The Almost Baroness

2004-10-31T22:00:00.000+01:00

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

2004-10-31T20:49:00.001+01:00

In the morning, we went in search of some of the more historic cafes. We walked arm in arm through the city, as if descending the stairs of a royal palace, and the stately, ornate buildings, imposing, curlicued and imperial, made me feel like a princess surveying her grounds.

"It's okay, your city," I said, feigning indifference, "but I've seen better."

He looked at me with wide incredulous eyes. I laughed, and kissed him.

We stopped under a centuries old archway held up by columns in the shape of men to listen to a quartet play Mozart sonatas. On the way to the most bohemian and intimate of the cafes, I spotted a little girl on a bicycle, her dress caught in the rear chain, her mother admonishing her angrily. I pulled him over and whispered for him to help her. He bent down and patiently worked the material free from the chain. When he stood back up and patted the girl on her head, she gazed up at him as if he were an apparition of a savior prince, arrived at the very moment she had wished with all her might for help. The mother gushed words of thanks, her frustration completely dissipated, her eyes going from me to him and back again. She seemed to be trying to figure out who we were and where we had appeared from. I felt her gaze follow us in wonder as we walked away.

“You are that little girl’s hero now,” I said, squeezing his arm.

"Do you think she will remember me?" he asked.

"When she grows into a young woman, she will search for a tall elegant man like the one who dislodged her sweater from her bicycle those many years ago," I teased, "You will haunt her until she finds your double."

We found the cafe we were looking for, and once we were comfortably settled and had ordered, he told me again how he was ready to get married again and have children of his own.

"Do you remember that photo I sent you, of me with a baby in my arms?" he asked.

It was the best picture of him, a grin spread across his face as he held the baby slightly away from him, a thing of beauty and wonder that he was afraid to mishandle and break. He looked radiant.

"When I held him, I understood that I really wanted to hold a child of my own blood in my arms," he said.

I set down my cup and listened. As he talked, I thought how easy it would be to let myself be molded, to give in, to let go totally. To completely surrender to a man, one who knew without a doubt what he wanted, was determined to get it, and was not shy of speaking it, had a certain delicious feel of letting go, like slipping off a sock under the sheets in the middle of the night. I pictured myself the mother of his children - two, maybe three, dressed in green jumper shorts sets and purple shoes. Me, the thin Baroness von F..., my hair in a chignon, my nails manicured just so. I imagined myself at balls and society functions, shaking hands and greeting people, finally speaking passable German. I knew my loud laugh and my American-ness would set me apart, but the Duchess of Windsor did just fine with her masculinity, American-ness and her divorce.

The subject of children inevitably led back to his wife, and why they had never had any of their own.

"We knew early into our marriage that she would never be able to have any more children. When we found out she was sick, we were told the treatments she would have to go through would make her infertile. Even if that weren't the case, having another child would have definitely killed her." he looked sadly at me, and I found myself reaching for his hand in an attempt to comfort him.

"So that is why I had an operation myself," he continued, "so we would not make a child. I don't know how you call it in English."

My breath caught in my throat. "A vasectomy," I said slowly.

"Yes, so you see, if we had children, you and I, I would get to choose when because they would have to take seed from me and implant it in you."

How terribly romantic, I thought. I had always imagined that the decision to have children would add a whole new dimension to the experience of love making. The future father to my children and I would stare deep into each other's eyes as we fused our bodies together to create a part of the two of us. We would touch each other more tenderly, kiss each other more passionately, each orgasm would be heightened by the knowlege of the life we would be creating together. It had seemed to me to be one of the things to look forward to about wanting to have children. That and having decent cleavage. But if Guenter chose me to carry on the von F... line, I would, like a blonde performing Lipizzaner, be inseminated.

We left Vienna and drove the Yellow Beast towards Graz, where he had told me his family, and his family line came from. Munich was not Munich and Coburg was not Coburg, so naturally Graz was not Graz. We were going to meet his mother, sister and brother-in-law at a wine garden in the countryside. I was nervous, and repeated the German phrase it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance silently to myself as I watched the mountainous landscape go by through the car window. I was curious to meet his sister, to whom he seemed especially close, and it was primarily to her that he had talked of meeting me. I wondered if she disapproved of how we had met, or my age or nationality. His mother I knew spoke no English, so I didn't think I would be able to connect with her, other than trotting out my German phrase and smiling in a meaningful, I-care-about-your-son kind of way.

We stopped overnight in an alpine town, and had dinner in a country inn. It was rustic, but elegant, and I remarked as we walked through that it must be a reputed restaurant.

"What makes you think so?" he asked, cocking his head.

"Because it has signs from Gault Millau," I said.

"I do not know this," he said dismissively.

I was surprised he had never heard of it. I would have thought, a baron...

"It's kind of like the Michelin guide," I said, "only better. It only rates the food, not the atmosphere or service, and it never gives a perfect score."

He simply nodded his head, and guided me towards the host stand. We were seated at a table with glazed wooden benches, and a view of the surrounding garden through the high alpine windows, amusingly framed by red and white checkered curtains.

I looked at the menu, trying to decipher the German without asking for help. He let me, occasionally looking over smilingly at me, amused at my stuborness.

"What does pute mean?" I asked, finally giving in. In all my Latin based languages, it looked the root for whore, which I was sure was not on the menu that evening.

"It's a kind of bird," he answered, putting his hands up to show me, "it's a very big bird, and you eat it in America, roasted whole."

"Ohh!" I said, "turkey!"

"I don't know this word," he said, but looked dubious that I come up with the right one.

"Does it go like this?" I asked, leaning my head back and cupping my hand to my mouth to emit - to the astonishment of everyone around us - "Gobble! gobble! gobble!"

He laughed so hard he had to use his linen napkin to wipe away the tears.

"Yes," he said, still recovering, and patting my hand as I laughed with him, "I think you've got it."

Chapter 6

2004-10-31T20:49:00.000+01:00

In the morning, we took the bright yellow Renault 5, which I began to affectionately call The Yellow Beast, on the autobahn to Vienna. I was glad to get out of the countryside and head to the city, where I planned to lounge in rococo cafes and watch passersby.

Guenter was tired, so I drove the Yellow Beast on the autobahn as fast as I could make it go, shifting its gears from the steering column, and making sure to let all the Audis and BMWs and Mercedes pass me. I smiled at the people who stared at us as they whizzed by, several of whom honked and waved, after realizing the yellow antiquity was not a mirage. Guenter had told me that often people would shout out to him that it was wonderful to see a Renault 5 again, and hand him beers through the window, perhaps charmed at seeing a car that reminded them of their youth spent hitchhiking across Europe, or their first love, a bohemian artist who slept on the floor in front of an unfinished canvas, hoping he would be able to transfer onto it the wild images in his dreams.

