"Can you see anything?" Jill asks from behind in a heavy breath. Eddie turns back and looks at Jill. "No. It is too dark." Jill's brown hair flies in all directions under the wind and glows surrealistically in the soft winter light. Her gaze is intense enough to make Eddie feel guilty about his boring discovery. As soon as he steps aside, Jill leans her body forward eagerly and tries to peek through the door crack Eddie has pulled open earlier.
"Wait a minute. There is something. Maybe a lawnmower." Jill says. "Darn. It is a storage room."
Eddie has become a bit impatient after the futile search: "I told you. This could not possibly be the gate for the exhibit. You don't believe me."
"Find it for me, then. We have been all over this stadium. Where can it be?" Jill shouts at Eddie as if everything has been his fault. Eddie shrugs and thinks, so what. It is Jill's idea to come to Nuremberg. It is also her idea to take the expensive taxi and come all the way to this side of the city just to look at an abandoned stadium. Eddie usually adores Jill’s opinions and strong personality, but sometimes he feels that he is treated as her slavery little brother. They did grow up together as next-door neighbors, and back when Eddie was a frail-looking and sensitive Chinese kid who often got bullied in schools, Jill almost took him under her wings and became his sole protector.
They stand at the rear of the main stage and look hopelessly frustrated. Under the stage hundreds of cars and sports vehicles are parked orderly, and hundreds of roller-bladders in their colorful winter sports outfits are gliding along the track with joy and glee. Their laughter and screams pierce through the crisp air and make the whole stadium rather festive.
"I have a theory." Jill says: "They hide the exhibit. The Germans just don't want us to see it. It is an eyesore, a shame."
Jill turns every opinion into a theory because theory is truer than hypothesis. Eddie tries to give her more opinions: "Maybe it is closed at winter time. Maybe we are not looking in the right place."
"It has to be here somewhere." Jill is holding her crumpled Berkeley budget guide and trying to read the line aloud again: "Behind the crumbling grandstands of the Zeppelin field lies the entrance to the exhibit Fascination and Violence, including film clips of the rallies and anti-Semitic posters, fliers and children's books. So what does this 'behind' mean? We have already tried "behind" the stadium, and 'behind' the grandstand. Gosh, who wrote this book…"
As she rambles Eddie walks back to the front of the stage. The stage is at least two or three floors above the field. There is a grand but faded mosaic Swastika sign on the stage ground. It looks as if someone has tried to erase the sign by grinding the stones very hard but somehow it still stays. Sixty years ago Hitler stood at this same spot and inspected his seven hundred and fifty thousand fanatic followers in the massive Nazi Party rallies. Eddie tries to imagine that ocean of flags and crowds underneath, tries to feel what it would feel like to be the super leader and the sheer idol worshipped by millions. For a few seconds he has ignored Jill.
When they planned this Europe trip, Jill insisted adding Nuremberg as a stop between Munich and Berlin. She said she had to visit it because of its historical significance. Eddie argued that he would rather visit the famous fairy-tale castle in the Bavarian Alps. The only thing Eddie knew about Nuremberg was the world war trial, and he could not figure out if that was enough for a visit considering the time constraint. They had already put Dachau in their itinerary. He understood how important it was for Jill, a Jewish girl and a history major, to pay her visit to the concentration camp victims. But why Nuremberg? Eddie opposed the idea and told her that he was not doing a World War II educational tour. Jill said nothing and dropped a videotape in his mailbox with a note attached to it. She wrote: "An awesome documentary although I hated watching it!"
It turned out to be Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda masterpiece on the sixth Nazi party congress. The film fascinated Eddie. He told Jill that he changed his mind and would like to see the actual filming site. The spacious stadium held such a spectacle that almost evoked a strange passion in Eddie. He secretly derived an erotic pleasure by watching those Nazi soldiers standing at rigid attention in their uniforms. The diminishing of the individual as a tiny part of the superhuman machine appealed to Eddie, as if it was some type of austere aesthetics that hid a sexual meaning he vaguely understood. Eddie felt a bit ashamed and he knew he could never tell Jill what really lay behind his motivation of coming to Nuremberg.
