Fiction from Web del SolThe Munich Window
Brian Evenson
Continued ...
sat down again on the handkerchief. I
stretched my legs out in front of me, eyes closed, waiting until,
with a jerk, the train began to move. I stood to open the
blinds, found the quay deserted, my Grunders daughter and her
psychiatrist friend gone. I had sat down and just closed my eyes
when the compartment door burst open and I found himself
confronted by both my daughter's psychiatrist friend and my
daughter herself, who entered the compartment without asking my
leave, one removing my coat and the other removing my bag from
where I had placed them on the cleaned seats, moving them to
filthy seats, so that, doubtless, I would have to burn both
items. After having engineered these two great assaults upon
etiquette, they mounted a third, sitting in the very seats they
had cleared of my possessions, and whining at me from both sides.
I stood up, excused myself, gathered my things without further
speech and moved to another compartment. They, proving
themselves again to be of the Grunders type, the persecuting
type, the tormenting type, followed me, sat down next to me. I
asked my daughter if she was in fact crazy, following me onto a
train as she had, ignoring all the responsibilities awaiting her
in Munich, responsibilities which, I told her, she could not
afford to ignore. I said this though I had no doubt that her
responsibilities were responsibilities of the Grunders variety,
the most lifeless of banalities: taking the trash to the curb,
for instance, or scrubbing the sidewalk. I informed the
psychiatrist woman that it was irresponsible for her to leave her
patients alone in Munich without help, while she, for the sake of
a vacation, encouraged my daughter to pursue a futile course of
action. I exhorted them both to regain their sense of social
responsibility instantly and to disembark at the next station.
In the meantime, I suggested, they should, if they had any sense
of propriety, find themselves another compartment, where they
would be able to converse between themselves, on the subject of
their choice, without disturbing others. My daughter took this
as her cue to claim that she and I still had matters to discuss.
"Matters?" I said. I was not in the least interested in
matters, I said, or in listening to the matters stemming from the
original scene which the psychiatrist woman had created in my
daughter's mind. Indeed, if she were a true daughter of mine,
rather than a Grunders halfbreed, she would never have allowed
anybody, least of all a psychiatrist woman, to convince her of
anything. "No, no, no," I said, cutting her off. "Leave this
compartment immediately; it is useless, useless." But my
daughter displayed an unexpected tenacity which, though wrongly
directed, revealed beneath her roughshod Grunders exterior
remnants of her true heritage. Had this tenacity chosen right
objects for itself, had it been directed at someone apart from
me, I would have found it both admirable and endearing. In the
present circumstance, however, it could not but be exasperating
in the extreme, so much so that I told my daughter that if she
said another word I would hurl both her and her psychiatrist
friend out of the window of the compartment. "Ah-hah!" said the
psychiatrist woman, pointing her stubby little finger at me in
such a manner that I immediately gathered my possessions and left
the compartment. Although I walked at the most brisk pace
imaginable, the two women dogged my heels. I kept on down the
hall, suddenly stopping, throwing my body backward against them
until they collapsed, falling to the floor of the narrow
passageway. I climbed off of them, breaking the psychiatrist's
woman's nose while regaining my feet--sheer accident--and
continued down the corridor, locking myself into the lavatory.
No sooner had I shut myself in than fists began to pound on the
lavatory door, to which I had no response but to contemplate
myself in the metal mirror. I was not displeased with what I saw
of myself, particularly in contrast with my surroundings, for I
must admit that I have never been in a more filthy and cramped
lavatory. The psychiatrist woman had pressed her face against
the door, and was speaking loudly about child abuse, using the
words "child pornography," and even the words "sexual
harassment." It was clear to me, however, that it wasn't the
child being abused but the parent, myself, who, by his daughter's
insistence and extravagance, had been forced to take refuge in
the most odiferous stinkhouse, the literal asshole of the train.
