The Great Game Berlin-Warsaw Express and Other Stories
Berlin-Warsaw Express
and Other Stories
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://www.d-nb.de abrufbar.
All characters appearing in the stories in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
To order: www.palmartpress.com
ISBN: 978-3-941524-12-5
ISBN (E-Book): 978-3-941524-56-9
First Edition, first printing, 2012
© 2012 Michael Lederer
PalmArtPress
Pfalzburger Str. 69, 10719 Berlin
All rights reserved
Front Cover: Genia Chef, Transformation, Oil on panel, 2011
Back Cover: Photo by Zeljko Tutnjevic
Editor: Catharine J. Nicely
Layout: Pauline A. Peters
For Katarina my love,
and again for Nicholas
“It’s a bittersweet symphony this life.”
- The Verve
(from their hit song Bittersweet Symphony
plagiarized from the Stones)
As a shooting star are we today
Within eye’s sight but for briefest time
And though we would we cannot stay
Yet we can always linger in your mind
If you recall our passage as your own youth
Gone, as beauty, in deed but not in name
Remembrance of a past as sure as truth
Your memory now for us the truest flame
For sure as light reflects and echoes sound
Both mind and heart can hold that which has passed
`Till Nature’s game must child-like come ´round
And all once gone instead forever lasts
Still, as your own star now flies fleetingly through time
Look to the day when it will follow mine
Prologue: Shooting Star
A Father and a Son
Hole in the Fence
Three and a Half
Happy Ending
Champagne
A Very Nice Man
Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
Dulcinea
A Wish Come True
Berlin-Warsaw Express
Not Science Fiction
A Bad Story
Alles Klar
Family Album
For the Children
Nothing Out There But the Wind
Butternut
Spain II
Wolfgangsee Again
Epilogue: The Wonder of the World
The City Café had not changed much for half a century. The cane backed chairs and round tables and long mirror on the wall. The wrought iron railings and wooden bar, and the shiny copper espresso machine. It all looked pretty much as it always had in the memory of the old men who gathered every morning in the corner beside the large window overlooking the square. They would sit together and sip coffee and remember things, and then they would share stories about what they remembered. It used to be this, she used to be that, they used to…and so on. Somehow everything said was ever new enough to be interesting, while at the same time familiar enough to be a comfort to men who had known each other when they were not old, but whose days now were measured more in yesteryears than tomorrows. All knew it, though they didn’t talk about it, except for the occasional joke at which they would all laugh before falling silent for a moment or two.
One of the men was an old doctor named Teo. After the others had gone, he would always stay and keep talking as if he was not alone. The locals did not look at him then because they knew him, and they liked him, and they would even protect him if anyone bothered him, though no one ever bothered him. Even the tourists passing through would look at him only for a moment and then turn away, somehow understanding that he was as much and as natural a part of the City Café as any of it. The waiters would bring Teo his sherry, and espresso with two sugars no milk, and his still water, and when he left there was never a bill, just a “see you later.” Then off he would go for lunch and a nap and a shower, before coming back to the café in the evening for another sherry and espresso with two sugars no milk, and a still water. The waiters never asked what he wanted. They would just bring it.
He had thick glasses, and white hair long like an artist’s that was cut nicely. His clothes were clean, and he always wore a tie even in summer. Because he talked to himself, the impression given was that somebody must take care of him. A wife perhaps, or a housekeeper, or maybe he had grown children with families of their own, and someone in the family took care of him. Because talking to himself like that, it was easy to think that he could not take care of himself.
The oldest waiter in the café was named Marko. He had started work there as a young man when his uncle was chief waiter. It was the only job Marko had ever had. Now his uncle was long dead, and Marko himself had become chief waiter. When he was not serving, Marko liked to stand in one corner of the large room with the high ceiling and the brass chandelier and all the people. He would look around “his” café with sharp brown eyes that saw and understood everything. One thing he could see was that because of all the electronic devices everyone carried, old Teo was often not the only one sitting alone while talking. Many people talked through their phones, or to their phones, yet somehow even without any kind of device the old man looked more natural doing it. He would hold a cigarette in one hand and wave it as he talked, though the cigarette was never lit because smoking was not permitted inside the café. Still, he would hold the cigarette and wave it elegantly while staring at the empty chair across from him and talking to it.
