When I crossed the border and arrived in Utrecht it wasn’t just the time or geographical distance; a wider gulf opened, and I became someone that I’d wanted to be all along, rising out from under Germany’s and my parents’ shadows.
All of a sudden I am struck by a realisation that pains me: I have become uncomfortable with my family. Their middle-class values; Mother a seamstress; Father a mechanical engineer; my plain sister still living at home, working a clerical job at a bank. They are an unsophisticated family despite their attempts to rehabilitate by classically training me and teaching Brigitte painting. If they believed that by doing so they would vicariously rise up and become cultured, well-bred people, it doesn’t work that way.
Fine breeding doesn’t trickle backwards. My parents sit around reading tabloid newspapers; listening to silly programmes on the radio; playing canasta with their friends; going to the bierstube for meals and drinks. I can’t ever recall them going to the opera or a play or a concert. We did visit the Belvedere Museum on our trip to Austria. Our home life is humdrum. Merely looking at this house and its trappings as an extension of her parents’ home, it is clear to me that Emma comes from a well-to-do family with a strong cultural heritage and professional public standing. What are her parents and mine going to talk about? Father walking up and down the assembly line, checking on quality control, or Mother sewing buttons and stitching seams? That’s hardly conversation that the Bergens would be interested in. Of course, they will listen politely and then behind closed doors mutter at the inequality between us.
I need to find a way to stall this, at least until I have established myself here. But how? The thought vexes me. It is easy to let go of a thought or a feeling, they are ephemeral; but a biological part is blood, skin and bone. We can’t simply sever that which we are physically and regenerate a new part. It is that which binds us to this earth.
I am afraid that if I cut them off I will lose myself, I will become untethered, drifting on the ocean like flotsam and jetsam. Alas, the things that matter deeply to me - my jazz-playing, the easygoing persona that I am cultivating, unfettering my thoughts from race and religion - come at a price. And maybe it is that, mutual exclusivity: I can be German with all the traits that I dislike about myself following me around like a shackled ghost, or a stateless person espousing the music, culture and persona that I want.
Can I not bridge the two? This I don’t know, until I try it. This is the magic and mystery of life: there are things you cannot experience unless you take the risk. What is certain is that until I know, I can’t have my family to visit over Christmas.
The room feels stuffy. I rise up off the couch and open the window over the desk, then unlatch and push the shutter outwards. The lamp posts flicker over the canal directly across the narrow street. I watch and wonder what it would be like to hold Emma. I have dreamt of this life even before I knew what it looked like. At heart, I realise all of a sudden that I may not really be an aspiring doctor, but a jazz musician.
It never occurred to me because I never thought to follow my heart, until now, when I followed it to Utrecht. If I don’t go on to become a doctor I owe my parents the tuition money at the very least for the wasted four years of pre-med. And that’s just the financial obligation. The extra hours and days that my father put in to pay my way, I can’t repay. Maybe subconsciously I have chosen to disown them so that I don’t feel the guilt and pain of owing them.
I pull the shutter to. I get undressed. My thoughts are stretching too far, too fast. It is four years of my life too. I need to become a doctor. Is it the rational, strait-laced German in me? Ought I negate that and throw everything to the wind and start down a new path?
I open my duffel bag, take out fresh underwear, a pair of loose cotton slacks, a singlet, a towel and my toiletries, and listen at the door to make sure that Emma is not using the bathroom. It’s quiet. The door opens with a creaking sound. I pause and listen again. All quiet. The hallway is dark and there is no light under her bedroom door. She must have dropped off as soon as she hit the bed.
I tiptoe along the dark hallway, pausing at every creak to make sure I haven’t woken her up. Under her door is still dark. I take another step, and then pause. It takes me another three steps to make it to the bathroom door. My hand reaches the handle and just as I am about to turn it, I notice a faint light peeping under the threshold. It must be a night light left on to avoid tripping when entering the bathroom.
Despite the warm weather, at night the temperature drops precipitously and my teeth start chattering. I push the door and enter confidently, closing the door behind me to stay the cold. I swiftly fling the towel over the shower rod and remove my underwear, letting them fall to the floor. To my surprise the bathroom is warm and the chattering stops. The light I saw earlier is poised directly above my head over the sink and mirror. I can’t see myself, though; the glass is covered with condensation. Emma must have used the shower before me. With the edge of my palm I wipe away some of the vapour so that I can see my face. I have some stubble; my eyes look tired and my face drawn. I tousle my hair over my forehead. I am pleased with the look: away with the dapper and strait-laced, in with the bohemian, hard-living artist look.
Without warning the door opens on my stark nakedness. Emma, dressed scantily, is about to enter the bathroom. I quickly stammer an apology and reach for my towel.
“Sorry, I should have knocked. I thought you were asleep.” Her hand rises to her mouth to suppress an impetuous grin underscoring her customary cheerfulness, which does not desert her despite the awkwardness of the moment. “Obviously not.”
I am still fumbling to find my words as I struggle to wrap the bunched-up towel around me. I am finally able to get it tucked in around my waist.
“Do you need to come in? I can wait.” I attempt to edge out the door.
