument. It’s not uncommon to find evident manifestations of the war in Berlin, even back in the sixties. All buildings and monuments are scarred with bullet holes.

She waits impatiently. But what for? Or who for? I thought we spent the whole time together during our visit, but I obviously didn’t pay as much attention as I should have.

Not long after, a tall figure emerges from one of the paths that lead to the ruined fountain. She turns to the stranger in fright. Her eyes are wide open, sparkling with the tears that are building up in the corners. The man wears a black hat and it’s hard to make out his face under the shadows. My mother runs to him and they embrace. The man holds her face with his black leather-gloved hands and kisses her passionately.

My legs want to run to them and intervene, but I order myself to stay put. I mustn’t interfere. I stare in rage, channeling all my anger through my clenched fist.

As soon as their kiss ends, my mother speaks. I haven’t heard her voice in over a year, and it soothes me immediately. But unfortunately, the sense of tranquility only lasts but a moment, until I discern what she has said. She has pronounced my father’s name.

It can’t be. That can’t be my father. My father was dead already. How could she…? How did she never tell me about this encounter!

The man takes his hat off and I can now clearly see him. He looks different, but he is definitely my father. There is no mistake. But he is different. Very different. His well-combed hair is all gone. In fact, it’s hard to even make out his eyebrows. He is completely hairless.

V

My mother has returned to the pension. I have decided to follow my alleged father instead. I waited patiently as they spoke and kissed for over an hour. I tried to avoid staring at them when they showed signs of affection, but still maintain a steady eye on them.

I don’t know where my father is walking. It’s as if he has no destination. Night is falling and the streets are sinking into darkness. I try to keep my distance from him, but the more scarce the light becomes, the more I’m forced to shorten the distance between him and I. I suppose the doctor must be concerned about my whereabouts, but I don’t suppose he’ll be looking for me in the streets, checking every random street. I’m sure he’ll still be at home by the time I get back. Maybe a little angrier than I’d like, but it’ll be for a good reason.

My father turns the corner. I speed up, not wanting to lose track of him. Already I’ve almost lost him twice. He doesn’t seem to walk; he floats.

I stick to the wall and take a peek around the corner. A hand reaches out over my neck and pulls me towards the dark shadows of a new alley. My father has me pinned against the brick wall. He pulls a knife out and jabs at my neck. I grab his arm in mid-air and stop him. I struggle against his strength — he is a lot fitter than he seems. His eyes sparkle in the dark as they scan my face. After a moment he whispers something in German that sends chills down my spine. He threatens me to stay away from him. That he doesn’t want to kill me, but that he will if he has to.

In an unpredictable move, he knees me in the stomach. I fall to my knees, gasping for air, as he runs away. By the time I inhale my first breath, he is already far gone.

* * *

I didn’t tell the doctor about my encounter. I kept it to myself. In my head I kept revisiting that moment, when my father looked me straight in the eyes. I’m trying to figure out of whether he recognized me or not.

The doctor brings me a cup of tea and recommends I don’t walk about Berlin at this late hour. After a moment he asks me about my mother. I tell him about my first trip to Berlin. About my mother. Where she was born. How she met my father. And there I tell myself to stop talking.

He waits for a moment, then nudges me to continue talking about my father. I am hesitant to reply. Anything I say may give away what I just experienced. I don’t think it’s wise to do so. I simply tell him what I knew before tonight. I simply tell him that my mother said he was a German deserter who fought for the soviets.

As if suspecting something, the doctor asks me where my father is now. Maybe he doesn’t suspect anything after all. Maybe I’m just being paranoid. But I do find myself confused when considering what “now” is. I suppose he means “his” now. Right now. I stutter for a moment and finally reply that he died in the war, not fully believing the words myself.

The room falls silent for the next half hour. The doctor smokes a pipe. I am hypnotized by the smoke emanating from the beautifully carved pipe. He says he bought it from a craftsman in Poland. He corrects himself and specifies that the craftsman gave it to him. It was shortly after the war. Apparently the doctor volunteered to reconstruct a small village in Poland. He served as a medical doctor for six months before making his way to Berlin. There he met a woman. She was the wife an artisan, renowned for his whittling skills. The man was mortally wounded after the war, and his condition was only deteriorating since. The doctor spent many days at their house, taking care of the dying man. Making sure it was as painless as he could make it. During this time he got to know the wife very well. She would thank the doctor by cooking him dinner. The craftsman wasn’t able to get up from his bed, so the doctor and the wife would be the only ones having dinner at the dining room table. The relationship grew to the point where they eventually found themselves sneaking away to the basement and engaging in sexual intercourse. In silence, in secret, without the knowledge of the dying man upstairs. This became a routine and it kept going for weeks. The toughest part was making sure that their seven year old daughter wasn’t around when they had their encounters. One day — the last day, in fact — the artisan asked the doctor to close the door to his bedroom so they could speak in privacy. He asked the doctor to sit beside him and held his hand tightly. He knew. The artisan knew everything. The daughter had innocently told her father what she accidentally saw in the basement. But, to his surprise, the artisan smiled. An honest smile. He told the doctor that he was happy to know that there would be an honest man who would take care of his family after he passed away. The doctor kept silent. Too embarrassed to speak. The craftsman then asked to be left alone so he could sleep. The doctor stood up and walked out the door. With his eyes closed, and on the edge of sleep, the artisan muttered that the doctor was a good man. Those would be his last words. He would perish that very same night. Two days later the doctor was on his way to Berlin. The artisan’s wife stayed in Poland and her daughter died of pneumonia the following winter.

Then the doctor falls silent and takes another puff from his exquisite pipe.

I am perplexed by the story. I do not attempting to make sense of it, but I do try to make sense of why the doctor has told me such an intimate story. Maybe he feels like he owed me something, since I had shared something intimate. Maybe he just feels pity for me. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe he still thinks I’m hiding something, and this is his way of bargaining for more information. But if there’s something I am good at is keeping silent. So I do. I stare at his pipe and admire the smoke protruding out of it like a ghostly belly dancer.

VI

My mother and I have left Berlin today. I followed her again before we… they left. But my father never showed up again. She waited in the park yesterday, for a whole hour, but he did not return. I was tempted to walk up to her and question her. I deserved some explanations, but I would only scare her away. Besides, I’m not sure I am ready to face whatever it is she’s been hiding all these years.

The doctor says I’m ready to travel again. We’re under the Resurrection Church. The blond, young woman is undressing me. There is nothing erotic about it, so I stop thinking about it before I unintentionally do make it erotic.

The doctor reminds me that I still need to find the rest of the time-booths, locate the wireless energy source and, in general, collect more information so that our great nation may take advantage of this wondrous technology.

Just like the last time, I do not know the destination. All he can assure is that it’ll be at the start of a decade. As the blond woman mentioned earlier (or later), it’s the only seeds that were easy enough to crack.