I stood as still as I could, trying not to touch anything,
gaining strength from my reflection, until my daughter and her
psychiatrist friend fell silent outside the door. From time to
time there still came knocks and feeble protests, until even
these died as well. I would, I thought, remain in the lavatory
until the end of the line if need be, from there making a rapid
dash from the train lavatory to the lavatory of the airplane. I
was planning my epic journey from lavatory to lavatory when the
door sprang open, revealing a dwarfish, pock-faced conductor
sporting a blue pill-box hat. The man slipped a heavy ring of
keys back into his pocket, informing me that the "crappers" were
for all alike, and that they served for "shitting," and that they
were not to be used as a hiding place. I informed this
diminutive yokel that I had entered the facilities with every
intention of employing them for their proper use but, being
confronted with their filthy condition, found myself incapable of
moving my bowels. He looked into the bathroom, scratched his
scalp, shrugged. He looked at the ladies to either side of him,
rubbed his chin, shrugged. Extracting from his inner pocket an
unwieldy device which, I divined, was employable for the
perforation of paper, he demanded of me my ticket. I promptly
removed my ticket from my own inner pocket, presented him with
it. He looked it over, nodded his head, perforated it, handed it
back, tipped his hat, and prepared to depart. I asked him about
the ladies, about the tickets of the ladies, as I chose at that
moment to refer to them. The conductor scratched his head,
turned to the women, held out his hand. The psychiatrist woman
and my daughter looked first at each other, then at the
conductor, whereupon he verbally requested their tickets. The
psychiatrist woman pretended not to hear. "What is the price of
the ticket?" asked my daughter, reaching into her purse. "No
tickets?" the conductor queried. I suggested that the conductor
have these two women--women clearly travelling illegally and
women who, I felt compelled to add, had had no intention of ever
buying tickets--expelled from the train at the nearest station.
Or better yet, I said, he might hurl them from the train without
further ado. I would, I indicated, be more than happy to aid and
abet him in either operation because of my great respect for his
profession. My daughter was waving a somewhat meager handful of
bills which began to attract the conductor's gaze with greater
and greater frequency. I discouraged the conductor from
accepting the bribe--if he did, I told him, he would be morally
ruined. He shrugged. Not only morally ruined, I said, but
professionally ruined, for his lapse would be described by me to
his superiors in the least favorable light. The conductor stood
quite still, hearing my words, giving no sign that he understood.
When his mind had gathered that I was finished, he removed from
another inner pocket a flat metal case, which he unfolded. From
it he pulled a set of blank tickets and a list of fares. DM
27,50 for the first stop, DM 275,20 for the last, he showed my
daughter. She counted her money, asking where she might travel
for DM 25. Knowing the answer to be nowhere, I volunteered this
information, whereupon the psychiatrist woman informed the
conductor that since they were with me I would pay the difference
to make up their fare. The only fare I would pay for either of
these women, I declared, was the fare due to Charon, the boatman.
The conductor rubbed his chin, told me this was a train, not a
boat, while the psychiatrist woman screamed out the
responsibilities of a father, the duties as a parent. I told her
I did not believe I was her father, but surely she was not mine.
The conductor remained rapt before this exchange, his pen poised
over the blank ticket which he had spread on his metal case. I
informed the conductor that never in my life would I, under any
circumstances, purchase tickets for these women, and demanded
that he eject them instanter from the train. He had the nerve to
tell me that until the next stop he could do nothing to remove
them from the train. Pocketing his metal case, tipping his hat,
he left us to our own devices. I immediately locked myself back
in the lavatory. I listened to the pounding. I stared into the
lidless metal toilet bowl. Through the hole of the bowl I could
see the movement of the tracks, feel the air gush up. I closed
my eyes, averted by head, waited until the pounding stopped. I
slid the lock out and opened the door a crack, saw, leaning
against the far wall, the psychiatrist woman. Her arms were
crossed, and she was staring down the hallway, her face
twitching, her nose all crammed with cotton, blackening near the
eyes. I swung the door wide, politely asked her to inform me
where I might find my daughter, whereupon she loaded me with
verbally epithets, thereafter attempting to endow me with her
psychiatric textbook-case notions of what it supposedly means to
be an ideal father. I asked her politely to refrain from
speaking of fatherhood and matters patriarchal, matters about
which she knew entirely nothing. She had taken from her pocket a
set of photographs which she waved at me, yelling, "Nothing
about? Nothing about?" finally managing to hold the photographs
still long enough for me to see that the photographs were the
remainder of a series of situations involving my daughter and
myself, photographs which I believed I had long ago destroyed,
save for the photograph hanging over my desk. There was nothing
improper about the photographs, though they could be considered
in the wrong light because of my daughter's clothing and my
daughter's poses, poses which she herself had chosen, but which
were likely to be interpreted as my choice in a court of law.
