Clemens Meyer - All the Lights

‘Mind if I have a smoke in here?’ A man’s standing in the open door; why don’t I hear them opening the door? He’s wearing a brown cord jacket, and what I immediately notice is his long, thin neck, and it seems to me like I’ve seen that neck and this man before sometime and spoken to him — his voice seems familiar too. ‘I’m sitting further forward, I booked a seat but you can’t smoke there. You don’t mind me having a quick …’

‘No, no, of course not.’ I look at him and nod but he doesn’t seem to recognise me, and maybe I just saw him at the station in Munich, the station I don’t remember at all; it’s as if someone or something had teleported me onto this train, maybe the cheap wine’s to blame, I’m a wine rep though and I can take my drink, but it’s not just the station and the train; there’s something wrong but I still can’t get hold of it. And again I hear a clinking and again it scares me terribly, but it’s not clinking at all, it’s screeching; the train slows down and then stops. ‘Nuremberg,’ I say and reach for my bag. ‘No,’ says the man, sitting opposite me now and smoking. ‘It’s a while yet to Nuremberg.’

I look out of the window but there’s no station to be seen outside, only darkness, and somewhere pretty far off a few isolated lights.

‘How far are you going, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Bitterfeld,’ I say and wait for him to tell me where he’s going, but he just nods and that looks very strange, with his long, thin neck.

‘Bitterfeld. Where exactly is Bitterfeld?’

‘Near Leipzig,’ I say, and he holds out an orange pack of cigarettes to me; he smokes Ernte 23 as well, and I take one out. He gives me a light. ‘You’ll have to change then, won’t you? We’re not stopping in Bitterfeld, are we?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Probably not.’

‘You’ll want to ask the ticket collector then.’ He pulls the ashtray out of the armrest and taps the ash in a couple of times. ‘I bet you have to change in Leipzig. I’ve been to Leipzig. Lovely churches they have there.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Lovely churches.’ The train moves off with a jerk, the empty bottle on the windowsill tips over but the man with the long, thin neck holds onto it; he was pretty fast, as if he’d seen it coming. We’re moving off now.

‘Is it a big place? Bitterfeld, I mean.’

‘No, not very,’ I say.

‘And the churches, are there nice churches there?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say, trying to remember, but all I see is the chimneys and the smoke and the flames.

‘You don’t often visit Father Yahweh then?’ He croaks the word ‘Yahweh’ strangely.

It sounds almost like he’s coughing, and I ask, ‘Who?’

‘Father Yahweh, our Lord. You do know our Lord?’

‘A little bit,’ I say. ‘I’ve read about him.’ And that’s true. I’m lying in a small cheap hotel, I’m waiting until I can fall asleep, flicking through the hotel bible. I reach for the bottle and drink, then I pass it to the man with the long, thin neck. He leans his head back and drinks in large, greedy gulps, and I look at his Adam’s apple moving up and down very fast. ‘Thanks. The Lord gave us wine.’ He hands me the bottle, leaning far forwards as if he were bowing to me or his Father Yahweh, and I drink again, not letting him out of my sight. He’s lit up another cigarette; he smokes just as greedily as he just drank. ‘Did you see the beautiful churches in Munich? You did come from Munich?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘Munich. Lots of churches in Munich.’ I’ve been to Munich on business a lot, although I’d have done better business there as a beer salesman, and I search, search in my head for what happened this time in Munich. And there’s that clinking again and a smashing as well, but I can’t get hold of it yet, can’t concentrate on it either because the man’s started talking about his Father Yahweh again, telling me it’s all thanks to Father Yahweh that he’s sitting here now.

‘And he sent me to you, to this compartment.’

‘Do you think so?’ I say, drinking and handing him the bottle.

Very quietly he says, almost whispering, ‘Lots of compartments were empty but I came to this one. Father Yahweh leads me, his rod and his staff guide me, although he has reason to be wrathful at me, and he has great wrath at me, and yet he leads me to the laid tables.’

He’s starting to scare me, this man. Now he’s drinking and I almost forget that I could use someone to guide me too, someone to clear my head, to give me back all my memories, and I say, ‘The Lord’s angry with you?’

