Chapter 13 (Перевод Брейна)

 

(All Parts Combined)

I remembered that I wanted to shave. But where on earth could I buy that damn shaving kit?! Frustrated, I hailed a taxi.

"Where are we going?" the taxi driver asked in Russian. In such a cosmopolitan city, I took this completely for granted."To the girls?"

"Why to the girls?"

"Well, every Russian who comes to Berlin goes straight to a brothel first thing. And there are plenty of them here."

"What are you talking about? That can't be true!" I said.

"Oh, you have no idea what those girls are capable of," the driver said. "They bring about fifteen billion euros in taxes into the German budget every year. Now that’s a business!"

"Good for them. But I'm not Russian."

"Really? Then where are you from?"

"I'm Ukrainian."

"Oh, I'm from Ukraine too! From Tsyurupynsk. Have you ever heard of it?"

"Yes, but that city no longer exists."

"What do you mean? What do you mean 'it doesn't exist'?" the driver asked. "I was born there, grew up there, and lived there until I moved here."

"It's Oleshky now."

"Is that true? So, I haven't just lost my homeland, I've lost my hometown too," the taxi driver lamented.

"Is that really something to cry over?"

"You shouldn't say that! It's my home soil, after all," he said, turning his middle-aged, snub-nosed Jewish face with blue Slavic eyes toward me, and continued, "So, where are we heading, compatriot?"

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Mikhail, Mikhail Zaslavsky," he introduced himself.

"Mikhail, I've just arrived in Berlin. And I need to buy a razor and some replacement blades."

"Oh! All the stores are closed today. But we could try to find something suitable at one of the flea markets. At least at Arkonaplatz, which is not far from Mauerpark."

"Then why are we just sitting here? Let's go!"

I stared intently at the boulevards drifting past the taxi window, at the austere buildings, and carefully scanned the sidewalks and pavements.

"Damn it! Not a single pothole, not even the tiniest puddle!" I exclaimed in disappointment.

"What do you think of that?" Mikhail asked, nodding toward a small crowd of people under the linden trees who were dancing as if in a collective fit.

At first glance, it looked as though everyone at this "rally" had a fever. Only after hearing the choral singing and seeing the dark-skinned musicians in white silk suits, passionately beating African rhythms out of drums, saxophones, and banjos, did I realize that this was nothing less than a musical declaration of belonging to some tribe or clan. Looking closer, I guessed that the event had been organized by refugees from Africa.

I was mesmerized by the dark-skinned beauties with slender braids, whose firm buttocks vibrated rhythmically to the beat of the music. And right next to them, copying their moves, danced full-breasted, plump fraus and slender fräuleins. Swaying their hips, they seemed to be trying to prove that multiculturalism for them, the descendants of Goethe's Gretchens, was not just a catchphrase.

"There they are, Vera Mason's clients!" my Brain reacted to the theatrical display taking place under the Berlin lindens. "But she’s unlikely to convince these compatriots, who have truly developed a taste for Berlin life, to return to their native Mali or Sudan...

"An impressive crowd of spectators had already gathered around. They cheered on the musicians and dancers with applause. The celebration was in full swing, and it seemed that nothing and no one could interrupt it.

"Africans are a resilient, cheerful people," I said. "They are the ones we should look to as a model of stamina!"

"Well, they are everywhere here! There’s nowhere left to house them," Mikhail said testily. "Unless it's in the areas and barracks of the former Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps..."

"Only now do I realize how unfair this is toward the refugees," my Brain reacted energetically to this piece of information. "Where they once burned Jews, our driver's own people, their primordial enemies, the Muslims, will now live...

"Mikhail drove me to the flea market and waited while I bought a Gillette razor and a replacement blade cartridge from the very first mulatto man who caught my eye.

"We have a tradition of celebrating a purchase with strong drinks and good food; otherwise, the blades will get dull in no time," I said, getting back into the car.

"Unfortunately, I'm busy tonight. I'm meeting my old friend, Vaclav—he’s from Prague, but he's been living in Berlin for a long time," Mikhail said.

"How about inviting him along too?" I suggested.

"That would be great! We can have a party 'for three,' just like in the old Soviet days..."

"Well, if you insist, we can give it a try."

In launching this adventure to "save" my shaving blades, I had a practical goal in mind. I was curious to understand what life was like for the average German resident, and how they felt about refugees and migrants. To achieve this, I couldn't think of a better way than a candid conversation with a taxi driver and his friend.

And so, meeting up as a trio later that evening, we went to have dinner at the Hummus & Friends restaurant on Oranienburger Straße in the Mitte district.

"This restaurant has two advantages: first, it’s close to your house, and second, hummus makes a great snack!" Mikhail said, and waved over the waiter, a dark-skinned, curly-haired Arab man.

"To be honest, friends, I didn't expect Berlin to be so overrun with migrants. Are the locals really ready to surrender to the mercy of the newcomers?" I asked as we sat down at the table.

"You're new here, Lenya, so you don't realize that this is happening not just in Berlin, but across all the federal states of Germany," Mikhail said, apparently forgetting that he was one of the newcomers himself.

The waiter brought the hummus, prepared with garlic and lemon, along with vegetables and hot flatbreads. And so, we began our meal.

"This influx of refugees into Germany is probably an echo of its colonial past," I continued. "People from former colonies, searching for a better life, have swarmed into Europe—heading, so to speak, straight into the territories of their former empires."

"The post-colonial syndrome is more relevant to England, France, Belgium, and other European countries than it is to Germany. All that's left of the German colonies are a few breweries in the Chinese provinces of Tianjin and Qingdao, which, by the way, are still operating today," remarked Vaclav, Mikhail's friend.

