A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones

said, rubbing her hands. ‘Yukio will join us later.’
    She studied the rail map for their route – to Alexanderplatz, then a change to U8 for Kottbusser Tor.
    It was an enthusiasm they shared: the circuit delight of a train map, its multi-coloured intersections, its neat calculus of routes and connections and oblong-symbol changeovers. Cass secretly loved the image of ring lines with their lace-patterned interiors; and the threads unravelling outwards, and the names of far-flung stations. London was like this, too; she carried the London Underground map in her head, and enjoyed the predictable sequence of names and the tranquillising effect of their reiteration. As a child Cass had assumed that everyone was under the spell of such ideal forms; only in adolescence did she discover the disappointing truth.
    The train appeared almost immediately, exhaling and slowing before them. The automatic doors shoosed open. Mitsuko leapt up and in, but the seats were all taken. They stood together by the doors and their faces, close as lovers, were bleached and somewhat drawn in the thin, spilling light. Yet in the anticipated freedom of a train ride Mitsuko was cheery.
    â€˜Alexanderplatz,’ she whispered, nodding upwards to the map arched on the ceiling above them.
    The train was approaching the next station, just at the beginning of the long platform, when it juddered to a halt. Mitsuko grabbed Cass’s forearm and smiled a timid smile.The other passengers were curiously quiet and subdued, studiously formal and not looking at each other, but there was some sort of commotion developing outside. Just visible, a policeman appeared from nowhere. A woman in a uniform waved a red flag. They heard a whistle and saw an official-looking man running up the platform, along the clear strip, too dangerously close to the canyon of the tracks. It was only then, after the speeding man, that an announcement was made and a low collective murmur sprang up among the passengers.
    Mitsuko had not listened, and Cass could not understand the loudspeaker German that had reverberated through the carriage.
    â€˜Excuse me?’ she said. ‘Do you speak English?’
    The young man beside her turned. ‘Ambulance mission,’ he responded in a bored tone. ‘This means a suicide. We will all have to wait now. They won’t open the doors and we will just have to wait.’
    Mitsuko’s bleached face contracted; she seemed to go limp. Cass put her arm across her thin shoulders and squeezed.
    All around them passengers became busy with handheld devices. They were unconcerned, or self-protecting, enjoined and apart in the senseless distraction of screens. Ten minutes passed. Twenty. So many screens, privately shining. Mitsuko was sending an extended text message to Yukio; Cass stood by, silently unoccupied. She had become aware of the thick human smell in the carriage, of the stifling air, of the isolation of each individual, of the swollen sense that they were all contained, a massed human cargo, against the sight and inconvenience of a single death.
    Outside, police had begun evacuating the station. Their silver labels, POLIZEI, sparkled on their backs, under the lights. Then, without further announcement, the carriage doors opened and all were funnelled in solemn order towards the exits. Cass and Mitsuko did not look back. They rode the escalators down to street level and set off to walk to the next station. Shaken by what they knew but had not witnessed, they walked solitary, rather than together, in a tight withdrawal and in silence. At Zoo station they recommenced their journey. Almost at once, Mitsuko began to weep. Berlin did indeed slide past, but she saw only the streaming world of her tears, her pink head hung low. In her soundless weeping she looked like the single mourner.
    It flew behind them, the tracked spaces of Berlin at night. Cass saw, below, the streaks of red and white light that marked the passage of