Kreuzberg. June 23, 2025.
You are twenty-two. The building is four stories and the apartment is on the fourth. The landlady has a knee that bothers her on the stairs and says so once, at the first landing, then does not say so again.
The staircase is plaster-patched at the landings. Each patch a different shade of not-quite-white. The stone underneath is waiting to be seen again. You follow her up.
On the last flight you take the steps two at a time because she is slow and your body has been on a plane for eleven hours and wants the work. You arrive at the fourth floor breathing. The bag has banged your knee once at the second landing and once at the third.
At the door she gives you two keys. The apartment and the building. A third key on the same ring — small, brass, older than the other two — she does not explain. You do not ask. The question of what a key opens is a question you have learned to carry without asking.
Inside, she stands in the doorway while you walk the rooms. Two rooms. A bed along the wall. A table with two chairs. A window onto a courtyard the color of courtyards. A galley kitchen one step wide. A bathroom with a blue tile floor. One of the tiles is cracked.
Ok? she says.
Ok.
The rent is eight hundred and fifty euros for two weeks. You count it at the table, twice, while she stands in the doorway still, and you hand it to her. She takes it without counting and puts it in a pocket that already has other things in it. A receipt is not offered. You do not ask.
She stops at the door on her way out. Der Kühlschrank ist kaputt. Then, in English, because your German has been two sentences and stopped: The fridge is broken. Eis kaufen. Buy ice. The grocer is two streets down. Go left.
She holds up the brass key, the older one. Nur einmal drehen. Turn it only once. Only once. She says it twice, the sentence and the translation, and you nod twice in return because that is the German you have.
She closes the door.
The apartment is yours for fourteen days.
You walk the rooms again. Slower. The table has a water-ring from a glass set down without a coaster, years ago. The mantel above the radiator has a postcard on it. Stamped. German. Addressed to the apartment: Frau J. Kreuzberg. Berlin. Two sentences. You read them without reading them — Es geht mir gut. Komm wenn du kannst. You do not pick it up.
The kettle is on the stove. A kettle is a thing the departed leave when they know others will come.
You unpack the bag. Three shirts, two pairs of jeans, one pair of boots, a book, a notebook, a wallet. You have not brought a laptop. You have not brought a phone you intend to answer.
You take the postcard from Charlotte out of the wallet. Charlotte at five. Crayon. A horse with six legs. She signed her name on the back in letters that take up most of the card and spell wrong. You put it on the table next to the table's water-ring and leave it there.
You have not seen her in six months.
You put the kettle on. The kettle boils. The tea is not food. The tea is a thing to hold.
Kartoshka, you say to no one. The word does not have a reason to be said. It is the word for potatoes. Your grandmother said it when she was tired and wanted something warm and did not want to choose. You have been tired for eleven hours of flight and an hour of U-Bahn and a flight of stairs.
The kartoshka is not in the kitchen. You did not bring it. You say the word anyway. The word is the kitchen's for a second and then it is gone.
From the window the courtyard is empty except for a bicycle locked to a rail, a trash bin, and a child's chalk drawing on the stones. The chalk is fading. The drawing is two lines in the shape of a house and one line in the shape of a sun.
Across the courtyard, on the third floor of the opposite building, a face is at a window. Not looking. Not looking away. You do not register it as anything and you do not turn from the window.
Beyond the courtyard, the sound of the S-Bahn on its raised line. The S-Bahn conductors have been on strike twice this year, or so someone at the airport said in English to someone else in English. The strike is not today.
Somewhere, farther, a siren goes. The siren goes for a minute and then does not. It is the kind of siren that could be an ambulance or a police car. You do not know which sirens Berlin uses for which.
The bed is not yours.
I am in a bed that is not mine in a country I chose in a room that smelled of the person who slept here last night and will not smell of her tomorrow.
You lie on top of the covers in your jeans. You do not turn off the light. You do not take off the boots. The boots are the only part of you that is touching anything that has touched ground the whole day. Your heels are sore. You count the days. Fourteen since the last. You have what you need in the bag.
The light is a forty-watt in a fixture that rattles when a truck passes on the street.
A truck passes.
The clock on the wall is on Berlin time. Your body is not on Berlin time. Your body is on a time that does not exist anywhere now — a layer of time between the one you left and the one you are on.
I am in a country I chose.
You close your eyes. You do not sleep. You listen to the pipes. The building's other breath.
Day zero is ending.