Cold Kindness

Cold
Kindness










a novel by

By Dennis L. Siluk


















By Dennis L. Siluk, Copyright, © March, 2005
Cold Kindness


Cover Illustrated by the Author
Inside picture; back graphic
Also by the Author










Dedicated to my wife Rosa; with special thanks to Jon McWilliams for his ongoing work in publishing my books; to Stacy Rebeck for her last minute editing, and suggestions; and to author and poet, E. J. Soltermann, for his review and corrections of my German.




Note: The name: *Dieburg, is a small city in West Germany, where the author had spent some time [four months to be exact]; it fits the story quite well; for when you take the word apart in German, Die, meaning ‘the’ and ‘Burg,’ meaning castle or fortress, fits the theme=The Castle/Fortress Tower or in this case, “The Castle Tower of the City”; which is an ancient 11th Century Tower. It is where the story migrates, or better put, ends up, for the reader, as well as the writer at every corner.








Contents.






Cold Kindness







Introductory Chapter: Winter in Garmisch [1959]

Opening: The Year is 1960, Dieburg, Germany
Chapters: 1 thru 18

POEMS:

1) Towers and Rain Drops (by Dennis L. Siluk;
((Dedicated to author, Vasudev Murthy.)) #380/written 11/04
2) A Morning, But no Sun [T.B. Read]
3) Stanzas [Thomas Hood, just before he died]
4) Carmen…
5) Carmen’s Winter
6) Sleep [by E.B. Barrett]
7) Love and Butterflies
8) Off, on Off
9) Hell’s Hawks
10) Assassins
11) Dreaming within Dreaming


Characters
[Main Characters]

Carmen Rosenbaum Schmidt [main character, 20-years old; born 1940; the year is now 1960, Dieburg (West), Germany]
Gertrude [Waitress, 30-years old]
Günter Gunderson [cook; 59-years old]
Ivan and Anna Marie [Landlords; 57 and 45]
Adam Marcus Schuler (American Post Exchange (PX) manager)
Friend: Frantisek Andre [friend of Adam]

Miscellaneous Characters:

Three SS-Men/German Soldiers [1944; Augsburg, Germany]
Adolph Schulman, Owner of the Pizzeria [1960, Dieburg, Germany]

Doctor Patricia Swell: Polish Doctor in Darmstadt, Germany
Father: Aerial Rosenbaum


Back of the Book:

Books by the Author
Notes about the Author










∆



News Release: it was a disruptive time between the winter of 1959, throughout 1960, and the spring of 1961. Elvis Presley was in the Army, in West Germany; Antarctica was agreed by the 12-nations who had claims on the continent, to use it wisely, and only for scientific reasons, no nuclear testing. Then the 1960-Olympics started in Rome. It was the year Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe at the United Nations on his desk; and Castro addressed the United Nations as well, asking for support with Cuba’s “struggle” against the United States. The Soviet Union put the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin; Pablo Picasso, at age 79 marries his model, Jacqueline Rogue, 35-years old, 42-years his junior…
and the author of, “Cold Kindness,” had his first poetry published in his High School newspaper journalism class; and within nine years, he would be in West Germany.



Towers and Rain Drops

Two hearts never seem to beat
the same, and
two minds never dream alike
we are towers left alone it seems
fighting for our lives.

If only the sun
would remain out, melt
the ice away,
then we could live above the clouds
and watch it rain all day.

We are but drops of rain
you know…
evaporating, in the sun—
most people know how to mix, it seems
while others flow as one.

—dlsiluk




































Inside the Dieburg Tower





Introductory Chapter
Winter in Garmisch
[1959]


She stopped the car on the road, it was full of ice and snow, the road leading into Garmisch that is, Garmisch, Germany; Carmen’s right forearm resting on Adam’s arm for a moment; in the distance ascending into the sky were the ski slopes. The wind was whistling around the car windows and the pine trees were swaying, it was a chilly winter’s morning. The mountain pass had to be made by car or bus; no trains could make it through the pass only around the mountain, and within a certain distance of the areas ski resort. She stopped the car, rested the motor, there was a lodge behind them, about a mile back down the road; and just beyond the pass ahead of them was the village (or town-let), called Garmisch, a ski region, a wintry haven for all of Europe; and a simple old tourist village the rest of the year.
Everything was shinny white, in the frosted weathered morning sunbeams; so much so, it was almost blinding you could say; thought Adam staring with his sunglasses on. Adam, he was Carmen’s American boyfriend. He was discharged from the American Military Armed Forces in Europe, about a year earlier, and had gotten a job as a manager at the local Babenhausen Military PX—and for the most part, he seemed to brave the elements of this trip without much difficulty. Carmen looked at him, a brief smile, a comforting intake of air, and drove forward through the pass.
“Is this Garmisch?” asked Adam with a vibrant blow to his diaphragm, trying to absorb its wintry wonderland beauty.
“Yes, yes, but it’s not quite the way I remember it to be, it was long ago you know when I was last here.”


They now had driven closer to the village where they both could get a better view of the whole countryside, a breathtaking panorama—; for a moment, a fairytale moment you might say, Adam was taken back, a bit awe struck from its beauty; then as they drove a little further they were in the village itself; a little quaint Bavarian Village by the Alps.
“The hotel is farther down,” Carmen instructed.
Adam looked over his shoulder, out of the back window, it was a long ride from Dieburg and the incline was steep and slippery, he was adjusting.
“Happy to have made it up here in one piece;” he commented.
Carmen burped out “We’ll have to cross this small bridge ahead of us,” turn to look at Adam’s expression, then added “…the hotel is right beyond that (pointing straight ahead).” Adam noticed a stream went under the bridge she was pointing at, and all the way (seemingly) through the village up to some farm pastures towards the mountains.
Said Carmen hesitantly, but with pride, “This is lovely country in the spring as well as summer: streams and forests all mesh together and give out many shades of green; and as you can see, most of the houses still have that old Bavarian architecture.”
“I see,” said Adam.
“Across the bridge is the hotel,” commented Carmen.
“And where exactly is the skiing area?” Although in Adam’s brain, the whole area could be considered, for it was all mountainous.
“There, over by the big hill, mountain I mean, you can’t see it fully, got to get a little closer, but it’s over a mile run down those smaller slopes alongside, there are several you know. We’ll be able to see it closer later; the mountains all kind of blend together, as you can see.”


As Carmen pulled up to the hotel, Adam cleaned his sunglasses a bit. At times, things were so bright, it was blinding, therefore, he rubbed his eyes, shut them for a moment. The snow was heaped up several feet high along side the hotel. Carmen parked the car. This was their first trip together; they had only known each other going on a month.
“There’s no bellboy here,” said Carmen.
“I see the ski-lift now,” the young man said, tucking in his shirt as he got out of the car, grabbing the two suitcases in the backseat.
“Perhaps we can ski this afternoon,” Carmen explained, walking into the hotel. “The weather is perfect for it,” it being twenty-five degrees out.
“How many folks are skiing do you think?” he asked, pointing now at the ski lift, way in the distance, or where he thought it should be, although a configuration, shadow of one was noticeable.
“Perhaps (she paused to look about, think before saying another word)…conceivably about one fourth of the normal folks that would normally come on a holiday or weekend, you know today’s only Thursday, we got a few days before the rush starts.”
“Great, great, I don’t like its crowded now, or will be, in particular.”
“Do you wish to ski as soon as possible?” she asked.
“Depends, ah, depends on what we have to do now I suppose!” he said aloud not realizing he was being overly loud; overcompensating for being tired I’d expect. She did a double-take on him when his voice had exceeded her calm zone.
“Yes, yes, I hear you…!” the young woman said. “But we should eat a fine, if not resilient meal first, rest a bit, and go later on towards early afternoon—we’ll be fresher and not so…(she hesitated, lost her thoughts, said), you know, not so loud please.”
“I’ve forgotten I’m hungry, and I didn’t mean to be so sharp, I suppose I’m just ornery from being tired, it does that to me some times,” said Adam.

[Inside the hotel] “Guten Morgan,” a voice said behind a counter, noticing Adam as an American he changed his language to English: “My name is Koln, do…” before he could finish his statement Carmen interrupted.
“I am Carmen Schmidt; you should have our reservation here?”
“A moment…bitte…please (he corrected himself back to English),” Koln said as he thumbed through some reservation cards: ‘hmmm,’ came from his mouth.
“Ya... (a pause) Ms Carmen R. Schmidt, and…dd, of-course—your guest…” (He said with a reluctant voice, or so it seemed).
“Yes, that’s me,” replied Carmen.
“Kabine sieben,” said the desk clerk [Room seven], adding in English, “…second floor, I see you’ll be here just three days…”Es ist schon” [fine], “…it’s good skiing weather,” he smiled and gave her the key, trying to readjust his earlier tentative sneer. Adam knew many German’s knew English, or at least conversational English, he himself knew a little German, enough to get a meal, a beer and an occasional date. And both Germans and Americans tried to use what little they knew; either out of respect, or simply for the recognition of knowing it.
“Danke,” said Carmen as they left the counter area, heading toward the main lobby, down the hall, Adam saying: “Tschus“[by]; then asked Carmen: “What is the ‘R’ for?”
“I told you I was a German-Jew, it’s my father’s last name, Rosenbaum, is that a problem?” she said with a higher defensive voice.
“No, no-oo… (a pause) not at all; what’s a Jew got to do with anything anyhow? I mean, I’m Russian-Irishman, American—big deal.”
She didn’t look his way, just asserted herself forward as she found the room and opened the door, smiled at Adam as she laid her suitcase on the bed, as if to say, the adventure of the weekend is about to start, let’s not draw back from each other.


[The Ski Lift] “We must have climbed a mile?“ said Adam, stopping to rest by a farmyard fence; two cows came up to the wooden fence, with two big bells tied around their necks, Adam was leaning against the fence.
“How charming,” commented Adam, satirically? He walked up the path a little further, toward the farmyard; two little boys came running down the path towards him, and two cows followed along side them, along the other side of the fence. It was as if one boy ran after the other, and the cows just followed. They were twins.
“Guten Morgen” said one of the two blond haired boys, the one by the name of Cody.
Said Carmen with a perfect pitch to her voice, as if it was a soft flute playing (wanting to know where is the ski lift): “Wo ist…der Schilift?”
Said Cody with an impetuous smile, “Er ist…gehen Sie… geradeaus… (go straight ahead).”
Carmen looked straight in back of her, where the boy was pointing: ah, she could see it now.
“Gandige Frau…” said the boy, “wie heissen sie?”
“Carmen,” she said, was her name, to the boy. And she explained that Adam was her American friend.
“Aha…” said the boy with a bright smile again.

Then with slow and broken English, the boy commented, “He’s…my cow sir, isn’t…he big?” Adam looked at them, “H...mmm, they are big and healthy looking cows are they not?” Possibly it was a statement-question, but the boys both looked up and understood most of what was said; then they looked at each other, and were indifferent to it, as if they were holding back a laugh.
Both boys now looking at Adam, Cody said in English, “My name is Cody, and he’s my brother Shawn, we live there (pointing to the house up the path).”
Carmen thanked the boys in German, saying: “Danke,” as the two boys stooped under the fence and ran towards the cows at which time the cows started to run, and then all of a sudden the cows stopped turned to them (the cows, stopping and turning about) the boys jump back and laughed.
Said Carmen to Adam, “They are quite interested in Americans I think, they took a shine to you Adam,” Adam didn’t say nothing; it was more of a statement he thought, than a question.
“Nice boys, cute blond hair, just like little Germans. Anyhow, do you mean we got to walk all that way over there, I mean we’ve been walking for two hours, I think, or is it three [?]” He looked at Carmen, she didn’t say a ward, I suppose nothing to say, then finished his thoughts, “It’s just a little ways now.” Having said that, they started to transverse over to the area the boys had pointed towards.
Then she got thinking: perhaps she was a ting cold hearted, she should ask how he is doing, and asked, “How are you doing Adam?”
“I suppose all right, I’m a bit fatigued, I mean, I mean, I only rested, not slept but an hour at the hotel. And this long walk, and the long ride up here, don’t you German-Jews ever get tired?” She smiled; not saying a word, figuring it was a rhetorical question at best.
Adam, at the present, took off his jacket, he had a sweater under that, and a wool-shirt to boot, and a cotton undershirt under all that, and as a result, he was starting to overheat.
Now, noticing Adam quite exhausted, Carmen (shaking her head) stopped, said with a humbling voice, “You can wait here, I’ll go check and see if we can ski.”
Adam [brooding] “O—No—no, I came all this way here, walked all this distance, no need to stop and rest a few hundred yards from the site now.” It was more like a quarter mile, but the mannish part of him—the Id was the driving force, although not destructive at this point, and it was a little ego involved, that is, which got its demand from the Id, I suppose, thus, he felt in control; in any case, he—the mannish part of him was not going to allow the female species to have the upper hand.


—Said Carmen to the husky, beer bellied man in the green ski-lift hut, sitting down operating some gears, occasionally looking through a window in front of him, and Carmen to his side, “Wo kann ich eine Fahrkarte kaufen? (Where can I buy a ticket?)”
“…Hier Schatzi!” (here darling) said the burly German, watching several ski-lifts going higher and higher up the mountain, threw the sparse wooded area. “Zwei…” (he said, implying she needed two tickets, as he looked, or tried to look, deep into her bottomless and blue beautiful eyes; Adam catching his gaze, the German paying Adam no heed.
Carmen responded in German: “Bitte…vielen dank” (please, thank you much).

