Clemens Meyer - All the Lights

How long had he been in this town now? Two weeks or longer? He thought of his wife and his workmates and the training course and the cash and carry. He felt like laughing but he was scared it would hurt again, somewhere inside him.

It’s cruel, he thought, dragging a person through the night like that. He was the deputy manager, actually the deputy of the deputy. Processed Foods section. Now he did laugh, and something dribbled over his chin. He heard the trains and felt his coat getting wet. She stood by the calendar and he looked over at her. 1995. A couple of horses.

I feel myself gradually waking up. I open my eyes. I’m in a train compartment. The train’s moving and I look over at the window but all I can see is the reflection of the compartment in the glass. I’m alone and it’s night outside.

I get up and pull down the blind. I don’t know what I’m doing on this train, I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know where I’m coming from, I can’t remember any station. I’m a wine sales rep, I know that much, travelling from town to town for years now. I’ve been to France and Spain as well, but not by train. A white van, full of bottles and catalogues. I sit down again, trying to remember where the van is, where I am. Something’s happened but I can’t get hold of it. ‘A wonderful pinot noir,’ I say, ‘dry but very fruity, what ripeness, let it roll across your palate, feel it rolling, grown on the best slopes, you can drink it with anything, always, I’ll give you three hundred bottles of this wonderfully fruity pinot noir, a truly aristocratic wine, Prince Löwenstein vineyard, three hundred bottles for … or let’s say five hundred bottles, the good old prince gets better and better with age, you’ve got a flourishing business going, noblesse oblige , as they say …’ I grab hold of the holdall on the seat next to me; a couple of bottles clink together and I open the bag. Five litre-bottles of cheap red wine with screw caps, one of them almost empty, and I take it out and put it on the little table under the window. It’s pretty nasty plonk, I’ve never sold anything like that, and I shudder as I drink it, and the full bottles next to me in the bag clink again because the train’s moving with a judder now, and I rummage in the holdall, finding a vest, nothing else in there, and shove it between the bottles. Was it that clinking that scared me? I try to understand why; I’m a wine rep and a few clinking bottles shouldn’t scare me, but as I drink the cheap wine I get the feeling there must have been a monstrous, much louder clinking somewhere and sometime, it can’t be long ago, and I drink until the bottle’s empty. I screw the cap back on and start to put it in the bag, but then I put it back on the table. No, I’ve never sold such cheap plonk. I’ve got plenty of mid-range wines on offer, but good Rieslings as well … ‘Freimuth Spätlese 2002 vintage from the slopes of the Bischofsberg in Rüdesheim, in the beautiful Rheingau region near Wiesbaden. A wonderful Qualitätswein mit Prädikat , pressed and bottled by Alexander Freimuth himself. Do you know what we call the beautiful Rheingau? Teutonic Tuscany. I’ll give you two hundred bottles from the best vineyard in the German Tuscany for a special price of …’ I see images of towns, hotels, restaurants and corner bars, then vineyards I rep for, and the vines growing on either side like waves; I’m sitting in my white van and driving from town to town, wine samples and catalogues, and no trains and no stations.

I pace up and down between the door and the window. It’s a smoking compartment but I don’t smoke, I gave it up years ago; it’s bad for your sense of taste and smell. I search my jacket pockets and find an open orange pack of cigarettes, Ernte 23 brand. Automatically, I take one out, a box of matches in another pocket, and then I smoke and pace to and fro. ‘Prinz von Hessen 2004 vintage; Domdechant Werner 2005 vintage; Diefenhardt 2002 vintage from Martinsthal; F for Flick, vini et vita, from the vineyard by the mill.’ The names of the wines are in my head, coming out of my mouth along with the smoke from the cigarette I’m smoking even though I don’t smoke any more. I grab at the blind and make it snap back up and look into the night through the reflection of the compartment and my own reflection. What’s behind the wine? What happened yesterday, what happened today? Why am I going wherever I’m going? I sit down again. I pull the ashtray out of the armrest and put out the cigarette. I don’t like the fact that I’m smoking. I’m a wine rep and my sense of taste and smell are among the most important things. That and talking. I take a new bottle out of the holdall. ‘Don’t be fooled by the screw cap. The fashion’s moving away from corks, certainly for mid-range wines. And I’ll tell it to you straight, this is a mid-range wine. And to be perfectly honest, it’s even lower mid-range. But it’s solid, a good solid table wine, a simple French wine but the best you’ll get for the price. Simple but good. A good wine for a good bar. And a good profit margin for an honest business, for you, for me and for your customers.’

She must have been standing there for a good while but I only notice her now, even though my eyes aren’t closed. ‘Your ticket, please.’ I hold the bottle between my knees with both hands and put it down on the floor in front of me. I see the ticket collector looking at the empty bottle on the table. If I’m on a train I must have a ticket, so I search my pockets again — jacket, trousers, shirt. ‘This train will divide in Nuremberg; you’ll have to find a seat at the front of the train then, from carriage 29 on.’

Nuremberg. I’ve been there before, on business sometime. ‘How long before we get to Nuremberg?’ I ask. ‘About fifty minutes,’ she says. She’s holding some kind of device, presumably for my ticket, which I’m still looking for. Coins, pens, tissues. She has reddish hair, a couple of strands falling across her face, and I don’t know why but I can’t help staring at those red strands of hair in her face, and she doesn’t like me looking at her like that while I’m still searching through my pockets. She turns aside and now the device for my ticket is right in front of my face. Those red strands of hair — what is it with that red? I try to remember women I’ve known with red hair but there’s nothing, it’s something else, this red (the wine? No, not the wine), but I can’t get hold of it. I feel some paper in a small inside pocket, folded, and I give it to her. She unfolds it, looks at it for a while, then she takes the device and stamps my ticket. ‘There’s a twenty-minute stay in Nuremberg, you’ll have enough time …’ She hands me my ticket. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Thanks,’ and then she leaves, pulling the compartment door to behind her.

I’m holding the ticket in my hand but I’m looking at the wine bottle on the floor in front of me. I crumple the ticket in my fist, then I spread it out on my knee, stroking it smooth again without looking at it, hearing the rustle of the paper and picking up the bottle and drinking a swig. Why would a veteran wine rep like me ever drink this plonk? ‘Munich — Bitterfeld.’

I read it over and over again, ‘Munich — Bitterfeld, second class, eighty-four euro,’ and I ask myself why on earth I’m going home when I haven’t been home for almost fifteen years now. Bitterfeld. Huge factories with flames coming out of their chimneys at times. As a child, I often used to stand outside the huge factories, the air like rotting eggs, and imagine that one day I’d … it’s all very clear in my head, but what’s behind the smoke and the flames? I drink, and then I press my hands to my forehead.