Home Is Where You Are

An invisible hero story

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Hello, Mentatrix readers!

The fictional short story below is part of a larger novel project I used to work on many years ago. The characters are Romanian immigrants in Germany in the early 90s, awaiting the resolution on their asylum application (long before the European Union brought free movement to Romanian citizens). Those of you who have been here longest may remember an older instalment: Living it up at Hotel Calypso.

In the excerpt below, I’m following one of the characters, the turbulent Marian, and hinting at an invisible hero that is haunting his mind, as well as the lives of his mates: the sense of lost identity. Captives in the Calypso, a boarding house for immigrants, they are all struggling to move on towards a home.

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Carmen and Marian are sitting on a slow train which is taking its time reaching Cologne. The hours are rolling into each other. Now they are in Nurnberg. Next, they are in Würzburg. And so on.

Marian is wearing the same frown. He is jealous, no, jealous isn’t the right word. He is disgusted. Disgusted and angry. Disgusted and angry and helpless. That she should be making sweet eyes to the old man. Who may own a big house in the town centre all right, plus money in the bank, as she tells opening her eyes wide to magnify the vision of his fortune – but after all he’s just a grandpa and a plain cook. Cooking the Wiener Schnitzel with a bit of Kartoffelsalat from the plastic ten-kilo bucket.

And who knows if he really owns that house for that matter. Carmen does like to spin yarns. She’s going to marry the old man and he’s not going to stop her; she loves Marian, but that’s not going to stop her either. Maybe he’s being prudish. He’s sleeping with a woman who’s eighteen years older than himself; why shouldn’t she get married to a man who’s twenty-five years older than herself.

At least he’s not making love to her to get any benefits. Carmen’s a good girl: funny, crazy, talkative – and fabulous in bed. She’s great to be with. On this train crawling to nowhere, in the waiting lounge of this life, she’s a great companion, making time feel as if it’s actually passing.

He’s waiting here in Germany for the visa to get to the States, a distant prospect he’s at once looking forward to and dreading. But he’s done a jump already coming to Germany, and he’s survived; the next one’s going to be much easier to land.

Is he and Carmen getting too dependent on each other? Carmen’s chatter, Carmen’s agile body, Carmen’s whispers, Carmen’s lips pressed together, chin up waiting for a quick kiss. Carmen’s dark frizzy hair, her thin lips ever so often stretched into a motherly smile, her easy chattering with the others in Calypso, her being the heart and soul of their get-togethers, cheerful and with sparkling eyes; those eyes getting watery when she mentions her ten-year-old daughter waiting for a German tourist visa back in Romania so she can visit her mom.

Incredible mighty woman having left husband and kid behind – for – for what? He’s not so sure he can tell exactly, she says a decent life, more than the sewing machine in a factory that has been privatized for peanuts so that the investor can lay them all off, tear it to pieces, and sell it for a fortune five years later. More than the empty nights coming home mind blank, sitting in the dimly lit apartment in a grey block of matchbox flats. Knowing there’s a life out there makes it unbearable.

“I wanted to get a life,” Carmen smiles bitterly. “And give my little Tina one, too.”

A leap out of the blank expectancy of joblessness, of lifelessness.

What are the others doing here anyway?

The Crisans with their behind-the-stage plotting and scheming, getting a divorce so the husband can marry a German woman for the residence permit. Mrs C putting on a nice woman’s smile as if that’s life, you know my boy, Mr C putting on no smiles but putting in deft jokes or remarks, what a man what a man, of many talents and quiet disposition. The Crisans often cook meals in their little flat, ignoring the Greek host’s rubbery meals. They all come together at the Crisans’ and squat around their coffee table hauled from a street dump, eating with all the sensorial side dish of reminiscing, self-delusion, and pathos.

Gaby is the loudest crying “yummy!”, when he’s there at all, when for some obscure reason he’s not needed to mop the floors on his sixteen-hour shift, but when he’s there, he’s very much there, at the top of his voice declaiming the supremacy of “our real food”.  

Diana: the good mama’s girl, neat clothes, good grades back home, reading books, blushing and looking down every so often, not laughing at dirty jokes, not laughing much, not talking much, as if afraid to hear herself performing. She’s that girl that landed in Frankfurt like a lady, was picked up by an acquaintance at the airport and given a lift to the immigrants’ camp. All of them had crawled on all fours to cross the borders, Carmen swimming over the Oder, himself hitching himself up on a freight train wagon, the others won’t even talk about how they got here – but Diana had stepped out of a Mitsubishi sedan in her chic university student laid-back outfit and had lodged an application for asylum. Aloof and blushing, that’s her.

