The man sat by the window, looking down at the street. It was the last day of the year, and the snow that had fallen that morning had already turned to gray slush. In Berlin, everything quickly turned to gray slush, he thought.
His name was Martin Berger, and he was fifty-two years old. That was an age when you started counting the years you had left, rather than those that had passed. He had once read that this was the real beginning of aging—not the wrinkles, not the gray hair, but this shift in perspective. He couldn't remember who had written it. Perhaps he had simply made it up himself and attributed it to an author to lend the idea more weight.
On the table stood a bottle of red wine, half empty. Next to it lay a letter he had received that morning. The letter was from his daughter Clara, who lived in Munich and invited him to spend the New Year with her. He had read the letter three times. Then he had opened the bottle.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” he said without turning around.
The door opened, and Mrs. Kovacs entered. She was his neighbor from the third floor, a Hungarian woman in her mid-sixties who had lived in Berlin since the fall of the Wall and made the best pancakes this side of the Danube.
“Mr. Berger,” she said. “You’re sitting in the dark.”
“The streetlights are enough.”
“That’s not light. That’s illumination. There’s a difference.”
She switched on the floor lamp without asking. The room filled with a warm yellow light. Martin blinked.
“I’ve brought you something,” Mrs. Kovacs said, placing a plate on the table. On it were three Berliner doughnuts, thickly dusted with powdered sugar. “You can’t start the new year on an empty stomach.”
“I’ve eaten.”
“Wine isn’t food, Mr. Berger.”
He smiled. It was the first time that day that the corners of his mouth turned up.
"Have a seat," he said.
She sat down in the chair opposite him. The leather creaked. It was an old armchair he'd bought years ago at a flea market in Kreuzberg. Back then, he'd still believed that old things told a story. Now he knew that old things mostly collected dust.
"Clara wrote," he said, pointing to the letter.
"And?"
"She wants me to come to Munich."
"That's nice."
"Yes."
"But you won't be going."
He looked at her. Her eyes were dark and alert, like a cat that knows where the mice are hiding.
"How do you know that?"
"Because you're sitting here. Because you're drinking. Because you haven't answered the letter."
"The letter arrived this morning."
"In the time it took you to read, another man would have already packed."
Martin picked up one of the Berliners and bit into it. The jam was sweet and thick, just right. He chewed slowly.
"You know," he said, "there's this saying. I can't remember who said it. That the new year is like a blank book. Three hundred and sixty-five empty pages waiting to be filled."
"A nice thought."
"A silly thought. A sentimental one. Because that's not true. The new year isn't a blank book. It's a continuation. Chapter fifty-three of a story whose beginning we've forgotten and whose end we don't know."
Mrs. Kovacs was silent for a while. Outside, a firework roared and exploded with a dull thud. A child screamed, whether from joy or fright, it was impossible to tell.
“In Budapest,” she finally said, “my father always said: ‘Whoever cries on New Year’s Eve cries all year. And whoever laughs, laughs all year.’”
“Was it true?”
“No. But it made us laugh, even when we didn’t feel like it. And that’s something, too.”
Martin took a sip of wine. He thought of Clara. Of her mother, who had died four years ago, on a Tuesday in March, when spring was just beginning and the forsythias were in bloom. Life had a cruel way of blending beauty and loss.
“I wasn’t a good father,” he said.
“Were you a bad one?”
“I was absent. I worked. I wrote books that no one read. I thought that mattered.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” He put down his glass. “There’s this old joke. A man goes to the doctor and says, ‘Doctor, I feel like my life is passing me by.’ And the doctor replies, ‘That’s normal. That’s how time works.’”
Mrs. Kovacs laughed. It was a warm, smoky laugh.
“That sounds like Kästner,” she said.
“Possibly. Or like someone who read Kästner and thought they could do better.”
The clock on the wall showed 10:30. Ninety minutes until the new year. Martin got up and went to the window. The street was filling up. People in thick jackets stood in groups, holding bottles of sparkling wine and sparklers. A young couple was kissing under a lamppost. They were both wearing red caps.
“Do you believe in New Year’s resolutions?” he asked.
“I believe in actions,” Mrs. Kovacs said. “Resolutions are just words. Words are cheap. Actions cost something.”
“And if you don’t know what to do?”
“Then you do the most obvious thing. The simplest thing. What’s right in front of you.”
Martin turned around. He saw the letter on the table, the half-empty bottle, the Berliner doughnuts dusted with powdered sugar. He saw Mrs. Kovacs in the old armchair, her face half in shadow, half in the light of the floor lamp.
"I could take the train at midnight," he said. "It leaves at 12:37. I'd be in Munich by 6."
"You could."
"Clara would be pleased."
"Probably."
"But?"
"There is no but, Mr. Berger. There is only the question of whether you will or not."
He went into the bedroom and took a travel bag from the closet. It was dusty. He hadn't used it for years. He packed a shirt, trousers, underwear, and a book. The book was an old volume, bound in brown linen, the pages yellowed. He had read it long ago, in another time, another life.
When he returned to the living room, Mrs. Kovacs was already standing in the doorway.
"I'm leaving now," she said. "I still have to feed the cat."
“Thank you,” said Martin. “For the people of Berlin. And for the conversation.”
“It wasn’t a conversation. It was a starting point. You did the rest yourself.”
She opened the door but paused for a moment.
“Mr. Berger?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know what the secret is? With the new year, I mean. With happiness.”
“No.”
“It’s not the new beginning. It’s the willingness to carry on. Despite everything. With everything. That’s not wisdom, that’s stubbornness. But sometimes stubbornness is all we have.”
The door closed behind her.
Martin Berger stood in his apartment, his suitcase in hand. Outside, the first fireworks were rising into the sky. Red, green, gold. The city was preparing for the moment when everything would change and yet remain the same.
He thought of the sentence from the old book he had packed. That life can only be lived forwards, but understood backwards. That wasn't Hemingway, Mann, or Kästner. It was a Dane he'd met in a Parisian café many years ago, when he himself was still young and believed in the possibility of new beginnings.
He left the apartment, locked the door, and went downstairs.
The night was cold but clear. The sky over Berlin glowed with every color. People were laughing, calling to each other, counting the seconds.
Ten. Nine. Eight.
Martin Berger walked to the train station.
Seven. Six. Five.
The city exploded around him in light and noise.
Four. Three. Two.
He bought a ticket.
One.
The train to Munich departed on time. At 12:37, when the new year was 37 minutes old. Martin sat by the window and gazed out into the darkness that lay between the cities.
He didn't know what the new year would bring. Nobody did. But he was traveling to meet his daughter, and that was more than he had thought possible that morning.
New year, new luck, he thought. Perhaps it wasn't new luck at all. Perhaps it was just the old luck he had rediscovered. Or what was left of it.
The train rolled through the night. In the distance, beyond the black fields, a light came on in a lonely house.
Someone was awake. Someone was waiting.
That was enough.
S.
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