Cafe Babanussa (4 page)

“Your father has stood by me all these years, even when I
wasn't well. But what you're really angry about is you, isn't it? We'll have to try to talk some sense into him.”

“I don't know how, but in any case, he won't stop me from going.” Ruby had begun smearing garlic and butter onto the bread when Jessie walked in.

“I'm starving. Is it almost ready?”

“You still here? Just hang on for ten minutes, and there'll be food.” Ruby pulled knives, forks and spoons from the drawer.

Her father came in and sat down at his usual place at the end of the table. “Smells yummy—I know there's good food coming my way.”

The mood in the kitchen was tense, and they sat down to eat in silence. Jessie asked her father if he wanted to say grace.

“Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub,” he replied. The only time they blessed the table was when they had visitors who were religious. When that happened, the girls would check to make sure everyone's eyes were closed and smirk at each other across the table. The sisters shared a smile now.

“You may have done all the cooking today,” Jessie teased, “but I sewed up a new dress for Mom at home this morning.”

“I guess we're even, then.”

Ruby's father looked up at her. “You'd be even more even with your sister if you worked on getting a good job.”

“James Edwards, don't you dare ruin this meal.”

“Ruin this meal? How about ruin her life? That's what
she's
trying to do.”

“Dad,” Jessie said, “for crying out loud. She's only going on a trip.”

“She can go on a trip any old day. I want her to get established first. Besides, I don't want her to be so far away.”

“That's it! I'm outta here.” Ruby shoved herself away from the table and went outside to get some air. The flowers in the backyard were fanning themselves in the cool breeze, heads slightly bent. Ruby went over and picked some lilacs from the bush and then snapped two white peonies off their stems. She wondered if the plants felt pain.

Her mother came outside and rubbed her daughter's shoulder. “I'm sorry, honey. He's just having such a hard time with this. He doesn't want to lose you.”

“He's not losing me, for chrissake, Mom. I'm not disappearing off the face of the earth.”

“Come back inside and eat with us. You'll be hungry if you don't finish your food.”

“No, Ma, I'll eat later. I'm going to my room.” Ruby went down to the basement and found a glass for the flowers. She lay back on her bed and stared at the ceiling, her mind going over the conversation at the table. The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to go immediately to West Berlin. Her uncle had studied at the Academy of Arts there until Hitler's fascists had chased him out. When he returned to Canada, he and his partner did indeed move in with his sister, Ella. His sister refused to meet his boyfriend but let them set up house together in the basement, which had had its own entrance. Some members of the family said he was a bit of a scoundrel, mooching off them all the time.

Her uncle Walter's story piqued her imagination. What
on earth was a gay African Canadian doing in Nazi Germany in the 1930s? It tickled her that she was the only one in the family destined—chosen?—to follow in his footsteps. She felt compelled by some crazy idea of cosmic karma to see if she could find his old haunts in Berlin.

An hour later there was a knock at her door.

“Who's there?”

“It's your broken-down old father. May I come in?”

Ruby sat up in her bed but then slumped back down. He knocked again, and finally she said, “Come on in.”

Her dad sat down at the foot of the bed. Ruby rolled over to face him.

Her father fiddled with his hands for a moment, head down. “Listen, Ruby, this is hard for me to say. I won't try to stop you from going. I can't anyway—you have a mind of your own and you're going to do whatever you want to do. It's just—I've spent so many years looking after you and looking out for you. It's hard to let go, hard to realize that you have to head off into the world on your own. I still hope you won't be gone for long and that you'll focus on a career when you get back. Your family is here, and you are an integral part of it. What are you going to do there in Berlin, after you've seen all the sights? But in the meantime, I don't know what else to say but be well, my dear, and travel safely. Let us know when you're leaving.”

“Did Mom tell you to say that?”

Her father struggled. “Yes, Ruby, your mother and I had a chat. But this is me. Solo. Here to talk.”

“It's just so strange . . . don't you remember when you were young?” Ruby asked.

“I guess different people have different impulses. Mine was to get an education, settle down and raise a family. That's what my parents taught me. Study hard, work hard, improve your life.”

