This Must Be the Place (16 page)

“You have a job there?”

“It’s in the works.”

Orson stopped chewing and put down his fork.

“Is that why you turned down my film?”

“Sorry?”

“We might as well discuss it.”

“What film?”

“The one I’m about to make! Your agent told me that it was the right vehicle you’d been waiting for, then she canceled with no explanation.”

The student film Klara had offered him was Orson’s. Walter studied his potatoes.

“I’ve made a decision to focus on Hollywood right now.”

“You picked a great moment to go back.”

“It’s not Manhattan or Washington, D.C.”

“Actually, I hear Disneyland is number six on the target list.”

Walter swallowed his bite of potatoes with some difficulty.

“I will avoid Disneyland,” he said. “For sure.”

Orson ate without looking at his food.

“There’s something funky about the whole thing. The recent attacks in America, the anthrax. You did
Mission: Impossible II,
didn’t you? Do you remember the plot?”

“Of course.”

“So you remember who was spreading the virus?”

“The guys who produced the cure.”

“Exactly. When everyone caught the virus, they were going to make billions, right? Well, look at the lines of people stocking up on Cipro in the United States.”

“Life imitates art.”

“Where’s Ethan Hunt when we need him?”

Walter tried to stifle a laugh. “Bayer is sending out envelopes of anthrax to boost the sales of Cipro?”

“I’m saying it’s possible. They don’t know where it’s coming from, do they? It has been an amazing public relations campaign for the company.”

“You are really cynical.”

Orson shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

Although it had been ten years since the reunification, Walter reflected, Orson was one of the only people he knew from the former GDR. When the Wall was up, he had only occasionally visited the other side, and although he knew it had since been rehabilitated, he still thought of it as the dark doppelgänger of the West, the slowly disintegrating buildings and flickering black light of the streetlamps. He still thought of East Berlin as another country.

“How old were you when the Wall came down, anyway?”

“Fifteen,” Orson replied. “But that has nothing to do with this. I’m just saying that there’s always someone out there ready to make money off other people’s fear.”

They returned to their meal in silence. Orson pointed at Walter’s potatoes with his fork and spoke with his mouth full.

“You better watch out for that superficial Hollywood bullshit over there. When Franka Potente went into American films after
Run Lola Run,
everyone there said her ass was too big. Now she only eats meat and cheese.”

“No potatoes?”

“Not in America.”

They both laughed.

“For the record,” said Orson, “you wouldn’t have had to lose weight for my film.”

If he were ever to sink so low as to act in a German student film, thought Walter, it would definitely be Orson’s. He pushed his plate back and watched him open a small leather case of cigarillos.

“It takes place in Berlin in the early nineties,” Orson began. “The main character is named Fritz. He was groomed to be an important Stasi operative in East Germany, one of the directors of the secret police. But all his methods involve illegalinvasions of privacy, so after reunification his skills are obsolete. When the film opens, he’s just been forced into early retirement. He moves from East Berlin into a new apartment in Charlottenburg for a fresh start and ends up getting involved with the strange old couple that lives next door. When the wife is killed, he uses all his illegal Stasi techniques to solve the crime. It’s a mystery, but the kind that takes place in the daytime, like
Rosemary’s Baby
or
Rear Window.
”

“When do you shoot?”

“I only have the crew during the university vacation, over Christmas. We’ll shoot the whole film in order from beginning to end, like a play. If I can do it in eighteen days I get the equipment from my film school for free. With the money from this gig I’ll just be able to cover the catering and the tape.”

“The tape?”

“I’m shooting on video.”

“Really?”

“Film is dead.”

