Go, Went, Gone

In August, 10 men gather in front of the Town Hall, Alexanderplatz, in Berlin. There are rumors that they have stopped eating. Three days later they stop drinking as well. The men have black skin and speak many languages. They want to remain in Germany, but they do not want to say where they are immigrating from: “The silence of these men who would rather die than reveal their identity unites with the waiting of all these others who want their questions answered to produce a great silence” (11).

Richard walks by them and thinks of the Polish town of Rzeszów. An archaeologist friend named Peter had told Richard that there were a series of tunnels dug beneath the Town Hall in Berlin, serving as an underground market, just like in Rzeszów. During World War II, citizens had fled into the Rzeszów catacombs, leading Nazis to discover the subterranean tunnels and gas them out with smoke. The Berlin tunnels were not discovered.

A reporter asks a policeman if any of the silent men have collapsed, or whether they are being force fed. He tells her he is not allowed to say, and she protests: “If nothing special happens, I can’t make a story out of it” (12). Some of the silent men have been joined by sympathizers. The men have made a sign they are displaying that reads: “We become visible” (13). 

Richard makes dinner for himself and reflects on the pleasures of living alone. No one disrupts his routine, and “vanity proves to be superfluous baggage” (16). His lover had begun to tease him about his rigid way of doing certain things. He reveals that his wife (who was 3 years old at the time) survived the end of the war after being shot in the legs by the guns of a German plane, as she was running away from Russian tanks. When Richard’s father came home, he did not talk about the war, and Richard was not allowed to ask. Richard and his wife always agreed: “You can never count on freedom from mayhem” (17).

He watches the news and sees the story of the 10 men who are on hunger strike at the Town Hall. One of them has been hospitalized after collapsing. Richard realizes that he had walked right by them and had not noticed them as he thought about Rzeszów. He wonders what it would be like to join them in solidarity: “For him, refusing to eat would be just as capricious as gluttony” (18). The men still refuse to give their names. Richard wonders if the footage of the hospitalized man—filmed being carried away from Alexanderplatz—could be footage from another country, or another time: “Did it even matter if these images flashing past, in tenths of seconds, really shared a time and place with the horrors that gave rise to the reports” (19). He is disturbed that he had not noticed the men on his walk. 

The next day, Richard does various errands and continues to wonder why he hadn’t noticed the men. He calls Peter that night to talk about the history of the tunnels. The next day he continues a routine of chores. It is raining, and he decides he does not want to unpack on a rainy day. That evening, the news reports that “the refugees on hunger strike have been removed from Alexanderplatz” (22). Richard is disappointed. He has found the demonstration to be provocative and intellectually stimulating. He wonders what happened to the sign “We become visible.” 

Over the next two weeks he does nothing besides read the newspapers, watch the news, and do more chores. He wants to know what happened to the 10 protestors, but there are no updates. Richard takes out his Atlas and begins studying Africa. It has far more countries than he had been aware of. He thinks of books his mother used to read to him as a child, typically featuring African cannibals with bones in their noses. In his study, he retrieves a book called Negerliteratur. He reads the first few lines: “The earth is round and completely surrounded by swamp. Behind the swamp lies the land of the bush spirits. Under the earth there is only more earth. What comes after that, no one knows” (24). 

Richard visits a “former school in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district” (25). It is dusk as he wanders through the empty building. But when he reaches the auditorium, he sees refugees sleeping in tents and on thin mattresses on the stage. He counts 70 people rehearsing statements in German and French, explaining where they are from, their type of employment, and their reasons for wanting to stay in Germany. One by one they come to the front of a line and practice. Some of them have lived in the school for eight months. Richard wonders if he should join the line and say his name but realizes that the thought makes him anxious.

There is a loud noise upstairs and the lights go out. The refugees assume that it is a bomb. When the lights come back on, a man begins screaming and throwing mattresses and pillows. Someone stole his laptop from underneath his pillow while the lights were out. Richard leaves. 

Richard is in his garden, wondering if he was cowardly for leaving the school without saying his name. Once the Berlin Wall came down, he lost his bearings and the city became unfamiliar to him, causing him unease wherever he goes. He watches the news and drinks whiskey: “Saying his name, it appeared to him, would have been a sort of confession—at the very least he’d have been confessing his presence at that gathering” (29). He just wants to observe the group and be left in peace. People can lie about their names, so it’s not like anyone would have known he was telling the truth. He asks himself if the truth would have mattered, in any event. 

Richard eats breakfast and listens to Bach. He remembers a lecture he gave called “Language as a System of Signs” (31). He loves the descriptive power of language but reminds himself that words “were never the thing itself” (31). Bach’s music reminds him of stories crossing into each other, stories without words. He walks to the square Oranienplatz and sits on a bench, observing a large group of black refugees and a campground of tents. Accompanying them is a group of young white sympathizers, who “dye their hair with henna, they refuse to believe the world is an idyllic place and want everything to change, for which reason they put rings through their lips, ears, and noses” (33).

A year ago, the bench would have been a spot for relaxation. Now the refugees camping before him have ruined the bench’s purpose. There are no longer any old women feeding pigeons, or young lovers walking through the square, holding hands. He considers writing an essay called “The Transformation of Sitting” (34).

Richard sees a 40-year-old white woman helping the refugees. She shows people where to leave donations of food and gives a donated bicycle to a happy man. A young woman with a microphone approaches her for an interview, but she declines. The interviewer keeps asking her questions anyways, and Richard overhears their conversation. She asks what the men do there all day. The woman says: “Nothing […] When doing nothing gets to be too much for them, we organize a demonstration” (35).

That evening, the news says that a solution for the refugees is forthcoming. Richard is irritated without understanding why. He remembers the white woman explaining to the reporter that negotiations for the refugees’ winter lodgings are underway. He looks at the half of the bed where his wife used to sleep. It is covered in his sweaters, shirts, and slacks. 

Richard spends two weeks “reading several books on the subject of refugees and drawing up a catalog of questions for the conversations he wants to have with them” (38). He wants to learn how one makes the transition to the life of a refugee: “He has to know what was at the beginning, what was in the middle, and what is now” (38). Among the questions he wants to ask are how the people lived in their former countries, whether their families came with them, where they want to be buried, and more. 

As the weather grows colder, the refugees’ tents at Oranienplatz are torn down and the refugees are taken in by various charitable organizations. Richard does not hear about this because he is studying the history of refugees. When he goes to Oranienplatz, there is only one African woman left and the tents are gone. A police officer tells him that the refugees have been divided among three locations, and one of them is in a suburb not far from Richard’s home. They are now being housed in an empty building that belongs to a nursing home.