May 21, 2007
Shelter (from the Munich Tales)
SHELTER
By Michael Kroetch
He was going to collect the wind. He would trap it in jars on his roof. He didn´t tell his parents about the idea. He kept the carefully chosen jars ready and hidden under his bed. To do it, he would go up into the tree that was outside his window and climb from it to the roof with a rucksack strapped on his back. He would have to be cautious not to jostle too violently the jars nestled inside the rucksack as he made his way up through the tree´s branches. For protection, each jar would be gently wrapped in swaths of old cloth. The cloth he´d selected was as special as the jars. It came from the shirts his great grandfather Leo had once worn when he spent time as a logger in the Rocky Mountains of Canada. Even though they had never met, his grandfather meant a lot to him. He knew the man would have approved of his plan for the wind. He would sometimes seek out the fabric of the old torn shirts when he was feeling most weak and alone. In touching the ragged cloth he thought he sensed some of his grandfather´s often praised strength and humor. These things he so very much desired in his own life, but could not find. He knew the people in his neighborhood thought him strange. His clothes. His hair. His face. He didn´t want to be strange. He wanted to fit in and be like everybody else, but somehow it never quite worked. But he knew having the wind would help. It would lift him up. If he could get it inside him, it wouldn´t matter what others thought. He would have the wind. He got the idea of the wind from an old documentary he´d seen the previous summer. It was on late one long hot night when he couldn´t sleep. The show had been about a man trying to decipher the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. The man claimed daVinci´s unusual creative power had come from his ability to pull the wind of life itself into his being and harness its energies. Even though the boy´s whole family had been long asleep andhe had wanted to be as well, when he heard these words, something galvanized inside him. And in looking at the image of da Vinci on the screen, he was struck even more by the uncanny resemblance between da Vinci and his own grandfather. They could have been twins. Almost. He did not decide right away to embrace the wind. Many months went by with the memory of the TV program becoming almost entirely lost in shadow. But then, seemingly out of the blue, the narrator´s voice would fire up again in his head and he would once more feel the lucid charge in his veins he´d felt that night he first heard about da Vinci´s secret. The feeling was so strong that it made him slink down to the dank, dark closet in the basement, where his grandfather´s old, ragged logging clothes were stored. When he was sure no one knew was there, he would open the cardboard box and run his fingers gently over the fabric, imagining them on his grandfather high up in a tree in the middle of the Canadian wind. In such special moments he felt his soul grow a little larger and a little more vibrant. And he knew then that soon he too would live in the wind. But not only that, he would also be a kind of home where it could find shelter.
May 20, 2007
Boat (from the Munich Tales)
BOAT
By Michael Kroetch
Originally it had been his boat. Originally it had been something that went through the water on missions from one place to another. Now it belonged to her and now it went nowhere. Now it stayed absolutely still in the middle of the room where most people would have put their television set. She had candles set up along the rims of the outside and at night would light them all and sit within them, listening. He was out there somewhere. He was going to come back to her. She knew it the same way she always knew, to the day, months ahead, when snow would first fall. He was not dead. Just lost. He was lost like a cat in a tree—except that he was somewhere out there in that wide water trying to find her. Her family had helped her bring the boat up the stairs and taken apart the doorway of her apartment to get it in. Her brother had done most of this work. Lucky for her abut his skills at carpentry. Unlucky for her about his sarcasms and sense of dark fun about her lover´s return. Her brother had tried to apologise afterward, but it was too late. Some things cannot be undone. And besides she hadn´t really been that angry at him. Really she just wanted to be alone with the boat. To run her hands along ist soft surface and hold it close against her chest. She missed him so much. In the wooden frame she could feel his breathing, sense his passion for life and even hear faintly that song he once sang to her after they´d made love and were cuddling, while outside the wind knocked the tree against the wall like Armaggedon was about to unfold. His voice had been so soft, so sweet. She felt in the words of the song like she was finally free from all fear—like that song was a home she could live in and be safe. When he finished she had wanted him to keep singing, but didn´t know how to tell him so. Instead she had looked into his eyes and seen the tears there. Such a man could get lost. That was possible. Certainly. But a man like that die? She knew better. She knew it was just a matter now of being ready in his boat for when he came back into view, waving to her, sending her his song of love and renewal and return. In the light of the candles she felt the words of his song rise up from within her. His words became hers just as his boat had become hers. She was standing in its hull with her arms outstretched to him, offering him the safety of her heart to rest on as she had rested on his.
May 19, 2007
Kindness (from the Munich Tales)
KINDNESS
By Michael Kroetch
Everybody was sure he could be a movie star. He had that kind of look. His was the easy, languid grace of a river at sunset. You liked him even before you met him. It was impossible not to. Something in his eyes drew you toward him. There was a slowness in them. A gentle thunder. You always wanted him to walk by on his way to the torpedo factory where he worked. And whenever he did, you always enjoyed seeing his footprints glitter wet on the pavement under the red marquee of the pizza place. He didn´t seem to notice your burgundy lipstick of the tiny black dress which you wore especially for him. But then again, you couldn´t be sure. With him you couldn´t be sure of anything. He was so full of surprises and tiny kindnesses. Plus, he was so different from everyone else. The thing that bothered you the most about the place where you lived was the sameness of it all and the sameness of the people. You only had to look at them once to know their whole story and what they named their cat—if they had a cat, that is, which many of them did, even though it was against the apartment complex´s rules. With him you didn´t know anything really, except how he made you feel. He could be thinking anything and you´d never know it from his little smiles and nicely polished shoes. You couldn´t really help yourself from wanting to know more about him. Sneaking into his apartment when he was at work wasn´t really an invasion, it seemed to be what he wanted you to do. He was just to shy to ask. Okay, so you broke that little window. Yes, that was probably not the nicest thing to do, but he would understand. You knew he would. Just like he would understand why you stood so long in his shower looking up at the spigot imagining him there waiting for the water to fall on him, how his skin would feel under your palms, wet, strong, alive with excitement and passion. How could it be wrong to get into his bed and lay there awhile and look up at the same ceiling he looked up at as he drifted off to sleep? This was not criminal behavior, you were getting to know him. That´s why you took all those photos of the pretty girl out of the album on his night stand, tore them up into tiny, tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet. You were protecting him from her. She did not live anywhere around here and had never taken the trouble to visit him so she was obviously bad news and toying with his gentle heart. That´s why you kept searching for signs of her and everywhere you came across anything related to her, you destroyed it and erased all signs of your act. You knew he would be happy in the long run that you had done this. But it would take awhile and a lot of tender talking between the two of you, which you were more than ready to begin until you saw him standing behind you and no words came out of your mouth.
May 17, 2007
Lies (from the Munich Tales)
LIES
By Michael Kroetch
He was a puppet. It´s what he said to people. But then, he thought everyone was a puppet. Most just didn´t know it. Knowledge was important to him. He thought he knew more than most. Maybe he did, it´s hard to say. But what´s beyond all doubt is that he knew a lot about his own disease, where his soft spots were. At night they lit up his room. It´s why he lived alone. He had to. He feared sometimes they would get so bright and so hot they would ignite the room while he slept, catching the bed linen in flames first, then spreading to the curtains and beyond. It was easy for him to imagine the whole apartment complex consumed by flames that were born from his sleeping flesh. He was that kind of puppet with that kind of disease. But as much as he might talk openly and often about his theories on the vicissitudes of puppetness and puppetry, he rarely, if ever, overtly spoke of his disease. He collected data about the disease anywhere he could find it that would not leave a recognizable link back to him. The public library and the internet were taboo. He suspected most doctors also reported directly to the government about the topic as well, even if they swore the opposite and promised on scout´s honor to throw their own mother off a cliff if it was true. They were puppets just as much as he was, so how could he believe a word they said? He had enough trouble believing his own words. He knew he lied sometimes. He wasn´t sure why. It sometimes happened when he least expected. He would be telling someone about how to get to the nearest butcher shop and suddenly would lie and tell them directions that were completely false. He did not know if this was a result of him simply being a puppet or something related to his disease. He thought about such things for hours sometimes, pushing various possible justifications for either side of the argument. He knew the disease was spreading inside him more quickly than in most of the case studies he had examined. Why this was he wasn´t sure, but he was keeping careful track of his soft spots. They were the most dangerous areas. In such realms it seemed almost anything was possible, given the particular nature of the disease. The bright light that emanated from his body while he slept was among the more innocuous dangers presented by the ailment. He tried not to think about the more devastating repurcussions it could involve. Better to keep his mind occupied with the world of puppetry. As a child he had a whole set of puppets. Nice puppets Circus puppets. He took them with him everywhere he went. His adventures in the world were always shared by the puppets. But then the puppets got jealous when he left them home once. They set fire to his house and his family and everything he knew. It was after the fire that he discovered that he, too, was a puppet. A little boy puppet running in the street with a pack of matches and a smile as big as the North Pole.
