by Liz Byrski
‘We need a password,’ he said a few days ago. ‘In case we don’t recognise each other.’
‘I’ll recognise you,’ I said.
‘Well just in case—the password is “thirty-seven years”, now don’t forget it will you.’
‘I won’t forget.’
Frankfurt. In the five weeks since I last stood in this airport watching the snow melt my life has been turned upside down. It seems inconceivable that so much can have changed in such a short time. The baggage takes ages but finally the first few cases appear on the belt and mine are among them. I drag them onto a trolley, take some deep breaths to steady myself and walk towards the exit. He is somewhere out there waiting for me. After all these years apart we are standing on this same piece of ground. The customs officer waves me through and the automatic doors open. I am shaking so much I can barely walk.
He is there and he is unmistakable. Everything about him is unmistakable, his posture, the shape of his head, his face and those same mesmerising eyes. He sees me and he smiles that same smile. There is no need for words, and anyway neither of us can speak through the tears.
9
On a cold January morning, a few miles west of Nuremburg, the first snow clothes the landscape. It rests lightly on the branches of fir trees and covers the grass in soft flurried waves. You stop the car alongside a field where two small boys are playing on a sledge with their grandfather. Their warm jackets and trousers spice the white field with moving streaks of red and blue, their voices chime clear and joyful on the cold air, disturbing the eerie stillness that only snow can bring. The sky is that pregnant luminous grey that portends more snow, it sheds a light that changes the colour of everything.
‘Let’s take some photographs,’ you say. And we walk up the slope of the fields to stand at a point where the landscape sweeps across the curve of the forest to the spires of Nuremburg barely visible in this strange snowy light. You walk a little way ahead of me, down the slope, and I see you as I saw you before.
‘Karl!’ I call, and you stop, turn and look up smiling at me. It is the same, the turn of your head, your eyes, your smile, the slope of your shoulders, your hands in the pockets of a short jacket. And I take the photograph—the same one I took on Brighton Beach. The same photograph I took so often in my dreams as I pictured you walking away from me down that steep San Francisco street.
‘Yes Sweetheart? Come with me?’ you call. I follow you down the slope, slipping on the snow, you take my hand and draw me close to you and we walk together down the hill.
I can look at this photograph now and see both of you—the man you were, the man you have become—and they merge into one. It is my favourite photograph because it shows me that this is not just a dream of the past. It shows me that while memory is the cornerstone of this love it is not its sole feature; it shows me that love is both past and present, that what was lost has been found.
When I walked into the arrivals hall at Frankfurt Airport and saw you there my life seemed to crystallise into that one moment. I don’t know how long we stood there speechless. I only know that at one point I became aware that people were staring at us. And I know that although I was among the first few passengers to walk out of the customs hall, the whole flight seemed to have cleared the area by the time we were able to speak to each other.
‘I hope I’m kissing the right person,’ I murmured later that evening, as we sat on the edge of the bed in that warm, softly lit hotel room in the heart of the Odenwald. ‘What’s the password?’
‘What password?’ you asked in genuine amazement.
‘How can I be serious about a man who forgets his own password?’ I asked.
‘Well, you just have to remember that I always loved you, that I searched for you and finally found you. You just have to remember that I came back.’
I’ll remember.
I’ll remember too how you gently took control that first evening, how you kissed my neck as you helped me take off my coat, how you bent to pull off my boots, how you looked at me and ‘For all those years, wherever I was, whatever I was doing, it was always you that I wanted.’
I’ll remember that we sat for a while talking about the past, exchanging photographs, exchanging memories, I asked if you remembered the night I read the sonnet to you, and you nodded with tears in your eyes. I told you the story of how I had ordered Sonnets of the Portuguese for you all those years ago, but never collected it and of how, a few days earlier, I had found the same sixty-two edition in Rye. And as you took the book from its gold box and gently turned the pages I spoke those words to you again— ‘How do I love thee, let me count the ways.’
And when we had both stopped crying you got up and turned down the lights, tossed your jacket onto a chair and drew me down beside you on the bed.
‘I loved your father,’ you said. ‘He was a wonderful man and I was willing to promise what he asked of me. He wanted us to wait—do you think he’d agree we’ve waited long enough?’
So it was there in that small cosy room in the heart of the forest, in that little village inn, its windows decked with flowerboxes even in the depths of winter, that we finally shared the intimacy of which we had dreamed. It was there, much later in the dark of night, that I woke and felt you beside me, your beard against my shoulder, your breath on my neck. I lay there in the darkness and savoured your nearness.
For the first few days we were both in a state of joyous shock, rapt in the process of rediscovery. We had seven days stretching ahead of us and it was much more than either of us had imagined possible. As we climbed the steep hill to the castle at Nuremburg, strolled through the quaint winding streets of Michelstadt, and sat at night in the car watching the vast landscape of twinkling lights from Dracula’s Castle, we grew to know each other again. We practised the tender intimacies of word and touch, the romantic parries of similarity and difference, and the exploration of profound grief for the years we had lost. And we acknowledged our dread of parting again, of the day, not so far off when we would fly away from each other in opposite directions.
