After Einstein Bee - EB

In the summer of 2006, on june 22, I saw a drunken woman drop her baby and then I wacthed an episode on Oprah that was particulary good on july 11. On August 20 at 7:45, I arrive at Einstein Bee´s hotel an hour and fifteen minutes before his lecture is due to begin at the Pavillion of Thought. The desk cleark shoots me a look that suggests he might be interested in throwing his weight around. Rather than pass him, I take a seat in the lobby, pull out my journal, and light a cigarette, he gives me another look.

"My husband hates for me to smoke in the room", I say.
He says, "What ?"
I say, "My husband, he hates the smoke, so I´m just going to sit here for a moment before going up to our room".

The cleark said, "Fine, whatever", and turns his attention back to a little TV set.

I can´t believe that Einstein Bee or EB, as I call him, is staying here at the Adlon. It´s so ironic, so unlike Einstein. It´s perfect. I´d called every hotel in Berlin asking if they had an Einstein registered, but ofcourse they did´nt. We´re not talking about Mr. Small Press Nobody here. EB is EB, and he´s got to protect his privacy. I can understand that, I can respect that. I called around again asking if anyone had a guest by the name of Bee Bee, the name of all the characters in Einstein´s second novel. All the hotel clearks said no. They said, "What the hell kind of name is that ?". Really, I think Bee Bee would have been too obvious, so I tried again and again, thinking he might have registered under the name of one of the minor charcters in Stinging Ray. I finally found him here at The Adlon under the name of St. Oiber, the character who undergoes a needless colostomy in Magnetic Fields. EB is here in room 822.

How like EB to use an assumed name, and especialy here at The Adlon, where he´ll be rubbing elbows with every shallow middle- class cliché you´d never want to meet, the exact type of people he exposes in his novels. How like EB, how perfectly ironic! Ha-ha-ha!

8:04. I had really hoped to catch EB before he left for the reading, but since nobody answers his door I can only assume that the department of litteratur heads have him hog-tied at Andrea´s Butcher Block, one of the upscale slaughterhouses this town calls a restaurent. I can see it now: The principle and his spaniels are shoveling forkfuls of red meat while poor EB just sits there, tuning out their petty conversation and gagging at the site of the food on his plate. I think its pretty obvious that the Litteratur Department knows nothing about EB. They just see him as another feather in their cap, a name they can use to attract new students. It makes me sick. They fly him in for a few days, race him around University like a greyhound, and then bore him to death with their talk of funding cutbacks and Who´s Who on campus. I´ve been standing outside this door for the last twenty minutes, so I think it´s also very obvious that they´re herding EB straight from the restaurent to the Pavilion of Thought at Humboldt.

At first I was exited about tonight´s reading, but now I say forget it - if EB has been rusched around by these university types all day, then I know he´ll be too exhausted to express himself. I had a feeling this might happen, so I arranged for a few people to tape tonight´s reading at the Pavillion. Siri, if left to her own devices, can tend to get a little too artsy for her own good, so I got Walter as a backup. Deep down in his middleclass heart, Walter would just love to wear a jumsuit and boss people around. While I really hate his politics, I trust his overall skill much more than I trust Siri´s. She taped last years Auster lecture and keept the camera aimed at his feet the entire time, and he wasn´t dancing or anything!

Another reason for boycotting tonight´s lecture is that I don´t think I can sit back and watch while EB wastes his time reading to an audience of a thoudsand kids who can´t even begin to understand his work. The students began lining up outside the Pavillion hours ago. They´re holding EB´s book in one hand and some bullshit ecomomic text in the other, economics or political science or whatever it is they´re really interested in. Most of them had never even heard of EB before Stinging Ray, but they act as if they have been reading EB for ever. I want to confront them. I want to ask them where they were when EB was physically attacked after the release of Magnetic Fields. Where were they when EB needed support after the media trashed Bee Bee ? These kids all act like they understand EB and it makes me sick to hear their lame opinions on his work. This afternoon I overheard a girl telling her boyfriend that EB´s work mirrored the opression inherent in Western capitalist society. She read that off the dust jacket. She doesn´t know shit about EB. She was wearing clothes that EB would really hate. Here at University I am surrounded by jokes like her.

