A pea in the pod of a 747 belly I am jostled from a quarter-slumber by the last of the turbulence. I open my eyes and through a thick yellowing glass near my window seat I see that we are about to land. “Flughafen” pops into my sleep-deprived mind. I am going back for the first time in nine years and I have been awake for twenty four hours.
Ordering breakfast in Berlin I discover that, even though Dieter the Teacher cried “Wunderbar!” every time I answered a question at Goethe Institut classes in San Francisco, my command of the language at this point is not enough to explain the solid state of eggs. I resort to English. I am understood and, I think, slightly pitied. I am sooo tired, and yet have to transit through Germany with luggage, and alone.
I am on the train. We have arrived in a border crossing town that has been cut in half by a river and the Second World War politics. We are waiting as some of the cars are being detached and shunted somewhere else. I have had the presence of mind to sit in the one that will go beyond, into Poland. I have the whole compartment to myself, with its green curtains woven in a gold pattern of Polish State Railways initials and a miniature formica table folded under the window. It is dark now, and I am resting. I am glad that I am wearing my comfortable suede shoes. I lie down and put my feet up.
And then, I hear it. The voice I have not heard for years, with the intonation and the pronunciation unspoiled by foreign influence. Slow and proper are the words; they bring memories of train trips to the seashore. She may be my age, in her late twenties. She is sitting in a station office in front of a microphone, repeating with flawless diction: “Express train from Berlin to Wroclaw is at the platform 3, track 1″. There is a certain timbre to it, a stirring familiarity. I welcome it, embrace it. I am very glad to be going home.
“Passport control!” A young soldier yanks the handle and slides the door open. He is gruff and maybe as tired as I am. Everything checks out, but he orders as he leaves: “off with the shoes!”
My uncle picks me up at the destination. He is not much older than I am, due to the complicated histories of post-war families. His wife drives a Maluch, a Polish Fiat 126, an ultra-popular vehicle with the engine in the back. The design is a well known death trap: in any head collision, your legs are gone. I stretch mine into the passenger well. “Nice shoes” my aunt says.
They live in our old apartment now. I will be staying in my room which is now her brothers’. But, where is all my stuff? Half of the furniture is gone, there is no sign of my clothes or books… I need to find out if a stash of mimeographed anti-government leaflets from 1982 is still hidden in a secret space at the back of one bookshelf. My leg and arm muscles are beginning to tremble from exhaustion and I will probably collapse any minute. But my family sits me on a stool at the plastic laminate kitchen table whose gray grid I know so well from drinking my before-school milk. I register a a plate of sandwiches out of the corner of my eye. “Talk”, they say. “Spin your tales”.
