Ferment, p.8
Ferment, page 8
I spent the next day walking toward Konz and back up through the vineyards home. What would I do if we had a child? I was ashamed and berated myself. How could I have let this happen? I couldn’t abandon Monique to her fate or leave a child fatherless. I’d take responsibility and support Monique as well as I could. Regardless of my wishes, Monique, I knew, would be the final arbiter of whatever occurred next. Looking back, I realize I was more grown up about the situation than I realized at the time. I decided against getting married. That would happen, I determined, after we established a lasting relationship, and then if the slightest whiff of love transpired.
We spent anxious weeks waiting to make sure. When Monique found she wasn’t pregnant, I cried. I couldn’t believe my luck.
Before the pregnancy scare, though, I’d acted like a man-child with little accountability. A woman in Giessen, Sabine, allowed Larry and me to stay on her floor. Later in my travels, even while I carried on with Monique, Sabine and I struck up a romance. She was a lovely woman with deep red hair and fierce, dark blue eyes. She always seemed tremendously depressed and anxious. But when she smiled, it was as if the sun had come out. I visited her several times, and each time she acted as if it was a burden to have me in her house. Simultaneously, she behaved as if she never wanted me to leave. We made love furiously and often. After, she scolded and berated me for wanting only sex from her, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth. When I was there, she fussed over having to cook for two people. She harangued me for unpacking and then told me to leave my stuff out since I was staying the night. When time came for me to leave, she made me promise to come back. This sort of confusion went on for the weeks I spent on the trains by myself. Such a confusing relationship made me nervous, but I kept coming back. Being with a woman, feeling a warm hand on a naked shoulder, was more temptation than I could resist.
At the time, I easily fell for women who slept with me, even though they may have wanted to sleep with someone, and I happened to be the guy. Sabine had certainly wanted to sleep with me. When I landed the internship in Trier, I called her several times. She made it clear after a while she didn’t want to hear from me again if I wasn’t going to visit. I couldn’t visit. I had no money and a tiny income from the winery. After a while, I was busy with my job and found friends. My priorities changed. Sabine and I never saw or talked to each other again.
The towns and people of that month I traveled alone, except for the few I mention here, rush by in memory. They exist in a blur of overnights in train stations and train coaches, nights stolen here and there in the houses of strangers. Except for Trier and Koblenz, the train stations waft by so I can no longer distinguish the difference between Merzig and Wittlich or Hamburg and Bremerhaven. The people’s personalities drift from one into the other.
For all the adventure on the train through other parts of Germany, I always celebrated returning to the Mosel Valley. Maybe it was the promise of staying with the Fricks or my growing knowledge of the region. I always found Mosel vineyards more intriguing and comfortable than the vast farms and plains outside the area. Detraining and knocking on winery doors gave me purpose. While it was enlightening to travel through unfamiliar countryside and visit strange and new cities, I felt most comfortable in smaller Mosel towns, where walking and getting around was more manageable, the landscape familiar. More than once, I entered the Mosel Valley happy to be returning.
* * *
On the train now, I contemplated the scenery along the river that was as familiar as my own neighborhood. The track turned out of the Rhein Valley and departed Koblenz along the Mosel. The bridge over Winningen spanned the valley, a concrete strip that monolith pillars supported more than 450 feet above the river. Vineyards grew up the steep bluffs on one side of the river, and their little towns occupied bottoms on the opposite bank. A few picturesque villages stood in the middle of the vineyards reaching down to the river. I marveled again at the tiny plots on the bluffs far above and set behind hand-built walls of slate. Here and there winemakers tended vines, perched on walls like eagles in their aeries. They moved slowly and carefully as astronauts. The jagged bluffs fell down to the rail tracks and then off into the river through more vineyards bankside. The lushness of the straight rows of vines and the brush denoting abandoned vineyard niches contrasted with the bare, dark slate of the bluffs they grew on.