"Kiddie Porn" was, I believe, the curious and inelegant term the
psychiatrist woman had developed to define the series of
photographs, showing once again her paucity of intellectual
phraseology. I struck her in the mouth, wresting the photographs
from her hands, tearing them to shreds, upon which she took great
pride in informing me that these photographs were by no means the
originals, that the originals were safe in my daughter's hands,
hidden carefully away. I grabbed the psychiatrist woman by the
neck, pulling her toward me, crammed her into the tiny bathroom,
forcing her to straddle the toilet bowl while I crammed myself in
and locked the door. When, a few minutes later, I squeezed out,
alone, my daughter was there, outside the door, holding the
psychiatrist woman's purse on one shoulder, her own on the other.
Grabbing my daughter by the arm, I propelled her down the
corridor, away from the lavatory, down to the end of the car, out
of that car, into the next car. I told her, in all sincerity,
that her psychiatrist friend had been a fair weather friend, who,
at the least hint of profit, had deserted her. I had bought off
the psychiatrist woman (it was wrong to call her "the
psychiatrist friend" now, I informed my daughter), I said, quite
inexpensively. Walking my daughter down to the end of the train,
I asked her not to waste another thought on her psychiatrist
friend. "Foremost, psychiatry," I maximed. "Lattermost,
friendship of the contingent variety." I entreated her to drive
all thought of the psychiatrist woman from her mind with the
utmost ruthlessness, to make the woman dead to her. I placed my
fingers to my daughter's lips, quelling her protests. I told my
daughter I intended to compensate her in every way possible for
the loss of the psychiatrist woman. I myself would return with
her to Munich, to her apartment, where I would discuss with her
everything that troubled her. I would stay with her as long as
she wanted. I was there for her, I said, and would be there for
her until the day she died. Wrapping my arms around her, I
embraced her warmly.
I could not help but notice that the Munich apartment of my
daughter bore considerable resemblance to the Dresden apartment
of my wife, of myself and my wife. Both possessed, among other
charms, three sets of full-length French windows, easily
accessible to a woman desiring to commit suicide. My wife, I
informed my daughter the instant we entered the apartment, had
jumped through the middle set. My wife had had a great love of
symmetry, despite the fact that her mind was unbalanced. My
suspicion was, I informed my daughter, that my wife had such a
great love of symmetry precisely since she was internally
imbalanced. Her suicide had been an attempt to attain a balance.
