When We Danced on Water by Evan Fallenberg

in to Martin’s routines, after recovering from her initial shock and fear, she began to explore Berlin. She walked the Tiergarten, the Schlossgarten Charlottenburg, the Zoologischer Garten, the Fritz-Schloss Park. She walked the grand boulevards and the small side streets. She visited the museums, the churches, the concert halls. She spent one whole week in the newly remodeled KaDeWe department store, a day on each floor testing perfumes, sampling cheeses, watching television broadcasts in the electronics section. Even halved it was a huge city, but she walked Berlin tirelessly, in ever-expanding concentric circles. On sunny days she prowled the parks and on rainy ones the museums or the shops. Mostly, on these long days of rambling energy, she spoke to no one, other than a quick request for coffee in a café or a ticket at a museum. Sometimes, however, she was approached, usually by men. They talked of the weather or commented on her brisk walk, all the while a smile on their rosy-cheeked faces. But their eyes would always drop downward, stopping at her chest, her hips. She quickly learned to cut off these aimless conversations before their eyes could wander.
    In the evenings she was eager for conversation, real human interaction, and wished to recount the events of her day to Martin. Martin, fatigued from medical studies and a day job in a hospital lab, wished for study time in the evenings, hoping to dispense with conversation over dinner. Vivi found this intolerable, and looked for ways to provoke his anger in order to coax him into talking to her.
    â€œI spent the day in the portrait gallery of the National Museum today,” she told him. “All those pale inbred aristocrats. I thought they were so ugly . Then afterward, on the street outside, I kept running into them. They’re all over the place, haven’t changed a bit!”
    Martin grinned but did not look up from his books.
    Vivi made a great, noisy show of scraping and stacking the glass dishes. “Then I stopped back in KaDeWe for a pair of socks and wound up buying four sweaters and a new winter coat.”
    â€œHmmm,” he said absentmindedly.
    â€œThen I had sex with the bear keeper and one of the bears at the Tiergarten Zoo.”
    â€œWhich did you prefer?” he asked, without looking up.
    She threw a dishtowel at him.
    â€œMartin,” she screamed. “I’m bored and miserable!”
    Martin slipped a bookmark between the pages and closed his book. He stood, stretched and approached Vivi, taking her into his arms so that her cheek pressed against his chest. “I know, darling, I know. Tomorrow night I’ll take you out dancing, or to a film. Would you like to see a film?”
    She listened to his voice as it reached her both from his mouth and from the deep rumble in his chest. She put her arms around his middle. “I miss you,” she said softly.
    Despite the tremendous size of the city, even just her half, Vivi had exhausted the museums and parks of West Berlin in a matter of weeks. The weather turned cold; her lips chapped and her skin grew dry. Her concentric circles shrank and she stayed closer to home, but still she spent hours outside the house every day.
    Vivi found herself drawn eastward, toward the wall and the city that lay beyond. Through November and December her outings always started off the same way, with a ride on the 129 bus to Potsdamer-strasse or Friedrichstrasse, both close to the wall. Some days she would walk the wall north, to where the Reichstag sat on the river, other days south and eastward through Kreuzberg, where once again she met the River Spree. Always, she kept to the wall for as long as she could before a biting wind or a freezing snowfall pushed her home. Often she would choose a spot and simply stare up at the wall, learning its structure, imagining scaling it, wondering if there were a Vivi standing just across from her on the other side contemplating all the same