Landing

by Laia Fàbregas

  When we parted that night in October,Willemien told me we’d see each other again the following week, but not to try to reach her before that. I spent the week whistling among my televisions, and trying to avoid Miguel. After a week and a day, Willemien came to find me at the camp. She had broken up with Miguel. I didn’t speak to him again for a year.

  In mid-December they told us that Mr. Philips was giving us Christmas holidays. But this time they didn’t send us to Spain, as they had in the summer. So I spent a few days wondering whether or not I should take the train home. And if I did, whether I would bring Willemien, or if it would be better to stay and celebrate my first Christmas in Holland. I decided to stay at the camp, like most of the guys.

  It was my first Christmas in a country where the sun sets at four in the afternoon. I had been in Holland for nearly a year and little by little I was getting used to the climate, I was able to stammer a few words, but I still hadn’t experienced how the Dutch celebrated the holiday so differently.

  Holland had two days of Christmas: the 25th and the 26th of December; they called them “the first day of Christmas” and “the second day of Christmas.” The ultimate manifestation of organization and consistency. At first it struck me as absurd. No one could explain to me why they had two days instead of one. Then I realized how sensible it was, to be able to celebrate Christmas without getting families together.

  Christmas Eve was uneventful. Dinner was just like any other night and some of us attended midnight mass at the church in town. The next morning felt strange and cold; I remember awakening slowly, knowing it was Christmas but feeling like it wasn’t really. We were lost in a dreamlike fog of indecision. In Holland there are many days when you don’t see the sky. I remember that Christmas as the first day in my life that I realized I needed the sky.

  After whiling away the morning, we put together the best Christmas dinner we could, convincing Peter, the cook, to let us dine on a Spanish schedule for once. He made us a meal that you couldn’t call either Spanish or Dutch, but it was good, and we had fun, laughing and singing, and the day passed without us feeling homesick.

  Some of us found it harder to enjoy the moment than others, because they missed their wives and children, who would be celebrating the festivities in Extremadura. I felt pretty good, because I had a girlfriend a few kilometers away, eating with her parents and eagerly awaiting the second day of Christmas, when we would see each other.

  My first second day of Christmas in Holland was unquestionably a Dutch second day of Christmas. I had already met Willemien’s parents several times, but they had never invited me to their house. It was a strange day. Instead of Christmas lunch, we had a Christmas dinner that began at five in the afternoon. And instead of everyone shouting across the table without understanding each other, most of the dinner took place in silence, broken only by the occasional question, which was answered curtly before silence resumed.

  While I ate I imagined my parents, Pedro and Mariana, Antonia and the little ones, gathered around the dining room table at home, drinking coffee and shooting the breeze after Christmas lunch. They were about to clear the table and go for a walk, and I was just sitting down. Until I realized that they wouldn’t be celebrating the second day of Christmas. They would be working and nostalgia made me miss them even more.

  But I didn’t miss them for long. The next day a letter from Pedro arrived, one I should have waited to open. I remember the words and the shapes of the letters clearly, I remember everything on that well-folded piece of paper, written in Mariana’s hand, but signed with Pedro’s name.

  “Dear Brother. I’m going to marry Mariana. The wedding will be April 1. Your brother, Pedro.”

  It was neither an invitation to the wedding nor an announcement that I was not invited. It was notification of an event, which he knew I would not be able to attend. And it became the catalyst for my remaining in Holland. On the last day of 1963 I asked Willemien to marry me. And she said yes.

  Willemien’s parents were clearly opposed to our engagement. Ever since “the Spaniards” had arrived in Someren all the families with young ladies had been on tenterhooks. Mothers rushed to find eligible Dutch candidates before their daughters showed up at home with Spaniards, and parents made disapproving faces when stories of the first romances reached their ears. Willemien knew very well that bringing a Spaniard home would lead to arguments with her parents, that’s why she had never brought Miguel home, and as far as I know, they never even knew about him.

  Willemien had wanted to go against her parents’ wishes for years, and occasionally she succeeded. But she lost the battle on her education. Although she saw herself living in a dormitory in Maastricht, studying art at the Jan van Eyck Academie, her parents prevailed upon her to live at home and study textile design in Eindhoven. In the end she grudgingly agreed, but she took the first opportunity she had to sign up for art classes behind her parents’ backs.

  By the time I arrived on the scene things had calmed down; Willemien had graduated and was working as a clothing designer for local businesses. But my entrance into the family threatened to break the fragile peace. Willemien’s parents never tried to hide their lack of enthusiasm for our relationship. No sooner had they learned of our intentions than they tried to delay the wedding as long as possible, hoping with all their hearts that their daughter would change her mind. One of their most compelling arguments against our union was that, by law, Willemien would lose her Dutch citizenship when we married.

  Willemien couldn’t have cared less, and sometimes she would say angrily that she would get married for better or for worse. But deep in her heart she craved her parents’

  approval, not to feel alone as she embarked on this unknown adventure of marriage to a foreigner.