Shortly after the Austrian border, we stopped at an outdoor cafeé on the grounds of a castle, high atop a hill and overlooking the valley, and ordered two beers named after his family, served in glasses with the same family crest as the one on his card. Sitting in the sun under the parasol, squinting from the reflection of the white tablecloth, his hand on top of mine, I watched a fly lazily buzz about and land on his arm. It was at that moment when he told me the date when he would marry again - February 3rd of the following year.

"Does that mean you have already picked a bride?" I asked, watching his eyes. I figured if this was just a fling and he had a bride waiting in the wings, at least I would know where I stood.

"No, I just know that is the day I will marry again." he replied, squeezing my hand significantly.

If I were a candidate in the running, which from the hand squeezing and his wanting to introduce me to his mother and sister, I assumed I was, I quickly calculated that we would have known each other a little over a year. I wondered who else was being considered, and if he put them in a spreadsheet to measure their pros and cons. I wondered if they had all been offered the red dress, and if trying it on was the ultimate test to pass, like the women villagers trying on Cinderella's glass slipper. Would Guenter get down on his knees and propose, or would he simply say,

"It's Tuesday, February 3rd. You know what that means."

I tried to weigh if I would be able to accept if he asked me. I thought of what I knew about him. He liked opera and sweets and bagels. He was tall and elegant. He was a pilot and an engineer. He was alternately very proud and very mysterious about his lineage. He seemed to like my sense of humor, and thought I was pretty. He had made many allusions to transforming his wife from an ugly duckling to a swan. She had apparently been rather plain when he met her, but through his guidance, had slimmed down and learned how to dress and do her makeup. I vaguely felt as if he imagined himself to be Pygmalion, and I, his second Galatea.

We reached Vienna in the middle of the afternoon, and soon saw signs pointing towards Schönbrunn. I said I had never seen it, so we parked the Yellow Beast and headed to the castle to take a tour. We had a tendency to tour things in an odd order, so we started with the carriage house. Walking along the amazingly overly decorated structures, peering inside them and trying to imagine gathering all those skirts into such a small space, I was struck by how some of the gilded and intricately carved ones looked almost gaudy, like the cheap overly done decorations of a Chinese restaurant. I said this to Guenter, and he looked at me strangely. Perhaps he has never been in a Chinese restaurant, I thought.

Walking from the carriage house to the main castle, he had his arm about my waist, and mentioned that he thought I had lost weight since the last time he had seen me in Atlanta. I said I hadn't consciously tried to do so, but that is was possible I had.

"You should lose more," he said, patting my waist.

"I like the way I look," I replied, drawing away from him. It was one of the rare times in which I actually felt that way, and I was determined to enjoy it. I decided to ignore the comment and put it down to German's propensity to sound demanding.

We went inside the main castle and opted for the recorded guided tour. I was embarrassed to have to ask for the English version. We followed along, shuffling with the crowds from room to room, and I struggled to work my headset right, often skipping ahead too far or going back to the beginning.

When we arrived at a particularly beautiful portrait of the Empress Elizabeth, or Sissi, as she is affectionately known in Austria, he caught my eye when the narrator talked of her slim figure, which she obsessively preoccupied herself with, often eating only broth to preserve her weight of a mere 90 pounds. I raised my eyebrows at him from across the room and stuck out my tongue.

Later that day, at the Hotel Sacher, I flipped through the menu pages and burst out laughing when it claimed that Empress Sissi herself was fond of Sacher tortes from the hotel and regularly had them sent to Schönbrunn.

"She didn't eat them; she weighed 90 pounds!" I exclaimed.

"She must have had such a happy life, living at Schönbrunn and being so adored by Emperor Franz Josef," he said dreamily.

I stared at him.

"Are you kidding?" I said, taking a sip of my sweet coffee concoction with a kick of cognac. "She ate fucking broth all her life!"

"Yes, but she kept her slim figure like Franz Josef liked," he said, admiringly, as if this, of all things, should be her crowning achievement.

I thought of how the taped tour narrator had talked of her, isolated in the castle, constantly fighting with her mother-in-law and adored but misunderstood by her husband. There had even been a quote from one of her letters describing marriage as a "...preposterous institution ... You are sold as a child of fifteen, you swear vows you do not understand, and you regret them for thirty years or more, but you can never break them."

"She was miserable," I said.

We went from the Hotel Sacher to check into our hotel, located in a Turkish section of town. It was an older building with large mirrors and a crystal chandelier in the room. I flopped on the bed, exhausted and ready to relax.

"Would you like to go to the opera tonight?" he asked from the bathroom.

"Oh, yeah!" I said. I had seen pictures of the Staatsoper and had thought how nice it would be to go there with him. But it was already early evening, and I wasn't sure if we had time.

"I'll go ask the concierge to get us some tickets," he said, and went downstairs.

I took a shower, lingering under the hot water, willing myself to wake up. Hot water always made me sleepy, but cold water went against my principles.

He came back up and announced from the bedroom that we had gotten tickets, but that I needed to be ready in 15 minutes. I hadn't ever, in my entire life, gotten ready for anything that quickly, not even when I was late for work. I rushed out of the bathroom, upended my suitcase on the bed, and dumped out the contents of my jewelry case, sifting through it for the necklace and earrings I wanted, a black beaded choker and dangling earrings to match. I chose a black velvet bolero jacket with white satin cuffs and black pants, and a pair of sexy black high heeled sandals I had bought for pennies in Brazil. I applied my makeup in a flash, choosing to go with the smoky-eyed look, as a steady patient hand called for more time than I had.

Twelve minutes later, my hair still wet, I was ready. He looked me over approvingly.

"You look beautiful," he said, smiling, and turning me around in a pirouette.

We went arm in arm downstairs and jumped into a waiting taxi. On the way there, I fanned my fingers through my hair, trying to simultaneously style and dry it, while also attempting to get a glimpse of the city whizzing by.

We got out a block down from the Staatsoper, which was large and imposing, and lit up on the outside.

I straightened up and tried to look relaxed as we walked through the huge entrance doors. I was glad to have my arm laced through his. He was at home in this old world of large ornate buildings, marble staircases and frescoed ceilings, and I felt proud to be with him. I had thought that with my blonde hair and blue eyes, I would blend into the background in Germany and Austria, but instead I would regularly catch people looking at me as if wondering where I had appeared from. I had asked him about it once when we were in some small town in Germany on our way to Austria.

"Look around you," he had said. I had, and saw young couples, families, and older people walking by. They hadn't looked not much different than me, I had thought.

"Do you look like anyone here?" he had quizzed.

"What do you mean?" I remembered asking. He had smiled and fingered my purple boa, and nudged my blue sunglasses playfully back up my nose.

