A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones Page A

Hagi, so Yukio could meet my family and see our pottery. We went together to the old kilns, which pock the hillsides like caves, and to the pottery museum and the ruins of the old castle. And then we stood by the ocean, and tastedthe tang of salt in the air. I told Yukio my theories about the curious scent that is history, and the way objects carry time, and my belief that powdered green tea spiralling in a pale Hagi cup is for me the supreme image of all possible images. I had never told anyone these things before. Yukio listened, and understood.
    â€˜And then – this is a true story – one day we were standing facing the sea together and a butterfly appeared. It must have been windswept across the waves. It came speeding towards us, a patch of bright orange, and flew past; and just as quickly, it was gone, it disappeared from the field of our vision. It was a sign, we both agreed. It was a moment we have talked of often, when we both turned and peered into the distance, with the wind and the waves crashing behind us, looking to check that what we saw was a real thing, a true orange butterfly, and not a figment or an illusion that we had conjured together. High brown fritillary – Fabriciana adippe – I think that’s what it was.’
    â€˜The butterfly?’ asked Victor.
    â€˜Yes, the butterfly. High brown fritillary. But this one was orange.’
    â€˜You can google it,’ added Yukio.
    They were quiet now. There was a gleam, a polish, that surrounded them all, Cass thought. Light from the crossed lamps collected them in a primitive and artful arrangement. The storyteller against death. The retrieval of a few lucky images from the semi-darkness of the past. There was no irony here, no superior whatever to the presence of others. She thought at this unlikely moment of Karl’s massive hands gently but firmly on Marco’s shoulders, the blue veins prominent and bulging, the sausage fingers pressing down,the fan of each hand seeming to command the jerking body beneath it to halt and recover.
    Mitsuko looked pleased with herself. She was absentmindedly fiddling with the imitation pansies in her pink hair, relaxed and newly social now that her telling was done. She plucked one, reshaped the petals in finicky pulling actions, then placed it back in its jumble. They were all watching as she performed what might have been, in its elegant simplicity, a Zen ceremony dedicated to the worship of cherry blossoms. The hovering silence that followed was like that of a sleeping household, all at rest, all self-enclosed, all comfortably dreaming their own dreams.

7
    After Mitsuko’s speech, they decided they were irrevocably committed, and that each remaining story should swiftly follow. It was Marco who suggested it, speaking as if a social experiment was taking place. Each would consent, following Victor and Mitsuko’s example, to revelation. Earlier, rather than later, so that none would suffer a relative advantage or disadvantage of knowing. It was an acceleration, he said, of the usual processes of friendship; it was a narrative artifice to which they might all pledge their mysteries.
    Gino snorted. ‘Pledge our mysteries? Jesus, this sounds like the church.’
    Marco was unperturbed. ‘Why does “mysteries” make you anxious? Why not pretend for the duration that we are all mysterious to each other?’
    â€˜I like scepticism,’ he responded, ‘though I am flagrantly superstitious.’
    They were staring at each other in a fraternal challenge. Victor was delighting in their argument and hoping for more; Mitsuko and Yukio were both uncomfortably silent.
    â€˜Fine. Let us hear of your scepticism and superstition.’
    â€˜No mysteries.’
    â€˜No mysteries. Not a single one. We shall abolish all mysteries.’
    Now they were smiling at each other. Something in their shared past had resurfaced to trouble and interrupt the present. Marco was