"However, it was actually the millions of migrants in the second half of the last century who pulled off a 'miracle.' They practically saved the automotive, coal, and other sectors of the German company from a severe labor shortage—and, ultimately, saved the German statehood itself..."

"I wonder which of today’s German business leaders reached the top thanks to — metaphorically speaking — the economic boom created by migrant labor?" I asked, tasting the still-warm hummus.

"First and foremost, it's Karl Albrecht and Theo Albrecht, Susanne Klatten, Reinhard Mohn, the Flick family, the Otto family, Ingeburg Herz, Reinhold Würth, and the Porsche family," Vaclav listed the names of the wealthy elite."And let's not forget Günter and Daniela Herz, Stefan Quandt, Curt Engelhorn, the family of Rudolf August Oetker, Otto Beisheim, Johanna Quandt, the Haub family, the Braun family, Hasso Plattner, the family of August von Finck, and the von Oppenheim family," Mikhail continued, rattling off the names of the local oligarchs.

"If this 'economic boom' had happened in the Soviet Union, the names of these 'shock workers' would have been put up on the 'Roll of Honor' boards in regional, provincial, and republic centers. And the best among them would have been awarded the Order of Lenin and the 'Gold Star' medal of a Hero of Socialist Labor," I said.

"However, that is far from a complete list of the wealthy families in today’s Germany. If my memory serves me right, we have around twenty thousand multimillionaires here," Vaclav clarified.

"Now I can picture exactly who German workers are working for, and who the migrants are slaving away for," I said with a smile, remembering how much I used to dislike creating surplus value. "And these clans, naturally, decide the fate of Germany..."

"Who else but them!" Mikhail nodded in agreement, just like a respectable bourgeois citizen.

"But aren't they worried at all about the rising crime rates and the increasing number of attacks on locals, especially women?" I asked a provocative question.

"The official stance on this matter is: 'We must not allow anyone to use these attacks to discredit all refugees,'" Vaclav stated. "The former German Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection, Heiko Maas, said that once. And as far as I know, nothing has changed to this day..."

"Government officials always misrepresent wishful thinking and often miss the point in their speeches. I wonder what they're trying to hide behind such diplomatic platitudes?" I spoke.

"The problem is that the post-war generation of Germans is retiring in masse. At least seven hundred thousand jobs open up every year, and domestic resources are insufficient to fill them," Vaclav replied, apparently well-versed in the subject.

"So, the same thing is happening again, and only migrants can save the German economy. Isn't that, right?" I asked.

 

"Of course, nothing changed," I sneered. "Government officials always misrepresent wishful thinking as reality and conveniently miss the point in their speeches. I wonder what kind of mess they're trying to hide behind such cowardly diplomatic platitudes?"

"It’s not a platitude, Lenya, it’s basic math!" Vaclav shot back, clearly irritated by my skepticism. "The post-war generation of Germans is retiring in masse. At least seven hundred thousand jobs open up every year. Our domestic resources are completely dried up. Who is going to run the factories? You?"

"Ah, so the grand illusion repeats itself," I said, leaning forward. "Only this time, corporate profits take precedence over national security, and only migrants can save the sacred German economy. Isn't that the real truth?"

"And that is exactly why the government is so eager to accept refugees from every single hotspot on the map," Mikhail interjected, his tone laced with heavy irony.

"Look, I was up on your TV tower today," I said, cutting through Vaclav’s attempt to interrupt. "And from up there, it looked as if countless mosques had literally dropped from the sky, taking over your capital..."

"Because they have!" Mikhail blurted out. "There are about a hundred of them in Berlin alone! And don't fool yourself, Vaclav—these aren't just quiet places of worship. They are political and cultural power centers of the Muslim world right here in Germany."

"So, you see it too," I said, turning my gaze back to Vaclav. "You don't need an army to conquer a continent. Refugees, migrants, guests—whatever label your media invents—they can seize Europeans' living space without firing a single shot. And you are letting them."

Vaclav slammed his hand on the table, his face flushing.

"Lenya, you sound like a textbook xenophobe! You just don't get it. This radical, paranoid rhetoric belongs strictly to the fringes—to the far-right extremists who only crawl out during government crises or Bundestag elections to scare voters. The 'open door' policy isn't a failure. It is bearing tangible fruit. It’s not for nothing that Germany remains Europe's undisputed economic powerhouse!"

 Vaclav Novotny, a fierce and uncompromising supporter of Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), was practically vibrating with righteous indignation.

"How blissfully naive, Lenya!" my critical Brain whispered directly into my ear, dripping with cold, cynical amusement. "Just as the Germans willfully blinded themselves to the catastrophe of Nazism in the past, today they blindly ignore the double noose tightening around their necks: 'cheap' Russian gas and the vaunted fairy tale of multiculturalism. Renouncing national identity for the sake of gross domestic product is a direct, one-way path to turning a free European individual into a second-class 'dhimmi'..."

Hearing Brain's icy verdict, I suddenly thought with tender gratitude of the Congress of African Women and of dear Vera Mason. She, too, "professes" an "open door" policy. But her doors are open in the opposite, far more honest direction. Through them, the reversed streams of migrants, radical ideas, and reparations must flow—straight from Europe back to those countries from which they had been drained for centuries by the force and cunning of capitalists of all stripes.

I took my glass, rose abruptly from the table, breaking the suffocating tension, and said, "Friends, enough politics. I have a toast. Let's drink to Vera-Virginia. To my Vera!"

Mikhail and Vaclav, visibly relieved by the sudden shift in tone, stood up, raised their glasses, and in a harmonious, erasing duet repeated my toast: "To Vera-Virginia! To my Vera!"