Midnight Train to Amsterdam Part Three

The girl thought back to during the day. Back to her arrival on the flat land. Its gold and green as it spread west, seemed mesmerizing. But, the experience of the rolling color had almost been like a rough jewel that could not be polished because of the officious manner that had guarded the border crossing. She remembered how she nearly cowered in her seat as she heard the tails of German shephards slapping back and forth on the walls along the narrow corridor. Tongues hanging out of their mouths in anticipation of someone not following the rules. The long strides of what seemed like boots that clicked only toward her compartment with a compulsive need to harass its passengers. To make them confess to crimes that they did not commit. She recalled the outcome that could have stemmed from the idea that had flooded her at the moment. It made her feel nervous all over again. Here, now, even on this train she wondered if her innocence would be called into question once more. She went on to visualize some more of what had taken place that morning. The door of compartment slid quietly aside again to allow the guard to stand over her, his puritanical hand summoning the passport she was offering him just beyond her reach. How he stood there and challenged her own border until she crossed it to meet him in his territory to poke the passport into his hand. Detached satisfaction had lay in the hand that afixed his wary eye to the efficient stamp he placed too close to the picture of her face. It was if he mocked what she represented. Lastly she remembered the crisp suction of the door as it slid shut behind him. When the train was allowed to move again it had made her feel as if she had passed some kind of crucial test.

He was beginning to seem quizzical to her as she shook off the border and left it back on that other train.

“But, if you live here, it is your home.” She reasoned.

“I do not really have one.” With his cigarette clipped between two fingers, he waved his hand over his sandwich as if to convince it that it was no longer required.

“Living here, means you have one somewhere.” To her own ears she thought she sounded entreating.

“Is Amsterdam. Or, maybe Enschede, I lose track of years.” Again he waved the sandwich from his presence as if denying it audience with the king.

The girl thought he was cryptically avoiding the truth of something he didn’t want to face.

“Two homes. Ok, so you are from a broken family?”

“When mother is tired of me to start cranky talk at breakfast boterhammen, she send me to father. I only tell about how government take money she sweat hard to get. She see it not as care. In her frustration she send me to Enschede, at the work. Father has a bakery.”

“So, you go back and forth.” The girl leaned forward sympathetically. “That is hard on kids like us. I have a friend who lives in one state for the summer with her father, and, then goes the school year in my state where she lives with her mother. While she is at her Dad’s he spoils her rotten and she whines about leaving there at the end of August.”

“My hands blacken from cocoa I kneed into the rye.” He held them out in front of his eyes as if to inspect them for the darkness that yet stained them. “Father say I need to learn young. Slave necessary to business. System is system.” The boy sighed, as if, to accept this idea was a personal defeat.

“But, you’re my age, maybe, don’t you go to school?” The girl asked all confused.

“I left, teachers do not know real history.” He slammed his finger into the table as if marking the precise spot on a chart where an economic down turn had been created. “They tell me they suspend me for disrespect. Disrespect for point to their lies. Lies they print. Their history. They show me disrespect for truth. I reject their betrayals. To make me leave, they have no chance. Because, I leave first.” He indicated his determination by the jerk of his thumb toward himself.

Not quite sure of what he was talking about. Not knowing the details of his personal war with his education system, she still felt a sudden deep compassion for his struggle with it. Yet, another time, she could only think of to respond with, “I’m sorry.”

“Amerika, it is the world. I am not worth much. Do not be sorry for me, be sorry for the world.” He said. The growl in his voice softened and he looked at his reflection in the train window he seem mystified about how the passing village lights seemed to hover over his head in the glossy dark mirror that seemed to reveal the inner monster only to him.

“But…” She started again. That she could not find a way to remove some of his burden, to make things so that they weren’t so harsh for him, made her feel helpless.

“Is ok….sorry to be unpleasant.” The small arch to his eyebrows showed that he sensed her discomfort so he put his weapons back in his war chest and gave the floor to her with his honest interest. “You said, you are exchange student?”

“Yes, I did a year in Bremerhaven, Germany.”

“You say as if was prison.” He said as he tamped out his cigarette in the ashtray.

“Well, it was a challenge.”

“Teutonic personality….is obvious.” He smirked out of personal experience.

