Leaving Berlin

by Britt Holmström

  Having discovered her artistic talent, Irene has signed up for the next level pottery class, as well as an evening art appreciation class at the university. She is considering learning how to weave. She has room for a weaving loom in the basement.

  Life has reshaped itself into a new pattern that is less symmetrical, but interesting in a different, less predictable, way. “Enjoyable” is a word that has cropped up lately.

  And yet they are still bothered about Kaye who is long gone. It’s as if they can’t let go. No wonder, all the power they let her usurp without a single mewling of protest.

  “What’s the moral of this story?” Irene asks Gertrude at coffee one morning. They haven’t had coffee together for several days. None of the others have showed up, claiming heavy workloads.

  “I don’t think morals enter into it.”

  “Every tale should have a moral.”

  “Why?”

  “Morals are comforting.”

  Irene had expected Gertrude of all people to understand this simple concept, but Gertrude, who is well read, says that is certainly not true. Stories happen, they unfold and come to an eventual conclusion, and that’s freaking well that. They are brief, or not so brief, these glimpses of life. Sometimes they are intended to mean something specific, other times not.

  Irene insists. She has a stubborn need for this particular tale to have a moral attached to it. Like the list of ingredients on a can of soup.

  “Morals and soup are two different things.”

  Irene ignores the acerbic comment and tries to explain. “Morals are for the survivors of unfairness to cling to. They’re what help us survive.”

  “Christ, aren’t we deep today.” The indifference in Gertrude’s voice is new. She is withholding herself as of late, and in that withholding is present a hint of more changes to come. She is drumming her nails on the table the way Jill used to. It doesn’t sound like a machine gun, mind you, more like a determined march into the unknown.

  Irene gets upset. “I’m perfectly serious. A moral would make it easier to cope. I crave justice. Justice makes it easier to forgive.”

  “Forgive who?”

  “You know who.”

  “Say the name.”

  “Why?”

  “Say it.”

  “Kaye.”

  “And why does Kaye need to be forgiven?”

  Irene ought to have an answer to that question, considering how strongly she feels about it, but she can’t for the life of her dredge up a suitable reply. She decides not to have coffee with Gertrude for a while.

  UNDER THE EIFFEL TOWER

  * * *

  LOOK AT THAT WOMAN SLUMPED OVER THERE, the one on the third bench from the south end of the Champ de Mars. The one with the reddish blond hair, knees pressed together, feet in low-heeled walking shoes. With her shoulders slouching like that she looks like a dejected lump of dough.

  Who is she? And what’s with that embarrassed look on her face?

  Her name is Carol Hubick. She is Canadian. From Ottawa. And she is afraid of heights, which is why she is sitting temporarily alone.

  Further down the path, somewhere over her left shoulder, looms the Eiffel Tower like a giant souvenir. Carol’s husband, her brother-in-law and his wife should have reached the top of that tower by now, gushing breathless over the famous view she will never get to see. Judging by the queue, the rest of the world’s teeming masses are impatient to join them. Carol sighs.

  Never mind.

  White clouds glissade with continental elegance over the roof of École Militaire. Birds trill their joie de vivre — probably in French — this magnificent June day as Paris bestows its most charming smile upon the hordes of visitors. And yet Carol, more impressionable than most, is not seduced. Yesterday she would have been, but not today.

  She is feeling ashamed, and that is what accounts for that contrite look of hers. The reason for her shame has nothing to do with her fear of heights, it is caused by something far more unexpected. Looking friendly enough where she sits — and she is friendly, to a fault — her docile face, apart from the unbecoming blush of embarrassment, reveals none of the clandestine thoughts whispering in her head as if afraid to get caught and reprimanded.

  These thoughts of hers are best described with the two words that did not always go together but these days are attached at the hip, accusatory and shrill: Politically incorrect! Such a tricky constraint is political correctness, making deviants of ordinary folk.

