East German TV
written by: Patrick McAteer
The tail end of the dream remains with me. In it, I recall leaving a house with a group but branching off on my own at a large shopping mall. I require several food items. It’s late, and thus the broad thoroughfare appears almost empty, but then at the very back of the complex, sitting on a parapet, a young man comes into view. I would usually see him with his friends and always felt tense, waiting for one of them to make a derisive comment, which would invariably be followed by coarse laughter as I passed.
A friend of mine appears and immediately enquires whether I know the young man. The teenager feebly lifts a hand towards him in recognition. Carlo proceeds over before introducing him, adding in a low voice that the boy had been ill and missed a lot of school. As I think about it, I decide he is right. I had not seen his face for a long time. The young man appears pale and withdrawn. Carlo goes on to say that he had failed English in his exams and then suggests as to whether I would be prepared to give him grinds. I nod and hand the young fellow my card whilst I mull over the question in my mind. I am trying to decide whether I should charge him or not. I switch my gaze to the azure waters outside the large glass panel. There are several objects floating in the ocean. I see that one of these is a hammered metal object shaped like a fish with fins and eyes painted, bobbing up and down as it slowly negotiates the waves. Further to my right, in the distance, I see a young man calling out a name as he wades up to his waist in the water. He suddenly keels over with a splash, only to arise holding an animated fuzzy dog. He cries out gleefully, what sounds like a dog’s name, amidst all the splashing. It is at this point I awake, but somehow feel that all will be well.
11.08.26
My sleep had been broken in the wee hours. Due to the heat, I had left the window open. A pair of voices talking garbage had broken the night’s silence. A man who spoke English with an American accent and a woman who spoke English with a German twang. Many of the young people here speak what is known as Denglisch, which is mostly English with a few German words thrown in. To a native’s ear, it sounds hollow and bland. I toyed with the idea of getting dressed and going down and requesting they move on, but I was tired, and the voices began to mute into the distance. Silence having been restored, I drifted back to sleep.
I arose later than I would normally and began to turn a lever on a coffee grinder. Once the pot was ready, I left it on the stove and grabbed my son’s bike. He is on holiday, so I didn’t think he’d mind if I borrowed it. I stopped off at the bottle bank. There were a few tiny shards of glass on the pavement, and so I dismounted and carefully placed the bottles into their respective iron domes. I hopped on again and turned left onto Hermann-Liebmann-Straße, at which point I noticed a line of bicycles in single file separated in alternate distances, heading towards me as they followed the curving road. The spectacle was to me like beads in a necklace being turned sporadically by a female’s long, invisible fingers.
Subsequently, I turned right off the road down a path, through a tree-lined park, across the zebra crossing, past another small park on my right, and tenement buildings on my left. A tram had come to a halt on Prager Strasse, and so I had the chance to go across with the traffic having backed up behind. I wove a way over the four lanes before coming to a halt. Having locked my bike, I proceeded past a man puffing a blue plume of smoke whilst studying his phone. The florist inside is gone and has been replaced with a trolley pick-up / setting-down area. I worried a little about the assistant in the shoe shop opposite, now having to get used to such a sight instead of the inoffensive reds, pinks, yellows, and blues raising their heads from black buckets. Inside, I grabbed a basket and began my way around. A blond lady, who was also carrying a basket, crossed my path once more in the sweets aisle. She was carrying a few extra pounds around her waist as she stepped closer to the shelf where she began to survey the packets of gummy bears.
I noted that the Polish beer was on offer, so I grabbed a can of Tyskie. Having spotted the lady at the checkout desk, I made a snap decision to go instead to the unmanned checkout. I know her as she always has the early shift, and I feel uncomfortable when she smiles at me. I begin to scan the items. A funny buzz is emitted when I put the can of beer through. Having passed through all items, a message pops up telling me that a member of staff has been alerted and to wait before proceeding. It can only be that can of booze. The self-service assistant is tending to someone else. An elderly man’s shaky voice is heard above the peeps, announcing that he only wished to check out eight normal bread rolls, but the more expensive ones appear to have been rung up. Finally, she comes my way and swipes her card before typing in her magical number.
The transaction complete, I scan my receipt and a glass door disappears into a shaft, allowing me to vacate the premises. Up ahead, a lady with a tiny dog enters a barber shop. The young Arabic fellow greets her warmly, but then quickly eyes her dog with suspicion.
Once outside, I am glad to see that the bike has not been stolen. I proceed again through the park but dismount so as to be able to walk up the incline. Ivy clings to the building to my right. I decide to sit for a moment on a bench, and as I do, I turn to investigate the persistent cawing emanating from a rooftop. There are three crows on an old TV antenna. They stop their racket in the knowledge that they are being observed.
The aerial is a relic of the past and is similar in structure to those in Ireland used to receive BBC, ITV, and Channel 4. My parents never had one, so we had to make do with the one channel, RTÉ, on a black and white telly. I would often look in awe at the BBC aerial on our neighbour’s house, Mrs. Webster. Her daughter Valerie, with flowing blonde hair, was very pretty, but it was hard to get so much as a glimpse of her behind the high hedges. I occasionally caught the flicker of a different world through their net curtains as I passed their house on the way back from the pub, having bought a box of matches.
West German television had been banned in the former GDR, but the average East German was inventive and managed to assemble the necessary components to erect such an aerial. Subsequently, they were able to watch programmes from across the divide. The socialist government was no doubt aware of this, but as it was done on such a mass scale, they chose to look the other way. The wall came down, but now East Germans feel largely isolated from what goes on in the Bundestag or, indeed, that which is transmitted over cables. There is a certain nostalgia for the simplicity of the old East German programmes. However, like Ireland, you never know what you have until it is taken away from you. That is why I am glad for the nights when my mind turns a dial, attempting to shut out the static in order to get a colour reception, even if there is no sound, while the crows bounce and turn on the metal rods standing erect above the chimney.
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