by John R Burns
Every September Franz was booked into a Swiss health clinic that overlooked a deep valley and the higher Alps. There he felt cleaned out in a different way. At the clinic it was as if the mind was also made stronger, clearer, more focused.
‘Do you think there is a secret?’ he had once been asked by Herr Volner, an Austrian who owned a chain of jewellery shops and often stayed at the clinic, ‘The secret to long life? Is that why we are all here? Do you think Herr Brucker it is possible?’
‘No I don’t Herr Volner, not at all,’ had been his answer, ‘It’s only a matter of luck. You have a biological clock ticking and you cannot do a thing about it. Here at the clinic we pretend that it’s not true, that’s all.’
The Austrian had looked disappointed and foolish. Franz had lied to him so the man would leave him alone. He did not go to the clinic for conversation. He went to wash his mind in the air of the high Alps.
His company had always given him this September break. It was when things started to slow down after the rush of demands towards the summer. Because he was up by five thirty he had time to manage his early morning jog and his sixty minutes at the sports club with Gunter before he had started work. Now he was retired they were working out a different scheme, one that would include two periods in the gym. The morning session would include the swim. In the late afternoon he would concentrate more on the weights and building up his stamina.
He knew he was the lightest he had weighed since the end of the war. He weighed himself every morning and recorded the results. He read all the health magazines, especially from America that had all the new research on lessening the calorie intake. Numerous articles were emphasising that longevity could come from lowering the amount of calories you took on board each day. Franz had taken on this new approach, again discussing it with Gunter.
‘It is a difficult one,’ his coach had responded when the topic had first come up as a serious issue, ‘we have to make sure you have the fuel to manage your sessions, especially if we’re aiming at two of them a day. If we don’t get the right calorie intake you won’t have the sufficient energy you will need.’
Franz let Gunter work it out for himself. The only reason he needed a coach was to have somebody watching and endorsing his achievements.
Every night he would check himself in his bathroom’s full length mirror, watching the skin tighten over the bone structure, the loose folds of excess fat disappear around his waist, see his rib cage becoming more prominent. To look carefully was to see both the process of aging and the results of his resistance. The daily impetus was to be always conscious of what he was doing minute by minute. Discipline was all that mattered, to overcome his body’s weaknesses. The strategies were prepared on a daily basis. The early morning runs to his late evening meditation sessions was a constant repetition. He saw the scar down his cheek and neck. He saw the bullet wound in his left shoulder. They were the marks of the past, the symbols he had overcome. They were part of a period that he had left behind. Nothing for him was left of those years except these two remnants.
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‘So how was your retirement dinner? I’m sorry I couldn’t be there,’ Angela Druckter asked as they sat down at their table. Angela was Franz’s lawyer and was one of the only people whose invitation he accepted. Usually he avoided restaurants with their cigarette smoke and stench of cooked meat. He liked to know exactly what he was eating and how it had been prepared.
He lifted his napkin and quickly passed it near his nose so he could smell how fresh it was.
‘Last night was....well it was what I expected.’
‘I wonder sometimes who they are for.’
‘Yes. I think it was more for the company than anything else. I could have done with a quick goodbye in the office, taken my retirement clock or whatever and left it at that.’
‘I wanted to be there,’ Angela said again.
‘No. Believe you me this is better.’
‘If you say so Franz.’
‘Well I do.’
‘But it just shows how much the company appreciated you. Recently being a more mature representative has become trendy.’
‘I have never felt trendy.’
Angela smiled, tracing the outline of her wine glass with her carefully manicured finger as she said, ‘You don’t feel trendy Franz. You either are or you aren’t. It’s what other people think. There’s a worldwide business trying to create what’s trendy.’
As the waiter took their order Franz wondered why Angela was being so complimentary. She was a small, immaculately dressed woman who had worked hard at her own version of holding back the ageing process. She was one of the only people he had ever trusted. When she had first become his lawyer Angela had been smart enough to never ask about his past. She had always been absolutely discreet and that in Germany back in the fifties had been essential.
Angela watched him as he sipped his water before taking a small slice of lettuce on his fork.
‘I’d forgotten Franz how having a meal with you is so undermining.’
‘Why, what am I doing?’ he asked, knowing what the implication was.
‘It’s what you’re not doing. You’re not having a drink. You’re not having a main course. You won’t have a dessert or coffee or tea. You make me feel like a fat, boozy, meat eating Fraulein.’
‘Which you....’
‘No,’ she laughed, ‘don’t say anything more.’
‘I was only going to say which you are obviously not.’
At that she lifted up her glass of wine, ‘Thanks for that Franz.’
He glanced around the dark, busy restaurant.
‘You know I don’t like eating out.’
‘That’s why I relish the fact we’re here. I was so glad you agreed to this.’
