The Cold Pebble and the Christmas Tree

Jan Maria arrived in Western Australia from East Germany in April 1997. When she met Horatio T Birdbath outside Gino’s cafe soon after, she knew she had truly arrived in Freo. Over the years, they became close friends. This is Jan Maria’s tribute to her friend.

Fremantle has a secret way of drawing in those people who just don’t seem to fit anywhere else. In 1997, not long after my arrival in the glaring light of the West, I met Horatio T Birdbath. He was sitting outside Café Gino’s on the South Terrace, looking as though a goblin had cut him out of a rainbow and stuck him right into the world of mortals. His jacket was a magnificent outcry against the drabness of common sense, shimmering in the midday heat like the wings of a dragonfly king.

The silence between us at that table settled like a heavy, velvet curtain. Then he paused, looked at me with a deep, ancient fire in his eyes, and mumbled: “Can I give you something?”

Before I could answer, he opened my hand and placed a pebble inside. A completely ordinary, grey stone. But as my fingers closed around it, a shiver ran through me: it was ice-cold. Right in the middle of the glowing, merciless heat of the Australian summer, this stone was like a piece of frozen Northern Lights. Pure wonder. Pure magic.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Horatio,” he mumbled, revealing his charming, gap-toothed grin. “Horatio T Birdbath.”

We became good friends. Our conversations on the Cappuccino Strip possessed a peculiar depth that would sometimes tilt into pure, delightful nonsense, only to turn out wiser than anything serious scholars had ever deemed important. Horatio drew endlessly—faces, intricate patterns, and entire sunken worlds. In 1998, he asked me for a favor: to scan his drawings. Back then, on the threshold of the new millennium, digitally archiving analogue art was a bit of a sensation. I scanned every trembling line, rescuing his thoughts into the infinity of ones and zeros. I have never regretted it. It felt as though I was guarding the chronicle of a king.

Here are two of the images scanned by Jan Maria in 2000.

Once, he told me—full of pride and with that unmistakable glint in his eyes—a story from one of the annual street parades in Fremantle. Horatio had tailored himself a magnificent costume: he went as a Christmas tree. Green, proud, and motionless, he marched along. When the colorful procession ground to a halt on South Terrace, Horatio froze in his role. He didn’t move a muscle. He became wood and needles.

In this moment of absolute stillness, a passing dog approached. The animal gave the supposed trunk a quick sniff, casually lifted its hind leg, and left its wet calling card on Horatio’s costume.

To Horatio, this was no insult. It was the greatest, most honest compliment an actor could ever receive. A human being lets themselves be blinded by props and makeup, but a dog only reacts to the naked truth of nature. If creation takes you for a real tree, then you’ve perfected the game. True art doesn’t look for applause, it looks for the truth.

Today, many years later and worlds away from South Terrace, I play Horatio T Birdbath on stage in a play called “Shake it!”. In our version, Horatio becomes Hamlet, but he refuses to play along with the old game of blood. He decides to end the endless, murderous drama of history, lays down his weapons, and tells the past: “No, father. The show is over.”

Horatio T Birdbath lives on. Not as a tragic marginal figure, but as a pacifist hero who breaks the cycle of pain. He lives on in my own gap-toothed grin on stage, in the memory of the ice-cold stone in the middle of the Australian heat, and in every digitized line he ever drew. He is no longer on the South Terrace. But he is forever on my mind.

*By Jan Maria, Germany

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