Munich Airport

by Greg Baxter

  Once I got outside, I poured the coffee out and threw the cup in a trash can. I looked up and saw my father and Trish not too far ahead, approaching the main street, across which was the square. They stopped and waited for me. I didn’t rush. I drank my water. I thought, This is the street Miriam lived on, and every day she walked down from her apartment to the square, just as I do now. I almost took some photos with my phone, but after turning this way and that I realized I’d be better off misremembering it. The street was narrow. Some of the buildings, like Miriam’s, seemed derelict, even though they were not. There were trees, and I could imagine that in spring and summer, it would be pleasant. The road at the end was busy, and the square on the other side was crowded, there was a market full of junk. I caught up to them. Trish said, I think we should sit down. Let’s find a place to catch our breath, get coffee or a snack.

  Let’s get away from this square, I said.

  I agree, said Trish. I know a nice street a few stops up on the U-Bahn.

  I’d rather walk, said my father.

  I said, Trish has to get back to work, Dad.

  My father looked at the sky, then back at me. Of course, he said.

  We settled for a place along a bright, treeless street that was full of interesting cafés, bicycle shops, and places selling old cheap furniture. From the outside, it looked like a restaurant, but inside it was clearly something else. It had the dimensions of a railroad car, and it served kebabs and falafels and baked potatoes and slices of pizza and cheeseburgers. We should have turned around and picked another place along the street. We all seemed to be thinking the place was wrong, but nobody said it. My father put on his glasses to read the menu above the man behind the counter, and the man, as my father perused the items on the menu, seemed to grow impatient. All I really want is a coffee, I said. Trish got a slice of pizza. The man asked what she wanted on top, and she said, Oh, you know…He made a suggestion, and she said, That’s fine, some of that. My father got a baked potato. It came out so overcooked and soggy, however, and the toppings seemed so lifeless, that he set it aside. Trish nibbled at her pizza, but only after removing the toppings. Tomorrow, said my father, speaking to his set-aside potato, we should go see the Bundestag or something. Trish said, Oh, definitely, you should book at the café and you can skip the lines. My father said, It’s been such a long time since I’ve been in Berlin. Yes, such a long time, I was a student. I came to Europe quite often for a while, when I started teaching. When I started editing the journal I found I didn’t really have the time to travel, I don’t know, maybe I did, I could have come to Berlin to see Miriam, I never did.

  I said, You came to Scotland, she didn’t make it.

  My father looked distantly at his potato. I could see that he really did not like the potato, and wished it would go away. So I moved it.

  Then Trish said, The Neue Nationalgalerie is also nice.

  I’d like to hear the Philharmonic, said my father.

  Me too, I said.

  I can help you get some tickets, said Trish.

  My father rapped the table with his knuckle—he was showing his approval. He asked Trish if Germany was a US foreign policy priority or a backwater. Something in between, she said. It was her first posting. She’d started late in the State Department because of her army career, but generally people in the Department thought Berlin was a solid posting, because it was a nice place to live and the embassy was busy and moderately important. Still, she would have rather gone to China or the Middle East. Her husband had hoped for London or Sydney, so he could find work. It must be difficult, said my father vaguely. Then he looked at me, and I wasn’t sure if he wanted confirmation, or if he wanted to accuse me of mishandling something far less difficult—a comfortable life in a nice apartment in London with a smart, pretty wife who had a good job and wanted kids—because he did not know anything about my wife or my marriage. So I said, Yes, must be difficult. Trish said, He found a job a few months ago, but it’s in Munich.

  Without realizing it, I had begun to pick at my father’s potato—just the toppings. Lots of sliced, pickled jalapeños, which were not spicy, and which were not crisp. Chunks of unmelted cheese. Too much sour cream. An overdressed salad on the side. I only realized I was eating when I grabbed his fork and stuck it into the potato. I was half-alarmed. I said, I can’t believe it. What’s that? said my father. I thought about not saying anything, but then I said, Well, what else, that Miriam starved to death. My father’s eyes got very soft, and we waited to see if he had anything to say. He didn’t. But I had ruined lunch.