I am naked in the booth once again. I can tell that the color of my skin is changing. It’s irregular, with some patches slightly darker than others. My body feels nauseous already, as if anticipating the inevitable.

I breathe in hard. The door locks in front of me. I thought I’d be getting used to this, but I’m only getting more anxious with every trip. I look out the porthole. The doctor stares back at me. But only for a moment.

A rush of blood flows into my brain, knocking me out of balance and making me fall on my ass. I should just sit on the floor next time.

I go through the motions, getting up slowly. I try opening the door, but it’s jammed on the other side. Fuck. I push harder. Nothing. I feel extremely weak. I’m not sure I’m even posing that much force upon it. I take a minuscule step back, take a deep breath and barge against it. It opens. Slightly at least. I stick my foot out and feel the ground with my toes. I slip out of the booth and tap the object that’s jamming the door. It’s a wooden table. I can’t see much. I keep touching the table with my hands. I feel a cylindrical object. I grab it. Feels like a flashlight. There’s no way the batteries are still working, but I flick the switch anyway. Inexplicably, it turns on. I use it to light the room. It’s a lab, no surprise there, but at least it looks like it’s a new location. I aim the torch on the table and find a pile of neatly folded clothes. Are they for me? Beside the garments is a note and some sort of ticket. I grab the note and I read it. The stranger tells me they’ll see me after the show. It isn’t signed. I look at the ticket. It’s a movie, or a play. I’m not sure. The title reads ‘Auf der Mauer, auf der Lauer’.

I try the clothes on. They fit me perfectly. It makes me feel a bit more secure knowing that they were purposely my size. Then again, maybe I’m just trying to convince myself that they were left for me, and not someone else with the same size. A moment after, I realize the jeans are a little too tight, and the leather jacket is disproportionately larger. But the boots, the black boots, are definitely my size.

In the jacket’s right pocket I find a bag of peanuts. It’s been filled to the top with salt. I eat half of the bag in less than a second.

I use the flashlight to guide me through the labyrinth of dark corridors and abandoned rooms. I reach a dead end. There’s a steel ladder. I climb up and struggle to open what seems to be a manhole. It finally budges and I push it aside. I begin to hear a loud noise, but I can’t recognize the source. The noise is only getting louder every second. I cautiously stick my head out and a fierce wind current forces me to duck down just on time as a train dangerously propels right above my head. The ground shakes around me for a moment. I close my eyes as dust and debris is flung around under the speeding train.

Once it’s gone, I stick my head out again. This time more cautiously. At a first glance I assume it’s night time. After a moment I realize I’m actually underground. The manhole leads to a dimly-lit tunnel. In one direction, the tracks continue infinitely into the darkness. On the opposite side, the tracks take a gentle corner before they disappear. Unsure of where to go, I walk down the latter. My ears are alert, in the lookout for any sign of oncoming trains.

After only a few minutes, and after dodging two trains, I see a light. I follow it and soon I arrive to Hansaplatz station. I jump on the platform as a group of teenagers stare at me, speechless. I walk past them and they begin to giggle among themselves. I should be the one laughing though. Their hair looks as if they’ve been hit by lightning. I’ve never seen this hairstyle. This is definitely some time in the future.

1990

XVIII

I was right. It’s nighttime after all. Is it just me, or does the air smell different? I bring out the theater ticket again and read the date on it. 1990. Wow. I also find the name of the theater: “GRIPS”. I look up and there it is, the theater, conveniently placed right outside the metro station. I ask a young passerby for the time. He points at his watch without saying a word, and leaves before I’m able to make any more questions.

The street is shiny and wet. I’m sure it was raining just minutes ago. I love the sound cars make when they pass me by on a damp road. I have about half an hour. Luckily I find some money in my pocket which I can use to buy an extremely expensive bag of chips in a convenience store nearby.

I wait outside the theater, where people have begun to gather. I stand at the edge of the crowd and push my hands into my pockets. I look at the people walking by. They look so different. So happy. It’s strange to see people this happy. It’s a completely different generation. A woman makes eye contact with me. She holds some guy closely by the arm. She laughs at something he just said. That is, until she sees me. She tilts her head and stops walking. The guy is pulled back abruptly by her firm grip. He asks her if she’s ok. She doesn’t take her eyes off me. She slowly makes her way towards me and it is then when I recognize my sister, thirty years older.

I immediately look down and away, hoping she’ll think I’m somebody else, but she doesn’t. She stands right beside me. I can feel her warmth.

She says my name. I ignore her.

The guy she’s with asks if everything is fine. She doesn’t even acknowledge his presence anymore. She repeats my name and speaks to me in Russian. She asks if it’s really me. I answer in German. I lie. I say I do not speak Russian. I turn my face away from her. She holds my cheek with her soft, cold hand and turns my head. I push her arm away and insist that she doesn’t know me. I tell her to stay away if she doesn’t want any trouble. I try to be rude, but it’s impossible to avoid a hint of affection in my words. The guy she’s with stands between us. He apologizes to me and takes her away. She backs off, though still unsure. Maybe she’s just crazy. It’s been a long time. Maybe she still sees her brother’s face in weird-looking bald strangers.

She finally breaks eye contact, but keeps turning her head towards me as they both walk away.

I notice people around have been staring. I know it. But I ignore it. Keep your head down and your mind busy until the end of the show. Just forget it. Forget it.

The play sardonically puts me up to date with history. It’s a moving story of a girl separated by the wall. Her mother in the east, her father in the west. At some point they join her father in the west. Soon after, the wall comes down and, disappointed by the west, she moves back to the east. Huh.

The actors take a bow and the audience applauds. Knowing now what these people have gone through in the last few years changes the perception of the time I live in. This city is alien to me. I don’t know what to expect from it anymore. It’s like a childhood friend you meet after many years of being apart. Even though you were the closest of friends back then, you realize you know nothing of this person anymore. He looks like what you’d imagine he would look like, but it’s not him. Inside, he’s someone else entirely.

I exit the theater and find Burak waiting for me outside. The years have taken a toll on him. His skin is as wrinkled as a brown paper bag. His beard hasn’t been combed in weeks.

We walk towards his car. I feel like I should be making small talk, but I’m not very good at that. He keeps to himself. I can tell he is thinking of a million other things. We arrive to his car. He’s bought a new once since we last met. Whatever it is he is doing now, business must be going well for him. The car is a red Volkswagen. I don’t pay much attention to the model. It’s looks quite ugly, to be honest, but once I sit inside I find it quite comfortable.

We drive down to Kreuzberg and he quickly finds a parking spot. The neighbourhood has changed a lot since I last saw it.

