Living It Rough at Hotel Calypso (1)
Living It Rough at Hotel Calypso (1)
There were eight Romanians at Calypso, a Greek B&B for asylum seekers in a small Bavarian town, and tonight they were all (more or less) celebrating.
Carmen, forty-two, was getting married to the sixty-eight-year-old German cook in the tavern where she was washing up ‘black’. The guy she actually loved, Marian, fourteen years younger than her, was packing his bags: at dawn, he would head for Hamburg, from where he had paid his one-way ticket in a shipping container bound for New York.
Also packing her bags was Mrs Crisan, who had finally got her visa to the US, where she was joining her sister. In a few days, her husband was to marry a German lady they had found via an underground network for fake marriages, so he can get the residence permit and a shortcut to the German pass.
The other couple, Gaby and Sophie, were leaving back to Romania at dawn, in their fourth-hand twenty-year-old van, having laboured enough on the black market to have some little fortune to go back home with. The van was now lop-sided with the overload of the stuff that Gaby had frantically hoarded during the fourteen months at Calypso.
Lili, Carmen’s roommate in the past few months, was to start soon on a bus back to Romania. She’d seen that there was no point trying to buy time appealing negative rulings on her asylum application, so she took the City’s free ticket back to Bucharest.
The only one missing from the big party was Nick, who had applied to be enrolled with the French Legion, but had recently vanished and been searched for by the police.
“Last night I bought you a scarf, la, la-la-la-la-la, la-la… Now I see you’re wearing none, la, la-la-la-la-la, la-la….”, Carmen was singing with the tune on the ancient cassette player, holding her wine glass with one hand, the other arm curled around Marian’s neck. She had obviously been crying loads and was just about to start again.
“Ah, Marian, Marian, what you’re doing to me, my love”, she wailed with a twitching smile.
Marian turned his sulky face to her.
“What I’m doing to you? What do you think you’re doing?”
She frowned and her twitching smile vanished like a shadow; she released Marian from her hold and squinted into her glass.
“You know damn well I have no choice. What am I supposed to do, you’re leaving me for your dream America. Or even worse, should we both sit here at the Calypso and wait for the Germans to kick us out? Ah, forget it, we’ve been through this a hundred times! It’s time to party now, tomorrow starts a new life!” and she raised her wine glass in a self-persuasive gesture of exuberant celebration.
The Crisans nodded with an awkward smile, staring each ahead of oneself, into the void. Gaby gave his shrill laugh and raised his glass to Carmen’s.
“To us all, let’s remember these times forever!”
Marian threw a brief disdainful look at him and scoffed.
“You think anyone here will be able to forget?” he mumbled.
Carmen forestalled Gaby’s reply:
“Let’s say that Calypso has been a cosy place just because we’ve been together, but otherwise surrounded by hell. And we’ve all been waiting for a change, for a move forwards, such a long time, chewing each over our dream, or just over our hopelessness! But Gaby is right, we should never forget Calypso, and by that, we mean of course – never forget each other! Gaby, my respect, as always someone to count on, man!”
On these words, she stood up leaning over the shabby low table and they clinked glasses.
“Hurraaah and bless us all”, cheered Gaby. “Be happy, Carmen, girl!”
“I will, yes, don’t worry, I will! When the German guy sees who he’s got married to, it’ll be way too late, ha ha ha!”
“To Germans going to hell!” Marian toasted gloomily, but no one gave a sound in response.
“They aren’t that bad”, Sophie put in shyly. “It’s just our own predicament.”
“Oh, aren’t they!” Marian retorted sardonically. “Then why are you going back home tail between legs? Why have we been wasting years of our lives here in this damn Calypso?”
“Come, come, love, we’ve been through this a hundred times, people make their choices, you know too well they’re going back home to their daughter, they would anyway, no matter what Germans were like”, Carmen interfered reconciling.
“We’re not going back home tail between legs”, Sophie replied faintly but categorically. “That was the plan from the beginning, wasn’t it Gaby!”
Her husband nodded irresolutely with his eyes in his lap, the remnants of a smile waving over his face like an embarrassed flag, and his nod gradually turned into a doubtful swing of a pendulum, his eyes rising to the ceiling.
“What?” Sophie asked turning to him as if she had only at that instant noticed him.