“I guess you could call it that.” She shook her head in agreement of the apt description. “That, and the language barrier. I had only had a year of German in school before I left to go there. I was told that one of the members of the family could speak English.” She blew out a stream of air and a lock of her dark hair fluttered above her forehead. “I guess they were wrong. But, really it was my responsibility to speak their language since I did come to their country.

“Was responsibility only to understand, yours?” His eyes focused on the little nervous tilt that appeared at the edge of her lips.

“No, not really.” There was a bit of relent in her voice as if she’d created her own problems.

“Those too lazy to understand,” He announced, “see only manifest of imagine.”

“Well, really it was my German mother….there was an incident.”

“If you like to talk, I am happy to listen.” He said. The faint smile still touching his closed lips now stretched a little more. And, as it did, it slipped a sparkle dance into his eyes.

She inhaled sharply as the memory began to filter back in. It was as if she’d just heard her German mother yell at her one more time. Then, unconsciously she raised her wrist but her eyes did not stray away from the spoon she agitated the cream with in the new cup of coffee that was just brought to her.

“It was kind of bad, I guess,” She glanced from side to side as if looking for some logic, “I broke a rule. Well, she told me I did….my German mother.”

“About ‘time’?” He inquired to confirm his observation.

“Yeah, actually it was? How did you figure that?”

“Germans and their time tables. Again, obvious.”

“So….” The girl took a deep breath to ready her self to dive into a deep pool.

“You give the German mother image she choose not to understand….continue.” He said as he decided to attend her illustration of such.

“My German mother had a friend who worked at the army/navy base in Bremerhaven. A friend she drank schnapps with every night.” She rolled her eyes up in their corners as she began to recall the details. “Her name was Frau Nickel….”

The boy watched as the image of Frau Nickel flitted across the girl’s face. He felt sure that the said Frau Nickel would be fleshed out shortly by the way the corner of the girl’s mouth pulled down a bit in disapproval.

“Frau Nickel convinced my mother it would be a good idea to let me go out to the army base with her. Just to have some fun. Play some American tunes, see a movie. You know, to keep me from being so homesick.” She rolled her eyes up and wobbled her head back and forth as if it really should have been obvious to the people she’d lived with. “Well, Frau Nickel took me to the base bar. Why, I don’t know. She told me I was even old enough to drink on base. She bought me a rum and coke.”

He observed, now, that her eyes had widened and were bobbing around at the incredulousness of the idea in her previous statement. This brought him a smile inside as he read her, and he thought about how refreshingly animated she was.

“Sitting there, waiting for what, made me feeling like a bird in the wrong airspace.”

“Of interest….that phrase,” He thought.

“I just wanted to disappear because the drink was way strong and just as sickeningly sweet. It made me feel weird. I told her I didn’t want another one. With her fluffy red head bouncing back and forth she just smiled at me like I needed to learn a thing or two. In the other room there was a pool table. These guys strolled over from there, just to say hello to her, so they said. She had a low cut shirt on. You know what I mean. She was acting all goofy.”

“Ah, Amerika, did not disappoint.” He thought. As he had anticipated, out had come the description of the voluptuous oversexed, Frau Nickel. He loved the way the girl’s eyes crossed as she said, “goofy”. It almost made him laugh. Almost….but, yet, he could not. A constant heaviness that he carried around inside always was there to haunt him.

“While my eyes were glued on her, trying to decide how she knew these guys, and, in general, determine what was going on, I turn my head and see a new drink on the table in front of me.” As if she had caught an unbelievable expression ripple through his eyebrows, she confirmed with, “Yeah, I know, exactly. What’s up with that? Anyway…so….this guy with long dirty dishwater blond hair had sat down next to me. He was too close. From the feeling I got from him, like Denver would have been too close. Know what I mean?”

Something inside of the boy smiled brightly at the extreme example she was giving him. It was dramatically amusing if there was such an idea.

“He tells me that he saw my drink was empty.”

He noted how she cringed. It was the memory of how she now realized she had accepted a refreshed beverage that put her self in the position of permitting a demon to become her unlikely companion.

“Well, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to drink another one, then try to remember what color Frau Nickel’s car was, which was black. So, I mumbled something about how I wanted a plain soda water to go with it.” Next to her coffee cup she indicated with a determined finger where she wanted the now elusive soda water placed. “ So…the guy bought me the soda. And….then….god….did I feel guilty. It was like; oh shit now I owe this guy. Know what I mean?”

