Berlin Walls, Hipsters & Haikus, Mike Marino [the false prince series TXT] 📗

her father and Ingrid Bergman. I admit to having a huge crush on her since “Casablanca” so Sibyll humored me on that point.  

 

Sibyll and I had weathered many political storms and engaged in protest, riots and the counterculture merry go round ride from Paris to London to Amsterdam as we Amsterdammed it, and back again to the ghost bunkers of Berlin.

 

Now, I faced a more daunting task. How to change a diaper! Something to do with forming triangles and using safety pins so that were joined as one entity inharmonious synchronization (This was damned near a trigonometry test!) to gather the refuse of babies after a full jar of Gerbers plum pudding, sickly green veggies or tapioca.   Ever notice how often babies smell like tapioca?

 

Breastfeeding is about as natural an act as a human can perform and Sibyll was a damn good performer. When it came time to breastfeed, she was Josephine Baker doing her famous cabaret Banana Dance! I admit to all of a sudden having a craving for some fresh sibyl milk versus a stein full of  beer, mainly because her milk dispenser was a hell of a a lot sexier than a spigot on a aged keg!

 

As for the gallery, I assumed the bulk of the workload so she could devote her time to Guntar and Ingrid. I was a whiz at writing and directing plays and being the Zeus of PR, but when it came to potty training I was a complete wreck.  

 

By 1983 the Gallery was pretty well known for its eclectic compost of artists and bonafide weirdos of every strip. Weird in the eyes of the established citizenry. We featured works by homosexual artists and homosexual themes, women’s liberation art was prolific and abundant...the times were changing with such  rapidity it made your head spin with or without an exorcist standing nearby.

 

Even the Soviet Union with Gorbachev at the helm of the ship of state was being to see it’s Iron Curtain fray and tear in spots such as in Poland with it’s  Solidarity movement giving a fuel injection to other soviet Bloc countries to give the Motherland the middle finger

 

One day in 1985 when I was setting up a gallery display of Sibyll’s latest artwork  I got a frantic phone call from Sibyll’s sister, who was visiting at the time.

 

I raced upstairs and what I encountered turned my blood cold. Sibyll ws sitting on the floor in complete physical disarray holding a butcher knife screaming that  our two children were from space and out to kill her along with the flying cows coming at her from the trees outside.

 

It was the beginning of her nervous breakdown and the doctor’s diagnosis of schizophrenia. I and her sister talked to the docs and the best course of action was to have her committed to the the West Berlin Asylum as a patient.

 

For the next four years I would visit every other day and when I took the children it was on sunny days when we were allowed to take her for walks outside on the grounds. I never wanted them to see her in her small cubicle of a room nor hear the wailing and screaming of the other ward patients.

 

I was now a single parent in one respect but those kids needed there mama and when around her they brought life to her eyes, while she filled their hearts with love as I hid my tears as best I could/

 

I also made sure we made small trips to Cologne to visit Guntar and Ingrid’s grandparents on their small farm, sharing a beer with Herr kalff watching the little ones  enjoy life feeding the sheep and horses and planting seeds to watch food grow. They were wonderful pleasant days. I enjoyed their company immensely.

 

Soon, the land that Marx built was about to  come crumbling down. 1989 to be exact.

 

The twins were now 16, and like their parents, had that fuel injection of art and activism running full throttle through them. They were both A students in school and joined the drama club and debate team always taking the Devil’s Advocate approach to things. A chip off the old blocks.

 

Once a week I was allowed to stay overnight with Sibyll were she would joke about her schizophrenia and ask which of her personalities I wanted to make love too? Decisions, decisions! I’d tell her all of them and would let her know who rocked my sheets teh best!

 

Then it happened.  The Wall was coming down! Thousands were out on both sides, East and West with sledge hammers and any tool that would bring the damned thing to its knees. Germany would now soon be unified, families together who hadn’t seen each other for decades, all would be one once again.

 

That first day Sibyll and I sat up in her bed that overlooked the Wall and held each other close. We had been waiting for this day and now the scene below seemed so surreal yet it was real.

 

One sight we weren’t ready for was the sight of our own 16 year old twins joining the crowd ripping the wall to shreds…

 

“There you go Baby,” I said proudly to her. “Makes a parent proud. We done good!”

 

Sibyll smiled an sunk her head deep on my shoulder. “Yes, we did. Now I can rest!”

 

At that  point I decided to go join the kids and grab some photos for a new display I already envisioned. Once on the street with the kids we looked up to her room and waved...she waved back with a sad smile. After a half an hour I took the kids to dinner along with their aunt who would watch them for me this evening while I would spend the night with Sibyll..a victory celebration. Around 7 PM  I went back to her room which was eerily quiet. She was lying in bed so I gently crawled in to hold her and could feel her breathing contentedly. She never stirred...soon she stopped breathing.

 

I panicked and tried to wake her to no avail. “Nurse! Nurse! We need help in here!”

 

Nurses and orderlies came fast. One of the orderlies saw an empty bottle of barbiturates on the floor. “This was a full bottle this morning, a new prescription!” he informed/

 

I guess she knew she would never be cured and the pain of her affliction coupled with growing depression caused her to take her own life. It’s hard when you’re not in that person’s shoes to fathom why suicide is the path they chose...a husband who loved her madly, two beautiful kids that would have families someday..but it happens.

 

In one day we saw the Berlin Wall come down and the woman I loved died in my arms and I was helpless to stop it. In effect...my world came crumbling down that same day…  

Chapter Fourteen - The Aftermath

 

Berlin Chapter - Fourteen

The Aftermath

After Sibyll died, I continued with the gallery for 10 more years. By 1999 all the friends and artists we had known, enjoyed, promoted and made love to were now quite successful in their various fields of endeavors. The poets were waxing poetic,  the prosers were popular if not cult status writers of note, the painters used a brush and canvas as their political and social justice weapon of choice.

 

My writing was now making a living for me and had debated returning to America after Sibyll’s death as Berlin held too many memories for me to carry or care about living. I contemplated suicide myself, but one look at the sweet faces of Guntar and Ingrid, the twins I immediately changed my mind. They had arrived at that transition age of 16 where rebellion and angst meet in a torrential waterfall of emotion. Besides they loved their grandparents and aunt so didn’t want to wrench them from that environment. Plenty of time for that later when they flew the nest on their own.

 

As 1999 approached, ten years after Sibylls demise the kids, kids? Excuse me the spawn of myself and Sibyll were all grown up and now on their own. Ingrid was working in NYC for the BBC World News Network, North America Bureau as head of research and story development. Guntar was the Bohemian, just like his mama. He, I am proud to say was a musician with his own band, appropriately called the Cold War, and also an actor, mainly in small venues doing remakes of Bertolt Brecht and his Marxist philosophy in Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin. Ingrid was working as well on documentaries on migrant workers and political asylum refugees in Europe.

 

Sibyll would have been proud!

 

Today I live in London. Ingrid now works in London at the BBC and Guntar now is an accomplished playwright.

 

The best part is I now have grandchildren and a son and daughter in law who love their spouses with the same fire Sibyl and I had for each other so long ago.

 

Sibyll would give her best coyote howl to celebrate her family. No, I didn’t commit suicide and now just waiting to join her when it’s my time and she calls for me…..until then I find life in her spirit, our two children and our grandkids she never met….

 

When I do see her….I’ll her all about them and how she lives on...in them...

Imprint

Publication Date: 06-11-2018

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
Dedicated to the Boomer Generation and all the street fighting men and women who stood up for human rights...