The Recent East

by Thomas Grattan

  Vati looked perturbed. Beate realized he’d been in the middle of a sentence. She stared at her plate as she continued.

  “Why did we really leave?” she asked.

  “You’ve already translated that for me,” he said.

  “Generally, I understand. But why not a year before? A week later? What specifically about then?”

  “We’d been thinking of it for a while,” he said.

  “But the specific thing. Were you about to be arrested?”

  “I don’t know anything about arrest,” Vati answered.

  Part of her wanted to stop, though to continue carried the dangerous excitement of sledding down an icy hill.

  “So there wasn’t a particular reason?”

  “There were many reasons,” Vati answered. “You were one of the reasons.”

  “But what if I didn’t want to leave?”

  “You were a child,” Vati said. “You’re a child now.” He pushed his napkin into a ball.

  “Mutti, did you agree with the leaving?” Beate went on.

  “Child,” Mutti said.

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere, a place where we barely speak the language. I’m just trying to understand.” In Kritzhagen she’d had a handful of friends who, like her, read all the time and drew pictures of houses and women in miniskirts. Friends who Beate would head off to the sea with on the first warm spring day, swimming until it was hard to feel their fingers. In Edinburgh Beate had had a sort of celebrity, also Duncan, always whispering about how he wanted to make love to her, which even in her remedial English sounded like a ridiculous combination of words.

  “I’m only asking a question,” Beate said.

  “I think we should take this up another time,” Mutti answered.

  “Why?”

  “Another time.”

  “Why not this time?”

  Vati banged a fist on the table, once, then again, again. Spittle freckled his chin. He stood up and stuttered into his room and seemed like a child. Mutti went to check on him. There’d been no real reason. Vati had simply made declarations, his favorite kind of talking.

  Beate had two years until college. And though Vati had said she could study in Winona for free, the next morning she found her friends and explained how much she’d hated telling her story to the class. “I was trying to save my grade,” she said. “I need to get into college. And not in Minnesota.”

  Sam and Christine talked about schools they wanted to go to out East, places with tidy old buildings and cinnamon-smelling days. “Yes,” Karen said. “We totally get it. We all want to get the fuck out of Dodge.” Beate felt flooded with relief. She tried, too, to figure out, without asking, what that expression meant.

  That night, Vati stayed late at the library, the night after, too. His idea of punishment, Beate assumed, realizing only later that he might have been afraid of her.

  * * *

  One morning, years before, in Kritzhagen and angry for something she couldn’t remember, Beate blurted out: “Liesl said I was an accident.”

  Sun cut across their honey-colored kitchen.

  “Did you ask Liesl why she said it?” her father asked.

  “Because it’s true, I imagine.”

  “Did you ask Liesl why she said it?” Beate shook her head.

  A stack of essays filled his satchel, so many ideas for him to evaluate, so many ways to tell his students that they danced around an idea rather than stating it.

  “Do you have questions for me?” he asked.

  “About what Liesl said?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “Do you have questions for me about what Liesl said about you not being part of a plan?”

  There was an answer he wanted. Beate wasn’t sure what it was. Saying she didn’t implied an easiness he seemed to enjoy in their child-parent relationship. Saying she did might show gumption. The answer was that she didn’t know whether she wanted to ask or not, that saying yes or no would change something, though she couldn’t say what, only that it would add to a pattern where she didn’t ask difficult questions, or where she did. She was hungry, angry with Liesl, her father’s questions a trick she’d wooed Beate into.

  “I want to know why you always wear a sweater and a blazer over it. I want to know if you get hot, and what you do when that happens.”

  He looked at his bag, at the hallway.

  “I am surprised that that is what you want to know,” he answered.

  And now, in their cheap Winona apartment, she was glad she hadn’t said anything real to this man who demanded truth and offered fiction in return. He came home a few nights after the interview’s broadcast in a huff. “They’ve asked that I study English with one of the teachers,” he said. He chewed his dinner at the front of his mouth, like a rodent. Beate ate fast and asked to be excused. She stayed in her room, what the realtor who’d shown them the apartment called a half bedroom. She could touch one wall with her hands, another with her feet. “I used to live in a large house,” Beate mumbled. “Who fucking cares?” she added.

