by Mariana Leky
The optician supposed he had gone off in search of my father, who had been traveling almost constantly. Selma believed Alaska had run away because we were too caught up in ourselves and had noticed him as little as we noticed the landscape.
I was caught up in myself because I had to deal with Mr. Rödder. I had started an apprenticeship with him despite my father’s recommendation that I move abroad for a time or at the very least to a big city, because, he explained, you only become someone when you’ve been away. Instead of moving far away, I stuck around. I moved to the county seat, into a one-room apartment, and into Mr. Rödder’s bookstore.
“Oh well,” my father said over the phone, “you’re not made for adventure. Neither you nor Alaska.”
Selma was caught up in herself because she had started to suffer from rheumatism. Her joints were slowly becoming deformed, especially the knuckles on her left hand. After the diagnosis my father had called from some coastal city or other and said that rheumatism wouldn’t be an issue if Selma would just let more of the world in. He’d called to ask Dr. Maschke about Selma, and Dr. Maschke, in his leather jacket, which you could even hear creak over the phone, said that you get rheumatism from trying to hold on to things that are impossible to hold. Selma had switched the receiver from her left hand, which was starting to become deformed, to her right, and asked my father to finally, finally stop pestering her about the world, and my father hung up on her.
* * *
We searched for Alaska the entire day. Marlies had joined in at first; Elsbeth had talked her into it for the fresh air, which would surely do her good.
Marlies turned around after ten minutes. “The dog’s gone,” she’d said, “deal with it.”
We combed the forest, clambered over roots and rotten tree trunks. We bent back low-hanging branches, calling Alaska’s name continuously. I followed Selma, Elsbeth, and the optician. Selma had linked arms with the optician, and Elsbeth walked at Selma’s right in her worn-down pumps. All three were in their seventies. The week before we had celebrated my twenty-second birthday. The optician had passed his finger through the birthday candle flames. “How can anyone be so young?” he had asked.
“I have no idea,” I’d answered, even though the optician had only asked rhetorically.
Alaska was already much older than a dog should be. Selma had recently seen a television documentary about criminals who stole dogs to turn them into what she called “animal experiments.” Selma was very worried.
“I don’t believe anyone would want to turn Alaska into an animal experiment,” Elsbeth said. “What test could they run on such an old dog?”
“The secret of immortality,” Selma said.
I didn’t believe in Alaska’s scientifically appealing immortality. On the contrary, I was afraid he had gone off somewhere to die. It wasn’t Alaska’s way to withdraw, but until now it hadn’t been his way to die either. With every fallen tree I approached, every pile of leaves I saw, I worried Alaska might have decided it was a good place to die.
Early in the morning, as soon as we’d noticed that Alaska had disappeared, I’d called Palm because I was afraid he might have gone hunting and confused Alaska with a deer.
“I would never do that, Luisa,” Palm had said. “Do you want me to help look for him?”
In the twelve years since Martin’s death, Palm had not touched a drop of alcohol. With Selma’s help, he had thrown out all the schnapps bottles, empty as well as full, from under his sink, under his bed, in his bedroom and bathroom closets. Selma and he had gone to the glass recycling drop-off five times.
Palm had also become religious. Bible quotes were plastered throughout his house, most of them about light. I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD hung over Palm’s refrigerator. I HAVE COME INTO THE WORLD AS LIGHT hung over the sideboard. I AM THE LIGHT THAT IS OVER ALL THINGS hung on the dark wardrobe in his bedroom.
Elsbeth could not understand it. “What’s the point of becoming religious at the very moment God has shown His very worst side?” she kept asking. Selma told her it made more sense than wanting to blow the leaves off trees in April and, after all, Palm had always known a thing or two about illumination.
In the period following Martin’s death, I was afraid of Palm, but it was a different kind of fear than before. After Martin’s death, I was afraid of Palm’s pain. I didn’t know how to approach him, in the same way you don’t know how or if you should approach a motionless animal you’ve never seen before. Pain had uprooted everything inside him it couldn’t use, and with Palm this meant just about everything. Even his rage had drained away, and without rage he seemed even more ominous to me than he had been with it.
The look in Palm’s eyes was no longer wild, nor was his hair. Every morning he combed his hair and smoothed it down, and soon after, as with Martin, a strand always stood up. If anyone mentioned it, Palm would say, “It’s pointing at the Lord.”
Since Martin’s death, Palm would visit Elsbeth, the optician, or Selma to discuss passages in the Bible. They let Palm sit in their kitchens, living rooms, or examination chairs. Over the years, faith had anchored itself in Palm, but no one was sure if this faith was solid enough to withstand uninterrupted hours in Palm’s silent house or strong enough to lift all that was no longer there.
Most of the time on his visits Palm discussed the Bible passages with himself, anticipating the rare questions about his explications. “You surely want to know why Jesus told the blind man that he should not return to the village,” Palm would say. “Well, I can tell you.” He would say, “Surely you’ve often wondered exactly how Jesus healed the paralyzed man. Well, I’ll gladly explain,” and then Palm would explain, and the optician, silently stirring his coffee, would let the explanation wash over him. Even Elsbeth, who struggled to follow him, would nod off sooner or later. She slept sitting upright on her sofa, her mouth hanging open, and Palm continued undeterred.
