Sea Air

by Meeringa, Jule

  “A reason?” he said finally. “Yes, of course there was a reason.”

  “So are you going to tell me what it is, or is it some deep, dark secret?”

  “Please don’t be like that, Nele. I thought the reason for my absence was clear. Don’t you remember how messed up things were the day before I left? I needed time for me.”

  “I needed time for me,” I repeated. “What a great reason. In fact, I think we all should be able to just drop everything and disappear when things get rough—every man for himself.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Do you think I’m an idiot, Mathis? You did what you did because it was the easy way out. But it was irresponsible. You weren’t the only one feeling upset about what happened. It was upsetting to all of us, and you left the rest of us hanging. When the project fell apart, we all went down together. And you know what? The rest of us thought that somehow, we’d pull ourselves up out of it together. But no—you’d rather run off and wallow in self-pity. ‘I needed time for me.’ Seriously, Mathis, if everyone ran off every time things got a little rough, then—”

  “It was more than just a little rough for me, Nele.” Mathis spoke so loudly I winced. “A whole lot more.” He took a breath and lowered his voice, sounding more thoughtful. “I thought that you, at least, would understand my motives—at least a little bit. In you, I felt I’d found a soul mate for the first time in my life. But, I see now—”

  “Don’t put this on me, Mathis!” I said. For one horrible moment, I started to wonder if there was some truth in what he was saying, but then I pushed those thoughts away.

  “On you? No, this is all on me, I know that. But, Nele. I want to tell you why I left. That’s the reason I came here.” When I didn’t say anything, a look of desperation came into his bright-blue eyes. “Please, Nele, give me a chance to explain.”

  Shit! I thought as I looked at him. I couldn’t resist those eyes.

  “Fine. But don’t you think for one second that you’re going to win me over with your sob story.” My words were filled with anger, but I felt fear rising up inside me. I was afraid that after hearing whatever he had to confess, I’d get pulled back in by those damn blue eyes.

  Mathis walked over and stood by the window. As the rays of autumn sun fell onto his face, he closed his eyes and stood for several minutes with his hands buried deep in his pockets. For the first time, I noticed just how pale he’d become. His forehead was deeply wrinkled and he suddenly seemed years older. It took all my resolve not to take his face in my hands and try to coax a smile into his eyes by covering his face with soft kisses. He hurt you, Nele, the voice of reason reminded me. Don’t let the sight of him weaken you. It’s time for this to finally be over.

  I looked up—Mathis hadn’t moved an inch. He clutched the windowsill as if holding on to it for dear life. “I promised myself that I wouldn’t let myself get thrown off course. I thought I could keep steady by pouring myself into my work.” Mathis began to pace. He didn’t look at me—in fact, he was so lost in his story, he didn’t seem to take notice of anything at all.

  “When Küsterer’s consultant told me that our project wouldn’t be implemented, I was shocked at first—then angry. I tried not to take it too seriously, and I succeeded—up to the point when I sat with you in the park. Later, I woke up in the middle of the night soaked in sweat, it was so bad. I felt a deep despair I hadn’t felt in almost thirty years. All night, I thought about my life—about everything I’d done and built and, most importantly, how I felt about it all. And I realized something.” Mathis hesitated. “Yes,” he said, his voice growing stronger. “I realized that I’d been fooling myself all those years. Even worse, I had denied myself.”

  Mathis turned to me and looked deeply into my eyes. “For decades, I’ve been playing a role that has absolutely nothing to do with me. I’ve been pretending for decades—and living a lie that couldn’t have been bigger.” He dropped into a chair, picked up his water glass, and turned it around in his hands.

  “Everything hit me all at once that night. And then I left—alone. I didn’t tell anybody because I was afraid. I was afraid they would immediately pounce on my biggest weaknesses, my inability not to provide for and support everyone around me. My wife would have told me I was a poor father for leaving the children in the lurch; at the office, I would have heard, ‘I can’t cancel all your appointments.’ And you . . .” Mathis gave me a thoughtful look. “Marco, Christoph, and you would have accused me of letting you down in a difficult situation—as you’ve already done so accurately. In the end, I would have stayed. I wouldn’t have taken the time to think things over, and I would have kept all my commitments—fulfilling everyone else’s expectations, like I have for decades—and I would have suffered like a dog because of it. I could not and would not do that to myself any longer.”

