“Have You Fire?”
“Haben sie feuerzeug?” A German man asks me.
We are on a patio at my hotel, the Mercure in Koblenz, Germany, overlooking the Rhine river. He wants to enjoy his cigarette as much as I’m enjoying my cigar.
“Uh… Sprechen ze English?” I ask, hoping he could repeat his request so I could understand it.
“Ah… have you… fire?” He said. He showed me a cigarette.
“AH!” I exclaim. “Ja,” I reply, one of the few words in German I can say without sounding hopelessly lost in my own head. I pull out my lighter and hand it to him.
“Ah, Danke! Danke, danke!” he exclaims in thanks. He clearly wants to smoke this cigarette. He lights it and puffs and smiles.
“Cigarette?” he asks, offering me one.
“Nien, danke,” I decline.
He shows me the pack. “Marlboro!” he replies.
“Cigar,” I reply back, showing him my stogie.
“Ahh!” he says with a smile. “Wunderbar!” He takes a cigarette from the pack and hands it to me. I tried to refuse it but he insisted. He says something in German which I presume to be “I insist,” then “Bitte! Und Danke!”
I smile and thank him with a “Bitte!” of my own. I return to my writing.
The waiter, whom I’ve built a good rapport with since my arrival a few days ago, comes up and says “Those are quite rare here.”
“The cigarette?” I asked.
“Ja,” he replied. “Real American Marlboro. He payed probably 30 Euros for that pack.”
“No shit,” I replied. “Wow…”
“So, that cigarette is quite a gift,” he continued.
I smiled. “Want it?” I said.
He smiled, reached out, took it and placed it in his pocket. “Danke, Herr Peacock,” he said with a nod.
The rapport I’ve built with this man is based on the fact that I tip. Decently by American standards; quite extravagantly by European. And to give him what amounted to a $1.20 cigarette further built a deep, heartfelt bond that will last for as long as I’m a customer here, I’m sure.
He comes out a few minutes later with a new glass of wine; a double pour.
“Danke,” I said. “How did you know I wanted another?”
“This one is on me!” he said with a smile.
I smiled and raised my glass to him. He smiled and took away my old glass.
It’s a Tuesday evening in May. Slightly chilly, partly cloudy, a little breezy and getting dark. To the German Marlboro man, it’s a day that a man with a lighter was kind to him; to the waiter, another good day working with an American on a business trip.
To me, it’s one of the most drastically emotional days I’ve had in a few years.
The workday was productive and, as is usually the case with the past few months of my life, I was simultaneously on-task with the work at hand and overwhelmed with just how lucky and thankful I am to even be here. This evening, a coworker of mine took me around the city of Koblenz. I’ve been here a few times now and never really looked around, and this trip, he decided I needed to see some things.
I saw the fortress, and the castles, and the merging point of the rivers Rhine and Mosel, and the houses and churches and statues that make this city feel like it’s been here for hundreds of years — because it literally has. I took dozens of pictures. I played tourist. It was lovely.
I was looking at all these amazing pieces of architectural history… All this beauty standing before me. And then, from some corner of my brain, memories begin to seep in. Memories of the first time I ever saw any of this architecture or saw this language on roadsigns or ate this food. Like a creeping fog, it began to slide in.
My eyes saw the buildings and statues and people of Koblenz… but my brain began to see Berlin and Munich the way it was when I first visited here in 2000, with my ex-wife.
I think about the first time I was in this country and how I had my first beer at age 23 in a biergarten in Munich with her, and how she cried when she didn’t realize she was in East Germany for the first time since the wall fell, and how last time she was here she was a little girl and there were poor people in the streets, and how everything looked so modern and beautiful and she didn’t even realize where she was and it overwhelmed her, and how we were scared to order any other food besides schnitzel, and how we carried most of what we owned around in huge bags because we didn’t quite know how to pack for a big trip, and the crazy homeless German man who yelled at us at the train station, and the street performing skateboarders near Checkpoint Charlie taking tourists’ dollars…
Good memories. Happy memories. Painful memories.
Painful because of who she is now. Not because I don’t have her, but because I don’t WANT her. After I wanted nothing but her for the rest of my entire life.
That’s a hard reconciliation. It will crush you. And it’s not hate or anger or sadness that does it. It’s the weight of how much love you had. It falls on you because it has no place to go anymore when you remember it. When you think of great times you had with someone you love, you experience that love NOW, in real time, even though it’s the love of a time well passed.
But when you think of great times with someone you LOVED, and you don’t love them anymore (or can’t), all that love… it can’t go to them. And you can’t give it to them, because… well, you just can’t.
And so, here you are, with that love in your heart which swirls madly, looking for the old conduit from you to her that it knows it should flow to, but it’s shut up and inaccessible… and it swirls and swirls and gathers mass until it crushes down on you.
Most times, I can hold them up. I can keep them at bay. I can experience the facts of the memory without the emotions. But some nights, like tonight, when I’m calm and at peace and my mind is empty except for what’s happening, and then it suddenly begins to fill with memories and I’m vulnerable, it strikes the chord that echoes within me and I can’t help but hear it.
And that’s the real moment of truth: allowing it to. Not shutting it off or pushing it away. Because to do that means closing up and keeping myself from having the peaceful moments. It’s not fair to me.
So, I hurt for a little while. And I think on it and I process it and I let it be what it is: unfortunate.
And then, the breeze picks up a little and the fingers of smoke from the tip of my cigar begin to stream diagonally and I become aware of the fact that this breeze is halfway across the globe from where I live.
I look around. Clarity slowly returns, like the fog blowing away with the morning light. And I see the patio and the Rhine river and the church on the opposite bank and the houses and the sweet man who wanted a light for his treasured smokes.
And I’m here again. Here. Now. In the moment, in Koblenz, Germany, on a fine Spring evening, with good wine and a great cigar and laughter and the sound of the wind in the trees.
Last time, I was on my back deck at the house I live in now. Another time, in Charlotte at a restaurant I went to a few times with a girl I tried dating shortly after my divorce. Another time, at a comic book store I frequented as a young teenager that held some amazing memories with people who turned out to be not so great and caused the first real feeling of betrayal I ever felt as an adult. And another time, in the passenger seat of a car similar to my first car which I loved, that someone crashed into and nearly killed me in the process.
That is life.
If I didn’t have the great memories, the pain wouldn’t be so deep. It can only hurt as much as you care. But that pain; it isn’t the end of all things. It’s the shadow behind the form which gives it substance. It is the edge of things. It outlines it and highlights it.
It can easily overshadow it. It is, after all, shadow. But that’s up to me as the painter of my own reality to determine, isn’t it? I can let it muddy the colors, or I can use it to emphasize the form. Bring out the folds in the dress my ex-wife wore on our wedding day. Build depth in the leaves of the trees that swayed to and fro on the windy days at my old house. Make vibrant the foreground of all these things that were so great when they happened.
Because I DO have fire. It burns so brightly and hot. I feel things very deeply, both good and bad. It makes the pain burn as much as the pleasure soothed. And that’s what makes life so fucking wonderful.
So I sip my wine and take a draw off my cigar and smile.
The waiter comes to my table. “Another glass of wine, sir?”
“Absolutely,” I reply.
“This one’s back on you,” he said with a wink.
I’m fine with that.
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