‘I hope you were,’ he said, looking intently at her, appreciating how she had never tried to become a friend. Their relationship had always been solely professional, the reason it had lasted so long.
‘So retirement at last Franz, I never thought you were going to do it.’
‘Well I have and I’m looking forward to it.’
‘Knowing you it will be all mapped out.’
‘At my age I think that’s essential.’
‘You’ve always known what you wanted to do,’ Angela said as she set down her knife and fork, looked across and smiled at him.
‘You’re the same Angela.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘You and your two dogs.’
‘Of course, my best friends. I just wish all my clients had been like you.’
‘You’re being very complimentary today, but that’s not what you used to think.’
‘And how do you know what I used to think?’
‘You thought I was a pain in the arse and I probably was.’
Again she smiled, a little more awkwardly this time before saying, ‘You were somebody who was very sure what you wanted and how you were going to get it.’
‘I could drink to that.’
‘If you had a real drink you could. And how are the stocks and shares at the moment, how’s Wolf?’
Franz sat back, the smells of the food around him beginning to make him feel nauseous. But at least Angela seemed genuinely glad to see him. Recently he had begun to find too much talking made him feel agitated, but with her it was different. There was no edge, no other agenda going on. He knew she was interested in him and yet understood the limits there were to such concern.
‘My broker has decided to go on a fishing trip to Sweden.’
‘God, what a bleak idea that is at this time of year.’
‘Wolf likes it bleak. He always has done, makes him feel more of a man or so he says.’
‘I never thought Wolf had any doubts in that department. How many times has he been married now?’
‘Yes. He seems to be accelerating his relationships at the moment.’
‘But he advises you
well?’
‘Yes, Wolf, other than with women, seems to know what he’s doing.’
‘So here’s to a prosperous future Franz,’ she said, raising her glass.
‘I thank you,’ he replied, knowing she meant it.
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He was listening to the early morning financial news. He had left a message at Wolf’s Swedish hotel the night before telling his broker he needed to speak with him as soon as possible.
As he prepared for his morning run he was going through some of his ideas for new investments. It was a well repeated process. He would study the markets for a few weeks, discuss them with Wolf in his plush city centre office before he came up with his new plan. Sometimes they disagreed. It was then that Franz knew he was onto something. However sharp Wolf might be he was still more conservative in his approach. Franz enjoyed the greater risk.
‘It’s my money so let’s just go with it,’ he had often said to his broker.
Wolf would look puzzled and then worried. His face showed all his emotions, something which helped Franz to trust both him and sometimes his judgement.
‘I don’t think this is good,’ Wolf would try, ‘but you’re usually right so I’d better arrange it.’
It was no longer the money. Franz had the life style he wanted. It was more the game, the risk and the satisfaction of being successful when his investments reaped their rewards.
‘You must be rich by now,’ Angela would tell him.
His lawyer was always probing how much he was actually worth.
‘I’m not rich Angela,’ he would inform her, ‘I’m not poor, but I’m not rich.’
‘You live within your means,’ she would try.
‘Yes. Of course, what else would you expect?’
He had known Wolf for almost as long as he had Angela. It was another strictly professional relationship. With Wolf it could be fraught with the unexpected such as his sudden fishing trip to Sweden. There was not the same predictability as there was with Angela, but Wolf had always been a strong support.
Switching off the radio he picked up his keys, locked the door and started down the marble stairway. He had lived in the same apartment for the last twenty five years. Hochner was its janitor who was there every day either to clean the stairs or check the lighting. Once a week Hochner would give the stairs a complete wash down. Franz gave him money every Christmas, knowing that the janitor kept a careful check on everything that happened in the apartment block, especially watching its security camera screens every night. Hochner had promised to always inform Franz of anything out of the ordinary.
‘Winter has come early this year Herr Brucker,’ the janitor had said when they met on the stairs the day before, ‘Reminds me of other times, other places. Once you’ve gone through the harshest of winters it’s something you never forget.’
Franz knew to what he was alluding. Hochner was always keen to talk about the war.
‘It’s almost the same with the heat, but that I could manage. It’s the cold that gets you. No wonder the Poles and Russians drink so much. I hear the Russian government has tried to ban screw tops on vodka bottles, it’ll never make any difference.’
‘You seem to know a lot Hochner about the citizens east of here.’
‘Used to know them too well.’
‘But not anymore.’
‘It’s like this Herr Brucker. There are things you never forget. It....it must be the same for you if I’m not mistaken.’
‘Good morning Hochner,’ he had said quickly.
‘Not that I’m implying anything, you understand,’ the janitor had tried.
‘Of course not,’ had been Franz’s last words, knowing that Hochner would try again. It had been going on for years, these attempts to draw him out.