It seems he still lives in the same apartment block. We walk up the stairs and he opens the door. This time the house is much tidier. There are no boxes. It is also quieter. There is nobody waiting to greet us. He walks me to a different room from the last time. It’s very old-fashioned compared to the rest of the apartment, which is mostly covered with posters of music bands and movies I’ve never heard of. On the night table is a picture of, I’m guessing, Burak’s mother. She looks very elegant, and a ray of sunlight makes the back of her head glow. I’d like to ask about her, but I choose not to.

I sit on the bed and he soon brings me a set of clothes and a towel. He asks me if I’m hungry and leaves before I am able to answer. I get up and grab the clothes. I open the wardrobe. It is full of women’s dresses. They are all very conservative and it smells damp inside, as if they haven’t been worn in a while. I decide to close it and leave my clothes on a chair.

I join Burak in the kitchen. He is making a sandwich. No. Scratch that. He is putting a pack of salami, cheese and a loaf of bread on the table. I begin making my own sandwich and wonder if he should be eating salami in the first place. He opens the fridge, brings out two cans of beer and places them on the table. I guess he’s more German and less Turkish than I assumed.

I ask him if we’ll be meeting with anyone. I’d like to say the girl’s name, but I still don’t know it.

He shakes his head. I ask what happened. I interrupt him as he is about to answer and ask about ‘the female scientist’ (that’s how I choose to address her). He says she’s gone. My heart twists inside my chest. He says she moved with her husband to Austria, or maybe it was Switzerland. After the wall fell, the Russians cut all the funding. They paid him enough to keep track of any future visits (like this one). I ask him how many trips I have left. He answers that he was told not to give out that sort of information.

I ask him what the plan is. He opens his mouth and the doorbell rings. His reaction tells me that he wasn’t expecting anyone tonight. He gets up and walks to the foyer. I hear him opening the door. He shouts with dread and I jump to my feet. I run to the foyer and I find a woman holding a toddler by the hand and carrying a baby in her arms. Burak shakes his head, but she insists fervently. Burak yells something in Turkish and points in my direction. The woman is startled when she sees me. She keeps silent for a moment and bows her head slightly, embarrassed. A moment later however, she gently pushes the toddler inside the house and hands Burak the baby. Burak complains, but the woman, who I’m guessing is his ex-wife, sticks a finger in his face and threatens him. Burak takes a deep breath and shakes his head. The woman kisses both her children and storms down the stairs.

Burak closes the door and turns to me. He apologizes. Explains himself with an elaborate story that sounds too messy to follow. The toddler runs towards me and punches me in the leg. Burak scolds him in Turkish and a second later the baby begins to cry.

XIX

I stand in front of the Reichstag. It is early morning but there is no one around. I can only hear the wind. The sky is grey and unsettled. Scattered columns of black smoke rise high up into the air around the city. Something buzzes right past my ear, like some sort of oversized wasp. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand. I turn around and find an army of soviet soldiers running towards me from across the field. They all have my father’s face. Another bullet buzzes right by my ear. I duck instinctively. A landmine explodes and rips the body of one of the soldiers into chunks of meat. I turn back to the Reichstag and find a swarm of German soldiers shooting machine guns against the soviet troops. I run for cover and jump into a ditch. More than a ditch, it’s the crater left by a mortar. I peek my head above the hole and look closely at the German soldiers. They all, too, have my father’s face. Someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn around. I find a child staring right at me. He holds out his hand. He has a live grenade inside of his minuscule fist. I rapidly reach out to grab it but it explodes in our face.

I wake up in Burak’s mother’s bed. Drenched in sweat. I breathe in hard. My mouth is dry. I feel a tiny hand tapping my shoulder. I shake underneath the sheets and turn my head. Burak’s toddler is staring at me. His dark eyes sparkle in the darkness of the night. He holds out his hand. He opens his fist, but there’s nothing inside of it. I don’t understand what he’s asking for. He babbles and hops on the spot. He pokes his grandma’s picture on the night table. The picture frame rocks back and forth, struggling to keep up straight. The toddler finally turns around and runs out the room.

I reach out and grab the picture frame and make the wobbling stop. My heart is still racing. My mind has nothing to fear, but my body thinks otherwise. I try to lay back down and cover myself with the sheets. I stare at the doorway, waiting for someone to show up at any second, but no one comes. My eyelids drop slowly as I slowly fall back asleep. Just before my eyes are fully shut, I think I see the shadow of a person entering the door frame, but it’s too late. My brain has switched off and I fall back into deep sleep.

* * *

Burak woke me up quite early in the morning. I think his kids wouldn’t let him sleep and he didn’t want to take the burden alone. I offered to make breakfast while he entertained the children. It’s only now, when I reach the kitchen, that I realize I can’t cook. I make some coffee, prepare a couple bowls of cereal and bring a carton of milk. Seems to be sufficient for Burak. The bags under his eyes say he’s too tired to ask for more.

An hour later I decide to go out for a walk. The high-pitched screaming and running is getting under my skin. Burak understands and simply asks me not to go too far. I nod, but I don’t follow his advice.

I walk all the way to the Tiergarten. Berlin has a strange new personality. Even the light seems different. On the way I find the four-story-high bunker in Pallasstrasse. I remember it well, but it catches my eye because they’ve built an apartment block right around it. As if they couldn’t simply destroy the largest civil bunker in Berlin and the newer buildings were determined to expand and engulf it like an overgrown vine.

Nevertheless, the city still maintains its spirit. It’s different now from what I remember, but different in the same way that a child grows into an adult. The city shows many scars, it has built a stronger personality. It is less naive. It is more confident. I’d go as far as saying that it actually intimidates me. In a good way, of course. I feel overwhelmed by its new personality. I no longer feel like I have any knowledge of who it truly is.

A couple of hours later I return to Burak’s apartment. The kids are gone now, and the apartment smells like marijuana. He offers me a puff, but I politely refuse. I sit beside him and we both watch television in silence.

Finally, I break the silence and ask him when my next trip will be. He takes a moment before replying that the program has been cancelled. I no longer need to travel. I tell him that now, in 1990, I may, indeed, no longer need to travel, but that in the past I still have the obligation to do so. He stares at me with a confused expression. I realize that my perception of time has been altered and is no longer the same as other’s. For Burak time is linear. Normal. Not even I understand my own perception of time.

A minute later he continues by saying that if I really want to continue travelling, he is in possession of a code and the location where it can be used. I’m unsure that I want to continue, but the more I think about it, the harder it is to see myself in this new world. I am oblivious to the past 40 years, I have no job waiting for me, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to approach my sister, the few friends I had have probably forgotten me by now… heck, I don’t even know where I’d find the blond doctor. The only person I know is Burak, and we seem to be as compatible as oil and water.

Besides, there are too many open questions. I don’t think I’d be able to live with the burden of the doubt.

Before going to sleep, Burak gives me the address of this new location. I also ask him for a map of Berlin. After he is gone to bed, I try to make sense of all the locations I’ve travelled from so far. I try to find a pattern, but it makes no sense.

