Christopher Kloeble: Almost Everything Very Fast

I haven’t forgotten a thing. I remember the beginning and the end, and all that lies between. I’ve seen a story become history and the other way around.

But nobody’s interested in that, not here. My senile neighbors can barely concentrate for a couple of minutes at a stretch, without having to put themselves down for a nap. And most of the young nurses have better things to do than listen to an eighty-year-old’s tales. They think they’re supposed to feel sorry for me. And yet I feel sorry for them. If only they knew what lies ahead of them! The poor things believe that their lives will spool out just the way they’ve imagined. Eventually, they’ll figure out that you can’t set a course for things. And I don’t mean that just figuratively: blood must flow. I try to explain it to them, I want to warn them. And what do they do? Pat me on the hand, and tell me I shouldn’t exaggerate.

My memory is better company. It grants me the scent of an incomparable bridal gown; grants me the love of women, many women; grants me the heat of a devastating conflagration; grants me the hope that my children are still alive out there, somewhere; grants me the glitter of gold, and the fear in the eyes of dead soldiers.

Nor is it frugal with pain.

Only, sometimes, I wish it would send me peace. Even when I’m asleep it won’t leave me alone and sends dreams after me. It’s always there. It won’t let me forget.

Five Fingers

Up in the sky, the last two clouds were drifting slowly toward each other. A lightbulb with blurry edges, and a white, puffy shape that defied comparison.

Down below, Albert stood flanked by his suitcases in the patchy front yard of a house in Königsdorf, eyeing the doorbell, lost in thought. Anyone acquainted with Albert — admittedly something only few could claim — would know that he couldn’t help it. When he was younger the other kids had called him bookworm, or four-eyes, though he didn’t wear glasses and was anything but studious. Whenever some assignment was handed to him, he attempted to tackle it, whatever it might be, by thoroughly thinking it through. That was all. And it didn’t mean he always got good grades, either. For Albert, there was no sentence so surreal as I would never have thought of that. How could you not think of something? (He often thought.)

But the toughest assignment Albert had ever been given — the solution to which he’d been seeking for nineteen years now — was waiting for him behind the door whose bell he was touching, but hadn’t yet pressed.

On this particular afternoon Albert had a journey of more than seventeen hours behind him — on the night train, the commuter train, and finally bus 479, whose driver had made every single stop in the Bavarian uplands, from Pföderl via Wolfsöd through Höfen, though no one at all had gotten on or off — and now that he had only a tiny scrap farther to go, he wasn’t so sure he even wanted to arrive.

This is what Albert always thought when he came to Königsdorf: that he’d been coming to visit Fred since he was three years old, initially accompanied by a nun from the orphanage at Saint Helena, and later alone. That he and Fred had never grown particularly close. That when he was five (and, as far as Albert knew, Fred forty-six) he’d made sure that Fred had donned his water wings when, hand in hand, they’d leapt into the Baggersee. That only a few years later he’d started paying for Fred whenever they found themselves facing a cash register, because Albert could count up the change without having to use his fingers. That at the age of twelve, he’d tried to dissuade Fred from his dream of becoming an actor. (The latter had fully rejected this plan only later, on the grounds that he didn’t want, as he put it, people watching him while he worked.) That the following year, he’d still been vigilant about Fred’s water wings. That at fifteen he’d tried to explain the facts of life to Fred, who hadn’t wanted to hear, and had simply responded with a sheepish laugh. That Fred had never called him anything but Albert, and Albert had never called him anything but Fred. That he had never called him Father.

Fred was just Fred — this was the first rule in Albert’s life. It had been that way since he was born, and it would be that way this year as well.

For a few more months, in any case.

In his office the cardiologist had waved the fingers of one manicured hand, and Albert had asked himself if the doctor always did it like that, if he generally told his patients the number of months remaining to them with his fingers, to spare himself the search for sympathetic words. Five fingers. Albert had barely paid attention to them, had taken Fred by the hand and left the hospital with him, ignoring the doctor’s shouts, as later he would his phone calls.

Because he couldn’t talk about it with Fred, he prattled on about other things as they made their way home, especially about the foehn, how strong it was for this time of year, really unusually strong.

Fred had interrupted him: “Five fingers are bad.”

Albert had stopped in his tracks, searching for something to say.

“Five fingers are very bad, Albert.”

“Five fingers aren’t all that bad,” Albert had eventually answered.

“Really? How many do you have, Albert? How many fingers do you have until you have to go dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is five a lot?”

“Five is a pretty good number,” said Albert, as encouragingly as he could.

“I have five fingers!” A relieved laugh. “And you, Albert, I bet you have plenty of fingers, too.”

That same evening Albert had left town again, to take his high school exit exams. An obligation that, in light of the news, seemed to him as ridiculous as his decision to fulfill it.

Though in fact, all he really wanted was to get away.

Two months later, after the exams, most of his friends had vanished beyond the horizon. Australia and Cambodia were destinations especially popular with orphans; when they returned from a trip to Angkor or the outback, not only had they “found themselves,” also they had an idea of where they belonged in the world, and what they wanted to start doing with their lives. Supposedly. Albert, on the other hand — who’d never been able to understand why so many people assumed that answers unobtainable in the immediate neighborhood were awaiting them in far-off lands — had decided to move in with Fred. He hadn’t known what to expect, and still didn’t this afternoon, standing before Fred’s house — he knew only that, whatever it was, there wasn’t much time.

Three more fingers, thought Albert; he rang the bell, lowered his head, grabbed the handles of his suitcases, and stood there, motionless. The heat bored down into his skull. People would remember this summer for a long time. Contrary to all predictions, there had not been a storm for weeks now. The grass in Fred’s garden was rust-brown, even the chirping of the crickets sounded feeble, and the shimmering heat on the stretch of the main street that ran in front of the property was playing tricks on Albert’s eyes.

Ambrosial!

Now the door opened and on the top step there appeared a gangling, six-and-a-half-foot-tall giant, sheepishly dipping his head.

They stared at each other.

“Albert!” shouted Fred in his silvery voice, and before Albert knew what was happening to him, he’d been plucked off his feet and pressed hard against Fred’s bony chest.