Carmen was catching her breath, said to Adam in a low tone, “Three Marks for a ride, three each, that’s close to a dollar!”
“Swell,” said Adam [suddenly], “let’s go for a ride.”
“Guten Tag,” said the man—he now pointed to the ski-lift they were to go on.
Adam saying in English, as if to impress Carmen in the fact he understood a little German, and very little, “And good day to your sir…!”
“Are you able to ski?” asked Carmen, realizing how exhausted she was, and he seemed even more so.
“We shall see once we get to the top.” I think he was thinking if she would, he could, but if she gave a little hint she was tired—well, I suppose he could go along with anything to get a long rest back at the hotel; anyhow, that was his answer.
He sat back tight against the ski-lift as it ascended up the mountain; Carmen by his side, the seat was made of wood, the rest was made out of steel. It was all painted green, like the woods around them; under him were some twenty feet of air, and accumulating more the higher they went of course. Adam gripped his hands tight onto the sidebars of the lift attached to the seat. Being somewhat fatigued, his eyes started to close. Carmen noticed that; she nudged him to wakeup: reinforcing the fact he needed to hang onto the side of the seat’s side-bar.

“To ski down this mile run is nothing,” said Carmen, “if you are not tired that is; but if you are—tired like me or more so, you—you could possibly break a leg.” She was a much better skier than he, and Adam knew it, and so hearing that, he took in a deep breath of air and thought on what she had just said a moment ago. On the other hand, Carmen knew that men seldom listened to women when they sounded competitive, or she felt they could outdo them, so she added: “I’m more tired than I had previously thought,” and although she was tired, she could have skied a few hours more without much effort. But for the most part, this was the best she could do with a warning for him, in allowing an escape path for his ego; thus, let him do as he pleased with this kindest escape clause, she had done her best to create.

“Yes, yes, I understand,” he said with eyelids half open.
“Yes, I see you do,” commented Carmen. At the same time Adam started tapping with his fingers on the steel bar next to him.
Said he, “How do I determine if I’m too tired or not, or how have you determined you might be…?”
Carmen [interrupting] “You are not deaf, are you?”
“No,” said Adam wiping his brow.
“Well, I’m telling trying to tell you we both are—tired, but if you’re not going to listen we’ll both break a leg together—go ahead, I’ll risk it also, otherwise we can turn about and go back to the hotel; I mean we got three, or is it, two days [?] anyhow, we got more than enough time to go skiing, it’s no big deal, as far as I feel, we do not have to push ourselves beyond what we know is not safe”; having said that, they both got off at the next stop and jumped on the returning ski-lift and back to the hotel, not even stopping to warm-up.

—When they got back to the hotel, they sat at a table, the bar area was behind them with stools and a few guests lounging about, but practically the whole place was empty—for the most part, perhaps four or five other people were present. They stayed for a few hours talking and drinking. A man and his ten year old boy were both playing violins with German, Bavarian traditional festive cloths on.
As the waiter came up to take their order Carmen quickly took charge to order, “Ich moechte zwei Stueck Brot, ein Kruegel Bier, und ein Glas Wein…danke.”

Carmen had two glasses of Mosel Wine, and Adam some dark beer, while the father and son team played away: a most handsome pair, if not down right touching thought Carmen.
It was going on 10:00 PM, when the hotel waiter asked if they wanted a last drink before they closed up.
“Nein,” said Carmen, politely, rubbing her arms together as the waiter looked at her mysteriously, “Kahlt,” (cold) she told him, as he walked away with a flat shape to his face—with no smile. When they got back to their rooms; as Adam undressed, he felt stiff and cramped, it had been a long drawn out day—to say the least. Halfway through the undressing, ready to jump under the cool linens, he told himself it was a worthwhile day, a great day, and he was happy he had come at her request. Carmen wanted it to be just such a day, very much so, and noticed him content as he pushed his youthful and muscular body quickly under the heavy quilt.
In point of fact, she was not feeling well, her head felt light, as she had a sensation sharply move through it, the temple area and frontal lobe to be exact, even a numbing of her teeth surfaced slowly, agonized her, along with a jagged feeling in her spine, then came an explosion with wreckage within her cerebellum. She had these signs and symptoms before and never told anyone outside of the doctor at the clinic, and a girlfriend who worked with her at the restaurant, and I suppose Günter knew something about it; I mean the surface information, not the underlining facts, the symptoms themselves: thus he referred to them as headaches, as she did. The doctor had ruled out such things as viruses, direct damaged, destroyed nerve tissue, or infectious diseases of the brain. But there was no denial of a general personality deterioration; for some folks would agree she was more unmannerly, and tactless, and at times more unconcerned with her appearance than a year earlier.

She noticed his trousers and shirt lay on the floor. She sat on the edge of the bed, tried to smile as not to spoil the day, which had now of course, turned into the evening.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“Nein…no, I mean, I don’t remember…lieben…I mean Adam,” came out of her mouth, as if it was automatic. She added, “I wonder if they have a tower around… hier…I mean here?” She seemed to be drifting off, Adam notice, drifting into some dissociate zone… thinking in English and German at the same time.
“A tower,” said Adam [inquisitively], “what for, what kind of tower?” his eyebrows up in confusion, his eyelids closing out of fatigue.
“Pay no attention to me darling, you look absolutely dead, please go to sleep, I’ll stay up awhile.” Intracrainal pressure increased her headache almost bringing her to the point of vomiting; she was a bit confused, if not with a little memory loss. She picked up his cloths, found a proper place for them; everything was in slow motion for her now. Then she went to look out the window slightly depressed. The view was not great, not as great as in Dieburg she thought, as at her apartment looking out her window; this view was of the back of the hotel. Adam was falling fast to sleep, but he had a few peculiar thoughts going on about Carmen in his head, she seemed odd this evening, he deliberated, but it was soon forgotten as he fell into a deeper sleep.



Opening:

The Year is 1960, spring in Dieburg, Germany.



He’d answer. He’d answer at length. The more he answered, the madder he became, the more indignant he become. (No, he was moody himself at times, drinking, ‘…now look at him,’ she’d say. No, he didn’t see his own moodiness; a blind spot to Adam’s mind. But love puts up with many faults of a person and seems to have its own power to do so, but it saps a person sooner or later.)
‘I tried, I really did, can’t put up with it any longer. I can be a friend. She is the queen of emotions.’ That is what he’d say at night when he was not with her, when he was thinking about what he should do about their relationship, but it mostly came out during his drinking.


It was 10:30 PM; as usual, Carmen was half lit up from booze. In her brain every thought was of that damn tower Adam told himself (along with calling it her: ‘obsessive-compulsive hysterical tower’). Or so he had learned as time went on. Yes it was her Turm, her tower, he said a hundred times to himself. She was like a person in prison; it was not heredity, the alcoholic part of her, and him, no predisposition to it. He used it for party time, she used it to calm her down, to escape, yes an acquired taste, and for the right kick. The kick, the kick, everyone wants that, you know: the kick. But she got more depressed with it, similar to neuroses, or maybe it was. It helped her to sleep she said, escape from the pain of the nightmares and headaches. The damn stuff was so accessible, it was everywhere she alleged. She even would sing a song, a rime looking to or at the tower, sing it as if she was in another world, Adam heard it a thousand times: “Spricht der Turm: Tod, der Tod ruft…’ (The tower speaks: death, death is calling….)”
She really didn’t care for it, alcohol that is; she used it because it was available. For five years she used it on an increasing regularity though. It became part of her temperamental makeup, part of her pessimism.
—But she would have said (and I would have agreed), Adam liked to drink also, and thus, they became a team in drinking: which brought on fighting at times; a curse to one another. Most folks are born with a kind of repugnance for the stuff, but it can become habitual nonetheless, when forced down and into the system, and it seemed Adam had his days of doing just that, and so did Carmen.

She was now sitting in her apartment drinking booze, singing her ‘Turm’ song, as was Adam in his apartment drinking: both thinking about the trip they had to Garmisch last winter, both alone—the relationship was changing, things were changing, winter had ended. It was as if, or became so, as if after a while, Adam became her reason for existing. When they tried to stay away from each other, which they were trying to do at present: every minute they were away, they simply thought of each other all the more. She was living in an alcoholic nightmare and a fogy day-dream; both becoming codependent.




1

[1960] The mist had come over the 12th-century tower (as often it did) across the street in the park where a shallow stream—a tributary from a nearby river—it gently and silently crept down and through the park, and then faintly down and through the city of Dieburg, leaving the Gothic Tower behind; the tower that looked like a grand guard post of a millennium past, overlooking the small four archer park. Not far from the tower was a play area for children: a teeter-totter and a set of swings, no more than that, quite small; not many but a few children would visit this little park. And several feet from the stream was a bench, the only one in the whole park—that’s all, no more, not even a tree stump to sit on, just one bench: for the old folks I’d expect, but it was used by Carmen quite a lot: to think, to ponder on, deliberate by, for conscious planning, the park was her sanctuary you could say. The water in the stream, its sound was always calming for her, and in summer and spring the plush grass was exhilarating with its several shades of green—it produced a most alive affect for her sprit; and I must add, the park’s muscular tower looking over the cozy little square, had become her golden chalice, her fixation, her passion.
Carmen lived on the second floor of a duplex right across the street from the Tower Park (and we shall call it that for now on, Tower Park); when she looked out her window she could see the tower, the whole park, the street below her, and the steeple of the church up the block; the meat market up the street to the north, a half block away (on the other side of the park, she could see also).
She had a small apartment, perhaps: conceivably close to six-hundred square feet, total. The kitchen consumed a hundred square feet of it I would guess, and the bathroom which was connected to the main room, was a living room and a bedroom combined (she had a daybed in it) was her main accommodation. She had a television on one side of the room, right across from her daybed; a window overhead, by her bed, and it was quiet and cozy—as she liked it.

—As she swung the heavy Iron Gate open to the premises, sleepily she walked out into the fresh spring air; she walked into the park, as she did each morning before going to work. A scent of the green foliage filled her sanity, her smell, her nose, all drifting to her lungs with a sweetened sent to the air, air she liked; her eyes were trying to open up wider, wider, wider to greet the day (her wide stunning eyes): she didn’t sleep well last night, she seldom did. She found herself wiping all the night out of her eyes, wiping the dreams into oblivion, like always; wiping the nightmares into the unconsciousness: yet she knew what most of them were anyway, they were those returning kind—, the ones that seem to put her into a catatonic posture at times.
The park, the Tower Park was glowing as she held a cup of hot, very hot coffee in her hands, sipping, slightly sipping it, as she walked. The black coffee, black, with the richness of fresh laid black dirt; the coffee against a new blue sky, seemed to mix unequal, in her mind; thus, she murmured: ‘…from darkness comes light, comes light from darkness,’ she whispered to her mind’s eye. Then she drifted to the birds, which could be seen and heard singing their little duets as she strolled the grounds, just waking, that’s all, just waking up to greet the day, and clearing her mind from last night. Feeling the tranquility life had to offer. She was grateful, very, very grateful, that the dark thinning night had come and gone; the gift of sleep she did not take lightly: an immense gift from God, lest any man lose it, and have to find out the hard way. It is the only time you are alive, yet dead, so she confessed to herself.
As the morning sun now had risen high, a yellow path seemed to reflect through the trees and bushes: beams of the sun ate up the dew that had encircled the park, gave the tower a cape of sorts: the thick brick heavy looking medieval tower, with several thin sliced windows, carved a foot deep into its torso, could be seen sporadically in several places around the tower. The roof looked more similar to an Asian bamboo hat, but the tower was as beautiful as it was deadly to her.
She put her hands deep into her pockets, felt the keys to the Pizzeria [Guesthouse] where she was the manager; along with pizza’s beer and hard liquor drinks were also served there, along with sandwiches; nothing fancy. She had to open it today, had some accounting to do that should had been done the night before. To be frank, her mind was not really on the Pizzeria, rather on a number of other things, in particular, her mother came to her mind, who lived in Frankfurt, when they both would meet on a weekend, that was before she met Adam, they’d go to a fancy guesthouse, order Rippchen mit Kraut (pickled pork chops with sauerkraut); and Haspel (pigs knuckles) and Handkas mit Muski (strong, smelly cheese with vinegar oil). And then they’d talk to her mother’s friends from before the war, Albrecht Durer and Karl Klee, play some cards and then drift off to bed. Her mother only smoked when she was in the city, and would ask, “Eine Zigarette, bitte?” and she not want to give the cigarette to her, but like always they’d smoke it together, as if it was something special they’d do together before drifting off to sleep.
But now Carmen was not seeing her mother as frequent as she did before; partly because of her ongoing relationship with Adam and partly because of her ongoing dilemma with her sleep and nightmares, and its progress intensity.
Her assistant, Gertrude, a waitress in her early thirties, and friend, would come in around 2:00 PM, which was the time it officially opened anyways, and Günter Gunderson, a man in his late fifties, would show up around noon to turn on the gas stoves, and ovens, do some kitchen work, and make sure the tables were set up for Gertrude.



