Munich Airport (17 page)

How long ago?

Oh, about a year and a half ago.

Christ, you didn't tell me for a year and a half?

I had a pretty crazy year after it ended. I'm not sure it was the right time to tell you.

What happened with the apartment?

What do you mean?

The one you bought together?

I moved out. She stayed.

But you used your mother's inheritance, didn't you?

I said, I got bought out, I made all that money back.

That satisfied him, and I've never told him any differently.

We put on our coats and walked outside to get some air. The place was crowded. It was, as it always is, I think, full of retired people. We walked along the lakefront in the darkness. A little light from the restaurant spilled outward on the grass behind us, but the lake itself was darkness, and above were dark-gray, swiftly moving clouds. He said, Miriam was too busy again, said it was too short notice for her. Have you spoken with her?

I haven't, I said.

You should go to Berlin.

To visit her?

Come up with some excuse, go there for a weekend and check in on her, make sure she's okay.

I barely had the time to come here, Dad.

I know, I know, he said. I appreciate it. It's good to see you.

The lake seemed to be pulling us into it, urging us into its oblivion, but by then it was seven and our table was ready. We got the booth? I asked. You bet we did, he said.

When my father and I entered the airport this morning, we wandered around for a while, went up and down a couple of escalators, flipped through some magazines at a newsstand. We went to the information center—who can say why—but it wasn't open yet. Eventually we called Trish and told her we were going to head through security, find a seat, and wait for her. We had a strange energy before we got to security, the kind of energy you have at the beginning of a very long car journey, when you find yourself singing along to the radio, loving the road, loving the sensation of driving. About halfway through security, however, the sense of purpose and avidity dissipated. Suddenly my father became very worried that Miriam's body would not be properly looked after. It was clear—though he didn't say it—that he feared she would be left behind somehow, mishandled and lost, and we would leave without her, which would make our time here totally meaningless. He started to panic and talk to himself, and look all around for somebody who might be able to help. There were two or three hundred people in front of us and two or three hundred behind us, and when my father started to panic about the fact that Miriam was in some vague trouble and he could not help her, I also started to panic, because I realized that no amount of worry or panic would move time any faster, or make Miriam any safer. She would never be safe or unsafe again, in fact. What an absurd trip we had made after all, what had we been thinking, why were we bringing a body home? By the time we got through security—I can't say how long it took—we were on the verge of anxiety attacks. But then we saw how curiously peaceful the terminal was, and we walked into the great bazaar like weary travelers who had at last arrived in the free city.

We decided to take an elevator up to the Skywalk—a long, wide, glass corridor on the roof of the terminal. It was a hundred and fifty feet high, or something like that. It doesn't sound very high, but it feels very high when you are up there, I'd bet. From it, on a clear day, we could have looked out in all directions, to the city, to the mountains, we probably could have killed a lot of time. But there was nothing to see. We stood close to the glass and examined the fog. I enjoyed feeling closely encapsulated by the grayness, it seemed vaguely like being in deep outer space—the outer space you might imagine near the boundaries of the universe. Everyone who was up there stood very close to the window, waiting, presumably, for signs of dissipation, or simply to observe the strange properties of this unusually thick fog. I had never seen anything like it. It seemed to move like a heavy gas, gas you could spoon out of a bowl, gas that would suffocate you if you stepped outside, or freeze you. My flat in London—the one in Spitalfields, though it is actually Hackney—is on the fourth floor. It overlooks Columbia Road and a small park. These were originally social housing, but by the time I moved there it was all architects, like the one I sublet from. I drink coffee by the window and look out over Columbia Road, or eat a sandwich, or have a drink if it is evening. Lots of bicycles go by. I play music quite loud and, on warm evenings, open the windows so that the sound will carry over to Columbia Road, so that people might vaguely hear something as they come closer, and enjoy an unexpected moment of romance in the city. I sometimes even go down myself—I leave the music playing, lock my door, go down the steps, open the outer doors, and walk until I can not hear the music anymore, then turn around and go back.

There is no more evidence of the fog. The mountains to the south, though far away, are clear and sublime. They are completely white. The sun is above them. The city is between us and the mountains, but you can't really see it. There are just the runways, then some grayness, then, miles and miles away, the mountains. It must be very cold, despite how bright it is. I walk to the window and look out. I don't have the energy to go back up to the Skywalk, and I presume it is busy now, I assume there are children running all over, people having picnics on the floor. But I wonder if, if I were to go back up, I could see the city. The tarmac is busy. Food trucks. Baggage transporters. Fuel and deicing trucks. Bundled-up airport personnel, with puffs of smoke for breath—the bald ones with steaming heads. A plane departs every sixty seconds. The queue of jets taxiing for takeoff is long, and it moves slowly. I imagine it must be a bit dispiriting to find yourself on an airplane after five or six hours of waiting, only to wait two hours on the tarmac, squashed in a seat you can't leave.

