M Train

  Credit 2.3

  My father sat at his desk, in this chair, for decades, writing checks, filling out tax forms, and working fervently on his own system for handicapping horses. Bundles of The Morning Telegraph were stacked against the wall. A journal wrapped in jeweler’s cloth, noting wins and losses from imaginary bets, kept in the left-hand drawer. No one dared touch it. He never spoke about his system but he labored over it religiously. He was neither a betting man nor had the resources to bet. He was a factory man with a mathematical curiosity, handicapping heaven, searching for patterns, and a portal of probability opening up onto the meaning of life.

  I admired my father from a distance. He seemed dreamily estranged from our domestic life. He was kind and open-minded, having an inner elegance that set him apart from our neighbors. Yet he never placed himself above them. He was a decent man who did his job. A runner when young, a superb athlete and acrobat. In World War II he was stationed in the jungles of New Guinea and the Philippines. Though he opposed violence he was a patriotic soldier, but the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki broke his heart and he mourned the cruelty and weakness of our material society.

  My father worked the night shift. He slept in the day and left while we were at school and returned late at night when we were sleeping. On the weekends we were obliged to give him some privacy as he had little time for himself. He would sit in his favorite chair watching baseball with the family Bible on his lap. He often read passages aloud attempting to provoke discussion. Question everything, he would tell us. Through the seasons he dressed in a black sweatshirt, worn dark pants rolled up to his calves, and moccasins. He was never without moccasins, as my sister, my brother, and I would save our coins throughout the year to buy him a new pair every Christmas. In his last years he fed the birds so consistently, in all manner of weather, that they came to him when he called, alighting upon his shoulders.

  When he died I inherited his desk and chair. Inside the desk was a cigar box containing canceled checks, nail clippers, a broken Timex watch, and a yellowed newspaper cutting of my beaming self in 1959, being awarded third prize in a national safety-poster contest. I still keep the box in the top right-hand drawer. His sturdy wooden chair that my mother irreverently decorated with decals of burnished roses is against the wall facing my bed. A cigarette burn scarring the seat gives the chair a feel of life. I run my finger over the burn, conjuring his soft pack of Camel straights. The same brand John Wayne smoked, with the golden dromedary and palm tree silhouette on the pack, evoking exotic places and the French Foreign Legion.

  You should sit on me, his chair urges, but I can’t bring myself to do it. We were never allowed to sit at my father’s desk, so I don’t use his chair, just keep it near. I did once sit in the chair of Roberto Bolaño when visiting his family’s home in the seacoast town of Blanes, in northeast Spain. I immediately regretted it. I had taken four pictures of it, a simple chair that he superstitiously carried with him from one dwelling place to another. It was his writing chair. Did I think that sitting in it would make me a better writer? With a shiver of self-admonishment, I wipe dust from the glass protecting my Polaroid of that same chair.

  I go downstairs, then carry two full boxes back to my room and dump the contents onto my bed. Time to face up to the last mail of the year. First I sift through brochures for such things like time-sharing condos in Jupiter Beach, unique and lucrative methods of senior-citizen investing, and full-color illustrated packets on how to cash in my frequent-flier miles for exciting gifts. All left unopened for the recycle bin yet producing a pang of guilt, considering the amount of trees necessary to churn out this mound of unsolicited crap. On the other hand there are some good catalogues offering nineteenth-century German manuscripts, memorabilia of the Beat generation, and rolls of vintage Belgium linen to stack by the toilet for future diversion. I saunter past my coffeemaker that sits like a huddled monk on a small metal cabinet storing my porcelain cups. Patting its head, avoiding eye contact with the typewriter and channel changer, I reflect on how some inanimate objects are so much nicer than others.