  I could feel Mathis looking at me, but I didn’t return his gaze. His words touched something in me, but I wasn’t yet sure what I was feeling. Nervously, I pushed my hair back from my face.

  “So what happened thirty years ago?” I asked.

  “Thirty years ago?”

  “You said that you hadn’t felt this desperate in thirty years. What happened to make you feel so miserable back then?”

  Mathis pondered for a moment. “Back then—everything hit at once. Did I already tell you that I’d been sailing for a year?”

  “You said you’d been a tenured teacher and threw it all away, and then you went sailing and came back, became an architect, and got married.”

  “Exactly. You summed it up so neatly in one sentence, but there was a whole lot more to it. If you want, I can tell you.”

  When I hesitated, he added, “Strictly speaking, my escape to Riga was a reaction to what happened back then—though, admittedly, a very delayed one.”

  “Fine. Let’s hear it.”

  Mathis sat back and folded his hands over his stomach, making me think back to our time at the North Sea, when he had first started telling me his stories. At the time, I often snuggled up in his arms as he talked, his calm voice filling me with a sense of happiness. The memory was like a stab to the heart.

  “It was the wild seventies,” Mathis began. “I had separated from Helga, but I still felt conflicted about the political and social situation in our country. I fully supported our generation’s uprising against the authoritarian figures that had seized power after the Second World War. I took part in demonstrations, discouraged materialism without limits, smoked hash with friends, and had a lot of sex. But I didn’t want to have anything to do with terrorism.

  “In time, they all were arrested: Baader, Ensslin, Raspe, Meinhof, and many others. Solitary confinement, isolation, torture . . . these were the phrases making the rounds. There were lots of deaths among the Red Army Faction prisoners, like Siegfried Hausner and Holger Meins. We knew they didn’t need to die, and we understood that those in power had chosen for it to happen. Anger over human rights abuses boiled over. Day and night, we stood guard outside the Stammheim Prison, shouting our demands for more humane prison conditions—but without success. It was around that time that Ulrike Meinhof died. Some people were spouting a bunch of drivel about suicide, but it was clear to us: the authorities had killed them—if not physically, then at least psychologically.

  “We took to the streets to vent our outrage, screaming even louder this time,” Mathis continued, “but it still made no difference. And then the same thing happened a week later. When I woke up on the morning I was supposed to receive my credentials as a tenured teacher, all I felt was rage and despair. I no longer wanted to have anything to do with this country. At school, they handed me my certificate and I tore it up before their eyes, shouldered my duffel bag, and left for Italy. My sailboat was docked at the port of Venice, where my buddy Hannes waited for me. Without a destination in mind, we cast off and sailed out into the world. As we were leaving the port, I held on to the r
ailing and shouted, “Fuck you!” to everyone I was leaving behind. Then I lay down on the planks and wailed. I cried until all my emotions had been let out. When I finally stood back up, the coastline had disappeared and we were free.”

  After that, Mathis fell silent for a long time and I wondered if that was all he was going to say. I now knew more about what had made him feel the need to take off, and I could see that he’d fallen into despair again. But what did one thing have to do with the other—and what did he mean when he said he was living a lie?

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with our situation now.” My voice sounded more reproachful than I intended. “This is very interesting, but it still doesn’t explain why you left me high and dry.”

  “It was important for you to understand the background for the rest of the story.”

  “So what happened after you sailed off?”

  “I’ll tell you, but first I could really use a cup of coffee.”

  I went to get it for him and then, coffee in hand, Mathis continued his story.

