 Several years ago. I decided to go spend a sojourn in Berlin four months in fact And my aim was to look for stories that were Still there that were still percolating from Cuba's long association with the Eastern Bloc After the wall came down remittances from the Soviet Union to Cuba dried up What ensued was a very difficult period for Cuba called the special period el perio especial But many people were Stranded in the east, you know in Eastern Europe in Russia many had spent years there like my uncle Who had gotten his master's degree in Moscow and his PhD in Czechoslovakia? I his first wife was Russian. I have a cousin. I've never met named Vladimir You know, so I knew that there were all these kinds of interesting cross-cultural Allegiances and love affairs and things that had it really as far as I was concerned been accounted for Anyway, so I went off to Berlin thinking that this would be just like, you know Picking rocks up off the side of the road and when I got there. I found nothing and And and to my astonishment here and there I mean at a at a music festival There were there was this Cuban band and you know the five Cubans that were left in Berlin We're all dancing, you know mambo or whatever, but I thought oh my god now. What what do I do now? So I just kind of surrendered myself. I had this little apartment I had been vowing for years saying that all I want to do is live in a white cube And so I got a white cube in Berlin and just started wandering the city wandering its streets seeing the tango dancers along You know along the Spray River going to its museums eavesdropping on Conversations trying to get my college German back up to snuff and that's how I spent the those four months and what happened Was this book which I took notes the whole time I was there, but I wrote when I when I came back to the States I was teaching in Texas at that time and so The Cubans I didn't find I made up I have an Angolan Cuban ophthalmologist who's working in Berlin. I have I Mean they're not all Cubans. I mean mostly it's actually German voices that emerged But I thought I might start out with One of my Cuban voices. It's the voice now of an old man looking back when he was You know, he was working as a night watchman in the eastern coast of Cuba during World War two and he got kidnapped by Members of a German submarine so this is going to be the longest one It will probably take about 10 or 12 minutes to read And I want to take some questions in between and I'll read other little snippets as well a lot of the stories are just You know three or four pages long and the conceit is that can you all hear me? Yeah, and the conceit is that all of these stories are being told to an unknown visitor in Berlin Okay, aka guess who okay, so let me start with this one It's when I I think I I think I actually haven't read aloud before Because generally I go with the shorter pieces, but here we go This is Ernesto Quadra is the speaker and It's called kidnapped I'll see if a Cuban accent works its way into this, but I'm not sure When I returned to Cuba after five months as a prisoner of war on a German submarine Nobody believed me Everyone assumed that I'd run away with like a girlfriend to Havana or or got eaten by sharks I'm telling you there was no trace of me except for Oscarito my identical twin But I see you're raising a nightbrow already. I'm not convincing you a good story and mine is true I swear it requires some telling of the soil beforehand You can't just throw a handful of seeds on the ground and expect anything to grow Let me try again It was 1943 and I was the night watchman for an electric fan factory and a beautiful stretch of Cuban coast As far east as you can go on the island without falling into the ocean It was late in May and a bit hazy the moon was lighting up the clouds the air unusually still I Was alone guarding the factory property of dr. Faustino when the a Who with his eternal scowl was neither a doctor nor ever had a good day in his life. I Was 16 and had just lost my virginity The old family had arranged it He made it his business to quote-unquote break in all the guavara boys at a brothel in baracoa I felt proud to have gotten the night watchman job to even prouder when I was issued a pistol and Fee I had become a man Let me tell you that none of these accomplishments serve me in the least when those German semen approach while I dozed at my post The mosquitoes had pastured me for the first hour of my shift and then they too buzzed off to sleep The German who woke me spoke a few words of Spanish and assured me they meant no harm What they needed he said gesturing stiffly were supplies for their vessel Ham Mungos Cafe butter eggs And he asked Did I happen to have any rum? This didn't surprise me. Everyone knew that coa produced the best rum in the world. I Blinked and rubbed my eyes. I Wanted to remember this strange dream to tell oscarito who probably wave it away saying get to the point Ernesto And as usual I'd say dreams don't have points at Mano I told the leader who introduced himself as Joachim friar that I had two tins of sardines and a hunk of dried beef Which mommy had packed for my dinner. I was happy to share No rum. He looked crestfallen. I Had gotten drunk only once the night of my visit to the brawl in fact But I was careful