Snow. Just enough snow to scrape off my boots. Donning my black coat and watch cap, I trudge across Sixth Avenue like a faithful postman, delivering myself daily before the orange awning of Cafe ’Ino. As I labour yet again on variations of the poem I’m writing in memory of Roberto Bolaño, my morning sojourn lengthens well into the afternoon. I order Tuscan bean soup, brown bread with olive oil, and more black coffee. I count the lines of the envisioned 100-line poem, Hecatomb, now three lines shy. Ninety-seven clues but nothing solved, another cold-case poem.

I should get out of here, I am thinking, out of the city. But where would I go that I would not drag my seemingly incurable lethargy along with me, like the worn canvas sack of an angst-driven teenage hockey player? And what would become of my mornings in my little corner and my late nights scanning the TV channels, watching my crime shows, not a trifling thing? Yesterday’s poets are today’s detectives. They spend a life sniffing out the hundredth line, wrapping up a case, and limping exhausted into the sunset. They entertain and sustain me. Linden and Holder in The Killing. Law & Order’s Goren and Eames. CSI’s Horatio Caine. I walk with them, adopt their ways, suffer their failures, and consider their movements long after an episode ends, whether in real time or rerun.

Back home, sighing, I meander around my room scanning for cherished things to make certain they haven’t been drawn into that half-dimensional place where things just disappear. Things beyond socks or glasses: a snapshot of a sleepy-faced Fred, a Burmese offering bowl, Margot Fonteyn’s ballet slippers, a misshapen clay giraffe formed by my daughter’s hands. I pause before my father’s chair. My father sat at his desk, in this chair, for decades, writing cheques, filling out tax forms, and working fervently on his own system for handicapping horses. Bundles of the Morning Telegraph were stacked against the wall. A journal wrapped in jeweller’s cloth, noting wins and losses from imaginary bets, kept in the left-hand drawer. No one dared touch it. He never spoke about his system but he laboured over it religiously. He was neither a betting man nor had the resources to bet. He was a factory man with a mathematical curiosity, handicapping heaven, searching for patterns, and a portal of probability opening up onto the meaning of life.

A Polaroid shot taken in Smith’s apartment which includes Fonteyn’s ballet slippers. Photograph: Patti Smith

I go downstairs, then carry two full boxes back to my room and dump the contents onto my bed. Time to face up to the last mail of the year – bills, petitions, invitations for gala events past, imminent jury duty. I swiftly set aside one item of particular interest – a plain brown envelope stamped and sealed with wax with the raised letters CDC. I hurry to a locked cabinet, choosing a slim bone-handled letter opener, the only proper way to open a precious piece of correspondence from the Continental Drift Club. The envelope contains a small red card with the number 23 stencilled in black and a handwritten invitation to deliver a talk of my choosing at the semi-annual convention to take place in mid-January in Berlin.

I experience a wealth of excitement, but I have no time to lose, as the letter is dated some weeks ago. I hastily write a response in the affirmative, then rummage through my desk for a sheet of stamps, grab my cap and coat, and drop the letter into the mailbox. Then I cross over Sixth Avenue to ’Ino. It is late afternoon and the cafe is empty. At my table I attempt to write a list of items to take on my journey.

Formed in the early 1980s by a Danish meteorologist, the Continental Drift Club is an obscure society serving as an independent branch of the earth-science community. Twenty-seven members, scattered across the hemispheres, have pledged their dedication to the perpetuation of remembrance, specifically in regard to Alfred Wegener, who pioneered the theory of continental drift. The bylaws require discretion, attendance at the biannual conferences, a certain amount of applicable fieldwork, and a reasonable passion for the club’s reading list. All are expected to keep abreast of the activities of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, in the city of Bremerhaven in Lower Saxony.

I was granted membership of the CDC quite by accident. On the whole, members are primarily mathematicians, geologists, and theologians and are identified not by name but by a given number. I had written several letters to the Alfred Wegener Institute searching for a living heir in hopes of obtaining permission to photograph the great explorer’s boots. One of my letters was forwarded to the secretary of the Continental Drift Club, and after a flurry of correspondence I was invited to attend their 2005 conference in Bremen, which coincided with the 125th anniversary of the great geoscientist’s birth and thus the 75th of his death. I attended their panel discussions, a special screening at City 46 of Research and Adventure on the Ice, a documentary series containing rare footage of Wegener’s 1929 and 1930 expeditions, and joined them for a private tour of the AWI facilities in nearby Bremerhaven. I am certain I didn’t quite meet their criteria, but I suspect that after some deliberation they welcomed me due to my abundance of romantic enthusiasm. I became an official member in 2006, and was given the number 23.

