Karl had been on the plane for over two hours trying to settle in to the constant drone of the engines and the movement of people up and down the aisles to the bathrooms. He had a window seat, his eyes were closed, but he couldn’t sleep. His mind kept drifting back to Munich.
●
It was near the end of his job with the publisher in Munich when Karl first met Angelique Flaubert. He had been spending more and more time on the weekends at the university library researching the life and works of great authors in the English section. He felt he needed to know how other writers had lived their lives, coped with the dangers of solitude and insecurity and rejection, to fully immerse himself into his fiction. After all, if one couldn’t personify the image or perception of a writer, then half the fun would be lost in the not doing.
Karl first saw her in early October, almost a year and a half ago. He remembered distinctly, because he had gone out the night before to an Oktoberfest celebration, had far too much beer, and sat that Saturday in a rather subdued state staring at Kafka’s Metamorphosis as if it were a children’s fairy tale.
She strolled by the first time as if she were one of the Eumenides discreetly seeking him to punish him for an unknown sin. Her beautiful auburn hair flowed over her shoulders and bounced with each step. Her eyes seemed to shift in his direction. She looked like a typical college student. Blue jeans that hung over her hips as if they were borrowed from her father. A baggy sweat shirt with sleeves pushed up to the elbows. And comfortable leather shoes. Nothing restricting. He imagined, even then, that she was hiding a splendid body under all those clothes.
When she passed by again, selected a book from the shelf as if she had been looking precisely for that selection all her life, she glanced his way and smiled briefly. It was barely a turning up of the lips, but Karl could tell that she had a nice, warm smile. He wanted to see more.
As quickly as she had appeared, she was gone. He made a note of the exact time he had seen her. People were creatures of habit. If she came that Saturday afternoon, then maybe she would the next, he remembered thinking.
He couldn’t get the vision of her out of his mind all week. At work all he could see was the flash of auburn and the half-smile. He was distracted with everything and couldn’t do his job—a job that had become more and more difficult each day anyway. If he had to translate another boring text book, he was certain he would slit his wrists.
As Saturday rolled around, his mind became more focused on the auburn girl. He didn’t know her name yet, so that is what he called her. He thought about his last time at the library. He had been hung over and probably looked like hell. This time he made an effort to look his best. He wore his finest jeans, a white shirt, and he actually combed his hair.
After selecting a biography of Fitzgerald, something he had already read once, he took a seat and waited. Karl always sat at an old wooden table with four chairs in an isolated spot. He liked the privacy. With four chairs and only one person at the table, it wasn’t likely that someone else would sit down.
It wasn’t long before the auburn girl made an appearance. Just as she had before, she slipped by quietly the first time and then stopped on her second pass. This time she smiled fully. A rush streaked through Karl as he returned her smile.
The encounters continued for eight weeks in a row. She even came closer on a few occasions. Karl was going crazy. It had become a game with no end in sight, like chess between equal opponents. Work had become intolerable, and his writing had changed. Changed for the better, as far as he was concerned. Something about her had inspired him to write with a conviction he had never been able to understand in all that he had read about other writers.
Karl’s life changed profoundly in December of that year. He had met Todd Stewart in the library right after an encounter with the auburn girl. After talking for a while, Todd realized they had a great deal in common. So he asked Karl to go skiing at the Zugspitze the following Saturday. Todd had explained that he wasn’t a great skier, but he enjoyed Garmisch so much that he tolerated the cold slopes as an excuse to retreat to a fire-placed bar. Karl, thinking about his weekly encounters with the un-named auburn girl and not wanting those to end, decided to take him up on the offer nonetheless.
It was a decision that Karl would later thank Todd for repeatedly. Karl didn’t realize until he got to Garmisch that Todd was there with a group from work; Bavarian Tours. Todd had only started with the company a few months before, and the entire group of tour guides were there for a seminar to teach them how to handle large groups of American and British tourists.
Just before noon, while waiting in line for the tram, a women shuffled up behind Todd and Karl. She wore a hat and goggles. Then she flipped her goggles to her head and said hello to Todd. Karl didn’t recognize her at first, since he had never seen her without her hair flowing over her shoulders and without jeans and a sweat shirt. Todd introduced her as Angelique Flaubert, one of the other tour guides. The three of them skied the rest of the day together, and when the day was done and they had discussed their job with him, Karl knew what he wanted to do. With Angelique and Todd’s prompting, Karl met the boss and showed how he could ski and speak German.
The following Monday, Karl gave the publisher notice and immediately went into training as a tour guide. At the time he had no idea what was required of the job, but that didn’t matter. For, deep down, he really wanted to be closer to Angelique. The fact that he would meet hundreds of interesting characters, which would be extremely beneficial to him as a writer, was secondary.
A year passed. Karl learned his job well. His ability to converse with people from all walks of life made him an extraordinary host. His salary increased with favorable comments received, and his tips were generally greater than what others received, although there was a great deal of under reporting on the part of some. He was making as much as he had working for the publisher, but without all the angst. He enjoyed the work, and his writing became even better than he suspected it could. He had even starting sending short stories to small magazines with some success. He also started the novel. Part of his success, he knew, was due to his ability to bounce ideas off of Angelique and Todd. Their relationship, that of Todd and Angelique and Karl, was built on mutual trust and an understanding of each person’s desire and passion for a dream that others couldn’t comprehend.
Karl spent the year constantly seeking Angelique. He had to be near her, if for no other reason than proximity. After a few months Karl learned that Angelique was to marry a man in Brussels. It slowed him down, but didn’t break his resolve.
