Another Saturday breakfast on my own as Tante Inga fusses with Onkel Horst in their bedroom above. Onkel Horst is dying and has been doing so for months. All of last year I watched as my mother lingered, each day nearer to death, and I have come to Germany just to live it all over again. There is nothing here in the house but that--waiting for death. No room for and anything to say other than how Onkel Horst fares, what is the likelihood he will live through the day? I have been there, endured that. I go to the hallway and gather up my painting supplies and easel. I call up the stairs that I am going out to the nearby park, Munich's Alter Botanischer Garten. But if anyone hears me, they do not respond.
We live on Dachauser Strasse not far from the gardens, where, when another session starts up, I can attend the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. I have come here from Savanah, Georgia, where I was studying art at the Savanah College of Art and Design. I have come too late to be enrolled in an art school here now. I must wait. So, I go to the park to paint while I wait--while I wait to enroll in art school; while I wait for Onkel Horst to die; while I wait for my life to start again. I do so this morning, thinking of life and of how empty it is, the waiting for Onkel Horst to die. I don't want him to die. He and Tante Inga have been good to me. But they didn't have children of their own. They don't know what to do with me, a nephew from America without living parents. So, they do nothing.
In the park I pass the bench where Onkel Horst's friend, Herr Auger, is sitting, reading his newspaper. He is here every Saturday morning, reading his paper, letting it drop a bit, and smiling at me as I pass by. Herr Auger is about the only one who speaks to me this summer while I am out of school. He is old, like Onkel Horst, but he is robust. He is not ready to die. He is friendly too, the only one who asks how I am doing--what I am doing with my time.
When I have set up my paints, he will come and stand behind me and murmur his pleasure at what I am capturing on the canvas. Tanta Inga and Onkel Horst never ask about my artwork. They are consumed by Onkel Horst dying. I understand, but it makes me lonely. I don't speak enough German yet to fit in and I haven't formed the circle of friends here I had in Savannah. Herr Auger makes an attempt to talk to me--and he admires my painting.
Seeking inspiration for a painting, I walk on the pathways in the Alter Botanischer Garten, all paths leading back around to where Herr Auger is sitting. He greets me, by name, Gregor, with a smile, on one pass but then he is gone when I last walk by. It is the first time in two days that I have heard someone speak to me by name--who has spoken to me at all. I walk over to the Park Café on the edge of the garden, on the Sophienstrasse side. Herr Auger is sitting at the café, as I knew he would be. Every Saturday morning it is the same with him. I sit down at the curb and look around for a subject to paint.
"
Komm her. Hab einege Kaffee und Kuchen, Gregor
--Come here. Have some coffee and cake, Gregor," I hear a voice say.
It is, as I expected, Herr Auger, inviting me to his table at the café. I join him, and as I share coffee and cake with him, we talk. It is the first time since the previous Saturday that I have had a conversation with anyone. He asks about Onkel Horst's health and how Tante Inga is doing. He and his wife were good friends of Horst's and Inga's when Horst was well and Herr Auger's wife was alive. He knew my father, Onkel Horst's brother, when he was young, before he went to the States, married my mother, had a son, and then died, with me knowing little of his life in Germany. Herr Auger tells me stories of my father I've never heard before and asks me about when my art school starts again and about what a newly arrived nineteen-year-old does in the summer in a land foreign to him where he understands so little of the language, the language of the father he hardly ever knew. They are questions that neither my uncle nor my aunt have thought to ask me, as much attention as my uncle needs.
I don't do what most of the young nineteen-year-old men here do--at least not this summer. I don't have any friends my age yet. I came to Tante Inga and Onkel Horst at the beginning of the summer, after the art school session here had let out, when my mother died, my unfamiliar aunt and uncle in Germany had offered me a home, and my art professor had told me that attending the Academy of Art in Munich would be a great opportunity for me. Onkel Horst already was sick and getting worse and Tante Inga's time and attention were taken up with him. It was good of them to take me in under the conditions they faced. And they had never had children of their own.
I came too late to be enrolled in any summer activities or sports here, so it is a lonely summer for me. I like books and science, so I have lost myself in that--and in keeping up with art by going to the park to paint. It was at the park where I first met Herr Auger and we learned we had Tante Inga and Onkel Horst in common--and loneliness--and some other interests as well.
After I met Herr Auger in the park, I rushed home to tell Onkel Horst and Tante Inga about the meeting, expecting them to tell me about their friendship with Herr Auger and for us to have connections and stories we then could share. But, after an initial "
Das ist nett
--that's nice," they returned to their own problems and showed no interest in any new friendships I might be developing in Germany.
So, it is a summer of losing my mother and my life in the States, living with serious sickness in the house, practicing my art, and waiting for life to begin again--and Herr Auger. Above all else it is the summer of Herr Auger.
As we talk at the café table, he reaches over and lightly strokes my forearm with his fingers. He has done so before, and it is the only intimate touch I have received from another human being this summer. He looks at me and I nod. Again I nod, knowing what that means, what I am agreeing to--as I did the previous Saturday and the Saturday before that, here in this café. Herr Auger isn't surprised. I have followed him from the garden park to the café.
"
Ich verstehen
--I understand," he says to me. "
Manchmal bin ich auch einsam
--sometimes I too am lonely." It means much to me that he shares that with me.
In Savannah, there was another young man, Scott. We were developing a relationship and awareness of ourselves and each other, moving toward intimacy--well, more intimacy. But then my mother died and my life in Savannah crumbled. I left for Germany, unfulfilled, uninitiated--but in need and becoming aware. I sense with Herr Auger that need for intimacy as well. I certainly feel the need for intimacy with someone--with a man.
When the bill comes, Herr Auger takes his billfold out and lays fifteen euros on the table for the waiter and hands fifty euros to me. I don't need the money, but he'd said, that first time, that he needed me to take the money. So, I do. I palm the money and put it in my pocket. When my hand comes back to the tabletop, Herr Auger takes it in his hand and strokes the back of my hand with his fingers. He looks into my eyes, and I can see the loneliness in them fading away into an expression of gratitude. I know exactly how he feels.
I know what he wants to be grateful for. I know what will dispel his loneliness, if only for a brief time, and, knowing loneliness myself, I want to be a comfort to him.
We walk, me following him--not beside him, but in sight of him--back to the bank of flats on Karlstrasse where he lives--all alone in the same flat where he and his now-gone wife lived. In the vestibule of his flat, I sit on a bench and Herr Auger kneels in front of me, unlaces my boots, and takes them off my feet. He looks up into my face as he slowly glides his hands up my legs and under the hem of my shorts--and higher, his fingers meeting at the quick of me. I sigh, spread the stance of my legs wider, and lean my shoulder blades back against the wall. The first time, with Scott, I was frightened and apprehensive; this time I'm not. I know that for the next hour I will not be lonely--I will receive attention and I will feel.
He is giving me attention, grasping me under the material of my shorts and briefs, stroking me. I engorge for him and feel tingly all over. I am panting in low, shallow breaths, and Herr Auger is looking into my eyes, all of his need and desire on display. I remain open, vulnerable to his touch, letting him stroke me within the material of my shorts. I am afraid I will come for him if he doesn't stop. But I know that he won't stop until I do come for him.
No one has even noticed I have been here all summer--no one but Herr Auger. I lift my legs as he slips my shorts and briefs off and then raise my arms for him to pull my T-shirt over my head. He lowers his head to my lap, and I give a little gasp and jerk as he takes me inside his mouth. I close my eyes and lay back, against the wall, and run my hands through the dark hair, shot with gray, on his head as his hands move everywhere on my body.