It had also been, I informed my daughter, a malicious attempt
steal my equilibrium, an attempt which I had of course escaped,
without damage. "Which window did you throw yourself from?" I
asked my daughter out of politeness, although I was sure of the
answer, the answer not being the middle, which she herself
confirmed. I strongly encouraged her, in future, to throw
herself from the middle set of French windows. The results would
be more aesthetically pleasing and would make for better
photographs, I told her, as witnessed by the widely publicized
photographs of her mother. "Works of art," I said, stabbing my
index finger into the air. My daughter poured herself a
drink, threatening to pour me a drink as well, but I would not
allow it. I took a seat on the ottoman, refusing first whiskey,
then chardonnay, then alcoholic drinks of all kinds, then finally
bottled water. She poured herself a drink, put the bottle on the
parquet, a herringbone cut, oak, freshly waxed, similar in every
respect to the parquet of the Dresden apartment. She dragged her
chair close to the ottoman. She offered to take my gloves. I
refused to part with them, saying finally, upon being further
importuned, that my fingers were cold. She offered to take my
coat and valise, which I allowed, noting carefully where she
placed them in the closet. I informed her that the Dresden
apartment had had a similar closet, perhaps an identical closet,
in the same location. It was this closet, I assumed, in which
she claimed to have been shut at the time of her mother's
unfortunate accident. Was it that closet? I wanted to know.
Was she perhaps thinking of another closet in the Dresden
apartment, one of the other three closets? I stood, walked to
the closet, opening it. I noted aloud that the closet had no
lock on the door. Commonly closets do not have locks on their
doors: What made her think that the Dresden closet had been the
exception to the rule, that in that apartment she could have been
locked in the closet? She looked confused. I confided in her
that psychiatry creates its own data to fit its assumptions, that
her analyst--did she mind if I called the psychiatrist woman her
analyst?--had pre-determined what my daughter's symptoms would
indicate, and had molded her memories into prearranged patterns.
I told my daughter that I was prepared to accompany her to
Dresden, prepared to prove that there were no locks on the closet
doors in the Dresden apartment. She was pressing her palms to
her skull, refusing to respond, a gesture which belonged not to
her but to her mother. It warmed my soul to know that her mother
was not completely dead after all. I wanted to embrace her, my
dead wife, my daughter. Instead I opened the closet and looked
inside. "The inside of this closet," I decreed, "is absolutely
identical to the inside of the closet of the Dresden apartment."
I proceeded to cram myself into the closet, once in asking her to
shut the door on me, which, after much persuasion, she did. I
demonstrated how easy it was to burst out of the closet, that it
was just a matter of leaning slightly against the door--a task
which even the most feeble of children could accomplish. She, I
didn't need to remind her, had been, like her mother, a
particularly well-developed child. She sat on the chair, sipping
her whiskey, not speaking. I made my way to the ottoman, sat
down, crossed my legs. "Now that we have resolved the closet
dilemma," I said, cracking my gloved knuckles. Did she have
"proof" of her other vague accusations, material we might examine
together, photographs, perhaps? She did not respond, except to
place her empty glass on the floor. I informed her that placing
on the floor a glass which contains or has contained liquid, even
for a moment, would leave a ring of moisture on the floor--a ring
of moisture liable to warp the floor!--and demanded she take the
glass off off the floor and carry it into the kitchen without
further delay. She did not move. I cracked my knuckles. I
repeated, whereupon she responded, "Why did you do it?" I
informed her the "it" she had used had no known antecedent and
could not refer to anything outside of the narrow confines of her
mind. The sentence, as it stood, had no sense. Had she never
been taught grammar? I wanted to know. "It what?" I said. "It?
It?" Hastily, I scrambled to my feet and took her glass to the
kitchen myself. The liquid that had condensed on the exterior
penetrated through the ventilation holes in the fingers of my
gloves. In the other room, my daughter was saying something,
which I ignored. "Marvelous Kitchen!" I shouted. "First Rate!"
