During this period, Walter lost his primary purpose. Two driving forces within him dictated his external life: to express the creativity he had accessed and not to feel the depression underlying all his actions. With a mixture of emotions and self-delusion, the result of Walter’s decisions became self-destructive conduct. In the beginning, his transformation did not show through his actions. His friends might have realized the extravagances he allowed himself. Nobody suspected he was going through a trauma he could not handle. In addition, he did not tell anybody that he had already consumed half the contents from Anthony’s gift letter.
Once, in the course of the baby shower, Walter let Gaspar know he had taken a hit of LSD, and Gaspar said, “Wow, let me have one, too. That is a great idea, to use it without other people knowing that you did.”
A new plan took shape in Walter’s mind. He wanted to produce one large summer party with all his friends and everybody they knew. The idea included having a music group perform in the meadow behind the house, him singing his songs publicly for the first time, and inviting the whole village. The print shop in Frankfurt printed a small poster he designed to announce the event. He also ordered a sound-mixing console that he could use to perform his songs. Walter still needed a microphone, but hoped to use one from the band. The purchases eliminated his cash. In a magazine, he noticed an announcement for a three-day open-air festival in Zurich, Switzerland, for acoustic music groups. He imagined that he would show up there, perform with his new sound mixer, and play guitar as he sang his songs.
On the last page of his book, Walter had included a personal ad, searching for a woman. It contained a truthful account of his situation, with descriptions of himself and his ideal partner. One of the people who ordered the book by mail replied to the ad. A very sweetly written letter arrived one day in Hohenhausen, asking him to visit Karin at a place in southern Germany. Since he had written and posted this ad in a desperate move to find someone who sensed an attraction to him, he decided to look up Karin sometime soon. In the back of his mind, he thought he could combine the visit to Karin with the festival in Zurich.
Out of nowhere, someone he knew very well arrived on the doorsteps of the house. A healthy-looking but almost toothless Frankie stood in front of Walter.
The two friends hugged each other, and Walter asked, “What are you doing here? What’s up?”
Frankie told him that he had been in and out of rehab and was clean for several weeks at the time. Walter invited him to stay in one of the vacant rooms under certain conditions, and Frankie thanked him gratefully. He had acquired many manual skills over the years. Within one week, he had built temporary scaffolding out of dead trees from the forest and placed it on the house wall facing the barn. Then he completely plastered the upper part of the wall, which needed it badly.
Walter nourished the idea that heroin addiction could be treated with LSD. He offered a hit of his stash to Frankie while they were driving through the most beautiful forest in the area to reach Bransfeld. In the middle of this dense forest, Walter stopped the car on the road and turned off the light. The next village was a distance of about five miles. Total darkness and silence surrounded the two for some minutes. Nobody made a movement or said anything. Slowly, the dark and quiet forest came alive. Tiny lights danced between the trees, branches creaked, an occasional owl called, and a gentle night breeze stirred. The stars above enlightened the scene of the two friends in an old Citroën 2CV. They did not talk for twenty minutes. Walter started the engine to get them on their way to an open-air festival outside town in a former gravel pit.
The drug had kicked into full gear when they arrived. They looked at about four hundred people at the bottom of the pit, dancing and swinging to the beat. A favorite local band played on top of the edge, about a hundred feet high. Since the two had come from a direction that was level with the band’s location, they slowly approached the area.
Frankie said, “Hey, listen, I want to go down there, see you later,” and left Walter, who moved carefully forward.
Near the band, Walter noticed a few maracas lying on the ground. He took a pair and gently began to rattle them. He had been observing the performing band and noticed that the drummer immediately moved his head in his direction. Walter smiled and showed the instrument and his ability to play with the band. Two acquaintances appeared from the dark and smiled at him. Wilma and Hauke positioned themselves on either side of Walter, and then all three started to sway in rhythm while Walter shook the maracas.
When the band ended the song, the folks in the sand pit clapped and screamed. The music group left the edge of the pit for a break. The break music sounded like “Sympathy For the Devil” by the Rolling Stones. Walter carefully moved to the small, empty drummer’s seat and sat down on it. Huge loudspeakers were transmitting the music over the public address system from the left and right. He hit the drums a few times with a stick, the crowd below noticed him and started shouting and clapping their hands. He noticed a microphone dangling in front of him that obviously had not been turned off before the group left their equipment.
He hit the drums again and screamed a loud “yeah, yeah” into the microphone. That triggered a thunderous “yeah, yeah” from the masses down below.