Rare (from the Munich Tales)
RARE
By Michael Kroetch
He made the garden slowly. He could see it more or less complete in his head long before he had broken the ground to plant the first seed. He knew growing things took time and patience. He was not worried about the plants not surviving. He had worked with many plants over the course of his life and knew which ones would flourish in the environment he had at hand. He enjoyed helping the plants reach their potential and bloom into full beauty. He talked to them a lot, telling them how nicely they were doing and that they had nothing to worry about. That he would bring them fresh water every day and make sure they had enough nutrients in their soil. For them he would journey with his old frail body on his bicycle several miles to a coffee shop where his good friend Charlie was a janitor and get from Charlie the ground remnants from the previous day´s brewing of coffee beans. He would sprinkle these coffee grounds among his little friends when they were sleeping at night. He knew these coffee remnants contained just the right kind of nitrogen for his plants and that when they woke up in the morning, their roots would feed on what he had given them and this would make them strong and vital and able to reach u toward the sun. Seeing them succeed and grow lush made him smile inside. He was a simple man. He did not need much in life to feel satisfied, but he needed his garden. It was a place for him to put his love now that his children were grown and gone to other places far away. He enjoyed seeing his family when they returned on holidays with the grandchildren, of course he did. But spoiling the grandchildren with all his affections and presents and hugs on those few days out of the year was not enough for him. Every day he was able to spoil his plants and tell them how lovely and beautiful they were, even as seedlings when all anyone else could see was a stub of green. To him this stub of green was a small miracle. He knew how brief life was and had not only lost his wife but so many of his dearest friends over the span of his years. He knew these stubs of green were a way the world had of trying again. He liked life but knew he would not have so many years to enjoy his garden. That is why he was so very careful with each living thing he encountered and smiled at them all. He felt as if they all held some of him within them somehow, especially his own plants and flowers. When he saw them healthy and happy and green with their colorful flowers, he knew he could face his own death. He could feel his body growing weaker with the passage of days and years and knew that before long some of the plants he had helped bring into the fullness of their life would go on without him. This could have made him sad, but it did not. He was a kind man and kind also to himself. He was happy for all that he had experienced and certainly wanted more time with his plants and grandchildren, but also he knew there were limits. In time he would become coffee grinds. He and his plants would give way to the next generation and their kind. He tried to tell his plants this to give them some peace when he saw them reaching the end of their life cycle. He would kiss them after he said it and tell them once more how very beautiful they were. And rare.
May 15, 2007
Pretty (from the Munich Tales)
PRETTY
By Michael Kroetch
She had built herself up out of spare parts, old things she´d found around in the junkyard or on the street. Nothing was original. She had a man´s voice that came from a 1950´s educational movie designed to teach school children the proper way to dance. Her cheeks were stolen off a billboard that once featured a tough cowboy smoking a long thin cigarette. Her ankles had been a boxer´s. Nobody famous, unfortunately—not that she cared. The whole thing of who she was wasn´t supposed to last or even impress—it was just the getting by that counted, the getting through another day somehow. The war had given her some of her toes in the form of bullet casings. She liked them, how they jingled a little when she walked. Because her breasts had been replaced with hubcaps and her vagina with a Hoover vacuum engine, she wasn´t really sure she should be calling herself a “her” anymore. But she did anyway. It was more out of habit than some kind of political statement. Her belief in politics had been lost long before her teeth. She poked at the silicone microchips which now passed as her teeth. They needed cleaning. But then, in her world, what didn´t? Everything that wasn´t dirty or falling apart was already dead and sealed up waiting for Armageddon to roll around so it could unthawed and given a second chance. Personally she didn´t want another roll of those dice. She´d landed in this slim slice of history and was making do and getting by. Not well, maybe, compared to the uber-rich who came by her place every once in awhile on one of their sightseeing excursions, but not as bad as the scabrous unmentionables who still tried to have jobs and keep the military machinery up and running. Having replaced all semblance of the “her” that had once been human, she no longer qualified as being able to fight and also was not really detectable by their recruitment equipment. To their machines she no longer read as a biological entity and appeared more like a mobilized advertisement out harvesting data—more like what they themselves were, if the truth be told. But truth was another of those old conventions she'd jettisoned long before giving up her teeth. Truth was whatever it needed to be for those who could afford it. And, simply put, she couldn´t. Not that she minded. Her world was not about victory, honor, or honesty. It was about trying to keep her body, such as it was, together and functioning enough, just enough to get through to the next day. There wasn´t going to be another generation after her. She knew that much. She felt lucky to even be able to say there was going to be another day. She smiled at the thought of anyone wanting a child, given the what of the way things were. She smiled and then did a little bit of a jig, her bullet casing toes jingling along in an almost dainty and pretty way as she did.
May 14, 2007
Dissolve (from the Munich Tales)
DISSOLVE
By Michael Kroetch
He lived in the past—not his own past, not even a real past that had ever happened, but a movie past. Purely imaginary. Purely a dream. It had gotten so he could no longer speak his own words, but had to use phrases and lines from the dreamworld of the black and white movies he was almost continuously watching. His body was more and more not his own either; its gestures and movements were being taken over by what he saw on the screen. He seemed unable to stop it and not even aware it was happening—that he was being erased and replaced. He would smile the smile of a long dead actor and speak words which had once been written down for the dead actor to say, and when his lips moved and the words came out—it was impossible to tell that he did not think the words were his own. If challenged on the matter, he would get upset, outraged and switch to a different film and use those words of wild-eyed condemnation against his accuser. His family took it in stride. What else could they do? He was part of them. Even if he could no longer admit this to himself or possibly even believe it—he was still their flesh, their blood and so they took care of him as best they could. His movies always came first, but after they were over—and that was the good thing for his family, there was always an ending to his movies—after they were over, his family would try and get him to go outside. Even for a little while. Just to get some air and maybe see some real people and have a little bit of a life. But this he wanted less and less. He didn´t see the point of it. Why would he want to go out there into that desert? His family didn´t know what he was talking about. Desert? They lived in a city. It worried them when he talked this way, acted so dramatic. Why did he have to be so difficult? Of course they couldn´t say this directly to him, they didn´t think they could say anything directly to him anymore. For them it was like they had to figure out what movie was maybe happening in his head and what parts might be available for them for the purpose of getting through to him. It was more and more as if they were invisible or imaginary beings flitting around the periphery of his vision, unless they spoke in words or had gestures he recognised from one of his movies. If they were careful, they could hold long conversations with hi this way. But it was tricky. It was not easy. He knew the films so much better than they ever could and would get impatient if they kept messing up their lines. Once his sister had more of it than she could take. She broke out of the character she was trying to play and started shouting at him that he was driving them all crazy with this nonsense and he had to stop it. He had to stop it. He did not respond. He turned his back on her. He went over and turned on the movie which she had been playing in and began watching it from where she had broken down. His smile showed how much more satisfied he was to be again experiencing the real thing.
May 07, 2007
Flower (from the Munich Tales)
FLOWER
By Michael Kroetch
He believed in flow. He believed in goodness. He believed if he rode in a balloon above the city he would be able to see the goodness from there like you could see flowers on a sunny day in the field where he sometimes went running. Goodness was like a flower to him. It was not something permanent, but fleeting. His goal was to try and capture it on a map as it occurred, at least as much of it as he could from his balloon above the city. He had acquired a powerful telescope for just this purpose and found a “How to” book on the use of telescopes to help him use it as it was meant to be. Or sort of how it was meant to be. He knew he would be looking in the wrong direction for the goodness and that usually telescopes tried to find it in the stars. But he didn´t let this trouble him. He was not the sort to be troubled by what other people thought of him or what he did. It´s why he didn´t get bothered when his neighbors in the apartment complex all signed a petition against him for his late night noise antics of building the large gondola for his balloon. He used vestiges of things that they had thrown away and which he had squirreled away out of the large trash containers in the courtyard. His place was filled with castoffs: old bicycle tires, pieces of a broken gas stove, several smashed lamps, a torn hammock, some mildewed luggage that seemed to have been half eaten by rats, an ancient stereo system with speakers bigger than his entire closet. All of this and more he was using to fashion the gondola for his balloon. Soon he would have it ready for the launch. He calculated that the best day to track goodness would be in the middle of the week and so he´d chosen Wednesday as the day for his first journey. The problem was he could not get off from his job at the noodle factory on Wednesdays because that was always the day they sent heir biggest shipment off to Spain. He didn´t know what to do. He was afraid of his boss finding out about his mapping plans. He didn´t think his boss would really understand the concept. He knew not everyone was able to think as abstractly about life as he could. But he didn´t want his mapping of goodness to itself somehow involve an act of non-goodness with him lying to his boss and so he decided the only way to make it work out well was to for everyone was to bring his boss along on the journey. Of course for this he would have to reconfigure some aspects of his gondola design and the weight variables of extra ballast he´d need to bring along. But the ballast wouldn´t be too hard to work out, he had the two kitchen sinks he´d saved for just such an unplanned turn of events. He tied them to the side of the big unwieldy odd basket in his kitchen and smiled how nicely surprised his boss would be when he woke up after the sedative wore off and could look down through the telescope and see all the goodness blossoming so far below them.
