Strangers in Vienna

by Angela L.

  “Thanks, man,” Alaric said and followed Adriana into another room.

  They didn’t fully close the door. I could hear Adriana’s bold laugh booming out through the cracks. It suddenly went silent and Adriana’s laughter turned to sobbing. I could hear her sniffles through the door crack and Alaric’s voice trying to calm her down. Adriana murmured something in between gasps of breath, and Alaric started replying rapidly as if trying to defend himself. I was curious about what was going on behind the door. I wished I understood German.

  I sat on the couch and waited patiently. I looked around the room. There was a small wooden toy horse with some soldiers lying on the ground beneath the wooden table. A black and white portrait of the little boy from earlier was hung on the wall.

  I heard the door swing open and out came Adriana and Alaric.

  “Well, good night, guys,” Adriana said, her eyes a little bit puffy. “If you need anything, I’ll be down the hall to the right,” she said and left.

  “So you want me to take the floor?” Alaric asked.

  “I can sleep on the floor. I don’t mind,” I said. I desperately wanted to ask him what he and Adriana were talking about, but it was none of my business.

  Alaric shrugged and laid out his blankets and pillow on the ground anyway. “Can you hold the tips?” He pointed at the other end of the blanket. I grabbed the other end of the sheets and stretched it out, spreading the white sheets on the ground like a layer of snow.

  “Hey, I’ll be gone in the early morning tomorrow. I told Adriana to bring you back to the railways if you’re uncomfortable with finding them yourself,” he suddenly said.

  “Gone?” I asked, surprised at this new piece of information.

  “Yeah. I have to go to another city,” he said. “Do you mind sleeping with the curtains open? I like looking at the stars.”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  It was weird—the thought of him not being here tomorrow morning made me feel abnormal inside, like something was blocking my thoughts. After tonight, I was never going to see him again. Even though I’d just met him today, I didn’t want to let him go. It was fun hanging out with him. It was as if he was a part of my life; a part of Skyler’s life.

  “Why?” I asked him. “Why keep moving?” I lay down on the couch and got underneath the blankets as I embraced its warmth.

  He paused and stared at me deep in thought. After a moment, he said, “I’m kind of sick. Well, not sick…but there’s something wrong with my body, so I’m getting the most out of what life can offer right now. It’s a long story.”

  “What?”

  Chapter Seven

  (July 27, 1992, in Vienna)

  “Long story short, I have organ failure,” he clarified, saying it like it was nothing. “I don’t have much time left before I have to be hospitalized, so I decided to travel from place to place until my body finally gives in someday. Then I’ll stop.”

  He walked to the door where the light switches were situated next to. He turned out the lights and lay on the ground next to the couch, where he snuggled under the covers. The room was entirely dark except for the moonlight that glowed from the window panels, shining over his face. I wanted to ask him which organ was wrong, exactly how much time he had left, how he dealt, all the details, but I felt like he didn’t want to get too deep into it.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be getting treatment?” I asked him as I stared at the ceiling. I wanted to hug him and tell him that he was going to survive, but I thought he probably didn’t want that. If he needed affection, he would have stayed home.

  “I should be, but even if I did get treatment, the doctors say I still won’t live that long. I decided to skip the pills and just live while I can, you know?” I could hear him fidgeting with his covers from where I lay on the couch.

  “And you’re completely fine with it?” I asked. “Dying, I mean.” We were next to each other except he was on the ground and I was on a couch. I wanted to roll over a bit because the couch was quite narrow, but then I realized if I did that, I would have rolled down and crashed into him.

  “I’ve made peace with it. I guess now I’ve got nothing to lose.” He chuckled.

  “You mean you’ve given up?” I responded bluntly.

  He chuckled again. “That’s exactly what my mom said when she got angry at me. She asked me why I’ve ‘given up.’ I don’t see it as giving up. I see it as living life on my own terms. Taking control even though I have so little of it left.”

  “And how’s that going so far?” I asked. I could feel my entire lower body get warm, so I stuck my legs out from the covers so only my stomach was covered by the blanket. I then rolled to my side so I was able to see Alaric on the ground.

  “Well, so far I crashed with a circus group in Poland, toured with violinists through Germany to Hungary, went backpacking in some parts of India with these hippies I met along the way, and now I’m back in Austria. So, yeah, I guess you can say my plan has been pretty good.”

  “Wow. It must be exciting. Now I want to go,” I said. I was sort of jealous of him, how he got the chance to experience all those things while I’d been enclosed in the same environment my entire life.

  “It is exciting. Now I have exhilarating memories that I can think back on before I die,” he said.

  I couldn’t wrap my head around how he could so easily talk about his death and be totally fine.

  “You need a traveling partner?” I joked. My left side was starting to get numb, so I rolled onto my back and faced the ceiling instead of him.

  He paused for a second before answering me. “Sure. Come with me.”

  “Wait, are you serious?” I asked him. I didn’t actually expect him to agree. I turned my neck and looked down at him, desperately waiting for him to reply.

