When you see them running like that, completely naked along the Baltic Sea beach, the baby Teutons take on the appearance of ancient Atlanteans, or giant marble structures in miniature.
The north wind, at times too strong, shakes me and leaves me spinning like a weathervane, while it barely tickles these little Hulks. Truth is, I love watching them laugh. So healthy and wholesome.
Any of these chunky tots would easily have me in a wrestling match, and it wouldn’t even be a great achievement for them. I’ve seen them at the Brandenburg lakes sizing up the swans or scaring them off, and I have no doubt that, if it came to it, they’d know exactly how to flip me onto my back.
‘Right, that’s it. I’m getting the new Mac,’ Sue K. says to me as she lifts her hand from her shaded recliner to signal that we’ve finished the fizzy water.
Her movements create a fleeting shadow puppet – an iguana or salamander – on the sand.
‘I can’t work with this shit machine any more. Honest to God I can’t,’ she goes on, licking the tip of one finger to turn the page of her book.
Her voice mixes with the spasms of the north wind. Gusts of air drag tiny pebbles, transforming my mental images: an astronaut surfing through a wormhole, or a little buddha facing the rapids of a river.
My mind frames our scrap of beach like one of those magic drawing boards which those of us who grew up in the eighties had as children – Etch A Sketch, I think they were called: unwieldy contraptions filled with aluminium powder, like Egyptian tablets on which you traced your dreams – pretty much an early version of the electronic screen of a smartphone.
I shift the sand with my toes, rather like a trained monkey. I kick little stones towards the sea and, without having to employ too much conscious effort, begin to reproduce the solid frame of Sue K. in the sandy pictures of my imagination. I don’t really know if it’s my mind that’s drawing her, or if the sea breeze has simply taken it upon itself to accurately interpret my desires. It’s like I want to make a copy or clone her as confirmation that this goddess is really mine.
As I slide a glance at her washboard stomach I can’t help but lament the inevitable deterioration that Sue K.’s body will suffer at the – as yet unforeseen – time we come to start a family. I wallow pre-emptively in the idea of what a shame it would be to see such muscle tone squandered by the merciless growth of an offspring – especially considering the massive size of the infants round here.
Seriously, what type of extraterrestrial vitamins do they put in these kids’ bottles?
I see them running past my recliner. Then they dart out of focus and disappear. I listen to them skulking around like a gang of mutants. It scares me to think that, say, between turns, they could accidentally knock me down or knock me out. I watch their jerky movements, and their steps seem to make the earth shudder.
Then – and this may be a simple consequence of culture shock, or another of the many supposed delusions caused by huge postmigration stress, as Sue K. keeps telling me – the thing is that for a while here it’s seemed to me that German babies are really giants landed from a parallel dimension. I don’t just say this because of the obvious physical aspect, but also because of their attitude, a certain emotional rhythm, a mood, a tone of mind which makes them, in my eyes, abnormally hardy, mighty, hefty, masters of a sturdy air of domination.
I sometimes feel like I’m sleepwalking along the paths of a nightmare – or in a film: Attack of the Behemoth Babies – in which I’m pursued by acromegalic toddlers equipped with an affection as indifferent as it is overwhelming.
I haven’t yet managed to find a spark. There hasn’t been the slightest sign of chemistry between us, so all I can do is accept it. I’ve tried a thousand and one clownish antics each time I catch one of these little angels looking; I make funny faces, or try to start one of those cute games; I start whistling, or try to make some kind of silly noise. However, I hardly ever get a response.
Sometimes one of them gets a fright when they notice my thick brown body-hair, but nothing more: once they get over the initial shock, the best-case scenario is that one stretches out its fingers towards me as though reaching out to a talking teddy bear – with no further interest than a curiosity which borders on taxonomic. These unfortunate children of the Devil seem to come adapted to rational order from birth.
‘Come on, give my back a little scratch, will you, Chewie? Don’t be a grump,’ Sue K. demands. ‘At least it’ll get you down off that cloud for a minute. Don’t abandon us mortals, don’t leave us stranded at sea.’
I listen to her as I continue to stroke my right foot. I take a deep breath, or rather, I sigh. I take an arm off my recliner ready to airlift it towards Sue K.
While I must admit that I don’t enjoy scratching tasks as much as I used to, they’re not exactly a hardship either. Although it’s not like at the start of the relationship – when I’d practically be licking my fingers after performing this chore – I still get something out of these primate favours.
‘A bit more to the left … a little bit more … that’s it, por ahí vas a toda madre, my Chewie, give it to me hard baby, así, that’s right, ah … now lower, a tiny bit lower, there, right there … eso, eso es, now give me a bit of nail, that’s it, that’s right, ahhh, that’s what I like, we’re going straight to heaven like that, Chewie, don’t stop, carry on, don’t hold back …’
She’s in a good mood this afternoon, my queen of hearts. She always calls me Chewie when she’s happy. I’d rather she called me Chewie than Chewbacca, obviously, but in an ideal world she’d call me by my real name, Jesús – a name which, out of fundamental ecumenical respect, ought to be untouchable and incorruptible. No one in the once sacrosanct occidental world can deny that my name is the sacred name par excellence.
In any case, I’m not complaining. I knew from the outset that Sue K. was a non-believer, a scientist, as well as a literary type, so I couldn’t exactly expect much different. In her view, my name is just a name. It could have equally been Mohammed or Krishna – it wouldn’t make any difference to her. Maybe even, if I’d been named after one of her literary idols (let’s say Günther, Salman, Umberto, Gabriel, Jorge Luis, Juan Nepomuceno Carlos, or her very favourite, Roberto), things would be different.
