The Elephants in My Backyard

by Rajiv Surendra

  19.

  I RAN. I RAN FAR away from home. Far, far away, to a world that seemed like it had sprouted from the pages of a children’s storybook—cobblestone streets, church bells ringing on the hour, and feathers—huge, long feathers adorning the hats of the women shopping in the outdoor market at the center of town. This was the home I had always wanted but never actually knew existed.

  It didn’t take long for me to fall head over heels in love with Munich. Small things about this city made me smile, like men and women routinely carrying bouquets of flowers home—flowers on the table were a staple part of every apartment, it seemed.

  The beautiful, old gothic, baroque, and neoclassical architecture took my breath away on a daily basis—stone façades with fruit, flowers, and gargoyles protruding from the eaves seemed like vignettes that were once alive and breathing, but were frozen in time. Cathedral spires, turrets, and towers capped with copper or bronze onion domes pierced through the skyline.

  After my bank interview, I found a website for au pairs (fancy talk for a youthful nanny) and created a profile, listing all my credentials and artistic skills—drawing, painting, and pottery. “I’m an excellent cook, and I’d be the greatest caregiver for your kids . . .” I typed confidently. I posted a few pictures of myself and in the bracket stipulating salary expectations, I clicked on the highest option. Within a few days, I had a message in my inbox. Anna and Joel, a British couple, had recently moved to Munich for work and were looking for an English-speaking male to take care of their two sons, Sebastian and Alexander, nine and ten, respectively.

  I hesitated briefly—did I really want to take care of two (potentially bratty) kids? And what happened to their previous nanny? Was this going to be like The Sound of Music—and was I the latest in a long line of governesses who had come before me?

  No, I decided, I would not be fazed by fear of the unknown. Just like Fräulein Maria, I would have confidence in myself. I turned back to the email.

  The parents needed someone to pick their kids up from school, make them snacks, and do homework with them on weekday evenings. Preferably someone who could cook dinner and also play soccer with the kids. During the day, when the boys were at school, the au pair would pick up the dry cleaning, and do the laundry and grocery shopping. And they had a separate apartment in their building for the au pair.

  A month later, I was perched on the back of an old 1920s bicycle, a big, old honker I had found on German eBay, complete with a worn leather seat, a wicker carrying case, and a dynamo lamp powered by the wheels, riding with reckless abandon over the cobbles as I made my way down the shopping list that Anna had written out for me—English on the left with the German equivalents on the right.

  The Viktualienmarkt in the middle of town was full of stalls selling fruit and vegetables imported from Italy, Spain, or North Africa, as well as a luscious selection of cheeses, breads, fish, and meat. I was the only darkie in a population that seemed entirely white, and the market vendors were now familiar with me. It was here that I began pushing myself to learn German. On that particular morning, after buying the household staples of milk, eggs, bread, and fruit, I wandered around, brainstorming ideas for what to make for dinner that night. I settled on chicken curry, and it was only when I was standing before the short, stout German butcher, bald with round glasses perched on his button nose, that I realized I had no idea of how to say “boneless, skinless chicken thighs” in German.

  The one line I used only as a last resort was pulled out, “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” I asked. (Do you speak English?)

  “Nein, leider nicht,” he apologized, grinning and placing his chubby hands on his hips. (No, unfortunately not.)

  I stood there for a moment, refusing to be defeated. Then I searched around in my head for something, anything that I had learned in German by then that could help me.

  “Ich brauche . . .” (I need) I said, my eyes to the blue sky overhead as I continued to brainstorm. I looked at him, tucked my fists under my armpits and flapped my elbows.

  “Huhn?” he asked, pointing to a picture of a chicken behind him that I hadn’t noticed.

  “Ja!” I shouted. “Genau!” (exactly). Then I patted my upper thighs.

  “Schenkeln?” he asked.

  I had no idea what the word for “thigh” was, so I decided to take a chance. At least it would be some part of a chicken, hopefully.

  “Ja,” I said, then added, “aber . . .” (but). I searched for another word. “Ohne” (without), and then I pinched and pulled up the skin on my arm.

  “Ohne Haut, ja,” he said, nodding.