not to drink on the job. Dr. Wendia had warned if I catch you with boozer out of here In any case I still believed I was dreaming so when the Germans disarmed me Pointed their weapons at my chest and demanded that I return with them to their submarine I resisted I can't go I whined mommy will worry When Joachim translated my remarks to the other men they were belly laughs all around but nobody lowered their guns And so me mother I was taken prisoner As I said I remained at sea for five months It wasn't easy for me to adjust My first days on board. I was green from seasickness and lurched around like a borracho I banged my head on pipes handwheels bulkheads. You name it The crew nicknamed me bluter goose for all my bruises The humidity even for an islander like me was intolerable Everything was slimy wet moldy including the food I felt as if I were trapped in the neck of a bottle Soon my homesickness grew worse than my nausea When I thought of mommy picking pebbles out of a colander of rice or Oscarito staring up at the rafters from the small straw bed we shared It was all I could do to hold back tears I dreamt of papayas with lime fried plantains coconut ice cream Once I woke up to the croaking of Cuban tree frogs and had to shake my head free of the sound And I swear la virgen de la caridad del cobre appeared to me on the stormy seas Cuba was Germany's enemy having sided with the allies and and harbored Jewish refugees But nobody on board held this against me Most of the crew wasn't much older than me But they had long beards and stank like senora portuondos backyard goats Happily they were glad for my company clapping me on the back shouting good good for any little thing I accomplished Even dour captain rook warmed up to me after a while The u-boat patrolled the eastern seaboard from newfoundland to the caribbean To my surprise the Germans regularly snuck ashore on enemy territory Florida, Virginia, New York to replenish their supplies and commit acts of sabotage In july they blew up an electrical plant on long island and we watched the entire shoreline go dark Except for the flames leaping into the skies Another time Joachim brought back a dozen stolen hams still warm from their smoking shed The submarine got as far as the tip of greenland where we met up with a secret refueling tanker The icebergs defied imagination A flotilla of gleaming peaks of all sizes Drifting in the pale green waters Translucent under the twilight Twilight summer skies How did this world exist on the same planet as Cuba? A host of daily jills and maintenance tasks took up most of our waking hours I became keenly interested in the 50 ton storage batteries that kicked into gear whenever the vessels submerged The hammering diesel engines operated when we surfaced or when we were at periscope depth which we charged the batteries Tobias the top mechanic taught me everything he knew about the batteries Reliable but highly toxic they leaked poison his chlorine fumes when damaged The batteries though were the submarine's lifeline as well as a deadly threat One of the radio operators Ulf also took me under his wing and let me listen in on the hydrophone Which could capture the sound of a ship's propellers 70 miles away In the rare quiet hours I learned to play chess and card games like doppelkopf and scott I taught Ulf and Tobias basic Spanish and learned some German myself a torturous language if you ask me We had several close calls with British and American destroyers How you both sank over 50,000 tons of cargo while I was at sea not to mention a serious control room fire But nothing Nothing was so nerve-rattling as when the allies began using twin engine patrol bombers against us The fact that enemy convoys now had their own air defense Crushed the Germans ideas of you both warfare And sank dozens of their fleet In no time there was a cemetery of iron coffins on the ocean bottom Nobody at least of all the captain ever expected to be shouting fluke toig on the high seas And then crash diving for cover During one particularly ferocious battle with the British warship We were trapped for 22 hours at a near hull crushing depth of 280 meters The steel streaked valves blew deck plates jumped and the boat was plunged into complete darkness Bombs and depth charges detonated above us sending shockwave after deafening shockwave The bill just flooded and kept us ankle deep in water oil and piss Everyone was half suffocated shivering sick with fear Who knows how many Hail Marys I said I'm telling you I could feel my heart beating under my tongue As we waited condemned in our underwater tomb I felt closer to death and to life. Good evening. It was a miracle. We survived I Suppose you could say it wasn't the worst adventure for a teenage boy On my 17th birthday The Germans got me good and drunk on what was left of their schnapps and failed miserably to sing the kuba national anthem As the war grew worse for them the crew spoke openly of this grounds for treason if they'd been found out They agreed a great risk to themselves to drop me off back in kuba Instead of surrendering me as a prisoner of war Had they been caught every last man would have been executed. No questions asked See I do believe that my allegiances shifted on board not for the nazis never for for those good brave men Joachim