After a few more repetitions, Walter lost track of the Rolling Stones in the background, and his drum solo and outcries were out of sync. The audience lost interest. He heard some whistles, which reminded him of where he sat and what had happened.
Later in the car, both started to laugh wildly, and Frankie said, “First I did not recognize that you were the one on the drums, but then I couldn’t believe it. You sure gave it to them. You had your performance of the night.”
Frankie began to disappear for days and then return in bad shape following relapses. Walter gave him notice. When it happened again, he told Frankie to leave the house for good.
In Walter’s mind, preparations for the big summer event in Hohenhausen were running ahead full speed. At the same time, Wilma, whom he had met at the disco in Bransfeld, visited him in the house. Over a weekend, the couple became more intimate with each other. Since there were no additional people in Walter’s room when they went to bed, it turned into an enjoyable encounter. He discovered her young, tight body to the fullest and studied her dark-blue eyes. Walter thought he detected an awakened interest in them, which encouraged him to spend more time with her.
Recently, he had noticed that his book sales in stores had slowed to a trickle, and he befriended the idea of selling it in person at a flea market. Acquaintances that went to the weekly market in Frankfurt every Saturday offered to place his book on their table while they sold honey, bread, and other organic products. Very early, before sunrise, Wilma and Walter loaded a box of books and Walter’s twelve-string guitar into the Citroën and made their way on country roads through the awakening scenery. With help of a thermos full of fresh coffee and some hemp hash joints, two hours later the two found themselves sitting next to the River Main, along with almost a mile of more people and their tables and booths.
When flea market visitors discovered the black-and-white cover picture of the book next to bread and honey, they asked, “What is this? Oh, you are the author. What is it about? Very interesting. Now I have met my first author in person.”
Walter felt important and privileged as he sold a modest number of copies. The ones he sold, he signed and dedicated to the buyers, and in doing so, everybody had a lot of fun. Later in the afternoon, he gathered enough courage to play the guitar and sing his songs for the first time with a donation box in front of him. Walter realized that it took a lot of energy, and luckily, one of the table hosts had a bottle of wine that he shared with Walter and Wilma. All day long, she gazed admiringly up at him with her blue eyes, they hugged and kissed, and she pressed his hands. The flea market experience left him elated and at the same time tired. When the couple arrived back at the farm, Wilma spent Sunday with him as well. Walter noticed that she had absorbed the situation and constellations among the people in the house and might have contemplated where she would fit in.
The city of Flederbach arranged its own flea market in town. The Hohenhausen commune reserved a space, and then everybody, including Kurt next to Hilde, sat at a long table on a cobblestone lane. They sold all kinds of stuff, from homemade bread, honey, pastries, cheeses, and used clothes, to Walter’s book.
As Walter sat on his spot, feeling alone again without Wilma, a man passed by and asked, “Where are you from?”
“Hohenhausen,” Walter replied.
The man responding in a clarifying tone, “No, I mean your looks and all, your dark skin. Shouldn’t you be in a warmer climate?”
Walter could not figure out or ask what the person meant since he had moved on already. His voice did not carry any malicious or aggressive undertone, as many Nazis in the area might have. It was a simple ascertainment of an unpretentious man in a provincial district town, and Walter could never forget. Meanwhile, Hilde appeared to be spending more time on the Neudorfer Hof than in Hohenhausen. Walter felt the gaping hole inside and the connected pain that the absence of his kids and Hilde left in him. Especially with Johannes, he had not been able to bond because as soon as she became mobile again after his birth, Hilde spent a lot of time away.
Slowly the biggest event in Walter’s history on the farm approached. He had no indication whether there would be any music band, who would attend, or how to buy a bottle of beer—because he had no more money. When the Saturday arrived, Walter was in his bed, wearing his sunglasses, with the bedcover up to his chin. He did not want to see anybody or feel his fear, anxiety, pain, or anything else. He had automatically dropped another one of his little friends on blotting paper, courtesy of Anthony from Boston.
As time advanced to afternoon and evening, occasionally one of his friends would come into his room and ask, “When are you coming? Everybody is waiting for you.”
Walter would say, “I’ll come out later.”
When Hilde returned from Neudorfer to attend and help at the event, she used somewhat stronger language than the previous visitors, “You cannot do this. You have to come downstairs. This is your party.”
Eventually, he dressed and slowly walked down the stairs into the kitchen, where butcher Sheik stood with a bottle of wine in his hand and said, “I want to hear you sing. Where is your guitar?”
“I am not singing tonight,” Walter replied and looked out of the window onto the meadow where, in the dark, a large bonfire lit up the area.
