Karin Lundberg
The Train

The train ride to Munich takes four hours. The newly invented Grossraumwagen, the idea of extended, collective space, has replaced the compartmentalized form of traveling. You can now choose the airplane-like seating arrangement: the frontal stare at the back of somebody's seat, sealed off and unaware of the random traveler in front of you. Or, you reserve in the traditional compartment, an accepted confinement marked by the coincidental companion; a hit or miss with unforeseen consequences. I have chosen the latter and find myself in the seat next to the window, a sense of victorious privilege over the rest who was not as lucky. I pull up the ultimate proof of my undeserved preferred seating: the greyish-yellow side table which miraculously slides out and falls into place.

Across from me a stern face, a retiree with the familiar, emotionless stare. I know the face: bitterness, at times disapproval and then again nothing. I see them everywhere, on trains, buses, park benches, alone in front of a beer. Always the glare. A glare revealing nothing more than a void. I never ask, just wonder what was there before their eyes hardened and their faces turned silent.

And there he is now in front of me: clean shirt, buttoned to the chin, grey pants, sandals, socks in sandals. He has brought his lunch, dark bread and "Lyoner", the sliced sausage that will exist as long as humans walk the soil of this part of the world. The sandwich is carefully wrapped in aluminum, pickles in between. He will eat it somewhere between Ulm and Augsburg and bring back wrapper and Tupperware for his wife to clean-proper, proper and predictable.

Outside, the familiar and friendly Swabian hills are rushing by. Clusters of houses in quaint villages. Church towers. Never ending facets of beige, white and yellow of simple and plain facades flash by the eye in a flickering chain of broken images. Windows. Each window draped in white nylon refusing to betray who lives, walks and breathes behind the milky veils of synthetic. Every so often, a train station appears and disappears, already bygone grey and brown constructions of forlorn sadness and yesterday's comings and goings. Dots of pink, red and white rebel against the grey in traditional flower arrangements. Above the door the clock that has been ticking away over the heads of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, love, agony and despair. Sturdy, metal station signs with letters in black on white split the seconds in one, two, three, four, five. Five times the same. The name of the town rushes by and the letters dissolve and vanish.

"Are you traveling far, Fräulein?" My chin-buttoned vis-à-vis smiles through his glasses with the thin steel frames.

"To Munich." I respond. "To see my friend. She works there now. I am still in Heidelberg finishing my thesis and preparing for my master's exams."

"Heidelberg, wonderful! I see, you are an ambitious young woman. Ach ja, enjoy. You are still young! What are you writing about?"

"The Magic Mountain."

"Thomas Mann is it?"

"Yes, it is." I am not sure how much he appreciates literature.

"I read all his novellas as a young man. I don't read much today. But you are young and spirited, you have a good mind. I sense that already. Never stop reading." He turns against the window. His eyes are silent for a moment. He doesn't expect a response.

A middle-aged woman to my right puts down her knitting. She stares down at her sturdy, foot-friendly sandals and sighs. Then she raises her head and looks straight at the two of us who by now have formed the beginning of the peculiar and short-lived traveler's bond born out of a unique momentum.

"He was a coward!"

"Who?" I ask, puzzled by the unexpected engagement from my right.

"Thomas Mann was a coward." She looks straight at us with a stare full of postwar convictions and intense ideology. Her backpack is teeming with muesli and wooden wool. The Quaker-like haircut emits stiffening sensuality, a staunch message to her surroundings.

My fellow traveler at the window turns to her. His face is back to the original mixture of bitterness and disapproval. He chooses not to comment. He leans back and takes out his carefully wrapped sandwiches. I look sidewards and nod with a faint smile, uncertain about the new dynamics in the confined space of imitated leather, glass and something similar to hard plastic.

"After Heidelberg, I plan to write on his exile experience in the United States. His late work seems to have taken its toll on him, which might have included his self-reflections on his early moral failings."

"Well, good luck with that." Her cynicism is blatant. "Where do you come from anyway?"

I am happy to offer a short description of my foreign background and know that the conversation will shift for the better. As expected, they both smile and I feel guilty that my origins always trigger the same enthusiasm. What if I said Turkey, Bulgaria or Iran? I will never know and I ride on my wave of privilege yet another time.

"That can't be! You are not German?"

"But you grew up here for sure?"

"I had a very good teacher. I was lucky." I have used the phrase many times.

They both shrug their shoulders. Again, I feel guilty, guilty because I know that I could do this over and over again and harvest the same amazement. What a coward I am, what a cheap way of earning laurels originating in dubious, questionable motives.