The train ride again reminded me of the names I was once so familiar with in those early days of train travel: Winningen, Kobern-Gondorf, Löf, Moselkern, Müden, Treis-Karden, Pommern, Cochem. I had searched many of these places for an internship but found only the larger, more famous wineries had room to take on new interns. Once, a winemaker at a famous but small winery in Bernkastel-Kues invited me in for a long talk. He took me into a dim sitting room filled with family photos and heirlooms. A large window looked out on the picturesque bluffs and vineyards above. He brought out coffee and cakes.
Fortunately, he could speak English and had traveled to the United States with his wine business, as much of his stock went into export.
“I would love to take you on,” he said, “but can offer only a small room in the attic, food, and no pay. I’m sure this is romantic, yes? I would think so if I was an American, or even if I was a German. Living in an old Bauernhaus and working in these vineyards high up on the cliffs is the stuff you make dreams of.”
He paused and lit a pipe and continued. A grandfather clock struck two. “You would fit right in with my workers and family, you have the right personality. But you don’t want to be stuck without pay. What will you do on weekends? There is nothing here for a young person who’s not a tourist. You’d find your way, ja, but it would be lonely, and you would be bored.” He cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together. He leaned forward and laid his big, muscular vintner’s hand on my arm. He squeezed and brought his hand back to his pipe.
“I’ll take you on if you don’t find another position,” he said. “But I want you to try bigger companies. They pay benefits. You’ll get insurance. I can’t do that. I’ll keep you in wine and food—and plenty of fun and wurst at the wine festivals.” I wanted to take him up on his offer immediately. But he demurred. “Better to continue looking,” he said. “You will find something, and we will always be here.”
The train now passed a familiar point, something I remember because it showed me how difficult building in this narrow, steep valley was. The cliff at Cochem bulged toward the train, and huge bolts, steel plates, and chain-link fences kept the slate from falling from many meters above. A spittle of imagination and memory clung to each village, vineyard, and bluff. I felt again the sadness and anxiety of the young man who had traveled this stretch.
* * *
Virginia and Nick busied themselves with books and devices. They looked out the window from time to time, but the landscape held no fascination for them. They could not distinguish the old from the new or the differences between Kobern and Gondorf or Treis and Karden. They didn’t notice the way the vineyards shifted from one bank to the other—always facing the south and west—around the river’s tight bends. I wanted to impress them but understood we were in territory from my past, my memory and mine alone.
As we approached Trier from the industrial districts of Ehrang, I felt as if I were coming home. We passed various landmarks and buildings I remembered from times past. Emotions rushed back—the joy at landing my first German job, the shock and dread of Monique’s pregnancy, my shame and guilt at carrying on with two sensitive women at the same time, the occasions I’d traveled to visit friends in Koblenz. I remembered the mania escalating late one summer afternoon, well into my internship, after I’d visited Ivo and his parents in Koblenz. The day promised a beautiful evening, and I figured I’d walk at least part of the way to Trier. I left the D-train (a slow train that stopped at every station on the route from Koblenz to Trier) at Longuich, two stops before Trier, hell bent on walking the Mosel back to town. I had no idea where I was or how to find a walking path, if there was one, from there to Trier. I carried a small duffle with some clothes, no water, no food. Little did I realize miles lay between the two towns.
Into the evening and toward dusk, I hiked along two-lane, shoulder-less roads far from the river. I wound up walking, I estimate today, about twenty miles up the Ruwer Valley and back down toward the Mosel through tiny villages famous for their wines. The longer I was at it, the angrier I grew, more determined to finish the job. I walked faster with wider strides until I was almost running. At one point, a car pulled up and the driver asked if I wanted a ride. “Nein!” I shouted, “I got myself into this mess.” By the time I stumbled into Trier North, night had fallen hours before. My feet were blistered and bloody, my legs rubbery, and my heart pounding out of my chest. I arrived home around midnight, exhausted and regretful I’d treated myself so roughly. I drank until I passed out somewhere toward 3 a.m. I don’t remember the next day.
