Munich Airport Read Online Free PDF Page A

frail. He can’t lift anything heavy. He gets tired easily. It’s perfectly normal for his age. What’s more surprising, perhaps, is how fit he was at the age of seventy. Here, I have walked him up hills. I have walked him down steps. I have helped him cross very busy roads. I have had him put his arms around my neck and lifted him out of a taxi. I tucked him into bed one night, because he’d become light-headed and a little breathless, but refused to go to the hospital. When I turned the light off, he said, Goodnight, son. I said, Goodnight, Dad. Now, as he wobbles, nearly falling back into his seat, I take his arm. Now I guide him from around the table. His balance returns—it comes slowly, arising in his eyes—and he seems steady, so he draws his arm away from mine. You okay? I ask. I’m okay, he says. Without fuss the four chairs around the table are taken by others.
    When my father and I arrived at the airport this morning, we said good-bye to our driver, the Turkish man with the huge, furry-hooded jacket, and had a brief argument over whether or not to tip. We didn’t tip. We simply said thank you, and he told us to have a safe flight. It was still dark. But the bright white lamplight along the entrance to departures, in the fog, made the darkness glow. We watched the shuttle drive away. Part of me had wished to say to the driver, Listen, we’ve made a mistake, any chance we could go back to the hotel? Maybe they would be merciful and let us check back in to one of the rooms, just for two or three hours. If not, then at the very least we could find some couches in the lobby and close our eyes for a while. I really don’t know how I am still awake, and I don’t know how my father is still awake. I have slept four, maybe five hours in the last two days, and my father has probably slept less. We arrived in Munich yesterday, very early, off an overnight train, and we paid a visit to the undertaker to make sure Miriam’s body had arrived without any problems, and that all was set for the journey today. On the train we had a compartment to ourselves. When we realized that we were on our own, and we closed the door for the night, we figured we would sleep for sure. We stretched the seats out into beds across the whole cabin. The beds were wide. Though the seats we’d reserved were beside each other, because we had the whole compartment we chose to leave the space of one bed between us. We lay down, propped up on some pillows, but fixed cushions that ran vertically between the seats meant we couldn’t see each other, only our bodies and legs and feet. We pulled white bedsheets over ourselves. They were coarse and smelled like soap. My father had no book with him, so I gave him a music magazine I’d brought with me. My father gave the magazine a perfunctory flip-through and sighed and asked if he could switch off the light. Of course, I said, and I turned on a little penlight that arched down from the console behind my bed. I had a book about Europe during the Thirty Years War—more than any other type of book, I read history books, and I had picked it up at an English-language bookstore not far from Miriam’s apartment in Berlin. I read and took notes for an hour before finally turning off my light and closing my eyes. My father said, I can’t sleep, it’s no good, you can turn your light back on if you like. I said, This is a fascinating book. He said, You’ve always taken notes, but what for? I haven’t always taken notes, I said.
    You sure have, obviously before you can remember, you were taking notes.
    Was I?
    You were taking notes since your mother was pregnant with Miriam. She was monitoring her progress—because she’d had the problematic pregnancy with you—and you monitored her progress with her. Then you didn’t stop. When Miriam was four or five, you taught her to take notes.
    Otherwise I can’t focus, that’s