Emigration
Here is the translation of the second part of “Charlottenstan.” It continues the raw, gritty exploration of Berlin’s underbelly, shifting from the intimate ritual of the first part to a surreal, nightmarish descent into self-destruction and historical trauma.
The second part of the poem “Charlottenstan” by Ivan Treptow is a final and irrevocable choice in favor of self-destruction, where the earth-carousel hurtles on, and the only path is to roll like “cargo, a burden” toward the inevitable end.
Charlottenstan
Part II
Here they are –
Unemployed, carefree, uncomplaining
Berlin bums
Nights and evenings they lie under bridges,
Loitering, having already filled themselves
With beer for a euro,
The one with the red star
Sold nasty and bitter,
But to me – it is a blessing.
It makes me feel good, brings relief.
Hey, make way, brother-bums,
Uncombed, shaggy,
Spiritually rich,
Like enriched uranium,
Like a broken water tap,
From which it pours incessantly,
Like from a Berlin nose in winter.
Look,
All their earthly bum-possessions
Packed into a single supermarket
Cart.
To continue lightly
On the final journey
To paradise.
I join your noble society.
I, the outcast, the devoured,
Submit my application to enter
your bum-masonic lodge
Quite a few of our kind have already
Arrived, tested their fate here by the tooth
Tormented by the city, beaten
By Berlin.
We shall dance with you,
Twitch wildly
Under a linden tree balding from November,
Under the hoarse speaker
Of a dive bar near Treptower Park
Where a certain woman
Forever drunk
Jerks her flesh to the beat of the music
Or just because
In headphones, in silence
Against the S-Bahn crowd.
Sometimes just a little more
And it seems she’ll crash, she’ll hit me
Dragging my feet every evening home alone
On my own thoughts.
Let us self-destruct, brothers!
Enough pretending
Playing the fool, acting
As if there is still a tomorrow.
Tomorrow – bright, murky, dark,
Multicolored,
Like the beer varieties in a Späti window,
Everything is already stolen,
Like jewels from the Louvre,
Impudently by thieves through an open window
Filched.
We ride,
A smelly Grandpa-God right here
Snores,
Sprawled across three S-Bahn seats,
Drool trickles from his blond beard,
Old down jacket torn
Into feathers, into black jacket-grease.
God has aged, he sleeps and watches
Like a blissful movie
The happiness of his children.
They dash across the lawn,
The sun, they have fun, they play,
Living as they were told by
holy Old and New Testament books,
With gusto, without malice.
But outside the window it’s not like that, outside is Berlin
On the night from Friday to Saturday
Rags, pukers, retching wrecks
Circle like crows
Tearing bottles
From Berlin’s trashy, iron-glinting mouth,
Pale German youths
With an unceasing boombox,
Dull and energetic eyes,
Like those of soldiers in an occupation army
At the very start of a war
Tum-tu-ru-rum, l’amour toujours,
They torture my ears,
Testing my endurance.
But it’s all empty,
I nod off, starting to drowse,
Seeing dream-pictures,
Late autumn, something from childhood,
Shadows, trees, the tipsy glint of a streetlamp.
The station! Devil! I overslept!
I scramble out.
Goodbye, Grandpa-God!
It seems you’ve made a flood.
Outside it pours from your heavens,
Though, it’s pouring from your pants too.
God has soiled himself! What a scandal!
War! War is coming! War has arrived!
War is knocking! War is at the door!
The arms and legs of innocent children
Are torn by omnivorous bombs,
Wake up, Grandpa-God!
Look what’s happening!
Do something already, create!
You can turn water into wine
And, they say, a lot more besides.
I shake him.
But he looks out from his sleep
Without understanding
Like an owl.
Devil! Mein Gott! Wrong station.
Click of the door!
Jumped out too early –
Frankfurter Allee
Allee named after Stalin
Before the cult of personality
Was debunked.
The heart of Friedrichshain!
I want to piss out
His name
By the fence where the construction stands still,
It’s so gray and old now,
It probably even remembers Chancellor Schröder.
I want to write out in eternity
The name.
Unbearable.
But I’m not the only wise one.
In this godforsaken corner
It squelches under my boots
Like in a village toilet
A Russian one
The most neglected
As if a monster will leap out of the sludge,
I step over the bricks
And release all the filth
Guzzled down through the night,
It flows and “S” bumps into “T”,
The puddle growls, gurgles, soon it will rise,
But the breath is caught,
But the nose is seized,
But what if a policeman is behind me?
