Berlin
a novel
Michael Mirolla
Leapfrog Press
Teaticket, Massachusetts
Berlin © 2009 by Michael Mirolla
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a data base
or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopy,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published in 2009 in the United States by
Leapfrog Press LLC
PO Box 2110
Teaticket, MA 02536
www.leapfrogpress.com
Distributed in the United States by
Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
St. Paul, Minnesota 55114
www.cbsd.com
Printed in the United States
First Edition
E-ISBN 978-1-935248-48-4
Contents
Postscript II
II: File—Saturday.doc
Postscript III
III: File—Sunday.doc
Postscript IV
The Author
Postscript I
Giulio Chiavetta (ex-stationary engineer by trade and self-styled freelance circus mime by inclination) became visibly agitated after unfolding the newspaper that had been placed on his lawn chair. This was the chair—“Prop. of G.A. Chiavetta” scratched with a rusty nail across its back—on which he liked to sun himself every chance he got. Even when there was no sun. Even in the most impenetrable fog. Even after the first permanent snow had arrived and he had to huddle beneath several blankets just to keep from shivering to death.
Normally, he would peruse the day’s news without allowing it to cause the slightest blip in his behavioural patterns. No telltale raising of an eyebrow or sneerish curling of a lip. And definitely no angry diatribes at the sorry state of world affairs or on the local hockey team’s inability to score. In fact, it was impossible to ascertain if he actually read the paper or only stared for hours on end at the inkblot patterns formed by the headlines, articles, photos, photo captions and advertising come-ons. And then turned the pages only when some mysterious internal clock gave the signal.
But, on this particular afternoon in late October, he barely looked at the front section before he tossed the paper aside, stood up abruptly from the chair (so abruptly, in fact, it tipped over sideways) and headed with a stiff gait towards the Victorian-style building where he’d been a reclusive resident for the past two years.
A few moments after entering the building, he reemerged with a key clutched tightly in his left hand and began to walk across the expanse of recently mowed grass. He walked as if on a tightrope, placing one foot directly in front of the other. He walked past his upside-down chair and the newspaper slapping against its leg in the wind. Past the white-vested players on the cricket pitch practicing their overhead tosses and batsmanship. Past the handyman in the flowerbed turning the earth for one last time in preparation for spring planting. Past several Sisters of Charity coming up the road for their daily round of volunteer work.
He walked until he bounced against the barbed-wire fence, installed more to keep pesky kids, nosy neighbours and angry ex-residents out than any of the patients in. He bounced once . . . twice . . . a third time. And then, ignoring the ever-increasing shouts and instructions from those behind him, he proceeded to attempt to scale the eight-foot obstruction. Even for a self-described freelance circus performer, this proved difficult as he could only use his right hand (the key being clutched in his left). As well, he was barefoot and the fence cut into the soft soles of his feet.
Nevertheless, Chiavetta would have made it over (feeling no pain) if his loose hospital robe hadn’t become badly entangled on the barbed wire strung across the top. Because of this, he was left dangling and flapping his arms while school children below him snickered at the fact he had no underwear on and adults crossed to the other side of the street just to put more distance between them and him. The staff had to position several ladders against the fence to hold him steady while the handyman cut the snagged cloth away with her gardening shears.
But that wasn’t the end of it. The moment he’d been lowered back on solid ground, Chiavetta, robe now in tatters, resumed his straight-ahead walking. Tick tock. This made him resemble very much one of those windup toys that can be deterred, deflected and derailed but not completely defeated until the spring . . . the battery . . . the locomotive force . . . has wound down to zero.
When Doctor Wilhelm (“Billy”) Ryle, the psychiatrist who’d been treating Chiavetta during his stay at the clinic, came alongside and asked him where he planned on going, Chiavetta answered without hesitation: “I have to get back. It’s important I get back. Now!”
Ryle, after having recovered from the shock of hearing him utter a clear and complete sentence for the first time in two years, then inquired exactly where it was he had to get back to. Chiavetta answered, with a hint of impatience: “Berlin, of course! Where else is there?”
And he continued to walk away. To bang once more into the fence. To attempt to scrabble up the obstacle—even if his fingers were scraped and bleeding. At this point, Ryle decided that, much as he hated to dispense them on principle, the only short-term solution was to inject Chiavetta with a mild tranquillizer.
After several orderlies and nurses—the same ones who’d held him down for the injection—had carried the semiconscious Chiavetta to the hospital infirmary, Ryle paid a visit to his room. He hoped to uncover clues to what had caused this sudden deviation from almost two years of placidity, hibernation and utter silence.
He knew already about the front-page newspaper article announcing the imminent union of the two Germanys and the pictures of students smashing holes in the Berlin Wall. But that, in itself, might only explain the trigger, not the cause. And Ryle was a firm believer in cause and effect—even on a psychological level. Especially on a psychological level. Explanations of this sort were very important to him. In fact, he held them to be the glue that prevented the world from coming apart at the seams. If psychological cause and effect could be unraveled, then everything else fell into place.
Chiavetta’s room was the same as all the others in the hospital—with the largest objects being a small cot in one corner and a desk beneath the shatterproof window. The only difference was the computer on Chiavetta’s desk which had been part of the patient’s personal effects. Some of the administrators had questioned the allowing of this privilege but Ryle had overruled them, saying he could see no harm in it. In fact, he felt it might speed up Chiavetta’s recovery if he kept himself intellectually active—or even if all he did