Half an hour later I wake up with my face drooling over the map. I put it away and go straight to sleep.

XX

Burak is not as protective as the doctor. I told him in the morning that I wish to travel and he agreed that we could do so as soon as possible. Maybe he’s just careless. Then again, that I already knew about him.

Before we leave the apartment, he packs a duffle bag with some tools and a scruffy notebook. We drive in his ugly Volkswagen southbound and park it near the Trabrennbahn, the trotting track in Mariendorf. I’ve never heard of this place. It’s amazing the amount of surprises this city still holds for its residents. To my surprise, this is precisely our destination. I remind Burak to bring the duffel bag with him. He shakes his head and says it’s too early.

It’s quite busy today at the Trabrennbahn. I didn’t expect this sort of place to still function this well. Burak places some bets, we get a couple of beers and find some seats. I feel a little nervous for taking it so easy. I feel like I’m slacking at work. I convince myself that I should take a break and simply enjoy the race.

It is actually more enjoyable than what I had expected. There’s something charming about it, almost primal. I’ve never been in close contact with animals, and the simple thought of riding a chariot sends exhilarating sensations through my spine.

The race is over sooner than I had hoped. Burak lost all his bets. His bad luck makes me feel uneasy. We exit the premises and walk directly to a nearby restaurant. I remind him that I have no money. He shakes his head and says that I am his guest. During our meal I ponder about my relationship with him. I figured that the reason it feels odd is because it’s unclear who he is to me. With other people I seem to clearly know who they are and what their purpose in my life is. With Burak it’s quite different. I convince myself that it isn’t something to be repulsed by and to simply take it in as it is.

After the very early dinner we drink a little. Burak much more than I. The mood is infused with our traditional awkward silence, until, all of the sudden, Burak begins to speak, in a tone I had never heard before.

He asks me if I know what life is all about. I think about the question for a moment, but before I am able to answer, he interrupts. Good. I had nothing smart to say. He says that his grandfather once told him that life is like a candle. It begins as an impeccable piece of wax until someone spoils it by lighting it on fire. Although the candle gets smaller as it melts, the flame is always as hot and bright as the first time it is lit. If you’re a good candle, people shall gather around you and you shall serve your purpose until the end of your existence. People will read books next to you, they will cook, they will tell stories. However, if the candle sits alone in a room, lighting up the empty walls, its life and purpose is rendered useless. Once the candle fades out, it is easy to clean up. A wet napkin is enough to remove the leftover wax and a new fresh candle can be placed in that same spot.

Burak leans over to me for his last words. He tells me that his grandfather told him this back in Turkey, in his living room, by the light emanating from the candle on top of the side table beside the sofa. He says that he would tell him many stories beside that table. He says the last time he was in Turkey it was five years ago. They were selling off his grandfather’s house. He says he saw the side table still beside the sofa. He blew the dust off of it and saw the stains of all the candles that had been lit on top of that table throughout the years.

With that, Burak sits back and stretches his arms in the air. I don’t quite understand what made him tell me this now, but I feel like we are somehow closer for it. He takes one more sip from his booze and explains what his reply to his grandfather. He was seven at the time. He told him that if he were a candle, he’d accidentally fall off the table and burn the whole house down — that would definitely leave a mark. Burak laughs with a raspy voice. My god. It’s the first time I’ve heard him laugh. It is not even close to what I had imagined.

* * *

Night has fallen. Burak and I walk back to the car. He grabs the duffel bag and we walk behind a side street. He brings out a crowbar and asks me to stay on the lookout. I look up and down the street. In the distance I see a man. I stare at him, but he soon walks off to the side.

Burak opens a manhole beneath us. We enter the sewers carefully. He takes out a small torchlight and I follow him from behind. He seems lost. I ask him if he is. He nods. He says he has the address, but it doesn’t mean he has been there before.

Burak gently taps the walls with his crowbar as we continue deeper though the tunnels. The stench is getting worse with every step. Finally, he taps something metallic. He scrapes the filthy moss off the wall and a metal door is revealed. On the front of it is a dial, as if it were a bank safe. He takes out the scruffy notebook and turns the dial back and forth. The door clicks. He sticks the crowback through the cracks of the metal door and finally, it budges. A humid whiff of air emerges from inside.

The lab seems to be among the smaller ones. It doesn’t take us too long before we reach the time booth. Burak takes his notebook out once more. He opens a fuse box and turns the switches on. I am amazed to see the lights turn on, after all these years. I ask Burak about it, but he says they still weren’t able to figure out where the power source comes from.

After about an hour, I am standing naked inside the booth. Burak seems a little confused by the instructions in the notebook. This doesn’t comfort me. I patiently watch him through the porthole. He paces up and down the room, with the notebook always in his hand. He finally gives me the thumbs up and the machine starts its cycle. He smiles awkwardly through the porthole. I begin to feel a little dizzy. Burak’s smile quickly fades and he turns around as if hearing something. I can’t hear anything from inside the booth. But I do see someone enter the room. Who the hell is that? It’s too dark to make out who it is. The stranger holds up a gun and without hesitation fires a round straight to Burak’s chest. I push against the booth’s door in desperation, but it’s too late. I’m somewhen else.

1980

XV

I rush to open the door of the time booth, hoping that I’ll somehow be on time to save Burak, but it is a totally different room. Unsurprisingly, it is dark. Unlike the other locations, however, there is a nauseating odor burning through my nostrils. I extend my arms and try to reach for any sort of solid surface. I find a table, but there’s nothing of value on it. I walk towards the exit and my foot stumbles upon something soft on the floor. I squat down and I let my eyes adjust to the darkness. The stench is stronger, deeper. Finally I see it. A rotting human body. I jump to my feet and take two steps back. The corpse is unrecognizable. It has been here for quite a long time. All I can tell is that it is completely naked and hairless. For a moment I feel the panic take over me as a thought drops into my head. Is it me? I try to make sense of it. How could it be? Will I die later? Will I die now? How can there be two dead instances of myself? My thoughts are interrupted by a loud explosion.

I duck and crouch towards the nearest corner. I wait. My ears are ringing and it is hard to make out any sounds, but after a few moments I begin to hear footsteps. I hope it is Burak.

The steps slow down as they approach the room I’m in. The beam from a flashlight floods the interior of the room, blinding me. A black, tall silhouette enters the room. The man says my name. His voice is familiar.

He flashes the light directly into me and I use my hands to cover my face. He takes a step towards me and I now discern that he is holding a gun in the other hand. He points it straight at me and bang! The dark figure is shot in the head. The flashlight drops from his hand and rolls towards me. A second man enters, also holding a gun and a flashlight. I point the flashlight at my father’s face. He turns away from the light. I point my beam to the freshly dead body on the floor. To my surprise, it is also my father. A younger version.