2




Carmen Schmidt, was only twenty years old, well, almost twenty-one but not quite; I suppose you could say she looked older for her age, and mature, surely business like, and was sharp with the numbers. About five foot five inches tall, almost a perfect weight for her height, not thin, nor fat, with dark brown hair, almost black; to most new guests at the restaurant, she looked reserved by all appearances, clean and mindful. She had deep pitted blueness to her eyes, almost hypnotic, should one stare too long into them.
As Carmen sat back in her chair in her small office, in the back of the kitchen, and to the side, she put the financial books in front of her, then started examining the debits, credits, and opening up mail, along with looking at checks and counted the money in the cashbox she had locked up in the side of her desk. It was 9:00 AM, she’d make the deposits later, and she always made them in the morning because it was too late when she closed the place at 11:00 PM.
She was sitting at her desk, which was by the side of a window, she liked windows, she liked the day time, the morning dew. It was a few nights ago she could see Jupiter, a red disc in the sky, a ting melodramatic for her, if not poetic; it came to her mind as she lit up a cigarette from her cigarette case and lighter; took in a big drag, sucked it inside of her—deep inside of her, all the way to her stomach: let it out slow, as if she was trying to capture the moment, and the full impact of the cigarette, its comforting elements, its calming effect. At night, she often ended up sitting by the window looking at the tower, the sky, the stars, checking out where the planets were with the planisphere [which helped her put stars within her reach], thus calculating, finding the planets with her stellar projections, in effect, she could predict sunrise and sunsets; discover constellations, identify the stars. Take her mind off the tower and other disturbing things.
As she looked out the morning window, the mist had not risen all the way in this part of the city, her vision was a bit blurred as she gazed at the morning people busily going to work, some leaving work from the hospital nearby, those on the night shift; thus, trying to rush home for a good morning sleep.
She could now taste the cigarette and coffee in her stomach, she didn’t have any food in her stomach, for the most part, just smoke and coffee now; it came up from her stomach, to her throat and left an odor in her mouth, she pulled out some gum from her purse and chewed it.


[Aplomb] In solitude, she now looked at her watch, asked her self in German, “Wie spaet ist es?” it was 10:30 AM, she looked out the window a second time, at her green Volkswagen, which was sitting alongside of the building, she was proud of it. She caught a glimpse of the wooden sigh that read: ‘Manager,’ in white, so young for a manager she thought, but her mother knew the owner, and it helped; matter of fact it was beyond a doubt, her influence that got her the job. It looked so alone—the car, she thought, like her she deliberated; the darkness of the green reflected like a mirror, owing of course to the new waxed-in shine; ‘…good,’ she murmured to herself: it was liken to a deep jade green, especially when the morning light hit it, like now; like now it glimmered. She put her sweater around her body tighter; the heat had not been on this morning and she had just turned it on as she walked in the building, it was sixty-three degrees in the café, several times she said out loud to herself in German, “Kahlt…”(cold), trying to warm herself up.
She looked at the clock on the kitchen wall, it was now 11:30 AM; hence, she told herself: Günter, or Mr. Gunderson, would be coming in half an hour. She had started to day-dream, fussing over her small apartment, and if she should move, move away from the park and the tower, out of Dieburg completely; but she loved it all so much, except for the nights. But she had asked herself many times: would it be any different in any other city? And the answer was always, ‘Nein,’ and her apartment window gave her such a good view of everything, especially the tower.
She could hear now, a few horns by passing cars being honked, it seemed to push her out of her day-dreaming mode; finding herself in the dinning room with her paperwork. Often she’d move out of the office simply because Günter would be fussing about the kitchen and he’d clean her office also (in the process), and she’d want to be out of his way, or he’d not do a good job, thus, she put her papers and letters on one of the several tables in the dinning room to finish her reports and other requirements.
As she sat behind a long table, she looked about the dinning room: it didn’t need a whole lot of cleaning she told herself. She had gone home early last night, and Gertrude must had done a quick job in picking up things, and Günter would follow up on it this forenoon.
Günter was an old veteran, a German soldier who fought in WWII with Hitler, or better put, within his Army, for he never met the Fuhrer personally, but had seen him give a speech once and thought him to be profoundly disturbed, although he didn’t use those words, he felt them for it became clear towards the end of the war that Hitler had a dark, deeply personal agenda for Germany, which stifled Günter’s motivation as a soldier. He had even read Mein Kampf; but the Third Reich did not produce the Master Race it promised, not at all, as Hitler projected; as he had gone over it a thousand times, everything was based on fear. That is how you get people to go to war, he told himself, again and again, but when you are young, such intelligence is not at ones finger tips. But he had paid his dues in an American concentration camp after the war, and that was that he felt, although Carmen was never sure how he took to her being Jewish.
Günter was a short robust kind of man with a flat kind of smile, if that is what it could be called: for lack of a better description. And she was never sure if he liked German-Jews—or Jews, like her; but then, she supposed he could not care one way or the other, a thought of the reverse; Gertrude didn’t mind, for the owner whom was Adolph Schulman, was a German Jew just like Carmen, whom lost everything in the war, and somehow put together this little pizzeria establishment. The war had just been over fifteen years. I mean, it wasn’t all that far in the past: painful memories were still well imprinted and alive in the residents of Dieburg and throughout Germany, for the most part, especially towards American GI’s stationed there.

There was a sound at the front door, Carmen glanced, it was Günter, with his fumbling of the keys, trying to open the door; he fumbled all the time, it was expected of him, and had he not, Carmen would have had to look twice to make sure it was him, she could see the top of his bald head: not completely bald, but close to it.
He came in.
After a moment, shutting the door, he saw Carmen, as he’d expected to see her, when she’d go home early the night before—all dilapidated, warn out.
“Hallo!” he said to Miss Schmidt, aloud; a smirk or a smile came on his face as he looked at her halfway moving toward the kitchen; Carmen could never differentiate his smirks and smiles, for to her, they both looked the same to her.




3


Günter quietly put on chintz and started to do his chores. He turned on the oven and the gas stoves, wiped the varnished-wooden tables down. He had little time for chitchat, or idol dialogue, and normally would not be found seeking any out. He was a man of little education, but it seemed in life, wherever he put his foot, things turned out alright for him, that being, he survived the war, the biggest of his feats. He told himself he didn’t mind working for a Jew, as long as he got paid, and a young pretty Jewess at that. But he was never sure of how she felt about him, so yes, he was guarded a little, and felt that keeping to him was safer for all involved at the restaurant, for the most part anyhow. He lived with the thought: some people come to work to work, others to play, and he wasn’t the other, and he came for work. He knew her father was killed by German SS-men, in 1944 when she was just four-years old, so he figured he had good reason to remain guarded. It was his philosophy: a woman either hated you or liked you, there was not much in-between with them. All in all, he simply did not want to resurrect any kind of discontentment within her, and he knew it didn’t take much to do that. He was hired several years before she came aboard, I mean she was only the manager for less than a year now, and the boss was a friend of the family (her family that is), isn’t that how it always is, he had told himself, but that’s just the breaks: it’s who you know, not what.
He now retreated to the back of the kitchen mixing up basil, pomadoro smelling its richness; as he stirred it, his pizza sauce; then he started thickening it with tomato past, cutting up more tomatoes to mix with the red sauce he had already put in the large bowl, a red sauce that was a ting hot to the tongue, with garlic, mushrooms, green peppers; in addition, he was sorting out meats, chopping up ham, sausage, pepperoni, putting them to the side, along with a verity of other ingredients to put on top of the pizzas; everything was preparation work for the moment; and along side of the dough he pulled out the cheeses—then Carmen came out in the walkway, the corridor to get some fresh air; the dinning room seemed to be getting overly warm now that the ovens were on, and the kitchen door open.



[Headlong] “Come…hier bitte…Günter,” [here please] asked Carmen, distinctly; again getting caught with her thinking in English and German at the same time.
“Ja…?” said Günter, eyes moving kind of nervously, as he took in a deep breath as if to say: now what.
She was about to make a headlong assault on him, as he seemed to have already guessed; and he clearly wasn’t ready for it. Then it came out of her mouth like a quivering landslide: “I am bloody sick of your thinking I do not know my job because of my age!” she said this half aloud, as if she had not the energy to say it louder—but wanted to—for lack of sleep; she was completely fatigued.
Said Günter, with tack and calmness, “You don’t have to worry about me; I know what I’m doing!” then caught his breath, adding: “…my dear, we are both grown-ups, are we not?”
The dry heat had left thick warmth on her lips, as she tried to think of what to say next, “What is that?” she said with squinting eyes that really meant: what the hell are you talking about.
As he stood there he had figured she must have had another bad night, I mean a real bad night.
“Listen Günter, you always seem amused with me…” before she could say another word, he interrupted.
“Thanks for the thought Ms Schmidt, but I’m too busy with my own life, I’m not worth all your trouble. I’m too old for this.” And he turned about and went back to his kitchen work. He grunted, and talked to himself as he walked: “Lauft was Gutes im Kino?”



—She was akin to water being moved by wind, the old man thought as he started to batter some of the dough for the pizza. ‘Her mind shifts like the wind, she lives in a suspicious world of her own,’ he mumbled inside his head that might have dripped out of his mouth. Then he just shook his head and added some salt and other spices to some pizza-dough.





4



(Quidam timore mortis orabant ((Pliny the Younger)) “Some, through fear of death, prayed to die”.


Günter walks back to his kitchen leaving Carmen to her own thoughts and went back to preparing, remade [but not cooked] pizzas, for the soon to be or come customers. It made no sense to him that she would be so disturbed so easily, but he knew in an hour or so she’d be ok, she always was, he told himself. It was those long nights she seemed to have, or so he guessed, what else could it be [?]

—She put her manicure things away, along with shoving the letters, and working papers to the side of the table and making a gesture of dismissal to Günter whom had already walked away anyhow, walked away a few minutes ago, as she had just stared as if in outer space—blank [straight ahead], she was having a delayed reaction in sensory and motion. She mumbled to the air: ‘…men always discard you once you let go of your reserve.’
Carmen, she never really retracted her accusations to Günter, or for that matter, Adam her current boyfriend, or anyone in general, apart from the owner, Adolph. Most of her friends accepted her emotional outbursts as part of her—silently at least, unjust or not. It was often irrelevant to her of the hurt she may have inflicted. The issue may be, she was willing to inflict it in the first place; whereas, it seemed more of a defense mechanism than a hidden motive to insult for the pleasure of hurting.

—Next, as Günter glanced through the kitchen door, Carmen was busy again with the bills, if anything it eased his mind knowing her mind was off him. After that, he noticed Gertrude had arrived a little early—who was more agreeable to her, they were like sisters one could say.
Said Gertrude to Carmen, in a soft calming voice, to relax her, “I should think Mr. Gunderson is so busy, he concentrates so hard on his cooking and mixing, he forgets there is another world outside the kitchen.” That made Carmen laugh a ting, and Günter a little irritated, save for the fact he knew she was trying to put out a fire; for his sake, and so she could go on the rest of the day not thinking about this little burst of energy she had with him awhile ago, so he didn’t take her comment as an insult.
“Yes, oh yes, I suppose your right, Gertrude. He means well, and I know men believe what they want to, anyhow, not sure why I squander my time getting mad at him.”
“Did you have a bad night, last night?” Gertrude said empathically.
“They’re always bad, all of them, or at least most all of them lately,” she said with taking in a deep breath of air, and holding it in her abdomen so she could let it out, all at once and get a release—a good exhale.
“What’s Mr. Gunderson doing now?” asked Gertrude, as if she didn’t know.
“Oh, go tell him everything’s ok when you get a minute, I think you want to, you’re my big sister, the one I never had. Matter-of-fact, tell him after I go, I got to…go…” she thought for a moment, kind of went blank, then said as if in a fog was lifting, “…Ich gehe zur Post, zum Postamt…(I’m going to the Post Office); I need to get some fresh air….” She then stood up as if she was lost again, in some time zone (possibly fighting her ill-temper), as Gertrude watched her push her chair in, under the table, and leave without another reaction.




5


There were times when Adam frightened Carmen, and when she brought this up to him, his reply was simply: “I must be exciting—“, and silence would befall Carmen. What an answer she thought, could he not come up with something better?

As she drove her car to the Post Office several blocks away, her mind shifted to early twilight, the night before when he had come over to her apartment, as he usually did a number of times during the week and stay over until midnight or so, and then leave; he’d never stay over night the whole night, not anymore, anyway; not wanting to deal with her in the middle of the night, especially with her nightmares. Anyhow, he was going to kiss her but decided not to, she was concentrating on something else. Adam looked away, lit a cigarette then. He then pondered on: does she not think there is a limit to her justifying her outbursts, or out of nowhere she had stopped a sexual advancement and questioned him where he was all day, which was at work, but a jealousy was developing; was there no limit to this? In point of fact, he had gone to a party and afterwards she somehow knew it, possibly [he considered]: ‘…she may have even followed me.’ He didn’t know how she knew, but she did. Yet, she wasn’t true to him either, so he figured, so why should he be true to her, was his thinking.
She looked over at Adam again; nothing seemed to bother him which irritated her even more. An indifferent sneer she labeled it.
“You have an answer for everything,” she said with a sarcastic tone to her voice.
To Adam, his not responding was simply not interfering with her mood, hoping it would fade away into oblivion.
“Adam,” she asked in a demanding voice, “what am I to you?”
”I thought you knew, I thought I’ve told you a number of times,” was his answer. One thing Adam didn’t like was what most women had learned, was to make sacrifices quietly, and not to expect a thank you from men all the time. This she protested against—plus, she’d not feed his illusions as most men wanted.
“If you have, it must have slipped my mind,” she said in repose.
“Maybe we both feel important to one another, just because we need to.” He commented.
“Oh,” added Carmen, “I’m your stray cat in need of love, and you need to feel mannish, or like to be in charge, so you jump in bed with me, what exactly are you made of?” Everything went quiet for a moment.
“Well,” said Carmen, “a woman either loves or hates, there is little in-between (she thought: where did I pick that up).”
Adam wanted to leave that alone, in fear he’d put her in another mood swing, and all hell would break loose. He lay besides her, softly caressing her shoulder, thinking how nice it was in the past when he didn’t realize her unbearable strain was present, her bewilderment, that he was now infected with. At times it was unendurable. But she’d always say, “Ich Liebe dich…” (I love you), which was hard for him to say, but he loved hearing it in German, it was, as he told her on many occasions, more poetic than English.


