The Prison of Facts
During pre-Euro, EU, and
let’s-build-a-wall days that some of us still remember fondly, Japanese
tourists were flocking to Germany, outnumbered only by Americans. After
mingling among them in bus-tour groups as they shot with SLRs and Instamatics
various snaps of the Cologne cathedral, I’d had enough. I wasn’t the raw,
original soul-seeker I’d fancied myself to be, so I chose to remedy this by
following the Rhine by train to Koblenz. I selected this destination because I
liked the sound of the city’s name. I was young, fit, energetic, and convinced
serendipity, not planning, was one’s best ally when it came to travel.
Journal at the ready, I marveled at mist shrouding
an occasional castle set into hills above the Rhine. It was dark and raining
when my train arrived to Koblenz. Unsure I wanted to stay there, I dawdled in a
phone booth awhile to keep dry. After returning to the train station to study a
posted schedule, I chose an express to Munich where I spent hours sipping
bottles of Spatengold in a billiard hall, musing over the movies I’d direct,
the women I’d meet, the money I’d make, and whether it had been a mistake to
fly solo to Europe with a meagre budget and spare knowledge of any language
other than English.
As a nineteen-year-old, I hadn’t yet realized I was a
cliché—didn’t know what I wanted from life and believed I’d find it through
meandering outside of myself on another continent. However, I did feel keenly
aware it was a luxury to spend time abroad, using my own hard-earned savings to
process doubts and fulfill hungers. Most of my friends back home, if not in
college or the military, were stuck in low-paying, unattractive jobs.
Regardless of my many oh-so-urgent concerns
regarding my value to the world, the night passed, as it tends to do. It was
cold—mid-December—I wanted to save Deutschmarks, so I slept on newspapers I
laid under a tree in one of Munich’s parks. I curled into a ball, kept my head
inside my sleeping bag, and breathed into my fists. Shivering, I fought a
hunger that gnawed. I rose now and then to relieve myself and to walk off the
ache in my kidneys.
After enduring such a night, I figured there
was nothing I couldn’t handle. I spent another two days wandering Munich,
sleeping in the same park, grateful it didn’t snow. I visited museums where I
stayed warm and dry and napped on various benches while taking lessons in
composition from the massive mural paintings of Reubens.
I’d learned little about Bavaria or
Germany. Was there a difference? I was to blame. I hadn’t acquainted myself
with any Germans. Hadn’t spoken to anyone, making extra sure to avoid Americans,
easily spotted, who, like me, frequented sites tourists were expected
to
visit.
Feet wet, nose runny, resenting the growing
suspicion that I was my own worst enemy, I described in my journal my reactions
to the works of European painters, many of whom I was discovering for the first
time. I listed names, dates, countries of origin, titles of masterworks, and
unique qualities I thought justified reputations.
From Hals to Durer, I vowed
to continue learning about them once I returned to the States. I couldn’t
paint, but I could use a camera and light to capture what a human face might
express. This understanding, be it the depth in a glance, the angle of a tilted
forehead, or the secret in a smile, defined an essential and lasting human
element. Coupled with an elevated sense of craft, it lifted any image above the
norm into what I found myself venerating as the magical realm of art.
I also found myself jotting down memories from
childhood and high school days. This frustrated me because I thought I should
only be using my journal to explain city streets, architecture, and art I’d
witnessed. I should have stayed home if I wanted to write about where I’d been.
Dreary worries about my future compounded my loneliness.
I stared, anguished, at my reflection in a train station window. What would all
this sojourning lead to? It didn’t seem right to travel for the sake of staying
in motion. My journey had to amount to something. Yet a part of me took pride
in the way I rolled along, fancied myself a gypsy, brushed off the fact that so
many, back in America, had mortgaged their lives to car loans, picket fences,
and delusions of security. None of those conventional banalities for this
champion of the road.
To prove it, I boarded an all-nighter to Vienna, sharing
a compartment with two florid women whose double chins reminded me of the
cheery faces I’d seen in many German paintings. Animated, a gleam in their
eyes, they spoke with hand gestures and big grins. They were from Austria and
insisted I eat with them. From a travel bag, they spread a towel over our
shared seat, delighting in my appetite.
I feasted on hard rolls, salami, sharp
cheeses, little cakes, sugary cookies, and chocolate-covered cherries. Showing
a maternal pride, they watched me drink glass after glass of a semisweet white
wine until I became woozy. My face flushed, my belly full, I had to hold the
ache in my ribs as I laughed with them, astounded by how much I’d eaten.