  “Absolutely. We can go on the next train to another city. I think I’ll be hitting Italy soon. Want to come with me? Come on, it’ll be fun,” he said. “The adventures of Skyler and Alaric,” he said, writing the words in midair with his finger as he lay on his back.

  “That sounds great, but…” I knew I couldn’t leave just like that with Marcel and Raya and the people back home hanging on the line.

  “But what?”

  “I’ve got to get back home,” I said.

  “Important people waiting for you?”

  “I guess you can put it that way,” I said. “Honestly, I would love to run off with you to Italy. You have no idea how bad I want to go, but at the end of the day, I’m chained to Missouri. I don’t have a choice.”

  “That’s silly. Everyone has a choice. Look at me. I shouldn’t even be out of the house, but I have a choice. It only comes down to whether or not the person is willing to take control of life and grasp on to the opportunities.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re on a you-only-live-once trip while I got no other place, plus money to support me for the rest of my life, so I got to get back home.”

  “Oh. I get it. Missouri’s your rock.”

  “Yeah, in a way. A sucky and useless rock, though.”

  “Throw the rock away.”

  “What?”

  “A rock is what keeps you grounded, but it’s always what makes you sink.”

  “You talk like an old man,” I chuckled.

  “Told you, I have the wisdom of a sixty-year-old man.”

  “I can tell.”

  “It’s all about the possibilities. They’re rare. Precious,” he had said.

  “But what if they never come?” I asked.

  “Then make your own,” he answered me and suddenly sat up with his legs crossed. “What do you want in life?”

  “What?” I asked, startled at his sudden movement.

  “What do you want? Because, from the looks of it, you’re not going to get it in Missouri. You’re never going to get anywhere if you keep clinging to what makes you feel safe,” he said. Now that he was sitting up, his face was on the same level as mine. He was gently rocking side to s
ide as he waited for me to reply.

  “What? No. That’s really risky.”

  Alaric stopped swaying and said, “Exactly. Risking it is the first step to chaos and adventure. It’s the most magical when you get lost in the middle of everything, then find your way back to who you are.”

  “Like how you travel all over the place with random people?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sounds lonely,” I replied. Simply thinking about it made me feel lonely; in fact, traveling across different foreign countries completely by yourself seemed somehow rather desolate. Imagine walking the earth alone. Even though you had random people to travel with, it still wouldn’t feel the same as experiencing the wonders of life with your friends.

  “No. We’re never actually alone in this world.”

  “That’s not true. At the end of the day, we’re all alone.”

  “Why, aren’t you a big ball of sunshine,” he said sarcastically.

  “What? Don’t you ever feel like you don’t belong?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I have my violin with me. And when I play it, I have the crowd with me. And before I go to sleep at night, I know that I have people supporting me.”

  “But do they understand you?”

  “Is any living thing in this world truly understandable? It doesn’t matter if people don’t understand. In fact, sometimes I don’t want them to understand. One’s soul is too layered and complicated for another to understand so easily. All they have to do is understand my music and, in a way, my music is what I am,” he said, and then he changed the topic to me. “So what’s your story?”

  “My story?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Everybody’s got a story that would make someone feel so lonely,” he said. “So tell me…who hurt you?”

  I wanted to say everybody, but instead I said, “Nobody. Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m curious.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat.” I regretted the words the minute it came out of my mouth. Curiosity wasn’t going to kill him. His organ failure was going to kill him.

  Even though it was dark, I could tell he was smiling. He shrugged as if he didn’t care if he died that very minute. There was something about him that was so lightweight. When one of my stepmothers got cancer, she cried for days, saying that she wasn’t ready to die yet. I was pretty sure most people would do that if they found out they were sick. But Alaric, he still had that glimmer in his eyes. I couldn’t place what it was.

  “You know—you intrigue me,” he said and slowly lay back down on the ground. From the couch, I could see his blankets flying up in midair as he snuggled under the covers.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I think you’re hiding something, something that you don’t want to admit even to yourself.”

  “Aren’t we all?” I remarked.

  “We’ve all got to fight our demons someday,” he said.

  “Not all demons can be fought,” I said.

  “That’s why we find someone whose demons can play with ours.”

  “And have you found that somebody yet?”

  “Not…yet,” he whispered and looked up at me from the ground.

  Even in the darkness, I could see the glimmer in his green eyes as it pierced through me in an attempt to search the darkest corners of my soul, and I couldn’t help but let him in.

  “So, who hurt you?” he asked and turned to his side so that he was completely facing me.

  I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t like thinking back to the people who had caused me pain. It’s true what they say. Ignorance is bliss. “Why don’t you tell me something about yourself first?” I said, changing the topic back to him.

  He sighed as if he knew that I wasn’t going to give in that easily. “Fine. My brother and I are close but he’s got his own life. My place is in Vienna, and I do what I can to get some cash these days to help my mom out. She’s working double shifts and like any other stubborn lady, she refuses help from my brother,” he said.