From the first day we both knew we must be together but there were the complexities of immigration law to investigate and the complications of work and family to be overcome, all of which meant another period of separation while we reorganised our lives.
On a crisp dry evening we walked through the churchyard in Weinheim and you suddenly pulled me into the shelter of the bushes and kissed me passionately, and we emerged giggling like teenagers as an elderly couple—yes older than us—looked on in amazement. And as we continued on to the front of the church we stopped by the illuminated notice board and you began to read through something printed in delicate sloping script on thick cream paper.
‘Listen to this,’ you said, drawing me closer, your arm around my shoulders. And you began to translate for me from the German the familiar verses of Paul to the Corinthians.
—if I have no love, I am nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one.
Love is never boastful nor conceited, nor rude, nor selfish nor quick to take offence.
Love keeps no score of sins, but delights in the truth.
There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, its endurance.
Love will never come to an end.
—three things last forever; faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is love.
Fancifully I suggested that the quotation had been placed there just for us and as I turned to you laughing at my own foolishness you took my hand and held it tightly.
‘I never believed that you could still love me,’ you said. 1 don’t know how you can still love me after the way I hurt you.’
‘You didn’t do it to hurt me,’ I whispered, fighting tears. ‘You were frightened, you did it to save yourself, that’s a basic human response. I don’t know how you can still love me. After all I lost faith in you and believed everyone else.’
‘I must have been crazy,’
you said, holding my cold fingers to your warm lips. ‘When I think what I lost—I read so many crazy things into your letters, things that didn’t even exist.’
‘And I was so insensitive it never occurred to me that you would read things that way.’
‘Of course not. Why would it? And my carelessness, confusing condemn and condone—that one word. If I had only read your letter properly I would have known—but by then it was too late. I was sure you would never want to see me again.’
‘What you did could have been put right,’ I said. ‘It was the distance, the separation. If you’d been in England we would have seen each other, talked, I would have understood. I was surrounded by people who wanted it to end. I let them influence me.’
‘I had no idea of all that. I should never have left you alone there. You were intimidated by them, and by me. I should have realised.’
We had had this conversation before, many times, on the phone, face to face and in many different forms. It’s the desperate attempt to understand, to explain, to make sense of it all in the belief that it will dispel the grief over the years that we should have shared. It doesn’t work, the pain remains but it also holds us closer; it is a ritual we can share only with each other. I think we will have this conversation all our lives.
In Darmstadt, in weak afternoon sunshine, we walked from the city centre up the steep hill to the ornate Russian chapel, aloof behind its rectangular pool where open-mouthed copper frogs spout jets of water in intersecting arcs. Nearby we strolled in the park between the rows of bare sycamores, their branches pruned back for winter. Something about this park reminds me of the park in Northumberland Crescent but this time, as we leaned against a tree I could feel your confidence and your trust as we discussed the future.
And in the evenings, in the small hotel where, after just a few days we were treated like old friends, you sat at the piano and played ‘Wooden Heart’, and turned the simple song from sadness to reassurance. You played Beethoven and Schubert, folk songs and love songs, and always you would look at me and your eyes would tell me that despite the people who wandered in to enjoy the music, you were playing just for me. I watched your hands, the square palms and the long elegant fingers drawing the music from the keys, and my body remembered how those hands held and stroked me through those long and loving winter nights.
***
Suddenly the seven days that had stretched enticingly before us were gone. From suspension in ecstatic, timeless space we dropped abruptly, painfully to earth facing the separation that we had tried to avoid thinking of until now. Packing our bags, paying the bill, loading the car, staring incredulously at the airline tickets which would take us away from each other again, to San Francisco and to Perth—as far away from each other as it is possible to be on this earth. We had not had enough, we could never have enough, we had not said all the things that needed to be said, or done all the things that needed to be done. We were desolate and frightened. Parting would never be all right, but this was much too soon.
We could barely speak on the drive to Frankfurt Airport. We walked in miserable silence from the car park to the terminal building and the Avis office where we would hand over the car.
‘I can’t bear it,’ you said. ‘Can’t we stay longer? This all feels so wrong. Could you stay longer? Another week say?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Could you?’
And we changed our tickets and rebooked the car. We made our phone calls to California and Australia and then to the hotel we had just left asking them to take us back. And laughing at ourselves, rejoicing in our spontaneity, congratulating ourselves on our flexibility, we wandered hand in hand through the streets of Frankfurt, contemplating the promise of another seven days together. The proprietor of the hotel grinned as we unloaded our bags. The waitresses gathered around us smiling, and in minutes the glasses were filled and the chef presented us with a steaming plateful of apple pancakes.