[Carmen’s Hate] “Is it true,” asked Adam, “…women outshine men in scheming? or so I’ve heard someplace?”
Said Carmen with an irritated voice and a forced blush “You’re a lover and akin to a torch that grows brighter when shaken.”
She seemed now to have changed again, and Adam was a good lover, but could be forceful, even hard handed at times.
“I wish you’d stay overnight again, my nights are a flurry, long and troubling… quite trying, is more like it I suppose.” She looked out her window, she knew he’d go, but she was begging nonetheless, again, and again for him to be there with her, be there when she was having her nightmares and so when she’d opened her eyes he’d be there, and she’d know it was all right, everything was fine, he would hold her, she’d be safe. But it was too much to expect.

—She was now at the Post Office. And so she walked in, handed the clerk the letters, and as she took them, she greeted a few of the women she knew and men, they had eaten at her Pizzeria a few times, then left quietly, and drove over to the military base in Babenhausen, some eight miles away, and to the PX. Adam was on her mind, and she might just as well surprise him by stopping by and seeing him, then get him off her mind, and see if he was coming over again this evening. Furthermore, Augsburg, Germany came to mind, as often times it did. Where she lived with her father when she was young, they’d walk the Lech and Wertach river together, hand in hand; hers being so small, they’d fit right into his, as if it was a pocket. She liked the Rathaus Town Hall also, built in 1615 AD; it was a master piece of construction. And she liked Augsburg in general, it has a long history, dating back to 15 BC, named after Augustus, of Rome; built as a Roman compound.
As her mind now slipped back to Adam, she assured herself, she’d try to be more accommodating than she was before: so she told herself. Adam was the General Manager of the little PX (kind of an all around store, mostly grocery store). As she pulled up in front of the Post Store [PX], Adam saw her through the window and left immediately, having Sofia-Marie taking the cash register, his assistant. He was happy to see her—in a way; that was the problem, he was if anything, becoming co-dependent, or put another way, addicted to her.
“How was the night, bad again?” he asked her as he leaned into her car window on the passenger’s side. Almost as if he was saying: see I knew you’d have a bad night and that is why I had to leave.
“I enjoyed getting into bed with you last night,” she commented to Adam, to lure him back into it, this evening: “Why not stay over another night, make it two nights in a row?” which was not uncommon, but not nearly the norm either for both of them. She added, “I promise you, really I do, I promise you I will be good.” She said in an awe-stirring and jumpy way.
“Sure, why not,” he said with a smile, thinking: what worse could happen. “I’ll be over after I do my bookwork and stuff.” And that was that. Carmen then took off quickly, and her mind was free to go back to the bistro, to her Pizzeria for work.

For him, for Adam, the compassion he had to feed her was fading with each new day, or so it seemed. He’d tell her but she was so much into the affair, more now than he was. It wasn’t long ago when he was much more into it than she though, how things reverse themselves, or have their cycles. They had both said they loved each other, although marriage was never brought into the picture, it would seem progression would lead it that way, even by inertia—and so the thoughts had been there for each other at different times. He liked her looks, her short hair, her smell of soapy cleanness, and her style of dress, it was in a way all so perfect. She was smart and sharp, sometimes too smart for him…better put: she was smarter than him, and she knew it, and held it in. But similar to him, who got a good Federal Government position after leaving the Army, and she had her mother’s friend hire her as the manager of the guesthouse…her mother living in Frankfurt like a hidden mouse, a hermit, having told her time and again, she was done with people per se, and preferred her quiet hidden life away from it all; in a way, an unfettered life, free from it all.
Sometimes in the mornings when he’d meet her in the park, Tower Park, before they’d both open up their shops of work, she’d sit on the bench twisting her fingers relentlessly. It was times like that, that he dreaded his passion and love for her, and it got twisted, call it an illusion of fear, a fear he’d have to take care of her somewhere medically along life’s short or long line, and he wasn’t prepared for that. Oh, I suppose she would have taken care of him in a heart-beat, if he had such problems, if they married (that’s the way she loved, or wanted to love), but he knew he couldn’t love that way, married or not. Right or wrong, it was just the way it was, or he was. His love had conditions I suppose one might say, and neurosis was not part of the package he wanted, if that was really what she had, and he was not a doctor, but it was a good word to label her with he figured, in lack of a better one. His reaction was becoming a fearful one, one that saw a demigod in the play of their lives. To her it was just nightmares, and depression, and sleepless nights in her life that brought on a kind of hyper, or abrasiveness to her irritated emotional makeup, her life in general, which of course was becoming plagued with it. He said to himself: he still loved her, just not enough; and the love that was left, was drawing a silence to it.
Adam knew she was a snob most of the time, she even applied it with tack, always snow with salt. And he knew her fear, and as she knew his male weakness, both were ripe for blackmail in any serious dialogue, if one wanted to hurt the other. Thus, it was better I suppose on both of their parts not to be too quick to judge the other, or verbally do so; and so often silent stares took the place of verbal attacks.
She had pulled up with her car to her apartment now in Dieburg.



6



[The Town-let/or *The Castle Tower of the City] Dieburg was not large by any means, but it was an interesting town; it was alive, and not many American GI’s lived in Dieburg, lest they get scorned by the locals who still remembered WWII quite clearly, and the bombing by the Americans the city had to endure. Outside the city limits were grazing lands for a small heard of cows; and beyond that was an Army Nuclear Site, deep embedded within a wooded area. Thus, the city was really called; “Munster by Dieburg,” for Munster was the city one had to go through—or might go through—to get to the site; where Adam had been stationed prior to his military discharge, and his taking over as the manager of the PX in Babenhausen. Munster (or Little Munster, there was another Munster in West Germany ((in the South)), called Big Munster); Dieburg was a few miles from Munster, as Munster was a few miles from the US Army Site. And Babenhausen was back a number of miles behind Dieburg. Thus, to get to the Military site from Babenhausen, you’d go to Dieburg, often, and then to Munster and then to the Site. Or one could bypass Dieburg, and go straight from Babenhausen to Munster and onto the Site. But in this case seldom did Carmen go to either places, that is, the Military Site near Munster or Munster itself; rather Babenhausen, or Dieburg, Darmstadt, some fifteen away.
Dieburg was an old city, with an old tower. An old church that still had bullet holes in its thick front wooden doors left over from the war, deep scars, like Carmen had, that did not seemed to fade with time.
As she parked her car by her apartment along side of the road, she lit another cigarette; she was becoming a chain smoker. In a habit-formed response she looked up at the first story window to see if Ivan (the landlord, fifty-seven years old) and his wife Anna Marie (forty-five) were home, she didn’t see him, or his wife’s pale moon face that looked like a mask of a balled Hindu priest, with an undisturbed calm about it, as she seemed always to have. Her big bay window was empty, and the curtains covered it for the most part, no movement, no one staring out, or around the curtains to see if she was coming home, as often one of them did. Perhaps their friends Heinz, Gisela and Helmut, were over playing cards she conjured in her mind; that would be on the other side of their apartment, not the bay window side, in the kitchen. Oddly enough, their kitchen was on the opposite side of hers.
Her mind now shifted on cool lemonade as she walked to the wrought-iron gates (with a spiked brick wall on each side of the gates), to the door of the duplex, and its few flowers that sat outside the large house: perennials, minced with daisies. She then got into the hallway, walked up the fourteen steps to the second floor.
As she paced her kitchen floor looking outside her window, the park looked so peaceful and picturesque. Spring was beautiful in Dieburg, she thought, but not the forthcoming nights. She then poured herself some lemonade.


[Nightly Ineptness] Sometimes she just wanted to disappear when she thought Adam or Günter was laughing at her. She was trying to stand on her own two feet, as a woman and individual, in spite of her age. Whatever it was, she felt she had no ability to put herself to sleep, other than drink herself drunk to do so at times, which she’d do a few times a week; knock herself out with the kick of booze; it was her idea, do it quick, before she could dream, or unwillingly enter the world of nightmares. But much too often she felt useless and not in control, if she could avoid night-sleep completely, all the better, she would have done so. On the other hand, if she could get a good night sleep, it would be God sent. On another note, there was no synagogue in Dieburg; she’d have to go to Frankfurt where her mother went for her spiritual needs, one might say, once a month or so; or to Darmstadt, yet that didn’t help her sleeping dilemma.
She tried to sleep in her natural rhythm, but it would change, she tried to vision Adam staying overnight, for he had done so a few times in the beginning of their relationship, but she scared him off waking up screaming, and her heart pounding, as if she was running after the three SS-Soldiers who took her father from her in 1944, never to return again; that was the last time she had seen him.
She liked Adam, he had a long thick neck, how she remembered her father as; and broad shoulders, narrow hips, an impressive specimen of a man she’d deliberate, when alone; a young man of twenty-three; unbroken by the world yet, superimposed ideology.




7


Both of their natures were different in a sense, what they lacked was what they did not examine in fear of finding out, I would expect (Adam didn’t know his weaknesses, which would come out in time; and Carmen, knew hers it seemed, and thus, became dependent on Adam for support, which he really couldn’t give; couldn’t give because of his own weaknesses). Somehow it seemed in the long run—for they had been dating close to a year now—in the long run, they could not recognized how to work out their differences—partly because of her catatonic condition [s], and his runaway reaction [s]; and to repeat myself, examine them in fear of having to put work into it; let me explain: Carmen needed success in business to feel good about herself, where few women enjoyed the challenge without male hindrance (remembering this was back in 1960) she needed it, and pushed the male part out of her way to find it, to get it. Adam, on the other hand, a good looking man in many ways, with more of a stable personality than Carmen, but could also be a heavy drinker, and a hot tempered man at times and was much more carefree than Carmen, too much so in his business, to where it affected his management of the store: that is to say, his fooling around with the help, didn’t help his store’s profits, he’d steal from it if need be to make it through the month, and fix the books to make it all filter out properly, all in the name of amusement. He had spent two years in the military, and took a European out [as it is called, when leaving the military and remaining in country], thus, acquiring a job as the manager for the government store [as they say in the military: the PX], under a civilian status. But again, not much was being worked on the relationship, in the sense of trying to preserve it and deal with the surfacing issues:


[Colorlessly] The days were gone—where their presence, would create a spark within them…Carmen didn’t notice Adam’s preoccupation almost matched hers; his being how to get out of the relationship that seemed to be getting progressively stronger, or worse; and trying to start another life for himself without her; whereas hers was trying to hang onto him by all means.
When Frantisek Andre showed up one Saturday, he was out of his office to meet her like a bolt of lightening, as if he was watching out a window for her. She was becoming his, if not hers also, developing distraction; both fancied one another; that is, while her husband was in training, she grew to liking Adam more and more; or so it seemed, that it was starting to be.
Frantisek looked at Adam, he looked so miserable she thought. “I thought it would be all right to make a little visit down to your PX, and see you, getting some bread for ‘show and tell,’ you know, so no one picks up on …” she stopped, for nothing had really happened yet, it was all in the makings. “You’re good for me dear,” she said, something for him to think about was her intentions.


I would think, and Adam knew, or at least he felt it, Carmen loved him, but then she didn’t seem to love herself, I suppose a self-esteem issue that was more noticeable recently. And what bothered him most was she seemed to, inescapably project, her lack of self-worth onto their relationship, or better put, onto him. True, self-esteem can be made healthier if we feel loved, which she was trying to pull from Adam, but it was hard for her to believe Adam loved her—I suppose it scared her. She could suffocate him at times, and that was another peeve with him: “Prove you love me,” she’d say to him. As a result, it was hard for him to meet her needs.
But Adam loved her nonetheless—yet love is a challenge at times, and can be quite puzzling, and there were many danger signals he seemed to recognize in recent time. He was seeing her as she really was, not as he’d wished her to be (as back in Garmisch), and that again was a drawback. She needed help, and those dreams brought on frenzied, if not gloomy attacks, a dimness to his perspective on his wanting to have an ongoing relationship with her (so, unintentionally, he put her on probation within the vaults of his mind). And love was a decision, one he was not sure he could fully make, under such conditions.
O, they used to set aside time for certain things for them to do each week, and now it was more at random; meaning, the golden times were kind of over for them, and she was trying to sew them back together. Could he turn ‘hate’ around? …was a thought that was going on in his mind lately. Hate being the other side of love. He was in pain over this relationship. He couldn’t walk in her shoes; empathy was not in his heart, as much as it may have been needed to be.



