On and on she went. Walter felt uncomfortable having to encounter this side of Hilde to spoil his fun, but he looked at her and realized that she had transformed into a stranger with a distorted face. The couple had not seen each other since the party, which had not turned out well.
Hilde also said, “I thought you were in the hospital and receiving help—why are you not?”
Walter left the house and went for a walk alone; Fritzi had been taken to Neudorfer Hof. Hilde was gone when Walter returned. He did not mind; instead, he made himself a pipe with hemp tobacco and went through the mail on his desk. There he located the letter from Karin, who lived near Trier in southern Germany. He also saw the magazine page with the Zurich folk festival information.
Walter began to prepare for a long trip. The Avant trunk was almost full with items that included the sound mixer, two guitars, and his sheep-wool comforter. He also loaded the glove department with his favorite cassettes of music. Certainly, Walter did not forget the significantly reduced bag of hemp tobacco and the envelope with leftover LSD.
Not too early in the morning of the next day, he left the farm, Hohenhausen, and essentially his life as he had known it behind. Via the main road to Bransfeld and onto the Autobahn in a northern direction, he accelerated the antique, black monster to the customary 140 kilometers per hour. He listened to the engine but heard no suspicious sounds. Walter concentrated on the road handling and checked if the steering wheel shook slightly, but it did not. It started to rain, occasionally heavily. The windshield wipers were not up to speed but managed the downpours.
Just as he passed the Autobahn exits to Hannover, he suddenly heard a bursting noise, and then the entire carriage shook and rattled. He quickly turned onto the emergency lane. When he exited the car and went around to the right side, he saw the reason for the tumult: a flat tire.
Something he had learned over the years— have always a large wheel wrench in the car—helped him solve the issue. Wet and breathless, he continued the trip without further interruptions until he reached the port city of Kiel late in the evening. He found a perfect parking space near the harbor area from where the ferry to Langeland left. The first night in his new beloved possession, Walter spent on the red backseat, where he could almost stretch out completely. Covered by the sheep-wool comforter, he slept in exhaustion.
When the early traffic noise and blowing horns of ships awakened him, he knew immediately where he was camped out and what he had to do. Walter put his bed cover back in the trunk of his marvel, seated himself behind the wheel, and turned the small key. Nothing.
No clicking sound, no movement whatsoever. He tried the little he knew, but the engine did not start. Scanning the area, he noticed two large men cleaning the parking lot where he had camped out. Walter approached them to ask for help pushing the vehicle, and they agreed. Within a few yards, the engine picked up and hummed comfortingly.
Walter drove to the ferry station house and bought a ticket for him and the vehicle, with the engine still running. He made sure to move the car into the proper lane for departure some hours later. Then he turned the engine off and searched for a place to have breakfast.
Langeland, a small Danish island located between the Great Belt and Bay of Kiel, had always been a three-hour ferry ride away. The ship that Walter and his Avant boarded arrived before noon in Bagenkop. The sun burned away the cloud layer that had hovered over the area. It felt fresh and warm as he carefully pulled up the ramp onto Danish soil. To his pleasant surprise, the starter worked on the first attempt. At the tourist information pavilion, where they also exchanged money, he noticed that the generator light on the dashboard did not fade out.
Driving along narrow roads, sometimes by the side of the sea, between marshlands, waterways, medieval churches and chapels, Stone Age settlements, and evidence of Vikings’ old burial mounds, Walter did not worry about mechanical or other issues. The windows rolled down, he breathed the brackish smelling sea air and enjoyed small houses, which reminded him of Tolkien’s fantasy story The Hobbit. Occasionally asking for directions, he eventually arrived at a rather large one-story building, in part encircled by an expansive atrium and some utility structures. There was no answer when he knocked at the front door. He went around the building, assuming that someone would be in the garden and was right. Walter saw Lisa with her long, black, curly hair and a little child sitting next to her between some plants.
He approached the salad area of the garden and said, “Hi, Lisa. How are you?”
She came up from her bent-over position and smiled. “Welcome back, Walter. There you are. So happy to see you. How was your trip?”
He said, “Why don’t you have a look at it,” pointing toward the other side of the building.