The boy had to admit that only a part of him was listening, while the other part of him was enraptured in music. Familiar soundtracks. At least to his ears, he would call it music. It was a shiny copper glitter of spitting cartridges falling away after they spilled their substances into an impact with what they were launched against. Consistent rapid fire echo, continuous in its melody. It radiated out in a reverberation until only a lulled rest kept it paused within its concentrated effort to reload. After which, it could gain new employment within renewed impact into what ever it chose to make the object of its serious determined point. Never before had an AK 47 sounded as musical to him as it did at that precise moment. The boy listened. Drawn into complete fascination, he watched the bullets fly and the shell casings tumble to the side. The near perfect submachine gun split the air with a sharpened volley as it issued in a steady stream of soprano lilt from between her flexible lips. And, as the boy recreated the weapon’s image in his thoughts, he saw it gleam invitingly and he remembered just how much he’d always wanted one.

“And, guess what?” The girl announced. “While I’m trying to figure out what to do with this guy, who started to do this….,” Without removing her eyes from the placid face of her travelling companion, the girl slowly snaked her arm out toward the reflection in the window that was leading her hand in rather seductive manner, then she continued, “Frau Nickel disappeared.” An exaggerated shrug rolled through shoulders. She held her palms up, then looked around. “It was like my life raft and the ten commandments disappeared all at once. And, Me? What did I do? I tell this guy the first thing that comes to mind, which is to tell him I was only seventeen.” She popped her forehead with the flat of her hand. “Stupid thing, huh? Like, ding, ding, ding, time to declare open season on deer, you know?”

The boy entered his imagination. For some reason he walked over to a tree and picked up an AK 47 that was leaning against. He drew it up into the air and aimed.

“ So, I sit there, sipping the drink and guzzling soda water waiting for Frau Nickel to return from where ever she went. This guy reminds me that he bought me a drink and how come wasn’t I enjoying it. Like I could enjoy the whole situation anyway. I don’t know how I did it but I managed not have to drink much of that drink. By this time it’s twenty-three hour and Frau Nickel still hasn’t returned. At that point I started to worry about my curfew. So, I had no choice. I had to ask the guy to take me back to my German mother’s because my curfew was at midnight.” She paused as if to let the magnitude of that concept settle. Then she sighed as if she was getting ready to give the boy a choice as to whether or not he wanted to follow her into deeper, darker and colder waters. “The whole drive back to the apartment, I was nervous. I was like shaking in the seat of his Volkswagen, checking on him out of the corner of my eye. I wondered if the full moon was going to turn him into a werewolf.”

Back in the image he fired the weapon through his mind’s eye. As he slung it over his shoulder he thought, “Amazing, in all this dour, yet humour. Bitter medicine with sugar.”

“Yeah, and, get this, there really was a full moon too. Believe me, I noticed it as I got into his car. So….just as I think I could finally breathe easier out on the autobahn, knowing where it was heading to, he took the off ramp. I’m wondering, what the hell….he’s taking a little detour? Yeah, out into the woods.” She paused to take another sip of her coffee, then she looked around and returned to the subject in a nearly desperate whisper, “I’m watching trees strafe by in a place I have no clue even existed outside of the city. He pulled into some long strip of deserted road, then stopped. But he left the headlights on. He got out of the car and walked around to the back. He was gone for so long that I thought he’d gone off into the woods. Maybe I thought he did it to change, I don’t know. Suddenly, he’s at my door. He opened it and asked me to get out and come with him to look at something. I was like, why? I wanted to ask him if it was about the moon but I was scared. I mean what if he already had started to change. How was I to know the signs of someone turning into a werewolf? So, like a dummy, I got out of the car. He pointed to something on the side of the car and asked me to come over there and look. So, I did. Just as I turned to tell him I couldn’t see anything, wham, he braced his forearm against my chest and he slammed me up against the roof of his car, hard. He started, well….” A sigh seemed to remove some of the energy that could locate the freshened air for her. “I couldn’t breathe.” Her eyes nearly popped from her head. “I was scared out of my mind. I was out in the woods. No one was around. What was I going to do? Everything that was in me told me to scratch his eyes out. But, then I thought about it. I realized that if I did do that, I might end up hurt for real. You know, physically. And, I didn’t know that it wasn’t going to happen anyway. I decided that whatever I did, I wasn’t going to scream. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of it and have him think he could go all powerful over me. But I had to think quickly. As he pushed up against me, I began to shake more from anger than from fright. Then it hit me. I knew how I would handle it. I would fight fire with fire.”