“Mmmmm, well, honestly… Actually…”
“Honestly and actually, he’d rather have stayed here”, Marian concluded abruptly.
“Here?!”, Sophie ejaculated.
“Well not here, in Calypso, but, yes, Germany”, Gaby hurried to disambiguate.
“Never, if you ask me!”, Sophie declared. “I didn’t strain my elbows reading for medicine to clean German houses – as black work, too!”
“Maybe Gaby means if only you could have stayed here and lived a normal life, you doing your profession, the little one growing up in this world”, Mrs Ceausescu ventured to reconcile.
Gaby nodded in thankfulness.
“If –if – if! The fact is, I’ve no problems with Germans fine, I hope I come back one day, but now it’s time to go home!“ Sophie retorted unflinchingly. “I miss my little one, I miss my home, my bed, the view from our living room window.”
“Sure you do”, Gaby assented in a conciliatory tone. “It’s such a lovely view – over concrete blocks of flats ha ha ha”, he added with his mouth wide, glancing around at the others and encouraging them to echo his laugh.
Gaby was not to be heeded most of the time. He just gave out his cascading roars with a grin that could be hung up around his ears.
About sixteen hours a day he worked himself to death washing up in a Biergarten downtown. Apart from that, he was busy decking the walls of their room in Calypso with junk of all sorts gathered in Calypso or from the streets: juice cartons saved from lunch, kaputte TV sets of all sizes, second-hand winter jackets from Caritas, junk ski equipment and what not. Rumours had it, however, that he was also going home with a handsome pile of banknotes, which he had scrupulously set aside.
“And tell us, now honestly, we’re all saying goodbye here, God knows our paths will never cross again, so you can tell us: what are you planning to do with your money?”, Carmen asked.
Sophie glanced at Gaby and then looked down, embarrassed and tense, waiting to see how open her husband would be. Gaby kept his grin on, if slightly receding, and avoiding Carmen’s direct gaze, he said:
“Well, yeah… we’re going to erm…. Well yes, we’re buying small flats and renting them. Flat prices are still ridiculously low in Bucharest, a bit off the central areas you can get a small flat for the money you get a second-hand VW here.”
The Crisans gave a faint, but prolonged sigh of stupefaction, and Carmen raised her eyebrows in appreciation.
“Of course, we’re also going to have to renovate, but we’re going to do that ourselves, aren’t we, Sophie”, Gaby said with what was meant to be motivating enthusiasm, and he slapped his wife’s knee.
She nodded quietly, then raised her eyes smiling as if wanting to reassure everyone this was her decision too.
“Sophie, now I understand why you’re so looking forward to getting back home”, Carmen said. Was she mocking?
“Ha, sure, she wasn’t allowed to buy herself proper cigarettes and had to roll herself that awful cheap tobacco, so they can now go back to Bucharest and do renovation work!” Marian gave out unexpectedly. Gaby frowned, and Sophie blushed.
“What do you mean, she wasn’t allowed?” Gaby’s voice was shrill again, as before either laughing or fighting. “We agreed on it together. A fiver for a damn cigarette pack is outrageous, who can afford that? Not from money made washing up or cleaning houses, that’s for sure!”
“And the tobacco’s really not bad at all”, Sophie added reassuringly.
Marian scoffed again and turned his eyes away in resentment.
“Love, just get off their backs, will you, they’ll be gone tomorrow morning and then one might regret any bickering we’ve had tonight”, Carmen said to Marian, stroking his hair motheringly.
“I’m not doing anything on their backs”, Marian shrugged. “It’s just this fake cheerfulness that’s getting on my nerves, all of us here as if there was anything to celebrate! We’re all just a bunch of losers, I tell you! And that might be okay, but for goodness’s sake, let’s not fake cheerfulness, OK?, let’s just admit we would have liked to stay in Deutschland too, but since we have no choice we must take the second best. Just don’t come now with things like I always wanted to go back in fact, or the second best IS the best after all – OK?
“Oh love, stop it for goodness’ sake. It’s over, we’re all moving on now,” Carmen said bitterly.
“Oh, are we? Moving on?”, Marian retorted.
“Our lives are moving on, that’s for sure!” she replied and raised her glass to cheer up the audience. “And Marian, that of all of us you should be grumpy! When you think you wanted to get to America all along, that was your destination in the first place, somehow you just got trapped here in Germany, for lack of money or waiting for a green light, but now you’re finally on your way to your destination, what’s wrong about it? Aren’t you finally moving on?”