Eventually, I dozed off. I didn’t see them wrap
their leftovers in cloth napkins and store them in a canvas bag. When ready to
sleep, they roused me, and together we pulled out seat
bottoms that met at their front edges to turn the compartment into a small
bedroom. We three slept side by side, each curled under a blanket. The train
arrived at eight a.m.
I welcomed the bite in Vienna’s morning air
and the crystals that frosted tree limbs in parks, dripped off the windows of
trolley cars, and slid in rising sunshine down steep cathedral roofs. I sauntered without aim, grateful to the women, wishing I’d written down their names and had been able to thank them in their language. They’d stayed on the
train. I regretted the stiffness I’d shown when saying goodbye. Guarded, liking
my reticence too much, at the very least I should have taken their
picture.
I leaned my head back and let light snowfall tickle
my tongue. Recalling The Third Man, a favorite movie, I imagined myself
Harry Lime, reputedly dead, but not really, existing anonymously. Nobody in the
world knew my whereabouts.
As it fell against my lips, I reveled in the
lustrous brilliancy of fresh snow. I watched it gather to transform a statue of
Strauss holding a violin. It swept windows and rooftops into the kind of
incandescent winter dreamscape I’d imagined when a child. I rode trolley cars,
not knowing my destination. I loved how they squealed and sent off sparks. One
time, a driver had to stop to use a long pole to relink a steel connector that
had run off its overhead rail.
I spent a few days following suggestions in my
guidebook, eating in wine cellars where the servers spoke English. I spent
blissful and maudlin hours craning my neck skyward in cathedrals or absorbing
in awe the paintings of Bruegel and Bosch. The genius of those two painters
astounded me. I had a newfound passion. No matter my future, art would play a
role.
I wrote in my journal: Before film,
the pictorial universe was rendered sublimely by hand on canvas and wood. I
should view the classic paintings of the world to develop an informed sense of
line, color, and composition. All that is modern should be judged with
skepticism. The modern shocks, untested by time, and is too often a tight-lipped celebration of minimalism and reduction. Am I pretentious for
thinking this? I don’t think so. The worst fakes are those practitioners who
sprint to the church of Modernism without pausing to be humbled by all that’s
come before them.
Snow fell each day, at times fluffy and shot through
with sun. At other times leaden, it brought a gloom that darkened my mood to
match the slate of a low sky. Unwashed, tired, I abandoned my budget in favor
of more wine, hot sausages, and bread, feasting until drowsy and then walking
off my stupor through slush in the early twilight along one of Vienna’s many
sidewalks.
I didn’t know the name of any streets or boulevards or parks. I
craved each moment without the prison of facts. If I spent my life studying
art, only one fact was needed, and it stated that everyone’s future remained a
mystery, so why bother with plans and preparations.
Trolley cars whined past. I didn’t know where they
were bound for or which neighborhood I was in. I thought of Joseph Cotton
again, the actor who played Harry Lime in Carol Reed’s brilliant film. Every
celebrated film director found malleable actors to work with many times. Welles
had done so with Cotton. Griffiths with Gish. Scorsese with De Niro.
To save money, instead of taking a room, I paid for
a key to a locker for my backpack, an encumbrance which made little sense in
the city. I slept on a dry bench where it was safe as long as policemen didn’t
find me. I woke each day before morning rush hour, my back sore, to watch ashen
light seep through the station’s high cathedral windows.
I loosened up as I
poked about and got out of the station before commuters arrived, all the while
shaking off night stiffness in my joints. As Harry Lime must have discovered, I
learned that Vienna hosted plenty of ghosts. They longed for companionship, and
I was happy to oblige them, but what I really needed was someone to talk to and
touch. That’s when I remembered Janet. She’d said I reminded her of a character
in a Michener novel called The Drifters that was popular at that time. I’d
never read that book or author, though it seemed everyone else had. Janet was
classy, educated, a little older than me, already had her bachelor’s. She’d
studied Europe’s history, architecture, and art. She’d found me amusing, too,
called me a creative spirit. We’d hit it off over beers in Amsterdam. I’d told
her I questioned everything and liked to imagine the way life should be, but
because of that even my mother scolded me for living in Dreamland.
Wasn’t Janet out of my league? She was,
and hooking up with her meant surrendering to facts. Okay, I’d do it, I was too
lonely.
I read my guidebook, learning a little about Switzerland and the
destination she’d mentioned, Grindelwald, a ski resort near a trio of alpine
peaks: the Eiger, Wetterhorn, and the Schreckhorn, which stood highest of the
three at roughly 13,000 feet. I’d always been too poor and clumsy to ski, but
if Janet was there, as she’d said, I was convinced she’d welcome me. We’d eat
fondue and later make love. I was scripting the romantic movie we would soon star
in. After all, she’d tendered
an invitation.