“Let me first introduce to you the others. They are all over the area here.”
She yelled, “Hey guys, come here, look who is here.”
Suddenly, six people, four of them children, surrounded the visitor and Lisa, who introduced Walter to everybody. She also mentioned that Lars and the other men worked at different places and would come home later. Then the whole group went together into the courtyard, and Walter heard “oohs” and “aahs” from the crowd. They all packed into the Avant, giggling and laughing aloud.
Lisa managed to charm the crowd away from the vehicle and walked with Walter through the hallway into the huge kitchen with the very long table. Right behind the entrance door on the left side, she showed Walter a space that would be his room: a cubicle-like, narrow space with a window on one side and the door on the other. The width of the stall did not extend much more than the door’s width plus a wooden separation wall. A sleeping berth had been attached to the wall. Lisa mentioned that currently they had a couple of friends visiting who stayed in the other available rooms. Six adults and four children lived on the farm.
Late in the afternoon, the whole team arrived home. Someone started cooking, and Walter helped cut vegetables. At the extra-long, wooden table with the whole crew present, Walter noticed how serious and resolute some of the members appeared to be. They talked Danish, which he did not understand, and anyone who addressed him had to use English because nobody spoke German. Walter also noticed that Lisa’s husband, Lars, had not displayed the same favorable reception and openness he had during the earlier visit, with Hilde. Meanwhile, Lars and Lisa had married, and with their second child on its way, the project of living in the local community had turned into a reality.
Walter had truthfully told anybody who wanted to know about him that he had arrived with little money but wanted to help wherever he could. After dinner, almost all rolled their own cigarettes. Tobacco products and alcohol had always been expensive in Denmark. Hence, he was pleasantly surprised when someone offered him his pouch.
There were a few parties in the house and after a few drinks, his presence on the farm and on Langeland did not stick out so much anymore. Walter appreciated any party because it would allow him to play and sing some of his songs and smoke cigarettes and an occasional joint. He had to use his own stash very economically because he could not afford to buy anything. The last money he spent had been for a mechanic, who fixed the starter but pointed out that Walter might need a new generator, which he could not pay for.
A pleasurable event for Walter occurred when he invited the visiting couple from the USA to take a ride with him and listen to music on the stereo. They smoked a joint of very nice hash, mixed with tobacco, and took a cold bottle of wine along in the car. Walter, sitting at the wheel, inserted a Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young cassette while the passengers took their seats in the back of the car. All windows down, he slowly chauffeured the large black car through the dark landscape of the midsummer night. An occasional appearance of the full moon from behind the clouds provided a full view of the sea. When they reached a spot where the road ended, Walter turned off the engine, and all three listened to the music while watching the spectacle of nature. After the cassette ended, they observed in silence and later went back to the ranch.
The couple with Walter declared, “We shall always remember this beautiful ride with you. Thank you very much.”
Lisa maintained a considerate attitude toward Walter. However, he realized that even between her and him was a lingering separation. He offered his help in the garden and in the house and kitchen, but besides occasional dish washing, nobody seemed to have use for him. During the next weekend party, he took one of his remaining few LSD dots and went back to the source of all that occurred. As an outlandish misfit visitor, observing the spectacle of alternative Danish provincial behavior between relatively young adults, he saw his isolation more clearly than ever. That night, he stopped trying to be of value to any of his hosts and instead began his personal discovery of the neighborhood.
With the Avant almost out of gasoline, Walter used one of the bicycles on the farm. He drove and walked through the most beautiful small settlements he had ever seen. The clear sunlight of these days emphasized the loveliness of cottage-style, cultivated dwellings with roofs thatched with reed. Most of them displayed small strips of flower gardens at the front and sides and a larger vegetable garden in the back. Doors and window shutters had been freshly painted with green, blue, yellow, and red. Large trees rose between the few houses, as well as on both sides of the roads.
