LETTER TO DANNY FLYNN NEVER SENT
Date unknown. Also: Danny moved away from Worple Road in Wimbledon where we lived together like hateful lovers. He tolerated me. I drank much milk, he called me the calf. I was yet young, while Dan was just a poet. He printed his beloved words by hand on those pressing machines (like squashing waffles) in that funny little adjoining room. That was his job. He introduced me to Leonard Cohen, until I was a louder fan than he was. When number 182 belonged to Leonard, Dan grew sick of us both. Also, he found my little cat killed in the road, who I buried in the rain in our garden. Nora looked on from her place at the fence. We all cried that day. And once, the balcony collapsed, and another time, I dug up half the garden to kill the Devil Weed. Do you remember the Devil Weed, Danny? I remember you well - and those were the days... When Krisztina came to London I took her to meet you, but the house was dark and empty, shrouded in thin moonlight and scaffolding. Are you still there somewhere, under your tin toys and record collection? Your girlfriend in pig-tails, did you ever tell her you were celibate?
I loved you badly Dan (though better than some others).
Dear Dan,
Never mind that.
How's things? How's your thing?
Stop.
I must be careful not to write a letter you've already written.
I could write about me, but that would be dull for both of us. I know all that stuff anyway. Or I could write about you, like: how's your thing? But that would be dull for me until I received a reply, and then I wouldn't be here to read it. I'm going North. That's exaggerating. I'm not going further than Norway. Further than that and you need to be able to swim through icebergs, or fly over them, and I can't even ride a bike. All the bikes in Berlin have been stolen, so how should I learn? And how can I swim through something I've never seen? Even if I could swim? I do know what its like to be ice-cold in Kreuzberg. Its like a perfect Summer's day under an empty sky, only its minus fifteen degrees inside the trousers. But the outside is more bright and sparklish clear actually than a really good summers day.
Stop.
Summer in Paris is even more noisy. But the sky is a boring blue. Most of it hangs around the Eiffel Tower, though there are bits of sky over other parts of Paris, like the street-corner where they teach passing foreigners to say "Pssst! You wanna la sheeet?". But that's not real Paris sky. Real Paris sky is on postcards of the real Eiffel Tower, sold by shining Moroccans under the big cardboard Eiffel Tower. There you can have your photograph taken with a plume in your hat, and have it stolen, then buy it back at a hundred times the price from a waiter who once played an aristocrat in a Truffaut movie.
Stop.
Here in Berlin, there's a sheep at this bar - a bar called 'Om'. I see he's been stuffed, over my hot grog and honey. I told him about the exhibition of marionettes I had here in the back room that first Christmas, but he just looks at me from his post by the iron umbrella fountain. He has a twig stuck in his mouth and a spike stuck in his belly to keep him up. People stroke him affectionately as they clammer for grog, flapjacks and very dark beer. He's an easy going sheep. His legs aren't right and there's a spike in his belly, but he smiles always and never leaves in a huff. His German is a little rusty, too. We have other things in common. My friend is all white, but dirty, except for his face, which is painted grey and clean-shaven. Drunken women like to push him over. They laugh, then stand him up good-naturedly as if he were the drunk one!
Sincerely,
Stop.
