The Glass

He hadn’t changed all that much. A bit heavier around the middle, Carl noticed as he came through the door. And the face was a bit fleshier than he remembered, but that was to be expected after the years that had separated them. Otherwise, time had obviously treated him well, leaving an impression of prosperity and of a disciplined life comfortably lived. The once thick crop of pitch-black hair had thinned, of course, and was more grey than black, especially on the top, making him look somewhat like a molting skunk. His own hair was now predominantly white and visibly thinning, which, he insisted to anyone broaching the subject, was premature for a man of his age. 

“Good to see you again,” Carl called out, closing the door leading to the gravel parking area where he had left his rental. Subconsciously standing straighter and sucking in his now ample stomach, he walked briskly, towards his former colleague who rose from the table that resembled the one they had once called their own.

Zoltan was wearing a newer version of the Bavarian green Miesbacher jacket that had been his signature wardrobe piece whenever he was away from the office that they had occupied together for a decade. On the way to the meeting, Carl noticed that their former building across Tegenseer Landstrasse, the busy main thoroughfare leading south out of Munich towards Kufstein and northern Austria, had been reworked as condos.

 “And you,” said Zoltan, as the two embraced in the neighborhood stube that was once their off-base rendezvous spot. They pointed to one another’s hair and grinned, not needing to say the obvious. Zoltan patted Carl on the cheek, a habit that Carl noted was still a part of Zoltan’s identity, one that Carl and others had attempted in vain to rectify in year’s past. 

“The place looks pretty much the same,” said Carl, looking around the dimly lit neighborhood eatery, now empty except-for-them, with the lingering stale beer odor of the previous night’s action still evident. The original larger wooden tables that he remembered hugging the walls were still rimmed by benches while the five smaller, more polite tables in the middle of the room where they were sitting, had individual chairs. 

“A few minor changes, I’ve noticed,” said the former Security Section chief, gesturing towards the back of the room where there was now a doorway that had not been there in their previous lives. “There’s a beer garden in the back, a new paint job in the interior, different posters, but the same predictable menu with a couple of additions for the      millennium generation. They’ve changed breweries. And most of the tables have been refinished since when we managed to scar them. Otherwise, nothing major that I can detect. Can I get you a beer?”

“When in Munich,” said Carl, spreading his arms in a gesture of acquiescence, as the two sat down. 

 “Zwie helle, bitte,” Zoltan called to the waiter standing behind the bar near the back of the otherwise empty room. “Frankly, I was surprised to hear from you after all this time,” said Zoltan, turning back to Carl, his former staff member. “How long has it been?    Thirty? Jeez, almost fifty?”

“Something like that, yes. Thought it was time I revisited the past. A sojourn down memory lane, I guess,” said Carl. “Getting time to wrap things up. None of us are getting younger. I suppose you might say that it’s just housekeeping. Taking time to clean up one’s personal trash before the inevitable.” 

Zoltan nodded. “Time does have a way of focusing the mind.” There was a momentary lull in the conversation before he continued. “I’m curious. How did you find me? I’m not in any phone book,” he asked. 

Carl grinned. “You did once pay me for that sort of thing, remember? And who uses phone books these days?”

“Ah, of course. Touché,” said Zoltan as the beers arrived and the twenty-something year old waiter made a quick turn back to the bar. “The memories tend to rust a bit as we age. Right? “Prosit,” he said and raised his glass in salute. 

“Prosit,” replied Carl, then taking a long sip. “This is good stuff,” he said, smacking his lips and running his tongue over his lips. “I miss good German beer. It beats the hell out of that piss we get back home. I’ve been looking forward to this.” After a pause, he nodded towards the door. “That’s your black BMW 330i in the lot,”?

“Yes. Bought it used. Got a decent price.”

“I took a close look at it,” said Carl, nodding towards the restaurant parking lot. “Impressive. Not a scratch. I thought for sure it was just out of the showroom.”  

“I got lucky. An old woman couldn’t manage its power. Her loss, my gain.”

“Lucky you. I’m still driving my 2010 Honda CRV. Still runs well. No need to upgrade.”