He shot a glance at her like knives and replied gloomily,
“Just because we’re all leaving Calypso doesn’t mean we’re moving on. Just remember how’ve we spent all this time in this pitiful cage counting the days, weeks and months to the next letter from German Immigration. How we’ve been commuting between our little black jobs and these miserable rooms. We’ve learned how to trick the German laws, by getting married to the right passport holder, we’ve traded Germany for America or the French Paid Killers League – oh or we just decided that nowhere’s like back home after all. Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, Romania here I come!”
There was stillness. Carmen sighed to bridge the silence in some way.
“And it looks like you’re the biggest winner of us all, right? Carmen? You can stay on in lovely Deutschland, can’t you? That even you should be celebrating. You’re getting married to a German cook who should have long been munching off his pension. But he’s got a big house, apparently!”
“You’re such a grudging asshole Marian!”, Carmen gave out as a bitter conclusion, her voice threatening to break into tears. “Or maybe you’re just too young to know how to handle hopelessness – and helplessness!”
“Oh and you’ve learned so well how to!” he replied.
Marian’s upper lip twitched as if he was briefly snarling, in momentary contempt. His eyes drilled holes, in turn, in the eyes of each of the others, except for Lili’s, as she was gazing out the window in a voluntary opt-out of the exchanges.
“Oh, and I’d almost forgotten! There we have another happy groom-to-be”, and he turned to Mr Crisan. “I suppose you’re also excited by your prospects, especially you Mrs C must be quite thrilled!”
Mrs C started mumbling something, but her (ex-)husband cut in whispering, but hissing with repressed anger:
“I don’t know why we should even take the trouble to explain anything. Each of us here is on their own and must seek their way out, and nobody can judge anyone.”
“Why not?” Marian grinned sardonically. “You think that if each of us here has been stuck in Calypso, it doesn’t matter how we get out of the shit?”
“Look here you smart ass,” said Mr C suddenly willing to fight it through, “if you’re talking about the shit that this kind of life was, yes, it was shit all right, but it wasn’t our choice, so don’t preach me or anyone else about it. You’ve had your share of the shit, after all, you’re no better than me or Gaby for that matter. And if you’re talking about how we’re moving on from here, you’re no better, or you think that paying five thousand to choke yourself to death in a shipping container bound for New York is a more dignified way out?”
“Guys, please, forget the fighting tonight, will you”, Carmen intervened in a pacifying tone. “What’s the point anyway? None of us here’s been spared the shit, it’s good old Deutschland that has brought us here, these German motherfuckers!”
“How right you are Carmen dear”, Mrs C was faintly heard. Her cheeks burning, her eyes were still in her lap, and her voice was on the verge of tears. “I wish we’d never come to Germany, God curse that day and this place!”
“Oh, come, come now”, Sophie put in gently, smiling sentimentally. “Time will heal everything – and then maybe we’ll realise it wasn’t that bad after all!”
“Mrs C’s perfectly right!”, Lili suddenly intervened, who had been quiet all night till then. “How time will heal things is of no consequence. That can’t change the way our lives are now. And right now things are pretty fucked up, it’s plain to see. Period.”
Sophie looked astonished to the corner where Lili was lying, outside of their circle around the table, on her bed.
“And I think Marian’s right about the celebration idea. This is no celebration, it reminds me more of the lavish meals after commemoration services for the dead in our family. The same kind of endless dishes and wine bottles for a dead cause that is calling for weeping rather than feasting. It always stuck in my throat…”
“Yes, Lili, no one’s happy here, but no one is claiming they are!” Carmen replied.
“Well, actually I am quite happy!” Sophie insisted. “You may call me a party pooper, sorry, but I can’t help it! I’m not going to sit here pretending I’m down just to show solidarity with you all. Of course, I’m not cheerful and I’m not celebrating, but I’m perfectly happy about leaving Calypso.”
“You left, and I smiled, but how much I loved you – this you will never – know”, the music suddenly burst back into their awareness.
Read Part 2 here.
And you?
Which character feels most familiar to you? Is it because you’ve met someone like that, or because you can relate to their situation?
Have you been trapped in a place, or situation, like these people? How did you get into it, and out of it again?
Which of these characters you feel most confident will succeed later in their lives?