Fishing in Beirut

There was a gig to be done before leaving. It was in a beer garden by the river, with a wooden stage and tokens for drinks. Each band member got three tokens to use whenever.
Frank’s strings were so worn it was difficult tuning them. They’d have served better purpose as fishing line. He wound the pegs in the sunshine, knowing his time in this city was nearly through. By nightfall he’d be bus-bound towards London.
An unusual assortment of patrons drank and ate schnitzels and currywurst. Kids, old people, Africans with dreads, expats. In the corner by a pool table Turkish girls showed off their thongs.
“Remember,” said The Behanser, “we’ve got to do three fucking hours here, so no amount of solos or breaks can be deemed too long.”
Pd had disappeared to smoke and use the phone.
“I was just saying there,” said The Behanser on his return, “take your time on this one. If anyone wants to try anything it’s all part of the song.”
Dev scraped his nails along his bodhran saying it was good for the skin. A child wandered over to investigate and ran back to her mum.
“And a one, two, a one, two, three, four –
Oh come over to the window my little darling…
They started as they always did, So Long Marianne by Leonard Cohen. It was one of those songs they never got tired of playing. Frank felt he must have done it more times than L. Cohen himself by now, and watched his hands make the chords, not thinking.
One tune followed another, with extended instrumental parts, and more beer breaks than the tokens warranted. At one point a Rasta with his own drum joined them on stage.
“I hope he doesn’t think he’s getting in on the cut,” whispered The Behanser.
“Well if he does we’ll just break it to him gently,” said Pd.

They took a rest at four, stretching out on wooden benches and rolling grass. Frank had broken a string but was unconcerned. The crowd was shifting before them, people drifting in and out and maybe staying for a while. It was a no-pressure gig – just make a constant sound and the money was theirs.
“This next song is for all the ladies,” said Pd, not realising his fly was undone. The Turkish girls in the thongs ignored them like flies. Unperturbed, they stuck with it, sweat on their brows and lightness in their hearts. The song for the ladies was actually a folk song about death.
The owner appeared to one side, her arms folded, but a smile on her face. Some people in the audience were clapping and so was her son. Frank sensed another string about to go, and then it cracked loose and whiplashed outward, the short part attached to the peg, the rest trailing down. The Behanser beefed up his strum to compensate if he could.
In the end, they got paid and went drinking. There was a bar boat docked on the far side of the bank. They walked across, the river sparkling.
“So here’s to you Frank,” said Dev. “Sure we hardly knew ya.”
The others raised their glasses to toast his last day. It was a sad and hectic experience, the knowledge this part of life was over. Everything was so fast, and so blurring, and so gone.
How long he had been in Berlin he couldn’t say. It was a fantasy camp, a dream, a story ending. He felt a tear in his eye and finished his beer. Berlin when day broke was the reason God gave him breath. The sun in the sky and the ache in his soul. The hope that his hope would never desert him in conflict.
The water was rippling gently down below them. He was noticing details now, the sound of traffic in the distance. A bee landed on the table, paused, and flew off again.
“It’s at nine o’clock the bus, yeah?” said The Behanser. “Sure you’ve plenty of time so.”
They played cards and remembered stories. The day of departure brings a softness no other can match.

It was evening, the moon visible but the sky still bright. They were camped around Zoo Station at the terminal. A beggar with a McDonalds cup faded and reappeared beside strangers, requesting money in a whispered, alien tongue. His hair was matted and congealed like a wet dog’s.
The hum of bus engines and the smell of petrol was familiar. Drivers stood around talking, passengers smoked last cigarettes. One or two kids loitered to watch bags loaded on.
“There’s loads of fuckin’ nuns around,” said The Behanser. “I wonder are you goin’ to be travelling with them.”
“You can give them a good seeing to,” said Pd, smiling.
Frank showed his ticket to the man. It was last call, most already in their seats now. The lads all shook his hand and folded their arms.
“We need smokes,” said Dev to The Behanser.
A tyre squealed in the traffic. There were people all around – tourists, Berliners, who knows. Frank had Monica’s U-Bahn map in his shirt. With one final nod he turned to the door, and looked up at the driver, his hand on the wheel. It was a long old journey, from pleasure and strangeness to the unknown.
He grinned. He was safe in the knowledge he could always come back. The city would still be there, forever. Frank gripped the handle, and got on the bus.