  Credit 2.4

  Clouds move past the sun. A milky light pervades the skylight and spreads into my room. I have a vague sense of being summoned. Something is calling to me, so I stay very still, like Detective Sarah Linden, in the opening credits of The Killing, on the edge of a marsh at twilight. I slowly advance toward my desk and lift the top. I don’t open it very often, as some precious things hold memories too painful to revisit. Thankfully I need not look inside, as my hand knows the size, texture, and location of each object it contains. Reaching beneath my one childhood dress, I remove a small metal box with tiny perforated holes in the cover. I take a deep breath before I open it, as I harbor the irrational fear that the sacred contents may dissipate when confronted with a sudden onrush of air. But no, everything is intact. Four small hooks, three feathered fishing lures, and another composed of soft purple transparent rubber, like a Juicy Fruit or a Swedish Fish, shaped like a comma with a spiraled tail.

  —Hello, Curly, I whisper, and am instantly gladdened.

  I lightly tap him with my fingertip. I feel the warmth of recognition, memories of time spent fishing with Fred in a rowboat on Lake Ann in northern Michigan. Fred taught me to cast and gave me a portable Shakespeare rod whose parts fit like arrows in a carrying case shaped like a quiver. Fred was a graceful and patient caster with an arsenal of lures, bait, and weights. I had my archer rod and this same little box holding Curly—my secret ally. My little lure! How could I have forgotten our hours of sweet divination? How well he served me when cast into unfathomable waters, performing his persuasive tango with slippery bass that I later scaled and panfried for Fred.

  The king is dead, no fishing today.

  Gently placing Curly back in my desk, I tackle my mail with new resolve—bills, petitions, invitations for gala events past, imminent jury duty. Then I swiftly set aside one item of particular interest—a plain brown envelope stamped and sealed with wax with the raised letters CDC. I hurry to a locked cabinet, choosing a slim bone-handled letter opener, the only proper way to open a precious piece of correspondence from the Continental Drift Club. The envelope contains a small red card with the number twenty-three stenciled in black and a handwritten invitation to deliver a talk of my choosing at the semi-annual convention to take place in mid-January in Berlin.

  I experience a wealth of excitement, but I have no time to lose, as the letter is dated some weeks ago. I hastily write a response in the affirmative, then rummage through my desk for a sheet of stamps, grab my cap and coat, and drop the letter into the mailbox. Then I cross over Sixth Avenue to ’Ino. It is late afternoon and the café is empty. At my table I attempt to write a list of items to take on my journey but am immersed in a particular reverie taking me back through a handful of years through the cities of Bremen, Reykjavík, Jena, and soon Berlin, to meet again with the brethren of the Continental Drift Club.

  —

  Formed in the early 1980s by a Danish meteorologist, the CDC is an obscure society serving as an independent branch of the earth-science community. Twenty-seven members, scattered across the hemispheres, have pledged their dedication to the perpetuation of remembrance, specifically in regard to Alfred Wegener, who pioneered the theory of continental drift. The bylaws require discretion, attendance at the biannual conferences, a certain amount of applicable fieldwork, and a reasonable passion for the club’s reading list. All are expected to keep abreast of the activities of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, in the city of Bremerhaven in Lower Saxony.

  I was granted membership into the CDC quite by accident. On the whole, members are primarily mathematicians, geologists, and theologians and are identified not by name but by a given number. I had written several letters to the Alfred Wegener Institute searching for a living heir in hopes of obtaining permission to photograph the great explorer’s boots. One of my letters was forwarded to the secretary of the Contine
ntal Drift Club, and after a flurry of correspondence I was invited to attend their 2005 conference in Bremen, which coincided with the 125th anniversary of the great geoscientist’s birth and thus the seventy-fifth of his death. I attended their panel discussions, a special screening at City 46 of Research and Adventure on the Ice, a documentary series containing rare footage of Wegener’s 1929 and 1930 expeditions, and joined them for a private tour of the AWI facilities in nearby Bremerhaven. I am certain I didn’t quite meet their criteria, but I suspect that after some deliberation they welcomed me due to my abundance of romantic enthusiasm. I became an official member in 2006, and was given the number twenty-three.