"I was in Denmark during the war. What a great people! And the food! I was invited many times and had a chance to admire the herring, and the smörrebröd. And the aquavit, amazing!"

This was a surprise. The black and white world from before I was born appears before my inner eye: Leather boots and uniforms on the streets of Copenhagen, the king on his horse among enemy soldiers, fishermen, fishermen by night on the other side of dark waters waiting for the boats to appear. To me, Denmark is joyful trips in spring on the ferry to a large and enchanted city with Tivoli, cotton candy, roller coasters and carousels. I was not prepared for this. I am the good kid, the friendly foreigner who speaks flawless German. My new friend is the invader who marched the streets of my Scandinavian neighbors and is now raving over herring and schnapps. He does not understand.

What made Danish families invite German soldiers to their tables? A photograph of men in the familiar uniform peeing on a pile of Danish butter resurfaces in my mind.

"Delicious! I never had such good fish again!" His face is red by now. He truly loved my neighbors.

Our fellow passenger is squirming in her seat. She glances at him, smiles at me with a flash of sympathy. She knows. She has chosen the right path. She is in the clean, not guilty. Her clothing, her novel and Der Spiegel carefully rolled up in the backpack prove her innocence. She is in the know. He is not. What happened after he read the last novella? Did he choose? Did he see?

"Yes, Copenhagen is a wonderful city!" A platitude is all I am capable of.

"And the Danes are very friendly people. I continue. "I always liked our trips there in spring when I was a child." I am a coward.

The train works its way through tunnels; tree-clad bends and Jurassic rock. Soon we will enter the Bavarian plains. Everyone is silent. I rest my mind and look out the window. My father is there in his uniform, the winter uniform of the North: white fur hat and white coat with fur collar, cigarette in hand, smiling at the photographer. It is one of the very small photographs my parents keep in an old box of grey carton somewhere on a shelf in their wardrobe. Black and white. It's a world that was there long before mine and it's troubled.

He folds the wrapper and cleans his shirt with the napkin. The thermos is empty by now. He cleans out the cup and puts everything back in his bag. His shirts and pants show signs of meticulous ironing. He removes his grey summer jacket from the hook next to the curtain, brushes it lightly with his hand. He smiles and leans back in his seat.

My companion to the right is knitting away in fast, energetic movements. Colors of the earth. It's a large piece, presumably a sweater. It will take a long time to finish even with the thick, wooden needles. She stares in front of her like knitters do. I see them in lectures in Heidelberg: warped minds who bring centuries of women's chores to the lecture room as if they cannot quite let go. They study political science, languages and pedagogy. They wear their henna hair like a fiery crown of their carefully plotted identity costume and place their wool in front of them on top of their notebooks as if female multitasking was a genetic, inescapable flaw. The professor is a male, usually. He has spent twelve years or more to get where he is: masters, doctorate and 'habilitation'. Now he will spend one and a half hours lecturing in front of the knitting squad, the new generation of self-selecting female identities. Amazed by this mind-boggling contradiction, I had once brought it up with my English professor, Professor Breuer, a phonetics expert who wrote the textbook with which he tortures us in long hours of language labs. Why on earth would hundreds of aspiring female academics bring loads of yarn to the lecture halls? Because most of them will get married after they graduate, he says. How can this be? How is it possible that this mass of henna, earth sandals, alternative food, alternative everything, will walk off campus one day only to fall back on some modified form of "Kinder, Küche, Kirche"?

I wonder about my fellow traveler. She is at least ten years older than I am. Is she married? Does she have a family?

"Are you going to Munich as well?" I have decided to try my luck with her.

"Yes, to see my boyfriend."

"He is a programmer and moved there a year ago."

My friend at the window stirs, as if relieved a new conversation has interrupted his rumination.

"Do you have children?" His face is turned towards my right.

I am not sure what provokes this question. Maybe it is a form of hope; a hope for normalcy to compensate for the irregular boyfriend. Or is he just fishing for the full story?

"No, no children." She looks him straight in the eyes. "I didn't know my father until I was eight. He came back from Russia in 1950. It was not a good experience. I decided to not have any children."

"Ach ja, that's very sad." He doesn't understand. He doesn't understand her sadness. Instead, he brushes it aside like a disturbance, the way one does an unruly child. Or, is it only his yearning for the good that is at work as the driving force behind his loud exclamations?

He looks at me and smiles through his glasses with the thin steel frames. "You will have children, I am sure!" I shrink in my seat and again, the feeling of involuntary guilt creeps up my spine.

"We will see." I answer and try to not seem too much like the fool who just happens to be lucky. Who didn't choose, didn't ask, just happened to be born under good circumstances in the right time and place. Who am I? A representation of the assumed immaculate collective of the North? A stand-in for lost innocence?