They rang at the door but were turned away. The Madame peered out from the gloom, shook her head quickly, and the slit they could see her through was gone. They were standing on the street at 4am.
Frank, Dev, and Martin were desire’s captives. This part of town had red neon and mirrored facades. It held promises of sin and swollen lipstick.
They turned down a side street and were beckoned by a doorman. “Good deal,” he said. “Beautiful girls.” The man was Turkish and overweight, in his fifties with a lime-green shirt. Martin spoke in German to better negotiate.
Inside, an ancient piano propped up a wall bedecked with sparkles. Girls sat at the bar, an older woman served. Through a half-open curtain they saw an obese German with two whores astride him, his tie on the floor beside a bucket with champagne. The speed they’d taken earlier was wearing off.
“Whiskey,” said Frank. “You know, fucking whiskey.”
“Ja, ja, I know.”
The barwoman busied herself mechanically, pouring Wild Turkey and, before they could stop her, adding Coke. Frank curled his lip and refused to go near it.
“What, “ she snapped. “You say whiskey I do fucking whiskey. Drink, drink.”
He gave her the evil eye but took it nonetheless.
A girl approached each of them, and before Frank was clear, he was on a stool with a hand on his crotch. The other hookers watched them, bored.
“So tell me your name, and your country.” She rubbed him and he rubbed back, the drink so foul.
“Ah, Irish. I love the Irish music.” From the corner of his eye he saw Martin stroke a dark girl’s hip.
“Yeah, Irish, and where are you from?”
“Potsdam,” she said. “Are you going to buy me drink?”
Frank said he had no money. She looked at him coldly and he swore he really had none.
“You won’t buy me drink?”
“No.”
She turned away from him. She was still beside him but it was like he wasn’t there. Her eyes were dead and his talk echoed into nothing. The other girls did the same, Martin and Dev declining also, and the bar was now a frozen den of hostility.
“What the fuck are you doing?” said Martin. “We were promised a show.”
The barwoman stared at them bitterly. Dev looked at Frank and they were almost going to go.
“We were promised a show,” repeated Martin, louder.
A wizened little man appeared from somewhere. “Make show!” he ordered. “Make show!” He clapped his hands and grabbed roughly at the black girl, and she stood up and walked towards a pole. “Make show!” he said again, and music began.
She swayed, comatose, her body forming shapes but her eyes not there at all. Frank drank more Coke and nearly wretched. He pushed it away and watched her naked gyrations.
A mirrorball hung above, purple and blue light catching as it spun. Frank noticed how her shoes were so worn, battered silver sandals holding hard-skinned feet. She caressed herself like a zombie.
“Lets go,” said Dev. “Fuck this.”
The old man hovered over them, imploring them stay for more booze.

They sat in the Schwartze Café with cream coffee. Martin was talking about artists who made paintings from shit. It was an hour since the brothel, fully light when they came out, the sun climbing. The streets populated by cleaners and staggering drunks.
“Yeah, yeah, seriously boys. Their whole manifesto is art from bodily fluids. Shit, blood, semen. They work in warehouses and squats, and this stuff sells big time in markets.”
Frank began to feel queasy, unsure.
Dev spilled sugar all over himself, some patron doing that trick of leaving the cap unscrewed. He cursed, but the waiter was laughing.
“Machts nichts,” he called over, uncaring.
They got the U-Bahn back towards home, Martin leaving at Gneisenau Strasse. On their balcony Dev and Frank composed poems of that night.
“The fuckin’ eyes in the place,” said Dev. “They hadn’t seen light in twenty years.”
Frank drew a picture of the girls and threw it down to the courtyard.
They had a bottle of what the label called ‘Breakfast Cider.’ It was a strange, fizzy, non-alcoholic carbonated applejuice, and they guzzled the whole thing with pastries.
“I’d love a fucking sausage roll, or some chicken,” said Dev, dropping crumbs.
It was ten o’clock. A bright, hot mid-morning, the snores of Pd and The Behanser carrying out through the bedroom window, droning softly in time. Like a detuned accordion clogged up with gunge.
Frank whacked his knee with the empty plastic bottle, and a bird squawked and took off from a roof. The sound reverberated around hitting concrete and windows.
“One should always seek out the quiet parts of a new place,” said Dev. “The quiet parts can make even an old place new. It’s like when we went to that Jewish Museum. Just the design made the area around it more complete. Silence is like that, stripping away the noise and the panic. An unbroken silence is the same all over the world.”
Frank couldn’t argue with that. And so he didn’t, and they drank the rest of the juice in silence.