When Jill first suggested coming to Europe in the winter, she listed all the benefits: Few tourists, plenty of accommodation, snow-capped Alps. "Think about a park, or a museum, or a castle with almost nobody there." She imagined the whole of Europe would be in a Wim Wenders film, ghostly and melancholy, with empty streets and bleak landscapes, haunted by histories. She would be Achmatova or Paula Modersohn-Becker, soul-searching, free-spirited, ready to suffer and devote.
But it was not the first time that Eddie came to Europe. In the summer of his sophomore year, he followed a group of friends and toured Spain, France and England. During most of the trip he was tortured by an intense and secret crush on one of his traveling buddies. Eddie remembered how awful it was when the whole train was full of loud American students from Barcelona to Port Bou. He cursed the obnoxious American invasion. He cursed the beaches on the Spanish coast and the fortresses in southern France, where he could only steal furtive looks on his object of desire. He cursed the blond girl whom his buddy finally got a chance to make out with. In the end he cursed himself. When Eddie recalled all these, a winter trip away from rainy California and into bitter weather of Europe, became just what he wanted
They sit on the side stairs and take a small break. Eddie has dutifully followed Jill and circled the whole stadium twice. They looked all over the stage but apparently nothing resembled an exhibit room. There is no sign indicating an exhibit, neither can they find a post explaining what this large space was used for, and why it is left intact for sixty years. There are a few European-looking backpacker types of tourists checking around, but every one seems to be in a cold mood and no one acknowledges each other.
Jill lights a cigarette and starts to blow the smoke circles through her long curly hair dangled in front of her forehead. Since she came to Europe, she has adopted this self-destructive habit. In high school Jill was the rebellious type. She never put on any make up and did not care about her popularity. She wore clothes from the thrift stores before vintage clothes were considered cool. Once in a while she took Eddie to the only art movie house in the town and watched the foreign films no one in the school would bother to hear about. Eddie always felt out of place and never had that many friends. His pairing with headstrong Jill caused much derision in their mostly white and Protestant Midwest school.
Eddie feels a little nausea from the smell of the smoke and turns his head away. The sun is setting, and the sunlight is slanted and has turned golden. Scattered sparsely outside the stadium are nameless tall trees, whose last leaves have been blown away by the harsh wind. Their skinny trunks stick up and look like a throng of antennas. Eddie moves his attention back to the crowd. He spots a few handsome faces among the roller-bladders. They are often blond with very wholesome and carefree looks.
"I can't believe this." Jill tosses away the cigarette head and comments: "This fascist stadium has turned into an entertainment park."
Eddie finds Jill's rage a little irrational. He puts his arm around Jill's shoulder and tries to calm her down: "Relax, Jill. It is not that your whole family was all killed in the holocaust. You do not have to hate Germans for the rest of your life."
"How can you forgive these murderers? Do you remember Dachau? Not only did they kill Jews, they killed gays too." Jill sounds like she is gritting her teeth.
The memory of the Dachau visit has almost made Eddie shiver in the chilly air. The pink triangle sign comes into his mind, but the terror does not seem so real, and he can not possibly relate the gruesome death chamber scene to the stadium on his current sight.
"It was the darkest part of German history. I think they already feel the guilt, and they have been trying to repent and move on." Eddie says, flushing out of big and meaningless words that he himself is surprised with.
"Have you read Ann Frank's Journal? When I was a kid, I cried over it whenever I opened the book. It was as if I was suffering. Since then I never had good feelings for Germans." Jill is in the mood for a tirade. "It is like Chinese hating Japanese. Just think how many Chinese they killed."
"But I don't hate them. It happened so long ago."
"Yeah, right. You even dated Japanese. What is his name? Hiro or something? "
"He is a very nice guy." Eddie protests. He suddenly thinks about the old pictures Jill's father showed to his family many years ago, and the Chinese jade and porcelain Jill's father displayed in their living room. Mr. Goldberg loved to talk about his wartime stay in China as if it was such a fond childhood memory. "At least, you don't need to hate Japanese." Eddie says. "In Shanghai, they did not kill Jews since they considered Jews European, more superior to Chinese."
Jill looks at Eddie as if she is bewildered at what he has just said. Then, she bites her upper lip and says: "The world is fucked up, isn’t it?"