Opening the cupboard, I discovered that my daughter had kept her
mother's dishes, the black glazed dishes her mother had received
when she had married me. I took the dishes out one by one,
examining the scratches and chips on their dark surfaces, trying
to determine which chips were new and which, eighteen years
prior, I had made myself. Feeling my daughter standing behind
me, I replaced the plates one by one, closed the cupboard,
returned to the ottoman. I sat wondering what else of my wife's
was in the kitchen, what else I might find in the apartment to
threaten what I had erected from my wife's death. Objects of the
highest danger, objects I would have to approach with the most
terminal ruthlessness and with the greatest efficiency--dishes,
ancient waterspotted glasses, a fork with a bent tine, a flour
sifter with two rusted screens, a set of knives with oxidized
blades, the uneven and badly carpentered corner of the third
drawer down, the slow leak of the ice box, a cracked window pane
held in place with Scotch tape, the spot on the wooden handle of
a spoon which had been polished and worn smooth by my wife's
thumb, my wife's long smooth fingers flicking ash from a
cigarette, her fingers tracing my jaw, her hair shook down out of
the pins and over my face, the feel of her body moving beneath my
open palms. Across from me, straddling a chair, was my daughter,
the very picture of her mother. "You are very lovely," I said.
"Quite lovely." She brushed her hair out of her eyes, hooked it
awkwardly behind her ear. Grunders, I realized, despite all.
Saved by a mannerism. I felt rationality returning. I informed
her I was aware that she had certain photographs in her
possession, photographs which troubled her, and that, if they
were the photographs I believed them to be, I could easily
explain why she was dressed as she was, and what precisely she
and I were doing, and how an unjustified unpleasant effect could
be wrongly construed. I told her that, as soon as she brought
out the pictures, I would explain all matters to her
satisfaction--surely she was not afraid to show me the pictures,
I said, when she failed to get the pictures: surely she didn't
think I would do anything to the photographs. If I did destroy
them, which I certainly would not do, I said, doubtless she had
copies elsewhere. With her psychiatrist friend perhaps? Only
with her psychiatrist friend or were there other copies? I wanted
to know. I told her that I didn't imagine that she would have
the nerve to show such photographs to anyone else because of the
harm which (considering the possibility of misinterpretation)
such a revelation might do her own reputation, not to mention my
own. Had she provided copies of the photographs to anyone but
her psychiatrist? I wanted to know. Not that it would matter, I
explained, but being in some of the photographs myself I had a
right to know. "Does anyone else, besides your psychiatrist,
have the photographs?" I demanded to know. I requested she
retrieve the photographs, and, when she hesitated, kindly led her
from room to room, asking repeatedly, "Are they in this room?
Are they in this room?" When this failed to elicit a response, I
began pulling drawers open, showing her the insides of them, my
eyebrows raised quizzically. Perhaps she wanted to call her
psychologist friend, I suggested; perhaps it would be wise to
call her psychiatrist friend and ask her advice. I was, I
claimed, not adverse to such an idea. I picked up the telephone
and brought it as close to her as the cord would allow. She
stood dialed her her psychiatrist's telephone number. No
response. I mimed surprise. I looked at my watch, told her I
hadn't time to wait until her psychiatrist friend was home since
I had a train to catch. It was either time to resolve everything
or for us to part forever. After being confronted with similar
rational reasoning, she brought me the photographs, though she
did not allow me to see where they had been hidden, but she
brought them to me, refusing to look at me as I examined them. I
looked at each photograph carefully. I requested of her a
magnifying glass and a good flashlight. I informed her that,
provided with the proper equipment, I could show her how the
print had been tampered with. What she thought was she, in an
obscene posture with myself, was in fact not she and I together
at all, but two pictures superimposed by a malicious soul.
Holding the flashlight close to the photograph, I looked through
the magnifying glass, forcing her to look through it as well,
telling her there was the slightest of lines where the photograph
of her had been grafted onto the photograph of myself. The line
outlining the shoulders, could she see that line? I told her it
was easier to see in negative, that if you tilted the negative in
the right way you could immediately see how the graft had been
touched over. Did she possess the negatives for these pictures?
I wanted to know. Would she get the negatives for me? She left
the living room, went into the bedroom, returned with the
negatives, held them a moment, handed them to me. I immediately
stood, shook her hand, thanked her for obliging me in this small
particular. I counted the negatives, pocketed both photographs
and the negatives, buttoned my coat tightly shut. I told her
that the matter of the photographs had become a matter of the
utmost annoyance to me, a matter which I was not interested in
pursuing. If she could not see the graft on the photograph, she
would doubtless fail to see the graft on the negative. I had no
more patience left, I said. She would have to take my word for
it, end of discussion. There was one matter, however, I told
her, still unresolved, that matter being the death of her mother,
and I was willing to spend a few more moments, at the risk of
missing my train!, putting my daughter to rest over that issue.