Will catch me, like in childhood, by the scruff of the neck:
Here’s your fine and greetings!
Deportation!
Cell, corridors, the rustle of metal,
Cold on the wrists,
And the plane,
Auf Wiedersehen!
But no –
There is no Stalin to deal with us.
At night to me
Like according to a Deutsche Bahn schedule
The executioner arrives,
I am returning to the homeland.
Quite voluntarily, truth be told,
Out of curiosity, out of boredom,
From the pampered bliss of Europe
Having fled.
Suddenly, for some reason, at a rally
In support of Ramzan Kadyrov.
Blue sky, uniforms of
A celestial color
And the police tenderly
Surround me
And escort me forward,
Friends, unseen for a long time, smile,
A celebration, balloons, portraits, posters!
They wave – farewell!
That’s exactly how it should be.
You wanted this yourself, you came here for this.
What follows next –
In a room narrow and dim,
The executioner is nearby, he’s businesslike,
he’s busy with tasks –
No time for me – well, see ya, soon enough.
To a cot with oilcloth
Another poor wretch is chained,
He mumbles, he quivers
Like a caught butterfly, a trapped bird:
He strives to get out – but it won’t happen –
Bound by straps.
The executioner has pliers in his twisting fingers
Unhurriedly he pulls out
The poor wretch’s teeth.
One by one.
Meanly
Someone whispers in my ear:
“Look –
clever!”
They’ll say later –
his teeth were aching!
He was at the dentist’s!
And the teeth – all gone!
The torture is finished.
And the poor wretch
Catches the air with a black, empty mouth,
His eyes –
White, bottomless cataracts.
They spilled out across the whole width
As a white sea.
His eyes –
Wide open doors.
Horror! Madman! The end!
Here is the translation of the concluding section of Ivan Treptow’s “Charlottenstan.” This final movement ties the personal nightmare of the immigrant to the political reality of Europe, ending in a dizzying, defiant surrender to the “spinning earth.”
“Next!” And away with me –
By the elbows.
And teeth—click—
Click go the straps.
Motherland! They’ve plucked me from your breasts,
Like a potato beetle—from a spud!
Motherland, you appear in dreams impudently, uninvited –
Here I am, here she is!
Later you’ll wash yourself in salty sweat!
The tangled sheets have gone soggy and boiled
At four in the morning –
And it’s neither here nor there,
Neither sleep it off, nor wake up for certain
And the bed has become a bit cramped,
When
These two settled into it –
The Motherland and me.
You eat our bread!
They told us at the Job Center,
Where our kind gets their benefits.
Yes, thank you, but your bread tastes of blood,
Fattened on the entrails of our exile-country,
It goes down poorly,
It has the fuel-oil bitterness of petroleum,
In it is the gas bubble, the Schröder deal,
In it is a nuclear dump with home delivery,
You fattened the beast, you cherished it, raised it,
Petted it gently, slapped its scruff,
Admired it, looked into its eyes –
The little beast has grown, look!
You treated it to Deutsche Marks,
And it roared, gnashing its teeth.
And now you say casually:
You must get used to the fact already,
That in your country –
There is war.
At Schlesi I dropped tears
Salty like halloumi,
Cold as your hands,
As your lifeless, blue fingers,
German beauty,
Having rejected me, having entrusted me
To the care
Of time.
At Kotti
The drunks rubbed together
Who are you? What do you want?
Three of them stopped me
Interrogated me,
Floated like ships
Out of the Berlin fog,
Mugs—what do they look like—covered in spiderweb tattoos,
Swollen with drunkenness,
Beaten,
Washed by Berlin rain like the pavements.
At Bellevue station
I vomit nonstop.
Beautiful views –
Four puddles!
One framed the ticket machine,
Two settled more vilely
By the drink kiosks,
The fourth lies modestly under a bench
Fresh as can be!
Red, with tomato paste
Mother Nature from my gorge
Bore them generously,
Dressing them thickly with gastric juice,
Vile weed!
Knocked me off my feet, a knockout!
An evening of solidarity with Russian dissidents,
Cut short untimely.
It robbed me!
Scram! S-Bahn, rare sideways passengers,
Ordnungsamt, Sicherheitsdienst, Polizei,
They’ll pinch you yet,
The dogs,
A slap on the pocket,
Seems not all is lost yet,
Get the hell out!