My head is still spinning from the reading EB gave in my master´s writing seminar this afternoon. I´d looked forward to some one-on-one contact, but the room was packed with people who aren´t even enrolled in the seminar. These kids weren´t writers, they were faked. But did the teacher ask them to leave ? Did Professor Nobody tell them that this was a class for serious writers ? Of course not. He makes his cowardice with this "We´re all here to learn" cheeriness that really makes me sick. It was perfect then when EB walked into the classroom. He saw all the copies of Milchmann on our desks and he picked up my copy and said, "Who´s making you read this shit ?". It was so perfect. Professor Nobody just stood there pretending he hadn´t heard EB´s remark. He just stood there and tucked in his shirt. He couldn´t even own up to it! I think EB hates Milchmann for the same reasons I do, because she´s a facist, a typical bourgeois racist, a judgemental Christian right-wing parrot, and a timid writer who relies on grammer to carry her through the page. I hate Milchmann, I really do!

EB´s reading was wonderful assertive. He read a few sections from Magnetic Fields, parts that I had practically memorized even through the book only came out last month. He never numbers his pages, but I was with him for a good quater at the beginning of the second part. I just mouthed the words while he read. I wasn´t doing it for the attention; it´s just a reflex action because I know his work, all of it, so well. After the reading, Professor Nobody opened the floor for questions, which was a mistake because it´s allways the stupidest people who ask the most questions. For example, one guy who´s not even in the writing seminar raised his hand and said, "I tried reading your third novel but gave up when I realized that all of the characters were going by the name Bee Bee. I found it confusing; I had a real problem with it". Ha-ha-ha! Right, he had a problem with it. EB was great. He just looked at this guy and said, "Well, if it´s giving you trouble, then I guess I´ll just have to rewrite it in simpler terms. I thought I might continue work on my new project, but if Bee Bee confuses you, then I guess it´s back to the drawing board". Everyone laughed but you could tell that they had problems with Bee Bee too. I didn´t laugh because I don´t have any problems with it. I have no problems with EB. Siri raised her hand and asked EB if he had grown up in Köln, which ofcourse he had. It´s right there in his writing, and besides, it says so on the back of all his books. EB answered her; he just said yes, but in a bored way that acknowledged the dumbness of the question. It really was a stupid question and I laughed when she asked it. I was the only one laughing, which simply proves how well I know EB´s life. He gave me a little glance, a little smile, when I laughed. I´ve spent a lot of time in Köln, and I´m often asked that same question myself. I wasn´t raised there, but I could have been.

The questions continued and were all incredibly stupid until I asked EB if the tall blond character in Magnetic Fields was based on his former girlfriend Casssandra Mitzi, the fashion model. I just wanted EB to realize that there are some of us who understand his life and work. My Kölner friend, Daniel Wexler had gone to University with Cassandra and he used to fill me in on a lot of details, like what a bitch she really is and how she uses people. Cassandra really put EB through the wringer over that phony abuse scandal. She´ll do anything for a media attention. She´s not even that pretty.

I asked the question, and EB looked at me with a lot of pain, a great deal of pain and anguish in his eyes, and said that Magnetic Fields was a work of fiction and that his inspirations were none of anyone´s buisness. A group of people laughed when he said that. I laughed too because I know that, on the surface, my questions sounded nosy, but I didn´t mean in that way. I realize it would have been impossible for him to open up and really talk about his work in that atmosphere, surrounded by so many people, who don´t know him the way I do. I can understand EB´s creative process and his life, and that´s why I really need to sit down and talk with him. I saw the pain in his eyes. I need to sit him down and let him know that I´m behind him one hundred percent.