May 04, 2007
Tickets (from the Munich Tales)
TICKETS
By Michael Kroetch
The ones inside her were black. They were the reason she did so well in school and was always so well spoken of. They were the reason she did so many things—including going to Antarctica to study climate changes from ten thousand years ago. Or winning the state spelling bee when she was ten years old. The tickets had reasons for existing, of course they did. She knew all about them. She knew they had names and dates on them. She knew they were evidence. And she knew she could do anything she liked, go to the bottom of the ocean floor in a diving bell with walls three feet thick to hold up to the intense pressure of the water outside, or sail up into the atmosphere where the membrane between sky and stars was thin as an eyelash. She´d done both and it didn´t matter. The tickets remained inside her. Solid. Safe. Unfettered. Waiting. Over the years friends had tried to help, especially boyfriends. And lord knows, she´d wanted help. Wanted to be free of the terrible weight of the tickets. One boy in particular had gotten in close to them. He almost seemed able to touch them. This had never happened before and she was astonished he had somehow been able to do so—gotten so near. She´d felt a mix of fear and excitement about it. Then she´d closed her eyes. She could hear it raining outside. It had been raining a long time. She could hear failure in the sound of the rain and knew when she opened her eyes that the boy would be gone. He would have gone away and left her alone in the apartment. In his place would be another tiny black ticket inside her. A new one. His name would be on it. And it would not go away even if years from now she might not be able to remember his face or his name. That wouldn´t matter. His ticket would still be inside with the others. When younger she had cut her legs in small places where no one would see, to try and let the tickets out. She had used a special knife for this that she purchased in a shop on the other side of the city. The same knife had purportedly been used by a magic healer in some part of Central America to cure women who had problems like hers. In his healing the man had used the knife to sever the heads of live chickens. She did not want to cut the heads off of chickens and so instead had cut into herself. But apparently she had not been able to cut deep enough to get to where the tickets were. It scared her to cut that deep. She had not wanted people to know what was happening. She never told anyone about the tickets. None of her friends. Not even the boy who by chance had gotten so near to them. She felt people wouldn´t understand and that it would backfire, and instead end up producing more of the tickets. And so she did what she always did and pretended not to know they were there, and to have more and more success in her life. She found that more than anything else, success worked for awhile to keep the tickets quiet.
May 02, 2007
Buttons (from the Munich Tales)
BUTTONS
By Michael Kroetch
He was from a different place. He had not been here long and still had many of the ways of doing things from where he had been before. Even his clothes were different. They had many extra buttons on them and in places people from here would never put buttons. He also spoke louder than people were used to speaking and made gestures with his arms that frightened them. Their words were new to him as well, and came out of his mouth all lopsided and broken sounding. Sometimes he seemed not to have any idea what he was saying or even how to do the simplest of things. Because of this, people were often puzzled by his behavior and became nervous if he came near them. If they saw him out walking on the street, they would often try to avoid him by crossing to the other side or by quickly entering a store as refuge. It was not that they did not like him or wished him ill, it was just that his clothes had all those extra buttons and in such strange places. Someone said all the extra buttons sewn into his clothes must mean something. Perhaps he was hiding something. Could be something dangerous. They ended up discussing the possibilities of what was behind the buttons for many days. During this time none of them spoke to him or dared to look at the buttons on his clothes. They grew ever more afraid of him and what his intentions might be. It had become quite apparent to them that he was anything but a positive presence in their lives and that he was making it more and more difficult for them to get through their daily routines. Something had to be done about him. They had to think of the children. They had to think about a lot of things. But what they tried not to think about was how different he was with his buttons, because they had already agreed among themselves that thinking about him and the buttons was bad. Better to think about a nice sunny day and walking in the park and looking at the trees and enjoying the sounds of the birds. But of course when they tried to do this, they could not. Him and the buttons were ruining everything! Someone proposed the idea that they grab hold of him by force, the lot of them, and pluck the buttons off the extra places on his clothes where the buttons served no obvious purpose except to cause trouble. This course of action seemed radical and extreme at first, but when considered seriously came to be seen as the only realistic alternative. In the process of achieving their goal, things went differently than they had expected. They did not anticipate that they would lose control and begin to beat and kick him once they had him subdued on the ground. After it was over, they held his buttons in their hands while his body lay there motionless. Inert. They did not know whether to be happy to have the buttons or not. Some kept their button as a trophy and pinned it on the wall, others burned their button. His body was not touched.
May 01, 2007
Scarecrow (from the Munich Tales)
SCARECROW
By Michael Kroetch
He came from a small village where everyone was blind. Over the years several teams of doctors, scientists, and health officials had been to the village to explore why everyone in it was unable to see. No answers were found. It wasn´t the water and there was no record of unusual amounts of radiation or cancer or any of the known transmittable eye ailments. Nonetheless, as far back as anyone in his village could remember, no one born there had ever been able to see. He was no exception. What made him different was that he left the place. His journey to the city was strange and long. A doctor who had studied the village had found him the job and place to stay and had brought him to it, shutting the door with a click after saying so long and goodbye. There was a storm the first night in the new apartment. He stood there in the thunder. He could feel it all around him. He had been in storms before, but never had been this high up inside of one. None of the homes in his village was taller than one or two floors. His apartment was on the fifteenth level of the complex. He was out on the terrace, face being ripped by the wind, the curtains flying around madly behind him, rain pelting his hair. He held fast to the iron grating of the rail. The doctor had told him to be careful about the rail, very careful, and to not go out on the terrace if alone. He had nodded agreement and said yes to the doctor´s words. He was good at saying yes to what people wanted and doing the opposite later. His parents had not wanted him to leave the village. His grandmother had cried and cried and taken hold of his sweater sleeve earlier that day when the family had helped him load his things into the doctor´s jeep. “Don´t leave us. Come back to us. Stay,” she pleaded. He said he would come back, but he knew he could not. He could not stay there in the land of scarecrows. That´s what he called the people of the town. The doctor had asked him why and he hadn´t been able to explain. It had bothered him that he could not. In the end he told the doctor it wasn´t the word itself but the feeling of the word. “They are so full of fear all the time, always worried someone will forget to put away a rake and they will trip over it. I´m so tired of this fear always everywhere under everything like an underground river they all pretend is not there. I can´t take it any more.” When he had told the doctor these words, he had not known they would be the words to free him from that world, but it was that same day the doctor began working to help him begin a new life in the city, the life he was now about to begin. And standing there where he was, at the rail, he was in the very center, in the throbbing heart of what the people from his village feared most. He could feel the storm rampaging all around him huge and terrifying and magnificent. He didn´t remember ever feeling anything more beautiful or frightening. It was like the world was being born all over again.
April 29, 2007
Victory (from the Munich Tales)
VICTORY
By Michael Kroetch
He was an old man. His arms were long and thin and trembled a lot—especially if he didn't get his morning tea, which seemed to those who knew him to be the main reason he went on living, just so he could have another morning's tea. He loved tea the way some men loved hunting or beautiful women. He'd had enough of both and would tell anybody so. “Forget your dead carcass or that beautiful girl spread across a bed, give me a cup of tea instead any day of the week. Or EVERY day. Yes, yes, much rather have it every day, if you don't mind.” That was what he would say to people and laugh and laugh at how shocked they looked. He liked making his tea drinking seem a bit risqué. Or naughty. Himself, he preferred that word risqué, but a lot of the other old people who lived in his building didn't know what the word meant. They seemed to think he was asking them if they wanted to play the game “risk,” which he most certainly did not! For some reason the game was hugely popular and always there were all these old people, many of them much older than he was, playing it and trying to take over the world. He didn't want to take over the world, thank you very much. All he wanted was his tea. He had been in a real war a long ago against someone who wanted to take over the world. That had been no game for him. All his friends getting blown up here and blown up there. Many coming home without some part of them. An arm or a leg. Or maybe some part of their brain. He had been lucky and he knew it. Every time he drank his tea, he would not forget his friends who hadn't been as lucky. He would hoist a freshly steeped cup toward the heavens and say, “Here's to you, boys!” Recently when was doing so, his long thin arm had trembled more than it should have and sent the tea cup loose from his grip, launched it skyward just enough to land on the gassy lady who lived next door to him and who it seemed was always trying to get close enough to him at breakfast time on the deck to sit in his lap. He got into a bit of trouble for the incident. The nurse who tended after his neighbor threatened to revoke his tea privileges. As if it were possible to do such a thing! Here he was a decorated soldier, a hero if it needed to be known with a medal of honor and they were going to take away his God given right to his morning tea? Well, not if he had any say in the matter. You could take away the dead carcass from him and the girl on the bed, but you better watch yourself if you come anywhere the least little bit near his tea cup. And that's exactly what he told the nurse. She had just sighed, rolled her eyes, and returned to cleaning up the mess on her patient from the spilled tea. He had laughed quietly to himself, proud of his little victory. He didn't get many anymore, but they were sure fun when they happened.