  That first week, I rented a bicycle and returned twice on my own to Miriam’s apartment. My father met Trish for lunches and dinners, and even had an unexpected drink with the American deputy chief of mission—the second-in-command behind the ambassador—a history buff who seemed to think my father was a famous historian, and who wanted to express his sorrow about Miriam and assure my father that her case was special. My father told me the deputy ambassador also asked him what the Indo in Indo-European meant. He had always assumed it meant collective or entire. Then he laughed at himself for a while. It would have been a funny thing to say, admitted my father, on a different type of trip. Another thing the deputy ambassador kept saying was hot dog, with a swift emphasis on hot, then a long pause, then a slow and exhaling dog, without any excitement, whenever my father said anything interesting.

  The first time I went back to Miriam’s apartment, I met a neighbor and old friend of Miriam’s. It was the day after I had been there with Trish and my father, another of those cold and perfectly clear mornings. I parked my bike outside Miriam’s place. I got a coffee in the square, and a squashed, tasteless croissant. I had two large canvas tote bags with me, in case I felt like rescuing some things. I didn’t plan on staying long. But as soon as I arrived, I realized I hadn’t any excuse to rush. And I was starting to adapt, already, to the pace of life in Berlin, which was much slower than that of London. I checked Miriam’s mailbox. There was a newspaper in it, some advertising leaflets, and a letter that looked official. I threw everything in a bin that was beside the mailboxes and was already overstuffed with newspapers and advertising. I had to cram them in, push them down hard and hold them down. A woman came down the steps, saw me, and appeared disgusted, but I wasn’t sure what had disgusted her. Three weeks later, I have come to realize that the look of disgust is just the way Germans look at each other.

  I entered Miriam’s apartment, and for the first ten or fifteen minutes I sat at the dining table and did nothing. I drank my coffee, that was all. The room was bright. I didn’t really know where to begin. I left the front door open. I was sort of hoping somebody might walk by and stick a head in. When my coffee was finished, I turned on a small silver radio and tuned it to a classical station. They were playing movie soundtracks. I kept searching. I found NPR in English and listened for a while—the conversation was insipid. So I found some pop trash that could not be accused of being good or bad, it was just fundamentally catchy, then I found a station in Russian. They were playing very strange stuff, so I left it on that. Then I went into the kitchen and checked under the sink. There were trash bags and cleaning supplies and yellow rubber gloves. I put the gloves on. I opened the window in the kitchen, then I opened the windows in the sitting room. The front door promptly slammed shut. I went into the bedroom and grabbed a few large, heavy books. I used them to keep the front door open. Then I divided the apartment into cells and gave each cell a category—books, kitchen stuff, papers, electrical appliances, furniture, and so on. Slowly, I moved everything into these cells. Slowly, I emptied the wardrobe of clothes, a sideboard of DVDs and tablecloths and place mats and glasses, and a drinks cabinet of mostly full bottles of spirits. This is when I first started to pay close attention to Miriam’s possessions. I was so focused on the small things that I did not even notice how nice the large pieces were. They were not heavy, and when they were empty, I moved them easily. Only the couch was heavy. I did not
want to scrape the floor, so I had to move it inch by inch, now this end, now that, then I stood it on its end to maximize the space. Then I got some trash bags from the kitchen and put stuff that was obviously trash into them. Then I beat all the dust out of the cushions. Then I swept the dust around the floor. Then I wiped clean all the surfaces. Then I cleaned the windows. Even though the day was cold, and even though a steady frigid breeze was moving through the apartment, and even though I worked slowly and took a lot of breaks, by the time I was done I felt overheated, sweaty, and covered in dust. I wanted a long hot shower. But then I went into the bathroom and realized I couldn’t use it until I cleaned it. At the level of close inspection, it was extremely unclean, and the tiles needed to be scrubbed. I decided, because I did not want to get my clothes dirty, and I did not want to sweat or stink in them anymore, to close the front door and get undressed, completely, except for the yellow gloves, and clean the bathroom thoroughly. It took a while, and I threw up several times, but finally it was sparkling and smelled like lemon and bleach. Then I took the long hot shower. Miriam’s shower was a lot better than the hotel shower. It was better than my electric shower in London. It had one of those tropical-rain showerheads, and it had great pressure. She also had a lot of shower gels. When I was finished, I dried myself off with one of her towels, then threw the towel and everything else from the bathroom into trash bags. Then I got dressed, back into my dusty and slightly damp-from-sweat clothes, and realized it was already past lunchtime. I took the croissant out of its bag and decided it wasn’t going to be enough. I closed the windows, turned off the radio, and put my coat on. I would go through the piles of things after lunch, I decided.