  “Ja, ohne Haut, und auch, ohne . . .” then I pointed to the bones in my finger joints.

  “Knochen?” he asked.

  Sure, whatever. Sounds like it could mean bones. “Ja,” I confirmed.

  “Hähnchenschenkel, ohne Haut und Knochen!” he bellowed jovially as he turned away from me and headed out of sight into the back of the shop.

  I was beaming—somehow I had figured it out. An older lady stepped up beside me, dressed in traditional Bavarian clothing, a dirndl dress that cinched her waist tight and pushed her breasts up to her chin, with a full skirt gathered into pleats. She had a hat on with a feather in it that was two feet long. We looked at each other and nodded slightly.

  “Hallo,” I said to her quietly, amazed with the characters that filled my new world.

  “Grüß Gott,” she offered back formally—the very local salutation that literally translated to “greetings in the name of the Lord.”

  I wasn’t only taken by the incredible history of this medieval city, where every street and building went back hundreds of years—it was the people, too. I got the Germans and they got me. Their way of life just seemed to make so much sense to me. There wasn’t the false lathering on of niceness that was typical of American customer service, in which an overly saccharine greeting would often be followed by incompetence.

  At the Viktualienmarkt, I was usually greeted with a simple, “Der Herr?” (literally, The Sir?). And I loved it. No bullshit. Within a few months, the fruit and vegetable lady and I were on a first-name basis—a true sign of closeness here in Bavaria. She’d laugh or smile while we conversed, and her reactions were real.

  It took some time to get to know my charges, Sebastian and Alexander, but I started developing a trust with them that was formed through a bit of struggling early on. They’d rebel and throw tantrums every now and then—once, at Nonnberg Abbey, in Salzburg (the actual abbey where Maria Von Trapp was a postulate, dating back to the year 740!) I took the boys on a “field trip’ ” one weekend and we happened to enter the chapel, only to be greeted with the haunting sound of the nuns singing evening vespers, out of sight in the choir loft behind a huge stained-glass window. It was pouring rain outside, and I warned the boys that when we entered, we had to be completely quiet. We had the place all to ourselves, and carefully sat down on one of the old oak pews. Alexander began fidgeting, kicking the pew in front of him. I gave him a warning glance—Anna cautioned me that they would test their boundaries, and that I had to show them that I was on their side but also the authority figure in the relationship. I mouthed, “Stop it” to Alexander as the beautiful chanting filled the stone chapel, but he defied me, continuing with a steady thump, thump, thump. Burning with fury, I took both boys outside and reprimanded Alexander—and he blew up instantly, crying, screaming, and stomping his feet in front of the ancient tombstones that sat crookedly in the graveyard.

  When he had stopped crying, I crouched down to him on the ground beside a completely weathered tombstone.

  “We can go home, if you want. You wanna get back on the train and go back to Munich? ’Cause I’ll do it. Or,” I patted his head, teasing, “you can be a big boy; you can say sorry to your brother and me, and we can move on—and go have some schnitzel at the place we passed on the way up here.”

  “I’ll be good,” Alexander whispered in his British accent. “So-rry.”

&nbs
p; I was surprised at myself about six months in, when I realized that I really did love these kids. I always knew, solidly, that I never wanted kids of my own, but there I was taking care of them like they were mine—and I couldn’t help but put their safety, comfort, and happiness before my own.

  I gradually became a friendly taskmaster, enforcing rules that had an effect on the boys. Their eating habits became tidier, they started saying “bitte” and “danke” more often, and their attention spans grew longer and more patient during our weekly watercolor painting lessons by the edge of the Isar River.

  Between the laundry, grocery shopping, ironing, and activities with the boys, my days began at 8 a.m. and only finished at around nine or ten at night. One day, as I was pulling the laundry out of the dryer and folding it piece by piece, I picked out something that took a moment to identify—a thong. Do I fold this? I wondered, looking down at this undergarment that seemed to be just a few strands of narrow fancy ribbon . . . If I do have to fold this, how do I do it? I was so far away from the direction in which I thought my life was heading.

