Berlin Is Not Yours

Abandoned by his lover, a man sits, locked in his bedroom, poring obsessively through an out-of-date guidebook.  The book describes Berlin, the city where his lover now lives.  As he traces, ever more doggedly, the imagined footsteps of his lover through a city on the other side of the world, the chaos and disorder in his room grows overwhelming, reflecting the acid confusion of a pained soul left cruelly behind.

Berlin is a city I know nothing about, but there are clues here.  Traces of you.  In a city I know nothing about, except that it’s fifty-two degrees latitude north and thirteen degrees longitude west.  There it is, motionless, like an object on the Earth.  It doesn’t move from there.  It’s fixed there and silent, except for the noises from the cars and from the industrial chimneys contaminating the sky that you’re looking at, terrified, through the windows that you hide behind.  You’re thirty-four degrees above sea level.  Thousands of metres from me.

This translation of Berlin Is Not Yours was commissioned for the Royal Court Theatre’s 2006 International Residency.

Playtext available from Sangría Editorial here.

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