Rupture in Being: The Pope Meets Baby Dee
During his German tour, the Pope visited the headquarters of hedonism: the Berlin dance club "Berghain"
BY MICHAEL RINGEL
Sven Marquardt had seen it all. The Berghain bouncer, who scared people with his face-piercings and tattoos, laughed scornfully.
Only the other day, two young tourists had had the balls to wave a bill in front of his nose, hoping he would let them in. The two Spanish kids had waited in line for seven hours, only to be turned away. Idiots!
But these two birds beat everything. Looked like priests. Both dressed completely in black. One of them wore red shoes, obviously handmade. On the head, stiffly groomed gray hair. Made like father and son.
Everyone knew he never, ever granted admission to couples.
The bouncer thought of the ruckus in the Dark Room last week and the trouble it had caused. He was just about to mutter his usual 'Not a chance' to the two priest impersonators when the elder raised his hand.
Expensive ring, the bouncer thought, when a ray of light from the Star of the South glinted off the gold ring and blinded him. A choir filled his ears. Jubilant voices sounded in his head. The mighty bouncer froze and let the strange couple pass.
The idea had come from Georg Gänswein, the Pope's Personal Secretary. Late at night at the Vatican, reading the homeland papers, he had seen in the Süddeutsche that a tourist in Berlin was quoted as saying: "The Berghain is to Berlin what the Vatican is to Rome and what the Pyramids are to Egypt".
The Holy Father had frowned. "Don Georg", Benedict XVI had said, employing half-jokingly the nickname that the female housekeepers used for his personal secretary: "Don Georg, was ist das? Das Berghain?" Slightly rattled, Monsignor Gänswein, who normally displayed a broad range of worldly knowledge, promised he would investigate in the morning.
The very next evening he gave a lengthy lecture on the so-called "best club in the world", which had apparently given Berlin its reputation as the center of hedonism. He, Gänswein, had read things about this hellhole that brought a blush of shame to his cheeks. "Oh, Gänswein, Gänswein," said Benedict, smiling. "You are such a babe in the woods."
But Benedict could not let the matter rest. The suggestion that Holy Mother Church was out of touch with the world nagged at the man who wore the shoes of the fisherman. Two thousand years of tradition weighed heavily on his shoulders.
Benedict would have given anything to be once more the little Joseph, who frolicked amid bees and flowers in the garden of his childhood home in Bavaria. A cheerful lad, who gave himself totally to love.
Monsignor Gänswein hatched a daring plan. On the first evening of the German trip, after all the official events were over, the Holy Father and he would slip out of their sleeping quarters at the papal nuncio in Berlin-Neukölln.
And so it came to pass that, late that night, Gänswein swore the janitor of the papal embassy to absolute secrecy—just to be on the safe side, threatening him with eternal damnation—and borrowed his yellow Fiat 500.
He picked up Benedict, waiting impatiently in the gloom at the back door, and the two clerics, giddy with excitement and a touch of fear, took off for the Ostbahnhof, the location of this "Berghain", this mysterious Vatican of Berlin.
Today there would be a concert by a Catholic girl from America. She went by the wondrous name Baby Dee, and later there would be an "after party," Gänswein, who had goose bumps, explained to the Pope in the passenger seat. Benedict smiled in anticipation.
Flashes, colors, sounds. In complete ecstasy Benedict XVI stood before the swaying mass, soaking up the flashing lights and the rhythmic hammering. Although he was now as deaf as a post, he could feel the bass rolling towards him from the wall, taking possession of his body and casting a spell on him.
His heart turned over. If his personal physician, Doctor Polisca, were to take his pulse, he'd faint. Beat by beat, the sound flooded the Bishop of Rome, who could neither hear nor see. He was aware only of his feet in his red shoes, which, all by themselves, propelled him into the midst of the ecstatic crowd. Benedict began to spin...
Gänswein stood at the toilets. Fascinated, he observed how males and females alike used the same restroom. Some of them disappeared into a more remote area, which the reluctant Monsignor was drawn to as if by magic.
Inside stood a beautiful muscular man in a white undershirt, who reminded Gänswein of a road worker he had seen once on the Autobahn on the way to Lourdes. Bravely he stumbled forwards. "Dark one, let me have a go", murmured the bodybuilder before he followed the secretary into the Dark Room of Knowledge.
Meanwhile, Benedict danced in a trance. Not since reading Dante's "Divine Comedy"—in the original, of course—had he been so taken by a work of art. He was overcome by this wave of music, light, images, arms, thighs and breasts.
And then he saw her. It was she! Benedict dropped the last of his holiness. His heart fluttered like a jellyfish freed from the ocean floor. Against the light, at first he saw only her delicate silhouette, then he saw her ebony skin.
This must be Baby Dee! Or was it Mother Mary? Or was it both in one? Benedict was completely disoriented. Even a quick, short prayer, mumbled rather routinely, could not restrain his wild longing for... —love, yes, that was it, true love, pure and ennobling, had him in its grip.
When the beautiful woman placed a gentle hand on his arm, Benedict could no longer resist. He pulled her close and planted an ardent kiss on her plump lips...
Before the bells rang the first Angelus, the four night revelers had squeezed into the little yellow Fiat—Benedict and Baby Dee, Don Georg and the bodybuilder, who now introduced himself as Mario from Rostock. "I am an organ builder, and you?" he asked the Pope. "I am but a simple worker in the Berghain, the Berghain—the holy mountain forest—of the Lord", Benedict said, chuckling.
"Guys, I know where to go", shouted Mario. And so it happened that the unlikely quartet watched the sunrise together, arm in arm, on top of the Kreuzberg. Benedict XVI felt that, during the seventh spring of his life, his quest for everlasting love had come to a happy ending in Berlin.
Translation of Michael Ringel's Dammriss im Dasein, Berliner Tageszeitung, September 24, 2011