She blocks my egress by slowly pulling the door to. “No, that’s all right, I will use Lijsbeth’s bathroom.”
As I hear her padding away I let the towel drop and this time secure the latch on the door. I am suffused with embarrassment. Yet, Emma did not seem all that fazed by the experience; yet another facet of my German reserve as opposed to the carefree attitude here in Holland, at least in my limited experience.
After a few minutes of resting on the edge of the bath I regain my composure and resume my ablutions. As I shower I can’t deny that, despite my innate embarrassment, I was excited by the encounter. Still, propriety trumps my inward desire and I resolve to stop by her bedroom and apologise for my forgetfulness in failing to latch the door.
As I enter the hallway I find that her door is now ajar and her light is on. I knock softly. At her invitation to enter, I slip my head demurely through and notice that she is lying on top of the duvet, calmly reading a magazine. She is smiling at my discomfiture.
“I just wanted to apologise for not latching the door. I should have been more careful. I thought you were asleep.”
“That’s all right.”
I am uncertain of what other conversation could ensue from this limited encounter; nevertheless I remain straddling between the hallway and her bedroom, feeling that I need to say more, searching for the final note before heading to bed.
“Would you like to come in? I am not that sleepy after all that exciting jazz.”
I smile. I am hardly dressed demurely: cotton slacks, underwear, singlet and the damp towel flung over my shoulders. “I don’t want to disturb.”
She pats the right side of her wide double bed. I enter hesitantly and sit tentatively on the end of the bed, barely resting myself comfortably on the mattress’s edge.
“So now that we are on more familiar terms, care to tell me a little more about yourself?”
“Like what?”
“Why did you decide to leave Germany?”
I sigh at the implication of the question. My rationale is so entwined in the events of the last few years: how I feel about Germany in general, my cultural and social disconnectednes
s, the current political status quo, my parents and their expectations. It’s not really one reason but a multitude converging into a single emotion: disenchantment. But how do I crystallise it all into a conversation between incipient friends?
“I... I wouldn’t know where... it’s complicated. I haven’t even discussed it with my sister... and she is the closest person to me. I am afraid that I would take up too much of your time.”
Emma sets her magazine on the night table and turns on her side to fully face me. “I am not working tomorrow. The night is young.” Her inviting smile sets me at my ease. I don’t feel that she is intruding or asking merely out of curiosity or boredom, but that she genuinely wants to know.
I am not wearing any footwear, so I push myself up on top of the duvet and sit cross-legged, remaining at the edge of the bed. “I think that I have always had these thoughts, feelings of not really belonging. At first I put it down to the rebellion of youth, but as I started to get older, I noticed that my desire to take on another culture, another way of being, became ingrained and I couldn’t pretend that it was merely a coming-of-age thing. It was like inwardly I was a person of the New World, America, and I was stuck in the Old World. Jazz was my first foray into the New World and then I followed it up by reading about the carefree, uninhibited culture of that world, and here I was stuck in some ancient world surrounded by prudish values and narrow attitudes, cultural strictures that belong in the Dark Ages, and just generally a world of darkness as opposed to a world of light.” I pause and study her face. “I am probably boring you.”
“On the contrary - after the jazz from earlier tonight, this is the second most interesting thing that I have heard in a long time. Please go on.”
I must have talked for a long while, because at some point, it started to get cold and we both got under the duvet. At first at opposite ends, our feet at each other’s heads, and as I grew progressively tired, my inhibition relaxed and I lay next to her.
It is early dawn. I find that I am lying under the duvet with my clothes on the floor. I instantly turn to my right: Emma is lying next to me, seemingly sound asleep - I needn’t peek to discover her state of undress: I can feel her nakedness next to mine.
If it were possible for a body to be physically smiling, my state would describe it. I am shorn of anxiety and my future is bright. I arrived here twenty-fours ago straddling a bleak past, worn with uncertainty and disenchantment, and a future full of hope and promise. Now I am standing fully in the latter. The past is gone. I am so enchanted with my future that I am thinking of adding ‘van’ to the middle of my name to Dutch-ify it. Friedrich van Becker. I like the sound of it. But Friedrich still sounds cumbersome, Germanic. Maybe Rich van Becker. That’s it. That’s my stage name. If I can get the job in the jazz club that Emma feels is certain.
The only sound in the room is the rain pattering on the shutters. I feel like getting up and playing. Strangely, the sounds swirling in my head are from Schubert’s Piano Sonata D. 958. I would have expected Bach’s Sonata No. 17 if anything. That is morning music: sunny, brilliant with a cloudless blue sky and lush green valleys stretching out as far as the eyes can see. The D. 958 is more introspective, evening, romantic. I let it play on in my head unopposed.
I gently clutch Emma’s hand as we both remain lying on our backs. I am totally contented. Slowly we snuggle under the blanket and embrace each other in the warmth of the bed. We don’t say anything; words are superfluous. Our sexual appetites fully quenched, we let our drained bodies succumb to fatigue and fall back to sleep.