Monica was her name. She was watching an unruly musical display, and he went over afterwards and sat down. Performance of any kind provides strange confidence.
She was from Bologna she told him, over here studying.
“I like the way the songs all opened out,” she said.
He agreed, and wasn’t sure in that moment exactly what she meant. When he said his name was Frank it made her laugh. He was ‘Frankie’ for the evening, in the pub and on the bus and in her place. That night they made slow love and he went home.
The lads were awake in Bohmische Strasse, drawing upside down crosses on the wall. Pd was laughing hysterically. He’d been presented with a full Black Forest Gateau earlier by a neighbour, and had scoffed it all mercilessly in front of the others. The plate and fork and some napkins were strewn about.
Frank rolled a joint and the buzzer shocked him. Minutes later Martin bounded in.
“Jesus Christ boys, I’m after spendin’ all me money on two Russians. I’m all worn out and I think I need a drink.”
He sat down, sweating. The tale that followed left everyone mute. Two 25 year old blondes had made the Belfast pianist a believer, with the aid of ropes and feathers and their own God-given secrets and curves. Pd had to head for the can.
When he returned, the smoke had thickened. He fought his way through it and sat down. Frank strummed a melody on his guitar, and squinted around at the bizarre crosses on the walls. Dev poured whiskey on the floor and lit a fire. Blue flame danced for an instant, and then went out.
“With the lights off that’d be brilliant,” said Frank.
Indeed it was, flickering and writhing, shadows jumping and alive, smoke seeming thicker than natural. All of them were transfixed in the raging glow.

An hour later a helicopter flew overhead, and in their state they were sure it was coming for them. Frank covered his face with a towel and ran to the balcony to investigate. The chopper was circling menacingly, and he watched it in fear.
It was growing light now, the blue-dawn reality that was their lives. A time when things cemented and got lost when you slept again. Frank stared up at the helicopter, its red body and black wings, the whirling rotors like the charge of some coming apocalypse. He fell asleep on a chair with the towel on his head.

“Get up!” someone shouted. “Get up! There’s money to be makin’ on the Ku-damm.”
Frank couldn’t see for a second, and then remembered the towel was blocking his view.
He removed it, shivering in the air, his bones aching and cold. It was probably one or two but it could have been anytime.
Martin was gone, and The Behanser was striding about with a cup of soup in his hand, marshalling the troops for another day’s slog. From the bedroom Frank heard the groans of Pd.
“What the fuck,” said Dev, stepping onto the balcony and stretching. His hair was knotted and face creased. He yawned and spat down below, dredging up phlegm and depositing it. The distant concrete was too far for the splash to carry up.
They milled around the kitchen, banging into each other and picking at food. They grabbed the guitars and left.
The Mexicans were nowhere to be seen, so they were probably down the far end. Occasionally one of them disappeared and was replaced by a lookalike. The same belly, the same moustache, the same instrument. Another compadre allergic to the factory floor.
Dev sat on the ground and fondled his bodhran. Frank could hardly be bothered playing today. He formed chords distractedly, allowing the others bear the brunt.
Pd slapped his thigh as usual, keeping a rhythm entirely separate to that of the song. The fact no one could hear Dev rendered this moot. The music was greeted with hostility and appreciation in equal measure, and when Pd went round with the boot the collection was average. “Thank you, but no,” someone said. “Your music has not pleased me.”
After hitting the majority of the restaurants, they packed up and moved towards the tram. The short journey to Prenzlauerberg took them past Hackescher Markt and Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. .
Jason was on the square, drinking sangria and talking to himself. “Alright boys,” he said when he saw them approach. They sat with him and smoked, and it became obvious they weren’t going to play that night. They went to a shop and bought beer and jumbo skins.
It grew dark and the night was beautiful. Lorca-longing and the sweetness of what you can’t have. Frank lay back and closed his eyes, his head spinning. He breathed deeply, and thought of hope.
Jason sang a song, an ancient blues from the cotton field. The way he howled and shook he was Johnson or McTell. He convulsed back and forth, his head and body jerking, the strings besieged but holding strong. He spat on the ground and his ponytail worked loose and came free.
Oh woman what have you gone done to me?
Oh woman what have you gone done to me?
Well you took my lovin’ and then you cut me free.
The stars hung above, and the sound rose up to meet them. Speech wasn’t necessary, and drink was in plentiful supply.