  In 2007 we convened in Reykjavík, the largest city in Iceland. There was tremendous excitement, as that year certain members had planned to continue to Greenland for a CDC spinoff expedition. They formed a search party hoping to locate the cross that was placed in Wegener’s memory in 1931 by his brother, Kurt. It had been constructed with iron rods some twenty feet high, marking his resting place, approximately 120 miles from the western edge of the Eismitte encampment where his companions last saw him. At the time its whereabouts were unknown. I wished I could go, as I knew the great cross, were it found, would inspire a remarkable photograph, but I hadn’t the constitution required for such an endeavor. Yet I did stay on in Iceland, as Number Eighteen, a thoroughly robust Icelandic Grandmaster, surprised me by asking me to preside in his stead over a highly anticipated local chess match. My doing so would enable him to join the search party into the Greenland interior. In exchange I was promised three nights in the Hótel Borg and permission to photograph the table used in the 1972 chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, currently languishing in the basement of a local government facility. I was a bit wary about the idea of monitoring the match, seeing as my love of chess was purely aesthetic. But the opportunity to photograph the holy grail of modern chess was consolation enough for staying behind.

  The following afternoon I arrived with my Polaroid camera just as the table was unceremoniously delivered to the tournament hall. It was quite modest in appearance but had been signed by the two great chess players. As it turned out my duties were actually quite light; it was a junior tournament and I was merely a figurehead. The winner of the match was a thirteen-year-old girl with golden hair. Our group was photographed, after which I was given fifteen minutes to shoot the table, unfortunately bathed in fluorescent light, anything but photogenic. Our picture fared much better and graced the cover of the morning newspaper, the famed table in the foreground. After breakfast I went to the countryside with an old friend and we rode sturdy Icelandic ponies. His was white and mine was black, like two knights on a chessboard.

  Credit 2.5

  When I returned I received a call from a man identifying himself as Bobby Fischer’s bodyguard. He had been charged with arranging a midnight meeting between Mr. Fischer and myself in the closed dining room of the Hótel Borg. I was to bring my bodyguard, and would not be permitted to bring up the subject of chess. I consented to the meeting and then crossed the square to the Club NASA where I recruited their head technician, a trustworthy fellow called Skills, to stand as my so-called bodyguard.

  Bobby Fischer arrived at midnight in a dark hooded parka. Skills also wore a hooded parka. Bobby’s bodyguard towered over us all. He waited with Skills outside the dining room. Bobby chose a corner table and we sat face-to-face. He began testing me immediately by issuing a string of obscene and racially repellent references that morphed into paranoiac conspiracy rants.

  —Look, you’re wasting your time, I said. I can be just as repellent as you, only about different subjects.

  He sat staring at me in silence, when finally he dropped his hood.

  —Do you know any Buddy Holly songs? he asked.

  For the next few hours we sat there singing songs. Sometimes separately, often together, remembering about half the lyrics. At one point he attempted a chorus of “Big Girls Don’t Cry” in falsetto and his bodyguard burst in excitedly.

  —Is everything all right, sir?

  —Yes, Bobby said.

  —I thought I heard something strange.

  —I was singing.

  —Singing?

  —Yes, singing.

  —

  And that was my meeting with Bobby Fischer, one of the greatest chess players of the twentieth century. He drew up his hood and left just before first light. I remained until the servers arrived to prepare the breakfast buffet. As I sat across from his chair I envisioned members of the Continental Drift Club still sleeping in their beds, or unable to sleep, filled with emotional expectation. In a few hours they would rise and embark into the icy Greenland interior in search of memory in the form of the great cross. It occurred to me, as the heavy curtains were opened and the morning light flooded the small dining area, that without a doubt we sometimes eclipse our own dreams with reality.