"You look like a moooofie stah!" he had said, laughing, and took me in his arms.

I fervently hoped I still did - the Staatsoper being a place where one aimed to look particularly stunning. He spoke to an usher, who pointed up to the last floor. We climbed up four flights, and once at the top, a little out of breath, he led me to our seats. Since we had last minute tickets, we were relegated to the cheap ticket section, where young art and music students sat crouched on the stairs scribbling in notebooks. The ceiling was very low, and as we were basically right under it, I was immediately uncomfortably hot.

The opera was unknown to me, but the composer I knew. Each seat was outfitted with a small digital screen that could be angled up however the audience member wished, and the subtitles were available in five or six different languages. I looked around at the predominately red and gold decor, and marveled at how the even the exit signs blended elegantly in.

The opera began, and it was immediately apparent to me that the opera singers were far superior to any I had ever had the chance to see. I wondered if they were well known in Austria or Europe, or if they were merely average local talent. At the intermission, he asked if I wanted to get a drink, and I was glad to get a respite from the stuffy air and cramped quarters. We headed down arm in arm to the first level ballroom, where drinks were served in real glasses and people could sit at small round cloth covered tables. I ordered a 'sekt' - orange juice with champagne. A mimosa - I thought amusedly, and remembered skipping the first morning class with my sister to eat beignets, drink chicory coffee and sip mimosas no one asked us to show our IDs for at a New Orleans style cafe on Peachtree Street.

When intermission was over, he led me to much better seats in the main gallery, and I tried not to meet anyone's eyes lest they know we were taking someone else's places. It is one of the ways in which I am very American - I don't cut in line and it never occurs to me to take a seat I haven't paid for. But I had to admit, the view of the stage was fabulous, and it was worth any wayward glances we might have gotten. He stared straight ahead, his head held high, as if he owned the place. I doubted anyone would second guess him.

We walked out of the Staatsoper arm in arm and crossed the street to a lit up sausage stand.

"You have to try some of these," he said.

It was more than a mere sausage stand; it was a fully functioning kitchen with every non cooking space used for displaying sausages, drinks and candy. I looked at the different cans, smiling at the yellow one with the cartoon alpine boy and girl on it. Yellow again, I thought, there has got to be a reason behind all this yellow. He pointed to it, and said he grew up drinking it. I asked him order me one with the kind of sausage he liked best. I could tell he liked my deference to his taste. We stood there, leaning up against the makeshift counter, eating off of paper plates in our opera best, the street lights shining on his chiseled face. I nuzzled into him, and he wrapped his arm around me, feeding me bits of his sausage, and explaining the differences between all of them. He wiped a smudge of mustard off my nose and kissed me, to the amusement of the Turkish and Armenian men around us.

We flagged down a taxi and returned to the hotel.

I had barely removed my earrings and necklace before he picked me up and carried me towards the bed, where he swept the jewelry to the floor and laid me down in one fluent movement. He undressed me slowly, kissing each exposed piece of skin as it was uncovered, pausing occasionally to admire and touch. I buried my face in his hair, which smelled faintly of sausage and cool night air. I caught the reflection of our bodies in the mirror of the bureau, as we made love slowly and tenderly underneath the crystal chandelier.

Chapter 5

2004-10-31T20:38:00.001+01:00

We drove for about an hour outside of the town of Coburg, and were deep in the countryside when he announced we had arrived at his castle. We went down a long tree-lined drive, and wound around until it appeared into view. It was smaller than I had thought it would be, and even in the dark, I could tell it was painted the same lemon yellow as most of the buildings I had seen on the way there. There was a gravel parking lot in what looked like a courtyard in the middle, the structure making a U shape around it, prettily framed by a high lemon yellow archway atop thick square columns. It looked rather new, not the crumbling grey ivy covered stone I had expected.

"Do you have company?" I asked.

He looked momentarily confused. I motioned to the other cars parked in the courtyard.

"No, they live here. They are my neighbors."

I looked around. There were three rows of big windows running along the building, so I surmised there were three floors, and as I looked closer, I understood the castle had been divided up into apartments. There looked to be ten in all. I smiled to myself. Munich is not Munich, Coburg is not Coburg and a castle is an apartment in the country.

He grabbed our bags out of the car and proceeded down some steps to one of the two side entrances. Inside, it was badly lit and smelled very strongly of wet dog. There was a ground floor apartment door to the left, but he bounded up the unstained rudimentary wooden stairs to the second floor. A lone light bulb hung from a wire, casting down a sickly yellow light. I looked down, and in the dimness, realized I was standing on a patch of astroturf. Astroturf in the entrance to a castle, I thought.

I followed behind him, and he opened the door. Immediately to the right was the bathroom, a big bulky square tub taking up most of the space, and the sound of dripping water eerily echoing from inside, as if someone had just taken a bath and forgotten to completely close the tap. Straight ahead was a closed bedroom door. There was no entry hall to speak of, but a small foyer off of which branched two more rooms and the kitchen. The ceilings were high, the floor parquet, and the windows reached from mid-wall to the ceiling. I put down my bag, not sure if I should go ahead without him. There was a distinct feeling of emptiness, of loneliness and isolation, and it made me suddenly cold.

"Let me show you the place," he said with obvious pride and fondness. He led me through the kitchen, furnished with a cheap looking table and three metal and plastic chairs. He pulled me by the hand to what had obviously been the living room. Stripped of most of the furniture, it seemed small and sad, a long-dead plant in the corner by the large curtainless windows. I tried to fill it with furniture in my head, imagine it as it must have been with Regina and her daughter to give it life. A newspaper rustled across the floor in the air we had suddenly disturbed, and startled me. There were a few pictures still left on the wall, one of which looked like a strange type of photograph of him.

"This is my hologram," he said, stopping in front of it and straightening himself up, "I spent a lot of money on it. They are very rare."

He stood there smiling, his hands on his hips. I looked at it, remembering a hologram of a human skull on the front of a National Geographic that, as a child, I had spent hours turning this way and that, the rainbow colors at odds with the solemnity of the skull's frozen grin. He was much younger in the picture, his eyes open alertly, his frozen smile one of fascination and novelty, as if congratulating himself for having had the idea and the money to have it done. Why would someone want such a thing? I wondered. I slowly walked around it, watching his preserved youthful face come out of the frame and into the room. I looked at it hard, knowing it would be the last time, knowing that the next time I passed it, I would avoid its slightly manic gaze.

He showed me the rest of the apartment, the two now empty bedrooms, and talked of how happy he had been here with his wife and her daughter. I wondered where the daughter was now, and why she was not with him. Perhaps she was with his wife's family - if they were in court over a red dress, they surely had gone to court for custody of their daughter's girl.

