When it was time to leave for Germany, Karl had no desire to remain in the frozen Heiland. He stood in the upper level at the Duluth airport, his bag checked through downstairs, and his computer at his feet.
Dee O’Brien was standing next to him, dressed to the hilt, a subdued expression on a troubled face.
“You come home once in a while, eh?” she said softly, moving closer to him.
“Why don’t you come to Europe,” he said. “I’d show you around. You’d like it.”
She gave him a big hug, and he squeezed her tightly in return. With her head against his chest, she said, “I don’t belong there. Just like you don’t belong here anymore. I think God made a mistake when you were born here. You skipped a few generations, and should’ve grown up with your Bavarian ancestors.”
That’s what Karl himself had thought for the past few years. Perhaps even before he crashed while skiing in Innsbruck prior to the Olympics, when the man had asked him where he was from and he had answered Bavaria.
“You take care of yourself,” Karl said. He kissed her on the forehead, and she swiveled her head up so their lips met for a long moment.
His plane was called for boarding. Karl held her until everyone else had walked out into the tunnel. Then he turned to go.
“Wait. I have to tell you something, Karl.”
He gazed back at her.
“I asked my friend Bud, the cop, to come over the first day you got here.”
“What. Why?”
She shook her head and tears streaked her face. “I love you, Karl,” she said, walking away, backwards. “I needed you. I still do.” Then she turned and skirted down the stairs out of sight.
“But why?” he yelled to her.
Karl waited until he could see her below, hurrying toward the basement to her car. Then he strolled down the long tunnel toward the plane.
●
The plane ride had been uneventful with complete spans of placidity. Karl had always tolerated flying. Planes were merely an instrument of time. Something to speed up the life of a traveler and make it as though time and time alone were the only factor worth considering in a life that had grown longer anyway, yet was cherished more for that quantity than for any regard for quality. And speed had never had anything to do with quality.
Karl had noticed while circling to land in Munich that the Bavarian Alps had received a fresh dusting of snow, and he imagined himself gliding smoothly down the Zugspitze through the new powder. A foot of fresh powder. He would hold the tips of his skis tight together just above the surface of the snow, carving left and right. A spray of snow would fly up behind him as he snaked gracefully down the steep grade. The only trace that a human had been there would be the trail he left behind. He wondered if life would be the same way.
From the airport Karl took a bus, watching the city unfold for him as if for the first time. Past the Frauenkirche, the twin Gothic domed towers stretching to the sky as if two arms were reaching up for God. Past the idle flower market and the New Town Hall. Past the Residenz and now-unspectacular Hofgarten. Then he got off and walked the last six blocks to his apartment, if for no other reason than to reacquaint himself with his home. He passed the bakery a block from his apartment, where he could smell croissants and coffee. He paused for a minute at the park across from his place, where he sat so many times casting a dreamy gaze toward the jagged limestone mountains to the south and hoped for snow.
He walked up the familiar cobbled sidewalk in front of his apartment, the ancient lamp posts, black with gold trim, resting in the mid-morning haze.
Picking up his mail from his landlord on the first floor, he slowly ascended the stairs to his apartment, shuffling through the few pieces of correspondence. A bill, a letter from an American magazine, probably a rejection, and then the curious letter from Todd Stewart.
Once in his apartment, he gently placed the fedora back on his bedpost, sat on the sofa, his leather coat thrown to one side, and he pulled Todd’s letter from the envelope. Todd would leave him notes frequently, but usually not in sealed envelopes. He checked the envelope again and noticed he hadn’t sent it through the postal system. It was hand carried. And since Todd had been in Italy for at least five days, he must have delivered it the day after Karl flew to America. He unfurled the two folds and read the hand-written letter:
Dear Karl,
By the time you read this I’ll be freezing my ass off in the Dolomites. But I’m glad I could be of assistance to you. I consider you a good friend, perhaps the best I’ve ever known. I was a bit apprehensive at the airport. I’m sorry for that. I was struggling with a bloody dilemma that could only be overcome by an all-night painting session in a state of utter and unadulterated inebriation. I’m certain you understand fully. So I rose this morning, or should I say pulled myself up by the britches, and made a Goddamn decision. I have to tell you this. I could no sooner go on with life as though nothing happened, than imagine life without your friendship. Which isn’t to say that her friendship is meaningless. It’s just different. I’m writing of course about Angelique. She’s a special woman. Both the flower and the butterfly that flutters over it. She came to my room the night before last, just after you two had been together. We talked. I should say she talked. I listened. She was doomed with a decision that she knew she had to make. You know she doesn’t love Adrien. She could no sooner love him than her butcher. But her family seems to have some sort of control over her and she’s not sure if she’s strong enough to overcome their power. She feels she is dependent on them, at least monetarily anyway. I tried to explain that money isn’t everything, and she agreed. But with money comes power. And she’s afraid that her family has too much of both to ever allow a relationship with someone they didn’t approve of. If you haven’t figured out what in the hell I’m talking about, then perhaps I am painting a picture more like Picasso. She has this special sparkle in her eyes when she talks about you, or even when your name comes up in conversation. Only an idiot couldn’t figure out she loves you, Karl. This is tough for me to say. You know how I feel more than anyone. But she does love you. You need to go to her. Make the first move. Don’t sit by idly and find yourself in twenty or thirty years, plastered in an old chair in front of the telly, wondering what could have been or what should have been. Well, I think I’ve said quite enough. Give me a call when I get back from Italy.