Running in the darkness always seemed to require less effort. As he approached the park he could see the industrial lights by the docks and the high shadows of the waiting ships. Hamburg was a symbol of Germany’s resurrection, a city now of wealth and progress. To Franz it showed the strength of the German people, again turning history completely around.
There was hardly anybody about this early winter’s morning as he jogged along the tracks he knew so well. His breathing was steady, his lungs taking in each mouthful of frozen air as he concentrated on the ice thinly spread over the paths. He used to run down by the river, pacing himself against some of the ships on their way to the North Sea, their lights glazing the water as he kept up with their speed. Having a ship for a running partner was exhilarating. It made him feel part of its motion, listening to its engines churning the propellers, glancing up to its decks way above him. Hamburg was the centre for so much activity. It had been completely rebuilt after the British had fire bombed the city, another atrocity that been ignored for too long. With victory came justification. To Franz it was obscene the disparity between the criticism of the two sides. More people had been killed in that one bombing raid on Hamburg than all those who had died in the London blitz and yet one had become the story of heroes while the other had been forgotten, the consequence of a war being lost.
Gradually he speeded up his pace. Such thoughts about the war produced the adrenalin. Eventually his mind would empty. He would become just the action of his running, the movement of his arms and legs together as a balanced process that pushed him through the semi darkness, his breath condensing in front of him as he turned at the end of the park. There was no duality. There was only this immersion of his brain, of himself into his body’s activity, into its habitual stages of motion.
The sky began to lighten. He tried to slow down a little as he ran beside the frozen pond, its trees stiffly bent over and reflected in the ice. Running made him feel part of the day, of the park, of his city. He enjoyed the effort. It made him feel clean and cleared out. His will was the source of the body’s energy captured in each step. He was more alive, aware of himself and his environment. It was the same when he went walking every autumn in the Alps.
Each year he booked in the same hotel following the same high mountain routes. Only once had he returned to his childhood village. He had hired a car and driven over one afternoon from the next valley. It was something he had resisted doing for many years. He saw no point in a return. Time changed everything. His house might have been the same and the narrow cobbled streets, but he had been different. He stood there in front of the house’s familiar main door, six windows and sharp angled roof. It seemed smaller than he remembered. There were flower boxes for each window and TV aerials attached to the chimney stack. His memories were of granny waiting to capture him in her afternoon sleep, of aunt Hildegaard and her hero husband’s picture above the fireplace in the front room. The ones of his mother and father had been more difficult. In fact he had tried not to think about either of them. He knew how much he could still resent his father and the way his mother had just acquiesced to her husband in everything of importance, even though she had been far more understanding than him. They had both failed their son, their only child. So his stay in the village had been short. He had walked around the rest of the place, had taken the path down to the lake and then back to the car to drive out of the valley knowing he would never return.
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The defender made the tackle and in one move had retrieved the ball and passed it to the midfield. In seconds the ball was out to the winger before being crossed for the stocky centre forward to rise above everybody else and head it straight past a despairing goal keeper.
Franz watched the TV images with satisfaction. The German national team were at the height of their powers, a combination of strength, solid tactics, a methodical approach, few mistakes and a final end product that meant one victory after another. Their play was essentially Germanic. He understood how influenced the team was by the country’s expectations and tradition of playing in a certain way, the German way, which meant forc
efulness balanced with ability, quick thinking, careful preparation and the determination never to be beaten. They were all the ingredients that had always stimulated his sense of nationality. His pride in the team and its success were evidence of his passion for his country that had never changed, especially when that meant beating the Dutch. That for the genuine German football supporter was always the best, to see the white and blacks take apart the orange show offs in the fiercest of European games. When this happened the whole of Hamburg would spend a night of celebration.
Wearing a tracksuit and sipping iced water and lemon he watched the rest of the match against the Portugese this time with the German team completely dominant. He liked the predictability of it all. Every match began with a confident sense of how things would develop. The response now he was nearing seventy was a little more subdued than it used to be, but there was still the clenched fist whenever the Germans scored.
Once in a while when he was working he had accepted Victor or Michael’s offer to join them in the company’s corporate seats to watch Hamburg. The pride in his city was there but not as strong as that for his country, especially as there were some seasons when the city’s team lost more than they won. Victor was usually well gone on drink before the match started whereas Michael would spend too much of the second half feeding himself on what the company chef had concocted for half time. Franz found their overloud support artificial. He knew that the football meant very little to them except as a way of entertaining clients. Everything was for the business. Franz was there to offer his expertise as well as ensuring everybody knew that on that day the company was sponsoring the match.
‘Come on Franz, lighten up,’ Victor was often telling him when they were at a game, ‘Act like a real Hamburg supporter.’
‘And how is that supposed to go?’ he had asked him.
‘Like everybody else around here.’
‘Drunk and loud you mean.’