Summer now was over. The days were growing cooler and the winds stronger, and everyone except those who absolutely had to smoke sat inside. The smokers who couldn’t not-smoke would huddle in the corners of the wide stone terrace outside, with their collars up and their backs to the wall. Old Teo clearly had issues, but a slavish addiction to tobacco was not one of them. He would sit inside the large window, where there was still a good view of the square, and it was enough for him just to hold the cigarette and wave it elegantly as he talked to the empty chair.
One morning a young American came into the café. He crossed to the back and sat alone at the table furthest from the door. Marko came to him. The young man ordered a double espresso. When Marko left, he pulled a laptop computer from his shoulder bag, opened it, and looked around the room.
The young man’s name was Jack. He had decided to write a great novel, and so had done what many of the great writers he admired had done before him. He had bought his generation’s equivalent of paper and pen, and moved to Europe. Hoping that what had worked so well for them would work for him, he had settled on this old café as the place where he would commence his life’s work.
Marko brought his coffee. As he drank it, Jack looked around the room while waiting for his great novel to make its appearance. An idea finally struck him. He started to write about a cat he had seen the night before in one of the cobblestone alleys of the old town. The cat looked hungry and alone, and the story started well enough, but then it reached a dead end when Jack couldn’t decide where the cat had come from, or where it was headed. After awhile he gave up. He figured that was a false start. He looked around the room again and tried to think, which is different than thinking. The idea of a cat led him to the idea of a dog, which led to the idea of a boy, which led…nowhere. Oh well. He would try again the following day. He paid his bill and left.
The next morning he returned, and sat in the same chair at the same table and ordered his double espresso from Marko. As Marko walked toward the bar, the young man already felt like a local. He wondered how many times he would have to come, and how many espressos he would have to order, before Marko would also start to think of him as a local. He took his laptop from his bag and opened it, and like many young men then, now, and forever hoped that anyone looking at him would understand he was there to do great things. But great things didn’t happen. Not yet. So after half an hour, when an idea for a great novel still had not come to him, he leaned forward against the table and rubbed the sides of his head, and looked around the café.
The old man by the window was there again with his friends. Jack had noticed him the day before. Now, as his friends stood to go, he wondered if the old man would start to talk to himself again. He did.
Both as a traveler and as a New Yorker, Jack had seen and heard enough people talking to themselves. On park benches and church steps, at bus stops, and one winter day he would never forget on St. Mark’s Place when he thought some foam-at-the-mouth nut was screaming at him. But then he got into a cab and looked over his shoulder, and it turned out the guy was just screaming.
This old man was different. He looked normal, clean, measured. Not loose like the others, but put together tightly and correctly. It even looked as if he was having a regular conversation, just that the other half of it wasn’t there. It seemed like it was more the other person’s fault for not showing up, rather than the old man’s fault for talking to air.
Jack watched him carefully. After awhile he tried to write again, but for some reason he couldn’t stop thinking about this old man who was talking to himself. Finally, as he had the day before, he gave up and paid his bill and left. As he walked out the door, he overheard the old man say:
“I wouldn’t tell you these things, except you need to know them.”
The next day, Jack came back to the café. He was about to sit again at the same table, when he noticed the old man by the window, already alone, already talking to himself. Jack decided to sit closer to him so that he could listen.
Marko came over and Jack ordered his “usual,” and as he sat waiting for it he heard the old man say:
“If you want something from someone, don’t think they’ll know it. Ask them, or tell them, but don’t just wait for it, because if you wait for things they will never come.”
The old man took a sip of his sherry, waved his unlit cigarette, and then said:
“A little boat gets smashed about by the waves, while a big ship cuts through the waves and gets to its destination. You want to be that big boat, not the little one.”
He added:
“And remember, a girl’s breast is a beautiful thing, but never let it hide her heart. To be truly happy, you must consider both.”
The coffee came.
“Marko?”
He knew the waiter’s name from his name tag.
“Yes?”
Jack lowered his voice so the old man would not hear him.
“Who’s the old man?”
“His name is Teo.”
“Who does he think he’s talking to?”
“His son.”