  When I opened the door, I found a man standing in the hallway, and we gave each other a fright. Then he stiffened up and rolled his shoulders back, as though he had not been frightened at all. He was slight and thin and had black hair. He wore a black leather motorcycle jacket over a T-shirt, jeans, and boots. He looked past me, he didn’t seem at all happy.

  Hello, I said.

  Can I help you? he asked.

  I don’t know, I said.

  Who are you?

  I’m the brother.

  What are you doing?

  I’m going for lunch, I said.

  I mean, he said, what are you doing with Miriam’s stuff?

  I turned around and looked at the apartment, now compartmentalized like a storehouse, and I wasn’t sure I knew what I was doing.

  Who are you? I asked.

  I live upstairs, he said.

  You knew Miriam? I asked.

  Yes, she was a friend.

  I closed the door behind me and locked it and said, You have thirty minutes for some lunch?

  The man’s name was Otis. He was from New York, but his accent was as corrupted and neutralized from living in Berlin as mine was from living in London.

  You’re cleaning, he said.

  No, not really.

  You’re throwing stuff out.

  No, not that, either.

  Those books, he said. They…

  I could see he felt we ought to be standing in each other’s places. He wanted something, and he didn’t feel he needed to weigh my pleasure or displeasure with the manner in which he expressed himself. He was the friend, and I was the intruder. Let’s talk about the books at lunch, I said. He wasn’t hungry, he said, but he would come along and watch me eat. We walked out of the building and turned toward the square. Otis walked with his hands in his pockets, even when he smoked he walked with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t say much. I spoke, and he mumbled. I tried to be friendly, because I wanted him to warm up, relax, and tell me something about Miriam, even something he might think I wouldn’t want to hear. I told him I lived in London, had lived there for twenty-five years. I told him my father and I were in Berlin to take Miriam’s body home and bury her. I told him where we were staying, and about the close quarters, and my green bathroom, I may have mentioned the botched phone call home from Bedford Square, or the lunch I had afterward, and what the Frenchman had said about the English. Nothing interested him enough to cause him to respond. So I asked Otis if Miriam had said anything about either of us, my father or me. Just the usual, he said. I said, I saw her twice in the last decade, have you known her that long? He said, I have. The day was going gray, and the sunlight was thinning, and the air took on the scent of ice, and I was certain I could see snow.

  Are you in contact with anyone who knew Miriam?

  Not regular contact, no.

  Could you make contact with them, if you had to?

  Why?

  I wasn’t sure what I was proposing. I think I had in mind a small gathering, something that my father could attend. I didn’t want to make a speech, nor did I want to hear my father make a speech, but I would have liked to see the faces of the people who knew Miriam once. I didn’t think it would remedy my grief, in fact I was sure those faces would populate my nightmares for the rest of my life. Nevertheless I wanted to see them, and I wanted my father to see them. Trish wasn’t getting any information from the coroner’s office, which suggested we’d be in Berlin for another few days at least. If it had to be canceled, so be it, but in the meantime it would give me something to anticipate.

  I said, I’d like to just invite anybody who knew her to a casual drink.

  He had stopped abruptly on the road. What do you want to eat? he asked. I don’t know, I said, something nice. He said, I’m not sure anything around here would suit you. He was being sincere, and he looked at me an extra half second after he spoke. We were, at that moment, surrounded on all sides by restaurants, cafés, takeouts. I’m not fussy, I said, really. I could see that Otis had no real interest in my fussiness or unfussiness. What was really going on, possibly, with this strange and severe taciturnity, was that he was treating me in the way that he felt Miriam would want him to treat me. If that was the case, then whatever she had said about me, or however she’d behaved whenever she mentioned me, had caused Otis’s behavior. I think I grew teary-eyed. But I didn’t quite accept it. I turned around, this way and that, to look for a place where I might like to eat. It was such an ugly street. It was such a cold, miserable day.