“You’re living where, now,” asked Zoltan? “I seem to remember you had moved somewhere on the east coast. Boston, was it? Philadelphia? Forgive me, but I forgot where it was, exactly. You once had mentioned where you’d prefer being. I lost track of you after everything happened. There were stories.”

“I chilled out for a while. Tried to make a go of it in Greece on the island of Ios. Had a charter fishing boat business. Ran through my cash in a hurry, though, including the severance. Lost the boat to the bank and then bummed around the country for a bit. A couple of years.”

“I didn’t mean to pry,” said Zoltan. “I had to get everything second-hand. You seemed to have dropped off the planet.”  

“That was so long ago I’m surprised I can even remember any of it. It was Boston, where I was supposed to go. It was where I was living when I was recruited to come here. But I’m on the other side, now. California, just outside of Los Angeles proper, south of the city. A place called Torrance.”   

“A good place to live?”

“It works for me. By the way,” he said, changing the direction of the conversation, “I noticed as I drove by that they converted our old building into condos,” said Carl.

“Ah, yes. Chalk it up to German ingenuity. Take a broken-down structure from out of history, tear out a few walls, put in some computer-friendly appliances, paint the rooms beige, and sell it as luxury living in a heritage building. You can sell anything if you know what buttons to press.”

“And it came complete with ghosts,” said Carl. 

“I don’t think that was part of the sales pitch.” 

There was a lag in the conversation, each wondering where the next sentence would take them. 

It was Carl who broached the subject. “Did they, uh, ever charge anyone? Convict them?” 

“No,” Zoltan said, reading the hidden content of Carl’s question, and reaching over the table to touch his shirt sleeve. “At least nothing was ever made public.” He leaned back and shrugged. “At least I never heard. And if they had done it quietly, after I was done, I would have caught it through the grapevine. Besides, I doubt they really wanted to know. It would have been too much of an embarrassment to too many people.” 

“And Bill?”

“Gone.”

“Wolfgang? Jirjis?”

“All of them,” said Zoltan.

“Even the Spaniard?”

“Pissed off to Barcelona with his woman when the wall came down. He was redundant. We were all redundant. I haven’t kept track.”  

“So, you and I – we’re the last of a dying breed,” said Carl. “We should drink to that.”

“I’m afraid that you’re a bit behind the times with that one, my friend. Our breed died a long time ago. A result of technology and technocrats and the new world order. Let’s toast something more positive. Here’s to renewing old friendships,” he said. The two of them clanked beer glasses and took deep swallows. 

“And you,” asked Carl. “What about you?”

Zoltan hesitated only slightly. “An apartment an hour’s drive from here, near the Chiemsee. It’s quiet, away from the world’s troubles. I had thought of moving further to the east, but it lacked a certain appeal, as you can imagine. The pensions are enough to live on and there’s some savings for the occasional vacation. I’m getting by.”

“Do you miss it, the action, the team, the way things were when they were good,” asked Carl? 

“Honestly, yes. I liked it better the way it used to be – a black hat, a white hat, and a wall in between. The Cold War was good for everyone, don’t you think? Both sides played by the same rules. There were no surprises, no one wanted to screw up. Now everyone wears a gray hat, and you can’t tell who is screwing who. The two old adversaries are now assessing their fantasies of military dominance in other lands and still blaming one another other for what’s wrong with the world.”

“You’re an even bigger cynic these days, Zoltan,” said Carl, leaning back on his chair smiling.

Zoltan shrugged. “It masquerades as wisdom and keeps me out of trouble. No-one has any idea what the hell I believe in. So, I get invited to parties as the token shit disturber. Everyone gets entertained, there are a few laughs, and we all get pissed. It’s the perfect formula for making sense of the new Germany.”

Carl caught movement through the front window facing the street as a couple passed on the road. And for a moment his eyes focused on the table adjacent to where he was now sitting. It’s where he was when everything changed. 

