by Anna Winger
He uncorked the Rioja and decided to forgo his cleanse prescription in favor of the wine, which set a sexier mood than showing up with a couple of shot glasses and a bottle of home-brewed cherry schnapps. Walter knew that Americans thought of schnapps as the tiny bottles of sweet poison sold at the supermarket checkout to homeless people and teenagers. In fact, the schnapps he had upstairs was very good quality, but he didn’t want to risk giving Hope the wrong impression. Before he returned to the dining room, he found her shoes in the hallway and filled them with candy. Then he brought her the stollen and wine.
“You’re so sweet!”
She said “sweet” as if it were a two-syllable word.
“You know, this is my first holiday in Berlin,” she said. “I completely forgot about Thanksgiving. This year it just passed me by.”
“We could celebrate it tomorrow if you like. There is an American section in the food hall at KaDe We. They sell Pop-Tarts and salad dressing made by Paul Newman and brownie mix. They must have things for Thanksgiving.”
“Two weeks late? It wouldn’t be the same.”
“Maybe you’re right. Otherwise, we could just celebrate Thanksgiving every day, like that Heinrich Böll story about Christmas.”
“I don’t know that story.”
“It’s a German classic, you should add it to your reading list.” Walter motioned toward the pile of books at the end of the table. “There’s a crazy aunt who’s only happy on Christmas Day. She gets hysterical when they tell her that it’s over, so her family celebrates Christmas every day. After a while, they hire actors to play the family members. They sing all the songs and light the candles on the tree. It goes on like that for two years.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Sounds like a nightmare. Christmas goes on and on here already. You’ll see.”
“You take it for granted. I’ve been reading up on the roots of Christmas, which was a pagan ritual appropriated by the Church as Jesus’ birthday, by the way. Actually Sankt Nikolaus was the original figure, an old man bringing treats on December sixth. It was in America that he morphed into Santa Claus, bringing presents on Christmas Eve. He was then reimported to Germany as the Weihnachtsmann, which is why you have both.”
We have both. This was the last conversation he wanted to have with Hope.
“The traditions seem quaint to you,” he said, “but at least American materialism is democratic. Christmas here is for Christians. All the holidays in Germany are for Christians. We have nothing like Thanksgiving, for everyone.”
Hope picked the raisins out of her stollen and arranged them in a neat pile on the napkin.
“I know what you mean. Since it’s the only holiday uncomplicated by religion, Thanksgiving was the only one we celebrated with Dave’s parents.”
Walter sat down at the table.
“Why?”
“Well, I studied to convert to Judaism when I was first with Dave, but his parents didn’t really approve so I dropped it. Maybe they were just using the Jewish thing as an excuse, because they didn’t want him to get married young.” She paused. “In any case, the Jewish holidays were awkward after that but Christmas was also a problem, obviously, so we didn’t really celebrate anything. Thanksgiving was the only one we could get through without a major meltdown. We always had it at his parents’ apartment, because ours was too small. I always made Brussels sprouts.”
She finished her cake and wrapped the napkin around the raisins.
“Can I tell you something?”
Walter leaned forward.
“Of course.”
“I haven’t been to my German class in a week.”
He blinked. He wanted to hear more about the problems in her marriage.
“I’m never going to learn German there,” she said. “I’m the only American in my class. No one speaks to me. When we have to pair up, no one wants to be my partner. And it’s boring.”
“But you’re a teacher.”
“I was a teacher.”
“The last time you showed me your homework you were doing pretty well.”
“Well, there are other ways to learn a language than sitting in that classroom. How about if you and I speak German with each other?”
“No.”
“I thought you would say that.”
She motioned down the hall toward the back of the apartment.
“Bring your wine,” she said.
In the many evenings they had spent there together, they had never left the front section of the apartment. He knew the layout of the back rooms exactly, of course, but had no idea what to expect. He followed her with his glass in one hand and the open bottle in the other. First, she took him all the way down the hallway and showed him the nursery. It was even emptier than the other rooms in the apartment, down to a loose wire hanging from the light socket in the ceiling. It was dark, but light came in through two large windows overlooking the back courtyard. She pointed at the farm scene carved into the molding on the ceiling. Trees, sheep and a horse.
“You see?”
“It’s very nice.”
Hope looked small standing in the middle of the empty room, looking up at the ceiling in the shadows.
“It is nice. But I have something else to show you.”
She led him back into the hallway and forward to the door of her bedroom. Afraid of any evidence of conjugal passion that might be lying there, Walter dragged his feet, but the room’s contents revealed very little: a mattress on the floor against the wall, some clothes piled up in a corner. She held both hands out toward a large black TV set at the foot of the bed. Other than the cardboard box the TV had come in, it was the only significant object in the room.
“Meet the television,” she said.
Walter stared at the black screen, avoided looking at the unmade bed, which was positioned right beneath his own upstairs. Hope leaned down to shake out the duvet and threw the pillows against the wall.