Patti Smith with her husband and collaborator the guitarist Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith in 1978. Photograph: Eyevine

My travel to Germany was uneventful save that a security agent at the Newark Liberty airport did not recognise my 1967 Polaroid as a camera and several minutes were wasted swiping it for explosive traces and sniffing the mute air within its bellows.

On the plane I watched consecutive episodes of the Danish crime drama Forbrydelsen, the blueprint for the American series The Killing. Detective Sarah Lund is the Danish prototype of Detective Sarah Linden. Both are singular women, both wear Fair Isle ski sweaters. Lund’s are formfitting. Linden’s are dumpy, but she wears hers as a moral vest. Lund is driven by ambition. Linden’s obsessional nature is kin to her humanity. I feel her devotion to each terrible mission, the complexity of her vows, her need for solitary runs through the high grass of marshy fields. I sleepily track Lund in subtitle but my subconscious mind seeks out Linden, for even as a character in a television series she is dearer to me than most people. I wait for her every week, quietly fearing the day when The Killing will come to a finish and I will never see her again. I follow Sarah Lund yet dream of Sarah Linden. I awake as Forbrydelsen abruptly ends and stare blankly at the screen of my personal player before passing unconscious into an incident room where a stream of briefings stakeouts and strange arcs empty into the rude smoke of isolation.

My Berlin hotel was in a renovated Bauhaus structure in the Mitte district of the former East Berlin. It had everything I needed and was in close proximity to the Pasternak cafe, which I discovered on a walk during a previous visit, at the height of an obsession with Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. I dropped my bags in my room and went directly to the cafe. The proprietress greeted me warmly and I sat at my same table beneath a photograph of Bulgakov. As before, I was taken by the Pasternak’s old-world charm. The faded blue walls were dressed in photographs of the beloved Russian poets Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Mayakovsky. On the wide windowsill to my right sat an old Russian typewriter with its round Cyrillic keys, a perfect mate for my lonely Remington. I ordered the Happy Tsar – black sturgeon caviar served with a small shot of vodka and a glass of black coffee. Contented, I sat for quite a while mapping my talk on paper napkins, and then strolled the small park with the city’s oldest water tower rising from its centre.

On the morning of my lecture I rose early and had coffee, watermelon juice, and brown toast in my room. At six I was spirited to a small lecture hall in a nearby location, like Holly Martins in The Third Man. There was nothing to distinguish our postwar meeting hall from others scattered around the former East Berlin. All 27 CDC members were in attendance and the room vibrated with an air of expectancy.

The proceedings opened with our theme song, a light, melancholic melody played on accordion by its composer, No 7, a gravedigger from the Umbrian town of Gubbio, where Saint Francis tamed the wolves. No 7 was neither scholar nor trained musician but had the enviable distinction of being a distant relative of one of Wegener’s original team.

‘The city’s oldest water tower’, Mitte, east Berlin. Photograph: Patti Smith

Our moderator delivered his opening remarks, quoting from Friedrich Schiller’s The Favor of the Moment: Once more, then, we meet / In the circles of yore. He spoke at length concerning issues under current watch by the Alfred Wegener Institute, particularly the troubling decline of the breadth of the Arctic ice sheets. After a while I felt my mind wandering and enviously glanced sidelong at my fellow members, most of whom appeared positively riveted. As he droned on I predictably drifted, weaving a tragic tale: a girl in a sealskin coat watches helplessly as the surface of the ice cracks and cruelly separates her from her Prince Charming. She falls to her knees as he floats away. The compromised ice sheet tilts and he sinks into the Arctic Sea on the back of his faltering white Icelandic pony.

Our secretary presented the minutes of our last gathering in Jena, then cheerily announced the forthcoming AWI species of the month: Sargassum muticum – a brown Japanese seaweed distinguished by the way it drifts with the ocean currents. Next we were treated with a brief slide show of No 9’s colour landscape photography of the sites last visited by the CDC in eastern Germany. I noticed my palms were sweating and without thinking wiped them dry with my napkin notes.

Finally, after a meandering introduction, I was invited to the podium. My talk was unfortunately introduced as “The Lost Moments of Alfred Wegener”. I explained that the title was actually the last, not the lost, moments.

A hush fell over the room. I looked over toward the stoic portrait of Alfred Wegener for a bit of strength. I recounted the events leading to his last days: with a heavy heart but scientific resolve the great polar researcher left his beloved home in the spring of 1930 to lead a gruelling, unprecedented scientific expedition into Greenland. His mission was to collect the necessary scientific data to prove his revolutionary hypothesis that the continents as we know them were formally one great landmass that had broken apart and drifted to their present location. His theory was not only dismissed by the scientific community but ridiculed. And it was to be the research from this historic but ill-fated expedition that would eventually redeem him.