Everything she had heard heretofore on the subject of her
mother's death, I said, was a lie, but I had the truth, the truth
being that I had not killed the woman--she had jumped of her own
accord, partly out of maliciousness, partly for being the
suicidal type. I was the only one who could know for certain, I
was the only one who had been there, except her mother, who was
dead and who, in any case, dead or alive, was an unstable and
unreliable witness. As for my daughter's memories, a scene
examined through a keyhole is distorted, and was, in this
instance, even more profoundly distorted by the imagination of
the six-year old observer, by eighteen years of Grunders
thickheadedness, by the dubious fabrications of a psychiatrist.
Luckily, I was here to correct everything, to put everything
in the context in which it belonged.
Part IV. The Munich Apartment
I asked her to open the windows, the French windows, all
three of the French windows. She refused. Did she or did she
not, I asked incredulously, desire the truth? The time to strike
the anvil was the present--or never. After a number of similar
comments, movements toward and away from the door, and similar
rational argument, she roused her stolid brain enough to open the
middle set of windows. "Wrong!" I cried. "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
Wrong!" I told her to close those windows immediately, to open
the two other sets of windows first, to open the middle windows
last. She closed the middle windows, opened the right-hand
windows somewhat listlessly. "No!" I said, "No! Put some life
into it!" I announced that she was her mother's child, no doubt
about it. I had been witness to her birth, and it was time for
her to start acting like who she was, conscious of her heritage,
of her mother's influence. She began to weep, whereupon I
informed her that overindulgence in alcohol had obviously ruined
her ability to know when a display of emotion was acceptable. I
yanked open the windows for her in a proper fashion, commanding
her to stand closer to the middle windows. I took a pillow from
the ottoman and threw it at her, telling her she should hold it,
that it was our baby. I demanded she move closer to the window,
and, when she failed to do so, took several steps toward her,
fists clenched. "Don't!" she begged. I lifted my open hands,
held them, fingers splayed to either side of my nose, wiggled
them. "Am I touching you?" I said. "Have I touched you? Have
I laid a finger on you? Have I given you a push? Have I given
you a shove? Have I given you the slightest nudge?" Her only
answer was to try to move past me, to move away from the middle
windows. I moved in front of her, kept moving in front of her.
"You are touching me, now," I said. "That's different, entirely
different, a world of difference; you are running into me now,
I'm the one who should feel threatened." After she had
exhausted herself sufficiently, I told her to get up and to pick
her baby up. Couldn't she see that her baby was lying on the
floor? Had she no shame? Was that any way to treat her baby,
leaving it lying on the floor? I got close to her and yelled,
"Have I pushed you? Have I pushed you?" The correct answer was
no, I was not touching her, no, but she gave no response. I
repeated the question until I had the response I desired.
Pulling her to her feet, I encouraged her to stand on the window
sill.
I told her, as she stood in the window frame, that the
photographs were genuine, utterly genuine. Not only had she done
what was depicted in them but she had enjoyed doing them, she had
asked to do it, had begged me to do them to her. All this
playacting with her had gotten my blood boiling, I told her; I
was eager to continue our relations where they had been left off
years before. I was willing to do whatever she would beg of me,
I was willing to make an effort, willing to try my best; no one
could accuse me of not trying.
She stood on the sill of the Munich window, holding the
pillow, hesitating. Blameless and seething love, I spread my
arms wide. "Come to Papa!" I cried, sliding toward her. "Come,
embrace me!"
I am blameless. Alis volabat propriis. She jumped entirely
of her own volition. Just like her mother.