who became a lifelong friend encouraged me to look him up in berlin after the war As a parting gift. He gave me his precious seven by fifty light spinoculars When you can imagine my family shock when I returned home Looking like a crazy jungle man I was 10 pounds thinner too and swaying on sea legs, but otherwise none the worse for wear As I told them the story of my capture. They laughed as if it were the funniest joke they'd ever heard When they saw it was dead serious and rattled off german phrases as proof They were convinced that I'd somehow knock myself on the head and lost my memory What other explanation could there be? Oscarito who hated ambiguity and aimed his words straight as arrows put an arm around my shoulders I don't give a damn what happened to you hermano. I'm just glad to have you back The next saturday my parents threw me a welcome home party and invited the whole neighborhood They pit roasted a pig and banana leaves cooked vats of black beans and rice and baked enough land to make our teeth ache The old family hired the best conjunto in town to play the changuis and guarachas that kept us dancing long into the night When the party wound down I walked toward the sugar mill where my family had slaves for decades In this world of sugar cane time had stood still for over a century One season following the next with barely a change I thought of the u-boat batteries how they'd saved us time and again How they might save baracoa I finally did visit yohi not right after the war that was impossible, but in 1957 After I made a fortune in industrial batteries I'd studied engineering and design batteries. I kept everything in the sugar mills from the crusher rollers To the centrifuges operating without gasoline or costly interruptions I sold my patent to manufacturers in brazil the philippines even the u.s It was because of those germans that I became a self-made millionaire cuba's king of batteries Then the dichosa revolution happened and destroyed everything I made a terrible mistake not leaving the island when I could Yohi he married a polish woman and had three daughters one of them an albino He looked more shrunken than he had on the submarine probably due to the contrast in surroundings Yohi taught Spanish with a Cuban accent imagine that they do At a local high school and did so until his retirement Now I'm here in Berlin for his funeral Took me forever to find a wife I was almost 50 when I married a widow and adopted her six kids I won over my Graciela with pink carnations Car loads of them She didn't believe the story of my kidnapping either though. She was tolerant enough and enjoyed my guttural impersonations of the crew By then I long stopped caring what people thought Let me tell you something else I am the exact same age as Fidel himself We were born just two days and 30 miles apart in 1926 I hang on praying he'll go first At home in Baracoa I like to sit on my veranda at night Especially when the moon is full and scan the horizon with my german binoculars My wicker swing overlooks the sea And sometimes I imagine that german submarine rising up out of the Caribbean coming for me once more But this time amiga I wouldn't hesitate. I would willingly go So that's uh, thank you So that's one of the made-up stories, but you know, um, I can take some questions in between as I'm happy to take some questions in between but um, just to mention that story emerged out of a story A bit of history that I was reading about how in fact german submarines did patrol the eastern seaboard of the u.s And at times did commit acts of sabotage and did sometimes go ashore for provisions And I thought well, they can get off in virginia. Why not baracoa, you know, like why not cuba and so so I found that many of the stories that emerged Uh In here in berlin emerged from almost like a little Little flaps, you know, little Little gills in history that I thought ah this this might make an interesting story. Look at this context Who could live in this who might elucidate this? How could I bring this little corner this tucked away corner of history to life? Fictionally, so that's how a lot of the stories were born Anyway, any questions so far in the back? Yeah um Yeah, no one of the one of the Like I was telling you the conceit of the book is is to make it seem as if this visitor um, the unnamed visitor of this book whom everyone addresses as dear visitor this visitor, you know, whatever um Was in fact interviewing people for this project Of a novel of a book of putting it together. But in fact, um No, I didn't actually interview anyone specifically for the book. But um, I was having a lot of just sort of casual conversations in cafes or You know, um, I'll give you another example. I went um the old stasi headquarters in east What was formerly east berlin is now a museum? And in one of the first of all, it was surreal just to kind of see all that and think of oh my god This is where so and so it was ran that crazy operation and but in one room It was a room where it showed just some of the undercover things that they had done And how the stasi had infiltrated a lot of the counter cultural movements And and so there was this one guy In a photograph. I I don't even remember his actual name, but I decided to make him Like a punk bassist, you know In what was