“Yes?” The boy said. He attended her with fire brightened eyes. It delighted him that this seemly caring, considerate girl turned feisty when putting on the clothes of a lion.

“No, I didn’t physically attack him, if that’s what you think. Do I look like could tackle a guy in heat?” The girl did not believe it of herself, but she was actually stronger than she appeared. “No, what I did, was to negotiate a coup by using a threat. I turned my fear into taunting. I said, ‘all right, go ahead have your way with me, get it fucking out of your system. I won’t fight you. But you have to make a decision. One that will effect the rest of your life.’ My sauciness was so absurd it slowed his attack in the wonder that I would even be mouthing off at him. I pushed my head up into his face to challenge him. I said, ‘yeah you have to make a decision, about what is going to be in your future? A boy or a girl? Because you’re going to get one or the other and when that happens I’m going to hunt you down like a harpy from hell. Track you to the ends of the earth for child support for after what you would do to me, right here, right now, at the point in time. You’d just better think about this real hard.’”

“Yeah?” He said. “What bravura,” He thought. “She find creative strategy dare to show danger in face.”

“Yeah, I did.” She nodded her head enthusiastically. “That’s exactly what I said, word for word. Then, get this. As if to capitalize on the point I was making to him, almost at that moment, out of nowhere, on that seemingly deserted road, a car came along. It was filled with a bunch of screaming German kids being driven by a couple looking for a place to swim. It was late at night, why were they looking for a place to swim, I have to ask?”

“Spirits,” He offered honestly and sincerely, then quickly added, “of the forest.” Uneven rows of densely packed trees caught the boy’s eye. Barely there, beyond the window of the train, a filmy moonlight gave them a jagged outline in front of the darkness. As the boy kept his eye slightly turned, he knew that those type of trees did not exist on the flat land. As if merely passed indiscriminately in the night, the density faded out into the boy catching another glimpse of himself as he watched his lips move through the answer, “Spirits manifest at such time. Bring comfort and merriment to fighting situation.”

“Oh, yeah? Spirits?” The girl raised an eyebrow. “Really? Never heard of that. Well, I, myself, just call it, last minute luck.”

“Last minute luck?” The boy settled his back into the seat and briefly tilted his head. “What brings luck but spirits?”

“Not really knowing anything about spirits, I’m not really sure what you mean.” Thinking about it, she looked into her coffee before she took a thoughtful sip, then continued, “Well, anyway, the German rolled down his window and asked the guy where the pool was. What stunned me, is that, when the guy answered, he did so in such perfect German. I began to wonder if he really was an American. I mean it was, like ‘who are you, anyway’.”

“In such a situation, light is shadow.” Foraging around in his jacket, he withdrew his package cigarettes. He clipped another stud with his fingers. He flicked the lighter and brought the flame up to the cigarette and slowly drew in and blew it out slowly. Then he said, “Germans do work on American bases. Janitor work and such. He had betrayed you once. Could he not betray you to his identity as well?”

You make a good point, thank you.” She paused again to consider what he was telling her, then she continued. “Not long after he dumped me off in front of my German mother’s apartment building. Meanwhile….during my absence….Frau Nickel had returned to the bar. Oh my god, she couldn’t believe it. I was no where to be found. So, she panicked and called my German mother and told her some story. So, here I am, dumped on the doorstep after midnight. Who do you think she believed?”

“And….” He asked, sensing the painful revelation lingering within the girl’s lips that tightened slightly prior to an explosion.

“Well, she called me a whore,” She nearly burst in the residual trauma that yet remained. “And, the evidence that convinced her I was one was that I shaved my legs. She said only the whores did that. She didn’t even care if all American girls did that. And, yes, you’re right, I was past curfew as well. So, there is the German timetable.” Then as if emerging from an experience where she had been immersed in the babbling in tongue of the Pentecostal church, she exclaimed, “Wow, I don’t even know why I told you all of that.”