  Beate began to speak English more. When her parents complained, she said that her teachers told her she had to pause on the German. “Speaking English only,” she said, in English, “is the only way to learn.” Her father adjusted his napkin, trying perhaps to remember the word for napkin in English, or maybe ungrateful.

  Soon she started thinking about college. Despite her piecemeal education, she was ahead of most of her peers. And Vati had a colleague at a women’s college in Massachusetts.

  “The Pilgrims,” Vati said.

  “A different part of this state,” Beate answered.

  She’d done well in school because it had been easy, because there had been nothing else to do. Because the idea of doing nothing was a falling she was afraid of. Vati’s friend would see her school report and talk of how impressive it was for someone who’d only recently learned the language, adding that, with the life she’d lived, she could practically go for free. Beate waited each day for a letter from the women’s college, trying to remember Massachusetts’ spelling. She sat in her small room. Held her breath until it ached across her chest, then her temples. Beate let it out just before she was certain something inside her would stop working.

  13

  1994

  After Liesl’s lawyer finagled Udo’s sentence down to a fine and he spent a disaster of a summer living with his father, followed by fifteen months of conscription during which he drove an ambulance in a town near the Polish border, Udo returned home. He got a job working for Heinz, whose business boomed with the city’s sudden influx of tourism. But he chose to live with Michael and Beate instead of his mother.

  “After all I’ve done for you,” Liesl said, as Udo unpacked his car. “All we’ve done.”

  He carried boxes into the house. Liesl kept talking. Her daughter, Annette, stayed strapped in the backseat of Liesl’s car, gnawing on a coloring book.

  “Heinz has even given you a job,” she said.

  “If Heinz doesn’t want to,” Udo answered.

  “There’s no talk of not wanting,” Liesl said. “But I have the apartment over the garage set up. I won’t even care if you have girls over. Or boys. Maybe you’re like your little cousin. I read that it runs in the family.”

  Michael had just gotten home from his job as a busboy; his skin and clothes smelled medium rare. He folded himself into a wingback in hopes that they wouldn’t notice him.

  “Good cousin,” Udo said, and dropped a stack of boxes.

  Liesl clomped in behind him. She was tan from a recent trip to Majorca. She wore a gold ankle bracelet and bracingly high heels.

  “Michael, tell your cousin he’s being ridiculous,” Liesl said.

  It did seem ridiculous. Even though Mutti had agreed that Udo could stay with them, she’d admitted to Michael that she didn’t understand why he wanted to. But Udo walked in and looked worn out in a way Michael hadn’t seen in him before. As he moved back into the driveway, hauling duffels
on each shoulder, he slouched with defeat, though Liesl later insisted this slouch came from weight gain. Each blink appeared effortful, as it had for Michael when Tobias and his boyfriend moved to Düsseldorf. But Liesl refused to believe that sadness was real, mistaking it for laziness or something unmanly. As Udo unloaded a crate of CDs, Michael understood that living with them was something he needed.

  “It seems like what he wants,” Michael said.

  “Tra-la-la,” Liesl answered. She lit a cigarette and told the room that she had things to do, as if it’d been holding her against her will.

  That night, as Michael and Mutti made dinner, they heard Udo heading out the door.

  “Where are you off to?” Mutti asked.

  “Don’t know,” Udo answered. The weight he’d added in the last year erased anything mean in his face. His shirt was carefully ironed.

  “You look like you have plans,” Michael said. Udo shook his head.

  “We have enough food,” Mutti added, and—with the same heavy slowness with which he’d unpacked his car—Udo sat down.

  As Beate and Michael joined him at the table, Udo gave them a smile that was both sweet and revealed the work it was to stay afloat.