  You like soup? he said.

  Soup?

  Asian soup.

  Sure, I said, though I did not want Asian soup. The moment he proposed it, I realized that what I wanted was a salad—I had been in Berlin for a few days and hadn’t had a single fresh vegetable. I was beginning to have constant indigestion during the daytime, which I suppressed with just enough alcohol in the evenings to forget that I felt a little sick. Otis took me to a busy and loud place that seemed deliberately half-refurbished, in a manicured state of collapse, and Led Zeppelin was playing, and it was full of people who were also named Otis. I ordered some soup and Otis got himself something to drink, a kind of lemonade with some mint and a thin layer of froth at the top, and we crammed into an overcrowded picnic table, opposite each other. I asked, When was the last time you talked to Miriam? He said, A long time, if you mean the last time we really talked. Me too, I said. My soup came. It was full of tofu and bok choy and chilies. I took a spoonful and Otis said, Is it good? I said, Yeah, it’s really good. Some people Otis knew came by and briefly spoke with him, in English. I was completely ignored, which was fine with me, because the only things I had to talk about were Miriam and the fact that I did something professionally that they probably all thought was evil. I ate my soup and did not even bother eavesdropping. When they left, I asked him if those people knew Miriam. No, he said. I felt like saying, If you want some books, Otis, you had better tell me something about Miriam, but instead I asked, Did you and Miriam ever date?

  Date?

  Or whatever.

  He paused, and then he said, Not really.

  I said, I saw her five years ago in Cologne, I knew then, I knew she was in trouble, she was so thin, but I didn’t do anything, I didn’t say anything.

  I finished the last few s
poonfuls of soup. He checked his watch a few times and dug in his pocket and jingled his keys, as though he was about to get up and go back to Miriam’s apartment. But I wasn’t ready. I said, What did she do for money? He said, She did a little bit of everything, taught English, movement therapy, life coaching, artist, translator, waited tables, got unemployment. He said this very casually and sleepily. But he awoke from the torpor of his list to lean forward and say—and as he spoke he hit the table hard once or twice with an outstretched index finger, and he revealed an aggression or rage that threatened to overflow from him—At no time in history have human beings had less freedom, less happiness.

  I didn’t understand how this connected to Miriam’s work or to her death, unless he was suggesting that a lack of freedom and happiness had caused her to want to kill herself by starvation, or, alternatively, that her death was some form of courageous social protest. Possibly he was accusing me personally of taking Miriam’s freedom and happiness from her, or accusing both of us of doing that. I thought it was a preposterous thing to say, no matter what it meant, but I responded anyway. I said, At no time?

  That’s right.

  I bet that’s not true.

  It’s true, he said.

  I looked down. The empty bowl of soup was in front of me. I pushed it to the side. I stood up and Otis stood up, too. I said, I think I’m going to head back to my hotel, get some rest, come back to Miriam’s another day to finish sorting everything. He said, The books. Yes, I said, what about them? Some of them belong to me, he said, and some other stuff. I said, I don’t give a shit about the books, Otis, or anything else. Before we leave, you can come over and take whatever you like. He thanked me and we exchanged numbers. He said he’d see me tomorrow, or whenever I returned to Miriam’s, and I sensed that he was telling me I would never get to spend time in Miriam’s apartment without him finding out and joining me. I reminded him about getting Miriam’s friends together, something modest but sincere, to mark the occasion. We parted in front of the soup place, but we were both heading in the same direction. I waited until he was out of sight, then I followed. I went back to my bike. The ride back across town, in the snow or freezing drizzle, whichever it was, was slippery and frigid. I got back to the hotel and took another shower and a short nap. I heard my father come in. I went to his room and told him that a neighbor of Miriam’s had explained to me that human beings have never had less freedom and happiness than now. He sat on the edge of his bed and undid his tie and started taking off his shoes. What on earth is that supposed to mean? he said. I don’t know, I said. I suspect he’s forgotten the tenth century, said my father. I suspect you’re right, I said. I sat on the little yellow tulip chair in his room and started flipping through a complimentary tourism magazine.