April 22, 2007
Clown (from the Munich Tales)
CLOWN
By Michael Kroetch
She was a happy child. But she was also full of beans and enjoyed pulling jokes on her friends when they were outside playing games in the street or drawing chalk monsters on the sidewalk. Her mother told her to be nice and not to clown around and laugh in church, but she couldn´t help herself. She saw funny things everywhere she went and was always whispering about them to one of her many girlfriends and making them also crack up with laughter. She had never thought her humor special, but always it seemed she was the one who did the best silly imitations of the teachers or whatever authority figure might have visited their classroom recently. Last week it was a fat policeman and during the lunch break she pretended to be him eating ten donuts at once and then trying to kiss his wife, but not being able to because of his big stomach. She put a cushion from the lunch room under her school uniform for the stomach and made her best friend, Karen, be the wife. Everyone laughed and laughed from where they sat watching on top of the monkey bars. Nobody expected she would miss her step when she stood up after her bow to the audience. They also didn't expect her to fall backward and smack her head on the pavement. They were still laughing at how silly the fake fat belly cushion looked coming out of her uniform. They didn't know at first she was in trouble. It was a nice sunny day. The smell of freshly cooked hotdogs from lunch still hung in the air and the trees overhead were newly green with spring leaves. And all the children were pointing at her and laughing. It was a moment that seemed to last a lot longer than most moments do or should ever last—because what they expected to happen next was not happening. After pretending to fall like that, she should have been bounding up and dancing around like a clown. She was the funniest kid, why wasn´t she jumping up? The ambulance came within twenty minutes, but many of the children later told their parents it took several hours to arrive. It had seemed like that to them. Each of those minutes with her there on the ground with her eyes shut had been an eternity. And an impossibility. This kind of thing simply did not happen. Her best friend and temporary wife rode with her to the hospital in the back of the ambulance. When she woke up, her wife told her everyone was praying for her. She asked why and said that she didn´t owe any of them any money. Then she smiled and giggled at her own joke and her friend did, too. After that she closed her eyes and never opened them again. Her friend and wife kept the fake belly cushion even though it was school property. She knew her friend would laugh at her for being so sentimental. But she didn't care. Some things were worth doing--even if it meant being laughed at.
April 16, 2007
Veil (from the Munich Tales)
VEIL
By Michael Kroetch
She wore a fireman´s raincoat. She liked the way it felt, that was all. And that was all it took. Soon everyone was wearing them. Now everywhere you go, that´s what women wear. She was like that with things. When she first moved in above the torpedo factory, only rats, bats, and opossums lived there. Next thing you knew, all the young darlings with perfect hair, neon white teeth, and triple platinum credit cards were her neighbors up there. And it happened like that. Almost overnight. Others liked taking the spotlight for her discoveries and often got their faces in the newspaper for this reason. But their fame didn´t last. It couldn´t. She knew this. It´s why she never got upset about such things and just kept moving on to whatever next captured her fancy. Today it was George. He worked the late shift at the coffee place behind the rodeo bar. He´d been awake for two days straight when she walked in wearing her fireman´s raincoat. She knew she liked him straight away, even before he spoke. It was something about his face, the way his eyes moved. There was a lot more going on inside him than most people. She was sure of this. Before he even had a chance to ask what she wanted to order, she asked why he wasn´t sleeping. He was taken aback, but not too much. Not more or less than she´d expected. He was good at the game, just as she´d hoped. He kept his nonchalance. In fact, instead of answering or asking what she wanted, he told her. And he was right all the way down to the sprinkles on top of the frozen half mocha with a raw egg inside. She wasn´t used to people playing at her level and so graced him with a brief, coy smile, and said simply “Yes.” Not much on the surface of that word, but within it were also the keys to her flat and a thousand unexpected longings of finally finding someone who did not in some way want to be who she already was. She sat in the back in the shadows where her face would not be seen. There was a bit too much of a following of her in this area of town. Lately she´d almost considered adding the accoutrement of a veil to her look. Just to get some distance. But she knew this, too, would backfire, drawing even more attention—at least at first, until it caught on and everyone and their dog were also wearing veils. But with him she didn´t want a veil. She wanted open access. Something raw and new and brave. It had been too long since she´d let herself feel the deep slices of intimacy you could only get when you had something big to lose. She watched him walking through the tables toward her. She liked it how he wasn´t and wouldn´t look at her. He´d understood her “yes” and was giving it back to her with his well crafted indifference. She would be his completely if he set her tray down and walked away without a word. How could he know her so well when nobody else did? She wasn´t even sure she knew herself as well as he seemed to and yet they´d not even met. The tray with her drink was placed on the table. He bowed his head ever so slightly, turned and departed. Her heart stopped.
April 15, 2007
Good (from the Munich Tales)
GOOD
By Michael Kroetch
On his wall he has a tote bag from Saviorland. It´s one of the first things he shows to people who visit. He took his girlfriend there last fall. She had not seemed to enjoy it as much as he did. It may have been part of why they were no longer seeing each other. He wasn´t sure. He did not understand why she had wanted to leave the Biblical theme park so soon. It made no sense to journey all those thousands of miles to be there at the replica of where Jesus first broke bread with the Apostles and then suddenly want to go back home. He had looked into her eyes searching for an answer. She was usually a very logical and loyal person who made sense in all her decisions. But not now. Now her arms were crossed and she kept turning away from him. Now all he could see were her shoulder blades. He liked seeing her shoulder blades. He had to admit this. He had never yet touched them, but he knew it would be nice to feel their round curves. He felt strange thinking about these curvings of her bones in the way that he was while being under the curious eyes of the big plastic Jesus hunched over on the mound surrounded by the gang of life-sized apostles. He thought maybe he should take her somewhere else a little more private so they could talk. But she said no, she didn´t want to talk. She wanted to leave. It troubled him she was speaking so loudly, almost yelling. There was no reason for her to be acting this way. Other visitors were starting to look over at them instead of being enthralled by the magnificent spectacles of the park. He began to worry that if she kept shouting one of the Saviorland officials might come over to escort them out through the beautiful pearly gates. He didn´t understand what he had done wrong. Only a few moments earlier everything was so perfect, so ideal. They were walking around harmoniously through the simulated Holyland with him almost ready to hold her hand—he hadn´t ever dared yet, but was just about to when out of the blue she grew so distant and cold and said she didn´t understand why they had come here in the first place. He hadn´t known what to say. What do you possibly say to such a thing? He felt dazed inside. It was as if Jesus had waved to him from the side of the road and, when he stopped the car and rolled down his window to say hello, Jesus had pulled out a gun and asked him for his wallet. It was impossible. And yet it had happened. He doesn´t remember much of t he Saviorland trip after that. It is a blur. He has the bag on the wall not so much to remind him of what did happen so much as what he wanted to happen. He doesn´t completely blame Jesus for things turning out wrong, but he does think Jesus could have given him some sign of what to do to make things go better and less violently. He didn´t think his girlfriend needed to break off the arm of John the Baptist and swing it at the guard. That hadn´t been necessary. None of it had. He knew he was partly to blame for saying the things he did about the coldness of his girlfriend and her family (especially her mother!), but he was upset. And saying the thing about her being like Mary Magdalen before the conversion may have only escalated the tension. But what was he supposed to say? She´d said he dragged her screaming and kicking to Saviorland and had lied about what was there, which... well, to be honest, was partially true. He had maybe made the place sound a bit more like Disneyland than it actually was, but he´d wanted her to go and knew once she was there she would be mesmerised. There was no screaming, no kicking. At least not until he pushed her a little—purely by accident—after she´d said he was an uptight church freak. And Jesus wasn´t helping—just standing there like a dummy while things got worse and worse. But he really didn´t like to think about all of it and how he would never be able to return to Saviorland because of the police involvement toward the end. He wanted to stay positive. Optimistic. At least the Saviorland bag was a nice color and matched his couch. That was one good thing. He always liked to see the good in things no matter what happened.
April 14, 2007
Ocean (from the Munich Tales)
OCEAN
By Michael Kroetch
She was sitting in the rocking chair, but her heart leaned into the soft summer wind like a kite above the sea. She knew it was blackberry picking weather back home on the island. She could almost smell how plump and pungent those berries would be by now. She could actually taste the jam her mother made from the buckets of berries she and her sisters brought home with their red-stained hands. She smiled at the thought of how one of those tiny berry seeds usually got stuck between her teeth and how for many nights she'd stay awake long past her bedtime probing at it in the darkness with her tongue, desperately trying to get it free. The child she was would never have believed she'd miss such an annoying thing. But that little girl wouldn´t have believed her husband would leave either. That little girl had seen the world in absolutes. Good and bad. No shades of gray. Things were pure for that girl, pure like the ocean was pure. From that child´s room you could almost see the ocean, but always the girl had known it was there within reach. All the time present with its promise of possibility and transformation. She had none of that now. The gray city around her now felt like a big gray endless scab. She hated her husband for leaving and loathed herself more for being left. But worse than that was that her love for him had not left when he did. And now that love had nowhere to go. It was stuck inside her—stuck there like one of those blackberry seeds. If it were a child inside her that would be another thing. She wouldn´t mind that. Quite the opposite. That would give her life some meaning, some focus. A future. But this, this was crazy. This stupid love trapped between her teeth made her stay awake now most nights for no reason. All she could think about now was the past. How much of life was already lost behind her. She sat in the rocking chair and sighed, looking out at the warm night and the apartment courtyard. So many people lived so close to her, but she didn´t know any of them. Not one. She could see them across the way inside the flats where they lived. She wondered how many of them were like her with a useless love stuck inside them. She wanted to ask them was it still love if the person didn´t want it or you anymore? Was it ever love? If it was love once, but wasn´t anymore, when did it stop being love? What she felt now felt the same to her as what she felt when he had said he was most in love with her. She wrestled around and around with these thoughts just as her tongue had long ago tried to free those seeds from between her teeth. She wondered what she´d done wrong for him to lose the love he once had inside for her. She looked into the lives of the people across the courtyard to see if the love they had for each other was still real. She couldn´t tell. They looked happy, but so had she until she opened the door that day and he wasn´t there. She had wanted to go to the ocean that day and not come back. She wished she was still that little girl. That´s what the girl would have done.