  The scorching sun was relentless. Mathis used one arm to wipe sweat from his brow, but a few seconds later his face was drenched in sweat again. All day he fought a dull throbbing in his head that grew worse with each hour. He massaged his aching temples and cursed as he tried to repair the damaged engine. He was tightening a screw on a particularly hard-to-reach part of the motor when he heard a loud rumbling sound and laughter coming from the deck. He wiped his oil-smeared hands on an old linen cloth and climbed up to see what was happening. He’d barely poked his head out of the hatch when he saw the mess: stray bottles of rum rolled over the planks—two of them broken, their contents spilled out in scattered puddles.

  Behind him, he heard an unfamiliar giggle, followed by a loud belch. He turned around to face a hammock that was rocking back and forth wildly. Sleek, suntanned legs hung over one side, bobbing rhythmically up and down. Mathis shook his head in disgust. Once again, Hannes had dragged in one of those whores who had nothing better to do than hang around the docks where men were buying marine equipment, food, and other necessities. “Why is it that idiots like me do all the work,” Mathis muttered to himself, “while other men amuse themselves?” He gave the steering wheel a solid kick.

  “Hey, Mathis, how about a threesome?” The noise had caught Hannes’s attention, and he now poked his sunburned head over the edge of the hammock and gave a lustful grin. Mathis looked at his drunken friend with disgust. “Oh, kiss my ass,” he shouted. Hannes’s bellowing laughter echoed behind him as he returned to the engine room. Mathis knew he’d have to confront Hannes, to make sure this never happened again. He leaned over the boat’s engine and wrinkled his brow. The engine had been beaten up pretty badly in a fierce storm that blew in the night before, and some of the sails had also gotten torn. It would take a few days’ work to get everything back in order. Too bad he couldn’t get Hannes to pitch in. “I need some time to recover from the trauma,” Hannes had announced when they finally secured themselves at the port after the ordeal—and Mathis now had a pretty good idea what “recovery” meant to Hannes.

  But what a storm it had been! They were out on the Atlantic Ocean after a failed attempt to reach the African coast, and the thrashing waves had thrown their boat, the Rieke, to and fro like a toy. It had been clear to Mathis and Hannes that they wouldn’t survive the night, but then the storm suddenly subsided and the sea became calm once again.

  One glance around the engine room told Mathis that they couldn’t make it to the next port under their own power, so he shot up flares. After what felt like an eternity, a small cargo ship took them in tow, and at sunrise, they dropped anchor in a Senegalese port. Mathis was so exhausted he simply collapsed, while Hannes had jumped ashore and kissed the ground. He’d sworn loudly that he would never again set foot on a boat. Then he’d left for hours and reappeared with the girl.

  “We have to mend the sails,” Mathis told Hannes as they sat together on the deck that evening, each with a glass of rum in his hand. A balmy wind blew from the sea, and Mathis was thankful for the darkness that was a reprieve from the merciless African sun.

  “We have time.” Hannes grabbed the bottle of rum to refill his glass. “Now’s the time to enjoy life. That was a damned close call last night.”

  Mathis looked up at the sky. He hadn’t seen so many stars in his life. The moon looked like a small fishing boat in a sea of glittering lights.

  “Don’t you ever feel like doing something useful?” He kept his eyes trained on the heavens.

  Hannes only grumbled and got up to get a new pack of cigarettes from the cabin. When he came back and leaned on the railing, his back was to Mathis. “Something useful? We’ve been doing something useful for almost a year.”

  “We’ve traveled the entire Mediterranean Sea, sailed around the Canary Islands, and now we’re on the west coast of Africa,” Mathis said.

  “True. All very useful. Maybe a little fun, too?”

  “Of course. We’ve done a lot. But, how much longer are we going to keep going like this?”

  Hannes gave Mathis a grumpy look. “What’s the matter with you? Are you getting homesick or what?”

  “That’s crazy,” Mathis said. “It’s not that—but we can’t go on like this forever.”

  “Why not? What’s wrong with seeing the world?” Hannes said. When Mathis didn’t answer, he added, “You’ve got plenty to keep you busy, screwing around with the motor all day long, fixing the sails—”

  “While you bring in women.” Mathis mimicked Hannes’s smug tone.