“I want to hear you sing, you coward,” Sheik said and pushed Walter with one hand and then grabbed him with both and threw him into the empty dining area. Walter bounced against a wall and then fell to the ground, got up from the floor, and walked outside toward the fire, ignoring the drunk. There he noticed neighbors gathered on chairs and benches, some smiling at him and others looking away timidly. Gerhard mingled with the guests on the lawn. Then Walter walked quickly back into the house. He felt unable to be among people, cut off from all channels of communication. Afraid to show his real self publicly, Walter was unaware that he hurt enormously underneath the emotional effect of the drug. Without hope or trust of anyone present, and unable to ask for help, the enormity of his sense of loss and aloneness could not be shared with anyone.
After a sleepless night, Walter walked down the stairs late the next morning and met Gerhard who was just about to leave and return to Frankfurt.
“Please come and visit me when you are in Frankfurt. I want to show you something you might appreciate,” Gerhard said and then left.
In the kitchen, Hilde was preparing the children for her trip south to Neudorfer Hof.
The two were unable to talk to each other, but Hilde managed to utter, “If you want, you can always visit.”
Walter stayed in the house for two days, cleaned up as well as he could, and avoided Silke and her kids. She might have been doing the same with him, because they only met briefly in the hallway without talking to each other.
During the third night, his jealousy and continuous thoughts about Hilde and Kurt enjoying the night together in bed next to each other did not stop. Before sunrise, he got into his car and drove south, not really knowing why and where he went. Halfway between Hohenhausen and the Neudorfer Hof, he used a smaller, winding, but shorter route through a protected valley, which contained only one village.
As Walter took the scenic route and reached a clearing with a hill and dense bushes, he stopped the car. He felt like an Indian pathfinder or Mexican medicine man on a mission to discover an important place or sign that could help him put an end to his misery. Walking gradually, very carefully and aware, slowly over the pasture up the hill, he observed many signs and places that could have meant something or nothing. Nature itself appeared to assist in his confusion; the excursion left him in a satisfactory state of mind. He walked back to the car and drove to the sleeping Neudorfer Hof.
Walter opened the entrance door and crept silently up the stairs to the third floor. He knew to which cubicle room to go. Very carefully, he opened the door and saw Hilde and Kurt sleeping next to each other in a bed. Walter moved one step toward the bed, and at that moment, Hilde woke up and mumbled something while raising her upper torso toward him. He punched a hook to the left side of her chin. Without witnessing the result, he left the room and went down the stairs to his car.
He drove to Frankfurt and hung out in the Westendstrasse for a while. Gaspar had to leave; he did not know Walter’s stories at that time. Walter waited until night and then called Gerhard, who had come home from work.
Gerhard said, “OK, come over and stay here if you promise that you will go with me to a place where they can help you tomorrow.”
The next morning both of them drove in Walter’s car over the Autobahn toward Bad Homburg, then took an exit that led to another small town with a large hospital surrounded by forest and meadows. During the drive, Gerhard frequently told Walter to stop the car, because he was afraid for his life. Walter would not listen; he drove fast and irately. He also did not hand over the keys to his vehicle when Gerhard attempted to drop him off. They entered the hospital building together into what appeared to be a reception area. Gerhard told the nurse they had an appointment with a doctor. Once that had been confirmed, Gerhard said good-bye, and Walter waited in a room. A female physician conducted a brief interview with him and then assigned him to a station. Walter inspected his appointed room and noticed that he had to share it with another person.
An early dinner had already been prepared in the common dining area. Walter sat down at a table and ate a few bites. He got up, left the open station and the building, went to his car, and drove back to Frankfurt. He stayed for a few hours at his destination, the disco at the university. After midnight, Walter departed from Bockenheim, taking the most direct route over country roads on his way to Hohenhausen. Beyond the last suburb of Frankfurt, while going north and approaching the next town, the road went downhill. Walter reached a juncture with a sharp right turn where he had to slow down. At that instant, he saw it.
A large black spot was positioned in the floodlight of a used-car lot. Something polished, sparkling in the middle of the night. He stopped his car and made a complete U-turn to inspect it. When he approached the lot, encircled with little flags fluttering on strings in the night wind, he identified the source of his attraction: a two-door Citroën Traction Avant coupe, possibly from the early 1950s, in mint condition, parked between the other common vehicles.