April 13, 2007
Begging (from the Munich Tales)
BEGGING
By Michael Kroetch
She wasn´t going to beg. She´d done enough of that. Never again. If they wanted to leave, fine. Let them. She had had enough. She pulled her hair back and put it in a ponytail. She would be at work soon. Time to smile. She could take their tantrums. She could take anything they threw at her. She wasn´t going to bend. Or beg. This was their new life now. If her sisters weren´t happy here with the money she gave them and the nice apartment, what was she going to do about it? She loved them, of course she did. Like a house on fire. Sometimes she knew she could not go on for even one minute without them by her side. Other times they drove her crazy with the noodle-nagging and gossip and endless prattle of which boy they wanted more from some soap opera. She couldn´t let herself think what it would be like in the new city without them, without that terrible music of theirs coming over her little stereo while they danced and giggled in the kitchen with their hair in curlers. They could be so annoying and adorable at the exact same time—and always, somehow, they cajoled her into joining their crazy shambly kitchen dance. She hated them for wanting to go back home. But she stiffened her back and pressed her uniform flat down against her hips—she would not beg. She was the oldest. She had had to be the strong one. She had done what was right by bringing them here, even if they could not see it that way now. She slipped on her shoes. They thought she was cold and mean. They said it was killing their mother for them all to be so far away. She had not responded to this. She didn't know how to. She couldn't tell them what she had told her mother. She looked again in the mirror, pursed her lips, checking her lip line to make sure the gloss looked right. When she had told her mother, it was instantly denied—but a bit too easily and too quickly. She suspected in some part of her mother´s brain that her mother already knew. How long her mother had known? That was another question, one she did not want to think about. One she could not let herself think about. She turned away from the mirror and picked up her purse. If her mother had known, why had she not stopped it? That was the question which had most haunted her and while still back home had made her realise that if she left, she could not leave her sisters behind. They would not be any more safe than she had been. And with her gone, who would protect them as she had all those years, begging and pleading and offering up herself instead? But she could not keep them here against their will and could not, never, tell them what had happened. They were safe here. And innocent. Why would they not just listen to her and stay? She had let them call home a few times, but only after they promised not to reveal anything about where they were. This had confused and frightened them, but they had obeyed. She didn´t think they would obey much longer. They were not only missing their mother and their friends, they were also missing him—that man who called himself their father. She did not want to think about him or his face. It was far too disturbing. She put her hand on the door knob. She prayed that her sisters would be here when she got back from work. If they did not leave, she knew she would have to tell them that night. There was no choice. It was the only way to keep them with her. Begging didn´t work anymore. She hoped and hoped they would listen to her and stay just this one more day.
April 12, 2007
Labrador (from the Munich Tales)
LABRADOR
By Michael Kroetch
He was with his best friend Paul at the hospital. Paul´s wife was having a baby. They waited a long time. Then they got the news that the baby wasn´t alive when it had come out. Paul rushed to see his wife. His friend stayed outside and looked down at his shoes, trying to think of what to say when Paul came back. It took awhile. He thought it would. He saw a couple of nurses talking together far down the hall and laughing a little bit, putting their hands up to their lips in embarrassment. They were young and pretty. Even at the distance he was from them, he could see they took good care of their hair and fingernails. They were the sort of women he would like to go out with and possibly become involved. He looked down at his shoes again. They were okay shoes, but a bit more beat up and worn out than he would have liked. The nurses might not notice this at first, but in time they would. It would come to bother them probably. He decided there was no point in trying to even begin talking to the nurses. They were too arrogant for him anyway. Then he thought of Paul´s baby and felt bad for thinking about the nurses at all. He needed to be here completely for Paul and not be thinking about kissing some nurse in a broom closet. Not that they would. Or would they? Women were sometimes so unpredictable. He had been with plenty over the years, but it always seemed like right when he thought he knew what was going on in their heads, they suddenly wanted to move to Spain or have a baby. He knew Paul would be devastated. He knew he was the wrong person to be here for Paul at a time like this. He was great for Paul if it was being around for some poker game or horror movie or all-you-can-eat at Hoot´s. But this, he was crap at this kind of thing. All his old girlfriends would agree. Then he thought again about kissing one of those nurses in the broom closet. With his luck he´d get his foot stuck in a mop bucket and go flying out onto his keister into the hallway and land smack on his ass right in front of Paul and his crying wife. What an idiot he was. Maybe it would be better to just leave now and spare Paul the embarrassment of what was to come with him invariably finding a way of making an ass out of himself and making things even worse for Paul. But he couldn´t let Paul down, couldn´t run out on him. That wasn´t what you did in times like this. You stood by and offered the shoulder to lean on. Paul would have done that for him. He knew it. Paul was the guy you could depend on. He didn´t really understand why Paul liked him at all. He was always letting people down and letting them pay the bill. It wasn´t fair. Paul deserved better. He looked around, trying to find somebody who could be Paul´s friend instead of himself. The doctor by the cardiology sign would do nicely. The doctor probably had three kids—one already in college, the other two active in sports and volunteer work. The doctor had raised his kids right and knew what it really meant to be a father. Not like him. He was a flake, not a father. No woman in her right mind would ever dream of wanting him to do a parenting project. She would be better served having a labrador retriever help her raise her young. That's when Paul came out, teary eyed. He put his arm around Paul´s shoulder and walked with him like that for the entire distance of the long hallway. Neither of them spoke.
April 11, 2007
Salt (from the Munich Tales)
SALT
By Michael Kroetch
He was a tidy man. And punctual. He took great pride in himself for such things as the crease in his trousers and the shine of his shoes. Always he was on time, over even a little early. His rules for himself were steadfast and could not be broken. He also granted himself no margin of error in keeping order within the restaurant that he managed. He did not cut his staff any slack. Things had to be done correctly. If one could not keep pace, the odds were one would not stay long within his realm. His limit, once reached, was definitive. None made their way back from his wrath. But he was a kind man and generous. Not in all things, perhaps. It was in fact true that some ungratefuls had even called him stingy a time or two. Not everyone understood the necessity of a firm hand. He accepted this as a fact of life. It could not be dwelt on too deeply. Far better to focus on the greater good of the many who benefited from his strict adherence to policy. Policy was most important to him. He had risen to his rank in life because he had followed the rules as they had been layed out for him—exactly as they had been layed out. The few who could not, or would not do as he himself had done? Well, they were not worth worrying too much about. He made a point of imposing this fact upon those who sought his grace. Maintaining his good opinion was not a lightly undertaken affair. It required both stamina and diligence, and also the willingness not to look too keenly at what might happen to those behind you in line who might be lagging. The whispers of harsh discipline had to be ignored if one was to hold one´s own in his realm. Reward for silence and blindness was measured as carefully as the amount of salt at any given time in any of the establishment´s salt shakers. All was tabulated and accounted for in keeping with the rules as they had been established long ago. Success of the eatery depended on the unified work of all individuals involved, and the success of these individuals depended on staying always within the field of grace emanating from the manager. He was the centerpoint of all activity and around which all revolved so smoothly. What might be happening in the cellar where the child-sized jars of artichoke hearts and car-shaped bags of seminola lay in wait for future use was of concern to no one. Who might be down there behind the four centimeter-thick grey steel door no one dared ask or even hint at wanting to know. A job in this fine restaurant was not something anyone wanted to jeopardize. The strict order of things suited almost everyone, and those it did not were not for long a problem. Order always found a way of reasserting itself and reaching equilibrium again—as salt will settle itself out to a nice peaceful field within a salt shaker.
April 03, 2007
Scar (from the Munich Tales)
SCAR
By Michael Kroetch
As a child she´d lost her left eyebrow in a fire. The scar, which should have been ugly and probably would have been on another woman, was for her a mark of distinction. She used the scar as a way of separating out people she met. How people dealt with it told her who they were, not who she was. She traveled extensively and continuously, always picking up new languages, always broadening her range of experience. But because she was so often in new situations she´d never been in before, she often did things wrong and made a bit of a fool of herself. But she didn´t mind too much. She laughed a lot at herself, and she had a nice laugh. One friend described her laugh as being as beautiful as a gold coin twirling down to the bottom of a well, making your wish come true. She hadn´t known exactly what he´d meant and he´d been a bit drunk at the time, but she´d liked the image. It reminded her somehow of her father. He´d perished in the same fire that claimed her eyebrow and had lost his life in the process of saving hers. To him she had always been special. When she was still very young, her mother told her the scar was the mark of his last kiss. She´d never forgotten this and also never mentioned it to anyone. And at times when all her courage had been washed away and she felt she could not go on, she would often look at the scar and sense her father there with her. During her travels, she always tried to help others feel some of what she had inside because of the scar. This is possibly what made her charm so deep and lasting to those who encountered it. One man took particular interest in her charm. He wore cowboy boots, had a gold earring like a pirate might, and knew how to make her laugh. She liked this. Soon between them there formed a special bond. It grew stronger as their weeks together turned into months and the comfort they felt when united surpassed even her need to keep traveling. She opened more to him than she had to probably anyone before and let him kiss and touch her anywhere—except on the scar. That was the sanctum, the spot most people noticed first but which, ironically, was also most private and which she never let anyone approach. Not even her mother and now not even him. He seemed fine with this and she appreciated his restraint. Despite how close she felt to him, the scar was still her most carefully guarded secret and she just could not bring herself to tell him anything about it—even though almost every part of her desperately wanted to. Much to her surprise and pleasure, he never once came anywhere even close to the topic in any of the hundreds of discussions they´d had. It seemed he somehow knew how sensitive she was about it without ever needing to be told. When she thought about it, this made her trust him even more. Then a strange idea came into her head. She wondered if maybe he somehow did not even see her scar? Was it possible? She looked in the mirror. It was definitely still there, which made her sigh in relief. But the more closely she looked at it, the more she noticed that it had grown somewhat fainter than it ever had been before. Every day thereafter as soon as she woke up, the first thing she did was look in the mirror. There was no way around it, the scar was definitely fading away on her. She did not know what to do. She felt total panic. Fear shot through every bone in her body. She was losing who she was. She knew it had to be his fault for making her fall in love with him. She thought quickly how to end things with him. If she did, and did it now, she would at least keep a little bit of her scar. Then she looked again at the faint outline of it that remained and knew she would not leave this man.