Ruby looked at her father and realized he had followed the dream of many Black Canadians. She stammered, “Maybe you didn't go far away, but you still set out on your own. That's all I'm trying to do.” She quieted her anger and reached out to her father. “Thanks for coming to talk to me, Dad. It means a lot to me.”

Her father opened up his arms and Ruby slid into them for one last bear hug. He hummed a familiar tune that made Ruby smile. Together they sang as they held fast to each other.

S
HOTS RANG OUT FROM A TOWER UP ABOVE.
I
T WAS
nighttime and everything seemed grey and bleak. A man's hands, pierced and bloody, gripped a barbed wire fence at the top of a tall slab of grey concrete. He was gasping; his face was etched with desperation and terror.

As a child, Ruby had sat with her father as he watched a film in the family room, and had ended up burrowed into his lap, too scared to watch the rest of the movie. Her father had told her it was about spies in Berlin, but she hadn't really known what that meant. He had shooed her away, and she went off thinking that Berlin seemed like a horrible place. This early image of Berlin haunted her now, along with the romantic associations she had of her uncle, so she delayed her descent into the complete unknown by stopping over in Paris for a week to soak up the sights and sounds of the French capital.

Ruby touched down in Paris mid-morning, mid-week. Her parents had taken her to the airport the night before and
there had been repeated teary goodbyes. Her first transatlantic flight had felt long and cramped, and it was a relief to disembark into the busy airport. Ruby had chosen a simple
pension
on Rue de Nesle on the Left Bank, and she admired the quirky decorations and artwork when she arrived to drop off her bags. There was no restaurant or café at the hotel, so she walked down the cobblestone road, which burst out onto a large square. She happily noted there were at least four cafés with patios stretching into its hub. She sat down at La Pleine Lune and soon she was munching on a chocolate croissant and sipping a grand crème as she took in her surroundings. She tried to imitate the French and their very essence of nonchalance by just glancing at the people all around her, but there was so much to see. She noticed a slight young man with wavy blond hair staring at her on and off from the other side of the patio. He waved at her. She waved back. As she got up to go, she wondered if he was from around here and whether she'd ever see him again.

Ruby hopped onto the Métro at Odéon and found her way to the Jardin du Luxembourg. The air was fresh in the park and the sun now high in the sky, casting thick rays of gold over the beds of flowers. She feasted on the bright array of colours as she strolled around. She bent to touch flowers as if she were talking to them. As she took in their scent she felt she was inhaling the promise of the city. It helped to lift the fatigue settling down on her, so she decided to remain in the open air and go on to Père Lachaise Cemetery. She had heard that it was beautiful, full of the graves of the famous amidst
bounteous nature. In particular, she wanted to visit the graves of Colette, Guillaume Apollinaire and then Jim Morrison.

During the week that followed, Ruby always had breakfast at La Pleine Lune before heading out to explore the city. She loved Paris, but she began to feel lonely and wished she had someone to share her experiences with. How would she cope in Berlin? Her confidence began to ebb. Maybe she wasn't quite as independent as she had thought. But she was determined not to go crawling back to her father so soon; it was important to prove she was capable of surviving on her own.

On the night before her departure, Ruby picked up some cheese, a baguette, some fruit and a bar of chocolate and went to the river. As she sat down with her picnic by the Seine, the same blond man she had seen on the patio her first day in Paris approached and joined her on the bench.

“At last,” he said in French. “No more waving. I can look you in the eyes and tell you how pretty you are.”

Ruby felt her cheeks warm as she smiled awkwardly at her new companion. His rather large nose reminded her of Gérard Depardieu, but his slate-blue eyes were welcoming, with a hint of laughter at their edges. His hair was so thick and wavy that she wanted to run her fingers through it.

“Yes, well . . . Um, what is your name?” asked Ruby. His accent seemed Eastern European, but she wasn't sure.

“I'm Werner. You are not from here, I gather, though you speak beautifully. What is your name, my little American?”

“Ruby,” she said. “And I'm Canadian.”