After a few more questions, Professor Nobody asked EB where he saw this postmodern metafictional movement headed, and EB just picked up his books and papers and said, "Anywhere but here", and walked out of the room. He meant anywhere but the small world of academia, but it went right over everyone´s head, ha-ha! After he walked out, I picked up my shit and walked out too, but EB had already left the building. I havne´t been able to find him anywhere.

9:19. I´m sitting in the lounge of the Adlon, a grotesque bar ironically named Reflections, which erroneously suggets that I will see myself mirrored in this godforsaken place or any of its customers. I sit at a table, pull out my journal, and, when the waitress arrives, I order a screwdriver. The waitress acts shocked that a woman might order a beer and a shot rather than some frozen daiquiri product, and I shot her a look that sends her off toward a group of people she thinks might find her cute.

EB´s reading is starting right at this moment. I can sense it. I think it´s very appropraite, very revealing that right now he is standing before an audience of people who don´t understand him, and at the same time I´m sitting in this bar full of people who, I am certain, have no hope of ever knowing or understanding me. It´s a lonely feeling, but rather be alone than stoop to a lower level of understanding. The waitress brings me my shot and my beer. She acts as though I´m spoiling all her fun. Whatever fun she might have working in a place like this, leading her dull, unexcamined life, she is more than welcome to. She can have it. The customers are all looking at me the same way. They can´t deal with anyone who isn´t into their Mr and Mrs Jovial scene, with someone who takes a hard look at the crumbling building blocks that are the foundation for their wasted lives. With someone like me.

This godforsaken place reminds me of the bar EB depicted in Magnetic Fields, except the people are fully dressed and they´re not drinking out of cans. The waitress returns and I order another screwdriver.

10:20. I´ve been standing in the hallway outside EB´s hotel room for the last half-hour rereading my favorite passages of Magnetic Fields and Bee Bee. His lecture must have ended by now, and I fear they are holding him hostage with another mindless question-and-answer session. My God, how much to they expect him to take ?!

He looked so tired when I saw him this afternoon before my masters´s class. I´d left my desk and was on my way to the bathroom when I passed him in the hall. It was incredible. The air was charged. EB was wearing a pair of camouflage trousers and a sports coat made of something rough. I thought he had silver hair, but up close I could see it was kind of a flat color, a color I like a lot more than silver. His eyelids were dark and puffy because the department heads had tired him out, but the eyes themselves were a rare intense shade of brown, like two clean coins shining. EB was walking toward the classroom with Heidberg, the university department head, who was running off at the mouth about his favorite subject - himself. Heidberg was saying, "you might have heard of me. I had an essay on art and analysis in last month´s Kulturfront", and EB said, "If you´ve been published in Kulturfront, then no, I havn´t heard of you". Ha-ha, EB is so blunt, so matter-of-fact, so uninterested in playing games. He wouldn´t be caught dead reading Kulturfront.

I tried to catch his eyes in the hallway. I wanted to let him know that everyone knows what an asshole Heidberg is, but then Professor Nobody came up and started yapping at me about my overdue essay, and EB was herded into an office. I can´t imagine what´s keeping him now. IF I know EB, he´s fed up with the Litteratur Department; he´s not going to jump through any more of their hoops. Where could he be ? I´ll wait here for a few more minuttes, and if he doesn´t show, then I´ll head over to the Pavillion of Thought at Humboldt. The suspense is killing me.

12:09, The Pavillion of Thought was empty when I arrived. The show was over. I was on my way back to the hotel when I ran into Siri taking shots at people with her videocamera. Siri started in about the EB reading. She said, "Where were you ? My God, you missed it. I don´t believe you". Sometimes Siri takes a very cocky, very inside attitude that infuriates me. She lies a lot, too. Sometimes I don´t even think she realizes she´s lying. She took this superior attitude and told me that just before tonights reading EB approached her, bummed a cigarette, and passed some time with her.