A Morning, But no Sun

The morning comes, but brings no sun;
The sky with storm is overrun;
And here I sit in my room alone,
And feel, as I hear the tempest moan,
Like one who hath lost the last and beat,
The dearest dweller from [my] breast!

—T B. Read





8


As she looked at the tower, its beautiful thick stone structure, as if it was undefeatable, with its roof that looked like a hat, out of some Asian city, she was in its grips, it was numbing her, numbing her wits, her thinking, what thinking she could keep in place in her fragmented at times, and numbing mind; consequently, she tried to push it aside, ignore it, hide from it by pacing the kitchen floor; but the mind controls the body, and the body knows that and weakens as the mind overheats, as her mind often did. For a long time, very long time she had an emptiness in her, possibly it was her feeling that her father abandoned her; oh, she knew he didn’t leave her on purpose, ‘…but he could had taken off to London in 1943, taken off in time to avoid those SS-Men, and not waited until the SS came to get him in 1944, what was he waiting for, to get caught so he didn’t have to be with us…,’ were her thoughts

[The many thoughts of Carmen] Everyone blames Hitler, the Jew hater, the killer. They even drew pictures, cartoons of Jews attacking German girls (during the time of the war ((some fifteen years ago)), raping them to built hate against the Jew, but the Fuhrer wasn’t there that day they took my father (she told herself time after time after time). In 1944, the Americans and British troops were landing in France; he [he being: Hitler] was too busy with that stuff to order my father’s death. (‘No,’ she concluded a hundred times), Hitler was not the first nor the last word of the war or the direct cause of my father’s death (indirectly, yes), many people were with him, told him, pushed him to do evil, but he did not kill my father, evil or not, it was those three soldiers. Father’s death was by the Nazi system; by the three Bavarian soldiers who took him to the death camp at Chelmno (Carmen did not know for sure where her father was taken but had overheard a learned man was taken that day from a library out of a big house within the city of Augsburg, to Chelmno). They are the men in dark in my dreams, she had concluded. And so she told herself time and again all these things, wrote letters and made notes of her sorrows, her thinking; put them in a shoebox. She divided Hitler from the Nazi Party separating one from the other, trying not to get angry at the cause or social unrest, but rather at the serological minds that chose to do the damage; she even watched the Nuremberg trials over and over to see if she could identify any of the three soldiers who had taken her father from her. But she never could identify one. In her mind, they kidnapped him, with ill-conceived will, ‘…they could have passed the house,’ she chanted to herself. ‘They could have said, these SS-Men, if they wanted to, they could have said: No need to kill one old Jew today, let’s do something better than wipe out a Jew ok? Everybody at the trials in Nuremberg said: we were taking orders, which were a major part of their appeals, yet saying you’re sorry does not mean one stinking thing. It does not bring back the dead.’




It was I suppose why she needed to be self sufficient, somewhat in charge of herself; just something inside of her, telling her: no one should be allowed to put you back into such a predicament.
She looked at the corner of her bed, a table was there with a light on it, and the Talmud sat alone in its embossed brown leather with its leather clasps. Her father thought much of it, she hardly ever read it though, but it was a keepsake, and still it was her gift from her mother, her father took it wherever he’d go, if it was for more than a week at a time that is. He was scholarly at its contents, of the oral law. He used to tell her “It is the wisdom of thousands of years condensed.” Then he’d add: “It is my daughter, the conglomerate of law, legend, and philosophy.” Then he’d insert, “…use it for unrealistic problems in your life, they will come,” adding, “Werden alle dich dose …!” (Become all you can). But she was only four years old, and now it didn’t seem to matter.
‘It was in 1944,’ she whispered to herself, now looking at the tower again, ‘1944, I was sitting in the library of father’s study, it reminded me of a bell tower of sorts, he used to toy with me about that, and when I looked out the window, I could see other towers, (it was in Augsburg, Germany), maybe they were steeples now that I think about it; then mom and I were taken by surprise when the SS-Men, Hitler’s Germans came in, dad said, “Hide behind the armchair and curtain,” it was a long curtain, and the chair was in front of it, and we hid, but I could see from a crack I made in the fabric of the two curtains together, I could see them. And they pulled him away, pulled him away like a dog, akin to a drunk off the streets; all three men; one was an officer, the other two of lesser rank possibly. We then went to London to escape, mom and I. Dad always told mom to do that, should something resembling this happen because they’d torture him until he talked, and he needed to know we were safe, so he made us both promise to quickly go to London, to leave everything except for the cash we on hand, along with some hidden inside a book on the bookstand in his library and some jewelry, along two paintings on the walls, small paintings worth a few Marks, or Franks, or dollars, should this very thing happen.’
It was not easy getting to London, and bribery was needed to persuade a German friend to drive them to Paris, a painting that was in the library persuaded him though, a Picasso, and in the dark of the night, Carmen’s mother passed as Hermann’s wife, from there, she had found a boarding house in Paris, which had refugees from several countries, all pretending to be of German stock or at least not Jewish, and in support of the new regime. At the boarding house the French supporters of the Germans, were not supports as they had pretended, and made arrangements for Carmen and her mother for passage onto London. Again, she gave a painting she had hidden away in her suitcase for the hardship of getting them there, a painting of Goya’s.

As she looked at her bed, she wanted to make love with Adam, to forget her day-dreaming. It was Saturday evening, Sunday the restaurant was not open, so that was good. But the PX was open, and Adam had to work.


[Wake up] ‘Carmen woke up,’ a voice said (too often a distant…and bewildered voice within her, intruded—) it was the middle of the night, out of her sleep she bent over the bed, lo, the same nightmare had come and faded away, but not until she was in a panic. The nightmare was like her shadow, she couldn’t shake it; she was struggling with tears to overcome it:
“I’m sorry daddy, honestly I am,” she cried. Then started thinking: how will it be in ten-years? She was still leaning over the bed, the leather book by the side of her face. “Everything in ten years will be the same: in twenty-years, in thirty-years.” She shook her head, and then added to her self-talk, “I know Adam’s toleration is melting away, and I love him so, so very much.” She bent upward toward the bedside window, there was the tower again. It had strength to it, strength she needed: she whispered to herself as if talking to the tower: ‘One has to have somebody daddy?’ a statement-question possibly. She felt childish, and slipped back under her covers to try and fall back to sleep again (wearing a black calico nightgown). She wanted to be: free, free, free of the burdensome nightmares. She found herself drifting off saying: “Frei, frei, frei, frei, frei…” (…free, free…) as if she was counting sheep. Then no sooner had she fallen to sleep, the telephone rang, it woke Carmen up from a dead sleep, one she cherished, for there was no duplicating of a nightmare then; those kind of sleeps she never had a memory of, with a little irritation she rolled out of bed and went into the kitchen to answer it, then it was already on its forth ring; when she answered, the person had already hung up, but the light of the day was shinning through her window: no need to turn on the light she told herself. She sat down by the window, looked at the tower again, the brook over in the park and just thought of Adam, how it used to be, and started to write two poems, poetry and water calmed her:


Off, on Off

We fear death [it]
Weeps at its breast…
For we cannot change—
What we fear to lose
…’Life!”




Hell’s Hawks

Hawks dyed coal black,
I rode to hell and back;
All I saw was a mass
A mass of clay
People baked…
Baked
From fiery flames—
Sneering… .






9


At times Adam revenged upon her nervousness, her shyness, her phobia. He blamed her for not resolving her internal issues, her nightmares; in consequence, causing him frustration, which he silently created doubt about for a long term relationship with Carmen, or better said, it was in its developing stages. She had seen a psychologist a few times, but always left more frustrated than cured. He had suggested she gain some more social skills, but her moods seemed to dominate her too often to do so, and she’d have to fight them instead, and that in itself kept her at a distance of trying to make any social obligations, lest they try to put her away if she had a breakdown. And he interpreted her nightmares for her, but that didn’t get rid of them.
Adam would have married her by now had he not discovered her illness, or as he had heard a doctor say: ‘disorder;’ if it truly was a sickness, whatever it was—, as he had seen it: her vulnerable child like clumsy behavior; her switching moods in the middle of having a cup of coffee. It all was coming to finality, or somehow a resolve for Adam at least; save for the fact, he still loved her.
The problem that seemed to get to Adam was that she never knew herself when her next emotional swing would create an outburst, or what would trigger it. Adam got to thinking maybe he triggered her, why not, it happened enough times when he was around her. Was he the cure or the curse, he didn’t know. So, needless to say, he was guarded when he was around her and more so now than six months ago. And how would it be six months down the road he asked himself [?] At this point, it was a rhetorical question at best. As a result, the subject of marriage was put off, not even mentioned, if not laugh at for even thinking it. On the other hand, in his eyes, going forward with the relationship, or even withdrawing from it, were equally hard for him. When Carmen was not pale in lack of sleep, she had a strange perverse beauty, and he liked it. In addition, he’d think more than not, about her great proportioned body; and if anything was keeping him connected to her it was in part that. And the thought emerged, was he just an emotional asset for her? He didn’t know one way or the other, and therefore, he let it go at that; without the clutter of marriage. It was although coming the end, where he did not feel like going over to her house, lest he find a lioness there, waiting to devour him.



[Day-dreaming] Carmen was now daydreaming looking out the window at the little Tower Park across the street with staring eyes, dark-pitted blue eyes, diamond-blue staring eyes, eyes that could swallow or consume any and everything in its path it seemed. Eyes that ventured back to the first days they had met: in particular, the third date they were on. He was at his office at the Babenhausen compound, at the PX. She was waiting in his office. He said goodbye to the help, and locked the door. There was a backdoor to the building, she’d figured they’d use that and go out for a bite to eat and a few drinks after he locked up. She liked him, especially his humorous ways when he was free of stress; in any case, she found him at a guesthouse in Dieburg, the only American brave enough to go into one in that city, for the city still had a harsh memory of the past war, World War II that is; it was still hot in their blood what the Americans had done with their bombing and shooting of the city—. She had stopped by for a quick drink of wine, and then was on her way home. That was the first meeting. The second one was in the park, he met her there and they talked, talked and talked one morning, almost about everything in the world—or so it seemed to her—as they walked around the reserved park. This day was the third day they had got together. It was then, then she did something undisclosed. And I shall tell you now, now and forever, and thereafter we shall push it under the rug, for lack of information:


A Fatal Call
[Carmen’s Dilemma]


Carmen had gone to the doctors in secret, the third doctor was one she seemed more convinced in. She was concerned about her condition, her dreams, her lack of sleep, sleep that was robbing her from life, from dreams at times, and producing some kind of mental and physical desecration to her whole created being. What was it, she asked herself, genetic, psychological, physical, a depression state? She was at times anxious, depressed, and there seemed to be a gulf between her developing insomnia that was becoming more noticeable, and her mind which was becoming less crisp; her body functions deteriorating. Dying of sleeplessness, on one hand, and plagued by nightmares on the other—which one would destroy her first she asked herself?
She had dreams, or you could call them nightmares, regarding her brain having small holes in it or so it felt; like a science fiction script, or movie. A fatal insomnia is what was being created in the past several months. She had seen this sometimes in the cow pastures, the cows going mad; thus, she could identify with them she told the doctor, the third doctor Hans Brandt. He knew very little of her disease, or disorder he claimed, but had seen it in sanitariums, so he said, yet it didn’t seem to him to be a mental disorder, but rather a genetic transmission (a protean war inside her brain, a genetic mutation in the genes). He could only tell her that the few cases that he knew of, involving such a sleeping disorder, seemed to be fatal, when at its end, was not long lived. Hence, so he told her, “If we could alter the genes, take an herb or something, prayer…something…anything, it would slow the process down, but science knew very little in his field.”




Dark as it was in the main grocery store area [of the PX], he turned the light off now in the backroom, only a small light from the both rooms were on, which gave shades of light laced in gray to each other’s frame. He clung to her like a man in heat, pulled her up to his body tight, “Listen, turn the light off and lock the door.” She didn’t know why he couldn’t do it himself, but she turned around and locked the door, walked over to the bathroom and turned the light off there as well. There was a reflection from the outside light on the pole, producing just enough glows to see each other, enough of each other to get turned on; then she walked over to his desk. It was faint, the lighting. Adam then threw his coat off and onto the floor, next to his desk. “Be quiet,” he said, as if someone was around.
“All right,” said Carmen, a little spooked, but liking the intrigue.
They both hesitated, standing, she smiled, “It’s all right,” he said, she remained silent.
“Are you just going to stand there, or are we going to do it,” she said. She brushed back her hair with her fingers—as if to press every hair in place, murmured vaguely, her blouse was slightly opened, and he could see her breasts bare, no bra, “Oh yes, you are…large.” She then kissed him with all her passion, as she bent down to lay on the jacket on the floor, softly and coldly, as they both went into each others arms, as if melting into a cocoon.


