Bridge Across the Isar

By Aaron Buchwald

Chase is an American ex-pat who followed Maria to Munich Germany. She was neither consulted nor happy about his reintroduction into her life. Alone and away from all that's familiar, Chase struggles with rejection, but clings to a distorted and childish perception of an ideal love. Chase is proud of his abstention from carnal urges, thinking it makes him a step above. He shows disdain for his single colleagues, who explore European destinations every weekend, yet he can't help but be enticed by their crude recounting of conquests and wishes he could similarly partake without guilt or consequence.

A chance meeting on the subway with Hans, a burn-victim, forces Chase to reconsider all his motivations, the source of his desire, and trace the roots of his emptiness all the way back to his childhood. Walking alone through the city, Chase stands in the middle of the Bridge Across the Isar: green fields are on one side: gray buildings under construction on the other: a nude beach lies downstream and a prominent church towers dominates the skyline upstream. It's there on the bridge that Chase experiences a fleeting moment of clarity and the confidence to step across to the other side.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781952664021

Book preview

Browne

Chapter 1

Schwabing

I felt empty. Fatigue and hunger weren’t unusual after more than two hours of pick-up basketball, but tonight I was abnormally dizzy and light-headed, scrunched on the wooden floor of Mike’s apartment, gradually dissociating from the conversation around me in a half-dream state while thinking about Maria. Music passed straight through my head without registering as it echoed back and forth like the undamped resonance between stonewalled caverns. A song by R.E.M. masked random bursts of unintelligible chatter: "I am superman, and I can do anything. I am superman, and I know what’s happening." I was cross-legged in my usual position, near the corner with my back against the wall, grimacing as I flexed my foot because of a calf cramp. The rest of the group had split into two clusters: J.D. in a cardinal Stanford tank-top and Peter Fillmore, wearing an aged gray Princeton t-shirt, were standing in the hallway, just outside the living room, debating the relative torque and thrust profile of the three- versus the five-series BMW, as Mike and Smith were sitting on the sofa examining the CD jewel case for Life’s Rich Pageant. Smith’s first name is Scott, but nobody called him that. He’s a walking punch-line without the joke. His one-liners virtually always involve references to microphallus, complete with descriptive visuals and creative slang for genitalia. Smith liked the song and kept pestering Mike for the lyrics.

What’d they say? asked Smith.

Why don’tcha read the lyric sheet? said Mike.

They don’t have one — Needle Dick replied Smith, tearing apart the liner notes from inside the CD case as if looking for a hidden prize.

Then Mike repeated the line. "‘If you go a million miles away I’ll track you down. Trust me when I say I know the pathway to your home.’" He said the words slowly, so that Smith would understand and stop asking.

Tonight was another get-together at Mike’s apartment. It would be just the five of us this time. All but Smith had come directly from playing basketball at the Siemens Sportzentrum just south of Neuperlach Süd. We were all American ex-pats: all electrical engineers, living in Munich. Mike liked to have frequent gatherings at his place in Schwabing¹. Sometimes our German colleagues would attend, but they usually wouldn’t come back. Apparently, hanging out with a group of all male engineers wasn’t anybody’s idea of an enjoyable, well-rounded evening. But, there was something more that kept them away — scared them away, to be more precise. They couldn’t help but feel a frantic uneasiness in the company of uptight Americans, making it difficult for them to relax. After having lived in Europe for a couple months, I was becoming increasingly aware of this dynamic: I began seeing myself less like the fortunate, entitled, resident of the greatest-country-on-earth, indoctrinated with selective history and false nationalism, and more how the locals saw all of us: crass Yanks — nervous and uninformed. Despite this: change wasn’t forthcoming — for any of us — not that we didn’t want to change, but overcoming the inertia proved difficult. I envied how my German friends could be content in social situations, but I was all but biologically incapable of sitting for hours at a biergarten and remaining similarly appeased. Denied the myriad of distractions to which I’d grown accustomed, something always seemed missing. Growing up with ubiquitously consumable TV, to both entertain and distract, had the side-effect of creating an empty vessel for absorbing advertising, delivered relentlessly, straight to the cerebral cortex, carefully engineered to make me feel inadequate, and thereby more easily manipulated into buying whatever was being sold. This mind-control, to which we’d all become willing accomplices, not only impacted what we thought, but what we paid attention to — what we deemed important. It overlaid a superficial scale onto everything we did by which we measured ourselves against each other: it set a time limit for how much tolerance we had for being quiet and reflective — the length between commercial breaks. After eight minutes without sensory overload, our American-bred sensibilities told us that something more exciting had to be happening elsewhere — just not here. Of course, this angst is implanted to exert subliminal control over us, to keep us continually questioning our self-image — our identity — to where it becomes pointless to move or try to reach for something better as the object of our desire remains forever elusive.

I admit I didn’t help to lessen the pervasive uneasiness: I was never the life of the party. After saying hello, I’d migrate to a corner and seldom speak. Tonight I was in my familiar position, sitting on the floor, wondering about Maria. What was she doing? It would be so nice to walk along the river with her, holding hands and stoping to look at the twin towers of St Maximilian Kirche on the banks of the Isar at sunset. I’d gently touch her cheek, neck and hair, she’d turn seductively to me as I caressed her bare shoulder and then...

What? I still didn’t get it. Smith’s relentless struggle to figure out the lyrics to this song snapped me out of my daydream.

"Dude," said Mike, with an agitated inflection, elongating the u of duuude. "It goes. ‘You don’t really love that guy you make it with, now do you? I know you don’t love that guy, cause I can see right through you.’"

Smith screwed up the left side of his face, cocked his head and looked upward in contemplation, saying

Their voices are all slurred like they’re half asleep or somethin’.

Whaddya expect from R.E.M.? said Mike.

What’s that stand for anyway? asked Smith.

Rapid Eye Movement — the dream state. said Peter, as he and J.D. reentered the room, careful not to spill their beers from their giant German mugs as they stepped over me. They’re supposed to sound sleepy and dreamy. That’s the point.

Smith scrunched his face the same way as before and turned to face J.D. and Peter. Did any of you guys ever have the dream where you go to school with no clothes on? He asked. I used to have that dream once a week back in high school.

Yeah. Me too. I said.

I began to think about the vividness of those old dreams: each installment was so real in every detail that sometimes I’d feel actual shame and embarrassment at school for days afterwards, especially as I walked the hallways, still wondering whether or not it really happened, checking to see if I was covered up and protected.

You know the funny thing about that dream? said Smith. "You always go through nearly the whole day, and nobody ever tells you that you’re naked. I mean, your mom never says anything when you go out the door in the morning: the bus driver doesn’t say a word: your buddies never mention it at lunch. Nobody notices until you do, then it’s all anyone sees."

That dream had been relentlessly repetitive for me, but then it just stopped, but was replaced by another, equally terrifying recurring nightmare.

Now I keep dreaming that I’m taking a final for a class I didn’t even know I was registered for, I said.

When I was in college, and even more frequently after graduation, I’d dream it’s finals week and suddenly remember I signed up for a class I never attended. It’s too late to drop the class so I have to take the final with no chance to study. I’d sit in the exam room, in full panic mode, not knowing any of the material. My identity in college, and thereafter, had become inexorably intertwined with my unblemished grades and being seen as intelligent. I feared I wasn’t as smart as I projected myself to be, only