I went to take a bath, and soaking in the tub, I thought of Regina and what her life must have been like, living in this sad little apartment carved from a castle, hidden away in the countryside, waiting for him to come home on the weekends. I pictured her in the red dress, looking sadly out the window, watching and listening for the yellow jalopy to come up the drive.

She had been a teacher in a local school. Did the children miss her, think of her, or even know that she had died? Did shopkeepers in town, forgetting she was gone, still ask after her, and wince at their gaffe while holding the box of pastries or wrapped meat over the counter to him, the package hanging in the air like the question, until one of them looked away?

When I emerged from the bathroom, I found him standing in the hallway, a painting of a woman in yellows, reds and greens in his hands, holding it up for me to see.

“This is my wife,” he said, holding it up.

“Oh, she was a painter?" I asked, toweling my hair dry and tilting my head to get a better look, "Or did someone paint that of her?”

“No,” he said, “this is her.”

And then I saw it - the impression of her body, like a technicolor shroud. She had smeared her hips and thighs and legs with yellow, accenting her nipples in red and her pubis in green, and pressed the canvas up against her dripping form. Her body was slim and quite beautiful. I felt the sheer force of her will, the desperate defiance of death by leaving a physical trace of her very self, a map of the body she knew she would one day abandon. She would live again for a brief moment each time he looked at it and remembered the feel of his hand on her hips or the taste of her nipples in his mouth. I imagined a desperate sob escaping her, wracking her glistening rainbowed body as she clasped the canvas to her, knowing it would one day be forever captured behind a glass and frame. It sent a shiver down my back.

He had made a makeshift bed on the floor of the living room, and as we lay there together, he settled into sleep, cradling me in his arms from behind. He murmured into the back of my neck, asking me what I thought of the apartment. I didn't know what to say. I could hear the water dripping in the bathroom, puncturing my silence as I struggled for words. I didn't like anything about the place except the windows, precisely because they led away from this empty, isolated and unremarkable apartment he had called his castle in the country. I had visions of standing endlessly at them, tugging at the ill-fitting red dress, waiting for the chance to slip away. I imagined myself trapped there, isolated in the country, more than an hour by car away from the small town of Coburg, not speaking the language. Alone with the imprint of a woman I had never known. I couldn't wait to get out of there.

"I could never live here," I said, sensing he meant for me to. Feeling bold, I moved my head away from his.

"I'm a city girl," I said.

Chapter 4

2004-10-31T20:38:00.000+01:00

A couple of days later, he went back to Munich, and I told a few people about the visit and my discovery of his lineage. Somehow, it got around to the girl at work whom I had replaced and whom I vaguely suspected of being intimidated by me. I heard footsteps coming down the hall towards my office, and she stopped in the doorway.

"I hate you," she said.

I looked up from my computer.

"Good morning," I replied.

She looked a little chastened.

"Only you would meet a baron in an airport," she said by way of explanation.

I laughed. "I talk to strangers," I said, shrugging.

I made plans to visit him in Munich. He wanted me to meet his mother and sister in Austria, whom he had apparently talked to about me. I pictured a formal afternoon tea, where he might be grilled about "settling down."

"My sister says I should have children with you," he said, the only thing he mentioned about their conversation.

"Did she say how many we are supposed to have?" I asked sardonically.

I marvelled that people actually had conversations of the sort where sisters decided with whom their brothers should procreate.

"She knows that I want children very much," he said, "and she says you are the right age."

I vaguely felt like a race horse or a pure bred show dog. I pictured sitting in a formal salon with my legs daintily crossed at the ankles, being asked to open my mouth and show my teeth.

"How much influence does she have over you?" I asked.

"Not too much," he assured me, laughing.

For a moment, I actually pictured myself being the mother of his children. What on earth are the children of a baron called? I wondered.

For days leading up to the trip, I frantically searched the internet for etiquette tips on how to address a baroness. As far as I could figure, I was about to meet two of them. Your Ladyship? Does one curtsy, or is a handshake acceptable? I found a French site on modern noble families, and emailed my questions. I received a bemused reply from a certain Madame Blanche de Kersaint, saying,

"Nobility no longer has any importance, my dear!"

I found this an amusing reply from someone who apparently founded a website purely dedicated to tracking the marriages and births of the modern vestiges of the French aristocracy.

I bought some German language CDs, determined to address his mother and sister in their native tongue. Listening to them in the car, I couldn't stop myself from sticking my chest out and straightening my back as I exaggeratedly repeated phrases like,

"Das ist ein huntewetter!"

Normally a pretty good mimic, there were many sentences I could not even begin to repeat or remember in time. I couldn't distinguish the words from each other, and as soon as I said them, I forgot what they meant. Oh no, I thought, I'm going to want to say 'Nice to meet you' and end up asking for a double room with a shower instead. The formal way of saying "Nice to meet you" was breathtakingly long, and I could only retain the last part, ending in something like "Sie kennen zu lerhnen." All that repetition for a little end of a phrase.

I could remember phrases in Czech I learned 14 years before better. Perhaps because at the time, it was so exciting to be in Prague right after the Velvet Revolution, or perhaps because I was ready to weep with gratitude at the end of a long hot day wandering the streets when the phrase, "Dva bile vino prosim vas" actually produced two glasses of white wine, please.

Guenter had told me he lived and worked in Munich, and had talked a lot about his "castle" in the country, and how he would most often fly his plane there and back. He had flown several trips back and forth from Munich since our first meeting, and I had always been a bit anxious until I heard from him again that the flight had turned out fine and he was safely back on the ground.

I arrived at the commercial airport a bit disappointed he had not been able to fly me in his plane to Munich - I would have liked to have watched him at the controls. I came out into the arrivals area, but he was nowhere in sight. I went to the windows to see if I could see him coming from the parking lot. I watched BMWs and Audis and Lexuses drive up and glint in the mornng sun. I wondered what kind of car he would have. A baron, with his kind of pride and arrow straight back, his discerning gaze, would surely drive a classy car. Maybe a Jaguar? I had always liked the look of a Jaguar.

Slowly, a candy yellow Renault 5 pulled up to the kerb, and Guenter emerged from it, the car wobbling to and fro from the force of the door being shut being him. As he walked toward the entrance, a smile on his face, I began to realize that Blanche de Kersaint might prove to be right after all.

I threw my things in the back seat, and peered into the front of the car. A ratty quilt was laid out across the passenger seat, covering what I could only assume was completely worn through upholstery. The floor board had a few holes in it, through which I could clearly see the pavement underneath. I had never seen an interior so basic, so little between the road and the people inside as the sheet of metal that made up the hood. When I got in, I didn't shut the door correctly, but couldn't find the handle to open it again. The car was so primitive, so rudimentary in its fittings, that I assumed the inside handle had fallen off and not been replaced. There was even a hole where it should have been. Rather than point this out, I rolled down the window to open the door from the outside. He laughed when he saw what I was doing, and pointed to the hole on the inside of the door.