The weather was exceedingly harsh in late October of 1930. Hoarfrost formed like starry ferns on the cavern ceiling of their outpost. Alfred Wegener stepped out into the black night. He examined his conscience, assessing the situation in which his loyal colleagues had been drawn. Counting himself and a loyal Inuit guide named Rasmus Villumsen, there were five men, and the Eismitte station was low on food and supplies. Fritz Loewe, whom he deemed his equal in knowledge and leadership, had several frostbitten toes and could no longer stand. It was a 250-mile walk to the next supply station. Wegener reasoned that Villumsen and he were the sturdiest among them and most likely to survive the long trek and decided to leave on All Saints’ Day. At dawn on 1 November, his 50th birthday, he placed his precious notebook inside his coat and optimistically set forth with his team of dogs and Inuit guide. He felt his own strength and the righteousness of his mission. But before long the clear weather shifted as the pair moved through a blistering whirlwind. Snowdrifts followed one another in waves. It was a spectacular vortex of swirling light. White way, white sea, white sky. What could be fairer than such a sight? The face of his wife framed in an immaculate oval of ice? He had given his heart twice, first to her and then to science. Alfred Wegener dropped to his knees. What did he then see? What images might he have projected upon God’s arctic canvas?

Patti Smith performs in Zurich, Switzerland, September 2015. Photograph: Walter Bieri/AP

My dramatic sense of unity with Wegener was such that I failed to notice a burgeoning disruption. An argument suddenly broke out concerning the validity of my premise.

—He didn’t stumble in the snow.

—He died in his sleep.

—There’s no real proof of that.

—His guide laid him to rest.

—That is conjecture.

—It’s all conjecture.

—It’s not a premise but a prognosis.

—You can’t project such a thing.

—This isn’t science, it’s poetry!

I thought for a moment. What is mathematic and scientific theory but projection? I felt like a straw sinking in Berlin’s River Spree. What a disaster. Possibly the most antagonistic CDC talk to date.

—Here, here, said our moderator, I think it’s time to call an intermission; perhaps a drink is in order.

—But shouldn’t we hear the end of 23’s talk? It was the compassionate gravedigger speaking.

I noticed some of the members were already gravitating toward the refreshments and I quickly gained my composure. In measured tones to stake their attention:

—I suppose, I said, that we could let it stand that the last moments of Alfred Wegener have been lost.

Their hearty laughter far surpassed any private hopes of entertaining this endearingly stodgy bunch. All stood as I hastily crammed my scrawled napkins into my pocket and we adjourned to a large drawing room. Each of us had a glass of sherry while our moderator made some closing remarks. Then, as customary, our minister issued a prayer, ending in a moment of silent remembrance.

As everyone left, the secretary asked me to sign the register.

—Could you give me a copy of your lecture so that I may at least attach it to the minutes? The opening remarks were lovely.

—There actually isn’t anything written, I said.

—But your words, where were they to come from?

—I was sure to pluck them from the air.

She looked at me quite hard and said,

—Well, then, you must dip back into the air and retrieve something that I can insert into the minutes.

—Well, I do have some notes, I said, feeling for the napkins.

I had never had much conversation with our secretary. She was a widow from Liverpool, consistently dressed in a grey gabardine suit and flowered blouse. Her coat was of brown boiled wool, topped with a matching brown felt hat with an actual hatpin.

—I have an idea, I said. Come with me to the Pasternak café. We can sit at my favourite table beneath a photograph of Mikhail Bulgakov. Then I can tell you what I might have said and you can write it down.

—Bulgakov! Splendid! The vodkas are on me.

—You know, she added, standing before a large photograph of Wegener that was set on an easel, there is a resemblance between these two men.

—Maybe Bulgakov was a bit more handsome.

—And what a writer!

—A master.

—Yes, a master.

‘Guardian angel, Dorotheenstadt Cemetery’, east Berlin. Photograph: Patti Smith

I stayed in Berlin a few more days, revisiting places where I had already been, taking pictures I had already shot. Though reluctant to go home I packed my things and flew to London to make my connection. My flight back to New York was delayed, which I took as a sign. I stood before the departure board and a further delay was posted. Impulsively I rebooked my ticket, took the Heathrow Express to Paddington station, and from there I took a cab to Covent Garden and checked into a small favoured hotel to watch detective shows.