My neighbor next to me puts down her knitting. She corrects her hair with her hand in short, swift strokes as if a must, as if it didn't quite deserve her attention. She rolls up the yarn, counts the rows of different colors in the mesh, which by now forms a landscape of green, earthy red, yellow and dark orange. It takes time.

I try to see the eight-year-old girl who has been told that her father will soon arrive. The soldier who left and never came back to see the newborn who was conceived in what? Love, hope or just a desperate moment that craved for normalcy? Or had the void already entered their lives of acceptance, the same void which speaks to me from the other side of the window? What was she like, the little girl? What did she feel before her world turned dour and sullen like the dark knitted matter in her hands?

I turn to my neighbor. "Where did you grow up?" Now a sense of pity works against the original annoyance.

"In the East. We fled when the Russians invaded. I came with my mother and sister to Mainz when I was three. I remember when the Russians moved into our town. I used to hide under the kitchen table when they knocked on our door. Black boots, that's all I remember, black boots and fear." Across, at the window the remark seems to stir some emotion. He leans forward with his grey jacket in a firm grip.

"Ja, a terrible time. I grew up in Stuttgart. I came back from the war over the Rhineland. You had it easier with the Americans."

"Where did you go?" I am always weary of these questions.

"I ended up in Wiesbaden and worked as a clerk in the American censorship agency. That's where I found literature again. The Americans brought back German writers and journalists from their training camps. They were supposed to help." He smiles in recognition, the smile of a secret bond, a common interest to share.

"In the censorship agency?"

"Yes, the Americans had long lists of authors and writers who were banned from printing and of those who were allowed to be published. I spent two years as a clerk in their office." Again, a surprise. "I had English in school. That's why. The Americans singled out German soldiers who knew some English." His face does not reveal any emotions, not good, not bad. Yet, I sense a hidden pride. He leans back again against his seat as if relieved.

I pause. A comment from my neighbor to the right seems almost inevitable. She is silent.

In a small drawer, my father keeps a few, very few memorabilia, as scarce as his words. Among them is a little, brown notebook. He carried it in his pocket somewhere along the Norwegian border. What made a young man, a plain soldier, carry pen and paper? What made it worthwhile to preserve the moment at a time when elf-sacrifice loomed over a generation in every instance, to scribble down short notes of an unknown fate in a minefield of a no-man's-land? The notebook has names and addresses in gothic script, names from "the other side." They spoke to each other, each man in a different language, a different uniform, not knowing what the next order would be.

Next to me, Der Spiegel has resurfaced. The front page has the usual oversized, well-crafted, exaggerated image of today's world: this week it's Ronald Reagan. His smile sprawls in stark, glossy colors over most of the cover, his eyes with the unmistakable determination of the American leader stare into the future. This time they have chosen the rugged version of the West. Below, in the right corner, an aircraft carrier sails away in the sun, missiles form the background. She turns the pages, stops and looks out the window.

I try to fathom the child under the table eying the Russian military boots.

"What do you do for a living?" I ask.

"I teach history and religion in the Gymnasium."

Across, the man abruptly rearranges his feet from left to right.

"Any particular time period?" I'm happy to talk about something she seems to like.

"The Weimar Republic."

"I studied in Berlin."

"Lots of archives there."

"Ach, Berlin. What a jewel it was and then, what a disaster." For some inexplicable reason the man puts his jacket back on the hook next to the window. "Berlin, the castle, the boulevards, it was a fantastic place!"

"But now, I cannot imagine. Those were terrible times!"

"But I love history. I watch it on TV."

What does he see? What fills the void? I will never know.

"Did you like working for the Americans?" I am curious and he seems willing to readily share his experiences.

"Yes, that was a great arrangement after the war. They offered us classes and gave us glossy, colorful pamphlets and books. Once a week was movie night." He seems to cheer behind his glasses and leans forward as if telling a secret.

"Much better than a small town where you had to sweep the streets, or do community service. Some were in the camps of course. They were bad, those camps on the Rhine."

Next to me, on the seat from below, the face of the former American actor is staring at me: smiling sideways, the hair swung back over his head to the right, just as when he stepped out of his last movie. The icon of invincible optimism, the stalwart of the dream which the children of a new superpower refuse to give up, stares me in the face from the orange-brown train seat that signifies new German wealth and confidence. I glance over at my neighbor. I am almost certain her solid shoes have marched against nuclear power plants and radioactive waste buried in salt mines along the East German border, or tracked endless miles against Pershing missiles in the Bavarian forests. A generation of no-sayers; children of the void who sat down at breakfast tables next to their silent fathers, the ones who had appeared out of nowhere breathing life into photographs, stories and dreams. Or, the imagined hero failed to materialize and Russia remained a vast imaginary space that had swallowed the word father forever.