When Eddie was seven his father finally finished graduate school and moved the whole family from Taiwan to a leafy suburb outside a Midwest college town. Very soon his family made friends with the Goldberg family, their next door neighbors. Not only did Eddie's father and Mr. Goldberg teach in the same college, Mr. Goldberg actually spent his childhood in Shanghai as a refugee during the second war and this Chinese connection brought the two families a lot closer. On Christmas nights, they often went to the only Chinese restaurant in the town and would stay until midnight when both fathers got drunk. Eddie remembered Jill vividly on those dinners, who often sat next to her father quietly and ate the Chinese food with the chopsticks in the most nimble way. Whenever Eddie's mother saw Eddie messing up the food in the plate, she would point up to Jill and said to Eddie: "Look at the white girl. She is so good at Chinese chopsticks. Learn from her."
Eddie moved away in the second year of the high school when his father found a tenure position in another university. For a while Jill and Eddie wrote postcards to each other but they eventually lost contact. A few years later Eddie settled in San Francisco and bumped into Jill at a friend's party. They both belonged to the post-college mass migration looking for a more liberating and exciting urban environment, although Eddie had a more urgent agenda to come to San Francisco, which was to come out and live the gay life. Eddie revealed his new identity to Jill almost right away. When he told Jill that his mother always referred her as the "white girl" and was never sure Eddie should hang around her or not, Jill laughed and said: "I overheard her saying that too. One day, I think it was in junior high, I told her that I was not white because I was Jewish. She looked awfully confused."
When Eddie met Jill in San Francisco, Jill just came to the city and was folding clothes in Urban Outfitters during weekdays and making lattes and mochas in a coffeehouse over the weekends. What else could a history major do in our information age? She did not hide her bitterness when Eddie told her he worked for a software company as a programmer. She said her father expected her to go to graduate school right after, but she was tired of schooling, and the academia career simply did not appeal to her after she witnessed all the foul plays of big egos. Eventually she decided to come to San Francisco and live on her own before she figured out what to do next.
They started to see each other more often. There were coffees, movies, parties, gallery openings, and frequent updates of each other's latest love affairs. Jill switched between jobs and boyfriends and was in a perpetual state of self-reinvention. On the other hand, Eddie tried to assimilate into the city's gay life. Three times a week in the gym, bar-hopping and clubbing over the weekend nights, chatting and setting up dates on the Internet, he never felt so free, although he did not particularly like his job, he didn’t hate it either. As he got used to the routine of working and waiting for the weekends, and as all the encounters turned out to be either flakes or unrequited loves, his initial curiosity and enthusiasm was slowly fading away and getting replaced by disappointment. There was still the occasional excitement of sexual adventures, but most of the time he was depressed and felt a bit lonely.
When Eddie and Jill get back to the old city center, the last ray of sunlight has already disappeared. The meticulously restored city walls and towers, with their dark imposing silhouette, add more chills to the freezing streets and squares. They decided to walk through the old town and towards the hostel they found earlier that morning on the north side. Most of the tourists have already gone and there are only a few locals walking around. The atmosphere has turned rather gloomy.
"What are we doing tonight? Shall we go dancing?" Eddie wants to talk about something cheerful, and he hopes his proposal can bring both of them out of the reflective mood.
"I don't know." Jill turns back. "I am really not in a party mood."
"Come on, Jill." Eddie says. "It is a Saturday night! You can not possibly stay in that depressing hostel for the whole night!"
"Why not? I can write my journal, and I can write the postcards. It has been such a day."
"You mean, you are going to spend a night bitching about Germans and all that? Cut it out, Jill."
"Every night all you want to do is party, party! Do you gay boys care about anything else?" Jill bursts out.
"You always have fun in gay clubs." Eddie says. Eddie had taken Jill to all his usual hangouts in San Francisco, although calling Jill a fag hag would be quite a stretch.
"I do. But not every night!" Jill refers to their outings in Florence and Rome. But since they entered Germany they have not gone out much at night, partly because it is so much colder and people look so much more depressed.
"We are on vacation." Eddie says.