Walter walked around the black miracle on wheels, shining, blinking, and attracting him in the summer night. He put his hand on the driver’s-side door handle, and it opened. Surprised, but considering it a good sign, he looked inside, and awe struck him. Both seat benches, front and back, were spotless, red with beige leather edges. He carefully moved onto the front bench behind the wheel and reviewed buttons and controls on the black, vertical dashboard. He turned a lever, and a light started to blink, which impressed Walter so much that he felt like a little child visiting the circus for the first time. At that moment, it seemed as if he stepped from a nightmare into a reality where deep wishes were answered.
Satisfied with his checkup, he exited the car and walked around it. He marveled at the exceptional exterior condition of the vehicle, its rims and tires, the stretched engine compartment with split hoods, which sported manual rubber releases. He turned the trunk handle, and it opened. Without hesitation, he walked back to his own car, which parked on the side of the road. He opened the back door and selected a few items, such as the large wheel wrench and the first-aid kit, to move them to the Avant. Walter had no question in his mind about why and what he was doing.
As he turned around to go back to his white Citroën, a police car pulled up at the curb with flashing blue lights. Two uniformed cops exited the patrol car, walking toward him.
“What are you doing here? Are you trying to steal the car? You are under arrest.”
Walter had to turn around. The officers put handcuffs around his wrists and made him sit in the back of their vehicle. At the local police station, they led him to an empty lockup. He lay down on the metal cot and rested peacefully, glad that somebody was taking care of him and happy he had found something beautiful.
It did not take too long; Walter must have slept for a while. A cop opened the cell door and directed him to an interview room. Officials had already confirmed his identity, and they took his statement and account of what had occurred for the record. The sheriff advised him that a complaint of attempted car theft would be filed against him. They let him leave the station and offered him a ride to his car, still parked at the curb near the crime scene.
The used-car sales office, with an attached auto shop, opened its doors as the cops dropped off Walter in front of the enterprise. Walter walked into the office where he received a harsh and icy reception. Personnel had seen him exiting the patrol car and now knew who had entered the property. Walter began talking to them by apologizing first and then explained that he fell in love with the black vehicle. He said he wanted to buy it. This announcement created a long silence in the sales office.
At last, the owner referred to the price. Walter said, “OK, I’ll take it and will pay cash for it. I also want stereo equipment installed.”
For Walter, his plan of action developed in his mind as he went from moment to moment; he had not planned anything. After he selected a brand and configuration of the stereo, he walked back to the curb and started his old car to drive back home to the farm.
Nobody appeared to be in the house when he arrived there in the afternoon. The banks had closed already. He could not do much except search for the house deed and be prepared. Walter also made a telephone call to Denmark. Lisa from New York, whom he had met a long time ago, moved to Denmark, married her boyfriend, and gave birth to her first child. When Hilde became pregnant, she and Walter had visited Lisa in their house on the small island of Langeland, across from Kiel, Germany. They shared common interests because of how and where they lived. Lisa and her boyfriend, Lars, lived on farm in a commune type of cooperative and wanted to integrate into the local society. It had been a good time to visit them. Walter liked the idea of visiting again, especially in his new acquisition, which is why he called Lisa in Denmark. She said it would be OK for him to visit for a while.
First, he had to take care of transportation. After a good night’s sleep in the empty house, he woke up, not knowing what had happened to all the residents. It appeared strange, but more pressing matters at hand prompted him to take care of his own business by visiting a bank in Flederbach. He selected a bank where he did not have any accounts, interviewed with the manager of the small branch, and within thirty minutes received the money he needed for the Avant, plus a little extra for living expenses. No thoughts went through Walter’s mind about the fact that the bank would want the money back; he simply followed his inner plan. A day later, the auto shop told him that the stereo had been installed, and he could pick up the car.
Elated, happy, and on a roll, Walter drove his old, white Citroën south for about forty miles and turned into the used-car lot. The mechanics let him sit on the red velvet cloth of the front seat. He inserted a cassette into the player and briefly reveled in the full, clear sound that came from the system. The owner counted the cash and shook his head. He had never experienced anything comparable to this deal. Walter arranged that he could leave the white car until later or until they were able to sell it. He slowly seated himself again behind the large steering wheel of the Avant, turned on the engine and listened to the sound of the simple, large engine. It looked and resonated like a boat’s motor humming away.
Walter stepped on the clutch pedal and carefully moved into reverse gear to back out of its position on the lot and drive onto the street. Everything worked as it should have. When he left town behind, he increased the speed somewhat to feel the vehicle move under him. Then he turned on the music and went to heaven—until he arrived in Hohenhausen and saw Hilde’s blue Citroën across the street in her usual parking spot.
“What did you do?” she said. “Oh my god, you are crazy. Bring it back return the money! How will you ever be able to pay for it? This is beyond belief.”