"That's how you open it," he said, smiling.

"But there's nothing there but a hole," I said.

"Stick your hand in it," he coached.

I was dubious, but stuck my hand in the hole. Lo and behold, I felt a latch, that when squeezed, opened the door. There isn't even a handle, and there isn't supposed to be, I thought.

He strapped himself in, pulled two earplugs out of the glove compartment, and merrily fitted them in his ears. I half expected him to unearth a leather flying cap and goggles from the back. He shouted to me that his doctor had noticed his loss of hearing from driving the Renault 5 on long road trips, and had admonished him to start wearing the plugs. There was only one pair.

We drove into town, the noise of the engine, the rattling of the metal and the vibration of the wind almost too much to bear. He was gesturing with his hands to make himself understood over the din, occasionally slapping the steering wheel enthusiastically with both palms as if it were a horse's rear and exclaiming with a wide grin,

"I luff this car!"

Shortly, we came upon a huge walled-in complex, and he pointed across the street to indicate where his office was. I looked at the wall on the opposite side. With a chill down my spine, I realized what it was: the Dachau concentration camp.

"You actually work across the street from the Dachau concentration camp?" I asked incredulously.

I made him pull over. I couldn't simply drive by it. I had to go inside. I had told him of my Jewish ancestry. I remembered my father telling me about them when I was a little girl. I was sitting on his lap, listening to him describe his grandmother whom he had been afraid of as a little boy because she spoke only Russian and Yiddish in a loud raspy voice, pinched his cheeks until they burned, and smoked cigars. He told me of growing up with the feeling that something else besides his Russian-ness separated his father and his family from others, something that was always left unsaid. Something that remained unspoken until the day his father's father died; the calvaryman who had brought his family over from Saint Petersburg, the one of whom a single black and white photograph in calvary uniform remains. That day, the unsaid broke through the lips of my father's father for seven days straight in a torrent of Hebrew words of mourning. My father, a boy of ten, suddenly understood that his father, sitting on the floor repeating strange words in a strange language, the mirrors in the house eerily covered, a single candle burning continuously, belonged to a secret world of rituals and customs. As I sat on my father's lap, imagining these long ago people, he told me that this meant I came from a line of Jews, and that if I had been the same little girl in Europe in the 30s and 40s, I would have been killed. One Jewish grandparent was all it took. I remember feeling suddenly cold, and wondering why the words uttered so many years before by a grandfather I barely knew would have marked me for death.

I opened the lemon yellow car door from the hole inside and walked up to the gravel entrance, barely noticing Guenter walking slowly behind me. He came with me as far as the single reconstructed barrack, but chose to wait for me outside as I went in.

The signs and photograph captions were only in German, and I was mildly relieved not to understand the words. The bunks were made of wood and I wandered past them in a daze, barely looking at the black and white images on the walls, afraid of what I would see. It all led to a small tiled room I realized was a gas chamber. I stared at the drain in the middle of the floor. It was all so spartan and simple. I was struck most by how innocuous it all seemed. How non-threatening. Stripped of the victims and the surrounding barracks, which had all been torn down long ago, it vaguely reminded me of a Red Cross camp I had attended as a child, when I had been forced to gather around the leader's bunk bed to listen to the rest of the kids share stories of how prayer had changed their lives. I had tried to get out of it politely, saying I preferred to read my Nancy Drew mystery novel, but it was made clear to me non participation was not an option. Bunk beds had always made me uncomfortable, making me feel packed in, forced into proximity with people I could not relate to and who could not relate to me. They were always in dark places in the country, far away from my parents. They evoked scratchy wool blankets and forced exile disguised as character building.

Standing in the dark barrack and unable to move, people slowly shuffling past me, I suddenly understood how it might have been possible to walk past this place every day, open your windows across the street, go about your daily business, without noticing what was going on in front of you. Just as I could have been one of those to suffer and die here, I could also have been one of those on the outside, just beyond the walls, who every day saw but did not choose to see.

I stepped out and found Guenter sitting on the a bench in the sunshine. They installed benches outside, I thought. For those who could not bear to go inside, or for those who were waiting on the ones who could not bear not to?

Back in the car, he did not speak or ask me any questions. I fervently hoped the sightseeing would improve from there.

We decided to drive straight through to Coburg, to his castle in the country, and spend the night there before going on to Austria the next day. I was excited to see it, and a little apprehensive, as this was where he had lived with Regina and her daughter. He had told me wistfully how he would drive to Munich on Mondays and work there the whole week, returnng to the country on Fridays to spend the weekend with them. The castle was now mostly empty, he explained, the majority of the furniture having gone to her family or having been moved to his place in Munich. I pictured a grey, damp neglected castle, its walls still vibrating with the memory of her.

We drove noisily and bumpily for a few hours, not talking over the roar of the wind and the whine of the engine, and finally arrived in Coburg. We decided to get a bite to eat in town before going to the castle, which was on the outskirts of town. I was beginning to understand that when he said "Munich" he did not mean "Munich", so "Coburg" did not mean "Coburg." Whether this was to make it easier or harder for me to get my bearings, I was not entirely sure.

The town was picturesque and well preserved, with winding cobblestone streets and a pretty little square with a large statue of Prince Albert who, he explained, married Queen Victoria, linking the two royal houses, though this would later be hushed over after the two World Wars. The buildings were painted in surprisingly warm colors, yellows and rusts, instead of the blues and grays I had imagined.

We found a modern little restaurant called - much to our amusement - "Brazil", and decided it was meant to be. The waitress, a pretty but unsmiling young woman, looked at me harshly as soon as I walked in the door. Her eyes took me in in the matter of seconds before she looked quickly away again in dismissal. I had to rely on him to translate the menu and order for me. I silently cursed myself for not having enrolled in German classes at the Goethe Institut back home before coming. When the waitress came back to take our order, she addressed him solely, holding the menus up as if to block her view of me or my view of her as she leaned provocatively over towards him, making sure he could see straight down her shirt, as she slowly wrote down the order. When she walked away, I leaned over to him and breathily asked what Freiherr von F... desired, describing the scrumptious special of the day, mockingly squeezing my breasts together.

Chapter 3

2004-10-31T20:37:00.000+01:00

When we got to my mother's house, I wondered if it might look shabby to him. I winced at a half full coffee cup sitting on the counter in the kitchen as we entered. I wondered if my mother would kill me later when she found out I had taken a baron to her house without warning her first.