  Carol does not approve of negative attitudes, including her own. She considers herself a liberal person, generally kind and good and well meaning. She believes in equality. Life is so much easier when people get along. And she has not changed her mind about that, not at all, it is just that today has turned out to be different. It was not supposed to, but it has. Today she has been forced to acknowledge another side of herself. Already she is surprised at the insistent nature of it.

  For the last five minutes she has been furtively eyeing a woman also sitting alone, two benches down on the opposite side of the path. This woman is the reason Carol’s head is hosting a midmorning coffee klatch of thoughts that nudge and gossip, impatient to share not so much what they know as what they assume.

  Well, she has no business sitting there, does she?

  Of course she doesn’t! She’s a gypsy. These benches are for tourists who have paid a lot of hard earned cash to come here.

  Exactly! I mean, look at her. She’s a beggar!

  No, I shouldn’t think like that. It’s not like I’m a bigot. I don’t even know if she’s a beggar.

  Oh, she’s a beggar all right.

  Now, you don’t know that.

  Sure I do. The city’s full of them.

  The woman, whatever her profession, is undeniably a gypsy. But what does that mean? Is the pointing out of this fact equal to uttering a racial slur? She is not bothering anybody, her expression is benign, she could advise Mona Lisa on the enigma of smiles. Her eyes are focused on something far beyond the tower, secretive, hooded eyes expressing vague amusement. Her clothes — a long skirt, cardigan and scarf — are simple, a mixture of browns and blues with a splash of red in the skirt. She looks a bit disheveled, her skirt unironed, but that is not it either.

  No, what Carol finds so troublesome is the forbidding otherness of the woman. She just sits there and exudes it. Unsure of how to interpret such a phenomenon, Carol takes it personally and finds offense. The word untouchable slips uninvited into her mental coffee klatch and joins the discussion. Allowing the term to make itself at home takes her subversive musings to a new extreme. She is shocked.

  I shouldn’t think like that. If she turned her head this way she’d see me blush. Maybe she’d guess why. That would be so embarrassing.

  Oh, don’t be stupid! She’s not a mind reader, for God’s sake!

  Back home they might have smiled at each other, these two women of a certain age, sensing similarities, making a friendly comment about the weather. Carol had not anticipated spending this glorious midmorning in solitary contemplation. She had every intention of tagging along with the others up to that ludicrously high point of the tower where no human was meant to set foot. Less than half an hour ago she was fully prepared to exhibit the necessary bravado, however brittle, however false, in order to honour what is a very special occasion: her and Rod’s first holiday abroad. Which is not just any old holiday but a celebratory journey, for on July the fifteenth — the day after tomorrow — they will have been married for twenty years.

  That, as Rod keeps pointing out, is something.

  On the plane from Toronto Rod voiced a wish to celebrate at the Crazy Horse Saloon, watching dancing girls, chugging a magnum of champagne, smoking a stogie, all after a big French dinner. Carol told him what she thought of that fantasy. She had her eyes set on a restaurant she had read about called Le Grand Vélour, a very old and famous place full of distinction. Napoléon himself used to dine there.

  It was an ambitious
plan, but the place — apart from costing an arm and a leg and your firstborn — turned out to be in such demand that people have to reserve a table years in advance, probably at birth.

  Instead they are going to celebrate in the not quite as expensive restaurant the concierge at the hotel has recommended. La Truffière it is called, on the Left Bank and très romantic, very suitable for an anniversary dinner, according to the concierge who kindly offered to make a reservation.

  They are going to go the whole hog that night with drinks before dinner, champagne with the food, you name it. Carol plans to have a liqueur with the coffee, too, see if she doesn’t. Grand Marnier probably, she loves that stuff. Rod says he is having a three star cognac for sure. And — it goes without saying — they are having an appetizer, main course and dessert. Crème brûlée probably, which is light but delectable. Carol is already addicted to it.

  Rod has brought along his good suit and the Ralph Lauren tie she bought him for Christmas. Carol plans to wear the dress she wore for their oldest son’s high school graduation. For the price she paid, it will have to serve as her special dress for the rest of her life.

