Sten Nadolny

"What we just passed, that was the Teltow Canal. Sometimes I try to picture how I used to see Berlin when I didn’t know it as well yet. I lived in Bleibtreu Strasse, in a PANAM stewardess’ flat. She always brought those little portions of butter from the planes, and salt in sachets. Back then, the North started for me north of Kant Strasse and the South started south of Kudamm. Swatting up on it all was tough. Thousands of streets, like a big, old brain. People only use five per cent of their brain. They normally do the same with their town.

Berlin’s future? Political issues often go over my head. Some of the other drivers know it all – and can tell you even more than that. Everything that a West German wants to hear: Berlin is still Berlin, the Wall is a disgrace – or the opposite. You learn to sound people out, see what they expect. ‘The Voice of the People’.

Here on the right is the Bohemian graveyard. Everyone who came from Bohemia is buried there. Krystek, Schudoma, Maresch – they were the first ones to be laid to rest here.

All the people who were at all decent in this city have nettles growing on their graves today, see for yourself! For example, Karl Twesten. We’ll come past there soon. Yes, the future! I drive lots of people, but what’s really going on here – I don’t hear that either. When I take a politician, he keeps shtum. Back when Bonn was deciding on the treaties with the Eastern bloc countries, I whisked the Christian Democrat’s Wohlrabe – do you know him? – to the airport, from Schloss Strasse to Tempelhof. He was pretty nervous about whether he’d make his plane or not. I thought I could stick stubbornly to 50 now and get one over on the class enemy. I didn’t though. And nowadays I’m not as much a leftie as I was. Otherwise you miss out on everything. Hey, Friedhelm, is that you here in Schönstedt Strasse? Not like you to just stand around – not keen on the ice? I’ve got one punter for Frohnau, I actually wanted to go to Westend! Till six then, mind how you go.

He was from the same stables. Elvira Bachmann cab firm, like it says on the plate. A good outfit. I’d never drive for another. You don’t need a Merc, a Ford does the job too. I always put a board behind my back, saves me trouble with the slipped disc. Elvira does fine. Her daytime drivers were students once, the ones who are still studying drive nights. Then you hear words that sound like Latin on the two-way radio, it reminds you of seminars. But I prefer to drive days, then I can catch a film in the evening. Elvira also has a man who deals with all the tougher stuff that sometimes crops up.

I don’t notice the tips much, except when it’s a lot. Just now I drove a really ancient guy who said that he used to be a policeman at Alexander Platz, and has been drawing a pension for the last twenty-four years. He had me drive him to where the women could see that he was coming by taxi. While everyone watched, he gave me a fiver. That happens too. For lots of people it’s part of their job to talk about Berlin. If you listen long enough, they get bigger and bigger and Berlin smaller and smaller.

Like in Rome. There was a guy who had a sausage stall at the Forum, for twenty years. He ended up thinking that people came for his sausages.

Berlin has an important place in history, everyone knows that. Or not, as the case may be. People know it abroad. Recently I drove a French woman from Tegel airport to Schlachtensee. Matterhorn Strasse. She had moved to West Berlin when she married. If her man had been from Düsseldorf or Hannover, her family wouldn’t have allowed it, she said. Berlin was just about all right.

Now we’re at Süd Stern, and in the cemetery to the left you’ll find many of the people who the streets here are named after – Stresemann, Mommsen. And the publisher Großgörschen. And women like Rahel Varnhagen and Henriette Herz. I live out in Hakenfelde, myself. But I’m more at home in Moabit. People know you there. They could still tell you all about anyone, whether that guy got drunk for the first time in 1954, or whether it was a year later.

On the left behind the wall is E.T.W. Hoffmann’s grave. No, not E.T.A.! E.T.W.! I looked at the inscription once. Councillors on the supreme court. The lawyers they had in those days!

Further back Karl Twesten is buried, a liberal. General Manteuffel shot one of his arms off, I don’t know, though, if he died from the arm or from something else.

Oops, the back snaked out a bit there! It’s as slippery as the devil!"