The beam of light flickers as my hand trembles in panic. My father asks me to calm down. I can’t. He walks towards me, slowly. His voice is soothing. He puts his gun back in his holster and assures me that he means no harm.

He begins to undress himself — that is, his now dead version of himself. He takes away his gun and asks me to put on his clothes. Without much of a choice, I go along. I only have a moment, but I notice strange markings on the dead man’s naked skin. It’s hard to tell what they are in the darkness.

Only moments later we walk towards the exit, which is actually just a huge hole left by the explosion I heard earlier. It still smells of burned explosives.

Once outside, it seems to me that we are in the middle of nowhere. It is early morning, and very cold. We are on a small island in what seems to be a lake. On the other side of the water, a mass of trees. I follow my father, my murderous father, still distrustful. I quickly notice airplanes flying over us at a very low altitude. I suppose we’re near an airport but I still can’t tell which one.

A small rowboat is waiting for us in the water. He asks me to hurry up. We both jump on it and he quickly rows away to shore. Moments later, we get off, run through some trees and reach an old Goggomobil behind some bushes. We get in and he drives off in a hurry.

On our way we pass by, what I recognize as, Tegel airport. To my surprise, we do not drive towards the center of Berlin. Instead my father continues towards Spandau. During my whole time in Berlin, I’ve never come to Spandau. It’s funny how you always end up circling the same streets, oblivious to all the beautiful spots in the peripheral areas.

I imagine we’re passing by the citadel. Of course, my father has no time to stop. In some strange way it feels like an excursion I never had when I was a child.

Minutes later my father parks the car and I follow him to an apartment block. He rings the intercom. Someone picks up, but no voice is heard. The door buzzes and we enter the complex. We go up the stairs and a fat man is waiting for us with the door open. He gestures us to hurry up and get inside.

There is an uncomfortable aura in the apartment. Something seems odd, but I can put my finger on it. The fat man nods at my dad, glances at me and leaves us. My father guides me to what I suppose is his bedroom. He takes his jacket off and hangs it inside the wardrobe. He asks me to hang my jacket too. I walk up to him and do it myself. On the top shelf I notice a suspicious, big metal box. I choose to ignore it for now. I still need to regain consciousness and think of what just happened.

I try to speak with my father but he places his finger over his mouth. He whispers. Apparently it’s not a safe place to talk.

We exit the room and walk to the kitchen. While my father looks for a jar of salt, he suggests I grab a teaspoon. I open the drawer and shuffle through the cutlery. A couple of pieces catch my attention. I grab a teaspoon and bring it close to my face. On the back I find an engraved swastika. My father hands me the jar of salt. I eat a couple of spoonfuls before I realize I’m putting a nazi spoon in my mouth.

My father stares at me while I eat salt. But, rather than watching, he seems to be studying me. When I think I’ve had enough, I hand over the jar. He puts it away and I drop the spoon in the sink.

He gives me a moment to breathe and then suggests we go outside for a walk.

XVI

Outside, the weather is getting warmer. My dad and I stroll calmly through a nearby park, as if this morning never happened. I tell myself that I should be afraid, but I am not.

His bland head shines in the sun as he marches forward, looking down at his feet with every step. We’ve been walking for quite a while now and he still hasn’t said a word. I’d usually wait for others speak first in these sort of situations, but I can’t help myself from demanding explanations.

He sits on the nearest bench, but I choose to stand instead. He stretches his arms across the length of the bench and avoids eye contact with me. I ask why he killed the other man at the bunker. He answers that he wanted to kill me. By ‘he’, he means himself. He explains that a younger version of himself was determined to put an end to my life. He collaborated with himself to find me only to put a bullet in his head in the last moment.

I ask him if he’s not concerned about the time rupture he may have created by killing a younger version of himself. He doesn’t answer. I attempt to explain as properly as I can what Dr. Vodnik said to me days ago — or rather years ago. My father chuckles. He undermines the Russian’s understanding of the whole time program and clarifies the reality of the time paradox. Once you travel, you have no link whatsoever to any previous point in time. The new instance of yourself is now existing wholly, exclusively in this time and space. You become a lone singularity that cannot be influenced by former instances of yourself. The only things that may change are those which stay in the aforementioned times and spaces. All that remains is what influences the outcome of history. For instance, if you destroy a building, that building will not exist in the future. But if you travel to the past and kill yourself, your living instance will continue living, as it is already there, independent of whatever happens in the future.

I ask him if that’s why there was a dead instance of myself in that bunker. He takes a breath and specifies that the body isn’t me, it’s him. There are now two dead instances of himself lying inside that bunker.

I ask him what happened to the rotting corpse. How did he get here? He says the only explanation is that the corpse is the outcome of his final trip. The ultimate last trip. The bunker is impenetrable, that’s why they had to blow it open. It is very likely that there was nobody to get him out and that he died of starvation. He speaks of this in a cold tone, as if he were speaking about someone else.

If that’s the case, he remarks, he has failed his mission. No matter how much he travels, that will be his ultimate fate. I ask how he knows he has failed. He says that if he hadn’t failed, he wouldn’t have made that last trip in the first place.

It’s quite a lot of information for me to process, and half of my questions are still unanswered. I ask him who he works for. He tells me it depends who you ask. This answer doesn’t help.

He says that, when he left us in Konigsberg, he moved back to Berlin to work for the Nazi regime. That’s where the experiments began. Shortly after, however, he made discoveries which urgently changed his point of view. I ask if he turned to the Soviets. He nods at first, but then quickly shakes his head. Apparently it’s more complicated than it seems.

I remember him leaving. I was very little, but I remember it well. Above all, I remember his absence. I remember his alleged death. I remember the struggles my mother had to endure on her own. I remember the day we had to abandon everything and flee from the advancing Soviet forces, her own people, after hearing the atrocities they had committed upon the people in Nemmersdorf. I remember the following months in Poland. I remember little from the village, but I remember much of the language. I remember returning home, to Konigsberg, now Kaliningrad. I remember how different it was. It was unrecognizable. It had fallen into utter decay. All you could find were prostitutes and smugglers. It’s as if the worst of Russia had fled the mainland to infect this young city with corruption. The only citizens I could look up to were the soviet soldiers stationed there. Fortunately my mother made sure we fit in quickly. She was a Russian after all, and a survivor above all.

I want to tell my father of all this. I want to recriminate my father for it. But I know it is of no use.

Instead I pace from one side to the other, trying to make sense of all the pieces. I ask if he was the one who killed Dr. Vodnik. I immediately follow up with another question; whether he killed Burak as well.

He nods in shame. He insists that things are more complicated than they seem. He insists that the technology is far too dangerous for the Soviets to get hold of. The doctor was too smart for his own good. He got too close to cracking its secrets, and it would have been disastrous if he did.

I cannot trust this man, yet I feel guilty for not doing so.