Sophie: smiling at her husband’s loud jokes and at his shrill cascades of laughter, no one knowing for sure if her smile means he’s just a funny kid who likes a good laugh, or sorry, he does sound silly sometimes but he can do better than that. Sophie smokes in solitude on the small balcony off the landing and when you walk past the door or pop your head out to say hello she’s startled and instinctively will duck her head and dip the cigarette with the same smile on her face, unclear if she’s amused at the prank or apologetic about being caught. Pretty eyes she’s got, sparkling with things behind them, things going on in her mind, only who knows what it is, perpetually ambiguous smiles or remarks like a fine dagger being just furtively revealed up the sleeve leaving you uncertain if it’s for fun or to kill.

To kill would be too much to suppose, though, thinking of her submissive silence under Gaby’s occasional vociferations being heard from their room. Women’s talk have it that Sophie must only get second-hand clothes from Caritas and is not allowed to smoke, unless she buys her stuff from her own money and certainly not the regular five-mark-a-pack Marlboro, but the cheap loose tobacco coming in large boxes for two and half marks.

Whenever anyone challenges Gaby for keeping Sophie on the short leash, he says,

“She can smoke as much as she likes for what I care, it’s just that I break my back sixteen hours a day, and being thankful about the job, too, because that way I can make more marks. She,” and he points to her like a father to his kid, “must remember that these dirty Germans will throw us out one day and every single bit we’ve managed to put aside by then will bring us a tiny bit further when we’re back in Romania. So if I can do sixteen hours a day she can also smoke the cheaper stuff, but make sure she brings her own share of coppers to the family budget.”

You could wonder why everyone is so frantic about moving on, moving on, or staying here, staying here, stalling the first negative and the second negative, keeping thorough track of the months in between to brace yourself for the final summon to leave Germany, as no justification could be found for outstaying your conditional welcome.

And what life is there all this time?

You listen in on what the others tell, hoping to get some clues on how to trick up your residence permit, you smoke a joint cigarette on the balcony or sit around a self-cooked imitation of a Romanian polenta with an imitation of white cheese bought from the supermarket in a plastic packaging.

Doing whatever black-market job, dashing out and getting back sixteen hours later, or idling the days away when there’s no work, speaking Romanian or backward German with other backward-German-speaking guys, sitting around their low tables giving Germans a bad name – sometimes he wonders what all that is, as it certainly isn’t Germany. They’re only waiting to be let in.

The Romania they are at pains to conjure up in their collective meals, and their togetherness marred by secrets, half-ironical smiles, double meanings, double games, that is not Romania either. Captive in their underground existence there’s no outlet for them to Germany. Attempting their fake food and friendship they are faking the Romania of their minds, because if Romania were so, everybody would be happily living the idyll without rushing over seven borders.

The desolating truth is that even if they had any access to either of the real two, it still couldn’t be home. For Gaby, maybe. When he’s back in Romania he’ll be able to buy himself a house or two on the German marks he broke his back earning. He might even reminisce with his watery eyes that often pass for tearful of good old Germany and the laughs they had in Calypso and the precious meals they cooked together, where a bowl of polenta and a slice of white cheese meant so much...

Himself – he’ll never be home in Romania again. Not after being thrashed by his father’s coal mine comrades, throwing his unconscious body in the fountain near the University building right in the centre of Bucharest, for leading a rally against the government. Not after the lies, the grunts, the kicks, the clubs falling. Not after the ground under his feet quaking and splitting into a gaping bottomless chasm.

He comes from Romania but he’s not Romanian, he repeats stubbornly to the dismay of the German immigration guys. This irreparable chasm between where you come from and who you are.

Not clear whether he was expelled or he expelled himself. Whether the mass turned its back on him after crushing him, or it was himself that drew a line. Anger, shame, despair, helplessness, a broken skull. Nice fix. Whoever is not with them is against them and must be crushed and spat out like a useless, lifeless husk. A motherland that wolfs down her unbehaving cubs.

Germany’s decent. Germany will never hurt like motherland did; she shakes her head no no no we won’t let you stay, but at least she doesn’t break you. Will the States be better? Getting a visa is one thing. Taking you on is another.

And the others: having broken up with Romania has burned their bridges. Daughters left behind who will never truly get over it. Daughters being born here with German women, creating ties that cannot be erased. Marriages being made and split. Houses being sold and neighbours told farewell. Lines being drawn behind, shutting a door and drawing down blinders.

They’ll never make it back.

They’ll never quite forget. The irreparable chasm between where you live and who you are.

But they all must get somewhere. Cologne’s coming in a few minutes. Ausstieg in Fahrtrichtung links¹.

1. Exit on the left.