Right, Siri.

She said that EB said he´d remembered her from the master´s class and that he´d like to read her work someday.

Right, Siri.

Then she told me that he read a chapterlike passage from a new work in progress, and I covered my ears because whatever it is, I don´t want to hear it from Siri. She is an abysmal storyteller and I don´t want EB´s work chewed by her translation. She said she had the lecture on videotape but that no tape could capture the intensity of the reading. She said I can watch the tape but I probably won´t be able to understand it, not having been there in person.

This attitude of hers really makes me sick. I might not be able to understand Einstein Bee ? Me ? This is very ironic, especially comming from Siri, who had never even heard of EB before I loaned her my copy of Bee Bee last semester. I might not be able to understand it ?

So I said, "Siri, EB is my writer, and I think I could understand him if he was speaking Egyptian". And she said, "I didn´t realize you owned any writers, Anastasia. Are there any others in your stable ?". Stable is a familiar word to Siri. Before I turned her on to EB, she was wearing fucking skirts in class, arranging her hair into a French braid, and drawing horse profiles in the margins of her notebook. Before I turned her over to EB, Siri´s writing consisted of florid little sentences and then, overnight she started writing like EB and going out of her way to mention his name in class. Then in critique she trashed my story, saying that my writing is obviously based on EB, so I said, "Maybe Einstein is writing like me", and she said ( in front of the whole class ), she said, "And where excately would EB have read any of your work ?" She´s so full of herself since she had that story published in Der Spiegel. Who the hell reads Der Spiegel ?

Siri is so transparent. I´m sure if EB did talk to her he only did it in order to get a feel for the stupidity of his audience. She told me she´d invited him out for a postlecture drink, but he´d said he needed to get right back to Köln because his wife was expecting a baby. EB was lying, giving her the shake. I know, because Knut Polartic told me that he saw EB´s wife, Julia Bee, at a restaurent in Köln two months ago, and Knut told me that it looked like Julia had lost weight. Lost weight!!! How pregnant can she be ??!! Knut also told me that EB and Julia are filing for divorce and living in seperate apartements, so I highly doubt she´s pregnant!! EB was just throwing up a smoke screen to protect himself from Siri. I know this for a fact because directly after talking to Siri I called The Adlon from Humboldt and asked them if St.Oiber had checked out. I had them connect me to Room 822. When EB answered, I hung up. I didn´t want to introduce myself over the phone, so I politely hung up.

Later, I knock on EB´s door, room 822. I can hear the television very ironically tuned to the Hours of Prayer, so I know he´s in there. I knock a little harder and am embarrassed when, after my fifth round - and I´m really pounding away - I hear the toilet flush. I hate it when that happens, I really do. I take a step back and compose myself and look down at he carpet, and someone answers the door but it´s not EB. It´s Siri grinning like a carved pumpkin. And the worst part, the most revolting part of it all, is that she doesn´t seem the least bit surprised to see me.

Danger is everywhere - by Anne Will

When he was young my father shot out his best friend´s eye with a gun. That is what he told us. "One foolish moment Anne and, Jesus, if I could take it back, I would". He was shaking his fist as if it held a rattle. "It eats me alive", he said. I mean to tell you that it absolutely tears me apart".

On one of my summer visits to his hometown in Köln, my father took us to meet this guy, as shoe salesman whose milky pupil hugged the corner of his mangled socket. I wacthed the two men shake hands and turned away, sickened and ashamed by what my father had done.

My father had received a gun for his twelfth birthday and accepted it as a personal challenge to stalk and maim any living creature: Sunbathing cats, sparrows, slugs and squirrels - if it moved he shot it. Every time I thought of my fathers gun, I saw his half-blinded friend stumbling forth with an armload of apples. What would it be like to live with that sort of guilt ?

