The Narrator

Born in the South German provinces of the BRD, the Narrator, who keeps his name carefully secret, has lived in the Wilmersdorf section of West Berlin for 20 years, drawn by the allure of a big city, a girlfriend, Lena, and an exemption from the army. The year-by-year stay becomes permanent. He lives rather spartanly in an apartment house built ca. 1900, whose outer walls are still marked by bullet holes from either the 1920s or World War II. The ground floor front apartments are leased to bars serving very different but equally destructive clientèles. The Narrator cannot differentiate the garbage thrown out by the owners, one German and the other Bolivian. It dissuades him from visiting either establishment. He meets few fellow tenants, but knows them by the noise they make. One is an ancient violinist whose repertoire the Narrator likes. When he dies, the Narrator endures...