Dear Reader,
I’m on my way home from Berlin. I’ve written 20,000 words of the third novel in the Double O series, browsed 7 bookshops, rummaged flea markets, gone in quest of gluten-free currywurst and cake, enjoyed museums and galleries and walked the lakeshore. I could get used to this.
I’ve been staying at the Literary Colloquium Berlin on Lake Wannsee, the inspiration for Felix Leiter’s home in Double or Nothing. LCB has a particularly Berlin history. Built for a wealthy industrialist in the late nineteenth century across from the villa where the Nazis would later plot The Final Solution, the building was turned post-war into a hotel and casino for American soldiers, and then in 1963 it was dedicated to literature. It’s closer to Potsdam than the centre of Berlin and seems to belong to the lake and the forests; but still most evenings 200 or so people turn up to listen to authors. Upstairs, bedrooms that make you wish walls could talk – or maybe not – host writers working on new projects. The whole place has a feeling of peaceful productivity, a well-oiled machine with art for a heart.
It would be easy for me to hate or fear Berlin. Ian Fleming writes in Thrilling Cities: ‘I left Berlin without regret. From this grim capital went forth the orders that in 1917 killed my father and in 1940 my youngest brother.’ From this city also went the orders that murdered my family in the Holocaust. However, the contradictions and complexities are what draw me. It’s a city where the present negotiates with history in plain sight, a palimpsest that inspired me to write Testament, and inspires me every time I visit.
What is a writing residency exactly? You exit stage left from regular life, leaving behind emails that want answering and To Do lists not done, and after a little while you don’t care so much about them. Think of the shower Sean Connery takes in Dr. No (I mean as a general rule, just think of it): off with all that radioactive stuff. Cleansed of everyday work and worries, your characters are now your only company and slowly but surely the story that seemed stubborn and stuck spills onto the page. Immersion, like Dr. No in the nuclear bath, only less screaming.
A balance of spontaneity and ritual helps me write. Most of the time, we can’t really be spontaneous. I can’t just decide to write instead of teach class. And, having settled down to write, I feel foolish to say it’s not working and go out. But it’s this spontaneity that helps me. If you want to write for three days straight and lose all track of time, do it. If you want to rise from the desk and sally forth into town, do it. If once you’re in town the idea coheres and you want to write in a café instead of exploring, do it.
Counterbalanced against this is ritual. I like to build up my little ways. Each morning, I’d carry a tote downstairs with a book and an empty 2 litre mineral bottle, which I’d pop by the sink. Then I’d make a gigantic Berlin Breakfast, perfecting when to boil the kettle, how many teaspoons I’d need for jams and yoghurts, the level of milk in the jug, and carry it on a tray to the Winter Garden, where I’d read and watch the boats on the lake. Then back to the industrial-sized kitchen, fill up the water, make a second tea and take the lift to avoid spillage on the grand stairs, using my little finger and heel to open the door to the bedrooms.
Ritual. Spontaneity. Nest-making. Flying to gather the feathers.
On the days when I duly sallied forth, I picked a different neighbourhood, from Kreuzberg or Checkpoint Charlie – which is still, as Fleming wrote, ‘full of past and present screams’, somehow temporary and desolate, resisting the KFCs and McDonalds, a death strip that now feels like a motorway – to Prenzlauer Berg and Freidrichshain. If you’ve read Thrilling Cities, you’ll remember Fleming writes up his tips on hotels, bars and ‘out-of-the-ways’ in a list titled ‘INCIDENTAL INTELLIGENCE.’ So for paying subscribers below, please enjoy my incidental intelligence on Berlin. (Regrettably, my list involves fewer establishments where you have to knock three times and ask for Franz.)
I want to mention Holocaust Memorial Day. I went to Checkpoint Charlie (where I was deeply moved by the panoramic installation by Yadegar Asisi) and then to Brandenburg Tor, crossing where The Wall once stood to circle The Reichstag and then end up at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. I gave a prayer to my ancestors as the sun set over the sea of stone blocks, a rising tide of graves.
Then I washed up on the comforting shores of Hotel Adlon. It wasn’t the first time. I found beauty and solace here when I was researching Testament: realising the ice cream sold on the champagne terrace was the same price as the nearby chain, I tentatively took a chair and ordered one scoop because that was all I could afford. The waiter was concerned: ‘Just one scoop? No toppings? No champagne?’ No to all three, just one scoop and a glass of tap water please. Reader, you’ve never seen a more exquisitely presented single scoop of ice cream with tap water on the side in your life. There was a coupe glass. There was a chocolate button stamped with gold.
This moment became a scene for Johanna Harwood in Double or Nothing, for which I drew on Fleming’s descriptions of Hotel Adlon in Thrilling Cities, written back when it was a den of spies. And now here I am writing the third novel in the Double O Series. This time, I walk into the hotel with confidence and order a pot of hot chocolate. The waiter is concerned: ‘No cake?’ No thanks: a whole pot of melted chocolate seems sufficient for my sugar levels and bank account. She sneaks cake onto my plate anyway. This hotel, with its live piano and smooth marble that belies its history, has become a comforting coordinate on my map of writing.
And finally, some lovely news. While I was in Berlin, I found out that my latest novel A Wild & True Relation is on the shortlist for the Winston Graham Historical Prize. I celebrated by seeking gluten-free crepes in east Berlin. When the manager delivered the perfect circle of sunshine onto my table, I shouted an involuntary: ‘Ah ha!’– very much as if I had just solved a crime.
From Kim, With Love x
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