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Main Stuttgart Railway, RE 3603 Departure: Plochingen 7.05
I can see, a memory, the relentless reflection of moon on their faces and hands. They had to time their sprints with the obscuring movement of the the clouds. A mother and father took turns carrying their young child, Gerald Freund, across the flat mud and clay field. When the clouds shifted, the dead-pale moonlight struck them. Women, men, children sprawled across the ground, covered their hands and faces, until the clouds moved, again, and brought darkness. Those were the times when East Germany bled with refugees, before the Wall rose and fell.

Smoke from the departing Plochingen train swirled around platform thirteen. I wondered if Gerald Freund, since I’d been thinking of him, waited on the platform with his newspaper; how long before his train would arrive? An hour? Any second? 41 minutes. What would be on his mind? Last night. He had accidentally run the old 16 millimeter movie, the wrong one, even, backward: from present to past, from train station to entertaining guests late last night in his living room, from west to east, from espresso to heavy gin, from the wall, once high, now fallen, to demonstrations and tanks, separated to married, man to child. From, GDR state and party leader, Walter Ulbricht’s action: sealed off West Berlin; built the Wall, and Gerald’s family’s preemptive flight past midnight.

At least it is a possibility that I could see him as I sat in the café across the street. I rubbed my moist fingertips into my napkin, then examined my fingernails and tried to lose my thoughts in the café’s rumbling conversations and clinging clanging glasses.

Main Stuttgart Railway, RE 3603 Departure: Plochingen 7.05
I can see, a memory, the relentless reflection of moon on their faces and hands. They had to time their sprints with the obscuring movement of the the clouds. A mother and father took turns carrying their young child, Gerald Freund, across the flat mud and clay field. When the clouds shifted, the dead-pale moonlight struck them. Women, men, children sprawled across the ground, covered their hands and faces, until the clouds moved, again, and brought darkness. Those were the times when East Germany bled with refugees, before the Wall rose and fell.

Smoke from the departing Plochingen train swirled around platform thirteen. I wondered if Gerald Freund, since I’d been thinking of him, waited on the platform with his newspaper; how long before his train would arrive? An hour? Any second? 41 minutes. What would be on his mind? Last night. He had accidentally run the old 16 millimeter movie, the wrong one, even, backward: from present to past, from train station to entertaining guests late last night in his living room, from west to east, from espresso to heavy gin, from the wall, once high, now fallen, to demonstrations and tanks, separated to married, man to child. From, GDR state and party leader, Walter Ulbricht’s action: sealed off West Berlin; built the Wall, and Gerald’s family’s preemptive flight past midnight.

At least it is a possibility that I could see him as I sat in the café across the street. I rubbed my moist fingertips into my napkin, then examined my fingernails and tried to lose my thoughts in the café’s rumbling conversations and clinging clanging glasses.

The Train to Tübingen would not arrive until 7.46, another 29 minutes, at least, and would not depart for six more minutes after that, so he could leave the platform and wait here, in the café. I wondered if Gerald might do that. If he were not careful he might miss the train. What memories would he cling to? What would he discard—the young child who rode on his parent’s shoulders?
I took a sip of my coffee, held it in my mouth, swished it through my teeth. It burned, slipped across my tongue, down my throat. I coughed.

Last night, Gerald and his wife left the party early. He told his hosts that she wasn’t feeling well, but it was the misloaded film. Sometimes it happens with those old 16mm projectors. You change it and the film runs forward, as time should. It was the wrong reel, one of his father’s films.
I saw the next train arrive. Some passengers boarded it, while I watched. An older train, the engine looked like a black kettle with one orange stripe, like a creamsicle, and another, drab green stripe. Gerald would stand up, stt down, and biggen to read another article in the newspaper. More people boarded the train.

Main Stuttgart Railway, RE 3603 Departure: Wendlingen 7.11
The projector clicked and clacked. His mother’s shirt, remembered as deep yellow, now rendered in a pale mottled gray. She brushed a lock of her dark brown hair into her face. Brown leaves rose from the long dry grass, swirled around her, and attached themselves to branches. She backed up a walkway. Long grass and tulips blown by the wind, snapped by the broken frames of filmed moments. A chimney sucked in the faded white clouds that trailed like smoke from the light blue sky. Then the woman, the cottage, the countryside faded like the clouds.