"I know. But, we are not traveling just for fun, for entertainment. Otherwise we should have gone to some stupid tropical island.” Jill stops on a bridge that crosses the river. The slowly flowing water makes a low humming sound. They can see their shadows projected on the surface of the water by the street lamps. A few tall willow trees, with their long and bold tangling twigs, are rustling in the wind. "Look around us. It is so beautiful here." Jill holds her breath and looks out to an old building about hundred yards away, whose base crosses the river and creates a mysterious-looking arch.
Jill seems to be in a dreamy spiritual moment that Eddie cannot quite share with her. He feels cold and puts his chin behind the collar of his jacket. He can see the white vapor when he breathes.
As if something has suddenly waken her up, Jill comes back to the reality and says. “OK. Where are we now?”
“Since you don’t want to be bothered by straight Germans, we should go to a gay club.” Eddie pushes his proposal more firmly.
“If you really want to go, you can go yourself.”
“I can’t leave you alone. Plus, it may be interesting to meet new people.” Eddie says: “How could you dislike Germans before you even know any one of them?”
“Eddie, you don’t understand. This has nothing to do with any individual German. It is connected to a horrible part of history. It is an abstract principle.”
“You lost me. Whatever it is, it should not stop you from making friends with Germans and finding out who they are.”
Jill seems to be tired of arguing. She says: “I am actually flexible. If you want me to go with you, I will go.”
“Of course you should go with me. You will enjoy yourself once you hear the music and have some beer to warm you up."
"Whatever, promise me that we will come back to the hostel early. We have to catch the nine o’clock train to Berlin." Jill finally succumbs.
They flew into Europe through Italy. They went through Rome, Florence, and Venice and then through Geneva to Munich. The journey will end in Berlin and they will fly home from Frankfurt. Jill just quit her job and is on a tighter budget. Her last love affair with an aspired animation filmmaker did not end well either. He moved away to LA and stopped calling.
Jill has been invigorated and energetic through Italy, although the weather did not paint the Tuscany vineyards, Roman relics or Grand Canal with the usual cheerful colors seen in the postcards and calendars. The Mediterranean casts magic on people, making them warm and flirtatious. However, the gay scene is generally disappointing. The clubs and bars are often so hidden that Eddie eventually gave up checking them out.
In the Uffizi of Florence, Jill spent much of her time in front of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. She looked at the painting in awe and mumbled about how harmonious the composition was. Eddie was rather astounded by Caravaggio. He stared at the head of Medusa for long. The serpents and the sight of blood spurting from Medusa’s neck intrigued him. Even in Sacrifice ofIssac, all he saw was Issac’s screaming and terrified face under Abraham’s knife.
When Eddie finally dragged Jill out, it was almost eleven. "Germans party late." Eddie told Jill. Using the Spartacus guidebook Eddie brought with him, he quickly found a dance club at the eastside.
The club is called Toleranz. Inside it is steamily hot and crowded. The music blares so loud that Eddie has to shout to Jill right in her ears whenever he needs to talk to her. When the DJ changes the music to Tony Braxton’s hit song Don't break my heart, everyone waves and shakes their bodies in a slow trance movement. With so many half-closed eyes, lifted circling arms and dramatic facial expressions, the crowd has been transformed and brought to an ecstatic state caused by pains.
"Gosh, they are all turning into divas." Jill screams. Eddie laughs and says: “Isn’t that cute?”
Eddie dances with Jill and no one seems to have paid much attention to them. On the way to the restroom, he notices a lanky guy looking at him. The guy has shaved head but his face is too gentle and nice-looking to pass for a skinhead. The black turtleneck and the black pants make him look more like a designer of some sort in his early thirties. When Eddie gets out of the restroom the same guy is still standing at the same spot with such a gaze that Eddie does not mistake it as pure curiosity. Eddie gives his acknowledgment with a coy smile. The guy comes over and introduces himself as Ralph.
Eddie senses obvious hostility from Jill when he brings Ralph over and introduces him. She checks him up from head to toe. “Why do you shave your head?” Jill’s first question comes as an interrogation.
“I am balding fast.” Ralph confesses. “So I shaved it.”
Jill stares at Ralph with a clear sign of disbelief.