Moreover, it’s understood that Sue K. calls me these nicknames because she’s teasing me out of love. What I don’t appreciate as much is when her friends turn up at our flat in Berlin and straight away start giving it Chewbacca this, Chewbacca that, or Chewie here, Chewie over there; Chewbacca above, Chewbacca below, Chewbacca everywhere.
‘So you didn’t go and look for work today either, Chewbacca?’
‘The German’s going a bit slowly, Chewie sir.’
‘Wie läuft’s, Chewbacca, hast du den Fuchs schon gefangen?’
‘Alles okay, liebe Freunde.’
It’s not that I don’t appreciate their interest in my adaptation to the German culture, nor their well-meaning attempts to kick me into gear to finally find a job. It would be ungrateful of me to think they were asking me so many questions out of morbid fascination, or just to please my wife. However, I have to accept that I don’t really like them taking the liberty of calling me nicknames that are meant only for my family or those I’m closest to. Maybe in time, God willing, we’ll become closer, but for the moment let’s be clear that I’ve been in this country just under two years, and I don’t feel they have the right to call me names. Whenever I can, I ask them once again, plainly and simply, to do me the favour of calling me Jesús; again and again I try to correct Sue K.’s friends, but as sod’s law has it they don’t take a blind bit of notice.
My queen of hearts has told me I shouldn’t take such things to heart so much.
‘Relax, darling, don’t be so sensitive,’ she tells me. ‘You look like the poor cripple girl in your telenovela. Don’t get so angry – you know we all use your nicknames affectionately, don’t be so stuck up.’
She always sounds so convincing, focused, well balanced. And, well, at the end of the day, she’s got a point, right? It’s clear that the change of country has left me a bit crotchety, since the truth is that before, I’d rarely get annoyed if someone I knew (or was acquainted with) called me Chewie.
Chewbacca is a different matter. That’s another story that I don’t feel like telling right now.
It’s not even a big deal: let people call me whatever they like; let’s just agree to make me the beast and have done with it. Because at the same time it’s clear that I need to make a few friends, and also I’ve got to accept that I can’t exactly be picky in this respect: either I lighten up in the face of Sue K.’s colleagues’ banter or forget it. It wouldn’t cost me anything to play along a bit more. It’s about time I compensated in some way for all the arrangements my wife had to make to ensure that I’d settle comfortably in this country.
I think this over in silence while I continue to scratch, and I contemplate the radiant turquoise tones of the horizon.
‘Ow! Be gentle, Chewbacca, don’t attack me!’ Sue K. interrupts me with a swipe. ‘You’re digging your claws in!’
‘I got distracted, buttercup, I’m really sorry.’
‘You haven’t drawn blood, have you, you filthy animal?’ She squeals. ‘Look! Look what you’ve done to me.’
Her mastery of Spanish and her fiery handling of my country’s slang shine even brighter when she uses them to curse. This is how Sue K. aces at being a drama queen of Spanish, this is where she demonstrates that she knows the language of Cervantes and José Alfredo inside out.
Her shower of slaps has left my right arm with a hot, burning sensation. It must be red, but I can’t check because of the layer of hairs. It doesn’t actually hurt that much, it’s more of an intense feeling which is in fact quite nice.
Sue K. takes control of my right hand. She leads it up and down, trying to determine whether I’ve inflicted any deep wounds along her athlete’s back. She gradually starts to breathe more calmly and relax when I take her compact from her bag to show her in the mirror that I’ve barely grazed her, it’s a faint cat scratch which will hardly leave a mark; I give her one, two, three, four kisses along the trace of a blotchy line.
‘Sana-sana-colita-de-rana-si-no-sana-hoy-sanará-mañana.’ I say this little rhyme, but I don’t think Sue K. is impressed as she leaps up like a panther, puts the Daniel Sada novel she’s just finished into her backpack, leaves her recliner behind, pads across the sand like a lioness preparing to pounce on a gazelle, takes a few steps towards her bike then signals with her eyes that I should follow.
Going at the same pace as she rode to the beach, my queen of hearts starts talking to herself. She does this pretty much out loud – so that I hear her, of course – while it’s clear that she’s talking to herself; she doesn’t expect me to respond and, what’s more, what on earth could I say to her?
It’s difficult for me to understand how these things work. She often tells me about her projects, her ideas and her movements in the academic world. She speaks in military jargon which sounds completely weird to me. I’m sure that if, say, a stranger heard her without having any idea of the actual context, they might think that the person speaking was the commander of a large army facing the pressures of fratricidal war.
My Prussian monarch goes on and on through her theatre monologue. This time she goes so far that I can’t deny feeling a bit cheated: our stay in the Ostsee was supposed to be an oasis in the middle of Sue K.’s intense professional life. The aim was to switch off so that she could then go back to the university recharged. The plan had been to relax and chill out for a reasonable amount of time. The original idea was that we’d stay well away from real life, totally removed from work problems. And the original objective of the trip was to be completely calm for a while.
‘Chew-ie, catch up! Pedal faster or you’re never gonna work off that builder’s belly!’
Her cries are like a white-hot worm boring through my ears like they were two apples.
And I’d like to do as she bids, how could I not, but my increased efforts are in vain. Between my construction worker’s stomach and these Tweetie Pie legs, I wouldn’t gain enough speed to catch an escaped circus dog on a unicycle.
Bitterly, I watch Sue K. getting further and further away. I watch her leave the beach at a constant speed, going into one of those dreamy little streets reminiscent of the town in The Truman Show with its utopian-designed houses that radiate well-being.
I’d like to call something nice to my queen of hearts, some quaint witticism to get her to wait for me, but I haven’t got enough breath. I moan, spit on the floor and splutter, feeling like I’ve run out of air.
Didn’t we come here to relax?
From the unpublished novel Zorrera