It was in that second week that we blended the past into the present. How much we cried in the first week. Every day, several times a day one or both of us would be in tears. We cried and cried—sometimes silent gentle tears, sometimes fierce wracking sobs. But in the second week we cried less and we laughed more. And we were able to talk more constructively about the future and where we might live. And we fell in love with the idea of settling right there, in Germany, in this paradise free from the responsibilities and distractions of our distant lives. As neither of us knew whether Australian or US visa and immigration laws would help or hinder our desire to be together the fact that we both had European passports seemed like a safety net.
At midnight we went in search of ice cream sundaes and ate them outside the Italian ice cream parlour, as the snow floated past the golden light of the street lamps. When the temperature dropped lower we walked briskly through the narrow streets and squares of Heidelberg, and huddled together to keep warm on the banks of the river. We drank rich hot chocolate piled high with whipped cream, and ate the fischbroetchen we both loved. In forests and castles, in town squares and cathedrals, and in the peace and security of our room we grew to know each other better. I fell asleep each night with the luxurious feel of you beside me and woke daily to the delight of finding it was not a dream, that you were still there in the bed or silhouetted against the window gazing out on the wintry landscape.
‘Remember I wanted to send you a rubber plant on your eighteenth birthday?’ you laughed as my fifty-fifth birthday approached. ‘I wanted to impress you—that florist was horrified!’
‘Honestly—I’ve so much luggage I can’t carry anything else home,’ I protested as you tried to buy me gifts wherever we went. But the delicate porcelain clock and the candle holder and vase which matched it were just too beautiful to resist and you had them packed and sent so that my birthday gift would arrive in Australia soon after me.
As the precious days slipped away we grasped at the various possibilities for our life together. After all those years apart we were desperate to be together but we both had responsibilities that made several more months of separation inevitable.
You had a heavy work schedule with long-term contractual commitments, you had dropped everything at a few days notice to fly to Frankfurt, and then extended your absence for a week on the day you were due back in San Francisco. I had already been away for several weeks and then postponed work commitments that were now becoming pressing. While my work was more flexible than yours I would still need to meet some responsibilities in Australia in the coming months.
‘We’ll be together again soon,’ you promised. ‘Once we’re back in our homes we can start organising it, we’ll be able to sort it all out…’ Your voice broke and you hugged me. ‘Soon Darling, really soon.’
It was the morning of my birthday when we clung to each other at Frankfurt Airport and this time there was no leeway for reorganisation: our lives pulled us in opposite directions, and as you kissed me goodbye and walked through the departure gates I thought my heart would break again. I had felt so safe and confident in your presence, but once you were gone I was back at Three Bridges Station watching you disappear down the steps to the platform for the London train. But this time it was worse. For although desolate when we parted in nineteen sixty-two, I was also confident that I would see you again in a year, that I would marry you and spend the rest of my life with you. But this time I knew the reality of the past, you had left and I had lost you. And as I wandered the airport waiting for my flight fear crept under my skin and into my blood and infected me. In San Francisco you would be drawn back into your real life and you would leave me again. The promises would melt just as the snow on the runway was melting under the steadily falling rain. It was unworthy of me, you had searched for me for years, dropped everything and flown halfway around the world to be with me. I was sure fate would intervene to keep us apart. I had no idea how I would return to the life I had previously loved and which had now become a chasm that separated me from you.
H
ours later, as the plane headed east towards the night and the dense bed of cloud beneath us turned from pale to deep blue and green, through gold and burnt orange to black, I closed my eyes and dreamed of you, heading west back into the morning, and my sadness grew as the darkness closed in.
Part Five
Dislocation
10
Perth is beautiful, bathed in dazzling summer sunshine, but I can hardly bear to put my feet on the ground. From below zero temperatures in Germany I step into the familiar and fearsome forty degree heat that sucks the skin dry and devours energy in an instant. Jan drives me home, tempering her pleasure at seeing me, and her enthusiasm for news, with the sensitivity of a wise friend who knows what to say and when to say nothing, who asks the most searching questions, who doesn’t judge and who always has time.
‘When will you see him again?’
‘I don’t know yet—later this year—we have to sort out visas, decide whether I’ll go there, or whether he could come here, and then there’s our work commitments. It’s so complicated.’
From a patch of shade by the gate Basil, my collie, stares at me with a mixture of reproach and indifference which conveys his disgust at my long absence. Stalking haughtily to the door he waits for me to find my key and unlock it; inside he slumps down in the cool space under my desk, his back turned towards me. Twenty-four hours will pass before I am fully reinstated in his affections.
My house-sitter has left the place pristine. The floors gleam, the windows sparkle and the scent of lemon and lavender floats through the rooms. In the centre of the table is a huge bouquet of yellow and white roses standing in a tall white vase and topped with a card.
Happy Birthday Sweetheart—I love you always. Karl.
Despite the journey, the thousands of miles between us, and the fact that you are already back at work, you have organised a welcome.
Jan knows I can barely speak.