“C’mon.” She sat down with the remote control and patted the place next to her. “Let’s watch some German TV.”
He perched himself uncomfortably on the edge of the mattress to her right, his hands clasped around his knees. She was smiling as she pressed the Power button, but her face went blank when the news came on. A female anchor in a special report was going over the crisis since September. Over her shoulder a series of outtakes from the past few months flashed by in chronological order. A young woman sobbed on the curb outside a city skyscraper. The New York mayor did damage control in front of the ragged and now familiar mountain of Ground Zero. American troops rolled off planes into Afghanistan.
“I can’t locate the world I know in any of this.”
On screen the young woman was being interviewed. She was wearing the disheveled remains of what must have been a chic outfit when she left the house that morning. Her eye makeup was smeared from crying.
“All the good things are still there as you left them,” Walter said, although it didn’t seem real to him, either. “They only show the bad parts on TV.”
“This is awful,” she said.
Walter wondered again where she had been that day in September. As movies were his only frame of reference for New York, he was tempted by images of Hope both as heroine and as damsel in distress, had played the scene out in both directions. He could as easily imagine her shepherding a group of small children through the streaming wreckage as collapsed over the arms of a fireman. When she dropped the remote on the bed and brought both hands to her face, he moved one arm to the small of her back. Her spine felt pointy and fragile under his outstretched palm. He moved the tips of his fingers ever so lightly against the muscles on either side. The wine was definitely going to his head.
“Maybe we should try to take your mind off it.”
She flinched and handed him the remote control, which he accepted with disappointment. He would have been willing to envelop her in a bear hug if it came to that; he had been expecting her to cry. He flipped through
the offerings, stopping on the dubbed version of Smokey and the Bandit.
“Burt Reynolds speaks German better than I do,” said Hope.
She watched in silence and Walter watched her watching, still trying to read the meaning of her flinch, like war code. Maybe he had moved a little too fast? The voice of Burt Reynolds had retired midway through his career and had been replaced by a younger actor. Walter listened reflexively for a moment, trying to ascertain which one had been responsible for this particular movie, and as he concentrated on the voice, he began to feel better.
“We sync the movement of the lips very carefully to the languages so that it’s almost imperceptible,” he said, like a tour guide showing off his favorite corners of the city.
“You think?”
“What?”
“I find it hard to follow either language when the lips move in English and German comes out.”
He stiffened.
“That’s because you don’t really understand German yet. If you did, you would follow the audio unconsciously. Most people focus on the eyes when they watch movies. They’ve done studies about that.”
“It must be me then.” She reached for the bottle of wine on the floor. “I always watch the lips.”
Walter resisted the urge to argue with her.
“Let’s watch something made originally in German,” she said.
He looked at the remote control as if it were the dashboard of his car and he were holding the wheel halfway through a badly organized date, unsure where to take her next. His saddest stories usually elicited the warmest response from Hope, but to start in now would have been awkward, even vulgar, he thought, on the heels of the New York coverage. Smokey was sauntering through a backyard somewhere in the South when Walter made a decision. She wanted to see a German original? Fine. Klara had said that it was always on at night; it had to be showing on one of these channels, somewhere. The few times he’d caught a glimpse of it in recent years he’d been so unsettled to see his own baby face and the thick bush of dark, moussed-up hair that he’d slid right past without registering where and when it was playing. If his true potential wasn’t clear to Hope under its current layers of neglect and malaise, he would show it to her. He would find his former self on television and offer the image up to her as collateral; he didn’t have time for her to discover him slowly, like the heart of an artichoke.
He took a gulp from his glass of wine and picked up the remote. She settled back against the pillows and watched indeterminate flashes of the German-speaking world go by until there it was, unmistakable. A wide shot of the Alps in the distance was followed by a quick cut to the interior of a stable, a zoom in on a young man feeding a large brown horse. Walter stopped flipping and held his breath. Hans walked the horse into a stableyard ringed by snow-capped mountains. Julia, the pretty city girl, was coquettishly perched on a picket fence and dressed up for church. They exchanged a shy greeting. Hope’s face didn’t indicate recognition immediately, but she seemed interested, so Walter tried to relax. Hans filled a bucket with water and lathered up the horse slowly, sneaking fleeting blue-eyed looks Julia’s way. He was short and compact. His upper body muscles rippled visibly as he moved the brush in circles against the horse’s flank. Walter glanced back and forth between Hope and the TV. He had spent almost every day on the Schönes Wochenende set for three years, but it struck him now that it didn’t seem any more real to him than New York City. He couldn’t even place this particular episode in the show’s chronology (he’d washed an awful lot of horses during that time). Maybe his hair was never coming back, but his body could look like that again. He’d lost two kilos already this week. A pleased expression had settled across Hope’s face, but he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Had she recognized him yet? She sipped her wine. Hans spilled his bucket of water all over his flannel shirt and Julia laughed on the picket fence. Hope laughed too. Walter held his breath as on screen Hans shook his head and grinned at them both, then pulled off the shirt to reveal a toned brown chest. A voice called to Julia from somewhere off camera. As she hopped off the fence, the camera went in for Hans’s handsome, symmetrical face. This is it, Walter thought. He was waiting.