You’ve got the film backwards, the others at the party said. Gerald didn’t hear them. Noone bothered to move. They were having some fun, watching life in reverse. When the take-up reel slapped the loose end of filmstrip against the projector, Gerald remained still; and stared at the white screen.
A ragdoll with a neck and head limp like a dead flower, lifted by men in white, with an IV needle that dripped glucose pushed into a bulging vein, with a face clamped in open hands of an orderly. A tube down his throat.

His father crawled backwards through the broken glass of a shattered wine bottle, until his body jolted upright and slid into a place at a round table covered with a checkered cloth. The glass rose from the floor, bounced off a far wall, and flew into his outstretched hand. The glass had become a clear intact bottle that sucked out his guts, until the bottle completely filled with deep purple liquid.

Main Stuttgart Railway, RE 3603 Departure: Reutlingen 7.34
At home she sat up in bed with the brown quilt, dressed in long white night clothes.
He picked up the postcard for his mother, glanced at the picture—a church on a mountain top and a caption that read, Church of the Angels—then returned it to the nightstand.

“Your mother will like that card, I think.” His wife pulled the quilt up to her chin.
Each week a new postcard. Last autumn Gerald almost went to visit his mother, his one remaining parent, but to see her would remind him of life in the East—papers required, Soviet tanks, and his father. His father, his drinking, and therefore, when Gerald had tried his own hand at drinking, several years ago. This autumn, he suddenly longed to fly again, like the day his family broke free, because Gerald could not talk to his wife. That damned quilt.

Still, he tried to appear as if he managed things well, and they struggled with small talk. They would talk about current events, what happened to those Turks; once a week, they talked about the latest postcard to his mother, this one is nice, such strong colors, she’ll like it; the latest revelation at the museum, where Gerald worked: the latest stone analyzed, the latest skeletal puzzle pieced together, some little bit from a scientific journal. When Gerald talked about himself, he would concentrate on mundane details: his work, political opinions, a joke. Perhaps he would toy with some sensitive issue for a moment, make some comment about something his father said when drunk at an market, then move on to the weather.

“These lines that—what, what was he talking about?” His wife complained that getting him to talk was like pulling teeth, but Gerald only said, “How should I know he was drunk.”

Even when she miscarried, years ago now, he could not talk. She laid in bed, under that brown quilt—her face, a pale sprout from the earth. He could say nothing, do nothing, but stroked her hair, stroked her hair and almost cried.. She closed her eyes and let him.

She didn't go with him, when he went abroad on field studies for the museum; she spent that time in politics, to improve the life of Turkish workers, who I’ve mentioned before. To fill the space in their conversations, she would talk about them and their lives, details, more than Gerald ever cared to know about their personal lives. How one had a hateful father, another had been beaten as a child, and the marital troubles of a couple. How one had cried when she told him about the miscarriage.

Unexpectedly, once, Gerald was in the middle of some work, dusting bones, she called him. One of the Turks she knew had died in one of those firebombing incidents. Gerald could not understand why she should be so upset; he didn’t feel much, besides, he was at work. Work, his life—gathered frozen moments in time—one night, a dinner party, the following day, a train ride.

The detachment spread through their marriage like creeping, clinging vines. They talked less. When they did talk, she did most of the talking, but talking wasn’t enough to heal Gerald and his wife. Most of the time they could only joke, about anything, even about his parents.

How strong the flight had gripped him. He never thought about his mother much before, despite the weekly postcards, mindless ritual, but now an excuse to distract. It's strange to think about someone in the world, a long time ago, hearts thundering with flight as a wall went up behind them, and here we all were around this bed with the brown quilt. And all Gerald could do was look at the quilt and think: that’s a Schnapps colored quilt.