We went through photographs of my childhood, and I was exceedingly grateful that they were organized and that my father had been such a good photographer. Guenter seemed to be looking for something in them, searching for a clue. Was he trying to establish how often my father appeared in the photos and what that might mean about my way of relating to men? If my mother dressed me well? If I was a real blonde? At least he appeared to approve of what he saw, but he said nothing the whole time he looked through them.

As we were leaving, he said,

"I want to eat in the best restaurant in Atlanta. Tonight.”

I mentioned the two or three I thought deserved the title, and as I guessed, he picked Seeger’s, the eponymous restaurant of a German born chef, Guenter Seeger, who had once been the star of the local Ritz-Carlton. Lord help me not make an ass of myself, I thought, suddenly self-conscious. I am liable to commit some unforgivable fancy restaurant faux pas, and all my Southern Belle breeding will be for naught.

We called and had to take an early seating, as it was last minute. We were led upstairs, and the restaurant was nearly empty. The waitress hovered stiffly over us, as if wanting us to make her the center of the experience, ask her opinion, be awed by her knowledge of food and wine. She kept coming over to see if we needed any help. We were both mildly annoyed. I was surprised that he did not know many of the terms on the menu, and surmised that haute cuisine in Austria and Germany must be less influenced by French cuisine than in the US. Could it be more Italian? Or Hungarian? Or was he simplypretending not to know in order to test my own knowledge? I explained timbale, coulis, brandade, pave and tartare, keeping a wary eye on the waitress, who was watching and listening intently, seemingly miffed at not being asked herself. He asked for the wine list, and painstakingly read every selection in the near 30 page book. The waitress looked like she might burst out of her vest and apron, her hands planted flat against the wall behind her, as if ready to pounce at the first opportunity to show off her wine knowledge. He finally signaled her over with a movement of his head, and ordered a German red wine. I was curious to try it. Not able to stop herself, she commended him on his choice, and while opening the bottle tried to engage him in conversation by asking if he had picked it because it was "home." He made no sign of having heard the question, tasted the wine, and dismissed her with a nod. I couldn’t help smiling. I raised my oversized glass for a toast, but he looked sternly at me to signal that this was not done. I wondered why not, but took the hint. Faux pas number one, apparently.

The food was delicious, and I savored each morsel, exclaiming at the different flavors and presentations. He seemed amused that I was so involved in tasting every little thing, but caught my enthusiasm, and joined me in trying bites from my plate and his. I felt certain this was out of character. At one point, he said something that made me laugh, and the sound echoed around the nearly empty room. Faux pas number two, I wondered?

"I want you to meet my neighbor in the country, the countess," he said, "she laughs just like you."

"I'd like to meet a countess with a raucous laugh," I said, picturing a small and thin older woman in a tailored wool suit. For some reason I imagined her looking like a cross between my childhood piano teacher and my former landlady in France, with thin bony hands and the scent of bergamot floating about her.

"But I think," he said, his eyes scanning me slowly and smiling, "you are almost more aristocratic than she is."

At that, I had to laugh even more. He looked at me intently, and seemed to be congratulating himself on discovering the likes of me.

The next day, I made breakfast and cappuccinos at my place, pointedly using my cups and saucers from Germany with their matching little gold spoons. Neither of us was in a hurry to leave the apartment.

He announced he would like to take a bath.

I brought him fresh towels and soap, and left him to bathe. In the next room, I put on a CD of Puccini arias. It fit my mood, and as the first wistful strains of “O Mio Babino Caro” floated around the apartment, I went to check on him. Peering around the door frame, I found him submerged in the bath, moving almost imperceptibly to the now plaintive notes. His head was laid back and his eyes closed, the sun pouring through the blinds and making glittering stripes across the water, and a smile of pure contentedness was spread across his face.

He must have felt me standing there watching him because he raised his head up and caught my eyes from across the room and steadily held my gaze until the last note.

Chapter 2

2004-10-31T20:33:00.000+01:00

We had arranged to meet in Atlanta. I had no idea what he might want to do, and didn't really know what to expect from the visit. We had talked a lot on the phone, mostly about his deceased wife. He was going through some sort of legal battle with her family, over her belongings they wanted back, most especially a red dress.

"She looked fantastic in it," he remembered, "she wore it to the village festival her last spring. I have half a mind to send it to you, and tell the family I don't know what happened to it."

I was strangely touched. I tried to picture what it might look like, and if it would fit me. I imagined a long formal gown, sleeveless but with a dramatic choker that would fasten elegantly in the back, emphasizing the shoulders. Tight fitting at the hips, and flaring at the ankles, touching the floor. I alternately envisioned a short sleeved summery affair, filmy, loose and asymmetrically ruffled about the hem. I thought of what I might actually do with it if he indeed sent it, and what occasion would be appropriate for wearing a dead woman's dress. It made me feel a little odd, as if he wanted me to become her. Maybe I would just keep it for him. Hanging in my closet, there for him to look at and fondle, away from the meddling in-laws. The more I thought of it, the more I began to think it was a little macabre. More than a few friends of mine thought it downright creepy when I told them.

On the day of an important turn in the trial, he was apprehensive, and I sent him a text message on his phone to encourage him.

"Be strong. Remember how much you loved her. No court can take that away."

He called me later to tell me it was 'perfect' and that he had read it aloud to the court. I was flattered, and glad I might have helped sway opinion in his favor. I felt for him, for the loss of the woman he loved. I wanted to help him heal and forget. Because I wanted to do the same.

To prepare for his visit, I made a booklet, complete with labeled sections of the things to do in and around Atlanta. There was a tab for "Restaurants" "Nightlife" "Day Trips" and "Exhibitions." I thought he might like to be the one to choose what we did. I wanted him to enjoy himself, take a break, and escape his memories.

A few days before he was to arrive, he mentioned our parting in the Sao Paulo airport.

"Do you remember," he asked, "when we said good-bye, and I kissed you?"

I remembered a light, platonic peck on the lips. Faint, quick and dry, spontaneous, yet hesitant.

"Yes," I said, a little nervous that he might ask if I had liked it.

"That is the first time I have kissed anyone but my wife in ten years."

I was stunned. I hadn't even really considered it a kiss. I suddenly felt an enormous responsibility to be careful with this man's feelings. My adventurous side was appeased by the chance encounter in the airport, the strong emotional connection with a stranger, and my sentimental romantic side was intrigued by what that might mean. Perhaps it was fate?

I was relieved, excited and nervous that this might be more than a fling. That this might be terribly important to him, that he might have hung his hopes of finding love again on my door. That perhaps I might find it too. I wanted to know more of him, understand his story, the way he thought about things. Something about his sorrow, his love for his lost wife, touched me, and I wanted him to feel he could share it with me whenever he wanted to. I wanted him to know I understood what it felt like, in my own way, to be haunted by love.

