He had overcome a few hours earlier this overwhelming fear that grabs you by the throat, never to leave you at every step closer to you baffles, watchtowers and barbed wire border.
- Anyone who has passed a check point you can tell the same story. Before the first look on the other side of the wall is its nauseating effluvium, oppressive, who dazzles. The arrival in the world of communist slight stench. First, it is the sweetish odor of fat mixed with Kalashnikovs reeks of cigarettes, spicy or disgusting papirossa Belomorkanal that interfere non casemates Customs. Then came the attack on the stale air by burning coal, which prevents you already meet the shoulders and forces you to push your chin in col. Then it is the acidity of bleach and detergents that slight scent - heating oil - gasoline that has not quite burned in these small engines Trabans farting bad digestion. These are the fragrances last, a sudden and sharp flavors of West Indian spices from all these oriental restaurants for American tourists who have hatched since the partition, to the perfume of jasmine flowers municipal gardens.
He had awakened in me the buried memories of a time when I tried to save the world reply silly of my state of absolute love. I loved the daughter of a KGB officer. I was going to lose it soon.
Around him, the mist Berlin, the East. A dangerous shore, no romance, carved cliffs, those of Communism and bristling with barbed wire, born of a single decree Russian. The general's eyes were shining.
- When you had Charlie, you remember that, too? - You're in the middle of nowhere. It only needs the foghorn of a ship in distress to make it look hallucination of the infamous corner of a port side of the world in black and white.
I also remembered that feeling of emptiness in which all memories and all pleasures seemed banished. Even loving couples hiding and stumbling in the dark. The smell of death rising from the sewers that were not fully reconnected to the network after the general failure of the City. We lived a science fiction novel, the two planets are living in parallel dimensions.