Berlin

Berlin is remembered as both a city for walking and the setting of an unusually intimate weekend between the Narrator and the Deceased Friend. The visit brought together the friend’s sudden literary success abroad, an excursion to Heinrich von Kleist’s grave, and a temporary feeling of being a couple. Later, these scenes return as a concentrated memory of closeness that the Narrator cannot readily speak aloud.

The City and the Visit

The Narrator had been living in Berlin for a year on a fellowship when the Deceased Friend passed through on a book tour. The German translation of the friend’s latest book had just appeared, and a book that had sold poorly at home had become a bestseller in Europe. This reversal brought the friend a level of attention described as royal treatment. The friend delighted in Germany’s reputation for serious readers and especially in Berlin, one of the friend’s favorite cities.

Berlin’s appeal is defined through movement rather than a catalogue of sights. Like Paris, it seemed an ideal walking city, rich in the tradition of flânerie. That quality makes the city more than a backdrop to the visit: it gives the weekend a form of unhurried shared passage, away from home and the usual assumptions attached to the pair. The recollection offers no detailed itinerary through Berlin itself; its emphasis is on the city as a place where walking, literary conversation, and companionship could briefly gather together.

A Weekend That Felt Like Couplehood

The Narrator had been missing the friend and was happy to hear of the visit. The circumstances made their closeness feel different from ordinary friendship: the friend was single at the time, and, abroad, the two were often naturally assumed to be husband and wife. For stretches of the weekend, the Narrator felt as if they were a couple on vacation. The feeling is presented as a temporary possibility rather than a settled change in their relationship, but it gave the visit a particular intimacy.

That closeness sharpened the departure. The Narrator remembers feeling especially close to the friend during the weekend and sadly bereft when the friend left. The contrast between arrival and departure is central to Berlin’s significance in the account: the visit offered a brief experience of shared life, while its ending made the limits of that experience unmistakable. The city remains attached to the memory not simply because the friend was there, but because the Narrator felt the friend’s presence so intensely there.

The Excursion to Kleist’s Grave

During the visit, the Deceased Friend wanted to go to the grave site of Heinrich von Kleist, who shot himself there in 1811, aged thirty-four. The Narrator knew the story of Kleist’s long despair and his wish to die with someone rather than alone. His idea of a suicide pact involved a woman who would share his desire for death. Henriette Vogel, married and diagnosed with terminal cancer at thirty-one, accepted his proposal of a romantic murder-suicide. In her final letter, she asked her husband not to separate her from Kleist in death; the two were buried where they fell, on a shaded slope beside Kleiner Wannsee.

The site became a place the Narrator returned to alone after the visit. It seemed peaceful, and a fresh flower was almost always on Kleist’s tombstone, even in winter. The Narrator had loved Kleist’s work since first reading it in college, and found pleasure in being at his resting place, imagining the Brothers Grimm walking there and Rainer Maria Rilke writing verses nearby. The grave thus held personal literary memory as well as the history that had drawn the friend there.

The landscape also included a less solemn scene. As the two crossed the Wannsee bridge, they saw swans mating in a commotion that made the female appear in danger of drowning. Beneath the bridge, the Narrator later found their nest close to shore. Returning alone, the Narrator would see one swan asleep or sitting on the nest while the other floated nearby; at times they worked together, adding twigs and rushes until the nest resembled a giant Mexican hat. These repeated visits extend the memory beyond the weekend itself: the friend’s chosen destination became a place the Narrator continued to encounter in solitude.

Berlin as a Memory in Grief

The Berlin weekend returns in the Narrator’s recollection of a therapy session. The memory was vivid and much on the Narrator’s mind, but when an attempt was made to speak about it, crying made speech impossible. The scene gives the remembered city a second role: it is not only where closeness was experienced, but also what grief makes difficult to recount. The inability to speak does not erase the detail; the weekend, the grave, and the bridge remain sharply present even when they cannot be narrated aloud in the room.

The book’s address to the absent friend gives that persistence a recurring verbal form. The Narrator says, "I miss you. I miss you every day. I miss you very much." Later, the wording shifts from direct address to the third person: "I miss him. I miss him every day. I miss him very much." The return to Berlin belongs to this structure of remembering: the friend is absent, yet the remembered weekend continues to be addressed and revisited. The city’s decisive significance lies in holding both truths at once—the intimacy that seemed briefly possible there and the continuing bereavement that makes its ending impossible to undo.