At Trier, Virginia, Nick, and I had little time to poke around. Our train for Kanzem was scheduled to leave fifteen minutes after we arrived. I implored Virginia and Nick to stay on the platform and away from the gift shop. I had to get a look, however brief, at the city. Of course, I’d seen it dozens of times. The last time I’d been in the station and in the city was in 2011 when I visited Joachim in Berlin and taken a side trip across the country to spend five days with Josef and Marlies in Wawern. On that trip, I’d taken a half day for myself in Trier and walked familiar streets that felt as if I’d never left them.
I ran down the tunnel below the platforms and came up into the station. Darting across the interior and out front, I looked back on the postwar-era station with a huge clock above the entrance. People bustled down Bahnhofstrasse and past the collection of tourist shops, restaurants, and bars. Trier was a tourist haven with Roman ruins, ancient churches, and cultural attractions, including a symphony and lively theater life. Much of the town had been bombed flat during the war, but postwar reconstruction replaced many of the buildings in the center of town in prewar and Middle Ages style. Church congregations and government agencies reconstructed church roofs and steeples. The Roman ruins—Trier was once the capital of the Roman western frontier—had been restored. The city’s damaged housing stock had been replaced.
The view outside the station jolted my first memories of the town. One night when I was traveling by myself, I had planned on overnighting in the Trier station but felt bold enough to go out for a drink. I wanted to stay close, so I could get back in the station before it closed. I stopped in at a bar in front of the station and drank up a good deal of money. The patrons took interest in the American with a backpack. They began buying me drinks. Before I knew it, the station closed its front doors and turned out the lights. A panic pulsed through me. Where would I stay? It was already midnight and I had no idea where the youth hostel was. I was also tottering drunk. A Luxembourger in work clothes befriended me and told me not to worry. He’d take me to Wasserbillig on the Luxembourg border. There, I’d could sack out on one of the train-station benches and get back to Trier in the morning. “It happens often enough,” he said in English.
He was drunk, too. We careened through the night, running up over curbs and zigzagging through roundabouts. At Igel, he drove to the center of town and skidded to a halt at a sandstone column dating to AD 250. “Here . . .” he said with a hiccup. “Here is something you won’t see from one of your trains. It’s Roman. It marks a grave.” We bumbled around the two-story column in the dark. “Touch it, American,” he laughed. “It’s very old. As old as your Indians.” I ran my hands over the pedestal and swayed a moment, trying to comprehend its age. We then drove across the bridge at Wasserbillig, slowing to a stop at the border station. The sleepy guards had little interest, it seemed, in a drunk behind the wheel. They let us through, and the man dropped me off at the station.
I took up on one of the benches outside. The watchman came around after I’d climbed into my sleeping bag. He said something in either Luxembourgish or French to me, then tipped his cap. Given legal sanction, then, I closed my eyes.
Before dawn, the same watchman nudged me with his nightstick and said something again in a language I didn’t know. He asked if I spoke English. “You can stay here,” he said. “But you have to sit up now. The station is opening. Do you know where you want to go?” I told him Trier. “The train leaves in one half hour,” he said.
I secured my gear. Deep blue and orange dawn broke above the town. Church bells tolled 6 a.m., and except for their tones all was silent. The station lights popped on and I saw the agent open his window. I bought a ticket and waited on the platform for the train. My head was full of cotton, and my back ached. I still have that ticket to Trier.
* * *
As they travel, a sensitive person absorbs people and places. Time doesn’t erase them. I know now the many people I met and places I saw for seconds or minutes in those first few weeks are as important as those fixed in memory. Three decades later, I lie awake at night sometimes and a face or scene comes back to me—a vineyard here, the face of a bluff there, child sitting quietly next to a grandparent and holding a teddy bear in the middle of a busy station. I remember a quick conversation on a train with a teenager who was glad to meet an American. Searching memories’ origins and trying to place them in the time line of experiences and events, I often recall the specific incident and not the context. Obscurity or absence in memory doesn’t undo the way they tangled into personality or experience. They appear on empty nights in a restless head. All the time they remind me who I was.