He took her hand in his and kissed it and said, “Hello, Ruby,
la Canadienne
. Pleased to meet you.”

His eyes seemed to devour her. Ruby squirmed a little. “You're not French, are you?”

“No, I'm German, from Stuttgart.”

“Oh! I'm going to Berlin tomorrow.”

“Berlin, eh? That's where I live. Why are you going there?”

Ruby chatted easily about her life back in Don Mills and how her great-uncle's time in Berlin had inspired her to travel, though she could see Werner struggling to follow.

Werner switched to English. “Do you speak German?”

“
Nein
. Not one bit.”

“Let's go for a walk and I can give you a crash course in swear words, teach you how to count, that sort of thing. We can do at least that much in one night. Are you staying there for a while?

“Well, I don't really know how long,” Ruby said, rising from the bench. “Maybe a year.”

“Then you
must
learn some German,” he said firmly, and took her hand.

Ruby laughed out loud. Somehow she felt comfortable around this man. He spoke simply and was straightforward and seemed genuinely interested in her. And he was nice to look at.
Ah, what the hell, what harm can a little hand-holding do
, she thought, wrapping her fingers around his as they headed off towards Notre-Dame.

“Why is your English so impeccable?” she asked.

“Impeccable?”

Ruby smiled and said, “It's excellent.”

“I always had a thing for English and English literature, more so than French. We start early in school, and also I travelled to London a few times. What about you? How do you speak French so well?”

“My mother is from Montreal. I love the romance languages. French, Spanish, Italian—love them all.”

“What about your father, where is he from?”

“He's from Canada. He's Black.”

Werner nodded as if he had thought something like this all along. “
Mischling
. . . ,” he said.

“I don't know what that means, but it doesn't sound good.”

“You're mulatto.”

Ruby stopped and dropped his hand. “That word is offensive. It should never be used anymore. Call me Black, call me mixed, but not that!”

Werner apologized. An awkward silence fell over them.

“It's okay. You couldn't be expected to know how awful that word is.” Ruby took his hand again and they stood looking out over the Seine. The incandescence of the city stretched out before them, and she felt like each and every twinkle that lit the sky was something to be discovered. Werner began chatting about Berlin, and he too seemed full of light, matching the Parisian night.

They sat outside Notre-Dame de Paris for a while, taking in its grandeur and murmuring about hunchbacks, and then they walked back through the streets to La Pleine Lune. After
eating, they ordered drinks and sat chatting some more, the cool night air blowing gently around them. Ruby felt intoxicated in more than one way. Werner's intelligence and sunny humour had cast a spell on her. After an hour or two of earnest talking, staring and hand-holding, Ruby felt she was ready to begin her journey into independence and liberation. She asked Werner, “Okay, your place or mine?”

“Oh, I like your style. Straight to the point.”

“Well, why bother waiting?” Ruby said. “Tomorrow I'll be gone and we'll have never known.”

“Never known what?”

“Why, how we taste . . . the best dessert of all.”

“Hmmm . . . I think I'm going home on the train with you tomorrow,” said Werner.

The two of them wandered down the road and quietly climbed the stairs to Ruby's room. Amidst awkward fumbling and giggling, they doffed their clothes and drank in the essence of their dissimilar bodies. His was long and gangly, skin rough and mottled next to her rounded café au lait limbs. Werner struggled with her bra straps, yanking at them impatiently until they snapped against her skin. “Do you need help?” Ruby teased.

“German women don't wear bras,” Werner said. “You'll be rid of this contraption in no time.” They laughed as their bodies melded.

“Please, make me one promise,” Werner whispered as he licked her earlobe later on.

“What's that?” Ruby asked.

“Don't say ‘I love you' to me tonight.”

Ruby giggled. “You must take me for a fool,” she said.

“But why is it that so many Americans always say they love people they are just screwing?”

“I don't know about ‘so many Americans,'” Ruby replied, “but Canadians are different from Americans. Don't lump us in with the Hollywood lot. Personally, I don't know how you could tell if you really loved someone without having sex with them first.”

Werner began to massage Ruby's feet. Then he took her big toe in his mouth and said, “Mmm, juicy, smoky and a little salty. Just like a piece of ham.”