essentially a a stasi dominated punk group, you know And and so sometimes things would just happen like that a face would catch me I would hear a snatch of a conversation. I would talk to people And I would read a lot of history and and also Uh Contemporary german literature and literature going back to the you know earlier 1920s 30s all the classics and things would just suggest themselves that way at one point this book Uh I didn't have a grand scheme for it. It just started coming out of voices and at one point I had over 100 voices which I had to whittle down and you know kind of be brutal about Who survives and who doesn't here? So um, but no, uh, I was also I'm sorry. It's such a long answer. My god This is why I don't write haiku. I write novels because I can't shut up Um, but wait, what was I going to say the uh Okay, that's enough for now. Yeah Yeah, well, I uh, well one of the things is I obviously, you know walking around Berlin, which was of course destroyed Absolutely destroyed during world war two. They call it yar nul, you know just year zero um, so It just felt that it was uh, in many ways I I was walking on all this history all these ghosts that they weren't evident and yet somehow I just still felt the whisperings, you know, I still felt it. I I hung out a little too much in cemeteries you know things like that and uh and and um And and so that's how it was. I just you know, since I went with an agenda that didn't happen I I just became open to what might happen and and that's how and that's how this um, this book coalesced ultimately. Yeah You did. Oh fat. I love hearing this. Yeah, tell me No kidding Wow Thank you. That's great to know. Yeah Yeah, well, um Yeah, for me, I I did want to give this sense Probably some of you who would have read this probably are um familiar with sebald's work wg sebald And I I'm a big fan of his and I always loved The way you sometimes it's sub, you know various junctures in the course of reading most of his work You're wondering is this did this really happen? This feels so Do you know documentary like and then he'd have these photographs? um And you think well, are these authenticating the stories or are they just random? And I remember always just sort of analyzing the photographs and seeing what was around it and So I I I just you know a few pages from his work in that sense as well Give it. I wanted to give it this photo documentarian feel I was also a former journalist So there was also that part of it and and it was a mix of photographs that I took as well as historical photographs that I I also insisted on sprinkling throughout the book too so it I I guess I was um Uh, it was it's it's a sort of collage effect. I suppose you you might call it but but thank you Yeah Any other questions at this point? I could read a little more too. Yes, uh, Oh god, I there's so many Yeah, um, there was one that I I was often at I'm forgetting the name of it though It was on solving solving e plots. Uh, there was there's a number of cafes there and I would the what? Yeah, I think yes, absolutely. Yeah, and then, um Um Mr. Cafe Einstein, you're a couple of cafe unsteins Yes, ultra den linden one. I was at that one as well as the other one And then what was you know all the cafes? So I will rely on you because I haven't been there in a number of years But there was also was that a cafe Einstein 2 that was also owned by that? The woman who uh during the weimar era in that fantastical house. Do you know what I'm talking? Yes, yes, that's the other cafe Einstein. Yeah. Yeah Yeah Yeah Oh, it's spectacular and they have the best strawberry tarts in the entire planet You know, that's I basically had that for lunch every day But what's your name sir chris check with chris for the best cafes in berlin if you're going because clearly he's the expert here Yeah Okay, should I read a little more another little bit? Okay. Um Let's see What else could I read? Uh, oh, you know what? You know, I mentioned in the in my Informal introduction disjointed introduction about the tango dancers and in uh, I think one of my first sundays in berlin Um I I just sat mesmerized it was um It was it was lesbian tango dancing And I've never seen anything so spectacular in my life and I just sat on the little knoll Watching and I I I can't dance tango and certainly not to the you know with the with the beauty that I saw there But then I kept I saw a pair of the same dancers At the Philharmonic where they were they used to have these lunchtime concerts and And so they were I saw a same couple and they're you know, so I started thinking okay. I have to track them, you know So I have two stories where they appear in and also a photograph that I took of the ones in the lobby of the The Philharmonic, but Uh, so maybe you know what maybe Okay, this is a little presumptuous, but what the hell um glad I'm glad that happened between readings Okay, so this is one of the few most of the most of the stories are Directly told to the visitor But this is one which is first person from one a woman who's at this tango Uh event along the river. It's outdoor thing and she's got her eye on someone else So I'm trying to inhabit this woman and and it's anonymous. I don't have a name for her Um, but this is who I imagined became that couple that I saw that I saw a couple