When I arrived at the upscale apartment to which my father had moved us from the cramped little hotel with the green bathroom, the receptionist gave me a key and told me to go all the way up to the penthouse. The rooms had names instead of numbers. I went in, felt completely shocked by the size of the place, and read a note my father had left on the kitchen bar instructing me to grab a drink from the fridge and come up to the rooftop. Between two large sitting rooms, and opposite a giant, open-plan kitchen, was a south-facing terrace that was just level with the rooftops of the buildings all around, with a large table on it, some chairs, and a couple of recliners for sunbathing. There was also a spiral staircase leading up. I thought, You gotta be kidding me. I opened the fridge. There were six bottles of wine and several bottles of beer. I got a beer, searched in the cabinets for a glass, and went up to the rooftop. The rooftop terrace was totally bare, except for the chair my father was sitting on, and an empty chair beside him. Apparently the embassy intern had brought the chairs up at my father's request. The weather was funny. It was still a cool, almost cold day, but from time to time a brief puff of warmth enveloped us. The sky was gray and very close. These were the very first intimations of spring. You are filthy, said my father. I looked down at my pants. The spots of superblack gunk went all the way up to my thighs, and had also spotted the front of my windbreaker, and the cuffs of my pants were wet and gritty. I had a pretty good beard already—relative to the fact that I'd never had one in my life. Maybe it had gunk in it, too. My father was in a suit, a black suit, and he was drinking wine. He looked serene. He was up there, on his own, just drinking and looking at the city. It was a spectacular view. We were nearly at the highest point of Prenzlauer Berg, which made it nearly the highest point in Berlin. Berlin doesn't look much like a German city from street level. But from the rooftop terrace, Berlin looked German again, because of all the red rooftops, and vast. We've got the Philharmonic in a few hours, don't forget, said my father. I haven't forgotten, I said.

I drank that beer, got another, drank it, and when we heard thunder, we went downstairs. I said, I don't get to hear thunder very much anymore. My father turned on the television and I went to shower and change. My room was enormous. It had its own flat-screen television. The bed was huge and square, as though I might like to sleep sideways, or bring multiple partners home with me each night. I also had an en suite, which was half the size of the bedroom—and as big as my sitting room in London. I felt a little bit silly sitting on the commode, looking around at all the empty space. I picked up my legs and kicked them, just because I could, and made funny faces in the full-length mirror across from the commode. I missed the old hotel.

I showered for a long time, under a massive tropical showerhead, and I made the water as hot as I could bear. When I came out, I was bright red, and I sat naked on the end of my bed for ten minutes, sweating. Then I put on the only suit I had brought with me—black suit, white shirt, black tie—which I had chosen in case my father decided to bury Miriam in Germany. I came out to find my father and Trish drinking wine and watching downhill ski racing on television. They stood. Trish wore a gray dress. In certain light, it turned black. You look very nice, I said. Thanks, she said, so do you. Four hours later we were back in our neighborhood, at a bar right beside Trish's apartment, and not too far from our apartment, which was dark, crowded, smoky, and which played Jewish folk music until three a.m. We drank a lot. I must have talked to a dozen people, and I think I spoke a lot of German, which is interesting, because my German is very elementary. We walked Trish home, then we got a bit lost trying to find our new apartment, which was pathetic because Trish's apartment was less than five minutes from ours. I helped my father into his room. I put him into bed. I took his shoes off. Then I went up to the roof and sat in the rain—under a complimentary golf umbrella—and drank a final beer, and up there, drunk, in darkness, I looked upon the wet and sparkling vision of the city, and it put me in mind of something I'd have liked to do in my youth. My father slept late. I woke, opened the blackout curtains to a bright blue late morning, and realized that I was not, to my surprise, hungover. And with that realization came the sound of bells, church bells, exaltation. I went outside to go shopping. There was a little café nearby that contained a small organic supermarket. You could get fresh produce, meats, and bread. The change in the weather was extraordinary. It was warm, the rain must have brought it. In the light, it almost felt hot. I took my sweater off and tied it around my neck. I bought food for breakfast. I got a little bit of everything. I went back to the apartment, and my father and I had eggs, bacon, mushrooms, broccoli, hash browns, beans, sausages, bread, and some coffee—all served on the rooftop.

On our second morning in the new apartment, my father woke me to say he had a surprise. He had been up a few hours, but I hadn't heard a thing. He said, I've got a surprise, get dressed, get some clothes for a couple of days, pack them in a bag. So I got dressed. I packed up everything I'd brought to Berlin. I ate some breakfast, then we went downstairs and walked around the corner, and my father pulled a key from his pocket, pressed a button, and the car we were standing beside—a big, black, sleek Toyota Camry—unlocked, and the lights flashed.

Hey hey, I said.

Hey
hey
, he said.

He threw me the key and said, You drive.

We're going now?

Why not?

Well, how do we get out of Berlin?

I got a GPS, he said.

But I'm still drunk from last night.

We're fully insured, he said, crash as often as you like.