Walter handed his empty plate to the waitress. Poor Orson, he thought. Most actors already had Christmas plans they wouldn’t sacrifice for an unknown director making a no-budget digital film. Walter watched Orson smoke. With the leather outfit and the long ponytail, the rose-tinted sunglasses fixed onto his pale, hairless face, he looked like a high school student hoping to get into a heavy metal concert in the countryside, but maybe he was the next big thing. Walter allowed himself a rare glimpse down the road less taken: his name on a cinema marquee at Potsdamer Platz, red-carpet interviews at the Berlinale, his Academy Award acceptance speech. A surge of generosity warmed his chest.
My country is at war,
he told himself. The very phrase made him feel reckless and optimistic. He would hate to spend Christmas in Berlin, he would hate to postpone the trip with Hope, but he could change his plans to help out a friend here, couldn’t he? He could push back California for a week or two.

“I was really disappointed when you turned me down,” said Orson. “But I got a copy of the script to Til Schweiger.”

At the sound of this name, Walter woke up abruptly, as if in the middle of a dream. Til Schweiger was the most famous German actor of Walter’s generation; the actor/producer of some of Germany’s only homegrown hits; the nice guy with model good looks. Say it.
The German Tom Cruise.

“He loved Fritz,” Orson continued. “He was willing to defer his salary for points on the production. He’s almost too handsome so I’ll have to change the character to accommodate that. But he agreed to work without makeup and gain some weight.”

Walter felt dizzy. The potatoes he’d eaten congealed into a monstrous ball in his stomach; he was seeing stars, cheap Christmas lights twinkling at the corner of his vision, making the room spin. Only a month earlier he’d read that Til Schweiger was making a film in Hollywood with Sylvester Stallone, now he was coming to Berlin to play Fritz. A flood of regret quickly extinguished the fantasies Walter had allowed to blaze up on the horizon. He watched Orson crunch out the stub of his cigarillo and motion for the check.

That evening Walter left work as soon as they finished the last take. He didn’t stick around to make small talk in the hallway with the actors doing
Ocean’s Eleven
next door. He did not speak to Orson again. He double-parked in front of Butter Lindner to buy a marzipan stollen, a bag of sweets and three bottles of good Rioja. Normally, he went by Hope’s place after dinner, taking pains to act like visiting her were an idea that had come to him spontaneously during a digestive stroll through the building. But tonight he arrived early, rang the bell and waited a few inches from the door, making a mental list of things to take care of as soon as possible: plane tickets to Los Angeles, reservations at the Beverly Hilton, a rental car. You probably had to book a car early to get a convertible, he thought, juggling his weight impatiently on the balls of his feet. Usually he had someone conveniently positioned to blame for his unhappiness: Heike, Klara, his parents, the weatherman. But it wasn’t anyone else’s fault that he had refused to read Orson’s script. He could blame only himself for passing on the opportunity to be in a film so brilliant that Til Schweiger was willing to look bad in it for free. Walter rang the doorbell again. If before his lunch with Orson he had been looking forward to meeting Tom Cruise at the premiere, if he had been excited about going to California with Hope, now his future was pitched toward the trip like a palm tree leaning into the winter sun. Three weeks, he told himself. It was long enough. It had to be.

Hope opened the door wearing a pink sweater that made her appear flushed.

“Today is the day of Sankt Nikolaus,” he said. “I come bearing gifts. Christmas cake with marzipan.”

“Please make yourself at home.”

He loved that.
Make yourself at home.
Her apartment was a replica of his own, cleared entirely of his personal archaeology. Each time he entered it, he remembered that before Heike his own walls had also been white. His five rooms had once been empty. Fifteen years earlier he’d moved in with one small suitcase and a few boxes. He had camped out on a mattress for months. Now his place was full of furniture and dust, videotapes he was never going to watch again, receipts collected for yearly tax returns and laid out in little piles after the audit last spring. When he allowed himself to think about the fact that he was still living with the ticket stub from almost every movie he’d ever seen, it made his palms sweat; going downstairs to Hope’s apartment was a new lease on life. He liked to circle the dining room while she did her homework, idly sniffing at the corners. Since her boxes from New York were still held up in customs, there were few personal effects lying around; no wedding snapshots on the mantel, no photo albums; a large pile of Holocaust books were telling objects, but as they were always in the exact same position, he assumed they belonged to her husband. Walter walked into the kitchen to unpack the cake from its wrapper and sliced it onto a paper napkin because she didn’t have any plates. Since lunch he had been counting the three weeks until the premiere, wishing that his life were a film—say,
Cocktail
—and a montage of images could flash forth on screen to speed things up. The two of them riding horses bareback on the beach, wrestling in the sand, drinking from coconuts, frolicking in a tropical waterfall, feeding each other shrimp. But since it was Berlin and nearly winter and dark most of the time, the ninety-second montage would show only two people talking together night after night in one of two nearly identical apartments.