Every station
Is won heroically,
Just not to fall asleep, not to drowse off,
Not to collapse on a neighbor,
Not to end up in Grunewald, in Potsdam,
Here it is – Charlottenstan
waiting for a night’s lodging,
Bare, pissed-on bushes by the station,
In some places, a dump has been left on top,
Charlottenstan, Charlottenstan!
Berlin is your charlatan-city,
A city of deceit!
It promised us love, careers,
Instead you get jack shit!
Herr Treptow, let’s go,
Here is your appointment, your ticket – for sleep.
Night, Wilmersdorfer Strasse is pitch black,
Empty as a ghost town,
The shawarma joint has fried all its chickens,
Smoked them,
Life itself was here, but it vanished,
Everything was traded-bought-drunk-eaten-smoked away,
Life is bad! As always—they whined,
How they burned out in their offices,
And now there is no one and nothing,
Only gopnik teenagers
In checkered – knockoff – caps
addressing you: “bruder! bruder!
Warum, bruder?”
Brother! Go eat a dish of shit.
Swine! An old man hisses at us
We are pissing in his entranceway
We are Russians! What a delight
Old man, let us on the threshold,
Or else we’ll fall behind the Gay Pride parade
The dog-people didn’t recognize us at first
Growling-barking,
White bodies, carrying their well-fed bellies,
Collars, muzzles
Spikes
The dogs passed in a column,
We followed them,
We’ll shed the decencies of civilization
On Christopher Street Day!
Heigh-ho!
Come on, little gay boy, don’t be shy!
Vacuum the road quickly!
Tail up!
Blessed be your nose!
The road will be mastered by the one walking!
Oh, the little path!
Past Potsdamer Platz
We fear no pounding of any kind
It’s a bit too early to die yet, boys!
Idleness awaits us at home
What have we done
More rum and coke
Like behind the school in childhood.
Fun, like in Brazil,
But now
Alone in bed,
As in a grave
Am I.
Hello, my black brothers
From Görlitzer Park.
Has the CDU mayor not fenced you in yet
With a high wall?
Do you hate France so much
That you, the francophones,
Made a run for it
Into this grayness — to the Teutons,
Having first left your native Mali or CAR.
“Rusya! Wagner!” – you smile glossily,
Digging up your storage holes
With bright pink palms
In the roots of trees, on glades and wastelands,
Among stinging nettles, maples and burdocks,
Among tourists, the experienced, and suckers
Distributing your jewels,
Pre-packaged
In twenty and thirty grams,
And tossing me another pinch
By right of origin.
Brothers, your gifts are dazzling.
Indeed, I heard,
Someone went blind for a good half hour,
Having consumed them.
Probably, something was mixed then
Into the wondrous herbs,
Chemistry! They’d call them “spices”
In my gloomy homeland
This is a poison worse, perhaps, even than literature,
A poison from which youths go mad,
A poison from which they leave home,
Lose their sight,
Brothers, you aren’t blind, but your eyes are red
And the vessels in them – have you seen?
Burst scarlet, like emergency pipes.
I feel it myself
As I turn into a vessel for sin.
Let us self-destruct, brothers!
The earth will crawl away like a snake from under my feet
Wait, where are you going!
It spins too much,
Daring, nimble, wild,
Like a carousel –
Haven’t you noticed?
And I throw myself, I catch it
The cunning thing.
And I dive into its nettles and burdocks.
I hold it by the scruff, I torment it,
But it doesn’t give in, it chirps away.
Stop!
You’ve carried us away far too far already,
Even too far!
In childhood I dreamed of walking around you, seeing you all,
But I didn’t count on
It turning out like this,
That I myself would become an emigrant
Without work, without a homeland,
Even love itself died
In the bushes of Grunewald
In childhood I only read about such vagabonds in old novels.
Stop! Enough spinning, enough playing the fool!
But it doesn’t listen!
So, I will roll to spite you, to defy you
From sunset to sunrise.
As cargo, as a burden,
So that it becomes harder for you to bear me.
And I roll.
From side to side, like a top, a sausage, a ball.
The black brothers laugh. They know for certain now:
This foolish earth
Is unstoppable, such is its turbulent nature,
No matter how much of its grass you destroy or smoke.
Text: Ivan Treptow
Photo: Alisa Istomina