‘You have to say his name,’ he says, very quietly again. ‘Father Yahweh, his name’s Father Yahweh, we have to say his name for him to hear us.’

‘Father Yahweh’s angry with you?’ We use the familiar form of address; I don’t know when we switched over from Sie to du , but it’s another thing that makes me think I know him already, as if we’d talked to each other before, but for God’s sake, I don’t know the man, I’d definitely remember if someone had told me such crazed nonsense before, and what else can I call it …

‘Father Yahweh put a curse on me.’

‘Now which is it?’ I say, losing patience now. ‘He leads you but he puts a curse on you, what kind of …’

‘Calm down,’ he says, smiling and lowering his head in my direction. ‘We have to love Father Yahweh and recognise Him. And I recognised Him too late, spent all those years without His light, and that’s what he’s punishing me for, and not just me.’

I close my eyes and press my head against the headrest. I hear him talking, talking about God and illumination and punishment, and for a brief moment there’s a memory, the man with the long, thin neck standing very close to my white van, there’s a woman too, lying down, and something about her reminds me of the ticket collector, I want to reach out and grab hold of it but the picture blurs, the memories aren’t clear, and when I open my eyes I see a small Madonna statue right in front of my face. The Virgin Mary’s holding a tiny Jesus in her arms, and at first I get a shock, then I feel the train moving and I think that I’ve never seen anything as ugly as this. China, or probably just cheap plastic or plaster; white, pink and pale blue.

‘Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she absolutely beautiful? The way she’s holding the Baby Jesus? If you look really carefully you can see him smiling.’

And I look carefully but all I can see is a tiny line that’s supposed to be his mouth, and I say, ‘Yes, beautiful.’

He puts the figurine carefully in the breast pocket of his jacket, smiling again or still smiling. I see his yellow teeth when he smiles. He’s smoking again or still smoking. ‘You ought to visit Father Yahweh in the churches of your town.’

I want to tell him about the huge chimneys with the flames coming out of them but suddenly I’m very tired and I drink and all I say is, ‘Who knows … my town.’

‘Father Yahweh,’ he starts again, even though I’ve passed him the bottle, but suddenly I think of something and I interrupt him and his smile, which I can’t stand any longer, and I ask, ‘Who, my friend, who has He punished apart from you?’

He puts the bottle down. He looks at me for a long time, and I can’t hold his gaze so I lower my head, as if his gaze had hit something right in my eyes, and I look at the floor and hear him whispering very quietly, ‘My wife.’

‘Dear passengers, we’ll shortly be arriving in Nuremberg, where the rear section of the train with carriage numbers …’

The bottles in my bag clink together as we walk along the train. Outside I see all the lights of Nuremberg station, but I have to hurry because the man with the long, thin neck is almost running ahead of me; I see his back, the opened bottle of wine held next to his hip. I’m surprised we’ve reached Nuremberg already; it seemed like we’d only been sitting in the compartment a few minutes, talking and drinking and smoking. ‘Come to the front with me, I’m sitting in a large compartment, there was a space free next to me before.’ I’m quite glad he didn’t say Father Yahweh saved the seat next to him, and I walk along behind him but I know there’s something else, something I have to find out about why I feel compelled to follow him. And as I hurry along the train with him the wines are in my head again — it’s as if I needed them so I don’t come to a stop and maybe so I can jump out of the train, Nuremberg station, despite the ticket to Bitterfeld — I’m scared as I walk along behind him, maybe of the memories, maybe of the pictures he’s going to bring me. ‘Herrenberg, Künstler, 2003 vintage; Hupfeld, Winkeler Hasensprung, Riesling Kabinett, 2005 vintage; Georg Müller, 2005 vintage, Hattenheimer Schützenhaus; Rüdesheimer Berg Roseneck, Spätlese, 2004 vintage.’ Riesling, it’s always Riesling, and I think of the good vintages and the not so good ones, of the good vineyards and the not so good ones, and my white van was full of bottles, wine samples and catalogues and lies.