of times in berlin over that summer It's your birthday hilda. I knew this because everyone congratulates you You're popular here yet. You remain aloof taller than everyone but exceedingly feminine too with a snug red dress that flares at the knees Your legs are long your hips childbearing wide. I can only imagine your scent It's my first time at this gathering by the spray river It's a dazzling afternoon in june the weather's so perfect. It banishes memories of february Along the river tour boats play their recorded histories Tourists stop to watch the dancing to take photographs with their monstrous lenses Later, they'll show their friends back home. Look at the queer tango dancers in berlin I'm dressed as an argentine sailor with a striped shirt and a beret Women tell me I have a masculine grace predatory eyes Today I hold my gaze for as long as it takes for you to notice me to understand that you won't escape Hilda hilda your friends call your name your hair gleams with every turn of your head I'm just realizing this is actually kind of a little bit x-rated. Are we all okay with this? Any okay. All right, like why why did I think to read this? But okay, here we go Others flirt with me, but I ignore them. I have a reputation in certain circles as a good dancer a better lover Nobody goes down like I do Though my fingers are more precise than my tongue Would you want your eye doctor performing surgery with her tongue? Most of the city's new architecture dazzling sleek has sprung up along these river banks Berlin longs to define itself by the future Yet it remains a hostage to its past Who knows this better than us? Not long ago, we couldn't have danced in the open like this legs intertwining towards those twisting and sexy Ocho's Do I detect a hint of grief in your eyes? Perhaps your family migrated from Poland and suffered as Many Poles have for the better part of three centuries Or did they hail from the Ukraine another eternally suffering region Where cannibalism flared during Stalin's great famine What was an orphan then but a child whose parents hadn't eaten her The cigarette burns close to my lips Soon it will be time to make my move You'll want to know my name Uncovites my profession forensic pathologist Yesterday I removed three golf balls from the stomach of a businessman fished out of the Kreuzberg canal His life was over, but for me his story has just begun How did you learn to tango? You'll certainly ask me I completed my internship in Buenos Aires, I'll say where a distant uncle had fled after the war It was there, Lieberhilde, that tango took hold of me I'm guessing you're a librarian A star among the city's dreary archivists My apologies to the librarians The zipper down your back glints in the sun You wear velvety black t-strap heels without a single scuff mark They're new and it appears you're breaking them in Later I'll remove those shoes Unsheath the arches of your feet Your toenails will be painted a hopeful pink I'll kiss them one by one The way your oma used to kiss them when you were a child Counting backward from 10 4 3 2 You'll cry as you remember this Then I'll soothe you with soft kisses Restore the peace of your heart your first girlfriend stole She of the pierced labia and thigh high boots The imported malbec they're serving is acceptable, but the chicken and bananas are unforgivable Unforgivably bland Most of the women here are accomplished professionals Lawyers or researchers like you Professors re-examining the path through a feminist lens You'll find the latest in self-pleasuring devices on their nightstands But you won't need yours leave a hilda Tomorrow when you wake up after making love with me all night You'll find it difficult to concentrate For I am the woman who will disquiet your life Anything can happen on this humid day along the spray I might lose you from one moment to the next Lose that perfect boys the press of your hand and mine At last you grace me with your gaze Calm and inviting as the cloudless skies An obvious visitor to berlin Wearing sneakers good god Ask you to dance short and mousy. She's an interloper a curiosity seeker. She doesn't belong here with us Startled you settle into her arms The visitor moves awkwardly fumbles with the rudiments of tango's intricacies. You follow her as best you can You're compliant hilda. That is evident. You resist making decisions about your life When the wave comes in you ride it to shore For the heat rising from your nipples for the eddies of pleasure between your legs Tango is an intimate conversation And then I'm not going to try and sing it But it's an old recording of a pola negri song from the night from 1937 about the tango no turno I haven't even got out of the tango no turno Svischen abend und morgen Aus der ferne klang I have a recording of pola negri singing this in 1937 Oh, we will listen to it together very soon I run my thumbs along my suspenders light another cigarette looks blows smoke rings to the trees They linger in the branches like miniature wreaths I want to remember this moment Register this light The ripe river scent mingling with the sweat of so many dancing dykes Already I could shape lumps of clay to the precise dimensions of your knees They say it's going to rain tonight though the skies remain a two-dimensional blue Come here Closer