* * *

That evening was like most others – the loud gathering in the stube of the ex-pats working on the base, a few soldiers, the occasional interested German neighbor. It was a place where the exchange of office information, rumors and possibilities were the currencies of the night. Many of the regulars had left for the mountains that weekend. Near him was a table of six Germans. They were new to him, not any of the neighborhood regulars. Likely, they were visitors to someone nearby. He tried to understand what they were saying, but they spoke too fast for him to recognize the Bavarian nuances. Like everyone else who had undergone civil service language training he was comfortable with high German and was still trying to relate to the local dialect. It would be like trying to understand a Scotsman on first meeting, he was told by his language instructor. It was something he’d have to work on. 

The Australian and Brit stube regulars who worked at various jobs on the nearby base were in their usual corner playing with the foosball machine. Hired because they could speak and write English, they worked at non-security level positions throughout the base earning enough money to pay for their skiing in the nearby mountains. They would be gone with the coming of summer as they moved on to their next European experience, replaced by other waves of English-speaking twenty-somethings seeking what they thought would be an adventure only to find that an office job in Germany – even on a front-line NATO base – was little different than one back home.

Several American soldiers were drinking at the table next to the Aussies, trying to sing a German drinking song. The Germans looked at them, then exchanged remarks among themselves and laughed loudly at one of the comments. The soldiers, knowing they were the subject of the Germans merriment, raised their beer mugs in a comradely salute. Beneath the table, their middle fingers were giving a salute of a different kind. 

Outside, it was raining with the ferocity characteristic of late Munich autumns. The rains always made the dreariness of the city on days like that seem even worse.  

He had been engrossed in the English language-newspaper when he sensed the two bodies standing in front of him, begging for his attention. And there was that scent, just a hint that made him raise his head.

“I want you to meet someone,” Zoltan had said, and with one glance upwards, Carl was captive to future circumstance. The auburn hair framed a flawlessly shaped face with a complexion that was perfectly smooth and teeth that heightened the soft-hazel eyes with a radiant smile that seemed to come from deep within. Zoltan helped her remove her well-cut raincoat. Without effort she displayed a sense of unpretentious elegance with perfectly cut blue slacks and a collared beige blouse covered by a lightly patterned wool sweater that provided just the right hint of what lay below. 

“She’ll be working in the office,” Zoltan had said, “splitting her time between us and the brass upstairs. Mostly, she’ll be working as liaison between us and the Germans.” 

“Hello.” She said in a soft, accented English, holding out her hand. “My name is Hildegard. But you can call me Hilda. Everyone does.”

* * *    

After a silence that seemed to last longer than it really did, Carl asked, “Have you seen her? Know where she is?”

“It took you long enough to ask.”

“Just out of curiosity,” said Carl in a forced, bouncy tone.

Zoltan leaned forward, in what Carl remembered was his way of making what he was about to say a confidence between them. “I understand she’s in Berlin. And, no, I haven’t seen her. Not since then,” he said. “I’ve heard stories, but you can’t trust these rumors. Most of my old contacts are either dead or they don’t care anymore. For all I know, she’s fat and matronly these days and bouncing her grandchildren on her knee. So, where are you staying,” he abruptly asked, changing the subject. 

“The Bayerischer Hof.”

“You’ve come up in the world since then.”

“Life has been fairly good. And, what the hell, you can’t take it with you,” he said.

“She’s married, of course,” said Zoltan. “Three children, I understand, all grown now, I guess.”

“We’ve all gone on with our lives,” said Carl. “I’ve been married twenty years.”

“Good for you,” said Zoltan, slapping the table and leaning back. “Long marriages make a man stable.”  

“Actually, it was four, twelve and four for that grand total. I’m a bachelor again,” he said with a forced smile. 

Zoltan laughed in that forced way that stood him out in a crowd. “Ouch. That must have been expensive.”

“Not so. They all married the other guys. It saved me a lot of money. I didn’t try to get them back. Used goods, after all. And you?”

“Ingrid and I were married twenty-four years ago. No children.”

“Ingrid? Are you talking about East Side Ingrid, who knew our every move before even we knew them?”    