April 02, 2007
Business (from the Munich Tales)
BUSINESS
By Michael Kroetch
The knifeman did not think it unusual that he had a knife collection. He knew many who also collected knives, maybe not as passionately as he did, but certainly there were others who would understand his zeal. The array of shining blades covered every wall of his home from ceiling to floor. Even the bathroom had become included in the ever growing display. While soaking in the tub he would often look around at all the weapons and smile. Being naked before them in the water gave him a special thrill he could not explain or completely understand and did not really want to. They came to him from every continent and time in history. All were precious to him but some were more valuabe than the entire building in which he lived. These were the ones he had to keep secret and which he did not tell anyone about. He did not dare. But more and more he had begun to keep his collection and collecting as much a secret as possible. If anyone asked anything even remotely related to it, he would deftly change the subject and tell them about a new carpet he was thinking of buying, or something, anything but the truth of what was really happening inside his home and where all the money from his stock broker business was going. But lately it wasn´t only the secrecy that made him nervous. Being away from his knives was also becoming more and more difficult for him. Anymore he felt like he lacked the strength to be his real self without them. In their presence he felt complete, whole, alive. But when he was separated from them—even by as little distance as going to the corner market—he felt small, useless, like a rat upside down drowning in a sewer. Horrible it was to feel himself that alone. Which is why he had begun to have some of the collection with him at all times. It had started out harmlessly enough, one small gold dagger originally used in Mayan sacrifices that fit nicely into the place where a cell phone was supposed to be located inside his briefcase. He would open the briefcase throughout the day to look at the Mayan knife. It gave him a sense of security and belonging. But soon, this one blade was not enough. He needed more and needed them closer to him than so far away as the briefcase. That is why he now has special clothes which carry them, cuddle them actually, right up against his skin. It´s a delicious feeling for him to wear these new business suits with the knives lined up gleaming and sharp along the inside. There is nothing else like it. He sits politely at his board meetings with all the other stock brokers around and knows who is in control.
March 30, 2007
Rose (from the Munich Tales)
ROSE
By Michael Kroetch
He was gripping the arm of the couch in the hospital waiting room so tightly that the tendons of his fingers had turned purple. In addition, he was tapping his foot because he had to pee. He was also staring at a photo of a tank that had been blown up in a desert—the news magazine on his lap had been open to that same page for ten minutes. He couldn´t take his eyes off the photo. For him the tank´s wreckage shared the same kind of beauty as a rose that had been dried between the pages of a dictionary. He hated this kind of beauty. He kept tapping his foot. He could feel his face starting to contort from the pain in his bladder. He didn´t want to look up from the photo. He was starting to feel trapped inside that burning tank. They´d said they would give him word soon. It had been too long. He couldn´t go pee and miss word from them. He crossed his legs, trying to stop the pain. The tank´s ruin did not change, but the longer he looked at it, the more detail he could see in there near the flames. There was a hand. It was blurry, but he knew it had to be a hand. Someone was inside the tank and this was their hand. It was holding onto the side. They were trying to pull themself up and out to safety. He looked at his own hand on the couch. He wold do the same if he were that person in that tank. Maybe he was in a way? No. He was not the one in danger here. His son was. His son´s heart had blown up from the inside. Maybe now his son´s heart was the dead rose flattened inside a dictionary? He didn´t know. He knew he hated the photo for being so beautiful and having that enemy hand in it there among the flames. He was supposed to hate the enemy, but he didn´t. He hated the photographer instead for taking the picture. He didn´t want to be here, he wanted to be there in the other room and take the place of his son and have the grenade go off inside his own chest instead and be blown up so he was nothing but a dead rose carried away in the desert wind—and his son be safe. He wanted everything to be back before any of this had happened, or to be ten months or ten years from now when everything was over. He just didn´t want it to be now. Plus he had to pee so bad wanted to break open the emergency box on the wall, pull out the red axe, and chop out his bladder right here in front of everybody else also waiting. Oh God, he had to calm down. He looked again at the destroyed tank photo. His son had wanted to be a soldier. He had not let him. Now he was glad. If his son´s heart had exploded on him in the desert what would they have done? At least here they had machines and dictionaries that it could be pressed inside of and preserved and possibly saved? He didn´t know. They said soon and it was no longer soon. It was late. But he had to avoid that word and what it meant. He knew the hand in the tank photo was the hand of his son. His son was still alive in the wreckage of that burning body, still trying to pull himself out of the flames. He knew as long as he kept looking at that hand that everything would be all right. He knew he did not have much control, but he could do this much. He could keep himself from peeing and keep his eyes on the hand. He had to.
March 29, 2007
Gift Horse (from the Munich Tales)
GIFT HORSE
By Michael Kroetch
He was absolutely forbidden to drive. The police all knew his face and kept a close watch for him. He had a bad record. The worst. He´d been in trouble with them about as much as possible. Still, he didn´t let this stop him. He wasn´t that sort. For fun he decided to steal a taxi and drive it around at night giving people rides. For free. Sure it was a crazy thing to do. He would have been the first to admit so. But he didn´t care what people said. Also, he wanted to get in good with Jesus and thought this free taxi might be his best bet. He lived above the old torpedo factory and had a half-blind cat named Tango. He took Tango with him in the taxi, making sure that they always had plenty of beer and Friskies for the night´s adventures. He originally only bought the Friskies for Tango, but found upon sampling the so very crunchy nuggets that they were a most delectable companion to his beer. Being a good natured and hospitable host he also always made sure to share the bounty of his discovery with his guests, pouring them some of the cat food into a styrofoam cup with his free hand, while simultaneously navigating through some of the most perilous of the city´s intersections. After which he instantly began opening a fresh beer and handing it over to whoever was in the back seat. Although it was true his driving skills left a lot to be desired, his manners with the passengers were impeccable. And even if they themselves remained speechless and quite white with fright, he always made sure to entertain them best he could with whatever was at hand. He would tell them tales about his days in the navy. He´d say “Tango wasn´t around back in them days, but I wish he had been. I could have used a cat like him to get me out of some of those scrapes.” As he told the story he´d be leaning back over the seat and, to make his points more clear, would be wave his arms around like a drowning polar bear. His guests usually didn´t know if it was more dangerous to stay quiet or to tell him to put his hands back on the wheel and pay attention to the road. No doubt they could see he kept his gun handy, duct-taped to the dashboard in case he had relationship issues with the police. At least that´s what he would tell them if he saw them looking at it. Then he´d say so far he´d been lucky with the taxi service. That Jesus seemed to be riding along shotgun on his shoulder and using some sort of holy voodoo chop-souey on the cops to keep them away. Then he´d say there was only one thing he hated more than cops and that was nosey parkers who liked to look a gift horse in the mouth. But not to get him wrong: He was happy to be driving and to do it for free, he just liked a little poetic license along the way to get from point A to point B. Usually he said this right before he plunged through a chain-linked fence and cut across a lawn of some private residence or public park—dodging statuary, trees, or the occasional kissing couple as he went. When at last he reached the end of the line, he´d hop out, cordially open the door for his passengers, smile and bow, then tell them to remember him to the big guy upstairs in their prayers. And off he would go in the taxi—whistling a tune, sipping a beer, and crunching down on some fresh Friskies.
March 28, 2007
Planner (from the Munich Tales)
PLANNER
By Michael Kroetch
She can´t talk about her parents. She has balloons and brightly colored cards placed carefully around the apartment to make it cheerful and full of joy. She smiles often at herself in the mirror. She tries to look only at her smile and not the rest of her body. She knows her weight is a problem of greater importance with each passing year, but like so many things, she won´t talk about it. There are the day´s plans to go through. The party. She can talk about that. It is safe. It is in her day planner book. It is organized. There is a beginning and there is an end. A time when it will start and a time when it will be over. In her closet is a carefully labeled transparent plastic box full of her party materials. This is where all her parties are born and where they go to be buried once they die. Today´s party is for one of her friends at the office. They don´t know each other well, but pretend to be close. It is always awkward when they run out of things to say to each other. She pulls her hair back behind her ear in such moments and straightens her dress and pulls her knees together. She likes to give parties. She likes the excitement and hearing people´s voices when she calls to tell them about when to arrive. Hardly anyone ever arrives when she tells them to and they rarely leave at the time she has written down in the day planner. This bothers her, but not enough to ever say anything about it. She wants to be a good hostess. The friend from work whose party it is likes to drink a lot and sit on men´s laps. She hopes this will not be that kind of party with lots of kissing. She doesn´t mind that people kiss and do other things afterward, it just makes her feel awkward because no one ever wants to do anything like that with her. But the lack of such activity for her really is okay because it isn´t in the day planner and would lead to a mess, and she doesn´t have room in her life for a mess. A mess would need to be talked about and she already has enough things that she can´t talk about and some new mess on the pile would be more than she could take. Her mother would like to talk to her about the mess. So would her father. They enjoy when things go wrong for her because it proves again that they were right about her not being ready to leave their home. She is thirty-eight and would tell them so, but they would say age is not important. A person should never be on their own before they are ready for the responsibility. She closes the cupboard on their imaginary faces and looks over at the balloons. It is truly a joyful looking place. So colorful. She is glad she can do this for her friend. She is glad she had room in her day planner to be able to arrange everything. It is a truly happy day all the way around.