He opens his shirt and shows the numerous scars and marks on his body. He asks me if I know what they are. I shake my head. He says they’re all seeds. Travel seeds. He cut them into his skin so they would scar and therefore be able carry them with him when travelling. He notes that he has used every single seed. He has travelled for over ten years. Ten real years. And he has seen too many things go astray.

I notice that some areas of his body are completely scratched off, making the seed unreadable. He notices. He says those are places no one should never revisit.

He warns me that I do not want to end up like him. What’s worse, I don’t want to see what the world will be like in the near future. This last sentence catches my attention. I ask him what he means. He responds by saying that the future holds a most unfortunate tragedy. I tell him I have been to 1990. Nothing seemed wrong. He says he isn’t talking of 1990, but of the 2000s. I am afraid to ask, but he nevertheless answers my silent question. He says that, even though the nazis were never able to fully deploy their original plan for the time program, they were successful in generating a catastrophic anomaly at the start of the new millenium. I ask him for details, but he insists in keeping them to himself. What he does divulge, however, is that it is my responsibility to prevent it. How? Why not him? He specifies I must travel back to 1943. Smack in the middle of the Third Reich? He must be kidding. He says he cannot return himself. They know who he is. By that time he’ll have betrayed the people involved in the experiment and they’ll be hunting him down. What’s more, an earlier version of himself, a nazi-sympathizing version, would surely shoot him on sight. He needs someone new. Someone they can give the benefit of the doubt. It’s the only chance.

The plan sounds mad and plain stupid at the same time. For all I know, this could simply be a trap.

My father buttons up his shirt. He runs his hand through his hair and sniffs. His eyes are piercing into my head.

No reason to trust him. Absolutely none.

XVII

My father has taught me much about what to expect in 1943, but I don’t feel ready. Luckily, I don’t need to travel all the way back to 1940. Three years trying not to get murdered in Nazi Germany. No, thanks. As an insider, he has access to a variety of dates, so I’ll be arriving just in time, for once.

The fat man who let us into his apartment doesn’t seem to like me. That’s fine. I don’t like him much either. I confirmed my suspicions that he is a nazi enthusiast. He only helps my father because he sees him as a hero. Poor idiot. He has no idea where my father stands. Then again, neither do I. Maybe I’m the idiot.

I haven’t had a day to rest. My father insists that it’s urgent. Every day I spend here is a day I spend in danger. I am his last hope and I my safety cannot be undermined.

We make our way to the center, in a rush. My father parks near the zoo and we walk. We stroll the same area I will stroll in ten years. The Hochbunker on Pallasstraße looks exactly the same, except for the graffitis; they’re are always changing.

To my surprise, my father walks towards the entrance bunker. Only now do I notice a strange man standing by the door. He nods and opens the main door for us. There is nobody else inside. Only us. My father cruises through the bunker as if it were his own home. He has been here before. Many times. I feel like a newbie being shown around the job by a veteran.

A few minutes later we are deep underground, uncovering doors that would be invisible to the naked eye. We enter the now-familiar laboratory, holding one more iconic time booth in its corner. This laboratory seems much better maintained than all the others I’ve seen. My father says he’s made sure to keep this one functioning properly, but it has proven to be a challenge to keep it a secret from the Soviets.

I peep over the documents that are pinned to the wall. Among them I see a map that makes my heart jump. In it are what seems to be the location of all bunkers. It all make sense now. Two hexagons, one smaller than the other. One labelled A, the other B. My father skims through the details but explains that the shape was part of why the time travel was possible. In fact, the more hexagons and the farther apart they are, the further you can jump in time. However, we are still limited to the existence of the time booths. In other words, we cannot travel before 1939, when the first hexagon was built.

If only Dr. Vodnik was here to see all this. It would blow his mind.

In the center of both hexagons is a red pin, right above Friedrichstrasse train station. It marks the place my father had spoken about last night while going over the mission details. The answer to the permanent and wireless energy source was hiding under this location. If I could destroy that, it would render the whole program obsolete. It would effectively halt all operations. The Time Program had spent two thirds of their entire budget on this single site alone. Nobody would put up the money or effort to rebuild it. Not in times of war. This power source made creative use of Tesla’s principles and brought them a step further. If my father’s plan is successful, the whole technology would be lost in time, burned along with all records of the Nazi Time Program.

My father undresses me as if I were a small child. It feels uncomfortable. I push his hand away and take the clothes off on my own. Once naked, I walk inside the booth. I am unsure of whether all of this is a good idea. I try to think of an alternative, but I have a hard time coming up with one. Besides, the booth has been airsealed already. That’s it. No turning back.

My father looks at me from afar. He fiddles with the controls and prepares the trip. He rolls up his left sleeve and reads a code from one of his many scars. The booth’s engine begins to hum faintly, warming up.

My father walks up to the booth and stands in front of the porthole. We stare into each other’s eyes, expressionless. I study the wrinkles on his face, trying to remember every detail. I breathe in softly. My father winks his eye and I’m gone.

* * *

I open my eyelids slowly, adjusting to the light. What? The light? There’s light outside the booth! Before I am able to react, the booth opens up. A rush of cold air brushes my sweaty skin. It is bright, too bright. I am only able to discern a human figure standing in front of me.

His hand grabs me by the arm and pulls me to my feet. I know it’s a man because of his rough palm and strong grip. I use my hands to shield my face from the light. In the corner of the room I discern an animal cage. Inside of it a beautiful Siberian Husky stares at me. Terrified, with its tail between its legs.

The man shouts at me in German. He demands I tell him who I am.

I begin to see things a little more clear now. The man is wearing a lab coat and a bushy moustache. Behind him, other scientists are gathering around. I’ve never seen one of these labs so populated and alive. It’s sparkling clean too. The walls are pristine and freshly painted. In the far corner I make out a soldier, dressed in grey, with a red armband. He has the emblematic SS pins on the collar of his blazer.

At least I know I’m in the correct year.

1943

I

I amaze myself with my lying capabilities. I tell the man that I am a fellow German soldier from the future. My impeccable accent sells the premise. The man in the lab coat buys it without a doubt. I read his name tag: H. Kammler. He demands that I tell him who my supervisor is. I tell him it’s a matter of state security and that I shall maintain confidentiality. Again, I’m amazed at my own deceit. I always felt like I was usually too honest for my own good. I just proved myself wrong.

He calls out to an assistant and I am offered a spoonful of salt. I swallow it swiftly, trying not to taste it. A blanket is thrown over me, even though I am not that cold at all. The whole situation is increasing my body temperature. I need to get out of here before I make a mistake and they find out I’m a fraud.

