Werner: Empty Bottles

A man, lying on the bench. He seemed asleep, perhaps he was dead. That couldn't be, he was in motion still. Fingers twitched, spread outwards ever so slightly then closed. His chest heaved, once powerful lungs expanding and contracting. The wrinkles around his eyes were deep, torturous, scars of a hard life. The eyelids fluttered like the wings of a butterfly. He was an old man, in his 70's maybe, solid in build but weathered by the onslaught of time. On the floor, next to his reclining figure were a dozen beer bottles, all of them empty.

Long ago, his youthful vigour had disappeared. The once clear complexion without lines or blemishes, had faded into distant memory. Even he could not remember now, the days of his youth. Images from the past paraded through his mind but were distorted, mutated, like the broken film reel found in the dusty attic. Faces of those he once knew splintered into those he saw staring at his tattered clothing.

When he was awake, drinking beer after beer, in a drunken haze, he had watched people walking past. The bench was situated a few metres off the main road in a miniature park, therefore he was able to observe from a distance. From beneath the trees he had seen the mass of arms and legs, merging into one another, creating a fog that eventually sent him to slumber.

As I glanced at his large belly protruding from beneath his dark green jumper, I saw not an old drunkard but a baby being held by it's mother, close to her breast. The loving eyes that had once looked down upon his forehead, the soft fingers that had tickled his ears and stroked his cheeks. A heart that had been filled to the brim with love, now deceased, like the innocent and playful smile of that child.

An old man, alone with his bottles, asleep in the centre of Berlin.

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Born in 1936, Werner had spent his entire life living in Berlin. From the tribulations of the Second World War he had garnered a great interest in Philosophy, especially Existentialism. He put this to use after his education by teaching in the main Berlin University. Years later, after a failed marriage and the unrelenting flashbacks from his war torn childhood, he turned to drink and fell into alcoholism. Finally, despite sympathetic attempts to help, he was made jobless by his employers. For a couple of decades now, Werner has become a regular site in the Mitte district of the city, always seen with a bottle to hand.
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