  Maybe they can bury me in it.

  They are going to bring the camera and ask the waiter to take a couple of pictures. It will be just she and Rod having an intimate anniversary dinner in the fancy restaurant, the other two will have to fend for themselves. Steve says they will feast at le McDonald’s because they serve alcohol and he can have a couple of beers with his big Mac.

  I might order seafood for the main course. Something with shrimp and garlic butter. It’s so French. And I love dipping the bread in the butter. Maybe I’ll tell Rod about sitting here getting all worked up about some gypsy woman I don’t even know. It’ll give us something to talk about.

  Carol had been convinced she would conquer her fear when she finally stood before the tall metal milestone, that she would make it to the top, eyes open, world at her feet, congratulatory. God knows she had thought about little else the previous winter when the snow lay deep and the temperature hit rock bottom and still kept on plunging. In January Rod came down with pneumonia that took a turn for the worse after he was given the wrong antibiotic. He was forced to be off work for two weeks.

  There had been ice on the inside of the kitchen window, a spreading white crust along the bottom pane. She had drawn little Eiffel Towers in it with a paring knife, worrying that if Rod did not get better soon, they would not have enough money to go to anywhere.

  Yes, she had been as eager as the others to join the endless queue shuffling forward an inch at a time towards the coveted elevator that would transport them up into the stratosphere and spit them out where the air is thin.

  When they were heading for the tower, the other three could not contain their excitement. Lynette, Carol’s sister-in-law, said “Jeez Louise, it’s waaay taller than I’d imagined! Though not nearly as shiny, mind you.” It being so famous and all, she’d had a mental picture of men crawling all over it every morning, spraying it with a special polish through hoses attached to large canisters strapped to their backs, buffing every inch of it with enormous soft cloths until the entire thing gleamed in the sun.

  Carol thought it looked a big ugly contraption built only to humiliate the likes of her.

  Rod and Steve were impressed and said so. They could not wait to get up and take a gander at the view. Rod was already waving his new Camcorder in every direction. At one point he stuck it in Carol’s face, pretending to be a journalist requesting a comment. Was Madame looking forward to le view from le top of le tower? Did she think she’d be able to see Canada from up there? How come her face was such an interesting shade of green? Was she an alien? Was this here tall doohickey her mothership?

  “Leave me alone, damn it!” It was not the response she meant to give. “I’m sorry, you guys, but I can’t go through with it. You’ll have to go up without me. WILL YOU FOR CHRISAKE STOP WAVING THAT THING IN MY FACE!”

  At least she had the courage to admit defeat.

  The other three exchanged glances. On the flight across the Atlantic they had made a bet that Carol would get cold feet when the time came. Carol, having insisted on a centre seat on the jumbo jet, had steadfastly refused to look towards any window, though she had been quick to assure them that she would be a paragon of courage when push came to shove, just wait and see. She would ascend all the 900 feet to the very top.

  Then push came to shove and now she owes them thirty dollars each. Ninety dollars total, and make no mistake, they will insist on payment, she knows what they are like. She could have bought a nice bottle of perfume for that money.

  Then off hurried Rod, Steve and Lynette until they disappeared in a horde of tourists all wearing identical fanny packs. Rod should talk about aliens. The entire queue looked like an army of marsupials come to rob the French capital of cheap souvenirs.

  Carol is not wearing a fanny pack. She thinks it looks too touristy, a dead giveaway. It also makes her stomach look bigger than necessary. Dieting is difficult at the best of times, but in France you may as well forget it. Okay, eating chocolate almond croissants for breakfast is not strictly a must, nobody else does, but that does not stop Rod from patting his own comfortable girth, repeating the same dumb line every morning: “When in Rome, eh guys? And Paris, too.”

  When Carol turned her back on the others, she was not sure what to do with herself. Not wanting to look lost, she strolled down the path in the direction of Esplanade des Invalides, unaware that behind her, stepping out from the marsupial queue, Rod was filming her slumping defeat for posterity.