“Her working history in the East didn’t make her popular on this side, I admit,” said Zoltan. “It took a few years, after the wall came down, after unification” he said, and then drained the last of his beer. “Everything was forgotten by then.”  

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you or her. It’s just a bit of a surprise.”

“Welcome to the new Germany,” said Zoltan with a shrug. “Life does go on.” 

“Three children, you said,” asked Carl running his forefinger along the rim of his beer glass and interrupting a silence that threatened to linger.

“Yes.”

“From your sources?”  

Zoltan shrugged and smiled. “You know how it is,” he said. 

The waiter walked over and broke the following silence. “Nach zwei helle,” asking if they wanted another of the lager beer? 

“I used to have my own glass,” said Carl to the waiter. “It used to be there on the shelf along with those from the other regulars,” he pointed to the wall behind the bar where glasses for the best local patrons lined the shelves. Each had its own slogan and embossed caricature.  

“That must have been a long time ago,” said the disinterested waiter in his Bavarian dialect, preferring not to speak English. 

“Before you were born,” said Carl, answering in the same vernacular. 

“The new owner stored a bunch of those old, embossed beer glasses down in the basement after he bought the place from the old woman.” 

“Muttie,” said Carl. “The old woman. That was her name. At least that was what we called her.”

“Yes, that was her name, I understand,” said the waiter, in his late twenties and          dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt emblazed with the FC Bayern Munich football name and logo. “Everyone called her Muttie. Mother.”

“She liked that,” said Carl. “A lot of us were young. She felt we needed a mother’s touch, someone to take care of us.”

“She’s dead, now,” said the waiter, matter-of-factly. “Cancer. Just after she sold the place years ago. I’ll see if I can find your glass. What was the inscription?”

“Us, forever. In English. My name is inscribed at the top of the glass. Carl with a “C,” above the inscription and the name, Hilda, below it.”

“The old woman made saving the glasses part of the sale agreement. In case anyone came back and wanted their glass. No-one has. You were here with the Army, yes? What was your unit? I read the history websites. I can look it up.”

“The 105th Finance Division.” 

“You were an accountant,” asked the waiter?

“Something like that, yes.”

The waiter turned, walked to the back of the room, and disappeared down the stairs to the basement.

“Did he really say he’ll check the history websites,” asked Carl, his question accenting the deep lines around his eyes?

 Zoltan raised his thick eyebrows and shrugged. “To him, we’re from the prehistoric past.”

“He has no idea,” said Carl. “That glass got me through a lot of bad nights.”

“And Muttie helped,” said Zoltan.

“Yeah, she did,” agreed Carl, “She knew exactly when to pour me another.” 

The unasked question hung in the air. Carl’s gaze fell upon the cheap travel posters framed on the walls depicting various Bavarian tourist spots. Mountains, lakes, picturesque guest houses in the countryside. On the west wall was a collection of old money, German Marks including the original conversation-stopper he recognized from back then – a million-Mark note from after the First World War that might have purchased the owner a loaf of bread. Carl’s gaze fell upon a print featuring a winter scene with its postcard-perfect mountain background complete with chalet, smoke lazily drifting from the chimney. 

* * *

The glass was lying beside his head when he had awoken late that Christmas morning in the small Austrian, Tirolian Gast house that had become their getaway spot, a two-hour drive south from Munich to near Kitzbuhel, not far from the Germany/Austrian border. It was where the two of them had spent that first winter weekend, weeks before. It would become their go-to destination until the end. 

“Now you’re officially mine,” she had whispered, pressing against him, and kissing his shoulder. “Every time you take a drink from it, you’ll think of me.”

“I don’t need a glass for that,” he said staring intently at her, a smile lightening the conversation.” There isn’t a time every day, every hour, that you aren’t in my mind, you know that?”

“I hope so,” she said.

“It will always be that way, that everything that I do will include thoughts of you, of us, forever.”

“That’s a long time, forever,” she said, with a slight giggle. “Forever is for fairy tales. The glass is for now. Let now be our forever.” And she rolled over upon him.

