In less than a month Michael would return to his efficiency apartment in University Heights, to his neighborhood of Dominican restaurants, broken sidewalks, graffiti and noise. He didn't want to think about New York yet. From his stop on the S-bahn Michael walked the neat avenue to the apartment where the orchestra board had put him up during his fellowship. It was early evening and spring had come; in front of the rows of identical flats the trees were beginning to bud and blossom, window boxes burst with tulips and hyacinth, and here and there children played on stairways and in parking strips before they were called indoors for dinner.
A teenage girl was sitting on the steps in front of Michael's apartment. Her name was Anna and she lived in the building. Michael waved at her as he approached. She did not wave back at him. Anna was dressed in tight black clothes and her hair was dyed platinum white with electric blue tips. She wore heavy black eyeliner like most of the girls her age in the neighborhood and Michael sometimes felt that he was surrounded by members of an alien race who'd based their entire culture on sci-fi cult films and dance music.
Anna's mother was Frau Bloch, the apartment building's live-in manager. When Michael had arrived in Berlin, the opera's assistant music director had driven Michael out to the neighborhood and introduced him to Frau Bloch. She had looked Michael over while finding the keys. Frau Bloch said very little to him beyond a reminder to keep the lobby doors closed and to not play loud music after ten o'clock.
"If you have any problems with your apartment," she had said, "I live on the top floor and you can knock on the door at any time."
Michael never had any reason to knock on Frau Bloch's door. The opera management paid the rent and the utilities and the apartment was in excellent shape. It had been built just after the Wall fell and everything was new, cleaner and better than anything in Michael's apartment in New York. Michael was in Berlin for a conducting fellowship, a six-month intensive practicum with Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin State Opera. The apartment had been decorated by Elena, Barenboim's wife. At the end of the day when he sank into the low sofa by the window, Michael always felt that he had stepped onto a film set, into a screenwriter's idea of a professional musician's home. There were photos of conductors and singers, portraits of Puccini and Mozart, an expensive sound system with a thousand CDs and LPs and a room filled with scores and analyses on shelves next to a fine mahogany desk and a leather-covered chair. In three weeks Michael would abandon all this luxury and go home. Michael's living room in New York contained an old futon couch, plastic bookshelves and second-hand Dover editions.
Berlin had never felt real. Standing next to Barenboim while holding the attention of the musicians and singers was a dream; the reality was that next month Michael would be unemployed and his student loans would begin to come due and there were precious few jobs for a man trained to do nothing but conduct an orchestra. He'd find himself playing piano in a cocktail bar or doing wedding gigs again, maybe going back to the Strand and begging for a job shelving books.
"Hallo Michael," Anna said, as he climbed past her on the steps. She smelled like cigarettes.
"Guten Abend, Anna."
"Did you have fun at the opera today?"
"I worked very hard. We are performing Der Fledermaus on Friday."
"I don't like opera. Why don't you join a band or something if you like music?"
"I play piano. I was in a band once, when I was a teen."
"Oh. Back in the stone age?" Anna had a wide mouth full of large teeth and when she smiled up at Michael she closed her eyes. It reminded Michael somehow of a cat yawning and the effect did not make her anything like pretty.
"Yes, back in the stone age." Michael was twenty-eight. Anna was old enough to know what boys were about but among her set Michael was middle-aged, a sexless old man. The idea amused him.
"Have you a cigarette?" Anna asked.
"I don't smoke. It's not allowed in this building; I'm sure Frau Bloch tells you this all the time."
Anna scowled at him.
"You will be going back to New York soon, ja?"
"Ja."
"What are you leaving for the apartment?"
Michael had wondered this himself. The conducting fellowship had been going for fifteen years and for the last decade the visiting fellows had stayed in the same apartment. Frau Bloch had been the manager the whole time and she had encouraged each of the visiting fellows to leave behind a memento of their homeland. It had become a tradition over the years and knick knacks from around the globe accumulated: a photo of Mexico City in the bathroom, a Japanese porcelain dish in the kitchen, an afghan in blood red across a chair in the living room. Michael knew about the tradition before he boarded the plane at JFK but he'd forgotten to bring something along and he'd forgotten to have any of his friends in Manhattan ship him a souvenir once he was in Berlin.
"I don't think I have anything suitable."
"You Americans, you know, are the worst."
"I believe it."
"You could leave behind a framed love letter from your girlfriend. That would be very sweet, I think. If she writes that she misses you terribly with all her heart."
"You are making fun of me. I don't have a girlfriend."
"Boyfriend?"
"Not one of those, either."
"Are you sure you don't have a cigarette? No?" Anna looked carefully at Michael, studying his dress shoes, his black jeans, his oxford shirt and blazer, his briefcase and his haircut. Anna's scrutiny made Michael faintly uncomfortable. He thought about the weight he'd gained and shifted his briefcase to hide the bulge of his stomach.
"Do you think my mother is pretty?"
Frau Bloch was a sharp-boned woman of fifty-five, with hair dyed orange and glossy lipstick and nail polish to match. She wore plain dresses in brown or blue and heavy shoes. Frau Bloch went out around four in the afternoon and returned near midnight, looking as if she'd not slept in days. Michael thought perhaps she was a cleaning woman in an office building. He looked down at Anna's angular nose and cheeks and saw the resemblance to Frau Bloch. Michael felt sorry for Anna.
"Frau Bloch is a pretty woman, yes."
"I have something, then. Stay here." Anna jumped to her feet and ran up the steps into the building. She was ungainly, like a long-legged shore bird running along the beach. Ten minutes passed and Michael began to think Anna had become distracted by some other amusement but suddenly she appeared and tripped down the steps to where he stood waiting. She held something out to him.
It was a shallow wooden curio case, painted faint blue with a glass top. Inside were six small birds, the size of finches. The birds were fixed to the back of the case, facing to the right. They had dull brown claws like dried twigs, wrapped around a willow branch that twisted along the bottom of the case. The birds were gray with yellow points on their wings and tail feathers. Each one of them had ghastly dead eyes of red glass that stared at the back of the next bird's head. Michael tried to hand the case back to Anna.
"No," she said. "You keep it and hang it on the wall of the apartment somewhere."
"What's it got to do with me?"
"My grandfather was an oboe player for the opera, you know. They went on a tour once a long time ago, and he brought this back. It's been in the family forever. My mother doesn't like it but she will not throw it out because my grandfather is dead. Look at the back."
Michael turned the box over. There was a small brass plaque on the bottom right corner.
Central Park Taxidermy
1953 1st Avenue
New York City
"I see," Michael said. "So you want me to put your dead grandfather's box of dead birds in the apartment?"
"He was in the opera, you know. I think it's got a poetry to it, ja?"
Michael wondered where in the apartment a glass-topped box of dead birds would be most welcome. He thought about the back of the bedroom closet.
"Sure. Okay."
"My mother thinks you are handsome."
"What?"
"Do you want to come to our apartment for dinner sometime before you go back to America?"
"Does Frau Bloch know you're asking me this?"
"Have you anything better to do?"
"No, I don't. I guess I don't."
"Then come tomorrow night. I'll tell my mother you have her birds." Anna jumped to her feet and ran down the block away from Michael, waving and yelling at one of her friends across the street. Anna crossed the avenue, dodging between cars. Her friend, who also wore black and had hair dyed silver with colored tips, gave Anna a cigarette. The girls linked arms and Michael watched them walk away until they disappeared around the corner of the building, two small shadows fading into the larger gray of the evening.
