Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

I3O
"It's best to do it in winter," he explained. "The sea is so
rough, they don't even bother to patrol it."
I glanced around uncomfortably. The passengers within hearing
range sat stone-faced, like New Yorkers ignoring a beggar.
"If a storm comes up, that's it," he said with a fatalistic shrug.
"But I'm getting older. I can't live like this much longer."
XI.
On the way to his apartment we stopped at another outdoor
cafe and had a few more beers. Then we visited a small grocery
store that seemed to have nothing in stock except for case upon
case of orange soda in unmarked bottles.
Klaus lived on the top floor of a four-story building on
Chopinstrasse. We stopped in the foyer so he could check his mail.
He stared at one particular piece for a long time.
"Oh no," he said softly.
"What?"
"It's from the police."
"What do they want?"
"To talk to me." All the color seemed to have drained from
his face. "They want me to clear something up."
"Is that bad?"
He looked at me for a long time.
"It's not good."
A disturbing thought slowly took shape in my mind.
"Is this about me?"
"I don't know," he said in an unconvincing tone of voice. "It
might be."
XII.
I waited on the couch while Klaus ducked into the bedroom
to change his clothes. The apartment was small but cozy. He
owned a lot of books.
I didn't want to be there—not in Klaus's apartment, and not
in East Berlin. By that point in the afternoon, I was mildly drunk,
thoroughly disoriented, and more than a little frightened.
Concern for my own safety mingled uneasily with guilt that I
might be the cause of Klaus's new round of troubles with the
authorities. All I really understood was that I needed to get back
to West Berlin as quickly as possible.
Klaus's shirt was off when he returned from the bedroom. He
locked eyes with me and slowly removed his belt, as though
performing a striptease. Then he unzipped his pants and let them
fall around his ankles. I remained motionless on the couch, trying
to maintain an expression of polite neutrality as he stood before
me in his skimpy underpants.
"I'm going on a date tonight," he said, long after the silence
had grown untenable. "My girlfriend's a doctor."
XIII.
There was an angel on top of his TV, a two-foot tall porcelain
statue of remarkable delicacy. Klaus lifted the angel off the set and
presented it to me for inspection.
"It's beautiful," I said.
It was, too. The angel's wings were outspread, and a serenity
radiated from its perfect face that seemed wildly out of place,
almost surreal, in that apartment, in that city.
"It belonged to my parents," he said. "I want you to have it."
I was touched and puzzled by the gesture. This angel wasn't
the kind of thing you just gave to someone, especially someone
you hardly knew.
"I can't," I told him.
He seemed startled. "Why not?"
"It's too generous."
"But I want you to have it."
"Klaus, I can't. I'm traveling with a backpack. It'll break."
"Are you sure?"
I imagined myself passing through the checkpoint with a large
white angel in my arms.
"I'm sorry. I really can't accept it."
With apparent reluctance, he took the angel from my hands
and returned it to its place of honor atop the primitive-looking
TV. Then he selected a fat volume from his bookshelf.
"Then take this," he said.