How closer still listen to me I promise to shield you from the storm From the dust of your past From those etchings of wolves and the volume of grim's fairy tales have frightened you as a child But first my Maliba hilda May I have this dance Thank you So, you know, you're just sitting on the hill and Watching this and thinking, huh? Okay. Well, could come this is so that's how it happened that way, you know And I would go back to that that tango again and again and and often see You know and go to those concerts at the Philharmonic I think they were on Wednesday is actually our friend here could probably tell us one of those concerts Were they every Wednesday? Yes, that one. Yes those. Thank you. Um Not only do we have just extremely well informed person on Berlin, but He can corroborate things. I'm saying so I'm very pleased you're here Well, I you know, I kind of went inside and seen and I hadn't been since college when the When the city was divided I was I was in Berlin first in the 70s And then hadn't been back. It was just so so astonishing And so I just took an apartment site unseen the you know through a friend and charlottenberg So it was a quiet part of town, but I was always I was always on the move It's in the west kind of a As my daughter would say bougie part of town, you know Any questions so far again Oh wait those lights don't mean I have to go right no, okay, just checking I think we have another 15 minutes or so. Yes, sir Oh, of course yeah, um my my uh I I I took several years of German in college and had spent a little time Living summers in Germany three summers in fact, but it was so crazily rusty that it was an embarrassment, you know, so um But over the course of a few months just hearing it and going movies and and you know just You know talking to people even though everyone would answer me in English pretty much after two sentences It did start, you know, it kind of it was like putting a little Little oil on it, but it was still never what it was In my late teens early 20s, but enough to get around certainly Um In fact when my daughter came to visit she was Doing a year abroad in Barcelona and she came for part of the summer for five weeks And I picked her up at the airport and we got in a taxi and I was giving directions in German. She looked at me like When did this happen, you know? It was so it was So odd to her and it was kind of entertaining by the end. She was ordering ice cream and doing things in German as well so um But no, I I just No, I I just felt so Uh warmly welcomed and and my curiosity was very welcomed. Um Even with even with delicate kinds of questions. Um, so uh Yeah, I I I I was reluctant to leave After those months and I felt that I was just maybe just scratching the surface I mean it took me a couple more years of reading and Almost retroactively trying to understand some of what I had seen Um and some of what I had heard And so most of the writing took place after my my time there Yeah, are you a frequent visitor to Berlin? No, okay. Yeah Oh god, um Well, I read a lot of fiction. Um, I was Trying to make my way through the daily newspapers um I also read a lot of history Probably one of the most and I named some of the important books for me in the in the acknowledgments, but was um Timothy Sniders, uh, who's a Yale historian and he's you know written a number of things since but called bloodlands, which basically compares You know to kind of side by side From 1933 to 1945 Stalin Hitler and what was going on with both these regimes and how This combination created, you know the deadliest Era And so so I I was reading Deep into the history, you know Stuff on the Weimar era as well things that also might inform the experiences of some of my older characters There's a lot of looking back in this book That's not that all that different from my previous cuban characters who are always looking back to cuba you know who are suffused with you know some combination of um nostalgia and and regret and disbelief and you know all these things that If people try to be authentic and honest about their past they're all alloyed and And so yeah, so I was I was trying to also imagine Pretty much the the last a few of the last generation who might have still even maybe as children Have lived through the the tail end of the war or remembered some of it So so that that was a big a big portion of it yeah I also I think in what was influenced to was um, you know the uh What's his name? Is it walzer, you know all those those um Books from the 20s and 30s of sort of promenading promenading through berlin these short sketches from journalists those collections I think that ultimately also influenced the shape that this book took As well thinking, you know, it's okay to just tell a Short short story and and somehow have it all um, you know be this kind of incomplete um Portrait of a city but but still maybe some voices you might not have expected to be hearing Yes, hi Oh Yeah, you know, I'm not I'm not really sure what happened, uh, I mean I I did meet On my numerous trips to cuba did meet people who had spent time in the eastern block Um, it's who had studied in russia like I mentioned my uncle But many others and his friends and so on there's a big sort of student exchange um That went on for decades um But I I just try to