Munich Airport (24 page)

We were tired, and the overabundance of food had suppressed the drunkenness I'd enjoyed through the first half of dinner. I hardly ever eat desserts, so when I do, my belly swells up, and my face goes red, and I have to burp a lot. My father's eyes closed. The waitress came by. I ordered us both a second grappa and an espresso. Then I said, Two double espressos.

When the waitress left, my father opened his eyes and said, Do you know that Schoenberg, when he finally got to Hollywood, begged a producer to let him produce a score for a film? I didn't know that, I said. Well, it's true. Schoenberg turned himself into a musical fascist before he left Berlin, and when he got to Hollywood he made himself a tennis player. In the end, all those European exiles—those composers you admire so much—were all making dreck music for shitty films in Hollywood, selling out, one after the other, swimming in money and debasement and feeling famous. It was too much for Schoenberg to bear, being left behind like that, being left out of the future of music. He demanded fifty thousand dollars—which is like a million dollars today—to compose music for a movie. He demanded full control. But really he just wanted to be working in movies. They ignored him. He sent a letter begging them to reconsider. They never answered.

My father looked away, then wiped his face with his thick white cloth napkin. The waitress served our last grappas and our coffees, and my father said, We have officially had way too much to drink. I agreed.

When we went back to the hotel that night, I felt unusually sobered by the conversation. Even though we blamed it on exhaustion and drinking, I was awake and sobered. I turned on the television and ran a bath. I put on my sunglasses. I went down to the hotel reception and asked for a sharp knife. The woman behind the desk said, Big or small? Small, I said, but sharp. She gave me a serrated steak knife from the kitchen. Perfect, I said, thanks very much. I went upstairs and got in the bath. The water was searing. I had to go in slowly. First just the bottoms of my feet, then up to the ankles, then to the knees, and so on. It took ten minutes to get all the way in, and then I couldn't breathe. Not for a while. I picked the knife up from the floor beside the tub and held it in my right hand. I had set my notebook on a little ledge by the bath, and I placed it in my mouth. I bit the spine of the book, I clenched the notebook in my teeth. Then, with my left hand, I took a hunk of flesh in the side of my gut. I squeezed the flesh and started to cut. I started the cut pretty deep, but I couldn't keep it deep. It was more painful than I could have imagined, and I almost bit through my notebook to keep from screaming. I was thinking, If I can get a pound out, just a pound, I will be purified. Or maybe I was thinking that, if I could make a large incision, large enough to stretch back the skin wide on either side, I might, for a moment, before the pain became unbearable, witness the reality of the life of my body, and, by witnessing that reality, eliminate the mystery of who I am and how and what I perceive—because that mystery is such great pain, a pain worth enduring minor pain to eliminate. But of course it had been unbearable from the very beginning. The bath turned bright red. I got out. Bending, twisting, standing—it was all excruciating. I dried off. The wound was gushing blood. I smoked a cigarette. The room filled with foggy smoke, like smoke from a wet campfire—it was totally illogical. Then I called reception and said I needed some first aid. The woman asked me if it was an emergency, and I said, Yes, I would say it is an emergency. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door. I wasn't dressed. I had a little towel around my waist, and it was soaked with blood. I opened the door, and the receptionist cried out something in Luxembourgish, which I assume meant, You are bleeding! I really was bleeding. It was very heavy, and I said, That's why I need the first aid. You need a hospital, she said. There's no need for a hospital, I said. The woman said, There will be a fine for smoking, and you must pay for the towels you have ruined, please give me the knife. I gave her the knife. She gave me the first-aid kit—with bandages and antiseptic. I apologized for the trouble—I made some weird excuse about trying to get a splinter out, and I assured her it looked far worse than it was—and she left.

I had a couple of bottles of hard liquor from the minibar. I smoked some more cigarettes. I was already going to be charged, so I might as well have a few more. I could have opened the window, but I liked the effect of the fog. It took a while, but the wound stopped gushing blood. And I wiped it clean with the antiseptic, or at least around it, and I saw that I'd hardly made a cut at all. The deep part of the cut was tiny, and the rest was just a superficial wound. I got back in the bath—it was still bright red and it was still a little warm. I stuck my hand down into the water to find the rubber plug, attached to a chain, and pull it out. Then I stepped out again. I put the bandage on, then I smoked cigarettes in bed until I fell asleep watching a political thriller that was playing in French with Luxembourgish subtitles. The scar was the shape of a crescent, and I realized that if I were twenty years younger, the scar might have disappeared after months or a year, but now I would probably have it forever.