With the greatest respect,
Todd
When Karl finished reading and re-reading portions of the letter, he gently set it down on the coffee table. He let out a deep breath and then pulled out the picture of himself and Angelique on the Innsbruck mountain. He smiled as he ran his finger across her face on the photograph. He wasn’t an idiot. He had sensed what Todd wrote. But the difference between foresight and true knowledge is always more clear after the fact.
He needed to talk with Todd to find out the exact words Angelique had used, but he wouldn’t return from Italy for another three days. And by then Karl would be on his tour of Austrian and Swiss cities with Angelique, not knowing how he should proceed. Feeling as passionately as a man possessed to act, he knew he should take the chance and discard caution for action.
Sun seeped in through the window and seemed to draw Karl’s eyes toward it. Kafka’s fedora was there on the bedpost waiting for him to pick up and put on his head. He did just that. When he slowly set it on his head, he felt this great resurgence. A power. He knew it was stupid to raise an inanimate object to status of life and thought and feeling, but sometimes it was important to bring reverence where none should be. And who was to say that he was wrong for feeling something?
Jet lag was beginning to make him shake, but he couldn’t sleep. It was nearing noon and he wondered where Angelique would be. He picked up the phone and called her, but hung up just as the phone rang for the third time. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps he wanted to meet her in person.
He freshened up a bit, splashing water in his face and combing his hair. Unknowingly, he put the fedora back on his head and hurried out the door.
The sun glimmered across the fresh snow cover. The streets and sidewalks were already clear and wet from the melted snow. He glance toward the Alps off in the distance and envisioned himself gliding down through that new snow again. He smiled at the thought, and then felt the pain in his knee as he took each step.
He shuffled slowly along the cobblestone sidewalk and imagined the feet that had smoothed the stones. Perhaps Kafka himself as a young student had strolled this very spot dreaming of a man who awoke in the body of an insect. But then the war had probably ensured that dream was doomed. For all he knew the stones could have come from across the river after the bombing had ended and restoration begun.
Continuing on, the university now in sight, he wondered if Angelique had made the trip to Brussels over the weekend. Maybe her family, or even Adrien, had convinced her for good that the marriage should continue as planned. And she would only be the biggest fool in Brussels if she didn’t see the inevitability of the joining.
When he reached her apartment building across from the university, he stood for a minute below the steps as he had the last time he was with her, where they had actually kissed on the lips for the first time. First time, he thought, as if confident there would be more.
He eased up the steps, his knee clicking with pain.
After he got to the third floor, he hesitated briefly trying to form the words he wanted to say in his mind.
He knocked and waited. Nothing.
He knocked again. Nothing.
Somewhat dejected, he went outside and down the brick stairs to the sidewalk. He began to walk back toward his apartment, and then for some reason turned and crossed the street toward the university. He remembered sitting languidly at his usual wooden table in the foreign book section of the university library, watching Angelique move gracefully in front of him over the top of his book week after week. The words he read became more and more blurred as she slid each book in and out of the shelf as if caressing each volume. She would turn through the pages provocatively, run a long finger down the page, and then stop with an accusatory point and assured smile.
Inside the library, he said good afternoon to the old librarian who knew him well, and then took his normal seat after pulling a tattered version of Joyce’s Dubliners from the shelf. He thought again of Angelique and the times he had watched her move among the shelves. The lights from above would shimmer off her auburn hair and seem to give the air around her head a soft red glow. He imagined touching the hair, then wrapping his hands among its thickness. Her lips would unknowingly mouth the words slightly as she read. And he thought of how those lips would feel against his. How they had felt once. They were full, engorged lips with a natural red from the blood of a passionate heart. Her piercing eyes would flow smoothly back and forth across the words, devouring each as a piranha scoops up its prey.
Once, in those first few weeks as he came to know every move she made, he had stood close enough to actually savor her perfume. It was an unobtrusive yet overwhelming flavor that he had stored neatly in his olfactory bulb only to be released or called up again each time she was near. Later when they had met at work and become friends he had found out the type of perfume and bought her a large bottle for her birthday. He wanted to ensure that she would never run out and change to an unfamiliar blend, setting his memory in some cataclysmic spin.
Karl slowly paged through The Dead as if the words would somehow magically drift from the page to his mind. He flipped to the end of the story and began to read of Gabriel’s discovery of his wife and himself. He didn’t want to find himself in Gabriel’s fate. The week at his former home had proven that. He couldn’t let his fictional dream escape into an oblivion that was normal and expected. A world in which complacency and acquiescence were synonymous with the wishes of those who wouldn’t matter after death.
When he finished the story, he saw a flash of auburn above his book as if a ghost-like shape were floating through the tall shelves. Then again. The shape came closer and stopped as she had so many times in the past. She slid a book from the shelf and slowly flipped through the pages. She stood less than twenty feet away now, her hair glimmering from the lights. He took in a deep breath through his nose trying to capture her essence, but he couldn’t. Then he gazed intently at her as if attempting to summon her mind to turn her head in his direction.
Finally, as if he had actually accomplished something, Angelique turned her face gently toward his. She smiled, walked immediately toward him, and took a seat across the table from him.