  I tried to find things to laugh about during the day—whether it was something related to my work, or my bold attempts at learning to speak German and failing horribly, early on. I think that laughing during the day helped me to lie in bed, all alone on the third floor at night, and begin to look back at what I had run away from. The rusty floodgates slowly creaked open. And that’s when the tears came.

  I lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling and feeling so very alone. And I was sobbing. You weren’t good enough, I heard myself say. You thought they’d want you, but they didn’t.

  I felt worthless, useless, only good for washing other people’s underwear and buying their groceries. But night after night, I gave myself permission to weep—and I started feeling as though I was mourning the loss of not something, but someone.

  “Why are you crying?” I asked, reprimanding myself, “Pi wasn’t even real.”

  I think I had to force myself to look back and realize that unlike the many auditions I had had over the years, where I’d have just a few days to develop a character, Pi had built up inside me, gradually and slowly, over the course of six long years. And eventually, he was real. He was a solid, tangible part of me. And he left me so unceremoniously, without even saying goodbye. It hurt, and I began to allow myself to mourn that loss.

  Recognizing my tragic condition, I made an effort to do things that would help me recover. I had recently christened my bike “Herr Gritzner” (Mr. Gritzner), inspired by the tiny, semirusted plaque below the handlebars that read “Gritzner,” indicating the make of the huge steel-framed beast. He quickly became my trusted sidekick, my faithful companion on my ventures around the city. I’d get out on Friday nights, or on the weekends. One of my favorite things to do was to put on my black suit and ride to the opera house in the middle of town. I still had my student card from the University of Toronto, and I used it to wait in the stand-by line for last-minute tickets that were sold to youths under thirty years old for ten euros.

  I knew this music—works by Puccini, Verdi, Bizet, and Dvořák. My iPod was full of the classics and they served as the sound track that accompanied the many art projects I’d worked on in our basement—gilding picture frames, oil painting, or making historically accurate clothing to wear at the village.

  One night, at the season’s premiere of La Traviata, I wiggled into my rose-colored velvet seat in the opera house as the lights went down. The place was full—even the standing room tickets were sold out. I looked around me and relished the gilded spectacle. I was surrounded by; Munich’s locals dressed to the nines, the women dripping in jewels, the men in their closely cut suit jackets and high-polished shoes. The energy in the room was palpable, pouring down from the terraced sweep of seats, five stories high.

  The conductor appeared under a spotlight and applause erupted. Then quiet. Then a string quartet pulled out the first few, long notes of the overture. A pause. More strings, sad and melancholic, rising to a crescendo as more of the string section joined in, bass notes anchoring the melody. A pause again. Horns, quietly, playfully . . . um paa paa BOM, um paa paa BOM . . . and then the strings swept back in. My lips quivered. I tried to keep it together. Um paa paa BOM . . . and more strings. He’s alive, I thought. Giuseppe Verdi is floating around here, filling up this space . . . this was something in his head, two hundred years ago . . . and right now, in some way, he’s right here, in this room.

  By the time the first signs of snow arrived, Munich was everything to me, and I couldn’t imagine ever leaving.

  Anna, Joel, and the boys would be spending a few weeks in Oman over the holidays at a resort and they asked me to come along but I wanted to stay put and soak up an authentic German Christmas. Before they left, Anna had enthusiastically insisted that I spend some of my leisure time at the Roman Baths that were not too far from our apartment. The huge art nouveau building was the project of the emperor of Bavaria in 1903, and inside was a spectacular pair of swimming pools, along with a huge stone-sauna facility, rooms of varying temperatures, and a Roman steam bath.

  The ceiling of the pool rooms was incredible, a mosaic masterpiece. Water was fed into the pool by two huge stone lion heads at either end of the pool. I swam laps and then waded around in the shallow end along with a few locals. It wasn’t crowded on this weekday afternoon.

  After swimming I made my way over to the giant set of double doors that led to the steam rooms. A little German lady was mopping the tile floor, and from the corner where she stood she called out, “Nein!” causing me to halt in my tracks.

  She muttered something else that I couldn’t understand so I asked her to clarify. “Entschuldigung?” (Excuse me?)

  “Ohne die Badehosen!” she stated firmly, standing upright and leaning on her mop.

  I picked apart the words in my head.

  Ohne . . . without . . .

  die . . . the . . .