“Where’s his son?”
“Dead.”
A pause.
“How?”
“Motorcycle. You want something else?”
“No. Thank you.”
Marko left.
Jack kept listening. It didn’t stop. One gem of advice after another.
“If you don’t believe in one part of yourself, find another part you can believe in. And then lean on that with all your might. Build everything else on that, because that’s your foundation. Remember, how will others believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself?”
There was more. Much more.
“They say talking well is a gift, but listening well is a greater gift. And they are right. Because any good teacher must first be a good student. In fact, the best teachers never stop being students. Because always what you do not know is greater than what you do know.”
And a moment later:
“You start with a dream. Okay, fine. You think what something will be like when you finish it, and that’s what makes you start. But the dream is not enough. Everyone wants to be rich. Or wants the girl. Or wants to fix the world, maybe. But then you have to make a plan to do it. And then…this is the hardest part…you must work very hard, and probably very long. Because remember, dreams do not come true, they are made true.”
Jack tried not to look at the old man. He was afraid that if he caught him looking he would stop talking. And Jack did not want him to stop talking. More than anything else, he wanted him to continue. There was a reason.
When Jack was seven years old, his family had been living in California. One evening his father had been returning up the coast road from Santa Cruz to Pescadero where they lived. It seems that he was driving too fast, because the next morning someone found his car at the bottom of a cliff, battered on the rocks along the sea’s edge. But they never found the body.
Two years later, when Jack’s mother announced that she was moving them back to her native New York City, Jack exploded into tears. “But then how will Daddy find us?” The boy had convinced himself that his father had somehow survived the crash, been thrown into the sea, and once the cold water had revived him had probably swum to a nearby beach. Then probably he had amnesia and had wandered around until someone had found him and taken him to a hospital. No amount of gentle persuasion could convince little Jack otherwise. And when the moving truck came to collect the household, the boy ran off and hid in a bush in the back yard, determined to stay and wait for the day his father would come home. But his mother found him, and they moved to New York City, and his father never did return.
Many years later, as a grown Jack was about to leave home to go to university, his mother came to his room with a small package wrapped in white paper. It was a journal that his father had kept.
“There are six of them,” she told him. “This is the one he was keeping when you were born. Someday you’ll have them all, but I’m giving this one to you now. There are some things in here that you should read.”
On the plane that night, he opened it. He read it all. Every word. His father had neat, slanted handwriting. He used blue ink. One of the entries was written just two days after Jack was born.
“Welcome to the world, little Jack,” he wrote. “It is a big place, and you are very little still. But one day you will not be so little. You will have many adventures. We will have many adventures together. But always remember, still your best friend will not be me. Or Mommy. It will be your older self. Imagine that he is with you always. When you are 20, think of the 40-year-old Jack. When you are 40, think of the 60-year-old Jack. And so on. And when you are faced with any great choice to make, and you will be faced with great choices, then just ask your older self what he thinks you should do. And listen to him carefully. You can trust him, because his interests always will be the same as yours. If he thinks something is a good idea, then go for it with everything you’ve got! But if he tells you something is not such a good idea, also listen to him then. He will ask you not to smoke, for instance, for his sake. And not to drink too much. But he will also ask you to have those adventures, so that he will feel that he has lived. A person’s older self is the best friend they can have, and if you let him he will be with you everywhere, and always.”
And suddenly, here now in this café half a world away, was a man who had lost his son. And who was offering the same kind of wisdom and love that Jack had felt, literally felt, in the pages of his father’s journal.
So everyday Jack would come to the café, and he would sit close to the old man, and he would listen. He would watch him out of the corner of his eye while pretending to look at other things, or to write. And after awhile he did write, but not his novel. He wrote down every word he could hear the old man say.
Only once did their eyes meet. It happened by accident. The old man was looking out the window toward the square, and Jack was looking at him from behind. Suddenly the old man’s eyes refocused on the reflection in the window. And in the glass, they looked at each other. Jack looked away at once. As much as he had wanted to know him, he was always afraid that if that happened the old man would never talk to himself when Jack was close by. And more than anything, he wanted to hear those words.