My room was bright and cosy with a small terrace overlooking the London rooftops. I ordered tea and opened my journal, then immediately closed it. I am not here to work, I told myself, but to watch ITV3 mystery dramas, one after another late into the night. I had done this a few years before in the same hotel while ill; delirious nights dominated by a procession of clinically depressed, bad-tempered, heavy-drinking, opera-loving detective inspectors. To warm up for the evening I watched a vintage episode of The Saint, delighted to follow Simon Templar in his white Volvo, tooling the dark recesses of London and as usual saving the world from imminent disaster. This time with a naive platinum blonde in a pale cardigan and straight skirt, searching for her uncle – a brilliant professor of biochemistry – who has been kidnapped and is in the clutches of an equally brilliant though malevolent nuclear scientist. It was still early so after a second episode of The Saint, with an entirely different blonde in distress, I walked over to Charing Cross Road and roamed the bookstores. I bought a first edition of Sylvia Plath’s Winter Trees and a copy of Ibsen’s plays. I wound up reading The Master Builder until late afternoon before the fireplace in the hotel library.

Returning to my room, I bundled up and had tea on the balcony. Then I settled in, giving myself over to the likes of Morse, Lewis, Frost, Wycliffe, and Whitechapel – detective inspectors whose moodiness and obsessive natures mirrored my own. When they had a chop, I ordered same from room service. If they had a drink, I consulted the minibar. I adopted their manner whether entirely engrossed or dispassionately disconnected.

‘The opportunity of 24 hours of Cracker was pretty tempting’: Robbie Coltrane as criminal psychologist Fitz in Cracker, 1994. Photograph: ITV / Rex Features

In between shows were upcoming scenes from the highly anticipated Cracker marathon, to be aired on ITV3 the following Tuesday. Though Cracker wasn’t the standard detective show it stands among my favourites. Robbie Coltrane portrays Fitz, the foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, and brilliantly erratic, overweight criminal psychologist. The show was discontinued some time ago, akin to the character’s hard luck, and as it’s rarely aired, the opportunity of 24 hours of Cracker was pretty tempting. I deliberate on staying a few more days, but how crazy would that be? No crazier than coming here in the first place, my conscience pipes. I content myself with the generous clips, so relentlessly promoted that I am actually able to piece together a projection of an entire episode.

During a break between Detective Frost and Whitechapel, I decided to have a farewell glass of port in the honesty bar adjacent to the library. Standing by the elevator I suddenly felt a presence beside me. We turned at the same moment and stared at one another. I was stunned to find Robbie Coltrane, as if I’d willed him, some days ahead of the Cracker marathon.

—I’ve been waiting for you all week, I said impetuously.

—Here I am, he laughed.

I was so taken aback that I failed to join him in the elevator and promptly returned to my room, which seemed subtly yet utterly transformed, as if I had been drawn into the parallel quarters of a proper tea-drinking genie.

—Can you imagine the odds of such an encounter? I say to my floral bedspread.

I consulted the minibar and settled on elderberry water and sweet-and-salty popcorn. I hesitated to turn the television back on, as I was certain I would be met with a close-up of Fitz’s face in a dark alcoholic stupor. I wondered if Robbie Coltrane was hitting the honesty bar. I actually thought of going down and peeking but instead rearranged my belongings that were haphazardly stuffed in my small suitcase. In my haste I pricked my finger and was astonished to find the pearl-studded hatpin of the secretary of the CDC lodged between my tee shirts and sweaters. It was the colour of iridescent ash and misshapen – more teardrop than pearl. I turned it in the lamplight then wrapped it in a small linen handkerchief embroidered with forget-me-nots, a present from my daughter.

As if it had followed me from Berlin a heavy mist descended on Monmouth Street. From my small terrace I caught the moment when drapes of cloud dropped upon the ground. I had never seen such a thing and lamented I was without film for my camera. On the other hand I was able to experience the moment completely unburdened. I put on my overcoat and turned and said goodbye to my room. Downstairs I had black coffee, kippers, and brown toast in the breakfast room. My car was waiting. My driver was wearing sunglasses.

The mist grew heavier, a full-blown fog, enveloping all we passed. What if it suddenly lifted and everything was gone? The column of Lord Nelson, the Kensington Gardens, the looming Ferris wheel by the river, and the forest on the heath. All disappearing into the silvered atmosphere of an interminable fairy tale. The journey to the airport seemed endless. The outlines of bare trees faintly visible like an illustration from an English storybook. Plane trees with pom-poms, dried brown seedpods, swinging ghosts of Christmas ornaments. One could well imagine a former century when a young Scotsman dwelled in such an atmosphere of dropping clouds and shimmering mists and gave it the name of Neverland.

My driver let out a deep sigh. I wondered if my flight would be delayed, but it didn’t matter. No one knew where I was. No one was expecting me. I didn’t mind slowly crawling through the fog in an English cab, black as my coat, flanked by the shivering outline of trees, as if hastily sketched by the posthumous hand of Arthur Rackham.