  “Can’t you just get a job?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s complicated. I like playing the violin, though. It makes me happy, and it makes other people happy, too. I sort of owe her. I dropped out of school two years ago, and I may have sort of run away.” He chuckled.

  “You ran away?”

  “Yep. Before I found out I was sick. I was planning to come back home anyway. I met these musicians, street performers, I guess, and I looked up to them. They played better than any musician you could hear on the radio. They were freelancers, and they asked me if I wanted to go to France and Hungary with them for two weeks to perform. I knew my mom would have never agreed, so that night, I packed my bags and I left. Of course I called her the second night and by then, I think she knew that she was never going to convince me to come back early.”

  “Was she mad when you got back?” In a way, I envied that he could just get up and leave. I was stuck in my town, stuck with the same people. Outside that town was a whole new world to me.

  “She was so, so, so mad.” He laughed as if he had a funny flashback of his mom screaming at him. “But it was an opportunity. I took it and I don’t regret it,” he said and smiled.

  “What about your dad?”

  “He’s serving his time in the army,” he said.

  “Why? His passion?” I asked. One of my stepmother’s grandfathers served in the Vietnam War and when he visited, he kept on telling me these gruesome stories that happened to him out on the battlefield.

  “No. It’s the law. If you’re an Austrian male citizen, you have to volunteer in the army for at least a year. I don’t mind, though,” he said and turned the topic back to me. “Now tell me about your story, Kaffee Mädchen.”

  “I don’t have a story,” I said.

  “Impossible. Then that would mean you have not lived.”

  “Well, my ‘story’ is pretty screwed up, but I’m fine with it. I now live with my stepmom and we’re expecting a baby soon,” I said.

  “Congrats. You and your dad excited?” he asked.

  “My dad passed away last month. That's why I’m here. Raya thought it would be nice for me to have a normal vacation,” I explained. “Raya’s my stepmom.”

  “Wow. You seem indifferent to the fact that he just passed away.”

  I shrugged and said, “I guess. I wasn’t that close to him.”

  “That’s a pity. I think every kid should have at least one parent to lean on. So, you don’t miss him?” he asked me.

  “I miss him, of course, but I’m not overly emotional about it. He was my dad, but we had our problems,” I said.

  “What problems?”

  “Just…problems. He drank a lot, dated a lot, but out of all the disasters that he went through, it seemed like I was never his first priority.”

  “What happened to your mom?”

  “She passed away when I was four,” I said. I realized that was actually the last time I cried emotionally. I mean, I’d cried since then, but it was always over a broken ankle or something physical that could have caused me pain.

  “Wow,” he said again. “You seem emotionally constipated,” he joked, and I realized I was saying everything in such a flat robot tone.

  “I guess you can say that. After a while of dealing with the same stuff…of being screwed over and hurt again…you learn to live in ignorance. You learn to move on and forget, block the pain and continue life because nothing’s going to stop on this earth for you. You find yourself…slowly drifting away from all your senses since you keep blocking them. Then I guess you reach this point of what you call ‘emotionally constipated.’” I laughed at his unique term. “Plus, I don’t like crying because every time it makes my eyes go really puffy like a bee attacked me a dozen times on the eyelid.”

  “You must miss her a lot,” he said.

  “What?” I didn’t think he listened clearly to what I had just said. I didn’t miss my mom; in fact, I didn’t have
any feelings toward her, because I couldn’t even remember her. It was impossible to miss someone if you didn’t even know who she was.

  “If you’re living in ignorance then the pain must be pretty deep,” he said and continued, “I believe that in terms of pain, there are three types of people: the ones who are defeated by pain, the ones who choose to ignore it and live in oblivion—the survivors, you can call them— and the ones who embrace the pain and build up from it,” he said. “The ones who have lived and conquered.”

  “So I’m a survivor,” I said. “Not bad.”

  “Being a survivor doesn’t mean you’ve lived. It just means you’re choosing to be ignorant.”

  “What about you, huh? Running away from treatment and all,” I said.

  “That’s a different form of pain. You can’t escape it. There’s only time. I don’t have a choice for my death, but I do have a choice on how I’m going to live in the time being. But you have a choice.”

  “A choice at what?” I asked him.

  “Owning up to your past. Sometimes…surviving isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to thrive. Yeah, it must be a sucky life, but you can decide what you do from here on out. You ever want to go somewhere or do something in your life?” he asked.

  “I like writing music.” I actually liked writing music more than getting lost in the pages of a book. A book was refreshing and allowed you to step into someone else’s shoes for a change, but music became who you were and lifted the weight off your shoulders.

  “And how’s that working out for you?” he asked.

  “I stopped. Sounds stupid, but I ran out of imagination. Just couldn’t write anymore.”

  “You never run out of imagination. Just inspiration.”

  “Well, there’s not much to be inspired about in my town.”

  “Inspiration doesn’t have to be physically there,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.