The Lamp, Part 1 (6/21/2009)

Number 49 Schaerdinger Strasse stood on the southern slope of Mariahilfberg – “Mary’s Help Hill,” the only bit of Passau, Germany, south of the Inn River, which otherwise divided it from Austria.

Few people ventured there, and those that did stopped at the Baroque convent halfway up. It was a pilgrimage site, you see, and getting there tested the most devout. If you drove, you prayed that your suspension could hold up during the half-mile, switchbackless drive up the 45-degree hill. If you were intrepid and walked, your thighs might scream mutiny. Lose your brakes or your footing, and well, Mary help you.

Beyond the convent, there was little reason to go further – just a few farms, houses, and a nursing home tucked away in the mile or so before the border. There also were cornfields and deer farms, guarded over by a wooden barn that seemed to age in dog years. You could get to Austria, sure, but there wasn’t much once you got there. The nearest town, Schaerding, was a solid 10 miles of country roads away – if you wanted to get there from Passau, the Mariahilfberg route was probably the least convenient; you’d have to cut through town and uphill to get there, and by the time you did, you could have been speeding down the Autobahn and have been there in minutes.

Number 49’s garage door and eight-foot gray fence were the only parts visible from the front. There were never cars in the driveway, and the courtyard was completely surrounded by a high wall and, occasionally, the stray vine. It was almost always impossible to tell if anyone was home. Walk down the hill, though, and the façade – a long one, perhaps 25 yards of house, revealed itself:

The garage, big enough to fit two cars, though the family of six could only afford one, a burgundy Previa with an oversized ass…

Behind that, the passageway… it looked on the outside like a painted accordion, but inside was a sheltered, open-air hallway between garage and home. You could look out on the courtyard from there, and occasionally my host father would peer through the vines and greet his oldest daughter, sunbathing in the yard.

After the passageway, the house began. It was two stories, and the roof shaped much of the top floor’s ceiling. You could see three windows from the street; my host sisters’ bedrooms, I think, since they’d occasionally study out on the porch…

After the windows came the front door, which was technically on the side, I guess … I dunno. I rarely used it anyway, and if so, more as an exit than an entrance. I’d occasionally pop out to grab my mail – oh, the mail in those days! – but rarely used it for anything else. My only key was to the basement door, and the only times I had to knock on this one were when my host brother had left his key in the inside part of the basement lock, preventing mine from going in the outside. He did that once during my first month, but quickly apologized.

Beyond the front door, the path continued down the hill, 10 more yards maybe, to the end of the house. My door was back there, at the bottom of a small staircase. The staircase sat right below the panorama window in the living room – from there you could look out to the farms of Saming, Austria. Most days, I woke up and looked abroad before I saw another person.

I trudged the path alongside the house many times, mostly at night as my social and traveling lives became more robust. The back entryway was illuminated only by a solitary lamp, next to the door. Unlike the one out front, this one was not on a motion detector; its only switch was inside.

Whether my host father designed it this way, I’ll never know. But his decision to do so years before, spurred on the turning point of my exchange year – and, perhaps, my life – on a rainy Sunday in November 1997.