The only one who asked questions during Palm’s biblical exegeses, the only one who at least said, “Yes, Palm, I have been wondering about that, please explain it again,” was Selma. She asked about many things so he could extend his exegeses, so he could kill a few more hours, because that, Selma believed, was the point: killing time so he wouldn’t have to spend yet more hours alone. Now and then during Palm’s visits, Selma would go into the bathroom and gobble down five Mon Chéris at once. Because of the increasing deformation of her left hand, she would unwrap the candies single-handedly, as she had when carrying me for three days. After the Mon Chéris, she would take a deep breath, pop a eucalyptus lozenge in her mouth, and return to the kitchen, where Palm was waiting with further explanations.
None of us dared touch Palm. We’d shake his hand, that was all. We never hugged him or patted his shoulder. On no account did Palm want anyone to touch him, this we knew. As if he risked crumbling into dust.
* * *
“Thank you, but that’s not necessary,” I’d answered when Palm had offered to help search for Alaska, because I was afraid he would quote Bible verses the entire time, and the Bible, after all, is bristling with passages that are suitable for when you’re searching for someone.
“May the Lord bless you in your search,” Palm said.
“Seek and you shall find,” I replied to make Palm happy, and it worked.
* * *
We searched until evening. “Alaska!” we called. “Alaska!” We passed through the two neighboring villages and asked everyone we met if they’d seen a dog that was much too big. For hours Elsbeth asked us over and over again if any of us happened to feel tingling in our right hands, which was as exhausting as Palm’s biblical exegeses would have been. Elsbeth had explained that you find someone you’ve lost when your right hand tingles. “No, still no tingling,” we’d answer each time.
“I can’t go any farther,” Selma finally announced.
“Let’s stop for now,” the optician suggested. “We can look for him again tomorrow. Maybe Alaska is sitting by the front door waiting
for us.”
I didn’t want to stop. I feared that the person you’re looking for is truly lost if you stop searching. I was afraid my father might call. He loved Alaska. My father saw him only rarely, which made love much simpler, because those who are absent can’t misbehave. My father had called that morning and the connection had been terrible. Selma told him that Alaska had disappeared, even though we were all standing around her, waving our arms to signal that she shouldn’t say anything about Alaska’s disappearance, not yet. But Selma hadn’t understood what we were trying to tell her and had only looked at us, astonished at the way we were all flailing our arms as if we’d all burned our hands at the same time.
“You absolutely have to find him,” my father had said, at least as far as Selma could understand over the terrible connection, and he promised to call again that evening. I could picture Selma telling him that we’d looked everywhere for Alaska but hadn’t found him. I could see my father, in a telephone booth somewhere far away with a bad connection, only able to understand “everywhere” and “not.”
“Go home,” I said. “I’m going to keep looking a bit longer.”
* * *
I didn’t return through the villages but instead followed the edge of the forest. Night was falling. When I reached the Uhlheck, in the meadow where Selma had seen the okapi in her dream, three men emerged from between the tree trunks. They appeared so suddenly and so silently, it was as if they hadn’t stepped out of the forest but out of the void.
I stood still. The men were bald and wore black cowls and sandals. Three monks had burst out of the underbrush. The sudden appearance of an okapi would not have been more incongruous.
The monks were staring at the ground with intense concentration. A few steps from me, they finally raised their heads and stood still.
They stood before me in a row. It was like a lineup in Tatort when an eyewitness behind a one-way mirror has to identify the suspect among several people standing in a row. To make the identification more difficult, everyone in the lineup looks very similar. “The perpetrator wore a black cowl and a friendly smile,” the witness would have said in this case.
“Good evening,” said the monk in the middle. “We didn’t mean to frighten you.”
I hadn’t been frightened, and only then, when the monk in the middle said that, did I feel alarmed, like an eyewitness who recognizes the main suspect beyond the shadow of a doubt. I felt dizzy and staggered a step to the right, not because anything accosted me from within or from without but because I had a presentiment when the monk in the middle said “Good evening” that he would upend the entire expanse of my life in a single movement.
I had always believed that you could never know something like this in advance, but there, in the Uhlheck, I realized you could.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, because it is an appropriate question to ask someone who is about to change your life.
“Walking meditation,” the monk replied. “We’re here for a retreat in the village back there, in that house with the pensive name.” He pointed behind him, meaning on the other side of the forest.
“The House of Contemplation,” I offered.
Years ago, a widow in the neighboring village had converted her farm into an inn, which she mostly rented out on weekends to therapy groups. When I was a child, primal scream therapy was in vogue. Sometimes, when Martin and I were passing through the neighboring village, piercing screams echoed from the House of Contemplation and the shutters of all the surrounding houses were closed tight. Amused, Martin and I screamed back as loud as we could until the owner of one of the houses came out and said despairingly, “Please, not you, too.”
“And you?” the monk in the middle asked.
