The Lamp, Part 4 (7/6/2009)

Soaked, I headed back down Mariahilfberg, across town to the only person I could pay a surprise visit to on a Sunday evening: my advisor, Inken. I had met her a solid month before, and we’d established a good rapport as I worked through the original jitters: She was a gorgeous, blonde 21-year-old law student at Passau University, and had spent her own exchange, five years previous, in rural Maine. Her German was a clean Lubeck dialect, free from the vowel mutations of back-country Bavarian. Her English was littered with the dropped “-r” of a New Englander.

Inken smiled as I opened the door. We hadn’t chatted in a while, and now that the Lechner tempest had quelled, we talked idly in English and German for half an hour or so. We tried a few times to call my host family. By this point, I had a feeling that something was wrong – I thought (correctly) they were at their grandmother’s in neighboring Vilshofen, but played dumb and said I didn’t know. I wanted to delay; maybe they’d have blown off steam by the time they came home.

They finally picked up the phone, and I headed back up around eight. The sky was clear now, the walk a bit more pleasant. When I got home, I knocked on the side door; my host mother threw it open and thundered “Get changed. I have to talk to you.”

I was screwed. I knew it.

And so, I did, and as expected, they laid into me. You broke your vow. You are a liar, an actor, a manipulator. All the progress from the last month had dissolved. My explanation – or attempted one, of “actually, I was telling people I can’t email” didn’t hold water, they didn’t want to hear it. Hand in the modem. You can’t call home until Christmas. You betrayed us. How could you do that? O the times! O the mores!

My host sisters stood, one to each side, openly lamenting like the women on Calvary. “Why, Matt? What’s wrong with letters?” You’d have thought I’d knocked one of them up.

That was that. No use explaining my side, how I was doing it for a longer-term good. I admitted I was wrong, and accepted defeat.

I retired to my room, shaken. I knew I had screwed up, but the task certainly hadn’t warranted the reaction. As I opened my door, wondering where this would lead, I noticed the patio light was off.

On Tuesday afternoon, my host parents made it official; they were tossing me out, effective at noon the next day. Frau Renner, who oversaw all students in Passau, would pick me up and find me a new abode. Forget school and pack your stuff now. But at least, my host mother said, “this wasn’t an easy decision. We barely slept last night.” I took slight consolation.

Leaving the Lechners was bittersweet. On the one side, I was relieved. I had literally no idea what the next eight months could hold – that village in Saxony, perhaps – but at the same time, I had just started to feel comfortable, had a superficial yet tangible rapport with a family who, on the surface, seemed to like me. And now, an innocent mistake dashed it all for an unknown beginning.

Wednesday morning, I was stuffing the last pieces into my backpack, one of which was my black folder containing all my letters. There among them was the Lechners’ treatise – 95 things we hate about you – staring at me in Consolas font and with five signatures waxed across the bottom. I contemplated for a moment whether to keep it, a last memory of them, a paper trail of their passive aggression and a reminder that, sometimes, you can’t please everyone.

I read it once, tore it into 200 pieces, and piled them on the desk.



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Epilogue:

Twelve years on, I wish I had kept the letter. It was, in hindsight, a break-up note nonpareil, and since the rest of the letters from that year – filed, neatly in my parents’ house – are truly my most treasured possession, it would have been a perfect yardstick in tracking my own growth and friendships as they matured throughout the year.

My decision – Blink! – not to extinguish the light on that Friday evening was far more seismic than I realized at the time, or even that year. Without it – and the escape it provided – my year would likely have stagnated. A continuing détente at best, a time bomb at worst. The subsequent eight months, none of which would have happened as they did, snowballed into events that shaped my life, relationships, and worldview.

I began to list them all here – highlighted by a fateful trip to Prague – but stopped. Each trip its own nut, each relationship its own gem, each lesson its own thread. And each one, its own story.

A last word on the Lechners, though: I never saw them, as a whole, again. On subsequent Passau trips, I have seen a few of them in passing – my host mother in the shopping district, Flo walking from a bus, Anna on the footbridge headed to university. None of them have flinched, and I’m guessing they didn’t recognize me. Who's to say they would, too? They had convinced themselves fully that I didn't want to be there, that I didn't love Germany the way I they wanted me to. Hard to think they'd ever see me returning. The joke, I guess, was on them.

Several times since, I’ve found myself making the walk back up to Schaerdingerstrasse. Most of the time I go all the way to the border; the station is abandoned now, the arm permanently raised. On the way to and from the station, I spend a few minutes staring at the house, wondering how life would have differed had I flicked the switch back in November ’97. The basement rooms are probably empty, the path to the back patio less trampled than it was a decade ago.

I smile, sometimes. Laugh, even. The light, I’m sure, is out.