I grab the man with the lab coat by the arm and pull him gently. I’ve made him uncomfortable with this sudden gesture. I slowly blink my eyelids, silently asking him to come closer. He leans in and offers his ear. I whisper that I need to leave the building as soon as possible. He backs off in surprise and suspicion. At first I don’t think he’s fallen for it, but he quickly gives me a reason to doubt my initial assumptions. He pulls me aside and asks the soldiers to step away. He cautiously asks me what the reason is. I tell him I cannot disclose that information. It’s not working. He shakes his head. I say it has to do with ‘The Bear’. That attracts his attention. I say that I’ve been sent put an end to the traitor, and that we will miss our only chance if they do not let me go immediately. He knows my father. I can see it in his eyes. And he does not think highly of him. He says he’s not authorized to let me leave the premises. I squeeze his arm in desperation and empathize that the Fuhrer’s life depends on it. Where the hell did I pull that one from? Controversially, my idiotic statement struck a chord in him. He quietly nods.

He turns to the other personnel and tells them to watch the time booth while he takes me to the infirmary. I follow close behind him, covering myself with only a towel. The lab looks very different to the others. For starters, it is full of employees and all the lights are working, as well as a rudimentary ventilation system.

We reach a turn in the corridor and he takes me inside the infirmary. I walk in, but he doesn’t. He asks me to wait. I do.

Less than a minute later he returns with a set of clothes in his hand and a lab coat. He says it’s his own clothes and hopes they will fit me. It’s only after putting them all on that I realize I have no shoes. He takes off his own. I must have done a great acting job. He seems genuinely concerned. I throw the lab coat on top of my new, baggy clothes and the man orders me to hurry.

I walk the confusing corridors as confidently as I can. Some turn their heads as I walk by, but not long enough to stop me. I begin to think they’re just being polite.

As I reach what seems to be the exit to the underground facility, I find a German soldier standing guard. I nervously approach him. He holds up his hand and I halt. He frisks me. Finds nothing. He looks back up at me, curiously staring at my bald head. He says he didn’t see me enter the facility. I choke.

Someone a few steps behind me explains that I have been doing the night shift. I turn. It’s the same scientist who gave me his shoes. He must have followed me to assure my escape. He’s still barefoot. The guard bows his head and lets me go. He does, however, point out that employees should always wear appropriate footwear. The scientist chuckles, slaps his forehead and then proceeds to complain about stress.

I walk out of the dark environment and enter a grey forest. I suppose the trees are probably more green than they are grey, but the myst makes it hard to discern. I do recognize the building right behind me. It’s the Jagdschloss Grunewald. I remember because my mother brought me here back when I was seventeen. It was the first art museum open to the public in Berlin after the war. I remember my mother telling me about the scandals that took place here.

So, good news is I know where I am, and it’s not too far from where I should be. Bad news is, I don’t know Grunewald that well and there’s only trees between me and my destination. I could turn towards the city, but that would be risky. It only takes one skeptical observer to blow my cover. I decide to take my chances through the thick trees.

On the way I stumble upon something I didn’t expect: a race track. I had forgotten about it. My sister knew I was fond of cars and she brought me here a few days after arriving to Berlin. It was a good way to introduce me to the city and the world’s first freeway. It made me believe it had been a good idea to move here after all.

A little further on I stumble upon another surprise. Teufelsberg, or Devil’s Mountain, as it would be later called. At the moment though, it is no mountain at all. Berlin hasn’t been destroyed, and a third of its rubble hasn’t been gathered here to build a hill that would eventually be used as a ski slope, as if it were some sort of macabre joke. In its place is the Wehrtechnische Fakultät, a half-built military academy of an olympic scale. It is intimidatingly grandiose, despite it not being finished. I look out for construction workers, but it seems to be too early for anyone to be working.

I soon begin to orient myself. It reassures and soothes me to know that I haven’t been walking in the wrong direction. I finally exit the park and walk back into the city. It takes me only a few minutes to get to the Olympiastadion. Just a few years ago the olympics exposed the might of Germany to the whole world. It is here where I was told by my father to wait, but he never told me what for.

I stand there, like an idiot, waiting for nothing. After a few hours of sitting on the cold floor like a beggar, I notice someone. He is a rough-looking man in his fifties. He smokes. He stares at me. He finally drops his cigarette butt and steps on it. With a determined step he paces towards me. My muscles tense up, ready to put up a fight. The man stops only a meter away from me. His eyes are glowing with a thin layer of tears. Although he is speaking in Polish, I know enough of the language to understand that my grandfather is overwhelmed to see me.

II

I had never met my grandfather. Never even saw a picture of him. But the way he curls up his lips after the end of every sentence reminds me of my father. I then realize I do the same exact thing when I end my own sentences. Never realized it until today.

It’s been three weeks since I moved into his home. The war is in full motion and bombs have begun to drop on Berlin. I know the worst is yet to come though. In the meanwhile, I’ve had to stay in hiding. It’s very likely that a young man like myself would be immediately drafted.

Some of my hair has grown back, and it feels good. I have met my grandfather’s comrades and I am now a full member of the Zagra-Lin, a Polish resistance organization. Some will call them freedom fighters, others may refer to them as terrorists. I’m not particularly proud of what I’ve had to do so far, but it’s the only chance I have to put an end to this.

I’ve taken the time to learn about my past. My grandfather has told me an infinity of tales regarding my father. Apparently they did not end in good terms. My father turned on his family and joined the German cause. Although my grandfather is ready to forgive, he isn’t ready to trust. That’s why I am here. If one of my father’s instances were to show up at his doorstep, he wouldn’t be able to trust him. He would consider him the man who left his family to fight Hitler’s cause. I, on the other hand, am the only person he can somewhat be certain of. I am to be trusted. I don’t quite understand the logic behind my grandfather’s reasoning, but he has proven to be wiser than I am in every other regard. So I go along with it.

Today may be the last time I see him. The last three weeks have been nothing but a long preparation for today. The plan is finally in place, the explosives have been finally acquired, and the team is ready to strike. All they were waiting for was for me to reveal the target. My orders are clear, but I am still hesitant. A lot of innocent people may be killed because of our actions, but there is no other way to access the vault unless we create a commotion at the street level.

I am ready. My cold gun pressing against my chest. I walk to the service door and stand next to it. Any minute now. Friedrichstrasse station is busy today. I wish it weren’t. I lean against the wall, tug at my trenchcoat and wait impatiently. What’s taking so long?

Then it happens.

I feel the rumble beneath my feet and a deafening bang blasts my ears. It’s louder than I expected. A cloud of smoke expands in the distance and the crowd crouches in unison, as if it were a choreographed ballet. An instant of baffled silence and then the roars and moans of terrified civilians spreads like a virus into an overwhelming commotion.

The service door opens soon after. A man walks out in a hurry. I stretch my foot to prevent it from closing and help myself inside. Although I stumble upon more than one person, nobody seems to acknowledge my presence. The explosion has done its job, and I’ve become invisible.