Sometimes she thought, as she pulled herself away from her daydreaming mode, she thought her anger got out of control, so much so, she didn’t quite notice she’d press her lips tightly together, so tightly together to where the blood had gone out of them. If only she could control her anxiety, cast discretion to the wind, like Adam. She did in the beginning of their relationship—even though it was a ting hard, but it was getting worse, her infirmity, or whatever it was inside of her. ‘Yes, yes,’ she murmured to her silent self, ‘Caution of the beast, I need more rest, more sleep.’ But it was easier said than done. If only Adam knew how bad it was, she’d tell herself. Oh she tried to tell him, several times matter-of-fact, and he’d listen for hours on end. But it was getting old for him, and for her it was getting worse—: old and worse, old and worse…frustration for both. And the doctor’s medication had so many side-effects it was hard for her to work and keep a clear mind, and was it the right medication in the first place [?] I mean, no one really could diagnose her.
She had told him about her nightmares, in particularly one, and her ongoing lack of sleep, that was her number one distress; it haunted her: the SS-Men—1944, the fire in the coffin, the soldiers standing by her, and her father in the coffin; it was burning…burning, the coffin was burning…and her and her mother was looking deep…deep into the tower like coffin beside her, the shape of her nightmare was in that coffin. The soldiers, the three SS-Men were close by, ready it seemed to throw her in it, inside the burning coffin, but she’d always wakeup in time, and at times she didn’t need to wakeup, she woke up. It is fair to say, her sleeping became more of a disorder, in recent days, than when she had first met Adam.


10


He was her mediation in a way, yet she was his enjoyment, his sex object, sex machine. And somehow, it was most difficult for either one to walk away from the other…hard to walk away and stay away. It was like being ripped apart every time if they stayed away for a number of days. And the longer they kept the romance going, bad or good, the harder it was to separate, and the more ripping it seemed took place, thus, avoidance needed to be regimented he figured.
They both seemed stupidly tied to one another you could say; sex does have its meshing, and produces its cravings, like cigarettes and alcohol, and it was doing its job well on both of them. If they went out without one another, but rather with friends, out alone that is, they’d talk to the others, their friends, about each other: kind of co-dependency episode [s] Hence, it was hard to figure out who was who in this sense, each was losing their identity for the other’s; or so it would seem to an onlooker, and Carmen was more of Adam, than Adam was of Carmen in that sense. That is to say, she was more melted into his persona, than the other way around
—and both did their own evaluating during these end months, these months that started in the spring of 1960; they looked at the dependency they had on one another, but they didn’t call it dependency—when one’s too close to the forest you call it everything but dependency (or enslavement, or addiction). In the long run of events, in essence, they just couldn’t resolve differences; it would seem such things could be worked out, perhaps in a different light, but they were like two people looking at a saddle and blanket when they should had been looking at the horse; in spirit, they were looking at the situation, not the problem. But that is always, or nearly always, the case, in such destructive and tumbling relationships. And we must remember, Carmen’s dilemma.




11




Again Carmen found herself sitting in a wooden chair, at the kitchen table, looking out the window at the tower—yes, the same window, and the same tower: the Dieburg Tower, smoking one cigarette after the other. It was Monday morning and she had to go to work, but could she [?] She was not well; she had waked up late last night, done something unusually, and could not get back to sleep, and slept dimly in the first place, if at all. She lit another cigarette, it seemed to put her in more of a control mode, yet as she looked at the ashtray, the other one was still lit: she put it out in the glass ashtray, rubbed it as if it was a rag and she was polishing the house silver. She could see her face in the tower; it was in her nightmare the night before. Her father’s memory, his ghost was in that tower, she was sure of it now. It was his unofficial coffin; the one the SS-Men, the soldiers never gave him. The cigarette started to burn her fingers; she quickly put it out, and then lit another one, and wrote another deathly poem:


Assassins

Upon a stone
My name will lie
Tomorrow, if I shall die.

If granted, yet
Another breath
Earth or devil

Could careless…
They both wait to slay
Like Assassins… .





the kitchen was warm, Adam would come, meet her in the park, maybe even want to go to bed with her, sometimes he did, and then lately, lately he never did showed up half the time. ‘I can’t blame him, my unpredictable behavior is enough to drive me crazy myself, and I suppose him also.’ But she was hoping, if she could only put herself back together. It was a long night, and the last few hours she had not slept well. She leaned back against the wall, the chair on its two legs; her legs crossed tight, her hair untidy, then she started to recall the evening:


“Hello to you rain,” she said walking in the wind at 2:00 AM, buckets of water pouring out of the sky, hitting the walls of the tower giving it shadows as the bushes and trees around it manifested the shadows against the thick solid door of the tower, as she walked across the street with only a robe on, a blanket over her head, a crowbar in her hands, she had taken out of the car beforehand; she stuck the crowbar in the lock, and cracked it open, then she pushed the heavy door open.
She touched the walls of the tower as if they were holy, standing now in the first few feet of the entrance of the tower, it was round, with a spiral, or coiled stairway leading to its top, in which she’d find a big room with a thick wooden floor once she climbed to its level. There must have been a hundred steps to the entrance of the upper chamber room.
Once in the room, she saw a chandelier, cast-iron, with a chain for a rope. At the end of the rope was the chandelier with candle holders in it, four or five. The wax was old, as she shinned her flashlight onto them.
“Are you cold?” she asked someone, as if someone was in the tower with her; her shoulders were shivering, so she put on the sweater she brought along. ‘Don’t be silly,’ the tower whispered back, or something in the tower whispered back to her. Everything had an echo in the tower she noticed. She looked about, was she in a trance, a dream, the beginnings of a nightmare, no, she was in the tower, she had walked up the stairway, she was like a swimmer who swam the English Channel now, tired, she sat down in the middle of the empty room, the flashlight placed upward on its back, so it shinned toward the tower’s chandelier and beyond [toward the ceiling]. The tower room was like a mausoleum to her. Her finger tips in the darkness, exploring with her eyes the tomb, like a ghost might do; she stood up, walking all around the circular chamber room, touching its walls

—“Are you crazy?” said a voice. “Is that what you’re annoyed about?” She had a sensation, explosion in her head, it wasn’t the first time. “You were rather sweet before,” was now a twist to the voices’ statement. She was holding her head, had a hand full of hair in her grips, and her grip got tighter and tighter. “What is it my sweet child?” the voice said. (A pigeon distracted her for a moment; it was circling the inner part of the steeple top; she lightened up on the pull of her hair.)
“Nothing,” replied Carmen.
“But my precious, it is not true,” remarked the voice. A storm outside the tower was booming with thunder, it made the pigeon move to the cross-beam above her, and then on over to the window, in case it felt it needed to escape.
“I know, I’m supposed to feel such things, you can’t because you’re dead!” Carmen thought about what she said, paused, looked about, was starting to feel foolish. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why do I feel such pain—?” She wiped her face, lifted her head, and wiped the tears from her eyes with her forearm. “I’ve been beastly to so many people. I have made them all unhappy. I wish I were dead like you papa!” She moved about now bewildered, walking in circles, bobbing her head to the right and left. She felt embraced, and held her arms in and around herself tight, looking about in this small thick-bodied, stonewalled room. She clung to herself as if she had wings, and murmured remorse and love. “How are we ever going to meet again?”
“Don’t worry, we’ll fix it up later, when you’re feeling better,” said the voice

she didn’t want to leave the tower, actually at the sudden thought that dawn would soon be breaking, she had to rush down the multitude of stairs so the day watchman would not find her there; in consequence, she found herself saying to the massive structure, “I shall miss you. I’ll think about you. I promise I’ll be thinking about you…” then hitting the bottom step of the stairway, opening the door, the wind and rain rattling the iron clasps holding the door in place, she ran back to her apartment.



“S-shee,” she whispered looking out the window, affectionately without thinking, she stroked her dark glossy hair—“I slept two great hours without a thought of those SS-Men, those soldiers.” She said this looking at the tower; she felt her father’s presence in the tower now. She had been back from the tower for a while; it was going on 8:00 AM.
At the end of her bed was a chest of drawers, on top, she kept her cream jars and brushes, all in disarray. With the drawers slightly opened, her cloths were jammed in them as not to be able to shut them; this was something rather new for her in that she was not normally so untidy. As the months had come and gone, several of them since she knew Adam, she had become more so, more untidy; even stockings lay without their mate, here and there.



12


Günter Sanders was cleaning up the restaurant with Gertrude Fephr, both putting away everything from the night before, largely, dishes left out, and unwashed dishes in the kitchen. The floor was swept clean, both thinking since it was Saturday, Carmen would be in, but often she came in late on Saturday’s, as Friday’s were a testy evening—frequently—with much drinking going on.
Beer bottles were now being picked up and leftover pizza—not eaten from the night before—was being thrown into the garbage cans by Gertrude. Then all of a sudden, Gertrude got a phone call, it was Carmen, she was not feeling well, and asked Gertrude to close the place for her this evening, she’d not be able to make it in.
“Ja” (Sure) she told Carmen, with a voice that was more concerned about her well-being than about making money.
She’d [She being: Carmen] often rewarded her for such things as this with an extra bonus a few times a year; and if her boss didn’t give it to her, Adolph, she’d take it out of her own money and give it to Gertrude for her loyalty. —For the most part, Gertrude did it for her when asked, but it was becoming a biweekly task now, before it was perhaps once or twice in a three month period. She never did give Günter a bonus though—and he never complained, I suppose he felt lucky to still be working.

The previous night had been a gathering of old friends after the few customers in the guesthouse had left. Adam had shown up, and Laszlo and Koln Lindeual were there and they met Adam. When Carmen was gone, they tried to talk to Adam about her poor health, and not to take it as serious as to blame her for things she couldn’t help. And Gertrude was present, as she was most times when there was a get together; and Gyorogy and Bernard were present; all trying to assure Adam, life would be better as soon as she could put the pieces together of her father’s death. But Adam felt it was much more than that, it was something imbedded inside of her at a much younger age, and it, whatever it was, had not healed and was not going to heal.


(At present, Carmen had sharp but still some soft contours; and smooth dark shot hair; still attractive; kind of a ripeness which was possibly more of a poise than shape. She also had tension in her face and body, flatness to her once pretty smile. She seemed chilled and tired most of the time.)




Adam was at the PX, pleasantly talking with his two employees, and Frantisek, a German gal, married to a GI, whom stopped by to pick up some soda, milk, bread and tin goods; kind of a preplanned stop for her. For she really wanted to talk to Adam, but felt she should first bring up Carmen so it wasn’t so obvious, she was very attracted to him. Carmen was well liked in the community, and knew the gate guards, knew them as well as anyone I suppose, and had met several of Adam’s customers. And yes, Frantisek knew Carmen as well.
“Looks like you’re going to be closing up early?” said Frantisek with an interesting smile, one that said, ‘I like what I see… (with dilated pupils)’.
“No, no…oo…not really, I close up at 3:00 PM every Saturday; you just normally come in, in the mornings, if I recall right.” It was close to three.
“How about you and I going out when the base closes down and all the GI’s go out for training next month?” It was twice a year the whole compound would have to go to training up north for thirty days, and during this time many of the housewives were left alone on base and they’d fill up the two clubs on base, many cheating on their husbands. She was twenty-three years old, and married to a Captain in his early thirties, and quite lovely, with a foxy face, a face that seemed to blow smoke into yours, with a sexual invitation attached to it; and curves in the right places.
“Sounds like nice music, if I’m not going with Carmen I may take you up on that, if you’re not kidding?” She looked at Adam, smiled, and then kissed him on the cheek. It’s what she wanted to hear, if not more.
“You’ll just have to find out, won’t you?” Adam took in a deep breath and nodded ‘yes’. He wasn’t even sure if he meant what he said, she had asked before, but he just blushed and walked away. This time for some reason he didn’t, he took it a bit further.


[The Apartment] As Adam entered Carmen’s apartment, the kitchen was full of smoke, and staleness seemed to bounce off the walls. As he walked over to the kitchen window—for he had a key for such occasions when she’d not answer the door—; thus, he pulled down the shade in the kitchen and closed the curtain, locked the door behind him. He threw his jacket on the floor, she was by her bed, sitting on the edge of it face down. He then turned off the lights in the kitchen and main room; a light still glowed slightly from the door being open in the bathroom. The sky was low this evening thought Adam, and her again, his girlfriend, was in the dumps, melancholy. Her face was in a twisted form, as if she had a stroke, but it wasn’t a stroke, it was distorted from crying, and anger. Tucked inside her head was that voice he knew, the voice only she knew, nobody else but her and God.


[Breaking Glass] The house seemed still, for both Adam and Carmen, an absolute stillness—a stone stillness. There was no movement for the moment in the bed; a light thud in the hallway, along with a cracking of the wood sounded, as if someone was pacing. Now and then a giggle of keys hitting against one another reverberated.
Adam tilted her head back put his hand under her neck to hold it firmly in place. He figured the landlord was most likely someplace outside the door of the apartment, he was a snoop. But then Carmen often lost her temper and would break things, and so he might had been worried about damage to his apartment building, and just checking things out.

Ivan, he was almost hugging the door now—trying to catch a sound, but couldn’t—couldn’t hear a thing. He didn’t trust Adam, but then he couldn’t figure out Carmen’s behavior lately either. He blamed Adam for it for the most part, because she wasn’t this way eighteen months ago, when she came to live at his place, and now she was. So guilty or not, he got the blame.