imagine I tried to imagine A cuban, you know, they're in the 60s for example, which would have been a heyday for that kind of exchange 60s and 70s um, they also had an exchange program east east germany had an exchange program with vietnam as well um Things that that I didn't know at all and and then again, you know would then tunnel in for a while and and then Tunnel in and then see what would emerge And I tunneled in primarily primarily for my curiosity not to not just opportunistically Oh, let me go this way and see who appears people would appear opportunities did kind of suggest themselves You know over a hundred of them to first starters, you know um But um But yeah, I I don't I don't know. I mean For a while. I mean I I remember when I first started going back to cuban in the 80s. They were a lot of uh cuban girls Say my cousin's ages are younger named natasha, you know and things like that I mean, there were there were some odd little cultural things, but it's astonishing to me how relatively little the the russian influence was in cuba I don't know how that that happened decades and yet there's almost like no sign of them ever Yes Yeah, yeah, um Well, I I think it was really my own interest how how Burning was my interest in this particular story enough to keep burnishing it and going back and doing more research And I remember I was teaching in texas at the time and I had big pile I had like the a pile the b pile the c but you know and I kept Kind of moving things around and then sometimes I would just just when I was about to discard the d pile Something will catch my eye and then I'm like no no back to the a You know and then and then it was just uh, there was Uh, no reason just madness to the process essentially No, most of them were written were far along enough You know, uh, there was a lot of immediate discards, but um, but yeah, I think I think in the end I wanted it I wanted it I wanted each story to work individually even if it's only two pages or three pages I wanted it to be to feel self contained and yet it also had to be part of a chorus You know if you have all sopranos is going to sound very different than You know all the variety of different kinds of voices and preoccupations that I I hope are in the book Yeah, I I think, um, maybe oh, yes, go ahead. Yeah one story I knew Um, yeah the opening story was there pretty much from the beginning it always kind of held itself in the a pile Uh, and it's a story about um, actually the first and last stories were both and and these were uh, these were stories, uh about You know in the book that again the conceit is that these are old men telling the story to the visitor And one of them was the son of the last zookeeper In berlin, you know as the bombs were falling and what happened to those animals and and his father was, um Uh Had to sign up for war even though he was older and infirm, you know toward the end of the war everyone was conscripted, um And then the last one was also again an old man who was looking back and He was the son of a famous clarinetist in the berlin philharmonic um And so those two somehow for me were always They were kind of stalwarts and then they ended up being the bookends to the to the piece. Yeah Yes Yeah, that's such a good question. It's something I asked myself a lot during this, uh um I have written short stories in the past, but almost everything I begin gets wildly out of control in no time, you know, so I just um So I I think probably, um I I I think the visitor was Is sort of the ribbon that goes in and around all these stories? um Sometimes very loosely sometimes tightly but sort of binds them together like I feel there's something about these voices The length that they're all telling them for the most part to the visitor being observed by the visitor um it's Maybe a little bit heisenberg-y that way, which I never actually thought about till this second But that that the fact of the visitors Observing I Her list her listening to all of these is I think the the commonality kind of the water table Um to me to me. It does feel like a novel. I'm not sure that if you pulled, you know One of the two or three page stories out of here by itself My I don't know might feel a little wobbly I I don't know if I feel like it'd be lonely. It needs the company of all these others. Yeah You must be a writer. Are you thinking about this? Yeah, I know that's such a writer question Okay, yeah, you write short stories or But yeah, how do you know what's what? Same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah I know logic is often the last thing that's applied. I know Yes, incredible in berlin in berlin in the humboldt or where Further east, uh-huh. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Um, they were also, um because of the I mean, I I was very interested in in cuba's internationalism particularly in the 60s and 70s Going somewhat into the 80s, but the 70s were the heyday, you know They were an angola and not always in military military ways, but they were they were They were very interested in cultural exchanges and student exchanges and all kinds of things and I and I think that was, uh Uh, that that was kind of part of the east, you know, they were part of that family You know the eastern block family to that extent and so there was a lot lots of Changes that way and like I said earlier romances and so on one of my, um One of the characters who appear several times in the in the book herself speaking in first person, but also other people referring to her is, um a cuban and Golan ophthalmologist Who um, whose mother was angolan the father was in angola during the 70s She was born of that union and then the mother went off with a german, um industrialist and then she ended up in She ended up in germany and ended up in medical school there. So so all of these These upheavals and dislocations of history. What do what ends up on our shores this way, you know um How does that translate? Or what are the possibilities for for for fiction? With all of these upheaval and dislocation That that is endlessly fascinating to me those combinations I I think we have time from um, maybe I'll do one last little piece. Maybe a two or three pager. Yeah, okay And uh, maybe last couple questions. I don't think we have to go the full 90 minutes That seems like a hostage situation. Um You know, so I will get you out of here in like five to minutes, you know, okay uh All right, so, you know, there's one, um, this is a two pager and it's uh Again, this was a little bit taken out of You know just imagining what if I got weirdly fascinated with um Eva brown and uh, and so this is uh This is a short piece by um, you know The conceit is this woman dagmar trap was kind of a doppelganger for ava brown And it begins with a little quote from rilke. Um, it's not your dream to be one day invisible So this is dagmar trap talking to the visitor It never happens anymore got sei dank, but it lasted a good 20 years When ava brown kills herself I was just another starving 12 year old on the outskirts of berlin For a long time very few people knew who ava was Who she'd become before dying alongside the fura his bunker bride of 40 hours After the war photographs of the two of them surfaced many taken by her She'd started out as a photographer, you know, and ava became a national obsession By the 50s, we knew everything there was to know about her As it happened, but I came to resemble her to an astonishing degree Wild speculations began to circulate that ava was still alive That she'd been spotted at the farmer's market in lichtenberg my hometown That she was working as a shop girl at carreve selling french perfume. That was me That she changed her name to trudy ster and was appearing on stage in berlin's theatrical fringe That too for a brief time was me Ava's shadow followed me everywhere Though we were nearly identical physically, I cultivated other resemblances Arranging my hair like hers Practicing her fura adoring gaze Even adopting two scottish terriers hot preferred pets I walk mine daily in the tear garden in part. I admit to hear the gaping passers by whispering Could it be her? There's no worse celebrity than being mistaken for somebody else Worse still when that somebody is a celebrity by association not by her own achievement So to answer your question. Yes, I became notorious but meaninglessly so and twice removed It's difficult not to sound too melodramatic But I blame my likeness to ava for ruining my youth By the time I was 33 The age of my doppelganger cracked that cyanide vial between her pretty teeth I divorced three husbands And suffered multiple suitors all of whom were wrapped with distorted longing for her My third husband gavald was a biscuit manufacturer who used to blow kisses at me like a schoolboy But he like the others was too terrified to touch me For our wedding night. He'd had a special altar built on which he instructed me to lie naked Motionless as a corpse and strewn with rose petals Then gavald lit a halo of candles around my head muttering helmeries and gazing at me for hours Fortunately out of war settlement left me financially comfortable enough to purchase this charlotte and berg flat I'm right around the corner from all the lovely antique shops on suarez strasse You know, I'm quite susceptible to knickknacks. I can't help myself Anyway After the disaster of my last marriage I put a stop to the ava charade by dyeing my hair black and penciling on a facial mole Then I promptly gained 10 kilos by gorging on cured meats and hazelnuts It was a relief finally to be invisible I Returned to my job selling perfume at cajole where I remained until I retired 16 years ago You know, I broke every sales record for my french company and was twice awarded vacations in palace My dear Let's not enclose ourselves indoors today. The lilacs are in bloom and in the occasions nearly so Soon my life will be over, but you oh, you're still a young woman Do you have a husband? No Why 54 is the prime of life? Just wait until you reach my age We may wish to avert our eyes from decay But it's our natural state After all what is more ravaging than time? In truth my own life feels no longer than this lanker spring day. Tell me how is that possible? Most mornings I stole the grounds of the Charlottenburg palace as I once did the tear garden It's faded grandeur reminds me that everyone In everything however sublime must pass So, thank you So, um, I'm thinking that might be a good ending there must pass unless there's like a last burning question Okay must pass. Thank you. Thanks so much for coming out tonight. Appreciate it