* * *
For a few minutes, I stood in front of the Trier station watching people come and go and traffic back up along the Bahnhofstrasse. The weight of responsibility weighed on my shoulders. I wanted to make it back in plenty of time to the platform where Virginia and Nick were waiting. When I arrived, the two of them looked bored, standing among our baggage. The train was running ten minutes behind. But knowing we wouldn’t have to rush to get aboard eased my anxiety.
Nick was still poking around in his bag of chips he bought in Koblenz.
“So, how long is this next train ride,” he asked.
“About ten minutes,” I said. “Josef will pick us up at the stop and we’ll be home in no time.”
“Home?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Home.”
CHAPTER SIX
A LOST FRIEND
THE DEATH OF my good friend Joachim haunted my daydreaming while we were underway.
The train out of Trier toward Saarbrücken sped us past ruins of the Roman baths and through my old neighborhood. I searched for the building where my old room was. Again, I peered out the train window into my memories. I tried to say to Virginia and Nick, “Ivo, Udo, and Martin lived just down the street here.” “I hiked through these gardens to get to their house.” “I used to get on the train at this station, Trier Süd, on weekends when I went from the boys’ house to go to Wawern.” They stared out the windows at trees and bushes rushing by. They saw industrial waste and the deteriorating old Konz rail station. Soon, though, we sped out of the city and into the rural Saar River Valley. We passed tiny postcard villages of Filzen and Hamm perched on vineyard hillsides above the river. Great arcs of land rose from the curving stream. Vineyards blanketed the hillsides in thousands of straight rows and millions of vines.
Within a few minutes, we arrived at the platform at Kanzem, where Josef was waiting. He was a tall man, fit for his eighty-five years. His piercing eyes darted cheerfully beneath a leonine gray and black mane. He smiled a mischievous, knowing smile that made me feel welcome. The sun shone full and warm on the vineyards climbing into the sky behind the platform.
Instantly, the three years since I’d seen him last disappeared. Josef’s not openly affectionate. But I’m not one to hold back and I gave him a hearty embrace. Virginia first met Josef in 2000 after hearing about him from me through the years. She also gave him a squeeze. Nick, too, tight with his affections, shook Josef’s hand. Josef looked surprised at our warm greetings, as though we were bringing him out of his shell.
“So, young people,” he said in German. “Did you have a good trip so far? I hope you’re ready for a few days at home.”
* * *
It would feel like our home within a few hours. When I was working in Trier, I spent weekends with the Fricks in the old, stately Weingut. Marlies kept the attic room in clean sheets and dried flowers in a vase. She referred to it as my room. She always left me sweets or fresh bread to munch when I put my bags up. Often, I entertained myself in my room reading, writing in my notebook, and lounging on the low, single bed. I sat on the windowsill, stared off into quiet nights and woke early to watch the sun rise.
Marlies and I often walked through the village and up into the vineyards when she wasn’t busy at home. She always stopped at a point above Wawern and made sure I took in the sweeping valley spread before us. The village snaked along its two roads. In the distance rose a forested hill as high as the one we were on. On the other side lay the village of Ayl, and above, the vineyard for which the town was known.
Josef and Marlies treated me as if I were one of their children come home for a few days. They had me at the dinner and breakfast table. Sometimes, in the late afternoon, they plied me with coffee and served cakes and cookies. I always departed Wawern with sadness, thinking I might not return.
Then, one night in November 1985, I called to see if I could spend the weekend in Wawern. Marlies apologized. Josef had lost control of the family Volkswagen on a patch of ice and crashed into a tree. From what I could understand as I stood in a telephone booth on the end of a bridge over the train tracks, Josef had broken his back and was in the hospital. He would be there several weeks.
After the phone call, I stood in the booth trying to absorb Marlies’s story. My German was still rudimentary. I didn’t get all the details. Josef could be dying, for all I’d understood of the conversation. I felt helpless and dreaded another solitary weekend. As I walked toward home in pools of streetlamp light, I tried to imagine what my life might mean without the Fricks in it.
