ADVENTURES IN A DIFFICULT WORLD. (chapter one) (part two)

Chapter One (part two)

Berlin

After we finish the joint, Ruthe goes back to work. The Trommel is open now, and one or two people are arriving. It won't be so busy until the evening -- when the night swarm comes, attracted by the blasting Reggie, the table-football, and the tolerance of dope-smoking.
Being a regular, I know most of the faces, if not all the names, of those now arriving. And I am soon joined on the large table in the window. The rolling of spiffs is now well under way. I'm still wondering about that miraculous tree
Ralph, a guy I've known for a couple of years comes in, and after ordering a drink sits beside me. Ralph is one of those jack-the-lad types. Around thirty something, short, dressed to kill, so to speak, in his full camouflage togs and his big duck-billed cap. Whenever I see him, I always get a picture in my mind of someone who has just jumped out of an aeroplane with a parachute, landed, hid the chute, and then came for a beer.
I say I've known him for a couple of years, but Ralph is a mystery man. You may not see him for months at a time. And no matter how much you question him, you never really find out just what it is that he does... It's always, 'this and that', or, 'just looking around'. Yet, he has a new BMW, all the latest IT gadgets, and takes regular holidays in exotic places. Maybe he's a mercenary.
He asks me if I'm busy at the moment with my teaching. I tell him I'm always looking for more hours. He waits a moment looking deep down into his beer, then asks if he could talk to me in private outside. We leave our drinks and I follow him out the door. We stroll along the street a few steps before he begins to speak.
'How many hours make you teaching in one day?' he asks in his own unique construction.
'It's different every day', I reply
'And you work night also?'
'Yeah, sometimes, but not late. Why?
He pauses and his small, narrow, dark, questioning eyes fix on me for a moment.
'I say you, but you must not say someone Ja?'
'Sure'
'I grow too many marijuana this year. Too many work for me -- dry and clean und cut --you help me I give you one gram von every day the Jahre ' three hundred sixty five gram, ja?'
I think about it for one arrested nano second!
'How long will it take?'
'Maybe one weeks, four five hour on day'. I have many big, very good smoking!'
'OK', I say, 'but I must do it between or after my English lessons'.
'OK, no problem!'.
'When do we start?' I ask.
'I ring you Morgen on'
'OK'.
I give him my number and we go back inside, and we don't mention it again. Before I leave we shake hands, and he pushes a little bulging plastic bag into my palm.
'Bis Morgen dan.'
'Ja, bis Morgen,' I say
The next day around two he rings, and we arrange that I should visit him at five -- after my last lesson.
* * * * *
As I enter his apartment he leads me into a narrow kitchen. He's in the middle of making 'English tea!'. He asks me if I had smelt anything when I came in. 'No', I say, to which he only replies, 'Gut!'
We sit at the table and he begins explaining in his funny mix of English and German what he wants me to do, while building a pure joint as thick as his gas pipes!
Every day he drive outside Berlin and cuts the plants, and bring them back here. My job will be to help him prune the leaves away, leaving only the buds on their stalks ready to hang and dry.
When I ask where we'll work and dry them, he quickly stands and goes over to a tall food cabinet, and looking like a TV quiz presenter he simply pushes... and it glides away! 'I make on wheels', he says with a gleam of pride in his eye.
Now revealed is a small narrow door about a meter high! He had divided half his kitchen with a wooden wall, and papered over it. He opens the door and we duck like gnomes into another room. Where a stink, as evil as the devil's arse-hole greets us!
A canopy of plants thick with buds hang from the ceiling on a series of lines running the length of the room. The false wall is draped with thick cellophane to isolate the smell. On a table in the middle of the room is a small green mountain of dried buds like broccoli, ready to be weighed and bagged. He tells me we begin the work tomorrow. We finish the Spliff, and as I'm leaving he gives me another small bag of the stuff.
I troll my way home in a dervish trance... Thinking about the three hundred and sixty five grams of this laughing gear! OK, I reason, 'Jeder macht eine kleine Dummheit!'
I get home to find a message on my machine, from Dirk -- a friend who lives in Dresden. He's in Berlin for a few days, and wants to meet at around eleven in the King Kong Kulb. A place I've never been.
I first met Dirk, an actor, about eight years ago, when he lived here in Berlin. We had met and got on famously, as they say. His father is English and he had spent five years in England as a teenager, so speaks good English, and has a cutting rakish sense of humour!
We became a part of a small loose group of odds. At most five or six of us who would get together for breakfast and banter around a table in a bar called Schwarz Sour.
I would spend a couple of hours there before going to my studio to paint. And Dirk would always be there before his theatre rehearsals. There we would be swamped in coffee and bagels, and smoking joints; at that time no one seemed to mind. The gab could be fast, cutting, and surreal, a monkey theatre, but hilarious and stimulating.
Another regular was Carlos, a tall slim Spanish writer who always dressed in black, and always had a twelve o'clock shadow. He worked six nights a week as a barman in a night club. He would come direct from work to the bar, still too high to sleep on the Colombian marching powder, which he had to do to stay the live-wire, which the club demanded of him, and which got him through those nights of hyper-energy. He never seemed to have time to write anything, though he was full of funny stories from his nights of madness.
Then there was Christine; a big beautiful Red-headed American girl with a great positive smile, and a quick wit! She did dance/performance. Dirk and I saw her once at some off-art-house, swinging around on a rope, upside down, or running around the walls! It was both frightening and stunning! Dirk and her had a real thing going for a while. But, she was the independent type.... and swung both ways, if you'll forgive the pun. She went off to Amsterdam with one of the girls who worked in the Schwartz Sour.
I haven' t seen Dirk for about half a year; since the spring, so it was good to hear from him, and it's always good crack to get together with him.
I stick a pizza in the oven and eat it with a glass of wine at the computer. As it's Friday, I do the preparations for Monday's lessons, then work over my M.S. Writing a few more hundred words, before taking off to the King Kong Klub, which is only five minutes walk from my place.

Berlin, May 2006

(Link to other chapters:)
http://www.abctales.com/set/chris-whitley/adventures-in-a-difficult-worl...

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