  Pedro and Mariana’s wedding date approached, and Willemien and I still hadn’t set a date. I hadn’t told my family I was engaged, and I began to worry that we’d never get married when one Sunday morning a kid on a bicycle came to the camp shouting my name. I was playing cards with my roommates when I heard the boy. I looked out the window and saw a blond kid with long legs who couldn’t have been more than ten. I had never seen him before. When I came out of the barracks wondering what he could possibly want from me, the boy approached me on his bike, stopping short in front of me, and handed me a piece of paper.

  In Dutch it said, “We expect you for dinner at our house at five.” It was an invitation from Willemien’s parents. The boy stood looking at me and I wondered whether he was waiting for a tip or an answer. He snapped me out of it.

  “Yes or no?” he asked expectantly.

  “Yes.”

  I put the piece of paper in my pocket and returned to my card game. But I didn’t win a single hand.

  At four I left the camp for a leisurely three-kilometer walk to Willemien’s house. I arrived at the specified hour, Willemien opened the door and I looked at her questioningly, expecting an explanation for this gathering, but I soon learned she knew as little as I did. She accompanied me to the living room and I noticed that the table was set for five. I wondered who the fifth person could be.

  “Father Driessen is also coming,”Willemien whispered in my ear.

  Jaime Driessen was the Dutch priest who said mass in Spanish at all the guest-worker camps; he knew the first and last names and even the birthdays of every last one of us.

  “Why’d they invite him?” I asked Willemien, both confused and relieved, since I considered Father Driessen an ally.

  “I haven’t the faintest.”

  In early January I had spoken with Father Driessen to let him know I wanted to marry Willemien, but that we still hadn’t told her parents, because we were certain they wouldn’t approve. Father Driessen congratulated me on the good news, and told me it would be best if I approached them to ask for Willemien’s hand, because her parents were quite traditional and would appreciate the gesture.
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  But Willemien didn’t like the idea. She said she wanted to do it her way and she told them about our engagement herself. Just as we had expected, their faces fell and the ensuing silence made it clear that they wouldn’t support our plans.

  So we had come to a stalemate; we were hoping Willemien’s parents would change their minds, and they were hoping we would change ours. During that time, which lasted for more than two months, I hadn’t brought up the wedding with Father Driessen again.

  It seemed that the time to bring it up again had arrived, and that I’d have to do it in front of everyone. If this dinner had been arranged to get me to formally ask for Willemien’s hand, it was fine with me. But something told me that was not why we were all there that afternoon.

  Willemien sat down beside me.

  “What if he’s coming to marry us?” she joked.

  “Great, let him marry us!”

  After a while Willemien’s father came into the living room. The armchair where he sat down was five meters away from us, a distance in keeping with the tepidness of our relations.

  “Father Driessen is also dining with us tonight. He’ll be here soon,” my future father-in-law said slowly in Dutch. I understood him perfectly and replied, pronouncing my words carefully, “He’s a good man. I’m happy to see him again.”

  He looked at me as if he understood only half of what I had said, then he turned to Willemien and began speaking so quickly that I couldn’t understand a single word, as he often did to make me uncomfortable. I could tell from Willemien’s face that it wasn’t an important conversation, and I relaxed.

  When the doorbell rang Willemien’s father got out of his armchair and left the room without a word. I heard the front door open and got up to greet Father Driessen. Willemien’s parents looked at me suspiciously when he greeted me effusively, in Spanish.

  Dinner was uneventful. We had trivial conversations that I can hardly remember. But at the end of dinner, much to my surprise,Willemien’s father asked the priest to what they owed the pleasure of his visit. That was when I realized that it was Father Driessen, and not my future in-laws, who had gathered us together.

  Father Driessen replied that he had some good news about marriages between Dutch women and foreigners. He spoke in Dutch but translated what he said into Spanish afterwards. He said that the government was working on a new law that would allow Willemien to retain her Dutch citizenship in the event of our marriage. She would receive Spanish citizenship through me, but she wouldn’t lose her own; she’d be a dual citizen.

  Willemien looked at me with a victorious smile. Her parents looked at each other, defeated. The argument they had been making so relentlessly over the past few months had just evaporated, and they realized they had lost, right there in front of Father Driessen; they couldn’t invent a new excuse for disapproving of our marriage. They had no choice but to give us their blessing right then and there, in front of the priest who would marry us.

  That night, at my future in-laws’ house, we set the wedding date. We’d get married on June 21 at the town hall, in accordance with Dutch law, and four days later we’d go to the church in Someren, where Father Driessen would preside at the bilingual, Catholic ceremony.

  Willemien’s mother, at least, was happy that her daughter was marrying a Catholic. Her biggest fear, at least until Someren had been invaded by Spanish guest-workers, had always been that her daughter would marry a Protestant.

  I waited until after Pedro and Mariana’s wedding to send a letter to my parents announcing our wedding. My mother replied that in the summer we’d have a party celebrating both unions. But the party never took place.

  Her

  On a break at work, I started with the forty-seventh person on my list. I typed the name into my computer when all my colleagues were out of the office.