Each day passed and at night he watched her under that brown quilt. Gerald dreamed of running—a long dream that encircled him as moments built up around him like fossilized bones or a wall of postcards. Then he stood at a train platform and watched two shadowy figures lift a woman, bound in chains. They toss her; bloody grinding chain metal pulled the tears, the lump in his throat down to grief in his ribs.

“Where are you, Gerald?"

At the train station, of course.

The hiss, sound of steam, and also the loudspeaker that announced the train’s departure, minutes until his train would arrive, more time than Gerald would want. I see the blue clad conductors in the doorways, one with a blue cap and thin lips, whom Gerald might ask, “How much time, exactly, before the Tübingen train arrives and departs.” Just minutes now. Gerald would step back from the car and look at his watch, at the second hand creeping around the minutes.

Main Stuttgart Railway, RE 3603 Departure: Tübingen 7.46
I can see Gerald more clearly, now. He took a seat on the next train. (I can see the blue reflection of his face in the window.) Not alone; a whole flock of faces, with gold or crimson hats or no hats, but cigarettes that dangled from their lips, leather jackets with the collars pulled up, or some other completely different appearance. The train moved. Some people hurried to jump on the train at the last moment. People on the train waved to people on the platform. Those on the platform waved at the train as it departed the station.

I left the café, walked under tracks through the concrete damp tunnel to the other side. I wondered what would happen to Gerald on that train. The split between us broke wide; the train gone. For some inexplicable reason it could have derailed and flung bodies down a mountainside; but, no, you could still see the train, then just smoke in the distance.

I emerged from the dank stairwell and appeared on the opposite platform, glad I hadn’t followed him. He rolled down some railroad tracks over some hills and a mountain. I didn’t know why he would visit his mother, now. Only the walk onto the platform and immediately back down, back to the café was now; I took my time to get another cup of coffee, to pull the train schedule out of my pocket and reread the tables.

Gerald’s memory clicked and clacked through East Berlin. His father let the hot water tap run and run, but the water never got hot, so he shaved with cold water. He splashed his face, and ran his hands over the light colored fuzz on his face, paused for a moment, then lathered on the shaving cream. It hurt. When he was done, he sat on the edge of his unmade bed, dressed in his pants and suspenders, and drank.

When he finished dressing, he put the flask in his pocket and left the apartment to buy a bag of fruit. Gerald tagged along.

At the flea market the air filled with protestors’ insults and signs,upraised fists.

“Young man, young man.” His father called. “Stay near to me. His ragged face looked fifty or sixty years old. Joseph stopped to look at his father—his clothes hung on him like autumn leaves; his arms wrapped around a basket of fruit. Someone shouted about some soldiers, what they had just done. Gerald and his father crossed the street. His father stopped to read some anti-Soviet graffiti that dripped on the side of a building.

A large armored vehicle smashed through the market. His father began to cry. “Here, Here.” He shoved the basket, full of pears, brown and wrinkled, into Joseph’s hands. “Take these, the lines that make up the paintings,” he said and ran. Joseph dropped the basket; the pears rolled down the sidewalk. Later, his father; bright blood dripped from his closely cropped hair, threaded over his right eye and down his stunned face.

How tightly he held his father when they fled in ’56.

My numb fingertips fumbled with the glossy smooth train schedule. I became confused for a moment; I had actually forgotten where I was going. I couldn’t even remember what train I wanted. And where did I live? Did my wife even know I had left the house?

My house. What did it look like? I saw chalk yellow stucco and tar brown shutters, closed. Creeping shiny green ivy. Smoke fluttered from the chimney. Nearly a quaint cottage, except for the concrete drive and carport. I didn’t see my house; I saw Gerald’s.

Main Stuttgart Railway, RE 3603 Departure: Rottenburg (N) 8.02
The train clicked and clacked along the tracks.

I felt less whole, lonely in Stuttgart after Gerald left. I could see him, still, but only a shadow that grew fainter with each passing minute. Wedged in between strange elbows perched on armrests and supporting cigarettes, he shifted and and tried different sitting positions. Legs crossed, legs together, one forward, crossed arms, tight to the sides. He looked out the window.