While wacthing television one afternoon my brother stabbed me in the eye with a freeshly sharpend pencil. The blood was copious, and I rode to the hospital knowing that if I was blinded, my brother would be my slave for the rest of his life. Never for one moment would I let him forget what he´d done to me. There´d be no parties in his future, no football games or carefree laughter, not one moment of joy - I would make sure of that. I´d planned my vengence so thoroughly that I was almost disappointed when the doctor announced that this was nothing but a minor puncture wound, located not on but beneath the eye.

"Take a look at your sisters face", my father said, pointing to my bandage. "You could have blinded her for life! Your own sister, blinded, is that what you want ?". Martins suffering eased my pain for an hour or two, but then I began to fell sorry for him. "Every time you reach for a pencil, I want you to think about what you´ve done to your sister", my father said. "I want you to get on your knees and beg her to forgive you".

There are only so many times a person can apologize before it becomes annoying. I lost interest long before the bandage was removed, but not my father. By the time he was finished, Martin couldn´t lift a pencil without breaking into tears. His handsome little face assumed the characteristics of a wrinkled, grease-stained bag. Seven-years old and the boy was broken.

Danger was everywhere and it was our fathers lifelong duty to warn us. Attending his birthday celebration at a Kölner golfclub, we were told how one of his military buddies had been disfigured for life when a handgrenade exploded in his lap. "Blew his balls right off the map", he said. "Take a second and imagine what that must have felt like!". I watched Martin, racing to the farthest edge of the golf course, with his hands between his legs.

Fireworks were hazardous, but thunderstorms were even worse. "I had a friend, used to be a very bright, good-looking guy. He was on top of the world until the day he got struck by lightning. It caught him right between the eyes while he was fishing and cooked his brain just like you´d roast a chicken. Now he´s got a metal plate in his forehead and can´t even chew his own food, Anne! Everything has to be put into a blender and taken through a straw".

If the lightning was going to get me, it would have to penetrate walls. At the first hint of a storm I ran to the basement, crouching beneath a table and covering my head with a blanket. Those who watched from their front gardens were fools. "The lightning can be attracted by a wedding ring or even the fillings in your teeth", my father said. The moment you let down your guard is garanteed to be the day it strikes".

In pre-gymnasium Martin signed up for a wood class, and his first assignment was to build a napkin holder. "You´re not going to be using a table saw, are you Martin ?" my father asked. "I knew a guy, a child about your size, who was using a table saw when the blade came loose, flew out of the machine, and sliced his face in half". Using his index finger, my father drew an imaginary line from his forehead to his chin. "The guy survived, but nobody wanted anything to do with him. He turned into an alcoholic and wound up marrying a Chinese woman he´d ordered through a catalog. Think about it, Martin". He did.

Martins napkind holder was made from found boards and, once finished, weighed in at close to four kilograms. My bookshelves were even worse. "The problem with a hammer", I was told, " is that the head can fly off at any moment and Anne, let me tell you, you´ve never imagined pain like that".

After a while we began to wonder if my father had any friends who could still tie their own shoes or breathe without the aid of a respirator. With the exception of the shoe salesman, we´d never seen any of these people, only heard about them whenever one of us attempted to deep-fry chicken or operate the garbage disposal my father had received from an English friend who was handicapped. "I´ve got a friend who buys a set of gloves and throws one of them away. He lost his right arm doing the excact same thing your doing. He had his arm down the drain when the cat rubbed against the switch to the garbage disposal. Now he´s wearing clip-on ties and having the restaurent waiters cut up his steak. Is that the kind of life you want for yourself ?"

He allowed me to mow the lawn only because he didn´t want to do it himself. "What happend", he said, "is the guy slipped, probably on a pile of crap, and his leg got caught up in the blade. He found his foot, carried it to the hospital, but it was too late to sew it back on. Can you imagine that, Anne ? The guy drove sixty kilometers with his foot in his lap".