  “I didn’t know,” Udo said, which may have been about the food, or him living with them, or Adela citing him as a primary reason that she’d stayed in America.

  * * *

  For months, Udo toggled between tentative and overeager. In happier moments, he turned too helpful and too social. He cooked elaborate dinners. He asked Mutti questions about this or that old person. Asked Michael if Tobias had finally fallen for him. “Tobias is gone,” Michael answered, and slid his headphones on.

  One night, Michael arrived home late to find Udo and Mutti waiting. “I made dinner,” Udo said. Michael wanted to say that he’d eaten already, but he was stoned and starving, so he sat down.

  “In America, people eat in front of the television,” Michael said as he slid an ice cube across the roof of his mouth.

  “How is your sister?” Udo asked.

  “I don’t really talk to her,” Michael said.

  “Sure you do,” Mutti answered.

  She would have said more, but Josef arrived. When Mutti and Josef excused themselves, smiling like teenagers, Michael and Udo cleaned up.

  “You like Josef?” Udo asked.

  “Josef is a tree,” Michael said, and lit a cigarette, soggy fingers staining the filter.

  “A tree is just there,” Michael continued, and thanked Udo for dinner and took off on his bike. He rode past his new literature teacher’s building. He’d decided this teacher was schwul as fuck and planned to read for class in hopes of being called on. As Michael biked, he dreamed up intriguing things to say. In consideration, he might start. Vis-à-vis, he would add, all the while twirling a pencil between his fingers.

  * * *

  A month later, Michael made plans to take a weekend off to head to Berlin for Christopher Street Day. Lena wasn’t interested. His friend Jacob said he had plans, which meant it scared him. He decided to go alone. Michael and Udo watched the latest episode of Wetten, daß . .? Then came a news brief that showed Helmut Kohl in Berlin.

  “I’ll be there soon,” Michael said.

  “Moving to Berlin?” Udo asked.

  “A weekend. To be gay and alone.”

  “My roommate when I drove the ambulance was gay and never alone,” Udo added. He pulled on a beer. His shifting feet shook the coffee table. He talked of his plain roommate coming home with men, most of them very handsome. “Like you’re handsome.”

  “Cousin,” Michael answered. “Are you saying you want to kiss me?”

  Udo’s lips were the pink of uncooked chicken.

  “No kissing, no, thank you,” Udo said. “But you shouldn’t be alone.”

  “And gay,” Michael added.

  Udo nodded. “I’m not afraid of gay people. I know you think I hate and hate.”

  “I don’t think anything!” Michael answered.

  A car honked on the street outside. Someone yelled with impatience.

  “But it’s a parade of gays,” Michael went on. “Men kissing and grinding in the streets.”

  Television light bounced off Udo’s face. A synthesized theme song played. As the show veered into more sexist jokes than Michael cared for, quiet Udo emerged.

  “You worry they might try to kiss me?” Udo asked finally.

  “They will try to kiss me,” Michael said.

  Udo turned off the television.

  “If you don’t want company,” Udo answered.

  Michael had nowhere to stay that weekend, no plan other than how he’d get there. There might be a night when he, tired and unwanted, would sleep in a park and get mugged. The mugging would at least be a story to tell, though it would be a story of failure.

  “Company is nice,” Michael said.

  Udo showed off his sad smile, sweet and effortful in the same swallow.

  * * *

  In Berlin, instead of the rainbowed welcome Michael had expected, they found tree-lined streets and outdoor restaurants, entire quiet blocks. Michael had written the addresses of gay bars on the inside of his palm. They walked dozens of streets until they found one. There was a crowd, though the otherworldly electricity Michael had expected was missing. They swilled beers. Udo left to use the bathroom and came back with a party they were invited to.

  “How did you get us invited to a party?”

  “At the urinals,” Udo said.

  “You must have a gigantic dick,” Michael answered.

  They walked in and out of neighborhoods in search of the party, certain they’d never remember where they’d parked the car.

