Volume CXXXIII, Number 15 February 8, 2002 f

Beyond the pines
LUDWIG VAN RANG
ALUMNUS CONTRIBUTOR

Back in Germany in June '66, I spent a few weeks with my parents at Bonn and then, as planned, headed for Berlin. My eldest brother, Professor of Education at Frankfurt University, on sabbatical in the States at the time, kindly lent me his car: another beetle, but a white one for a change.

Off I went early in the morning of the 13th of August, which happened to be the fifth anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall. Driving along a pot-holed autobahn through, what was then still the German Democratic Republic, I arrived in the divided city about noon and went straight to my twin brother's apartment, all mine for the moment, since he and his wife were on holiday on the Black Sea.

Mathew and Dora then lived in Zehlendorf, a pleasant residential district on the western outskirts of the city, where most of the Americans stationed in Berlin and their dependants lived until reunification. Having showered and changed, I got back in the car and drove down Clay Allee, a broad avenue named after Lucius Clay, the first US Military Governor and hero of the Berlin Airlift, to Kurfürstendamm. This was and still is West Berlin's show-piece avenue, like the Champs Elysées on a smaller scale, with expensive shops, restaurants, and side-walk cafés.

It was while sitting in one of these establishments, in summer 1913, that the famous World War One poet Rupert Brooke, feeling a bit homesick for the gentile atmosphere of pre-war Cambridge, penned a nostalgic poem called "Grantchester" ending with the oft-quoted line, "And is there honey still for tea?"

Well, more than fifty years and two World Wars later, a would-be film maker wasn't pining for English-style tea, with or without honey, instead just savoring the relaxed continental atmosphere. What a difference, I thought, to my first visit here, as a GI, in the freezing winter of 1961, before the Wall was built.

Seeing an empty table outside crowded Café Möhring, I quickly grabbed it. Having ordered the obligatory Kännchen Kaffee, a pot of coffee, I sat back and engaged in the time-honored past-time of watching the world go by, as well as people at other tables.

Among the latter, I couldn't help noticing a group of people, quite vivacious and looking rather Bohemian, who naturally attracted my particular attention.

One of them particularly caught my view, apparently the center of attraction and only black among them, who wore a colorful silk shirt with flared sleeves, a bandana, wine-red corduroys, and high-heeled boots. Now and then, this exotic-looking creature would lift a little blonde girl, apparently belonging to one of the young women in the group, up in the air, a game she seemed to enjoy, since she reacted to it with mock-apprehensive squeals.

The longer I watched the more something about the fellow's striking face and figure struck me as vaguely familiar… could it be Raoul, a black dancer I had met years ago in New York? The longer I looked, the surer I was it must be. But even if it was, would he remember me?

While still debating whether simply to walk up to him and ask, the waiter happened to pass my table. Having asked him for the bill, I quickly paid, got up and sauntered back to the car, parked just round the corner in Fasanenstrasse, where one of Berlin's synagogues, burnt down during the infamous Kristallnacht of November of 1938, used to be (today a memorial site).

But, after putting the key in the ignition, I just sat there without turning it over, wondering if I'd done the right thing. After all, on my own in Berlin, not knowing anyone, why didn't I want to talk to someone who might be glad to see me again after all these years?

What was I running away from? My gay past I suppose, which I was determined to get away from, to start a new life.

I sat there thinking it over for five or ten minutes: one of those moments of indecision that, depending on the decision you make, can change the course of your life. Suddenly, without thinking really, I made up my mind. I got out of the car, and went back to Café Möhring.

He was still there.

"Excuse me," I said, "isn't your name Raoul?" Hearing mine, a slow grin of recognition spread over his face. "Won't you join us?" he said… the die had been cast.

He was with the Living Theater of New York, Raoul told me, an experimental theatrical group touring Europe, to great critical acclaim, with pieces like "The Brig," a one-act play about life in a Marine Corps prison (under conditions not unlike those in Camp X-Ray I suppose) and "Frankenstein," based on the horror story by Mary Shelley.

Currently appearing at Berlin's Kunstakademie, a venue for avant-garde art including the performing arts, for their next engagement they would be going to Venice, with other Italian cities to follow, where they would be doing "street theatre."

Where was he staying?

At a Pension on Kurfürstendamm. Run by Madame Shéira, a former ballerina, once married to an Egyptian, long dead, their spacious apartment in a building with art nouveau facade had been converted into a Pension. Julian Beck and Judith Malina, founder-directors of the Living Theater, were also staying there. He had a large double room, all to himself, Raoul grinned.

What was I doing later that evening?

"Nothing," I said.