I make my way down a set of stairs, deeper underground into the belly of the station, until I find a large metal door. That must be it. A soldier is holding it open, guiding other soldiers, employees and scientists out of the vault. It’s going to be challenging to push through the on-coming avalanche of people in order to access the inside. I make an attempt, but I am pulled aside by the guarding soldier. He yells that I cannot enter the facility. I reach for my gun and am about to pull it out when a policeman steps in. He calls the soldier for help, and briefly points out the lack of officers keeping the crowd under control in the upper floors. I recognize the police officer’s voice. It’s my grandfather. The soldier hesitates for a brief moment but eventually leaves his post. I squeeze through the steady flow of people, as if swimming up a river, and finally make my way into the vault.

A high-pitched alarm is blaring inside the confined corridors, strenuously echoing against the hard concrete. The facility has noticeably been constructed in the same manner as the other labs, but, as in all other labs, the layout is completely different. I explore every corner as fast as I can. My father explained that what I seek is unmistakable. When I find it, I will know it. And I do.

A set of thick, metallic barn doors lead to an immense room. I feel goosebumps across my body as I find the gigantic bell-shaped structure in front of me, stoically glowing with a deep violet aura.

This is it: Kronos. The mechanism that is powering all other time booths across the city. I pull out the explosives from within my coat and wrap them around the base of the bell. I hear a man shouting behind me, demanding I tell him what I am doing. I turn around and pull out my gun. The scientist immediately rises his hands and ends his bickering. I tell him to get out. He hesitates at first, but soon follows as I sprint by him and out the door. We run up the stairs as fast as we can. The explosion sends a ball of fire and smoke up the narrow passage. I think may have timed it wrong. It shouldn’t have gone off this fast. My eyes are covered in dust and I am temporarily deaf. I keep running forward. I need to get out as soon as possible.

I reach the surface, bumping into various soldiers on the way. They seem disoriented. Not sure which explosion to follow: the one above or the recent one below. Once I reach the outside tunnel I remember the instructions my grandfather gave me. On the far end I discern the column he referred to in his descriptions. Beside it, on the ground, the manhole cover. I pull it open with ease. Someone else has already used it. I slide down and find myself in the sewers. It’s dark. My eyes have a hard time adjusting to the darkness. My ears are still blocked. But I do feel the hand that grabs me by the arm. I turn and find my grandfather. I try reading his lips, but can’t make out what he is saying. I follow him down the intricate passageways and finally reach the surface once more. Our comrades have clean clothes ready for us.

It’s over. We’ve done it. History has been changed forever, and nobody will understand how it happened or who was behind it. Nobody will remember my name and, in part, I prefer it that way.

That same night my grandfather and I drink a lot. More than I have ever drank in my life. He will be returning to Poland, and I… I don’t know yet. I have an idea, but I still need to muster the courage.

III

It’s been two years since I left Berlin.

I had few choices left. I couldn’t stay in Germany. If I did, I would most likely be enlisted in the army. If I were to somehow avoid that, I’d still inevitably be forced to join the Volkssturm down the line. An army made of old men, injured soldiers and boys too young to fight, in Germany’s last desperate and futile attempt to win the war. I escaped the country and felt like I was playing with an unfair advantage. I knew how history would unfold and I knew exactly what to do in order to survive the next couple of years until the end of the war.

My Polish comrades helped me cross the border towards the incoming Red Army. There I offered my services as a pilot. However, it wouldn’t be long until officials caught eye of my flawless German accent and decided that I was better suited to join URK SMERSH, the military’s field counterintelligence department. I was immediately transferred to the 3rd Ukrainian Front, under the command of Rodion Malinovsky. Having fought in World War I, the Spanish Civil War and liberating Stalingrad from the Germans, I was confident I had fallen in safe hands. He’d later be replaced by Fyodor Tolbukhin, who was no less qualified. I even had the honor of working beside notorious Soviet spy Nikolai Kuznetsov, just before his capture and execution in 1944. His death was a permanent reminder that, even though I was fighting on the winning team, I would never completely safe from death.

The Red Army steadily pushed through Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and finally, in April 1945, just as I had read in history books back in school, we arrived to Vienna. My destination.

Hoping to accomplish a bloodless liberation of the city, we established close communication with the O5, the Austrian Resistance. Among their leaders, Carl Szokoll. A plan was carefully thought out for German troops to retreat as soon as they saw us, avoiding an unnecessary loss of human life and the consequent destruction of Vienna. We called it “Operation Radetzky”. Unfortunately, just a day before our offensive, SS officers intercepted our ploy and the major leaders of the resistance were publicly hanged. Fortunately, Carl made it alive. I never asked him how he made it all the way to our position, but he did, and with him he brought other members of the resistance. One of them was a woman. She was blond. I recognized her immediately. It was her.

And here I am now. Staring at her beautiful face once more. Youthful. Radiant.My heart has stopped. She looks youthful. Radiant. And terrified by the remarks Bulgarian and Russian soldiers are exchanging among themselves, oblivious to the fact that this German girl is capable of understanding every disgusting word they're saying. I walk up to her and introduce myself in Russian. She is cold at first, wary, silent, waiting for my next move. I then speak in German, almost a whisper, so that others aren’t be able to hear. Seeing that I can speak both languages seems to soften her attitude towards me. I calmly explain that I am working for the counterintelligence department, and that I’d be very interested in her help. She’s about to ask me why when I interrupt and explain my reasoning. She speaks both languages fluently, and she knows the city better than any of us.

She is still skeptical towards me. I don't blame her. But I need to let her know why I'm here. Maybe not right away. Maybe not today, but one day. I need to let her know that the war is over. That I never had anything to fight for. That I had no purpose. Not in this timeline nor ever. That there was only one reason for all this. Only one logical explanation. That I have travelled across space and time simply to be closer to her. I need to let her know that she is my purpose.

So, although I already know the answer, I ask her where she's from. Maybe having something in common will break the ice.

She lets my question linger in the vacuum of time. She ponders for a moment. Studies me from top to bottom. She stares back at me with her piercing eyes and takes a deep breath.

“Berlin,” she replies.

THE AUTHOR

Alain Xalabarde is an award-winning filmmaker and game designer. He was born in the Basque Country, raised in South Africa, completed his film studies in New York, wrote his first screenplay in London, got his first job in the video game’s industry in Berlin, and is now happily married to his Russian wife.

You can follow him at

www.xalabarde.com

Copyright

Copyright © 2019 Alain Xalabarde

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781096068587

Content

Alain Xalabarde
THE BERLIN PARADOX
CHRONICLES OF A SOVIET TIME TRAVELER

INTRODUCTION

1960

PROLOGUE

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

1970

XII

XIII

XIV

1950

IV

V

VI

1990

XVIII

XIX

XX

1980

XV

XVI

XVII

1943

I

II

III

THE AUTHOR

Copyright