  Badehosen . . . Hmmm . . .

  Bade . . . bath or pool,

  Hosen . . . like Hose, pants . . .

  Oh, no! I gasped.

  I can’t wear my swim trunks in here!

  I stood there, frozen to the spot, the German lady standing in the corner, acting as the gatekeeper to the sauna, ensuring that all who entered did so with their bare bottoms. I didn’t know what to do! Anteater Willy had never been forced to be displayed in all of his unassuming glory!

  “Fuck it,” I said to myself, feeling defeated but also surprisingly daring. I stood in the corridor, held my breath, pulled down my trunks, and then, one foot before the other, took them off. I could feel Anteater Willy recoiling from the chill in the air, and wished he would just man up and not retreat into hiding. I had no idea of what the German lady was looking at; I had turned away from her and put my hand on the brass handle of the steam room door, pulling it open.

  A huge billowing cloud of hot white steam gushed out of the door as I stepped into the blinding fog. It was dark in the steam room, but as the moisture evened out and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I spotted an ornate iron rack of hooks where a bunch of swimming trunks and bikini tops hung. I obligingly hung mine up as if it had been some form of ritualistic initiation. To my right was the door to the first sauna room—turning the dark corner and entering the room, I was greeted by the light of the full afternoon sun, streaming through the narrow windows that ran along the top perimeter of the walls. Tiered stone seating projected out from the walls and there were about a dozen other men and women sitting on various levels, buck naked. I nervously found a space on a lower tier and took a seat. Everyone else seemed relaxed and I noticed a couple of men and women glance at me and smile welcomingly.

  Completely overwhelmed, I wondered whether I should cross my legs, keep them together, or slightly apart. All around me were bodies of varying ages, sitting in various states of both tautness and droopiness. Penises, breasts, nipples, pubic hair in every imaginable frame of vision . . . I closed my eyes
to calm down. When I opened them again, nothing had changed. I wondered whether anyone was looking at me, and then, startlingly, after about four minutes, everything was fine. Penises, breasts, nipples, and pubic hair. So what? a voice in my head asked. Yeah, so what? another voice asked. I relaxed, and closed my eyes, but this time it wasn’t to escape—this time, it was simply to take in the warm and soothing feeling of the steam permeating my skin, muscles, and bones.

  I made my way over to the next room, even hotter than the first, and again was surrounded by naked Germans. And now, I wasn’t scared, embarrassed, or concerned. I was proud of myself for shedding my inhibitions. With my eyes closed, I breathed deeply and fought the urge to be overwhelmed by the heat of the room.

  I moved on to the third and final part of the sauna—a huge round room with a vaulted stone ceiling, and in its center a round pool full of ice-cold water. The naked Germans were jumping right in, wading around for a few minutes, and then climbing out. It looked like a scene from some ancient Roman ritual. I made my way to the edge of the pool—I was ready to become completely part of this culture, this city. Anteater Willy was also ready. I jumped in, the ice-cold water hitting me to the core. I shivered spastically for a few seconds, and then laughed, feeling completely awake, rejuvenated.

  I probably could have survived in Munich without learning German. But I wanted to assimilate. I wanted to reach out and make friends, but only with Germans. I wanted to learn the language, and I wanted to feel like I belonged here.

  It started with my neighbors in the building—the chic young couple that lived next door to me on the third floor, two architects, Nicola and Claus. We’d make small talk whenever we’d meet in the hallway or happened to be taking the elevator up together.

  Then they invited me over for dinner one night—Claus made risotto—and eventually it became a regular thing. When the weather was warm enough, we’d sit out on their little balcony and get tipsy at the end of the day, overlooking the courtyard. Nicola was stunningly beautiful. She had long, brown hair, bright blue eyes, a sharp nose, and delicate pink lips. She’d go out of her way to speak to me slowly, constantly double-checking that I understood what she said in German. She was an avid reader and we often talked about books—one night I surprised her with a copy of Schiffbruch mit Tiger (the German translation of Life of Pi). She loved it, and after reading it, she joined me in mourning the loss of the movie role one night over a bottle of wine. “You would have been peeerfect,” she said, shaking her head and looking down into her glass.