  Credit 3.1

  Bison, Zoologischer Garten, Berlin

  Animal Crackers

  I WAS LATE getting to Café ’Ino. My table in the corner was taken and a petulant possessiveness provoked me to go into the bathroom and wait it out. The bathroom was narrow and candlelit with a few fresh flowers in a small vase resting atop the toilet tank. Like a tiny Mexican chapel, one that you could piss in without feeling blasphemous. I left the door unlocked in case someone was in genuine need, waited for about ten minutes, and exited just as my table was freed. I wiped off the surface and ordered black coffee, brown toast, and olive oil. I wrote some notes on paper napkins for my forthcoming talk, then sat daydreaming about the angels in Wings of Desire. How wonderful it would be to meet an angel, I mused, but then I immediately realized I already had. Not an archangel like Saint Michael, but my human angel from Detroit, wearing an overcoat and no hat, with lank brown hair and eyes the color of water.

  My travel to Germany was uneventful save that a security agent at the Newark Liberty Airport did not recognize my 1967 Polaroid as a camera and several minutes were wasted swiping it for explosive traces and sniffing the mute air within its bellows. A generic female voice repeated the same monotone instructions throughout the airport. Report suspicious behavior. Report suspicious behavior. As I approached the gate another woman’s voice superimposed over hers.

  —We are a nation of spies, she cried, all spying on one another. We used to help one another! We used to be kind!

  She was carrying a faded tapestry duffel bag. She had a dusty appearance, as if she had emerged from the bowels of a foundry. When she set down her bag and walked away, passersby seemed visibly disturbed.

  On the plane I watched consecutive episodes of the Danish crime drama Forbrydelsen, the blueprint for the American series The Killing. Detective Sarah Lund is the Danish prototype of Detective Sarah Linden. Both are singular women, both wear Fair Isle ski sweaters. Lund’s are formfitting. Linden’s are dumpy, but she wears hers as a moral vest. Lund is driven by ambition. Linden’s obsessional nature is kin to her humanity. I feel her devotion to each terrible mission, the complexity of her vows, her need for solitary runs through the high grass of marshy fields. I sleepily track Lund in subtitle but my subconscious mind seeks out Linden, for even as a character in a television series she is dearer to me than most people. I wait for her every week, quietly fearing the day when The Killing will come to a finish and I will never see her again.

  I follow Sarah Lund yet dream of Sarah Linden. I awake as Forbrydelsen abruptly ends and stare blankly at the screen of my personal player before passing unconscious into an incident room where a stream of briefings stakeouts and strange arcs empty into the rude smoke of isolation.

  Credit 3.2

  —

  MY BERLIN HOTEL was in a renovated Bauhaus structure in the Mitte district of the former East Berlin. It had everything I needed and was in close proximity to the Pasternak café, which I discovered on a walk during a previous visit, at the height of an obsession with Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita
. I dropped my bags in my room and went directly to the café. The proprietress greeted me warmly and I sat at my same table beneath a photograph of Bulgakov. As before, I was taken by the Pasternak’s old-world charm. The faded blue walls were dressed in photographs of the beloved Russian poets Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Mayakovsky. On the wide windowsill to my right sat an old Russian typewriter with its round Cyrillic keys, a perfect mate for my lonely Remington. I ordered the Happy Tsar—black sturgeon caviar served with a small shot of vodka and a glass of black coffee. Contented, I sat for quite a while mapping my talk on paper napkins, and then strolled the small park with the city’s oldest water tower rising from its center.

  Credit 3.3

  On the morning of my lecture I rose early and had coffee, watermelon juice, and brown toast in my room. I hadn’t wholly mapped out my talk, leaving a section open for improvisation and the whims of fate. I crossed the wide thoroughfare to the left of the hotel and passed through an ivy-covered gate, hoping to meditate on the coming event in the small church of St. Marien and St. Nikolai. The church was locked, but I found a secluded enclave with a statue of a boy reaching for a rose at the foot of the Madonna. Both possessed an enviable expressiveness, their marble skin worn by time and weather. I took several photographs of the boy and then returned to my room, curling up in a dark velvet armchair, drifting into a small patch of dreamless sleep.