They got the U-7 at Neukolln, Karl Marx Strasse bustling and full. At Berliner Strasse, they changed for the U-9 to the Ku-damm. The Mexicans were already playing the red restaurant on the right.
The Mexicans were the competition, two guitars and a violin. Their bellies forced the guitars to be played at chest level. The strings on these instruments were older than the street they were serenading, and flapped about tunelessly as the chords were plucked.
Frank lit a cigarette and watched them. They were sweating in the German summer heat. The Berlin sewer smell rose up violently, making diners cough and Dev complain.
They’d wait half an hour before playing here. After one performance it needed time for the clientele to change. They moved across the road and set up at another restaurant, effortlessly stealing The Mexicans next port of call.
The place was half-empty, and Frank tuned up. The Behanser wandered off during the first song, leaving him alone to play guitar. Dev sat in front with his bodhran, and Pd slapped his thigh while he sang.
Frank felt light in his head from the sun’s rays. The chords to these songs could be done without even a thought. So Long Marianne, Lime Tree Arbour, these were the set staples. Adapted to be played at cafes, beer gardens, and bars.
The Mexicans in turn leapfrogged them, and the two groups continued around the Ku-damm in this manner, overtaking one another, pausing, and doing so again. They stopped for beer on several occasions.
Stretching in a restaurant they had just hit, they laughed when The Mexicans huffed up and started playing. Frank smiled at finally catching their act. They performed for the customers impassively, staring ahead like they were dead or waiting for a bus. The Behanser let a belly laugh but it didn’t ruffle them.
As evening descended, they waited for Dev to drain his glass and got the tram to Prenzlauerberg. There was a square surrounded by restaurants, known as Kollwitzplatz. Here they shared sangria with an English busker named Jason, who told stories of Anderlecht, Paris, and Sevilla. He was maybe forty, with a scraggly ponytail and booming voice. He welcomed the company, and gave a sense of being utterly alone.
Then they started. Touring the restaurants, blasting out the same set. It was difficult sometimes to imbue it with any effort. However, it was this or working, singing or the sites, and so they sang, happily. Dev sat on the ground like a beggar or a Buddha.
In a bar at four in the morning they met Martin. An Irishman in an Irish bar in Neukolln. He was thirty-five, from Belfast, and played piano in five star Berlin hotels. The Behanser and Frank invited him back to the flat. He sat at the Bluthner grand, playing Mozart. He launched into Beethoven’s Fifth to make them laugh.
“You boys are wicked,” said Martin. “You’re brand new.”
His thick Northern accent was screaming for mimicry.
Dev tripped over a flashing lamp stolen from a construction site, reaching in vain for something but no one knew what. He just stretched out from his seat, then stood up leaning forward. He tripped on the lamp as he lunged at a shadow on the wall.
“Sit down you moron,” said Frank.
“There’s a fucking shadow on the wall like the ghost of a girl.”
They all looked, thick smoke obscuring everything, cigarette papers and butts littering the floor. There was no shadow or girl determinable.
A carton of sangria had spilled that night or previously, soaking the threadbare carpet, the smell mixing with the smoke. Dev dropped a roach in a can of Kuppers. Frank spied a pack of painkillers on the table and ate the six that remained in it. They combined with the smoke and the drink and made his body quite numb. He saw The Behanser stand up, but slowly, like underwater. Martin laughed, sounding as though from somewhere else.
“Play fucking piano,” mumbled Pd. “I’ll sing something Irish if somebody plays.”
Martin hit A minor and followed with F. As soon as he moved to G they knew what was coming.
True you ride the finest horse, I’ve ever seen,
Standing sixteen one or two, with eyes wild and green.
The Behanser removed a block of hash from his anorak.
As dawn broke they played charades, miming the titles of films that never existed. Pd took an hour and then gave up
“What the fuck was that?” shouted Dev. “What fuckin’ film were you doing?”
“If you can’t guess it, it’s fitting you’ll never know.”
They sparred back and forth for a while, each claiming the other’s turns were inventions.
The pointless exchange was finally ended with whiskey.