On Friday evening I arrived at the bar where we were meeting a good quarter of an hour early. I had been looking forward to the evening all week, and had left work early so that I could go home and change my clothes before the opening. With those earlier art shows that Ingrid had taken me to in mind, I had put on a black turtle neck (how I was glad I had had the forethought to buy that before I left Edinburgh), a pair of dark jeans and my best shoes, a pair of second-hand brogues.
I studied the other people in the place as I waited. The bar had an Italian name and there were Italian dishes on the menu, but I knew that didn’t mean much in Berlin where half the supposedly Italian restaurants were run byTurkish-Germans. The over-designed interior, all black padded seating and alcoves, was generic West Berlin chic. I felt scruffy and poor in comparison to the glamorous little groups of 30-somethings who populated the bar, smoking cigars and thin cigarettes, their mobile phones laid on the tables.
When Ingrid arrived just after seven, I had already drunk a beer at the bar, paying for it up front so that it wouldn’t appear on the bill later. In some ways I still thought of Ingrid as a mother fiugre, and didn’t want her to know I needed Dutch courage.
She had obviously made an effort for the occasion too, and was wearing a dress whose colour — based on my knowledge of my mother’s Next mail order catalogue — I could identify as “tobacco.” She kissed me on both cheeks, a habit common among Germans of a certain social class and one I still haven’t entirely got used to (part of the problem is not knowing whether a second or even third kiss is coming and reacting accordingly).
“Na?” she asked, the one word greeting popular with the kissing crowd and which translates roughly as “How’s it going?” She looked pleased to see me and for the first time it occured to me that perhaps she had been looking forward to going out with me that evening. I am not now, and neither was I then, particularly handsome, but I scrub up well enough and I was a good 15 years younger than her — a fact which I have learned increases one’s stock among women of a certain age. And it didn’t take much to look more exciting than Herr Müller — just the fact that I spoke and left the house occasionally was enough for me to look positively sexy in comparison.
We sat down at a table and began flicking through the thick, bound menu for something to do. We were both a bit nervous and I had the ridiculous notion that we were out on a date. I reminded myself that that wasn’t the case and she was just an old friend.
I asked Ingrid if she came there often — the question didn’t sound so hackneyed in German, at least to my ears — and she said she had only been there a couple of times. “Heinrich doesn’t like going out so much,” she said apologetically. It was the first time I had ever heard her husband’s first name. I nodded sympathetically and then the conversation died again.
I was glad of the distraction when the haughty waiter finally came over. Ingrid ordered a prosecco. I was glad that she had gone first because I had decided I would order whatever she was having. I had no idea what a prosecco was but told the waiter I would have one too.
When the drinks came, Ingrid proposed a toast, holding up her glass of prosecco, which had turned out to be fizzy white wine. “To Berlin and your new life here,” she said. “And to art.”
We clinked our glasses together and I took a sip of the wine.
Ingrid frowned at me as if I had just made a Nazi salute in the middle of the restaurant. “Not like that,” she said. “You have to look into my eyes when you make a toast. Otherwise it’s bad luck.”
This was news to me, used to drinking pints with no fanfare in run-down Edinburgh pubs. “What will happen if I don’t look into your eyes?” I asked, deliberately meeting her gaze as I held up my glass again.
She clinked her glass against mine. “Seven years of bad sex,” she said triumphantly and I felt my face go red.
It was just then that Jasmilla arrived.
Up until that point — and I feel shabby even admitting this — I had been thinking what an attractive woman Ingrid was. But as soon as I saw Jasmilla, Ingrid suddenly looked old and dowdy. Jasmilla was wearing a tailored black shirt that hugged the contours of her body and flared black trousers that emphasised her long legs, as well as a tweed cap and managed to be simultaneously jaunty, ironic and sexy.
“Hallo Du,” she said to Ingrid, giving her a kiss. She shook my hand. “Hi.” (Had she forgotten my name?) “I didn’t realise you were coming too.”
“I saw the opening listed in Zitty,” I said awkwardly.
“Well, hope you like it,” she said, giving me a polite smile.
Just then the waiter came over — he was suddenly very attentive now that Jasmilla had joined us — and took her order. She asked for a gin and tonic. Now there was a real drink, I thought, feeling embarrassed that I was drinking sparkling white wine.
I had hoped that we would make some relaxed small talk before going to the opening. Knowing how tongue-tied I had been at Ingrid’s Kaffee und Kuchen, I had prepared a mental list of questions I could ask Jasmilla. I had even gone as far as checking the gender of the nouns so that I could get the articles right (although in the heat of battle I knew the adjective endings would be beyond me).
But instead Jasmilla immediately began an intense discussion with Ingrid about Ibramovitch and his worked, which I gathered was terribly post-modern and clever. Of course I knew nothing about him and could only sit and listen, trying to keep up.
From there the conversation moved on to other artists. I caught the occasional name that I vaguely recognised, such as Gerhard Richter and Joseph Beuys, but the others were all new to me. I kept quiet. Even if I had had something to say, I wasn’t able to express myself in the level of German they were using.
I gradually found myself losing track of the conversation which began to sound to me like an unwatched television droning in the background. The abstract nouns and verbs flowed over me — I could understand the individual words but couldn’t make out their sense in the context — and I lost the urge to participate and began to feel depressed. I wished I hadn’t come out with them. I had always felt myself superior to my rugby-playing peers at Edinburgh University but I was clearly too stupid to play with the real intellectuals. I resolved to buy a selection of books on art and stay at home reading them until I had something to talk about.
Ingrid brought me out of my daze by saying we should get going and asking for the bill. She insisted on paying for all of us, which I was secretly relieved about despite my protests. I hadn’t been paid yet and I only had 10 euros in my pocket to last me the whole night.
Walking towards the gallery, I felt the snail’s instinct to withdraw from the world and tried to lag behind so that I wouldn’t have to take part in the conversation. However Jasmilla matched her pace to mine.
“So do you like art, Richard?” she asked. I was brightened by the realisation that she did in fact remember my name (although maybe she had asked Ingrid while I was in the toilet!) but thought that the question was sort of inappropriate considering how little I had said earlier. Nevertheless I managed a feeble “sure” in response. I realised Jasmilla was expecting me to go on, so I mumbled something about liking Picasso, which I knew sounded ridiculous.
“I love Picasso,” she said. “Who else do you like?” I realised she was trying to be kind and felt a bit better.
I cast my mind around for the name of an artist that she might find interesting, ideally someone she would never have heard of. I visualised the interior of the National Gallery of Modern Art, where I occasionally went at the weekend (although more for the carrot cake in the café than the art itself, if the truth be told), but the artists they had hanging there were either too obvious (Braque, Leger, Dix) or too provincial (the young Scottish artists who the Scotsman wrote about).
Then I remembered an exhibition I had seen years ago in the Botanic Gardens, where the artist had stitched leaves together with thorns to form spiral-shaped horns and built giant fir cones out of slabs of slate. Normally I am bad with names but the artist’s name came to me in a miraculous flash. “I like Andy Goldsworthy.”
Jasmilla’s reaction was exactly what I had hoped for. She had never heard of him but was intrigued. As I began to tell her about his work — fortunately I remembered a Channel 4 documentary about him I had happened to see — I found myself talking with growing enthusiasm and even authority, seeing as I knew something about the artist and she didn’t. Best of all, Jasmilla was paying attention to what I was saying. By the time we got to the gallery I felt a warm bubble of happiness begin to expand within me. Perhaps the evening wasn’t beyond saving after all.