It still hurts. But only when I think about it. I've got a dressing on it, and I re-dress it every day. I swab it with alcohol, let it dry and scab after showers, then I forget it. Sometimes it will itch, and if I can remember why it's itching, I can stop myself from scratching. But if not, I scratch it, and it usually starts to bleed, and if it gets going, I tend to look like somebody who's been shot, or stabbed. My father hasn't said anything. I think he's noticed, but I also think he thinks it is a nightmare, and he is too afraid of what will happen in the nightmare if he speaks of it. All week he has been screaming through the nights. So have I, I think. I wake up more tired than I was when I went to bed.

I step inside an electronics, photography, and appliance store. It looks, from the outside, as though it's a place to run in superquick and get some headphones, but once inside you turn a corner, then another, and you realize it is immense. It sells things you wouldn't normally consider—or at least I hadn't considered—buying in an airport, such as flat-screen televisions, desktop computers, and kettles. I stop a member of staff and say, Do you speak English? He blinks at me. He is a bit doughy, with wire-framed glasses and buzzed short hair, and a very thinly clipped goatee that makes his face look like it's held together by the goatee, like it's stitching on a fattened chin. I suspect he's about twenty, and I can see that he finds me, in my sunglasses, preposterous. Of course, he says, how can I help you? I'd like some sound-canceling headphones, I say. And a DSLR, and a big wide-angle lens.

Very well, he says.

And a laptop.

He looks up at the corners of the ceiling, because he thinks this is possibly a trick, and that he's on camera.

A laptop, I repeat. And some headphones, and a DSLR camera.

I turn around. Right in front of me are digital voice recorders. I point toward the most expensive one. And I want this digital voice recorder, as well, I say. It's about three hundred euro. It has 8GB of storage, which means it can hold up to two thousand one hundred and twenty hours of recording at a time, or three months' worth. Plus it has an inbuilt rechargeable battery. The man says, What will you be using this for? I say, Why do you ask? He says, You can get a recorder that is just as good for much less, though it has smaller storage capacity.

Why would I want smaller storage capacity?

Are you a journalist? he asks.

My son is, I say.

The man gestures to a colleague. The colleague moves slowly, and nearly gets into a conversation with another customer, but the man whistles and hurries him. I tell him I want two pairs of headphones. One pair of really big sound-canceling headphones and one pair of in-ear headphones, something to replace the shitty ones that came with my phone. I see myself, I tell him, wearing the big ones on airplanes and at home alone, and the small ones when on the go, or running, and so on. Do you know much about headphones? he asks. Nothing, I say. What kind of music do you like? he asks. Country and western, I say. Hmm, he says. I search the shelves. There are two brands that are the most expensive—they are roughly the same price. These here, I say, which are the best? Those are very good, he says, but they are probably not worth the price, the ones over here offer comparable experiences without the high price. Which one has the most features? I ask. The most features? he says. I pick up the boxes underneath the shelves and begin to compare them myself. I haven't heard of the brand names that produce the most expensive headphones, and somehow that is reassuring. I take the headphones that have something called head tracking. I take a high-priced pair of in-ear headphones, too. We go to the cameras. On the way, I point at a few small things and ask them to include them in my shopping cart. I get a laser pointer and a milk frother. There's another man who helps me with the cameras, while the first man stands by. Another member of staff is also watching. Other customers are waiting. I can recommend, says the man behind the camera counter, a Canon 600D. It is a very good camera with excellent HD video, and it is very fast and lightweight. I want an EOS 1, I say. The man says, We do not offer an EOS 1 here. The first man says something in German to the camera guy, who then says, The highest-priced camera we have is the Canon 5D. Does it have the most features? I ask. The Canon 5D has many, many features, says the man. I'd like a lens to go with it, I say. There are five big lenses in a plastic box beside the camera display. Which would you like? he says. I give him an impatient look, and he responds by pointing to one of the lenses and says, This lens is the most expensive and has the most features.