One day he heard him say:
“Everything in its time. Don’t hurry so much. That stupid motorcycle. What’s the rush? You have your whole life ahead of you. But once, I told you not to wait for things. I’m sorry. That was my mistake. Maybe you were listening to me, and so you thought ‘I better hurry.’ But sometimes, it can be okay to wait. Everything in its time.”
October became November. Soon Christmas passed, and the new year advanced into spring. And one day the old man did not come. It had happened a few times before, so Jack did not think anything of it. Again the next day he did not come, and still Jack did not worry. But then the day after that the other old men did not come either.
“Marko?”
“Yes?”
“Where are they?”
“The old men?”
“Yes. Especially, you know, the old doctor.”
“He died.”
“What?”
“He died. A couple of days ago. Everyone’s at his funeral. You need something else?”
“No. Thank you.”
Some tourists stood up from one of the nearby tables. Marko went to wipe it clean with a damp cloth. Jack sat there for a few minutes. Then he paid his bill and left. He walked through the old town, and he did not stop walking for a long time.
Half a century had taken its toll. Everything had shrunk. The house. The city. The world.
The hill was not as steep as he remembered it. One could hardly call it a hill, in fact. A sloping lawn was more like it, though as a boy shooting down it on a sled in winter it had seemed so…grand. Looking at it now, Cal wondered how he, his brother and their friends could possibly have achieved those great speeds on that. He could still hear the ice scraping under the blades, see the apple tree looming closer, feel the struggle to turn the handles just in time to miss the tree. And there had been so many near misses.
He turned now and walked across the lawn, stepping further into a world he had not seen since he was nine years old. The little house was still there, thankfully, though someone had painted it green and added a summer porch. They should have left it blood red with the white trim, thought Cal. Why change something that was so…perfect? And yes, the new porch was nice enough, but they had never needed one, and they were happy here. So incredibly happy.
52 Roger Road. This is where all had begun for him. Every first impression, more or less, had come to him here. Whatever came later was just a repeat: another home, another family, another Christmas, another spring, summer, winter, fall; another anything.
At the edge of the lawn was a familiar line of trees. Beneath the trees were some shrubs, and running through those was the old chain link fence that still separated the little house from Yale Field. Cal walked toward the tree line, eagerly looking for the “secret fort” that had sheltered him so well from pirates, and Indians, and a mother calling out that it was time for dinner. But, was it to the left of the poplar tree or to the right? He couldn’t remember. He saw one spot that could have been his fort, but it was too thin to give the kind of shelter a young cowboy had depended on for his life.
Stepping further over the familiar ground, Cal crossed the grass to the end of the fence looking for another great landmark. And there it was, unbelievably, the hole in the fence, exactly as he had left it. Shrouded now by undergrowth, rusted at the edges where the zinc had worn off, still it was there. No one had ever bothered to fix it. He stood for a long while doing his best to picture every crouched form that had slipped through it. He and his friends, with tree branches stuck into their belts like swords, would steal out onto the great expanse of Yale Field. They would hide there among the pylons and tarpaulins that belonged to Yale athletic department, while the groundskeeper, “Cigar Face,” would stroll past, not knowing how close he was to danger. Because without a doubt, they were the fiercest band of pirates on Roger Road, or Forest Road, or Cleveland Road, or probably anywhere in New Haven.
Later, as their years there were coming to an end, and his family was about to depart that paradise for California, leaving those friends, and the seasons themselves, and even childhood behind, he had brought another neighbor, Karen, to this same spot. And he had suggested a new kind of game for them to play. “I’ll kiss you, and then you kiss me.” It would be his first kiss, then and forever, and it happened right there.
Cal turned now and slowly walked back toward the house. He had been lucky and grateful to find no one at home. Today was giving Yesterday its due.
He paused in the middle of the wide lawn and looked around. More memories came racing back, like horses at the track when the gate is lifted, one stronger and faster than the other. He could remember the birthday parties with the funny hats. And the little pool his father would fill in the summers where he and his brother – and at least once their father, too – would sit splashing. Later, when the pool was taken away, came the great piles of brown and yellow and red leaves and the joy of kicking through them. He could remember how those smelled. And he could remember his father, a young professor, making a little extra money by parking cars on their lawn during the Yale Harvard game. Was it a dollar a car? A quarter? Fifty cents? He would never know.