He was still just the monk in the middle, still nameless. The monk in the middle’s name could still have been Jörn or Sigurd, which would have been unfortunate in light of the still-unestablished fact that I would eventually say his name around seventy-five thousand times and would think it around a hundred and eighty thousand times.
“I’m looking for Alaska,” I said.
One of the monks giggled. He was at least as old as Farmer Häubel.
“Is that a metaphor?” the monk in the middle asked.
“No,” I replied, then thought of my father and Dr. Maschke. “Well, yes, it’s also a metaphor. But it’s primarily a dog.”
“How long has it been gone?”
“Since last night, I think,” I said, because you lose track of time and no longer know the difference between last night and the coming night when you sense your life is in the process of being upended.
The monk in the middle looked at the ancient monk, who nodded. “We’ll help you,” he said.
“Look for the dog?” I asked, because you become slow on the uptake when you’ve lost track of time.
“That’s right, to find the dog,” the monk said.
“To look for.”
“To find,” he insisted.
“It’s roughly the same thing,” the ancient monk said.
“You’re Buddhist monks,” I said, and all three nodded as if I’d answered the grand-prize-winning question.
“What does the dog look like?” the ancient monk asked.
“Big, gray, and old,” I said.
“All right, let’s spread out,” the ancient monk said.
He turned and walked straight back into the forest. The second monk turned to the right. The monk who had been the monk in the middle rested his hand on my shoulder and smiled at me. His eyes were very blue, almost turquoise. “As blue as the Masurian Lakeland,” Selma would later say. “As blue as the Mediterranean Sea in the Mediterranean midday,” Elsbeth would later say. “It’s some shade of cyan blue, to be precise,” the optician would later say, and “As blue as blue, that’s all,” Marlies would later say.
“Shall we look together?” he asked me. “My name is Frederik, by the way.”
* * *
We walked next to each other, keeping a lookout, and Frederik kept looking at me out of the corner of his eye, the way Selma had looked at the okapi in her dream. Frederik was tall. He had pushed up the sleeves of his cowl. His arms were tanned as if they had just returned from summer vacation, and covered with fine hairs, blond ones; you could tell that the hair on his head would have been blond, too, if it hadn’t been shaved.
For a long time, neither of us said anything. I frantically tried to come up with a question, but because too many questions arise when a Buddhist monk is suddenly walking beside you in the Uhlheck, especially when it’s one who is about to upend your life, the questions all get wedged together and none can get free from the others.
Frederik didn’t look as if he had a question. I figured Buddhist monks likely never have any questions, but that wasn’t the case. At my side, Frederik was also trying to figure out how to separate questions that had gotten wedged together. “What do you think?” he wrote me much later. “That kind of thing doesn’t happen to me every day either.”
Frederik stuck his hand into his cowl pocket and pulled out a chocolate bar. It was a Mars bar. He unwrapped it and held it out to me.
“Want some?”
“No, thanks.”
“What kind of dog is Alaska?”
“He belongs to my father,” I said.
We crossed the Uhlheck. Frederik ate the Mars bar and kept glancing at me, then at the landscape that was now dressed to the nines, like Elsbeth when she had Sunday visitors. The ears of wheat were truly golden, the sky perfectly clear.
“It’s beautiful here,” Frederik said.
“It is, isn’t it,” I agreed, “a glorious symphony of green, blue, and gold.”
Everything about Frederik was light: the hair missing from his head, his very present turquoise-colored eyes. How can anyone be so beautiful? I thought. My thought had the same intonation as the optician’s when he had asked no one in particular how anyone could be so young.
Then I stopped and grabbed
Frederik’s sleeve.
“It’s like this,” I said. “I’m twenty-two years old. My best friend died because he leaned against a door on the local train that wasn’t properly shut. That was twelve years ago. Whenever my grandmother dreams of an okapi, someone dies soon after. My father believes you can only become yourself somewhere far from home, so he’s traveling. My mother has a flower shop and is having an affair with the owner of an ice-cream parlor whose name is Alberto. The optician took a saw to the posts of that hunting blind there”—I pointed at the adjacent meadow—“because he wanted to kill the hunter. The optician is in love with my grandmother but won’t tell her. I’m doing a bookseller apprenticeship.”
I had never told anyone all these things because some were already known by everyone I knew and some were things that no one should know. I told them all to Frederik so he could jump right in.
Frederik looked over the fields and listened to me like someone listening closely to directions so he can remember them exactly.
“That pretty much sums it up,” I said.
Frederik laid his hand on mine, which was still clutching his sleeve, and kept looking into the distance.
“Is that him?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Alaska.”
From far, far away, something was running toward us, a small gray thing that got bigger and bigger and looked more and more like Alaska as it got closer. When it got very close, when it reached us, it truly was him. “You can become yourself somewhere nearby, too,” Frederik said.
I knelt down and threw my arms around the breathless dog, who was covered with twigs and leaves. “I’m so happy, so happy,” I cried, “but where have you been?” For once, I was surprised Alaska didn’t answer.
I plucked the twigs and leaves from his fur and looked him over to see if he had any injuries. He was intact.