A variety of trains would take me first to
Interlaken. Once there, I could board a local that ran high into the Alps,
stopping only at Grindelwald. This local departed once in the morning and in
the evening.
When I arrived at Interlaken, dusk had settled, and snow angled eerily out of the gloom. Alone on a platform, having learned it was the last stop, I began to fear the scheduled local to Grindelwald wouldn’t come. I halted a man in a parka who was crossing the platform and asked him. He spoke French.
Using lively gestures, he explained that snowfall had prompted the train’s early departure. He thrust an arm forward to emphasize deep into the mountains. He paused for a moment. His eyes blossomed. He said he’d give me a ride to the train’s next scheduled stop. We’d beat the train there and he’d drop me off.
Elated by such generosity, I did my best to
express my gratitude in fourth-grade French. I hopped into his little pickup
and off we bumped along a narrow road. I didn’t say a word. Nor did he ask
questions. Silent goodwill brewed between us. I tried to see out my window
through falling snow. He drove, determined, as if he knew God smiled down on
him for such a deed.
We pulled up to a platform shaped like a
pagoda. We waited until we saw the approaching beacon of the train’s nose, a
pencil-shaped lance filled with luminous snow. It reminded me of the lens light
spiking the darkness in the projection-room scene of Citizen Kane.
The man exclaimed in
French, “Hurry, hurry.”
I stumbled along with my backpack, thanking him as I
bounded into the train. Again, I’d forgotten to get a name. When would I learn
to value the lives of these kind strangers, rather than just obsess over my emotions
upon meeting them? I hoped that the generous Frenchman would understand, but I
didn’t like regretting my consistent lack of selflessness.
On board, panting, I dropped to a wooden bench not
unlike one I’d slept on in Vienna. The train felt chilly and appeared empty of
passengers. Still, I had to smile. All forces of benevolence were working in my
favor. My visit to Janet was meant to be.
I sat back and closed my eyes as the
train began to roll. The vent below my seat provided more noise than warmth,
but this beat another night in a station. Doubts, however, began to grow. Since
Janet didn’t know I was coming, there was a chance she wouldn’t be there. Nope.
I shouldn’t think about the calculated risk I was taking. Better to dream big
while gazing out a window at the majestic Alps.
Dusk had turned to night. I couldn’t see a thing.
Frost had begun to cover the black glass of each window. Not one passenger. How
strange. I wondered why. I dozed a while, surprised no conductor had asked me
to purchase a ticket. When I awoke, I felt chilled to the bone, my fingers and
toes numb. My throat felt scratchy as I breathed air that had become thinner,
damper, more frigid. The train car creaked and chortled so slowly that I
assumed the tracks were covered in places with increasingly dense, drifting
snow.
The wagon I rode in reminded me of an old subway
car. Air drafts whistled through gaps and seams. Now and then, high swirling
winds sounded soft explosions that shook the wagon. At times, the climb got so
steep that my back felt pinned to my cold, hard seat. Increasingly leaner air
pressure began to needle my eardrums. No shared body heat or conversation
distracted me. I rolled my shoulders and blew into my fists.
What had I gotten
myself into? I had to act. I couldn’t sit still. I took off my boots, dried my
feet, and changed my socks. I scribbled oddball phrases in my journal until my
fingers grew stiff and I fell asleep, the journal spilling to the floor.
When I awoke, shivering, my nose and ears felt
burnt with cold. I searched between seats until I found my journal. Pages were
wet, the ink of my scribbles blurred. Little piles of snow had formed on seats
where some windows, though closed, hadn’t sealed completely. This local wagon
wasn’t a showpiece in tourist-oriented Switzerland, but I shouldn’t dwell on
that. What I needed were gloves, a scarf, long underwear—none of which were in
my backpack.
Had to move, get the blood flowing. Maybe I’d find
someone in the next wagon. It was a short train, only two wagons and the
locomotive. I hurried to the door leading to the second wagon, but I couldn’t
open it. Through the yellowish light of a square window I saw the second wagon
was also empty. I remained the only passenger, and it was still snowing.
Winds
gusted higher, more frequently, the air sharper. This wasn’t just heavy
snowfall. It was a blizzard in the Swiss Alps. What would I do when, and if, I
arrived? The train creaked, struggling along as if sounding my despair. Snow
continued slashing the windows. I paced the wagon and dropped into different
seats, feeling dread, despondent, asking myself what on earth I had done.