Facing the house, Cal’s eyes drifted up to the window where he and his brother had shared a bedroom. If there were children living in the house these days, he wondered if they, too, would have a rocking horse on springs, and cowboy hats and six-shooters, and a little electric train, and a blue wooden shelf full of story books like Peter Pan and Yertle the Turtle and Pirate Don Dirk of Dowdee. He could see his young parents tucking them in at night, and reading them those and other stories. His father used to also tell one story that he had invented himself, about a little boat that was always safe in harbor, but would see the big ships coming from the great sea beyond, and the little boat grew curious. And so one night, when no one was looking, the little boat set out to sea. But then a great storm rose up and the waves battered the little boat, and just when the danger seemed unbearable, one of the great ships saw the little boat and tossed it a line, and towed it safely back to the little harbor. And after that, the little boat always knew that it was better to be safe than to risk everything. But even so, as the story always ended, the little boat was happy because at least it knew what it was like to be on the great open sea. Cal felt now like he was that little boat.
How strange to be here again…without them. It was like walking into a kitchen long after cookies had been taken from the oven. Though the cookies themselves were gone, still the sweet smell lingered.
His eyes drifted down now to another window on the ground floor, the little living room where Christmas trees once came and went like metronomes counting out the years. Beside that was the kitchen, and the little porch not yet enclosed when his mother had stood one late autumn afternoon with tears streaming down her young cheeks.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?”
She could hardly get the words out.
“Oh darling, somebody shot the president.”
And with those words, spoken just there, a more innocent time in his life, and in a country’s life, came to an end. Later, of course, he would learn that it was never quite as sweet as he had imagined. Not if you were black and living in the south, or your own family’s home was in southeast Asia, or an iron curtain ran through your world…or…or…it was a long list. But a nine-year-old boy had no idea about such things. He only knew when Christmas was coming, and his parents would take him to see the tree in Rockefeller Plaza, where he could see his own breath in the cold air, and smell chestnuts, and walk past the Christmas windows at B. Altman’s. He knew those things, and it was enough back then.
Cal turned to look one last time at the wide green lawn. He wanted to breathe it in, all of it, and hold it forever. To see everything and touch everything and remember everything he could before leaving this place once again.
The apple tree was still there. He walked to it, recalling warm spring mornings when, while he and his brother still slept, his mother would hide chocolate Easter eggs wrapped in colorful foils, and real eggs they had colored themselves the night before. And she would spread a hundred copper pennies on the grass for all the children to find. And there would be one special basket for each child, with the fake grass and the jelly beans and other treats, and once you found yours you were not to say anything if you found another so that the next child would find that one for him- or herself.
Just for fun, now, Cal leaned over beside the apple tree. That was always one of the spots where Easter treats were hidden. Grinning at his own false hope, his fingers pushed aside a tuft of grass, probing, scratching at the dirt. And then he saw it. A tiny scrap of red foil. It had taken him fifty years, but he had found it finally. There it lay still, beneath the exact spot where his mother would have hidden it half a century before. Breathing hard at the unexpected thrill of it, he picked it up. The chocolate once inside was long gone, of course. So much rain and snow and generations of insects had seen to that. But the foil itself had endured somehow, waiting for him. Cal stood there, just looking at it in his hand, and he began to cry. He wanted to run to tell his mother that he had found it, but he couldn’t do that. She had died years earlier. His father was also gone, and he and his brother hadn’t spoken in years because, well, later in life things had become more complicated. Everything had become more complicated. So Cal just stood there and held the piece of foil in his hand, and there was no one else to care that he had found it.
He thought of putting the foil into his wallet so that later he could always take it out and look at it when he would wish. But then he decided it was better to leave it there where it was, where it would always remain as unexpected proof of the happy childhood that had unfolded in that place. He buried the foil again, this time deeper than he had found it so there would be no chance that someone else might take it. And then he realized that it was time to go.
He started to walk once more past the house, when something else now caught his eye. He had not seen it before because a late model car, parked just where the old Buick used to be, had blocked his view of it. But there it was unmistakably, on a post stuck into the grass: a For Sale sign. There was a phone number and a website. In a great rush of excitement, Cal fished his phone from his back pocket and quickly went to the site. Seeing the price, he thought how easily he could do it, because really it was not so much. It was a small house, after all. And he could buy it back! And all this could and would be his again! Not just any little house, but the house. The one.