* * *

“You haven’t asked who she married,” said Zoltan, finally, suspecting why Carl continued to focus on the poster. 

“Not important. The past is like stale beer.” Carl got up. “Have to take a piss,” he said walking and pointing towards the familiar door to the left of the bar at the back of the room. “Can’t hold it like I used to,” he called back over his shoulder.

In the washroom he put his hand against the wall as he leaned over the urinal and closed his eyes. He had wanted to let this now-ancient world rest as it should, just as the rest of the planet had moved on from that time and this place, here where any of the leftovers from the past might still be relevant. He should have known back then – when the first failure took place. And later, when there was a succession of failures that suggested that only prior knowledge could have been the cause. But he had ignored the signs. 

 “That’s better,” he said with a dramatic sigh, minutes later pulling at his pants belt as he sat back down at the table. “Room for one more.”

“Klaus,” said Zoltan, intently watching Carl as he sat down. “She married Klaus.”

Carl seemed to melt into the hard-backed chair. Outside was the high- pitched sound of a motorcycle being gunned in the parking lot. “Fuck me,” he said and became silent, his mind now racing as he pictured a face and a memory that had dominated the past decades. He wanted Zoltan to say something. But Zoltan was silent. 

“We almost got the bastard that night,” Carl said, finally.

“Yes,” said Zoltan. “Almost. But it wouldn’t have made any difference, would it? Not as things turned out.”

The motorcycle cut out. The room was still again.

“After the wall came down,” said Zoltan, “we could blame everything on the Russians. We would sing Deutschland Uber Alles together in perfect harmony. After the tell-all books, the TV documentaries and after a few of the major pricks died, we closed the ledgers. A little fuss now and then, a minor official publicly disgraced. But we’re like a Russian Nesting Doll, only dressed in dirndls and lederhosen, Carl. Remove one and there’s another beneath it, then another and another and yet another. Soon you tire of opening the first doll of history just to see the same thing in smaller doses.”

“But Klaus,” said Carl closing his eyes.

“He’s an important confidant to the government now. If you’re here long enough and watch enough television news, you’ll eventually see him hobnobbing in Berlin with the latest power brokers.”

“And her?”

“Stays in the background like an old-fashioned German wife should,” he said with a smirk. “There might be too many questions, don’t you think? There are still some of us who know.”

Carl stared at his hands. “Everything that happened was because of Klaus. That prick.” He paused. “And she married him,” he said, finally, with a sigh of resignation. 

Zoltan shrugged. He stared at a piece of hardened spaetzle on the floor left from the night before. “I’m the one who introduced you, remember,” he said. “None of us could help ourselves, Carl. You know that. She was so…how should I say it…perfect. You’re not the first, nor will you be the last person to be done in by pillow talk.”

“I must have been an easy mark.”

 “She would have had the same effect on any of us. You just happened to have the most convenient position in the office for her needs. At least they let me stay on for a while and leave with a few perks instead of just canning me outright like they did you after the inquiry.” 

The young couple from the motorcycle came through the door and walked to the bar, boisterously greeting the waiter with a familiarity reserved for those of the same generation. The waiter handed him a bag, the clacking bottles revealing their identity. And the two laughing twenty-somethings walked to the door, briefly looking to Carl as they passed, the young man’s free hand caressing his woman’s ass. 

* * *

  They had spent that last afternoon walking through the Schwabing area of Munich, a traditional stomping ground of students, artists, and political radicals, and had had lunch at what she called her “hideaway” restaurant  – a small, intimate bistro located in the basement of an apartment block near her place. She had seemed quieter than usual, Carl thought. 

“I have to leave for a while,” she had said, afterwards, back at her apartment. “A family thing. I may be a few days. Perhaps a week. Don’t forget me,” she had joked, pushing the hair off his forehead. 

“You make it sound like always,” he had said in response. 

“No, silly, not if you have the glass and there’s still beer in Munich,” she said, pressing her finger against his lips. And they laughed and held one another tightly. 

* * *

The waiter returned carrying the glass now filled with the house brew. “This is what you were looking for,” he asked? “I cleaned it, of course.”