A bodily pain came to her, and she said several undesirable words, she tried to make no noise but her head hurt again, as if an explosion had taken place. Out of not-thinking—an automatic response, she went into the kitchen, found a set of half-inch thick, drinking glasses, picked one up after the other (there were six) and threw them against the wall trying to break them. They didn’t break, she wanted to break them badly, and tried a second time. The old man got scared, ears next to the apartment door, and ran downstairs, not sure what to do. Then she threw them again, and again and again. Next he felt he had no choice: he came back up the stairs, “What’s going on in there?” he yelled. Adam opened the door and there was Carmen sitting on the chair next to the window with two of the six glasses in her hands. She saw him, and put them down gently on the kitchen table. Ivan looked at her strangely, not quite knowing what to make of it all; almost in disbelief.
“I was trying to break these glasses,” said Carmen almost in a stupor, as if she didn’t know what she was saying. The Landlord looked at the glasses, “You can’t break them they’re made to be unbreakable. What is wrong with you two?” Adam looked at him.
“Nothing with me Sir, it’s her, I never threw anything.”
Said Carmen with a tearful voice: “Ich…es tut mir leid…wirklich…!” (I, I am sorry, really!),” Ivan looked mystified at her, “…really I am sorry Ivan. I’ll pay for the wall damages, really I will. Just fix it and bill me,” she added.
He then smiled, “You getting them headaches again?” That’s what she called them when he’d ask before.
“Yaw, it was real bad this time, I couldn’t think.”
“Well, o…ok, but Adam, you, you need to leave, let her sleep it off, and stop feeding her booze.” Adam shook his head, and didn’t say a word, Ivan figured he needed an excuse to tell to his wife, and adding him into the crazy zone of behavior, well, it made Carmen not look as bad as she was, that was as good as anything he supposed, why not use that.




13


For some odd reason, Carmen arose from bed early, got ready to meet Adam for a ride with him into the Black Forest; She put on a long skirt, with nothing under it, frankly she was naked, and her breasts were exposed—to a high degree, thus, her whole body was chilled, as she felt the cool wind of the morning.
Adam had met her down by her car, at her apartment. He noticed she was looking a little different today, almost promiscuous. There was a slit in her dress all the way up to her upper thigh. It was almost rude, if not sluttish, Adam thought, but he got into the car with her. He had a little green Volkswagen, and he liked driving in her sportier looking car, so as always they used hers. As he sat in the front seat, and she drove, he kept thinking this was going to ruin the day, that is, this new look of hers. What was it she was trying to prove, or say [?] he asked himself.
“What is it,” asked Carmen, “why are you staring at me so much?”
“Can’t figure you out, you’re looking…I mean your look: why did you dress like a whore?”
“Like a what!” she bellowed, “A whore…?” She slammed the brakes of the car, pulled over to the side of the road—ready to slap his face.
“You got deep red lipstick on, and all this makeup, and your breasts are popping out of your blouse.”
“You haven’t taken me to bed like you used to, thought you’d like to have a whore today, so I dressed like one, and if you want, we can do it right here in the car.” She smiled with geeing anger—hand open ready to slap at the right moment. What she couldn’t say, but was thinking at this moment was, was coming out in her dressing up as she had—like a whore as he described her, or so it seemed. But all in all, to Adam it was just bazaar behavior, and getting worse by the week; no looking for reasons why.
“Did you have that same dream again?” He asked.
“Fuck the dream, and fuck you for asking, this is not what it’s about, it is now, today, this moment: about you making love to me, me! …and not doing it enough.” She was right, he was avoiding her lately. Adam got out of the car and walked up the street; as far as he was concerned the day had ended for him with her, it would not get better he figured, and with her and the way it was, ready that is to slap, he’d be forced to confine her and that would be a mess.


—Just over a week later, Frantisek had gotten a wild idea, and slipped out of her apartment, in the Off-Post-Housing area (off post housing being an area where the American military families lived, which was close by the military compound, yet outside of it); about four blocks outside of the military compound, where she lived, she dashed down the street to check out and see if she could meet Adam before he left the PX. It was a fleeting thought, and it was evening, Saturday evening; which he often stayed late, and so what the heck she figured. It was dark, the back door of the PX was locked, and a light in the backroom was on; it was pouring rain, she hid under a small overlapping part of the roof of the PX, enough to keep her a little dry, but not much. He could not hear her from the thudding rain. Frantisek felt Adam would be favorable to her little game of surprising him when he came out. If not, no harm done. ‘Silly idea,’ she mumbled, but she had done sillier things in her life. Just then from out of the store the door opened and Adam stepped out, but before he put his foot down he saw Frantisek and caught his breath, she gave him a little fright; the rain was but a drizzle. He grinned, and then a moment passed for them both to settle their insides.
“You look cold,” came out of Adam’s mouth, he had not shut the door yet, and he couldn’t think of another thing to say, she was shivering. He extended his hand and somewhat pulled her into the store, turned on the light. It was pitch dark outside. She quickly weaved her hands through Adam’s hair, promptly so she would not lose the spirit of the eventful moment. Her fingers were now pulling his head to her lips, and like a python, she wound her body around his as they stood erect. There was a little disbelief on his face. She noticed him grow thick and large, against her thigh.
“I should die if you do, and I should die if I don’t,” he said in a breathless way. She chuckled a bit, and pushed harder into his body; the offense was over, they were both comfortable it seemed with the rhythmic and hypnotic environment being produced.
The drumming of the rain started again and she was now hissing in his ear, as his leg became saturated and overflowed with substance, then she knew, and stopped, smiled and said, “You really are Adam, I mean, good for me.”




14


Sleep

Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward unto souls afar,
Along the Psalmist’s music deep,
Now tell me if that any is
For gift or grace surpassing this,--
“He giveth his beloved sleep”?

--E.B. Barrett.




During her sleep, Carmen was again visited by her most frequent dream: nightmare that is. It always seemed she was not prepared for it, even being so used to it; it was like a jack in the box, popping out again.
She had struggled with her sleep, staying awake half the night—again, not unusual as we all know, as you may have guessed by now. It would grow light soon, and she knew she’d not get to sleep again. She awoke to find herself naked in bed, with a little chill from the windy nearby open window. The dream was fading from her mind. When would the nightmare come to its gruesome climax? A question not asked, but thought. The only thing that remained—as Adam had said a hundred times—was, ‘…why don’t you do something about it?’ But he never said what that something was, or should be. She got out of bed, walked to the kitchen window, looked at the tower, grumbled a bit.




[Café meeting] Back at the café, Gertrude was cleaning up; it was another Saturday morning. She sat down in the kitchen where Günter was leaning against a window and register (water heater), trying to put together a conversation, a meeting if you will.
“Günter, you know as well as I, that Carmen has changed quite a lot in these past several months.”
Günter looked inquisitive at her, putting his dough pizza and sauce to the side, walked toward her, “Yes, so I do.” He said bluntly.
“I mean Günter, I know her quite well…too…well, and I know her idioms and what not….”
Günter interrupted, “Get to the point will you, you damn women go around in circles all day long, drive me crazy. If it isn’t my wife, it’s Carmen, and now you.”
She looked at old Günter, and took in a deep breath, “Ok, I’ll make it sweet and short; it has occurred to me she needs help, I think we, or me, with your support, should call her mother and let her know she had, or is going off the deep end. You know what I mean. She just is losing it. I’m really scared for her.”
“Is that a statement or a question?” he asked, “I mean are you expecting me to give you advice?” She looked a bit dumfounded; I guess she was. So she shook her head ‘ja...’
“Well, I make pizzas, that is what do, and what I am good at, maybe if she ate some, life would not be so complicated for her, tell her to stop thinking so much and eat some pizza...take life easy, not so serious… .” Gertrude wanted to either laugh or cry over the statement—or heave the pizza in his face, but the old greaser was kind of right. We make life too hard for ourselves sometimes, when we just need to do the basic things, and eat, work, love, pray and try to get along with one another. And the truth was, she never did have, or make much time to eat pizzas lately: as they say, ‘…smell the roses…’. Old Günter, he didn’t spend anytime looking for approval of his statement from Gertrude, he just turned around and threw a pizza into the oven, “One coming up,” he yelled as if Gertrude was in the other room. For once he felt he did not have to feel or be apologetic; his simple life was good enough for him.

—Adam had written out a letter to Carmen; it seemed he was to the point of exhaustion with her behavior; plus, every time he left her he had withdraws, as a person addicted would have, yet every time he was about to go visit her, he was always guarded; his body even came to the point of weakening, not knowing what to expect, and got physically sick. But then sex has its ardent drive does it not. Up to this point, he could not write this letter—he had started it only to rip it up and throw it away a number of times, up to this point that is, and now he could, and he felt he had to. Yet he was torn, should it not be face to face, he deliberated. He felt anger, resentment that he had to do it, he believed she was making him do it, or at least that is what he told himself—plus, the relationship was just not working. Working the way he wanted it to work, that is.
The troops on base were now getting ready to move out on their thirty-day training up north. Frantisek had stopped by again, and was showing her breasts a little as they talked the last few weeks, knowing he liked to witness them (besides her little visit on the side), but he assured himself it was not because of her that he was breaking up, or going to break up with Carmen; for once the troops came back, she’d be right back home with her husband again, like many of the other housewives on base, whom once left alone did just that—for it was merely a good distraction for him in the healing process, so it did occur to him.
Ay, yes for Carmen on Adam’s behalf, it was not unconditional love was it—, no, not on his part anyhow. He had told her the relationship made no sense anymore. He needed to be honest and straight forward, even if he was the bad angel with the bad news.



[Breaking Up.] “I’m not a school boy Carmen, and I’m not sure how far I can go with dealing with your agitated or depressive nature lately. Mood swings, good lord, that’s all I get, crazy behavior, I’m going mad just trying to figure out what is coming next. I need predictability.”
Carmen, although in shock, was still standing up, listening over the phone (‘Why did he not come and tell me this,’ she thought). She noticed there was no gentleness to his voice; then she thought, ‘He’s feeling he has to be strong, stern, just like a man.’
“M-mm,” came out of her mouth, a voice not sure of what to say, or if there was something she was supposed to say; what does one say when the other voice is confirmed on its destiny for its listener [?]
Spontaneously she coughed out: “So finish what you were about to say, before you went into your silence Adam.” He was not expecting that, he was expecting much, much more. An emotional flip-flop, if not anger, or a slam from the phone, or swearing in German, or possibly, perhaps if she was that good at it, in English; if anything, she seemed at this moment quite durable, but then maybe she was in shock, disbelief, so thought the young man on the phone. She was quivering on the other side of the phone though, he just didn’t pick up on it, notice it.
Her face was averted from the phone, and had a low tone to her voice; she really had no more to say to Adam, to anyone—the pause was isolated, there was no love she sensed coming over the phone: she mumbled to herself, indistinguishable even to her. (Two hearts never seem to beat the same she thought, just like two minds never dream alike; thus she felt akin to an isolated tower, one standing alone for a thousand years: looking, just looking day after day, fighting to avoid the demolition team.)
He finally broke the silence, “I don’t want you to be cross with me, I can’t deal with the relationship anymore,” he concluded.
Carmen said shyly to herself, the phone call was over; these new images, shades of fog, she was having had never presented themselves to her before; it seemed to carry a double shot of pain, her father had abandoned her, now him; both for their own reasons of course. She now dropped the phone, it simply was hanging, she didn’t put it back into its proper place, what for, nothing was proper, why should the phone be, that would be crazy, so she thought. She walked over to her bed, pulled out from under it, a shoebox, got thinking, she simply filled a void, and for it to continue she’d have to keep him in the box, possess him I suppose: and how do you do that?
Sitting there in thought she wrote a poem in prose, to calm herself:

Dreaming within Dreaming

I thought, in my dream, I dreamed I was dreaming, I was a tower, and there I died—alongside the solders that killed my father. In the stead of their asking for, forgiveness, I dreamed, that I was dreaming, I was a ghost, and thus, I arose in my madness to execute my fathers enemies—now hanging and rotting, rotting somewhere within the dream I was dreaming….





15


Carmen was never sure what triggered her dreams at night, and more than often the dream, that same dream, the one she’d had most of her life came back. She called it, ‘The Tower Dream.’ She was in some kind of building, her father was in a coffin burning, the coffin looked the shape of a tower, a tower coffin if you will, and that is what it was. Her mother was with her, they were both looking into the burning coffin. Three soldiers [The SS-Men, Germans] were there. No one said a word, and the smoke got thick and thicker in the room, and no one moved, I mean no one, and thereabouts, she started to choke. Then she’d wakeup, looked around her dark room, looking for ghosts, the soldiers: were they coming for her, she’d asked herself [?] She could never find anything stronger than fear to put out this apprehensive fire, and so the dreams came sometimes almost nightly; sometimes not for weeks though, but seldom. And now it was even harder to sleep, to keep the eyes closed, eyelids tightly sealed against one another at night; sometimes she’d force herself to start thinking of the Pizzeria.
A doctor had told her that by luck she’d grow out of it, but that was five years ago; she had now told herself she’d be better to trust in courage to make it through the nights and days. She often wondered who these three men were. She’d look at many faces, draw pictures of them, not knowing what they looked like really, completely, I mean, not exactly what they looked like, for that was over fifteen years ago. Perhaps if she knew who they where it might help, she deliberated; if they were all dead it would be better, better than her thinking some night they’d [the soldiers] be coming for her and she’d not wakeup from her nightmare and this ongoing drama would stop. And now something was reversing it, to where she’d not fall to sleep for hours on end…and sleep was light, it was becoming a treasure. The soldiers, the soldiers…it was like they were waiting for the fire to consume her, and then they’d take her away, but she always lived through the fire; alas, not her father. Maybe they lived in Dieburg or back where they had taken her father; in Augsburg, she had often thought this. It was in 1944, she was only four-years old when they took him out of the huge library, or so it seemed back then huge, she had returned to it several times when in Augsburg, it was not as huge as it seemed now to her, that is to say, as it was when she was four; he was a German-Jew, a professor at the University. Carmen and her mother hid behind the armchair, the big sofa chair, as he walked toward the three soldiers that questioned him, so they would not walk toward him and find them. They asked him where his wife and child were. He told them at home. After they took him, Carmen and her mother went to London until after the war.