  “Oh, so that’s it!” Hannes gave a salacious grin. “The upright Mr. Hagena feels neglected. I tell you what, Mathis: Tomorrow we’ll go together and pick up a nice piece of ass for you. That’ll fix everything, you’ll see.”

  “Cut the crap!” Mathis flung his glass onto the dock and heard it crash against the quay wall. “Do you always have to be so crude?”

  Hannes looked at him without speaking, and Mathis felt suddenly very tired. What was wrong with him? Throughout their Mediterranean trip, Mathis and Hannes had gotten along well, met many people—some nice and some not so nice—and enjoyed their freedom. So why was he feeling such aggression toward Hannes now?

  “I’m sorry, Hannes,” he said. “Let’s just talk tomorrow. Maybe I’ll feel better by then.” He got up and went down to the cabin. All he wanted was sleep.

  After a few hours of fitful sleep, he woke with a violent headache and a stiff neck caused by sleeping in an awkward position. He swallowed two aspirin, then he went on deck and lay in the hammock. The fresh air did him good and he was able to breathe more deeply. He listened to the night: The sea was calm, and it was hard to believe that just the day before they had been in the middle of the most violent storm he’d ever experienced at sea. He listened to the creaking of the masts, the quiet flapping of the canvas sails, and the gentle lapping of water against ships’ hulls. Yes, Mathis thought, this was his world. He sighed and closed his eyes as the rocking of the Rieke lulled him back to sleep.

  After eight days on land, Mathis and Hannes finally left Senegal, sailing north toward the Canary Islands.

  “Maybe we should take a break from sailing,” said Hannes one day after they’d arrived on Lanzarote in the Canaries. As usual, the sun burned mercilessly from the sky, and they were cooling off with a beer at a pub. “After being on the boat for a year, it would sure feel good to have our feet on solid ground again. My legs feel rubbery—and no one can put up with this fucking sun forever.”

  Mathis nodded. He’d been thinking a lot lately about what to do with the rest of his life. He’d fled the injustices of Germany and the expectations that had weighed on him there. He’d thought he would find happiness in freedom. But he had learned quickly enough that whatever else he’d escaped, he couldn’t escape himself—or his guilty conscience. He had a son who needed care, and to
whom he was very attached. He missed Lars a lot.

  “Maybe I need to learn just to hang in there and meet my obligations better,” Mathis said, more to himself than to Hannes. “After all, I can’t run away forever.” He looked out over the water, which glittered in the sun and disappeared at the horizon line beneath a hazy cloud. He knew how hard it would be for him to be away from the sea. “So, let’s go home and figure out what we’re going to do with our lives,” he said. Hannes nodded in agreement. “And if we don’t like it any better,” Mathis added under his breath, “we’ll just push off again.”

  At the time, he believed it, too. Nothing could be easier than packing his stuff and going out into the world. Hannes and he had already proven that.

  As Mathis finished his story, dusk began to fall. I turned on a few lights, using the opportunity to wipe a few tears from my eyes without Mathis noticing. Suddenly it dawned on me that the days were already significantly shorter; soon it would be dark in the afternoon and the weather would turn colder. And me? Once again, I would spend the long evenings alone. There would be no Mathis coming by to cheer me up, cook Paula and me a delicious meal, tell beautiful stories, or listen to my concerns. But, I reminded myself, Steffen will be here, and you’ll be happy with him. A shiver went through my body.

  “Is something wrong, Nele?” Mathis looked at me with concern.

  “I’m fine. I was just thinking that winter isn’t far away.”

  “And?”

  “It’s not important. What happened after you returned to cold Germany?”

  “Well, I tried to regain my footing. I thought I’d be welcomed back with open arms, but I was disabused of that idea pretty quickly. Even though the labor market back then was much better, I still couldn’t find a job. Word had gotten out about what I’d done when I received my permanent teaching credentials, so from that point on, teaching was out of the question. No one in Germany forgives you after you’ve torn up your documents and thrown them at someone’s feet—no one. You should have seen the expressions on the faces of people when they read my name! You’d have thought I was guilty of treason.