I was determined to play close attention to any clues he might give me. Distance I would interpret as conflicted feelings and the need to go slow. I would give him room to be however he wanted to be. I would adapt, and take his lead.

"My home and my heart are open to you," I wrote him, "Come, and be welcome."

I had carefully prepared. My studio apartment was cleaner than it had been in months, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot was chilling in the fridge. I had even bothered to paint my toenails. I picked him up at the airport, and he greeted me with a peck on the cheek while grasping my hands. In the car, he was quiet, and I tried to fill the silence with light chatter.

"How was your flight?" I chirped.

He didn't respond for some moments, and from the corner of my eye, I could see a sort of pained expression on his face.

"I need a moment to arrive," he said.

I took the hint and dispensed with the small talk. On the way to my apartment, I pointed out the buildings of interest in the skyline and other attractions I thought he would want to know about, carefully phrasing things so they required no input from him, letting him “arrive” and absorb. I could only imagine what he had been through with her family, what memories haunted him at that moment.

When we got to my apartment, I hung up his coat and put his small suitcase in the closet, motioning for him to sit on the tiny sofa and make himself comfortable.

“We could go have a drink somewhere,” I suggested, “or I have some champagne here if you would prefer.”

“Champagne,” he said.

I brought the bottle out from the kitchen.

“I see you have good taste,” he commented.

I smiled and served him. We sat together and sipped the champagne, and I watched him for clues. He seemed to be relaxing and getting more comfortable. When we had both started our second glass, he leaned over, took me in his arms, and kissed me passionately. This was a signal I could read loud and clear.

The next morning, as we lay in bed, his arms wrapped around me from behind, I felt so at ease, as if slipping into a comfortable pair of jeans that had been worn so much they fit only me. It felt so good to be held by a man, a man who felt things deeply, his head buried in my neck. Here we are, I thought, two wounded souls, finding solace in each other’s arms.

It was a lovely cool and sunny day. I suggested several options for breakfast. We decided to walk to the square to one of my favorite cafes, a bohemian affair that served cappuccinos and lattes in big hand painted cups, with a nice patio that gave out onto the sidewalk. The covered portion had a gas fireplace that was lit. We snagged the two rocking chairs in front of it. I suggested bagels for a touch of local flavor, not sure if they still existed in Austria and Germany - were there enough Jews left to want them? He loved them, having never heard of them, and ordered a second helping. When we had finished eating, and were nursing our second cups of latte, I pulled out the book I had made for him and handed it to him.

“I thought you could look it over, and decide what you wanted to do. You are my guest, so you choose, and we’ll do it.”

“That color looks very good on you,” he said, appraising my rust and black outfit.

I was glad he liked it, and made mental note to wear it again. He began to page through the booklet.

“This is perfect,” he said, tapping it.

He seemed very pleased that I had gone to the effort of putting it together, and liked that it was up to him to decide. I had the feeling he liked the organization of it, and approved of it in a way a manager might approve of a well-put together presentation from his secretary. I understood from this that he was a man who was used to having things done just so, organized and ready for him to make the final decision. He seemed like a man who knew what he wanted, and who had always gotten it.

“How far away is the BMW plant? I would like to see it.”

I had included it because I remembered he had worked on some projects with them. It was about three hours away by car. We decided to leave immediately, and dine in Athens on the way back, in a restaurant that had gotten rave reviews for its frothy cauliflower soup, urging Atlanta readers that it was worth the 70 mile drive.

I packed the car with plenty of CDs and put him in charge of them and the map. My collection of music ranged from Khaled to Mozart. I like music that transports me. He amused himself by playing a few songs from one, before changing to another, going through the entire collection until he found one he wanted to hear all the way through. He seemed intrigued by the eclectic selection, and would cock his head to the side listening to rai or fados for what I gathered was the first time. I translated lyrics when I could. I began to call him “DJ Guenter” and teased him periodically with,

“Alright ya’all, check it out! DJ Guenter’s in da house!” putting an imaginary microphone to my lips and pointing the fingers of my other hand down to the beat.

I could tell the reference was lost on him. He didn't strike me as a man who had seen too many hip-hop videos.

The BMW plant was closed for tours, so we explored the visitor’s center, watched a documentary film on how the cars were assembled in the factory, and had some good German beers in the café.

I watched him as he drank, fascinated that his whole face changed when he tilted the glass back to sip from it, his lips pursed almost prettily. Sitting in the atrium, a beam of sunlight across his face, I told him he was handsome.

At dinner, he reached across the table and took my hands in his, saying,

“It would make me very happy if you took the dress.”

His eyes bored into mine. He said he would send it to me when he got back. I thanked him, sensing I couldn't refuse. The dress seemed to mean so much for him. Did he expect me to wear it he next time I saw him? Why was it so important that her family not have it? Was it vintage? Designer? I silently wondered if I looked like her.

I asked her name: Regina, with a hard g. I felt funny saying it, as if it might bring her back to life to speak it, like speaking the name of a dead pharaoh and awakening his long quiet ka. He told me about his house in the country, a “castle” he called it. I wasn’t sure if he knew what the word meant in English. His English was understandable, but very Germanic, peppered with the declarative and absolutes.

The next morning, he murmured in my ear that he wanted a “real American breakfast.” I took him to a diner, and he ordered a stack of pancakes with a sickly sweet strawberry sauce and whipped cream, sausage and two eggs on the side. For some reason, watching him eat it amused me greatly. It seemed so incongruous, the way he cut into it with a knife and fork and ate it slowly, bite by bite, his back perfectly straight.

We went to an antique shop next door, and I noted the pieces he liked best were large and imposing and very expensive.

“This would look wonderful in my castle,” he said, pointing out the largest armoire I had ever seen in my life. A mere $8,000. I slowly opened the door to peer inside.

“My cat and I could live very comfortably in here,” I said, my voice echoing from inside, “it’s about the size of my studio.”

He nearly bought me a 1920's cup and saucer set, perfectly art déco in gold and black and white. He pointed out necklaces he thought would look nice on me. I didn’t like any of them, but wished I had; he seemed to want to see me them on me.

“I want to see pictures of you as a child,” he declared, as I was admiring a fiery red glass bead choker he hadn’t noticed.

“Oh, well, we would have to go to my mother’s house for that,” I said, straightening up from the display case. “But we’re right nearby.”

On the way there in the car, we got stuck in traffic. He started talking about titles, and asked whether in English we had different titles for different academic degrees. I explained we called people with PhD’s “doctor” but that was it. He said that in German, they had titles for everything, from lawyers to teachers.

“What is your title?” I asked, remembering he had said something about a Master's in Mechanical Engineering.