You said you wanted a laptop as well, the first man says.

Yes. For my son. And I had better get an e-reader, and a tablet computer, as well.

Your son is going to be very happy when he sees you.

My son despises me, I say.

The man lifts his hands, palms up, as if to say, Can't win them all.

I ask the electronics store staff to deliver everything to my gate, except for the large headphones, which I sling around my neck immediately. Good-bye, everybody! I say. They all say, Good-bye! I walk back out of the store. I plug my headphones into my phone. I scroll through the music I have. Nothing seems to suit the mood. I need some rap, some classic rock, even some country. I start going through my online store, buying whatever I come across. The downloads move pretty fast, and within a few seconds my first song appears. I strut around for a while. Then I get a phone call. It's Trish. The headphones have a telephone speaker on them, so I just answer, and talk to the air.

Hey, Trish, I say.

It's been twenty minutes. It's been over twenty minutes. Everything okay?

Everything is fine, I'll be there in two minutes.

We might just go ahead to the gate and meet you there.

Don't go, wait for me, I won't be long.

A woman is staring at me. I look down and see that I'm bleeding. It's not bad, but my shirt is ruined. I lift the shirt up to see how bad it is. It's bad. It's going to need a new bandage. I'm going to need a new shirt. I must have been scratching at the scar while buying all the electronics. The woman staring at me looks a little horrified. I tell Trish I gotta go. She says, Are you on your way? I say, We still have an hour!

A concerned traveler, an American, stops me and asks if I'm okay. He tries to lift up my shirt to see what is bleeding, but I don't want him to touch me. What's going on? Trish asks. I tell the American man that I'm fine. But suddenly I am not fine, I am feeling very weak. Gotta go, Trish, I say, be right with you. I kneel on the floor. I take the headphones off my ears. I tell everybody I'm okay. Bicycle accident, I say. I lift the shirt up and pull the bandage back and show the man my scar, because I fear he will call security if I do not, and I suppose it does look a little like a bicycle accident. He says, You need medical assistance. I say, It's an old scar, it's absolutely fine. They sit me down. I am trembling. I try to imagine some food, but all I can imagine is eating the impurity beneath the scar in me. I think I am in a dream, in clouds, in a gray, turbulent murk, while my body comes apart, it is being ripped apart. I remain like that for a while. The hunger pang is strong and nauseating, and the bleeding makes the nausea doubly swampy. For a moment I think that I am going to die, and just at the moment I pass out of the murk and pain and toil—like coming into the blue clarity of the sky—I realize that I would like to leave a part of myself in that pain permanently, to leave myself permanently inside the idea of dying, but then I am through, completely through, into the blue and serene air above the clouds, and I am filled with regret and unworthiness. I take a few minutes. I recover. I get up. I stand and check my scar, and it doesn't seem to be bleeding now. I have some tissues and I pack them on top of the wound. They stick there. A few people watch me. I buy a bottle of water. I drink some. I put my headphones back on, walk into a men's clothes store, and I buy a nice gray button-down suit shirt. Then I buy a few more shirts. Then I look around and see a bunch of nice suits. They aren't too expensive, a thousand euro each or so, so I buy a bunch of suits. Forty-four longs. Blue suits. Black suits. Gray suits. A tan suit. I'll get them tailored at home. I'll be the guy who drives around in his dad's truck in thousand-dollar suits, which is a lot for people in my hometown. I don't even take my headphones off at the counter. I don't look at the girl behind the counter. I get everything in two big bags. I go to the bathroom and change. I put on a new shirt, and I leave it unbuttoned quite low, and I put on a jacket. I head back toward my father and Trish.

Miriam came to London once, while I was there. She didn't tell me she was coming, but I got a message from her saying she was in the city but probably wouldn't be able to meet. I didn't write back, because I thought her message was pretty cruel—who would write to say they were in town, then add they had no time to see you? But two days later I got another message saying she was feeling very ill, and could I come to her hotel. This was when I was still trying to make my business a success, and doing the MBA at night.