March 27, 2007
Wings (from the Munich Tales)
WINGS
By Michael Kroetch
The thin man is an angel. He is sure of it. He had parents and they were not angels, but today and most days he can feel wings growing out of his back. He doesn´t tell his wife or his children. They would not understand. It´s not something he completely understands himself. Mostly his life is not anything out of the ordinary. His job is not the job an angel would have. He designs bridges. Not even fancy ones. Just simple ones to replace bridges that are too old on little highways winding around the countryside over little rivers. Last year he did two bridges and his boss was overjoyed by his productivity. But he did not think much of what he had done. It was his job, nothing more. His wings were of much greater interest. You might think he would always be looking at them in the mirror or reaching his hand back to feel them and assess each day or even hour their development and growth. But he did not do this. Never did he do this. He was not a man of superstition, that was not his way. Nonetheless, worried that by actually looking directly at his wings he might injure them in some way or stunt their growth, keeping them from becoming the full-sized glorious ones he knew they could become. At night in bed he often lay awake fearing that in her sleep his wife might reach over and touch his back. They were not close and barely shared the bed, let alone anything like real meaty heartfelt conversation, but still, in sleep, she might reach out. One never knew. One night she almost did. Her arm flopped over, her fingers almost-almost touching his wings. He had squished himself flat up against the wall to avoid the sleeping fingers. This was why he stayed up so late, watching his wife´s every motion. Likewise with his children, he could no longer behave as freely and playfully as in the past, taking them up on his shoulders and parading them around the apartment or out onto the street for ice creams. They would understand, later, he knew. Later when it became clear to them and all what he was becoming. This morning he stood on the balcony early before anyone else was awake, staring out at the morning sky, seeing the sun curve up through the trees. On his back he could feel the wings. He could feel them unfurl a little more with each small bit the sun climbed into the sky. Soon, he knew. Soon.
March 25, 2007
Martians (from the Munich Tales)
MARTIANS
By Michael Kroetch
He could not go on pretending. He was not able to anymore. He had run out of places in his head to hide. She was gone. Three weeks gone. And she wasn´t coming back. He looked at their bedroom door, then straightened the abstract crayon drawing that hung there on a thumtack. In the frontroom he could hear humming from the young artist who had made the drawing, most likely hard at work on another masterpiece. Lately his daughter had grown obsessed with Martian creatures and drew them almost non-stop. He had no idea where a three year-old girl would come in contact with the concept of Martians. She didn´t watch TV. He wouldn´t let her. He tried to discipline her. He tried being strong. He tried to keep her safe, hugging her close and kissing the top of head, not letting her see his tears. He had to admit he was rather happy about the Martian invasion. Since they had come and taken over the household, her questions about her mother had diminished. He had tried to tell her that mommy was lost, but he didn´t think she believed him. She´d said mommies can´t get lost. She said she could get lost and Martians can too, but not mommies. He had asked why mommies couldn´t get lostand she looked at him as if it was the dumbest thing he´d ever said. Then she´d responded simply “Because it´s their job.” Until that moment he had not even known she had the word ´job´ in her vocabulary. It seemed every day she was changing on him, growing smarter and faster and more adult. He was sure within a few months he would be the one asking her questions and advice. She was already so sensible and practical. He wondered what she would say if he told her the truth, that her mother had run away. Saying her mother was lost was close to the truth, but it took the willfulness away. Maybe it would be just as truthful to say the Martians came and took her mother away. The note had said nothing of a new lover, but he guessed there had to be one. Younger than him, more exciting. Probably a musician. She´d always had a weak spot for them. Martian, musician… He didn´t see it made that much difference. She wasn´t coming back. He knew he was partly to blame. The toilet seat thing. Him not fixing the toaster like he promised. Too much beer and not enough kissing. The list went on. And on. He put his finger up against the thumb tack that held the Martian in place on the door. He wished he could have had some kind of thumbtack to have kept her here. He thought their daughter would have been enough even if he were not. But apparently she´d known herself well enough to know that even with all his faults he was still the better parent. It´s what she´d written in the note. Something like that anyway. He didn´t have the note anymore. First he´d torn it up, then burned the scraps in an ashtray and flushed the ashes down the toilet. His actions seemed extreme to him now, going that far to get rid of her stinging goodbye, but he loved her. He still did and no nice words on some scented piece of stationery was going to make that pain go away. Maybe the Martians had a special ray gun that could. He would have to ask his daughter. She would know.
March 24, 2007
Listen (from the Munich Tales)
LISTEN
By Michael Kroetch
Her brother again. Some new problem. She knew it even before she clicked the button down on her cell phone to answer. Sometimes she wished he would lose her number. She didn´t know what to do with him. More and more his troubles were getting beyond what she could deal with. But she didn´t say this to him. She didn´t say it to anyone. Better to be quiet and besides, right now the weather had turned nasty. She had four bags of groceries slung over the back of her wheelchair and with the wind and rain getting into them, they were like parachutes pulling her backward down the sidewalk while she struggled to get the phone as close to her ear as possible. People who saw her brother for the first time thought he was fine. Unlike with her, there were no outward disfigurements. He had all his fingers and none of his bones corkscrewed around on him. The one thing they both shared, and which everyone always always commented on, was the unusual striking beauty of their faces. With his height and well developed muscles, people often thought he might be a model or an actor of some kind. Nobody ever said this about her. Not at first anyway. But that slowly changed once they knew her and discovered all the foreign accents she could do and saw how much she could change her facial expressions or heard the dozens of Shakespeare soliloquies she knew like the back of her hand. But she had never acted, never even been on a stage. She had no interest in it really. None. Well, okay, maybe a little bit, but she prided herself on being a realist. In this she lived a life in direct contrast to her brother who lived in the clouds and did not usually stay up there very well. But the scars on his body were inside, so at first people didn´t know how often and hard he would fall from his cloud haven—hitting the ground with the same gentle elegance as a fully loaded Mac truck falling from space. And who picked up the pieces? She didn´t mind. She really didn´t. He was her brother. It was her role in their little stage play. She alone could make him laugh when all around was darkness and despair. It had always been so since he was a very young child and their parents were in hysterics about how to calm him during one of his episodes. She would wheel her chair over to him and make her rubber duck face or burping tiger or strangled giraffe for him and soon enough his smile would return. These days those easy tricks didn´t work. What he was injecting into himself to keep the monsters at bay, she didn´t want to know. He would try to tell her, but always she would refuse to listen. It was the one thing above all others she didn´t want to know. She knew it was killing him slowly. She didn´t like admitting this, but she knew it was true. Much as the wind in the grocery bags might be pulling her back down the little hill she´d just wheeled herself up, she knew what these things were doing to him was so terribly worse. But she couldn´t get him to listen to that. All she could give him now it seemed was her ear, something he could talk into for awhile. She couldn´t let herself feel sad, she had to be strong and just hold the cell phone as close to her ear as she could for his words. It´s what he needed most.
March 23, 2007
Backwards (from the munich tales)
BACKWARDS
By Michael Kroetch
She was learning how to walk backwards against the wind. She had photographs up all around her house. Her own and those of people she admired. She told people she lived in the heartland of amnesia, and that by walking backwards she could be a better photographer. She said this because for her photos were always about looking backward. At what had been. She did not live in the country of smiles, nor seek refuge there. She did not live in the country of smiles, nor seek refuge there. Her photographs had no people. They were temples of lost memory. One of her favorites was of an old axe asleep on a desert floor. She told people the axe had the western lips of September. That it held the song of the ocean and the dreams of a scarecrow. Some thought she was mad to talk in such a way. Others believed her a saint. She didn´t care much for either camp. She preferred looking at photos of nowhere places and dead cigarettes. She didn´t choose to be the way she was or, lately, even where she was at any given time. Lately she lived much more by random than by rote. No day resembled the one before. Her sleep pattern was about as erratic as her driving. That she hadn´t killed anyone yet on the road seemed a miracle, but she knew better than to rest too well assured about the future. She didn´t blame herself for her bad driving. Her mind saw things abstracted inside a frame—always focusing on what needed next to be photographed. Everywhere around her she saw a kind of crucified beauty. It was sometimes more than she could take, being that exposed to the broken things of the world and their divine mystery. Many men were drawn to her because of how she saw the world. More than just wanting to get into bed with her, it was as if they wanted to climb inside her mind and see out through her eyes. She took such lovers in stride, never giving herself over to them fully. Part of this was out of fear of losing herself in the process and another was her apprehension that none of these men were quite right for her. Besides, her real passion was never there in the bed. Always it was when she was behind the lens framing the inanimate that she was most animated. She found it humorous men would want her because of how she saw the already dead past. She thought most men were slightly ridiculous and really only wanted assurance about themselves and their place in life. Maybe this is some of what they got from her photos and what they sought from her as well. But she couldn´t give it to them. Not really. Not the way they seemed to want. It was why she was so often alone. She had her camera, what more did she really need? It was a more responsive lover than any she had ever known and always was giving her fresh surprises and reasons to walk backwards. She couldn´t really say that about any of the men she´d been with, but maybe that was her own fault? She wasn´t sure. She did know it was time now to get another photo. The clock was ticking.