His eyes darted around making fast assessments. The first thing he would do, of course, would be to repaint it so it would be its original, proper red color. And then he would take away that stupid summer porch. He would remove whatever trees had not been there all those years ago, and also he would plant yellow tulips beside the house just where his mother had them. He would not fix the hole in the fence, and, why not he thought, he would even buy a green ’58 Buick with fading paint and leave it parked it the driveway. And each year he would put a great Christmas tree with colored lights next to the window in the living room, and hang chocolates from it, and play Bing Crosby on the record player. And then he would…then he would…what? What would he do then? Wait for his grandparents to come walking down the driveway with presents in their arms, with those warm familiar loving smiles? Would he wait to see his father drive up, and for their dog, Falstaff, to come running when he heard the car? No. He could wait a thousand years, and still those things would not happen. He would want them to happen, but they would never happen no matter how hard he wished for them. And then he realized that he could buy the box, and he could arrange every blade of grass so that it would look exactly as it had then. But still, his mother would never put a hot dinner on the table again, or bake cookies. And upstairs, he and his brother would never hear their father tell the story of the little boat again.
Cal put the phone back into his pocket. Slowly, he started to walk up the gravel drive. At one moment he paused and began to turn for one last look over his shoulder. But then he stopped himself. Because if he did look, the house would still be green, and that new summer porch would still be there, and also the late model car that looked like all cars. But on the other hand, if he just kept walking, eyes straight ahead not looking back, he could still see his mother young and beautiful standing in the garden, and his father sitting in the folding lawn chair nearby reading the newspaper, with Falstaff lying on the grass next to him. And because he knew where to look, he could still see the cowboys and Indians and pirates crouched low in their little fort.
Out on the street, at the end of the long gravel driveway where the road bends, near the spot where the milkman used to leave thick glass bottles of milk with the cream at the top, Cal got into his car and he drove away. And that was the last time that he ever set foot on Roger Road.
It went from okay to bad to great to bad to really bad and somewhere back again. Like that.
An easy ride and blue skies from Palo Alto north toward San Francisco on 280. Then a sharp eastward on 380 over to 101. A left northward near the airport, across the bridge, Berkley, then I-80 all the way: the Bay Bridge to George Washington Bridge, one arrow shot as the Indians might say, that is if they hadn’t been slaughtered along the same route. But no wagon train, no gold rush this time, just sandals, shirt, shorts, a backpack, sleeping bag, about fifty bucks and a thumb. It was enough.
Until Utah, all was good. On-ramps and truck stops and one ride after another and nothing special to recount. Then the fan hit the shit…almost. Somewhere that looked like nowhere, Cal took a moment’s refuge from the high sun of the day to stand in the shade of an underpass. Ribbon of Woody’s highway and he was standing in the bow. At least a thousand degrees out of the shadows, but then sun-blinded the drivers wouldn’t see him in that cave, so back into the full of it. The cardboard sign on his backpack read “New York PLEASE.” The PLEASE was to allay fear and show everyone that he was a polite young man. The one who was not polite, however, was the son of a bitch other young guy in the car going about 90 miles an hour who thought it would be funny to hurl a 16-ounce can of Budweiser at Cal’s head-full-of-young-dreams. It wasn’t even the good European Budweiser, thought Cal many years later when he came to know about such things. It was the crappy piss-poor American stuff. If you’re going to kill a guy with a Bud, at least…
He heard and even felt the can whiz past his right ear, that’s how close it was. A nanosecond later and the heavy thud of it smacking the hot cement over his shoulder confirmed the savagery of it. The bridge pylon took it without a blink, but at ninety miles an hour a full 16-ounce can of Bud to the head would be like hitting a watermelon with an asteroid. An inch closer to target and Cal’s face, his eye, his brain, his future, would have been vulture bait. The car sped on, someone inside it laughing insanely. But back in the senselessness of the moment, there was nothing to do but get over it. Out with the thumb, ready to duck from now on, loss of innocence part one.