  The party was in a warehouse full of men, shirtless and sweating. He and Udo took pills that made everything glitter, though it may have been the lighting. The building was once a factory that made belts and bags. Bolts of leather filled corners, and the whole place smelled musky. A beautiful man—shirtless, wearing rope as suspenders—stood close to them. Udo nudged Michael toward him. Michael planted his feet in weak protest.

  “There’s a café on Oderberger Straße,” Udo barked over the music. “I’ll see you there in the morning.”

  “Which café?”

  “If I’m not there, it’s the wrong one.”

  Udo turned toward the exit. Michael wanted someone to find his gigantic cousin beautiful. He wanted him to stay.

  “What if Ropy doesn’t want me?” Michael croaked.

  Men coiled their fingers into each other’s belt loops. They laughed loudly and wanted to be noticed. Michael wanted to be noticed, too, but couldn’t imagine what came next. Someone could say hello and Michael would repeat, Hello, hello, hello, hello. He also needed to pee. The closest thing to a bathroom was a large back window. Men stuck their dicks out and pissed into an alley. The pill Michael had taken felt useless, then willfully defiant. He dreamed of getting into Udo’s car and driving home. People in Kritzhagen asking how it was, Udo and Michael answering, Fun, and looking anywhere but at each other.

  “Why are you saying fun like that?” Udo asked.

  “I’m not saying anything,” Michael answered.

  “You’ll be fine, cousin. If the handsome one doesn’t take you home, someone else will. But go for the handsome one.” Udo moved through the door. Michael sloshed beer around his mouth and spit it on the floor. He felt young, frightened in a way he knew should bring him shame, and wondered if anyone there would help him if he started to weep. A man with roller skates over his shoulder asked for a cigarette. Michael lit it and the man stayed. Though Michael wasn’t interested, he kept spinning the skates’ wheels, relieved by the man’s chatty attention. A few times in their conversation, Michael worried he’d throw up. He excused himself to pee, going to the roof instead, where the man in the ropes had gone. The roof was packed and dark apart from the streetlamps that leaned over its edges. The Fernsehturm blinked. Ropy stood near the roof’s edge. He and Mi
chael paused next to each other as if by happenstance.

  “I like that you’re small,” Ropy said.

  Michael lifted one of his suspenders. The skin underneath roiled. By early the next morning, the two of them in a flat in Mitte—Ropy’s real name Kurt—Michael had grown bored with the way Kurt winced each time he got near the rope burns, his constant remonstration: “Gentle.” Michael left at four in the morning. He went to a bar that was technically closed, though there was life inside. He knocked for a minute before somebody came to the door.

  “We’re not open,” the man said.

  Inside, everything seemed to be happening. A breeze tickled Michael’s neck.

  “And I’m not really here,” Michael answered, and smiled so wide his face hurt.

  Ten minutes later Michael found the bar’s back room with its lights off, feet entwined as if dancing. As he walked through it, someone pulled Michael next to him.

  At seven he stumbled into the sun. He asked a man in a park for directions to the street Udo had mentioned. “I’ll tell you for five marks,” the man said. Michael smiled and kept going. “Two,” the man shouted. “A cigarette!”

  In the café, he found Udo reading the paper.

  “Yay or nay?” Udo asked.

  “Yay and nay,” Michael answered. He downed a coffee. A newspaper article showed balloons, men in lipstick.

  “I might need to sleep for an hour or two,” Michael said.

  They walked to a hotel Udo had found the night before. Michael took a shower and slept until noon. They wandered down Joachimsthaler Straße. Men in drag, along with dykes of every consideration, funneled together like streams into a river. The sun was hot and Michael took off his shirt. Udo followed suit. The pills they’d taken before leaving the hotel had Michael leaning close to strangers, feeling their shoulders against his even after he’d passed them. Though there were men that Michael might have kissed or groped or gone to the park with, which he’d heard had an entire forest dedicated to fucking, he stayed close to Udo. Music played. Everyone around them moved together like one large limb. As the crowds thickened, Michael climbed onto his cousin’s shoulders.