16


‘You know,’ murmured Carmen at the tower, as she walked around it (it was forenoon, and she had just talked to Adam less than an hour ago). ‘You know I just got the death of my relationship with Adam,’ she said as if there was a second person to the monologue. ‘You know,’ she said again, as she started to comb her hair back with her fingers, rested her back against the tower, ‘angels don’t hurt you, only people, no matter what, no matter what, they, people will hurt you eventually.’ In all terms known to man, the most descriptive I can give you is that she was having a meltdown. ‘You know,’ she said again, back leaning still against the tower, looking up at its ridiculous roof-hat, of sorts: ‘The more one gives in with the heart, the more one loses’

—she was now in the quiet world of her own, at knifes-edge. ‘I don’t blame him,’ she commented to the tower, looking up at its top again, as if it was her father with a hat on. She had brought a small bottle of scotch with her, had it in her purse, pulled it out and drank half it down straight: coughed, tried to catch her breath, eyes bulged out, it was equivalent to at least four shots of straight whiskey or more. She had thought her truths and fidelity was enough to compensate for her emotional abstractions, as unable as they seemed, they were not meant to harm anyone. She walked over by the stream, an old couple was sitting on the bench she so much enjoyed: she contemplated: what a terrifying future it is to think I’d have to live to be as old as they with this infirmity: these nightmares, ongoing nightmarish horrors; these nightmares, nightly (if Satan had a nightmare demon, he was working overtime on her, so she whispered in a back chamber in her mind). She drank another shot of scotch; the old woman looked at her, shook her head, got up and walked away.
“Entschuldigung!” (I’m Sorry) she bellowed out, drunkenly, the old lady never turned about. She put her bottle back into her purse, and picked up her shoebox, the one she had carried with her, the one she pulled out from under her bed.



[Babenhausen] If she could, she told herself—her second-self that is, the neurotic voice inside of her, now getting into her car, if she could un-live the past, sixteen or seventeen years of her life, and just relive the first four over, it would be worth giving up the other sixteen or so; yes, every moment of it, she assured herself now of that. She kind of knew it before, but now she deep-rooted it, and it seemed those four years were becoming a replay in her mind, as if a movie was being developed: her father pulling candy out of that big candy glass jar that was high up on a shelf, that she’d see every time she went down the stairway into the cellar, and she’d try to jump up to reach it, and once it fell during her trying, fell down and onto the stairway. The times he came home, she’d run to meet him on the sidewalk, as he’d find a blade of grass and put it in his mouth, and she’d copy him. The times he’d have to leave for a few days, and he’d come back with lots of gum for her. A movie was starting to focus in sharply of her childhood with him.
The car started, and it was pointed toward the Babenhausen Military Base; to its PX.
—She had concluded in her mind, Adam gave her one gift, honesty, had she found out way down the road of life he would leave her, thus, she’d stay only to be separate later, it would be even more devastating she figured; plus, he could go on with life now, it was, evidently, paralyzing him in his own way, she presupposed.
Her silence as she drove gave way to retrospection. Her endurance was snapped, she pulled out the bottle of liquor, took another drink, possibly a double shot. It was hard to swallow, but she pushed it down: coughed some of it up, shook her head, pushed it back down. She put more of her weight on the steering wheel, slumping over a bit as she drove. ‘Opened the window wider to get fresh air,’ so her second voice told her; she felt as if she was in that room again, but this time it was not a nightmare, it was possibly, just probably, the conclusion of the long sought out nightmares coming to reality in day-dreaming. She saw their faces now, three faces completely: how mysterious she pondered, as clear as day. They were always faded somehow before; she would recognize the SS-Men anyplace now, should someone had shown her a picture, but now she needed no picture, she had one. It was like they were looking at her, as she was hiding behind the armchair. She now came out from behind the armchair, not afraid anymore. They took her hand like they took her father’s but she pulled it back, said ‘no,’ then she shook her head, and refocused on her driving.




17



She reached over the empty seat in the car, rolled down the window, as she noticed Adam stood in the archway of the door to the PX. It was as if he knew she was coming. He seemed to have an enormous shadow, one that went from the archway to the car, or at least that is how Carmen saw it. Adam had known she left the phone off the hook purposely, and wasn’t sure why, but likely, he concluded, likely she did not want to receive anymore phone calls, as simple as that, should he wish to think about what was said and call her back.
With vivid clearness he could see Carmen in somewhat of a serene pose, she seemed a bit wobbly though, or frigid, but quite at peace, a funny kind of peace, too peaceful now, now that he put more thought into it. She even smiled, he smiled back but thinking: maybe she came to have her last look, and then go home, he was nervous, and getting more nervous by the second. He smiled again, not knowing what his next move would be. He even got thinking it wasn’t a mannish thing to do by simply calling her on the phone and breakup, rather a coward’s way I suppose, but it all was too emotional, too trying, so he told himself at this very moment. He moved about, frigidly kind of, then refocused his eyes towards her, took in a deep breath ‘what is it she wants [?] he asked himself. What was different about this, he speculated; I mean she did odd things, but just staring at one another was weird. Then he noticed a shoebox. He had seen it before, I think under her bed he concluded, but he was told to leave it alone, it was just girlie things he was told by her, and so he never explored it. ‘Funny,’ he murmured, trying to get a better look at the shoebox.
Carmen noticed he was straining his eyes looking at the shoebox. She then told herself: “I have to do what I come to do, and do it quick,” it was about time anyhow. She was for once in her life under a state of complete nullity. Everything was now superficial for her. She had two shots more of whiskey, Adam saw it, shook his head, put a grin on his face, his eyes looking at her and that damn shoebox: what in the heck was that shoebox doing there, ran rampant in his cerebellum; and now the two more quick drinks were down her. At this point he had enough, he was holding the door to the PX open, cigarette in his hand, he forgot it was there, was about to step out of its archway, and she put the bottle on the floor of the car, at that very same moment, she opened the top of the shoebox. Again she smiled at Adam, and she pulled an item out of the box, it was a gun, a rather huge gun for her small hands. (Dust was in the air, army trucks were in slow motion going back and forth, around corners—everywhere; soldiers marching, running in squads across the green grass; the American flag flying high in the air on top of nearby wooden pole. The military compound was busy, busy like working ants; but to them it was just another day, another day for the three-hundred soldiers station there.)
Adam saw it, saw the gun, but it didn’t quite register, and he didn’t want to die: it was an invented moment for him, should he run to the car, he couldn’t, or at least so he told himself, he was in disbelief; she put the gun up to her temple—Adam’s eyes bulged out of his head almost, his mouth…mouth…wide opened—dry as a desert, this was a ‘joke,’ which flashed through his mind, ‘she wants me to makeup with her’
there was a cracking sound in the air, echo, loud; wet blood spattered all over. He had not moved, dropped to his knees, put his hands over his ears as if to stop the sound of the shot, but it was all over, she was dead in the car, it was no joke. She had come to fracture the silence, and she wanted to die in doing it, but needed an audience. The invented moment for him was all over. It was her sacrifice.


As he looked up, Garmisch came into his mind, as if he was in a day-dream, “Don’t be unhappy darling,” she said, she said with a whisper as they sat at a table, a drink in his hands, one in hers. “I’m going to take care of you, such good care, I really will…” that’s what she said to him in Garmisch. It made him feel good. Carmen’s fingers closed gently and warm around his hands (that was his last thoughts of her as someone shock him by the shoulders to come out of it. He was in a day-dream, shock.)




18




Her last words and last poem: (Quod sum eris ((epitaph on a Roman tombstone)) if he could have read her lips, Adam would have read: “I am what you will be.”




Carmen’s Selbstmord

Was gibt es hier zu
Sehen?
Wo waere es gut,
hinzugehen?
Ich nehme das Boot,
Da bleibt die Liebe immer
Ueber Wasser ...
Nun nicht mehr...





Carmen’s Suicide

What is there to see
Here?
Do you know a good place
To go?
I prefer a boat
Where love
Floats
No more… .


#510 [3/7/05]



[Six months later.] Adam had become aware of a nagging and reoccurring dream. At first he didn’t think much of it, but he couldn’t shake it either. He even told Frantisek about it, but she kind of kept her distance now, he seemed a bit disturbed. They had an on and off relationship for the most part, and she was thinking of divorcing her husband for awhile, but was now having second thoughts; especially when she’d had to sit up and listen to his retelling, and retelling of his nightmare all the time, his last thoughts at Garmisch, how she [she being: Carmen] took the gun out of the shoebox, it was all a tad too much. She wanted attention, not to be his counselor.
In his nightmare dream he saw her lips moving, they had said something, he could never quite make it out, they were her last words though; it bothered him, and he went over them a hundred times; matter-of-fact, he became obsessed with them, and would walk by the tower, the one he got to know with her, and ended up talking to the tower as if it was his amulet (his charm to ward off evil). Especially when storms came, he’d think about that day, how Carmen said she’d take care of him; her lips moving, saying something he couldn’t interpret, translate. Did he kill Carmen, no, of course not, but try and tell him that; he felt he had something to do with it. He told himself, the nightmare would fade into oblivion eventually, they always do, but then he didn’t know for sure, he never had one before, not one recurring anyhow; it was just a matter of time he said: he said that year, after year, after year.





Carmen’s Winter

Your days were bleak,
Your wings were chilled
The poetry of love
Inside your soul—
Was crumbing
In a rhythmical
Dirge…
Death, death was calling!...

#538 [3/11/05]




Stanzas

FAREWELL Life! My senses swim,
And the world is growing dim;
Thronging shadows cloud the light,
Like the advent of the night;
Colder, colder, colder still,
Upward steals a vapor chill;
Strong the earthly odor grows,--
I smell the mould above the rose!

—Thomas Hood


End of the book


∆




Books by the Author:



Out of Print

The Other Door, Volume I [1980]
Two Modern Short Stories of Immigrant life [1984]
The Tale of Willie the Humpback Whale [1981]
The Safe Child/the Unsafe Child [1985]

Presently In Print

The Last Trumpet and the Woodbridge Demon

Angelic Renegades & Rephaim Giants

Tiamat, Mother of Demon I
Gwyllion, Daughter of the Tiamat II
Revenge of the Tiamat III

Mantic ore: Day of the Beast

Chasing the Sun
[Travels of D.L Siluk]

Islam, In Search of Satan’s Rib

The Addiction Books of D.L. Siluk:

A Path to Sobriety,
A Path to Relapse Prevention
Aftercare: Chemical Dependency Recovery

The Chick Evens Collection:

A Romance in Augsburg
Romancing San Francisco
Where the Birds Don’t Sing

Stay Down, Old Abram
Perhaps it’s Love


The Suspense short stories of D.L. Siluk:

Death on Demand
[Seven Suspenseful Short Stories]

Dracula’s Ghost
[And other Peculiar stories]

The Mumbler [psychological]

Sirens
[Poems-Volume II, 2003]

The Macabre Poems [Volume III, 2004]

After Eve [a prehistoric adventure]

The Midnight Ghoul
Poems, the Spanish Collection
[Volume IV, 2005]

Cold Kindness



∆


Love and Butterflies
[For Elsie T. Siluk my mother]


She fought a good battle
The last of many—
Until there was nothing left
Where once, there was plenty.

And so, poised and dignified
She said, ‘farewell,’ in her own way
And left behind
A grand old time
Room for another

Love and Butterflies…
That was my mother.


—By Dennis L. Siluk © 7/03


∆


Notes on the Author


The Author was the winner of the magazine competition by “The Eldritch Dark [.com],” [a tribute to Clark A. Smith] for most favored writer [contributor] for 2004 [with readership of some 2.2-million]. And received a letter of gratitude from President Bush for his many articles he published in the internet Magazine,“useless.knowledge.com,” during his campaign for President, 2004 [1.2-million readership].


From the Editor of SSWFT-magazine out of Australia, he writes [Benjamin Szumskyj], “You’re a Master of the written word.” He goes on to say, “I have just finished reading your volume ‘Death on Demand,’ and I have to say, you are a helluva author. I really, really like your work Dennis. In fact, so much so, I plan on writing a scholarly essay on your short stories…”


From the book, Death on Demand, by Mr. Siluk: says the author E.J. Soltermann—Healing from Terrorism, Fear and Global War, “The Dead Vault: a gripping tale that sucks you deep through human emotions and spits you out at the end as something better.”



Visit my web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com you can also order the books directly by/on: www.amazon.com www.bn.com www.SciFan.com www.netstoreUSA.com along with any of your notable book dealers