  I knew it wouldn’t take long, that in all likelihood I wouldn’t find him, but I thought I should try all the same. Sven Kils wasn’t registered with the Dutch tax authorities. But I did find a Sven Kils in Germany through Google. I planned a trip to Berlin. I already knew that he was too young to be the one I was looking for, but that didn’t stop me from tracking him down. I was almost halfway through my list, and after investigating forty-six names, calling and visiting over eighty people, I couldn’t imagine discarding one of these names without at least speaking to them. I had to be systematic, organized.

  Friday I took the day off and flew to Berlin. My flight left at 6:50; it was half-full and I was alone in row seventeen. I arrived in Berlin early in the morning. I had done an internet search for directions from the airport to Sven Kils’s office, and had the printout with me. After landing it took over an hour to get to the office. I hadn’t called to make an appointment with him. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t. This time I thought that if he wasn’t in, I’d ask his secretary or one of his colleagues. Sometimes it was more helpful to do this than to speak with the person directly.

  The city was bustling. It was different from Amsterdam, where it was difficult to tell if people were going to work, school, or coming home from a night out. In Berlin it was clear everyone was going to work. Or perhaps it was just that the U-Bahn had deposited me in a business district.

  I arrived at reception in a tall building and told the receptionist I was looking for Sven Kils. Without uttering a word, the girl motioned to the elevators. At first I thought she was being rude, but then I realized she was on a phone call on her headset. I walked over to the elevators, wondering how many floors there might be. Hanging next to one elevator was a directory of all the offices in the building. The Sven Kils’s design studio was on the tenth floor. I was the only person who got in the elevator.

  When the doors opened I found myself in another world. The cold marble and high ceilings of the lobby had turned into a world without walls, bursting with warm colors and playful objects. I didn’t feel any more or less welcome than I had in the lobby, but I was struck by the contrast. Color was splashed across every surface: desks, columns, chairs, and carpets, but also giant balls of yarn and huge dice. The whole floor was so over-stimulating that you could hardly see past where you were standing. I was facing an empty desk. I walked over to it and, with the change in perspective, saw two guys who had been hidden behind a column. One of them approached me.

  It was Sven Kils. He was twenty-five years old and spoke in a fast Berlin accent that was difficult for me to understand. I asked if he could speak more slowly and he looked at me like I was stupid. But I didn’t mind.

  “I like your office,” I said, just to show him I knew German.

  “This is our second year here, it’s a little worn now, but for visitors the novelty doesn’t wear off.”

  “How many people work here?”

  I wasn’t remotely interested in his business, and I have no idea what he said. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t the one I was looking for.

  “Have you ever been to Holland?” I asked, getting straight to the point.

  “Plenty. We have good clients in Amsterdam, I go three or four times a year.”

  His misuse of the word “plenty” made me laugh. He didn’t think it was so funny. I was overcome by the need to get out of there. I had laid eyes on Sven Kils; he was too young, brusque and arrogant. But I had an important question for him.

  “Was your father also called Sven Kils?”

  He didn’t answer. He looked at me surprised, uncomfortable. I suddenly felt sorry for him. In a flash I understood why he was the way he was, he had lost his father too young, which is why he’d had to make himself more important than he was. But perhaps I was mistaken.

  “My father doesn’t work here any longer,” he said, his face tense. It wasn’t clear from his response whether or not his father’s name was Sven Kils.

  “Did he ever live in Holland?”

  “My father never crossed the German border in his whole
life.”

  I thanked him and said I had to go. He was agreeable and I was grateful not to be questioned about the reason for my visit. I could have lied to him, but after his last response I didn’t’ think I would have been able to hide the truth.

  I was wondering what else I could do with my time in Berlin when the elevator stopped on the fifth floor. A girl carrying a rolled-up poster got in. She was a little younger than me and wore a long black dress, one that would make a great party outfit with an eye-catching necklace, but with the modest scarf she wore it was perfect for the office. It occurred to me that I should take more time putting my outfits together; I was wearing some comfy jeans and a black turtleneck sweater.

  The girl pressed the button for the twenty-third floor. I was going to say that we were going down, but the elevator started going up. The girl unrolled the poster and flattened it against the mirror. She asked me what I thought.

  It was approximately fifty by sixty centimeters. Photos, postcards, and magazine clippings were pasted randomly against a white background. The first thing I noticed was that everything was yellow, or yellowish. There was a flower, a baby’s blond hair, an apple and a banana, a yellow car with a caravan, the yellowish interior of an old home, a piece of a card with a quote about love written in pencil.

  “It’s a mood board, for inspiration,” she said.“How does it make you feel?”

  I was used to replying “m-hm” to strangers. Like when a woman started telling me her life story in line at the supermarket: had she closed the lock on her bike properly, or which sausages she liked best. Easy conversations: I’d answer “m-hm” and they were satisfied. But this was different, the woman in the elevator really wanted my opinion, she wouldn’t be satisfied with a simple “m-hm” and a nod.