But we just got the new apartment.

It'll be here when we get back.

We sat inside. The seats were soft. It had automatic transmission. The steering wheel was thick and soft. There was great leg space. It had cruise control. The dash beamed bright white and red. I pushed my seat back, lowered it, reclined it a bit—all electric—adjusted the mirrors, and turned on the radio. The car was very smooth. Once we got on the autobahn, it pulled a hundred and seventy kilometers an hour without any trouble, without much sound. It just flew, and you barely felt the road. Yes, every once in a while, an S-Class went by us, reminding everybody on the road who the king was, but for the most part we zoomed by everybody without being overly conscious of our speed. We stopped at gas stations for snacks, cheeseburgers, slices of pizza, buns, and so my father could stretch his legs. Our journey took us through the Rhineland, then through the Ardennes, then to Brussels. After Brussels, we went to Aachen. The only part of the trip my father let me know about beforehand was Aachen—because on that first stretch my father talked a lot about Charlemagne. Our trip lasted five days. Five days of warmth and sunshine. But then winter returned, and we arrived back in Berlin in a sleet storm, in a fog that swirled as cars drove through it, in the middle of the night, stinking of all that time in a hot car together, and stinking of the long day's journey.

I'd never experienced anything quite like the traffic in Brussels. It seems to be a city absolutely strangled by stupid, overcrowded intersections. And I think our visit coincided with a couple of days of strikes or protests. Every driver there was deranged and homicidal. We waited at a roundabout for thirty minutes, then again, then again, and finally inched along the motorway for an hour before we got to something resembling normal heavy traffic, with low visibility, rain, and fog. When we arrived in Aachen, I was in desperate need of a shower. I had sweated through my shirt and pullover. My pants were uncomfortably sticky. But we thought we had to hurry. We thought we had five minutes. We hurried from our parking spot to the cathedral. And then, to our embarrassment, we couldn't locate the entrance for a few minutes, until we realized that it was obvious. The entrance was in the West Front, like, said the brochure, a great bulwark intended to protect God's house against the outer darkness, at the foot of the tower, leading to the central core. Then through to the Octagon, under the magnificent and low-hanging chandelier, Barbarossa's chandelier, which was built three centuries after Charlemagne's death. My father sat in a pew under the chandelier to catch his breath. The interior was dark, and in my memory it was green. There was candlelight. Charlemagne's shrine was way past the altar, behind rope. I said, Is that it? That's it, he said. It was golden and unexpectedly small. The shrine was elevated, and it rested inside a very modest beam of light that didn't seem to come from anywhere, so that it gleamed in the same way Christ is gleaming in Piero's
Flagellation
. I felt the need to have my father stand beside it. To look into the color and ornament of the tomb that contained Charlemagne's bones. But he was in no mood to stand and walk around. Every few seconds, he coughed. The coughing caused him intense pain that made him double over. Saliva hung from his lips. His hands were trembling. He wiped his mouth and sat up and looked at me. His eyes were blank. His skin was green. He seemed emaciated. Then he started coughing again, and leaned forward, into his own lap. I knew it was the hurrying that had exhausted him, but another part of me wondered if the place itself did not contain a force capable of destroying him, cell by cell, breaking him apart, scattering him in the air. There were three small groups in the room with us. Each group was guided by its own amateur know-it-all, one of those experts on a thousand unimportant things. The people following these know-it-alls seemed variously intrigued or bored to death. I went around looking at a few things on the walls, waiting for my father to stop coughing. A few minutes later, a new group entered the room, this time led by a younger man—obviously a member of staff. He spoke about the chandelier for a while, with practiced stresses, pauses, and gestures, then the statue of Mary, then about the mosaics of the dome. I followed them at a distance. I didn't understand what he was saying, but he was pointing out important things, so that when I went to the souvenir shop and bought a book in English, I would know which parts were worthy of attention. When the new group was led behind the rope to Charlemagne's shrine, I asked if my father and I could come along. He said it was a private tour, and anyway it was in German. I said we had come a long, long way, and we didn't need to hear him speak, we only needed to get behind the rope, my father was a historian and knew quite a lot about Charlemagne. The man peered over at my father, who was still sitting, but the coughing had subsided. I'm sorry, said the man, but if you want to view the shrine, you will have to return next week. I told him my father's name, not because I thought the man would recognize it, but because I thought saying his name would make the man think he ought to recognize it. The man politely admitted the name meant nothing to him. He looked at his watch. The people on the tour glared at me nastily, so I begged their pardon and returned to my father. No luck, I said. Hmm, he said. He stood and walked to the altar, turned around and looked up, to the upper level, where Charlemagne's throne sat, from which he would have observed services. Opposite the throne, at eye level with the throne, was Christ on the cross, staring back at Charlemagne, like a man and his wife. The private tour ended, and the other groups left, and we were alone. I cannot say now why we didn't simply step over the rope. It was just a little bit of low rope. It was just, I think, a suggestion to stay back.