The next time I awake it is morning. For the first time I notice the interior of her room. It is roughly the same size as mine, but with a three-door wardrobe and a chest of drawers instead of a desk. There is also a small dressing table with an oval mirror and a number of bottles and jars arrayed on top. The walls, from what I can tell in the dull light, are painted a dark shade of pink or violet, and there are a number of framed prints of women dancing or frolicking near a lake or a pool. They seem to be oriental. I recall that Holland had historical ties with Indonesia dating back to colonial times. These prints could be related to that connection.
The shutters are wide open but the window is closed. I rise up on my elbows and glance around me. An adjoining door that I failed to notice in my room is now fully open. It must have been behind the wardrobe. I can smell breakfast downstairs and hear the clanging of dishes and plates.
I stagger naked to the bathroom and study my face in the mirror. There is a jauntiness about my being and I feel light-headed. I sit on the edge of the bath to steady myself. Fragments crowd my brain: the jazz; Emma inadvertently entering the bathroom and catching me in my total nakedness; me talking late into the night in her room; the awkward first moments of intimacy; the passionate lovemaking; waking up in an adjoining room. They appear like distorted images from a feverish brain. But I did wake up in her bed, and the adjoining door to my room is wide open.
In some uncanny way my desire to counterbalance Jac and Beth as the other ‘madly-in-love’ couple has come to pass. So I am elated in that, but the hastiness with which events have unfolded unbalances me. I feel like I have lost control of my destiny. Emotionally it feels like another lifetime ago, but it was just last night that I wondered if I could straddle Bremen and Utrecht. Now I have awakened in a status quo that makes me consider remoulding my identity to fit my new reality.
It is jarring, moreover (while I am loath to look a gift horse in the mouth), the swiftness with which the pieces have fallen into place and erected a wall between my past and future without allowing me to intellectually and emotionally assimilate the change. I am gliding on an emotional high. I need to slow down and reassess. I came here to complete my medical degree. That was my goal and my destiny. The jazz-playing was a spur-of-the-moment gesture to show off and I got carried away. I felt a need to be admired for the oldest reason in the world: the desire to impress and possess a beautiful woman; it is in our male genes. I recognise and accept that. But other than that I play for pleasure, not for gain. If I can translate that talent to pay my way it will be another lucky break to add to my current streak. But I am not about to turn pro. I just don’t have that in my genes.
It is obvious to me that I let the pendulum swing too far in one direction, to the point of losing myself in the ecstasy of the moment. But I need to bring the pendulum back to centre and maintain the balance between my past and present. Otherwise I will lose myself, and I can’t afford to do that. Not here, in a foreign country, after all.
There is a soft knock on the door. “Friedrich, Liebchen?”
“I am just going to be a few minutes.”
“That’s fine. I am downstairs. Breakfast is ready. We need to get to the open market before noon.”
“Ah. What time is it?”
“Just past ten.”
“OK.”
I hear the creaks in the wooden floorboards as Emma steps away.
The pendulum slowly returns to centre. I start to feel more grounded. I attempt to stand up, wobble slightly, but I steady myself by clutching the side of the sink.
Rather than veer one way or the other, I need to find a way to forge a path to Bremen, treasuring that which is dear to me and fusing that which I have already gained here, albeit in a very short time.
I shower hastily and dress out of my duffel, the shirt and trousers creased but clean and smart nonetheless. I hang up the rest of my clothes and put away my belongings. I place a framed picture of my parents and Brigitte on the desk by the window. Instinctively I touch the glass and kiss my fingers.
I bound down the steps, and at the sight of Emma my heart leaps. I bask in her love. From the blush in her cream-coloured cheeks I can see that it is mutual. I continue down the steps until I reach her and we embrace passionately, letting a long kiss linger between us.
We separate and Emma points to the door. “I have made you a sandwich. No time for a sit-down breakfast.”
We dash out the do
or and head out for our day as a couple.
The new semester begins in six weeks. During the past three months we have developed a routine where Emma teaches me Dutch every morning in a quasi-classroom setting. While we were at the market we procured an easel and a board and set them up in the opposite corner from the piano. Her fluency in both languages smooths my way in overcoming the syntactical and grammatical hurdles, thereby easing my learning curve. Nevertheless, during the first weeks Dutch sounded foreign, harsh and guttural, but that was the unfamiliarity and pronunciation. Once I got my head around the grammar and syntax the words became clearer.
We break for lunch, and in the afternoon we focus on medical studies. Emma is in her second semester of pre-med, aiming to specialise as a medical researcher working either for a pharmaceutical company or an academic institution. Having recently graduated pre-med, I help her navigate through the dense medical texts, some of which are also available in German.
By the time Christmas comes around I feel sufficiently confident that when the semester begins in February I will be able to follow the lectures. Exams and rounds may prove challenging, but the latter is not likely to happen till the second year, by which time I aim to be sufficiently conversant to participate.
When evening rolls around we break. Our relationship has evolved beyond the sexual ardour, embracing our studies, our mutual interest in art and music, and seeing eye to eye on many issues, amongst them political and social. We even talk about our bright future, after we both graduate.
THE MADNESS LOCKER Page 7