The tension between Jill and Ralph makes Eddie rather uneasy. He tries to get everyone to the dance floor. Jill reluctantly joins in but quickly excuses herself. Eddie feels bad by leaving Jill alone, but Ralph has already charmed him. They dance closer and closer, and inevitably start to touch each other. After Eddie tells Ralph that he has to leave Nuremberg the next day, Ralph suggests that they should spend the night together. The offer has made Eddie rather excited, but he becomes hesitant when he thinks about Jill.
“I can drive you back to the hostel.” Ralph looks at Eddie affectionately.
Eddie goes back to the bar area and finds Jill sitting on the stool with a bottle of pilsner, looking tipsy and left out. He tells her that Ralph can give them a ride back to the hostel, and he may stay with Ralph for a few hours.
“You are such a whore.” Jill whispers, with a condescending voice: “And with a skinhead!”
“Jill, I think he is sexy.” Eddie says. “You know, this is part of gay life. I have not had a single fling since we came to Europe.”
“Neither have I.”
“Don’t tell me you never flirted with all the Italians. They were fascists too, remember?” Eddie finds his words a bit too harsh.
“You do whatever you want. Just leave me out of this, OK?” Jill looks pissed. She stands up and almost stumbles over the stool. Eddie sticks his hand and holds her with his shoulder. “You are in no condition to walk back.” Eddie says.
“Let’s take a taxi.” Jill mumbles.
“Ralph promises he can give us a ride.”
“I don’t need help of a Nazi skinhead.”
“Be fair. He is very kind. Jill.”
Jill stops arguing when her head falls down abruptly. She passes out. Ralph sees this from a few steps away and immediately comes over to help both of them. They walk out of the entrance and get into Ralph’s car. Then they put Jill in the back seat. The hostel is not far. They make sure Jill has fallen in sleep in the bed before they get back to the car and drive to Ralph’s apartment.
Eddie finds Ralph’s apartment incredibly orderly. The first thing that catches Eddie's eyes is a bulky black cello case leaning against the corner. A music stand is neatly folded next to it. A series of framed black ink sketches decorate one side of the wall. Two metal bookshelves, each full of neatly shelved books, insinuate the owner’s avid reading habit. On a steel roller in front of sofa rests a Hi-Fi stereo, which looks like some medical instrument. Its edge glows under the reflections of the light.
Eddie walks over to the bookshelf and looks through Ralph's collection. He has developed a habit of checking out books and CDs in a stranger's house, as he can usually tell quite a lot of the person just from what he reads or listens to. Most of Ralph's books have German titles with authors unknown to Eddie. He notices Tom of Finland, but he skips it and goes right to a poetry collection by Rilke. Somehow, just to show off his knowledge on German poetry, he takes out the Rilke book.
Ralph comes out of the kitchen, holding two glasses of wine, one on each hand. When he sees Eddie thumping through the poetry book, he recites: "Wer, wenn ich schriee, horte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? Eddie, do you read Rilke in German?"
Eddie tries to sound modest: "Oh, not much. I took German for a year in high school. That’s about it."
"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies? My favorite line in his first elegy." He hands the wine to Eddie and sits back in the sofa. “Rilke spoke with such depth and intensity.” Ralph has a very aristocratic style. Even when he sits he poses elegantly with one leg over the other one. Is this all part of being culturally-cultivated German? Eddie is fascinated. Very soon they start to kiss and fondle each other. Ralph moves his tongue very tenderly, almost too timid and cautious.
When they take off their clothes, Ralph takes out a studded leather collar from his closet and asks: “Do you mind if I wear it?”
Eddie is a bit amused. After Ralph puts the collar on, Eddie gets more excited than he could admit. He feels like grabbing Ralph by the collar and stomping him under his feet.
When they get in bed, Ralph lies on his back and looks at Eddie earnestly: "Spit on me. Please." He says.
Eddie is shocked. "Are you sure?"
"Oh, please." Ralph begs.
For a second Eddie thinks it is creepy. You only spit on the person you hate the most. Eddie has grown to like Ralph’s gentleness and suave manner, and the idea of spitting seems a bit far fetched.
“I don’t know if I can do it.” Eddie says. How weird it is. How did he get into all this strange kinky stuff? Was he been abused as a child or what? Could that be the German guilt in the collective sub-consciousness? Eddie has no time to analyze more before Ralph pleads again with his heavy breath.