“Are you calling me a pig?” asked Ruby as she wriggled around.

“I will worship them one by one, how do you say, until the cows come home?”

“First a pig, now a cow—Werner, you're not very flattering.”

“This little piggy goes to market, this little piggy comes running
all
the way home. That's right, come to Werner, baby.”

“Oh my god, get off my toes.” On and on they went through the night, with Werner joking all the way.

Ruby postponed her departure to Berlin. She and Werner spent the next two weeks wandering the streets of Paris together. At the end of it all Ruby was ready to leave for Berlin, with Werner in tow.

The train rumbled sluggishly through the flat and colourless countryside, having slowed measurably since they crossed the border into East Germany. Ruby chatted with Werner and with a young West German couple sitting opposite them. They all laughed at her attempts to pronounce the few German words she knew, the language sounding rough and angry to her untrained ear. Often she would open her eyes to see the young man and woman necking, hands caressing each other's bodies without a care in the world.

Werner carried on trying to drill some German words and phrases into her, but Ruby was only half-interested. Then he said, “I think you should stay with me. Let's take a chance on each other and see how it works out. Anyhow, where else are you going to go?”

“Well, I would have stayed in a youth hostel for a while. But thank you for asking me to stay with you.” Her first instinct was to go with the flow and say yes. It would be ideal for her, she thought, more than she could have asked for. “This will be true immersion in more than one sense,” she said as she smiled at Werner, who seemed both nervous and pleased about her answer. They pressed rather uncomfortably into each other and let the night fall upon them.

Morning arrived cheerless and dim; whistles blew and the train jolted to a stop. Ruby saw guards perched on towers, rifles slung over their shoulders.

“We're here,” Werner said, yet there was no station or city to be seen.

Ruby leaned out the window and spied a group of soldiers
in grey uniforms that seemed to match the countryside walking purposefully along the side of the train, reining in large German shepherds on leashes. The dogs sniffed at the underbelly of the train.

“What on earth are the dogs for?” she asked Werner.

“To check if anyone is hiding underneath,” Werner replied a little curtly.

“Anyone . . . ?” Ruby asked.

“East Germans, of course. We've been passing through East Germany and are about to enter West Berlin and no one from the East is allowed in. Some people will try any means to escape to the West.”

“Do they always do this?”

“Yes.” His voice betrayed exasperation with her naïveté. It was ironic to Ruby that she, for some strange reason, was taking a reverse escape route, from West to East.

A voice rang out.
“Halten Sie bitte die Pässe bereit.” Get your passports ready
.

The East German officers came through first, silently checking everyone's papers. Then came the West Germans, in dark olive-green uniforms, looking every inch as dour and authoritarian as their Eastern counterparts. They asked Ruby which baggage belonged to her, and after Werner translated, she pointed to the blue knapsack on the rack above her head. Only when they had finished carefully thumbing through her passport and returned it did she realize she'd been holding her breath.

As the train took off again, she noticed a grey slab of concrete looming behind a tall barbed wire fence.

There it was. So plain, so simple, so ugly.

They chugged along parallel to the Wall for a while and then snaked towards the city through a dense forest. The leaves on the trees were a vibrant shade of green, and tree branches stuck out from every which way as they coursed along the rails towards the city.

“This is the Grunewald,” Werner told her. “Berlin has the largest urban forests in all of Europe.”

Ruby felt this was most appropriate for a city enclosed by a wall. Soon she was taking in the beauty of the cityscape that was gliding by her window, so different from the harsh regime that surrounded it. Church spires, intricate and colourful facades adorning tall buildings, a gilded palace. Against the grey hues, the place radiated a melancholy elegance.

The train screeched into West Berlin's downtown station, Zoologischer Garten. Werner was telling her that he didn't believe in phones or televisions and she would have to place any calls from the public phone down the road from him.

The long train ride had taken its toll, for her whole body ached as she lifted her knapsack onto her shoulders. She stepped onto the platform with the throngs of other passengers, Werner following her and offering to take her knapsack.