The apartment by Batsceba Hardy

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SYNOPSIS
Maria manages her bar in Berlin. Here she meets Sebastian, a real estate agent, and Emma, a foreign girl who arrived in Berlin almost by chance. Maria firstly is a spectator, then advisor and finally a participant in their love encounters. An erotic and inebriating trip in the apartments of old Ost Berlin

BATSCEBA HARDY momentarily lives in Berlin. She is a writer and a photographer of unreality. One of her stories is present in: Cose Bulgare, tredici scrittori raccontano la "Bulgaria" (Linea BN Editions, 2011), by various authors, but with other pseudonyms she has published horror stories, romantic, adventure and pacifist novels. Her work has been translated in Spain and she has translated in Italian many foreign authors. Her stories appear and disappear continuously. She has been exhibited in various photographic galleries in Italy and Germany.

PREVIEW

I don't know why I'm telling you this story. Someone, passing by my Café, may recognize me.

My name is Maria. Maria as millions other Marias. In fact I do have a second name, like almost all Marias – especially those born from a South American mother – but since I took residence here in Berlin, I buried it together with my old ID card, along the banks of the Nikolassee River on a night of full moon …

Yes, why not? I buried it at the bottom of a drawer in my apartment, a fourth floor walk-up on Danziger Straße, between Prenzlauer Allee and Schönhauser Allee. Sunny side of one of those rare gray buildings, a residue of the DDR, standing who knows for how long, enduring the pressure of the renoviert and saniert where spiders have woven extremely long cobweb highways along the external pipes, wide and narrow, horizontal and vertical.

I was born in Paris and spent my teenage years in Rome. My mother is from Ecuador and my father from Boston. I always suspected he was part of the CIA, and that is why I left home as soon as I could.

Thereafter I took a bachelor's and a master's degree in London, it does not matter in what. Then I tried to settle in Copenaghen while chasing that Yellow-eyed Girl. Eventually I ended up in East Berlin, in the heart of Prenzlberg.

Don't ask me why. Reasoning never led my life. What I call my "spy gene" might have guided me, the one I inherited from my father, along with his height, five feet nine with no heels. Where could I embrace my instinct of snooping, if not in the homeland of the Stasi? I believe there is no need to explain what the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit is, or who captain Gerd Wiesler of Das Leben der Anderen is.

Everybody talks about Berlin, even too much. Everybody eventually comes here. Only few learn German. And even fewer stay. It's a gateway city. For me, it was my destination.

They also got here by chance. Sebastian arrived first. He walked into my Café on a windy day, letting in a cold gush of air. He sat on a worn-out armchair in the corner of the back room, beside the old jukebox. He put his leather bag on the ground, a cheap one of unknown color somewhere between red wine and dark brown. Horrible. He glanced around just like a real estate salesman hunting for clients.  Over the years I've learnt how to spot them at first sight. Here in Berlin, where the whole city is for sale, it's one of the most common jobs, They say investors just point their finger at the object on paper and buy it, without even looking. Italians, Greeks, and Japanese, of course. They buy what the Danish bought right after the wall came down and are now reselling. To make a long story short, that's how capitalism works.  All I know is that if I'm ever unable to continue paying the rent for for my Café, I will ask my father to invest in Berlin. You bet!

As for Sebastian, though I realized he was a real estate agent, I missed the fact that he was not German. Well, he didn't have the face typical of a thirty-year-old Italian man who is trying to survive in the most homelike city of Europe: no big nose and no messy hair. Most of all he had no fat around his waist, on the contrary his bones stuck out of his clothes. His long grayish hair, up in a small ponytail, and his weird aspect carried out the bluff.

I addressed him with a joke: - Too much wind to enjoy the sun. – He simply smiled back.

- An espresso – he ordered, and that's how I realized he was Italian.

I am the first one who called him Sebastian, without the "o" at the end.

- You should make your own business cards like that – I suggested to him and we immediately became friends. More than friends, mates I would say.  He lent me the keys of the most beautiful apartments on sale and in return I provided him a daily supply of food.

Sebastian would show up at the Café right before closing time for a last coffee (I'm not licensed to sell alcohol). He would hand over an envelope with the keys inside and pick them up the following morning along with his first cappuccino and a warm schoko croissant.

He told me he was an only child from Trieste, his mother was a teacher and his father a psychiatrist. Photography was his passion and he was trying to build his resume.

- I couldn't find a job as a photographer. I don't believe working as a clerk would make any sense. My savings were almost finished when one day, sitting on the wall on Kollwitzplatz, you know that roundabout where the Weichardt bakery van stops every Thursday? – Without even waiting for my reply he went on, bundling up his vowels: - There she was. A woman in a suit sitting next to me, eating a slice of pizza and smoking a cigarette with a holder. I didn't really look at her that much, she wasn't my type. Too aggressive. Well, she noticed me, instead. And also listened while I was talking to my new roomie on the phone. I was telling him about a typical Berlin apartment I had seen that I wanted to rent on my own. She asked me: are you looking for a job?. Sure, I answered. That's how I became a real estate agent. Just because I can manage three languages and I know what a Berlin room is. Incredible, don't you think? I deal with the Italian and French clients. But I get a few Germans as well by now.

- And did you manage to get that apartment you liked? – I asked, and it gave him a start.

No, he did not. He still lived in...