March 17, 2007
Number (from the Munich Tales)
NUMBER
By Michael Kroetch
He brought people the news with his face. He was used to being on television, used to seeing his face there. It wasn´t a completely handsome face, but it was not ugly. People trusted it. People trusted him. He was reliable. He liked having people count on him. He liked also that people counted how many people watched him. The number made him comfortable in the same way a down blanket might on a cold night. He held the number in his mind when he visited his parents and they needled him with questions about why he didn´t have a family yet. There was no way he could or would possibly explain to them that this number was his family. They would not understand. They would tell him to get off his high horse and live a little bit in the world of people. They liked using this phrase “live in the world of people.” What was the number except a record of how much he was alive in the hearts and minds of people? How could you live more fully and completely in the world of people than with this kind of number? But such questions were useless. He knew this. He knew his parents lived outside of logic. It was a place they visited sometimes, but rarely stayed very long, prefering instead the security of their own belief system. He didn´t need their beliefs. He was a man of the news. He was known anywhere he went. He lived in TV. The number was with him there and kept him there. He liked being in the news room. It felt more real to be in that chair behind that desk than almost anywhere else—certainly more than being home watching himself, which he sometimes did if there was nothing else on TV. It was not that he minded at all seeing himself on the screen, which he had heard some people from television did. More than dislike, he felt a different feeling, a feeling closer to jealousy. He didn´t want to be home in his flat, he wanted to be there where it was real in front of the cameras and where what he said mattered and made a difference. At home his words lacked purpose. He had the same feeling when he was at parties. He felt confused, as if he were impersonating the person he was on TV and never doing a very good job of it. He knew if he made his parents´ dream come true of having a family, things would only be worse. He´d become even more of a shadowy version of the strong, confident TV news personality. He had no trouble meeting women. None whatsoever. They all came straight towad him and jumped into the palm of his hand. But once they were there, he didn´t know what to say or what to do. He was always afraid he was lit badly and too sweaty. He needed to practice ahead of time what he was going to say so it would seem as smart as what was written for him to say on the news, but he usually forgot where he was in the planned speeches and what was supposed to come next. So usually what came out was chaos with him ending things abruptly and rushing home to see the better version of himself recap the day´s headlines. How could he be a father to anyone when he was so afraid the number might change, get smaller and smaller? Every day it didn´t, he felt relief. He was still here, still the one everyone loved to tell them which plane just exploded on the runway.
March 16, 2007
Octopus (from The Munich Tales)
OCTOPUS
By Michael Kroetch
She put the plate of soup down in front of her mother and then took one of the spoons and put it in between her mother´s fingers. She spoke slowly and clearly. She said “Eat, Mama. It´s good. Soup. Eat.” She looked into her mother´s eyes. They were grayer than she remembered. Like marbles. Or something you might find on the outside of an octopus, one that had washed up on the beach. She felt sometimes as if that were how it was since her mother had moved in, like the old woman had washed up onto the beach that was her apartment. She was never sure how much her mother understood anymore. She bathed her every morning, but somehow her mother´s body still sometimes had that smell of an octopus baking on the sand—that unmistakable smell of oldness. Frailty. She took the gnarled hand with the spoon and dipped the spoon into the colorful slough of vegetables and noodles. She could feel the limb give in to her will, letting it be guided by her own. She knew there had been a time long ago when their roles had been reversed. She didn’t think her mother could remember those times, but then somehow sometimes out of the blue her mother´s eyes would clear and she would be back in those old days and be talking to her as if she her sister and not her daughter. It was in one of those moments of seeming clarity that she´d first learned how much her mother had not wanted her, but had been afraid to get rid of her. She hadn´t known how to feel about that, especially since it was not too long afterward that her mother had had a temper tantrum about something or other and hurled a plate of Spaghetti-o´s at the wall, breaking one of her favorite plates that an old boyfriend had brought back from Greece. She had picked up the broken pieces of the plate and little o´s and stared at her mother who was waving her arms around and laughing like a chimpanzee from one of those nature shows the old woman so loved to watch every day. She had felt such a heaviness inside her at seeing her mother become a chimpanzee. Somehow it was worse than when she was the beached octopus. She could feel pity for the beached octopus. She didn´t know what to feel about the chimp, especially since she now knew the chimp had never wanted her in the first place and that her whole childhood had been a mistake. But today was an octopus day and so she could feel more detatched about everything and just do her best to get the soup into the old body which she had spent an hour earlier tenderly bathing and drying and powdering with talcum to keep away the rashes which lately were becoming an increasing problem. She wondered if her mother had felt equal ambiguity about her as a child while doing all the things needed to keep a baby happy and quiet. She had never had time for children herself. Maybe this was why? Maybe she had been saving her mothering for her own mother? She took the octopus in her arms and let the spoon of soup clatter to the floor. She hugged and hugged the octopus until deep within it she heard a faint burp. “Oh baby,” she said, “don´t worry. Here, let me help you,” and she patted the old woman´s back softly again and again.
March 14, 2007
Hand (from the munich tales)
HAND
By Michael Kroetch
Her hand was made of wax. She didn´t let people know or tried not to. It had been so since she was a child. She had fallen into the ice while playing with friends on a frozen river. She had gone down into the icy darkness away from their laughter. At the river´s bottom she saw a beautiful doll trapped under a stump root. Pushing against the current, she had reached out for the doll in the murky shadows. Its eyes were so very blue and beautiful. It was right when she had touched the doll that she felt someone grab onto her legs and pull her back up through the ice to the surface into the dazzling light where everyone rushed toward her to see if she was all right. She had been all right. Or it had seemed that way at first. The hand which had touched the doll didn´t die completely right away. It took many weeks with her parents and everyone else growing more and more concerned until at last the decision was reached to cut off the dying hand. Even today, all these years later she can still feel her wax fingers tingle if they brush against something unexpectantly. She knows this is just a trick of her mind, but it doesn´t make the experience any less real or troubling. Likewise if the weather changes and gets too warm, she feels her hand getting sore as the wax softens and begins to lose its shape. When this happens her heart races and she goes straight for the freezer to get her hand in there as quickly as possible. Doctors have told her over the years that she does not need to suffer this way, that the wax hand can be replaced with something much more durable and mobile. She thinks the word they used in this context most recently was “titanium.” What an ugly word. What an ugly thought. To her this would be like somehow admitting she was not fully human. She thinks the wax is better because it is so delicate and vulnerable and also quite comforting to rub if she is nervous. She can´t imagine anything more vulgar than a titanic claw coming out of her sleeve. At night she looks over at her wax hand on the night stand and is happy to see it there so beautiful and pristine. The only thing she ever saw more beautiful than her hand was probably the eyes of that doll beneath the river. Those eyes had been irresistible. She would have done anything to be nearer to them and is still somewhat angry she was dragged away. Sometimes she feel them calling to her hand to come back to them once more.
March 13, 2007
BIG (from the munich tales)
BIG
By Michael Kroetch
Little Henry´s heart was not in the right place. It´s how he was born. The doctors were all very worried at frist. None had ever known of a child with a heart located in its shoulder. Henry was written up in medical journals all around the world and everyone expected he would not live beyond a few days, or a few weeks at most. But he did. He lived and lived beyond all their expectations and fears and even outlived all his brothers and sisters. But he never got very big. He stayed pretty much the same size all his life. It didn’t bother him being small. He was used to it the way a dog might be that has fleas. It came with the territory of being who he was—a tiny miracle. That´s what the newspaper´s headline had in big print the day of his birth and what his mother continued to call him until she died. He rather liked being a miracle and being special and could never understand it when people tried to make fun of him for being what he was. If they laughed at him, he would always do the one thing he knew would stop them cold in their tracks. He did his dance. It didn´t have a name, but probably should have because everyone who saw him do it was overcome by its cleverness and style. It was a dance he´d done so long he didn´t even remember a time when it was not a part of who he was and how he had made his way through the world. But it always had the same magical effect on people who saw it—it made it so they loved little Henry. Couldn´t help themselves, really. It was something about the upbeat way his feet moved and the rhythms of his dance and how he´d twirl and smile as he did it. Always they would clap afterward, even if they were not the sort who usually clapped or had already seen him do it a dozen times before. These things didn´t matter a bit. All that mattered was that Henry had stood before them and had danced. Their hands moved unbidden into applause. Henry was not a proud man either. He did not dance for money or to impress people. For him it was a way of expressing his joy at being alive and being a tiny miracle with a life that was not supposed to happen. The woman who fell in love with him and had his children was not as small as he was. She was almost as large as everyone else, but she did not care about size. What she saw in Henry was the same thing the doctors had first seen and been so astonished by—his unusual heart, only for her his was not the heart of a small man but one ten times the size of any other man she´d ever met. For her, Henry was almost too large for her to feel worthy being next to. Or so she told him. At which he had just laughed and told her she was crazy and kissed her gently.
