The Girl Who Shook The Skies

Chapter 2

         My dad’s like a pendulum clock that hasn’t needed any adjusting since the day it started ticking. As always, he’s there, at the right spot on the platform, with his usual brown suede coat, waiting for me but looking elsewhere. It must make him feel less ill-at-ease to pretend to be contemplating the view, instead of seeming like he’s there exclusively for me. This always makes me smile. My dad’s even more self-conscious than I am. 

 “You need a new coat, Erik”, I say as I get off the train.

“Yeah, missed you too kid”, he says with half a smile. And that’s all. German dads don’t hug; least of all mine. And neither do British mothers, by the way. Or just not mine. 

 Erik grabs my luggage case, though tiny, and walks me to the car. I don’t really try to strike up a conversation, since we don’t really feel the need to; although I could have commented on how beautiful the weather was in Stuttgart. 

Once “home” – I still haven’t figured out what to call my dad’s house – we have the usual talk about how things are going in Paris, how I’m handling music school, if I have enough money on my account, if my roommate Ginny is holding her end of the deal by paying rent and doing chores, and a brief question on my mother’s health, only.  Then he heats up some dinner and we watch the latest Tatort episode. Obviously I don’t have the slightest idea what it’s all about. I just know that it’s a crime series that’s been on TV since the seventies, with the exact same opening credits, and it’s set in different German cities, depending on the episode. 

“Hey dad?”

“Hmm?” he says distractedly.

“Why haven’t you ever taught me German?”

He freezes, keeping his eyes on the screen. He seems a bit lost in thought for a few minutes, then uncomfortably shifts his weight and says, “Well, I’m not much of a teacher, am I?... I just considered English as a language you’d need much more, with your mother, and professionally… And you were learning French too, inevitably. So I just didn’t want to clutter your brain with more… But you do speak a few words…”

“Food-related, mostly”.

He lets out a short guffaw, “That isvital. You also know how to say hello and all that…”

“Naturally. I’ve been coming here for two years, so I’ve caught a few words here and there… But it’s all recent.”

He seems a bit uneasy so I quickly pull him out of his misery. “I’m not blaming you for anything dad. It just frustrates me not to understand the true depths of Tatort!”

He tries to look non-amused – you do not joke about Tatort! – though the crinkles around his eyes betray him. He smiles for a second and goes back to watching young Kommissar Bootz solve crimes with incomparable skill. It’s endearing to watch my own father, a police officer who has seen it all and knows too much of crude reality, be so affected by obviously filtered fiction, depicting a dramatized version of his profession. But a more dominant thought keeps intruding and poking at me: I couldn’t help think that maybe my father had sacrificed too much for us, including who he really was. He had accepted to marry a foreigner, move to Paris, and raise a non-German-speaking child… How could these reasons not be part of why he’d left in the first place?... It makes me wonder if I’d have the courage to let go of so much, just for love. Or if I ever should.  

            For some reason, my mind suddenly jumps back to the drawing. Will this ever stop baffling me? How was that guy able to strip me of so many details? Could he see my reflection in the window perhaps? Nah… I couldn’t see his, so he logically couldn’t see mine either. Physics. But then… how? And most of all, whowas he? I know how my mind works: I start with allowing a thought in, and then it takes over every inch of it. By tomorrow, I’ll have become sickeningly obsessed with it. Couldn’t I just nip this in the bud and spare myself the trouble? Sadly, there is no OFF button for my brain…