He uncorked the Rioja and decided to forgo his cleanse prescription in favor of the wine, which set a sexier mood than showing up with a couple of shot glasses and a bottle of home-brewed cherry schnapps. Walter knew that Americans thought of schnapps as the tiny bottles of sweet poison sold at the supermarket checkout to homeless people and teenagers. In fact, the schnapps he had upstairs was very good quality, but he didn’t want to risk giving Hope the wrong impression. Before he returned to the dining room, he found her shoes in the hallway and filled them with candy. Then he brought her the stollen and wine.

“You’re so sweet!”

She said “sweet” as if it were a two-syllable word.

“You know, this is my first holiday in Berlin,” she said. “I completely forgot about Thanksgiving. This year it just passed me by.”

“We could celebrate it tomorrow if you like. There is an American section in the food hall at KaDe We. They sell Pop-Tarts and salad dressing made by Paul Newman and brownie mix. They must have things for Thanksgiving.”

“Two weeks late? It wouldn’t be the same.”

“Maybe you’re right. Otherwise, we could just celebrate Thanksgiving every day, like that Heinrich Böll story about Christmas.”

“I don’t know that story.”

“It’s a German classic, you should add it to your reading list.” Walter motioned toward the pile of books at the end of the table. “There’s a crazy aunt who’s only happy on Christmas Day. She gets hysterical when they tell her that it’s over, so her family celebrates Christmas every day. After a while, they hire actors to play the family members. They sing all the songs and light the candles on the tree. It goes on like that for two years.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Sounds like a nightmare. Christmas goes on and on here already. You’ll see.”

“You take it for granted. I’ve been reading up on the roots of Christmas, which was a pagan ritual appropriated by the Church as Jesus’ birthday, by the way. Actually Sankt Nikolaus was the original figure, an old man bringing treats on December sixth. It was in America that he morphed into Santa Claus, bringing presents on Christmas Eve. He was then reimported to Germany as the
Weihnachtsmann,
which is why you have both.”

We have both.
This was the last conversation he wanted to have with Hope.

“The traditions seem quaint to you,” he said, “but at least American materialism is democratic. Christmas here is for Christians. All the holidays in Germany are for Christians. We have nothing like Thanksgiving, for everyone.”

Hope picked the raisins out of her stollen and arranged them in a neat pile on the napkin.

“I know what you mean. Since it’s the only holiday uncomplicated by religion, Thanksgiving was the only one we celebrated with Dave’s parents.”

Walter sat down at the table.

“Why?”

“Well, I studied to convert to Judaism when I was first with Dave, but his parents didn’t really approve so I dropped it. Maybe they were just using the Jewish thing as an excuse, because they didn’t want him to get married young.” She paused. “In any case, the Jewish holidays were awkward after that but Christmas was also a problem, obviously, so we didn’t really celebrate anything. Thanksgiving was the only one we could get through without a major meltdown. We always had it at his parents’ apartment, because ours was too small. I always made Brussels sprouts.”

She finished her cake and wrapped the napkin around the raisins.

“Can I tell you something?”

Walter leaned forward.

“Of course.”

“I haven’t been to my German class in a week.”

He blinked. He wanted to hear more about the problems in her marriage.

“I’m never going to learn German there,” she said. “I’m the only American in my class. No one speaks to me. When we have to pair up, no one wants to be my partner. And it’s boring.”

“But you’re a teacher.”

“I was a teacher.”