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The streets around the Ohlsdorf Cemetery are not served by commonplace shops and stores. For a radius of a mile, one finds only tombstones, caskets and wreaths. Ordinary neighbourhoods have roadside displays of fruit and vegetables; these shops specialise in the accoutrements of Death. Ranks of diversely-clad marble headstones parade in pavement plots, decorated with a biblical abundance of quotations and pithy inscriptions. The dozens of florists deal mostly in tributes. Even the shops in the station entrance will not allow you to forget that life is a one-way ticket. My personal favourite has a sign reading: “A funeral doesn’t have to cost a fortune — DISCOUNT COFFINS HERE.” On Sundays and the special days Germany has set aside for her dead (I cannot think of many that are set aside for the living), coach-loads of old women in hats invade Ohlsdorf. They hunt for bargain caskets and inhabit the tea-rooms. Undertakers terrorise the pedestrians in their high-powered hearses. It’s a morbid place to go about the business of living, you might think, but a reassuring one if you are on your last legs, in the knowledge that there isn’t far to go. Some nights, when I am lying awake in bed, I see the cemetery gates in my mind’s eye; ornately curved under a full moon. * Two years ago, in October, I arrived back from a short trip to Nashville that had thrown me like an unbroken stallion. On the flight I took a trembling pledge to give up drinking. Opal was there to greet me at Hamburg airport. I remember being overwhelmed by strange faces as the automatic doors slid open and I emerged at ‘Arrivals Terminal 4’. I had brought Jean-Paul Gaultier perfume for her and a bottle of duty-free Glenfarclas whisky for myself. There would be time for abstinence, I persuaded myself, in the winter months to come. Opal was driving. “It matures in sherry casks,” I said. She was wearing one of her shortest skirts and I slid my left hand with a gentle hiss along her thigh at the traffic lights. “How about you, Sam?” she asked. “Any danger of you maturing in the foreseeable future? A couple of years back we talked about having children. Ring any bells? What about getting married?” I just grinned and rolled my hand over the contours into the warmth between. “What would I go and do a thing like that for? You’ve never done me any harm. But since you mention sex — let’s go and see Antonio at Wa-Yo. I haven’t had any decent sushi for weeks.” Over sushi and sake, Opal spoke her mind. “I entrusted you with my love and you lost it. I never wanted to be anything but a friend to you, to be with you sometimes; no more than that. And I didn’t want you to expect any more of me than that. I gave you love because that’s what I felt for you. So we both had some of it; we shared it like friends. But you got complacent. You began to think of my love as a matter of course. And you’ve corrupted not only yourself with your drinking; you’ve corrupted my love with it, too.” She was not only eloquent, she was right. I had taken her for granted; as the coming winter is betrayed by the harsh laughter of ravens in the cemetery. *
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