There she was again, the little girl. The child who waited for the man her mother would whisper about in the ears of aunts and uncles. One day he would come.

"Would you consider moving to Munich?" I might be too daring.

"No, it wouldn't be possible. Besides, I don't like it there. Bavarians are self-indulgent and self-contained for the wrong reasons, sedated by beer, pretzels and dumplings."

"In Munich you just find the urban version of the same."

"I quite like it there, especially the lakes. They seem to have more sun than we have on the Neckar."

"That might be, but I cannot take the Föhn. Warm, alpine wind that sweeps in over the city every so often-it makes me dizzy and gives me a headache."

Once again, I am baffled. I cannot wait to leave the foggy, oppressive weather on the rivers, where the humid air sticks to you like an extra layer of skin and muddles your mind and your senses.

"The Bavarians are reactionary and conservative. I cannot breathe in that state, a state where eighty percent vote for Franz-Joseph Strauss!"

The sturdy Bavarian politician with his bull neck and square face has roamed the political scene since the beginning of the postwar republic; a self-made, self-promoted teacher who knows Latin and became good friends with the Allies, making sure he was needed as he needed them. Now he sits at the helm of Bavaria, rules the ultra-conservatives and gets invited to the Iron Lady and others of her kin. He has always remained a good friend, Franz-Joseph.

The train comes to a halt. Ulm. "Ulm und um Ulm herum." The nonsensical rhyme from my German textbook pops up in my mind like on cue. Outside the compartment, the usual shuffling and dragging of bags, feet and bodies starts. People are getting off, pushing forward as if the train were a pest-ridden ship. From the other side, newcomers are already populating the narrow corridor, squeezing by, while schlepping their luggage, turning their faces against the door, looking inside with frantic eyes full of adrenalin, only to be forced to move along by the forward pressing mob of impatience behind them.

A determined, middle-aged man slides the door open, looks left and right.

"Ist hier noch frei?" I am always amazed by the rhetorical question which precludes any sitting down, even when the compartment is almost empty.

"Ja, sicher, bitte!"

He swiftly puts down his briefcase, sits down in the seat next to the door as if he made up his mind long before the train arrived. He brings his stiff briefcase back onto his lap, opens it by pressing the buttons almost simultaneously like only very busy people do. It snaps open. He takes out a bundle of neatly wrapped sandwiches, a late edition of the Bild-Zeitung, closes and locks the briefcase, stands up again in that uncomfortable manner you only experience where the invisible boundary of personal space cannot be overstepped, places the briefcase on the shelf above the seat and sits down. He is perfect; perfect and the boring proof of the civil servant's dull and predictable existence. His appearance breathes Swabian virtue and frugality. I wonder what made him spend the extra five D-Marks on the fast and fancy Inter-City train. He must have an urgent matter to take care of in one of the two remaining stops.

The light in the compartment seems brighter. Suddenly it's there. The flatlands are spreading out into endless fields like a soft, green surprise. White, onion-shaped church towers appear here and there in the midst of the green. They stand tall against the sky like proud signs of its dwellers. A sudden shift has taken place. The hard-working Protestant pietists have given way to the earthy old tribe of the Bajuvars. Woodpiles dress up the large farmhouses and winding country roads plough through the vast fields of the land which refuses to give away the majestic wonders that are to come in this part of country.

"Augsburg, Augsburg Hauptbahnhof!"

The usual, frantic commotion starts: grey jacket zipped, hat on head, closing of bags, sandals tightened, trash in trash can, looking left and right, below the seat, behind the curtain. Nothing forgotten.

"It was a pleasure! Please remain as you are! Good luck! Please enjoy your young life!"

"Auf Wiedersehen, auf Wiedersehen, gute Reise!"

"Danke ebenfalls!"

Swoosh, the door slides back and closes. He disappears in the narrow hallway where others slowly push their way forward toward the exit. I reach into my backpack and feel the familiar, thick volume of The Magic Mountain. I let it rest on my lap for a moment and look out on the sweeping fields of the flatlands.

_ _

Karin Lundberg is an assistant professor of the Department of Language and Cognition at Hostos Community College, CUNY, where she teaches academic English and literature to non-native speakers of English. She holds a PhD from NYU in Germanic Languages and Literatures and an MA in German Literature, English and Linguistics from Heidelberg University. Her short story writing engages in the cross-cultural experience and interpersonal encounters.

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