  What she wanted to do was find a bench at a safe enough distance from the lolling sea of tourists around the Tower and the various kiosks doing a brisk trade. Her thoughts were still acceptable then, less than twenty minutes ago.

  There must be millions of miniature chrome Eiffel Towers sitting on knickknack shelves all over the world from Ottawa to Oslo, Omaha to Osaka. I’m for sure not getting one. What use is a six-inch Eiffel Tower made in China?

  There is a good chance she will find out. She is pretty sure Lynette will buy one each for her kids, parents, aunts and uncles, including the one who had his camera stolen on his visit to Paris two years earlier and now hates everything French. Yesterday Lynette took her sweet time selecting a tiny Notre Dame in a snowstorm, a keepsake for herself, she said. She kept shaking the plastic bauble, holding it up and declaring how adorable it looked, how real.

  “How do you know?” Steve asked. “You’ve never seen the Notre Dame in a snowstorm.”

  “You have to imagine, don’t you?” said Lynette, still shaking the stupid thing.

  As Carol reached the end of the path, some Japanese tourists got up and vacated the third bench from the end, so she hurried over to replace them, parking herself in the middle to make it awkward for anybody else to join her.

  And here she sits, hosting stubborn, forbidden thoughts about a woman she never laid eyes on until ten minutes ago, a gypsy disfiguring Carol’s idea of Paris.

  I wish I could shake the scenery and make it snow. Make her disappear in a cascade of flakes that look like grated coconut.

  Not only does the woman lack the Parisian elegance Carol has come a long way to admire and — with a bit of luck and determination — emulate, but with her otherness she looks as threatening as the gypsies begging on the steps leading up to the Sacré-Coeur. Tucked in every corner of the steps, there they sit, like living statues.

  They ought to order them to move. It’s not fair that they’re allowed to sit there so sneakily and pounce on people.

  I shouldn’t be thinking that.

  But it’s true! They pester people. People like us who pay our way. I was assaulted, wasn’t I? Rod said it was an assault. Rod’s a cop, he ought to know.

  Yesterday when they made their way up the steps, walking off some French calories after a lunch of croque monsieur washed down with a couple of beer, one of the beggars, a scrawny young woman
holding a baby, grabbed Carol by the ankle and did not let go. Just sat there, innocent as can be, presenting a pleading face to the world, though her eyes were as menacing as the claw firmly locked around Carol’s ankle. Rod had to holler at her in bad French to let go, goddamn it. The gypsy ignored him.

  After Carol tried to pull her foot free, she felt stupid and cheap and handed over what change she had. The young woman did not show the slightest gratitude, but did let go of Carol’s ankle, shifting the baby to her right arm, acting like the people before her had become invisible.

  “Your problem,” Rod educated Carol for the third time that day, “is that you’re way too soft. These people can tell a sucker a mile away, you gotta realize that. This is Europe.”

  The gypsy woman down the path is wearing a blue kerchief around her head, tied at the nape of her neck. A large canvas bag lies open in her lap. It looks like a shapeless, hungry pet, its mouth open in a rictus yawn. The woman is indifferent to her surroundings, staring with unblinking eyes beyond the imposing tower, northwest across the river towards the Bois de Boulogne. But she is not begging. Her hands are not stretched out palm up, but perfectly still, clutching one of the handles of the gaping bag. She sits immobile, bothering nobody, her vaguely amused expression never fluctuating. She could be waiting for her family to come back down from the impossible height of the tower. She, too, may suffer from acrophobia.

  But she’s doesn’t, does she? She’s a beggar. I mean, let’s face it, you can tell, can’t you?

  I shouldn’t . . .

  Carol continues her internal quibbling, ashamed, knowing how bigoted it is to assume that a woman is a beggar simply because she is a gypsy. It is, she cautions herself, not very nice. Yet something in her rebels.

  Tell you what, if she’s not a beggar, I’ll run up the outside of the Eiffel Tower like the damn Road Runner. Surprise the hell out of Rod.