She showed no real conviction when she talked about her fiancé, so Karl’s friendship with her continued to strengthen. They discussed every possible subject. They would eat together, drink late into the night, and do coffee early in the morning.
He remembered a few months back, when he and Angelique had met at the bakery less than a block from his house. He was wearing the fedora she had bought him. She liked the way it looked on him. He looked like a writer, she thought.
He set the fedora on the table against the window after kissing her and sitting down. They drank coffee and ate strudel with ice cream.
“I love this place,” Karl told her. “I found this bakery the first week I returned to Munich.”
She sipped her coffee, peering over the top at him. “You never told me why you came back here,” she said.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“I have time.” She smiled at him and touched his hand.
“All right. I told you about my skiing accident and my first real visit to Munich prior to heading back to Minnesota.”
“Yes. We got so drunk that night.”
“I’ll say. Anyway, a little over a year after the skiing accident I graduated from Northern Minnesota University. It was May. I had nearly tripled my course load for three quarters to finish in just over three years, including the two at Colorado. I had lived and breathed writing and reading for a year and a half. I didn’t really give a shit about my other classes, although some of them were interesting and helpful for me as a writer. I took German also to keep honing my skills.
“In June I packed my backpack with enough clothes for two weeks, the new laptop computer my Uncle Jack gave me for graduation, and bought a ticket for Frankfurt. I shipped my old ten speed touring bike in baggage, and would ride throughout Europe for the summer. That was the plan anyway.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“My Uncle Jack saw me off at the airport, wanting more than anything to have the courage to go along with me. When I reached Germany, I loaded my bike and started heading south along the lonely red roads that linked tiny villages. I spent some time in Heidelberg, perfecting my German. I’d camp in farmer’s fields or on groomed forest floors or in nature parks. I ate mostly bread and drank water and beer, yet I seemed healthier than at any other time in my life. Even my knee felt fine. Sure there were occasional bouts of pain in the evening following a long day’s ride, but nothing like the anguish of atrophy from weeks of inactivity living in the college library.
“I followed the Neckar to Heilbronn and then veered east to Schwabisch-Hall, Aalen, picked up the Danube to Ingolstadt, and finally headed south to Munich. It took a week to get from Frankfurt to Munich, but I was in no great hurry. Getting there was less important than how I got there.”
He paused for a sip of coffee. “One day along the Neckar, I stopped for a drink of water. While I cooled myself off, I watched an old man tending a hilly section of Riesling grapes. His tools were crude, having more rust than polished metal, yet he took the time to smile as he wiped the sweat from his brow. Then the old man walked down the hill a ways to me, leaned against his rake, and pondered me for a moment.
“Finally the man asked in a slurred German dialect, which I still remember distinctly, ‘Why do you ride on such a hot day?’
“I thought for a moment and then said, ‘The faster I ride the cooler I get.’
“The old man smiled. ‘Yes, but the faster you ride the less you see.’
He paused, staring at the fedora. “I thought of all the drivers in their Mercedes and BMWs and Porsches cruising along at two hundred kilometers per hour on the autobahns, pondered my own bicycle, and laughed. ‘In a car I would have never seen you working your grapes,’” I said.
“Would that have been so bad?” the old man asked.
“I think so.”
Karl finished his coffee and poured another glass from a small metal pot. Then he continued, “The old man had me up to his tiny tractor, produced two large beers and a sandwich from a cooler, and we ate and talked for over an hour. The man explained his small wine growing operation from start to finish, and I briefly detailed my dream to write. When I was off on the road again, I realized at that moment, more than any other time, what I had to do. I stored the man in my increasing pile of characters that would one day emerge to life again on the pages of short stories or a novel.”
“Did you use him in that story about the old man who lived in the alpine village and hadn’t been to the city in over fifty years?” she asked.
“Exactly,” Karl said. “You know, I fell in love with Munich all over again the first day I arrived. I had admired the city on my trip following my recovery in the Innsbruck hospital, but now it was as if I could no longer pedal my bike for fear of breaking some enchanted spell. Most of my days over the next week were spent at the Marienplatz or the University. I took the small room I still have, intending to stay only a week.
“I’d take day trips riding into surrounding villages, testing the local beers. I wrote daily. I became a regular at this place. The owners, an older couple, allowed me to plug my laptop into the wall socket below this table. I didn’t bother anybody, and I spent what little money I had on bread and beer while I wrote stories.”
“How did you get on with the publisher?”
“Well, money had become a problem. After a month, I got serious about finding a job. The German government is very forgiving of foreigners working in their country, as you know. After a week of intense searching, I found the job as a translator with a small publisher.”
“What did you do there?”
“I converted English and American text books for German secondary schools. It was my job to ensure the idioms and colloquialisms seeped through with a semblance of meaning in German. My writing was suffering though. I dealt with words and texts all day long, languishing in a tiny cubicle, with a boss whose management style was molded by Gestapo training flicks. I felt like Kafka must have, working for the insurance company. Yet, I needed the money, and needed the job to stay in the country. As you know, I lasted nearly two years.”
●
Karl was shaken from his reverie by the man sitting next to him in the center seat. It was time to eat. A flight attendant handed him some food, and he looked at it as if it were a pile of dog turds. He wasn’t hungry, that was for sure. He picked at the chicken a little, and then settled on a warm bun with some butter. After shoving the dish aside and closing his eyes again, he was finally able to sleep.