Carl held the glass in front of Zoltan, inspecting it. “Thank you. Can I keep it”?

“Why not? No one has used it for more than what, more than thirty years? Why worry about it now? Tell me when you leave, and I will put it in a bag.” The waiter placed the other beer he was carrying in front of Zoltan, stiffly turned and left the two older men, and joined the boisterous couple as they left. 

Zoltan made that guttural dismissive sound Carl remembered well. “He wants a big tip. The owner doesn’t give a damn what happens to the glasses. He just hasn’t gotten around to throwing it out along with all the others,” he said, shaking his head.

The beer soon finished and conversation finally at an uncomfortable standstill, they got up from the table, left enough Euros to cover the cost and a generous tip and walked outside past the spot by the door where Bill got the shit beat out of him for screwing the Spaniard’s girl. 

At Zoltan’s Beemer, they embraced. “We were warriors, you know. Even if minor ones,” said Carl, his hands lightly resting on Zoltan’s shoulders.

“I guess,” said Zoltan, dismissively. “Now we’re just old ones. It is not our world anymore. It belongs to others, not us. Take care. There are few of us left. Pretty soon there will be no-one to tell our dated stories.” He waited for a reaction. There was none. “Where are you off to next,” he asked?

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.” Carl paused, his arms falling to his sides. “Perhaps Berlin for a few days. It has been a while, but I guess some of the old haunts are still there.”

Zoltan placed his hands on both sides of Carl’s face and after an intense several seconds of staring at him, gently shook Carl’s head. “It all means nothing, my friend. They are only memories. They are not important, and no-one cares anymore. No-one gives a shit,” he said slowly. And after a pause, “The memories are meaningless to anyone else. No-one wants to know.” He tapped his former protégé gently on his right cheek. “You understand what I’m telling you?”     

Carl nodded, staring back, surprised at his former section chief’s sudden, but familiar, officious tone. Then he noticed the Cartier watch, whose gold-plated wristband he had felt on his cheek – and when he looked down, the Scarosso ankle boots. And the like-new high-end Beemer behind him. “Getting by,” Zoltan had said. Sloppy, he thought. He was sloppy. Like before when he should have seen the signs. 

“Good boy,” said Zoltan, who tapped him again, turned, smiled, and got into the car. “Till next time,” he breezily said. “Stay in touch. Who knows, maybe I’ll get to America one of these days. I have always wanted to see California.” And he closed the door.

 Carl watched the car fade into the neighborhood housing and then got into his Opel Corsa rental. He pulled out of the gravel parking lot and stopped at the end of the street that was now barricaded from Tegenseer Landstrasse, forcing a right hand turn along the barrier on a one-way, single-lane street. The sound of the traffic flow penetrated his car from over the obstruction.

“Shit,” he said, realizing that he had left the glass on the table. For a moment he considered going back. Instead, he put the car in park, put his head onto his arms and leaned across the steering wheel, exhaling deeply. After a few moments, he looked up to the barrier separating him from the busy thoroughfare and from the former old four-storied administrative building that was once the centre of his existence – now just overpriced condominiums fashioned after the building’s original requirements had expired. 

He could see the edge of Perlacher Forest in the distance where he and his team had waited back then, in the rain for most of the evening, waiting for Klaus to appear to meet his contact. But Klaus didn’t show that evening. Nor had his contact, the primary object of the operation, someone suspected to have worked in the building. 

  It became obvious the planted information designed to lure them into the open, hadn’t succeeded. A week later, Klaus was photographed near Dresden – across the border in the East – in the company of Carl’s woman. 

The blaring horn startled him out of his mental fog. He looked in the rear-view mirror to see a round face staring through the windshield of the car behind him, the waving arms urging him out of the way and the unheard profanities thrown in his direction.

 He put the car in gear and then thought of the glass, the glass that would always remind him, that would tie him to her and to this place for the time he still had. 

 He flipped the finger to the bloated face behind him and headed for the traffic circle that would merge him into the flow towards central Munich.