Regardless of the heat, I mowed the lawn wearing long trousers, knee-high boots, a motorcycle helmet, and a pair of protective glasses. Before starting, I scouted the lawn for rocks and dog feces, slowly combing the area as if it were mined. Even then I pushed the mower haltingly, always fearing that this next step might be my last.

Nothing bad ever happend, and within a few years I was mowing in shorts and rubber shoes, thinking of the supposed friend my father had used to illustrate his warning. I imagined this man jumping into his car and pressing on the accelerator with his bloddy stump, a warm foot setteld in his lap like a sleeping puppy. Why hadn´t he just called an ambulance to come pick him up ? How, in his shock, had he thought to search the weeds for his missing foot ? It just didn´t add up.

I waited for a long time before taking my drivers licens. Before taking to the road, we sat in the darknened room, wacthing films that might have been written and directed by my father. Don´t do it, I thought, watching the couple attempt to pass a truck. Every excursion ended with the young driver wrapped around a telephone pole or burned beyond recognition.

I drove a car no faster than I pushed the lawn mower, and the instructor soon lost patience.

"That license is going to be your death warrant", my father said on the day I received my drivers permit. "You´re going to get out there and kill someone, and the guilt is going to tear your heart out, Anne".

The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to 40 kilometers per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely. For a while.

When I began driving again, I ran over something I shouldn´t have. A cat. "Shit, I whispered to Martin. "Shit, Shit Shit", I whispered, tapping my forehead against the steering wheel. This was a living creature that cried out when caught beneath the tire. We covered our heads against the rain and searched the darkened street until we found an orange cat coughing up blood into the gutter. "You killed me", the cat said, pointing at me with its flattened paw. " My whole life wiped out just like that". The cat wheezed rhythmically before closing its eyes and dying. "Shit", Martin said.

"That could have been a child!", my father shouted. "Think about that the next time the two of you are tearing down the street searching for kicks". He made it sound like as if we ran down cats for sport. "You think this is funny", he said, "But we´ll see who´s laughing when you´re behind bars awaiting trial for manslaughter". I received a variation on the same speech after sidewiping a tree. Despite Martins encouragement, I surrended my permit for a while. My nerves just couldnt take it. It seemed safer to hitchhike.

My father objected when I told him I wanted to move to Berlin and waged a full-fledged campaing of terror when I announced I would be moving to South Africa. South Africa! Are you out of your mind, Anne ? You might as well take a razor to your throat because, let me tell you someting, those South Africans are going to eat you alive." He spoke of friends who had been robbed and bludgeoned by packs of roving gangs and showed me newspaper clippings detailing the tragic slayings of joggers and vacationing tourists. "This could be you!", he said.

I decide to visit my fathers hometown in Köln and I felt my way around the city with a creepy familiarity. I found my fathers old appartment, but his friends shoe store had been converted into a gambling hall. When I called my father to tell him about it, he said, "What shoe store ? What are you talking about, Anne ?". The place where your friend worked", I said. "You remember dad, the guy whose eye you shot out".

"Walter ?", he said. I didn´t shoot his eye out; the guy was born that way".

My father visists me now in Hamburg. We´ll walk through Eppendorf, where he´ll yell, "Get a look at the ugly mug on that one!", referring to a three-hundred-pound biker with grinning skulls tatooed like a choker around his neck. A young man is photographing his girlfriend, and my father races to throw himself into the picture. "All right, sweetheart", he says, placing his arm around the startled victim, "It´s time to get comfortable". I cower as he marches into grocery stores, demanding to speak to the manager. "Back home in Köln, I can get this exact same orange less than half this price", he says. The managers invariably suggets that he do just that. He screams at waiters and cuts in line at restaurents. "I have a friend", I tell him, "who lost his right arm snapping his fingers at a waiter".

"Oh you kids", he says, ( he still thinks of me as a kid. ) I don´t know where you get it from Anne, but in the end, it´s going to kill you".