“It’s on my card,” he said, smiling.

“No, it’s not,” I said, “I’ve looked at it a million times.”

“Yes, it is,” he insisted. He seemed amused I didn’t know already.

“Okay, but I’m driving and can’t get it out to look, so tell me,” I said.

He turned to look at me squarely.

“I'm a baron.”

My mouth dropped open at the cars in front of me. I slowly turned to him,

“You’re a fucking baron?!?” I said, laughing.

I made love to a baron, I thought.

I have a baron in my car.

I took a baron to a diner to eat sugary strawberry pancakes.

"So that wasn't your logo on the top of your card, but your family fucking crest?!?"

I laughed all the way to my mother's house.

Chapter 1

2004-10-31T20:29:00.000+01:00

I dated a baron once. An Austrian baron, who desperately wanted heirs. I didn't know anything about his lineage when we met in the Sao Paulo airport. I noticed him because he was handsome and had a certain carriage.

I had a four-hour layover from Rio for my flight back to the US, and instead of waiting in the gate area, I went to the main atrium and installed myself at a café table on the second floor, opened my Brazilian fashion magazine to practice my Portuguese reading skills, and ordered a caipirinha. The café tables were set along a railing and facing the main walkway in front of various shops and other establishments. It was here I first saw him walking, slowly, without a destination in mind, a man killing time. He was thin and quite tall, and held his head a little up in the air as he surveyed to his left and right in passing. I had noticed him when he walked by the first time, how he only vaguely looked at the shop windows. When I had taken him in, I turned back to my magazine, wondering if he had a spectacular looking Brazilian wife who was on her way from somewhere to meet him. When I looked up again a good ten minutes later, he was coming from the opposite direction, walking just as aimlessly and slowly. I wasn't sure if he had looked in my direction or if he had even seen me. I turned back to my reading again, thinking he might instead be waiting to board a plane, as I was.

The third time around, I thought to myself, "Poor man. If only he knew that he could strike up a conversation with me and the time would pass so much quicker and more pleasantly for both of us." I told myself that if he came around a fourth time, I would get his attention and invite him to sit and have a drink with me. I busied myself with the items on the table, rearranging the stand up drink menu (caiprinha, cairpiroska, cafezinho, chope, suco de abacaxi, suco de maracuja) and the position of the salt and pepper shakers. I fiddled with napkins. I turned the pages of my magazine. When I looked up, there he was again, this time heading toward me, away from his former path and toward my table. I caught his eye and smiled. He smiled, bent forward in a slight bow and said in German-accented English,

"I told myself if you were still here when I came by the fourth time, I would come and talk to you,"

I laughed and said I had said the same thing to myself, that I would have invited him for a drink if he had come by again. He asked if he could sit down, and did. We quickly established that neither of us was Brazilian - I thought he was a Brazilian businessman - he was Austrian - and he thought I was a Brazilian TV star - much, of course, to my delight.

“Nope,” I said, laughing, “I’m an American assistant.”

“You are so luminous,” he said, his eyes scanning my face,”It was your light that I saw from far away.”

For those who don’t know, mistake a woman for a TV star and call her luminous, and the battle is half won.

He asked me, being an American, what my experience had been of September 11th. It was January, so very little time had gone by. I didn't mind the question as much as I thought I might, and answered that it was personal for me in a way that I didn't quite know what to do with. I hadn't lost anyone, but it made me keenly aware of the people in my life who were important to me, and I tried to contact them all to tell them so. The first person I had thought of, when it seemed that the world itself was dissolving, was the man I still loved, despite everything. I had desperately wanted to hear his voice, to know that he was alright, and I had hoped that the very nature of what was happening would jolt him out of the rigid state he had created and coveted, protecting himself from his emotions for me. He was unchanged, and still afraid of what seemed to me to be, on that horrible day, totally insignificant. Of all days, of all moments, I thought this one would be the one where he would let go and give in to love. It had crushed me that he hadn’t. I also felt very strange and petty and selfish, crying for my lost love story, and at the same time, I had cried for the thousands of people who cried for their dying, dead, missing husbands, lovers, children and parents.

As I shared my reaction, tears came to his eyes. I was impressed at his sensitivity and closeness to his emotions. It takes a lot for a man to be comfortable enough to tear up in front of a woman he does not know who is sharing something personal. I thought his tears showed he understood me. In the end, I said that my country's reaction to the event had disappointed me.

"We always overdo it," I grumbled, citing the forced patriotism, the ubiquitous flags, the maudlin appropriation of others' grief. "We could go for poignancy, but instead - and I don't know if this means the same thing in German as it does in Yiddish - but instead, we go for schmaltz."

He burst out laughing. Reaching in his briefcase he handed me his business card and said,

"You must keep in touch. That is the first time I have laughed like that in many months."

I looked at the card. It was white and simply decorated with a crest-like logo at the top, and his name, "Guenter Fhr. von F..." with the contact numbers below. I remember thinking it sounded like a noble name, but I had no idea what the "Fhr" stood for - I thought is was a middle name or some kind of diploma title. The German speakers, I vaguely recalled, were big on titles, with different ones for different academic degrees. For all I knew, it meant he was a dentist.

I asked him what had brought him to Brazil.

"It was the last place my wife and I were happy, when she was healthy enough to enjoy herself. She died last year of cancer," he answered, smiling sadly, "I came to see how it felt without her. To see if I could recapture some of it. But it wasn't the same, and I couldn't stay. I am now returning to Germany."

As he told me how, when they had discovered she had little time left to live, they had decided to travel the world, he sometimes stopping every hour to carry her to the bathroom, it was I who had tears in my eyes. She had made him promise not to pity her, and she did not share her pain or thoughts of death. They had sworn they would only share happy times, and he carried her and her IVs, her myriad pills, from port to port.

"I do not think I did enough to save her," he said, looking down.

I don't know what made me do it. In an instant, I grabbed his hands across the table, and looking him in the eyes I said,

"She was very lucky to be loved by someone like you, who took her to see the world she would be leaving instead of fussing over how it might hasten her end. You loved and respected her deeply. She would be proud of you, now, for being here, trying, out in the world, when you could be crumpled up in a little ball on the floor, hiding from life in grief and loss. You honor your love for her much more by going on."

I felt it was what she would have said to him if she could have spoken.

"Thank you," he said, simply.

By the time we both had to leave to catch our flights, we had talked for hours. We were standing, with the table in between us, neither of us really wanting to go.

"Well," I said, smoothing my shirt and gathering my things, "I'm so glad you came over. Look how nicely we've spent the time."

"I hope to hear from you soon," he said, taking my hand. For a moment, I thought he might kiss it.

I went to catch my flight. I was in such a daze that I missed my gate completely.