An ocean of autumn hues danced down from the hills and valleys and flowed past the train window. The setting sun flashed in his eyes. The light flickered rapidly and obscured his vision, except distorted images that cropped up between white flashes.

A train on the opposite track passed and blocked the sunlight. He could see, clearly, what was not there; skeletal faces peered, like pale lilies that poked through rotten leaves, from the other train. Their mouths hung open, and the rumble of the trains issued from their lips like groans. Their eyes, familiar to him as a child, that crackled with protest in East Berlin, now stared, smooth and flat, and glistened like celluloid. He rubbed his eyes.

He was much younger, when he rode on his father’s shoulders with his mother at their side. They ran, trapped by a misfed 16 mm film in Gerald’s head, backward with a herd of people; their eyes focused intently on the fading flickering lights of the West. It was midnight, and the moon was full. Gerald rode on his father’s shoulders for a while, then his mother’s, then back to his father. Confused and terrified, he gripped his father’s hair.

Both parents ran and exhaled wheezy-tired huffs of breath. The young child bounced up and down. They ran to catch the western lights, but each step propelled them back to the east.

On the train, Gerald, leaned forward, tired, and rested his head in his hands. The train crossed a bridge. He began to bounce in his seat, except his feet, which felt like they had sunk through the floor and slid along the tracks. People lived, the people in the passing hills, the valleys. People died, the people that slipped through barbed wire, crawled across the earth between two walls.

I was getting tired of this “What would Gerald do?” game. What difference did it make? If time didn’t have the decency to at least appear linear, there would be no end to the possibilities, already determined and frozen like fossilized bones buried in the earth. Possibilities existed all at once in an instant and in layers that stretched across the relative eternity of geological time.

When the conductor, a woman, finally took his ticket, it is spring. She smiled, and ten years passed, as she turned to take the next ticket.

Ten years.

I ordered another coffee, at the café. I unfolded the crumpled newspaper and read. Why should I, explore his past? The past exposed, day after day, slow like steel train tracks ground down, or bones whipped clean by the wind.

Then, the passengers swayed and bent, as usual, when a train stops.

Main Stuttgart Railway, RE 3603 Departure: Horb 8.24
Gerald waited in his mother’s room. He sat on her the crisp white sheets of her hospital-style bed and looked down at the black rubber scuffs on the institutional green tile. Above the only other furniture, a mint green antiqued dresser, where a mirror belonged, his postcards hung instead. The postcards created a mosaic of moments. Each card reminded him of the week he mailed it, a week he trudged through with his wife.

What if Gerald sat there and imagined that I sat here in this café? Imagined me, as I waited with my train schedule, my espresso. Maybe, he thought, here I stand on the platform and glance over at the café and see him; I get on the train, look through the window as the train leaves, and see him, still in the café. On the train did Gerald wonder if I stayed in the café or walked through the tunnel and under the tracks to the platform and watch his train leave.

I thought about who he had come to visit. I thought, she has gray hair and soft black eyes, big eyes. Her curled lips wrapped around her gums upper teeth and mouthed one meaningless monosyllable over and over. When they wheeled her in from dinner, she’d have her lean hands locked around a round red pad in her lap. They had cut her hair as close as father’s and pulled it back with barrettes.

Gerald could have reached out to touch her brittle hair. A small lock would fall out, held tight in his hand. Why did it pursue Gerald and I, now, what that wall of postcards showed? A binge that happened years ago, cursed in anguish, then of course forgotten. His wife slept, recovered from the miscarriage; we mechanically attended to her needs. Each night, tired; put out the light.

These lines that make up the painting, these lines in the postcards, crossing, the palm of my hand; these lines like strands of hair, these lines that crack the bone; into the night, these lines, train tracks, these lines that I hold tight.

If Gerald turned to the life reflected in the postcards like the colored lights of the West and saw an unshaven man with thin, closely cropped hair and red hazy eyes, then I didn’t see the last morning train depart from Stuttgart. I rode the train and cried for my mother, cried for my wife, and on my father’s shoulders sailed in ungainly grace through the soft moonlight air and across the open field.

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