“Please, please. It really turns me on. I would love for you to spit on me.”
Ralph’s voice trembles, sending a warm wave through Eddie’s body. He cannot think of anything else to do but to please Ralph, to cater for every need Ralph has.
Eddie’s first spit falls on Ralph’s forehead. It is tiny, and Eddie almost starts to apologize.
“Oh, more.” Ralph groans.
When Eddie sees his second spit sticks to Ralph’s brown eyebrow and the shining studs on the leather collar, there is a sudden rising of sensation inside him that is so new, so strange. He is empowered and in control, and his whole existence is heightened. Ralph smears Eddie’s spit all over his face and gasps: “Ah, it feels so good. Never has an Asian done this to me before.”
Ralph’s contorted face triggers a series of montage images in Eddie’s mind as he continues to spit harder and harder. The uniformed Nazi soldiers in Leni’s film, the infinitely large and empty Zeppelin stadium, the angry face of Jill, the high school playground where he used to stand aside quietly looking at the popular jocks, the ancient arch over the river in the old town of Nuremberg, they all mix together and appear as blurred snapshots and then disappear instantly. For a short moment Eddie feels Ralph’s whole history, although totally unknown, has been usurped and taken over by him.
The next morning Eddie wakes up and looks at his watch and finds out it is already half past eight. He suddenly remembers Jill and their Berlin train. He jumps out of the bed right away. Ralph also wakes up and tells Eddie he can give him a ride. When they get back to the hostel, they find out that Jill has already checked out. On the desk she left a note: “I think it is better to for me to complete the rest of the trip on my own. See you at the Frankfurt airport.”
When they rush to the train station, Eddie spots Jill sitting on a corner of the platform with her backpack leaning against the wall. She is reading her guidebook. Before Jill sees them Ralph stops and gives Eddie a hug. He pecks on Eddie’s cheek and slips a note into Eddie’s pocket. “Write me.” He says. Then he turns back and walks away.
Eddie approaches Jill from the side and realizes how beautiful Jill is even in her stuffy jacket. Her cheeks radiate with a healthy reddish color, and her hair, though often not neatly combed, gives her the exact bohemian air. No wonder those Italians always stared at her, Eddie thinks.
Jill lifts her head and sees Eddie. She tilts her head and throws a look as if Eddie is so expected. “How was your night?” She asks casually.
“It was OK.” Eddie tries to brush over the subject. “I am really sorry. I overslept at Ralph’s place.”
“Whatever.” Jill seems to pretend that she has forgotten the note she wrote.
“I thought you have already left on the nine o’clock train.” Eddy says.
“I missed it.”
“Really?”
“Oh, well.” Jill shrugs and plays with words. “I thought I could wait a little longer and see where else I could go.” She lifts the guidebook. “There is Wagner’s hometown nearby, do you know that?”
“Wagner is anti-Semitic.” Eddie says.
“I know. So, anyway, I don’t have extra time.” Jill says.
“Do you still want to travel the rest of the trip on your own?” Eddie asks, after a bit hesitation.
“Eddie, you are great company. But sometimes I wonder whether you really need me around or not.”
“Sorry Jill.” Eddie says. “Don’t go off like this.”
“You virtually abandoned me last night for a skinhead. How should I take that?”
“I promise I won’t do that anymore. You know, the libido usually wins.” Eddie tries to sound funny. “But Ralph is not a skinhead.” A faint smile appears on Eddie’s face, and he almost feels like telling Jill something about the night.
Jill stares into Eddie’s eyes as if she has known everything: “How is Ralph?”
“He is nice. You know, he helped to take you home when you passed out last night.”
“Really? I don’t remember any of it.” Jill seems surprised. Then she asks: “Are you going to see him again?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.” Eddie decides that there is nothing more he would like to say about Ralph.
“Sometimes, I wish I could live the way you do.” Jill sighs.
On the train they keep quiet. Jill is reading again. Neither is Eddie in a mood for more conversation. He looks out of the window and sees the barren winter fields, church spires and snow-capped peaks quickly passing by. He imagines how different they would look when spring comes. Then he thinks about Berlin and wonders what awaits him ahead.
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