“Tschüss,” said Hans with a wink. Bye-bye.
His blue eyes sparkled intensely, reflecting a room full of blazing television lights. The camera lingered for a moment before the credits rolled.
“That one was really good,” said Hope.
Walter waited for more but nothing came. At first he thought she was being coy, but she just hadn’t recognized him. He was that far gone.
He stared at the black box where his young, buff self had been. In place of Hans, now a cartoon tube of toothpaste promoted a new striped formula. Hope leaned over to pick up the bottle of wine, filled his glass and her own without saying anything at all. Walter was still focused on the toothpaste, when she picked up the remote between them and cut off its singsong monologue midsentence. He drank everything she’d just poured into his glass.
“There isn’t a lot on,” he said.
One after the other, she flipped through channels showing talk shows or the late-night news. One had a series of quick commercials for phone sex, women in black leather and red lipstick making eyes at the camera. Their breasts were exposed and enormous. Neon pink phone numbers flashed across the screen. He rubbed his temples and closed his eyes. When he opened them, a blond girl was undressing slowly in a park while a muscular man watched from behind a tree. Hope had stopped changing channels. The woman walked over and slowly started to pull down his shorts.
“I can’t believe they just show porn on TV,” said Hope. “It’s like that brothel right on Savignyplatz. What about the children?”
“The children?” He felt weary. “The children are asleep.”
Her eyes were open wide in simultaneous disgust and fascination, but she only pressed the remote when the blond woman bent her head. The next scenario was different from the others: no phone number, no makeup, no romantic surroundings or mood lighting, whips or chains; no leather. Two girls were wrestling on a plain gym mat. They were naked, but they weren’t doing anything sexual, per se. There was no mud or Jell-O. There was no disco music either, just the sounds of panting. Pink circles formed high on Hope’s cheeks. Less than three weeks till the premiere. Walter needed some kind of confirmation from her. A chaste kiss would be great, he thought. Holding hands would be enough. Plan B: When he reached the middle of the bed, he would let his arm rub lightly against hers. As long as she didn’t scream or slap him, he would move one hand to cover hers. When she turned her face in response to this touch, he would kiss her. He started inching his way across the bed. On TV, the wrestling girls went at it. One had short brown hair and the other’s was long, bleached blond. They got into headlocks and leg twists. The brunette was stronger. She had a determined expression that looked familiar but he couldn’t recall seeing this one before. Hope’s body was tilted at a slight angle toward the middle of the bed; he could feel the heat of it only centimeters from his own.
“You two look like you’re having a good time.”
Walter jumped away from Hope so quickly that he spilled wine on the duvet and almost fell off the bed. In silhouette against the bright back light of the hallway, the man he recognized as her husband ambled into the dimly lit bedroom. He was carrying Hope’s shoes.
“I’m Dave,” he said. “You must be Walter. Please don’t get up.”
He shook Walter’s hand and then held up the shoes for Hope.
“Look what Santa brought you.”
When he set them down on the bed, some of the candy spilled over onto the duvet by her feet. She unwrapped one, put it in her mouth.
“Nikolaus!” She smiled at Walter. “I must have been good this year.”
Walter had half a hard-on in his pants and pools of perspiration gathering on the palms of his hands. Since he’d seen him a month earlier on the stoop, another mental image of Dave had developed in Walter’s mind.
He had become smaller, colorless, slumped at the shoulders, fuzzy at the edges, so that the full force of his presence now was shocking. The loud voice. The full head of hair. He had perfect teeth.
“I went to the most incredible restaurant tonight,” he said. “The customers cook their own food. There’s a chef who gives general directions then you decide among yourselves how to prepare the meal. I took my team from work because it’s an amazing exercise in cooperation. I mean, you’d be surprised how challenging it is to coordinate a meal for ten people cooked by ten people. You can really learn a lot about people’s strengths and weaknesses. In the end we found a really good synergy.”
Walter looked up at him as if he were speaking Chinese.
“Ignore the management-speak,” said Hope.
“How you doing, kiddo?”
“I bought a television.”
He sat down and leaned across the bottom of the mattress to wrap his fingers around Hope’s slim left ankle.
“I see that.”
“I quit my German class. I’m just going to learn from the TV from now on.”
He removed his hand from her ankle.
“I thought we agreed that it was a good thing for you to get out of the house every day.”
Walter thought of the scene he’d first witnessed on the doorstep, and silently encouraged them. Fight, fight, fight.
“The people in my class were so unfriendly. Here, at least I have Walter.”