During one of his daily trips through the hamlets, Walter realized he never saw a human being while he was there. He stopped in front of a house that he especially liked because of its pleasant energy, went to the entrance, and pressed the door handle. The door opened, and Walter called, “Hello, hello,” but nobody replied. He stepped inside and wandered through the house without knowing why he did it, except he simply loved everything about the house’s exterior and interior. He studied framed pictures and little semiprecious stones or delicate table lamps, sometimes rearranging the position of an item, and then came to the kitchen. He noticed a heap of dirty dishes and washed them, dried them with a towel, and placed them neatly on top of the kitchen sink. Then he left the house and roamed some more through a wooded area until hunger made him return to the farmhouse to eat some bread with butter and cheese.
At night, he could not fall asleep because of too much energy. Walter went into the large laundry and bathroom area where someone had created a small paddling pool out of painted concrete for the kids. He cleaned the whole space inch by inch with a lot of water, using a hose. After he finished the job, he had the feeling he had done the commune a favor. It gave him the sense of being helpful in some way, and he felt as if he had cleaned himself.
Nobody ever said anything to him about his activities. The continuous summer weather delivered wonderful days, during which he could go to the sea, swim a little, or lie on the narrow beach. In the house, he faced a society of involved couples. When sometimes a blonde and blue-eyed Viking woman appeared for a visit and Walter attempted to demonstrate his interest, she soon let him know that somebody else waited for her elsewhere.
He held on to his daily routine, walking or driving the bicycle, discovering new gems of houses. One day he again entered a beautiful house he would have liked very much for himself. A few dishes waited to be cleaned. Just as he finished them, he noticed through the window someone approaching the house. The door opened, and a man stood in the doorway, looking at him speechless.
“Do not worry, I did not take anything. I only cleaned the dishes, and I do apologize for entering your house,” Walter said and walked by the stunned man.
Within the week, Lars told him to leave. They gave Walter some money for gasoline and ferry and told him to hit the road. Lisa attempted to talk with him but became overwhelmed with emotion. “How could you do such a thing, breaking into other people’s homes?”
Since Walter did not know why he did anything recently and did not break in anywhere, he gratefully accepted the money and departed.
He succeeded in making it back to Germany. As he entered the Autobahn in Kiel and, he heard the engine revving up without transmitting any power to the transmission. Playing around with the tempo, Walter realized that something was wrong with the clutch, intermittently transmitting force and then sliding without doing so. This added another mechanical issue to his antique vehicle. During the trip south, Walter tried saving every penny he had from his friends in Langeland. He did not stop before Hannover to refuel and use a restroom at the gas station. The generator light came on and then went off again, the clutch did not provide full transmission power, he was hungry, and he had another three hundred kilometers to drive before reaching Hohenhausen.
Handling the Avant now felt more like hard labor combined with tension than like a thrill ride. Several times during the trip, Walter thought that the journey had ended. Especially when he reached the mountainous stretch of the Autobahn south of Kassel, about a hundred kilometers north of his exit, it appeared as if the automobile would not make it up the hills.
Physically and mentally strained to the limit, he arrived in Hohenhausen in the middle of the night. The house was empty. He found breadcrumbs in a bin. Searching for something edible, he discovered oatmeal, pickles, and some cans of sardines and corned beef.
Walter also noticed a half-full bottle of red wine, which he knocked back while puffing on a hemp tobacco pipe. When he went upstairs into his room, he saw a stack of envelopes on his desk. Glancing at them, Walter recognized bills and a reminder from the bank to start paying back the loan. Lonely, tired, miserable, he fell asleep to wake again early in the morning.
His first thought had to do with Germersheim in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and Zurich, Switzerland. Karin’s letter showed an address in Germersheim, but no phone number. Walter did not feel as if he could wait for an answer from Karin by mail. He decided to leave the house as soon as possible, before anybody else could interfere with his plan. He dressed quickly in his usual travel outfit—the cotton jacket in light yellow, blue, and white stripes with many pockets and his faded jeans. The vehicle stood where he had left it. All the stuff from his previous trip filled the trunk. He only needed to turn the key and hope the starter would work.
Luckily, it did work. Walter found himself on the road again when he decided to pop his second-to-last LSD hit. Since he had nothing to drink, he let it dissolve on his tongue. Within thirty minutes, Walter entered the world of here and now. There were no issues or feelings of misery, pure chemically induced presence with acute focus. He did not suffer any hunger either, which enabled him to drive farther south on the Autobahn.
Walter outsmarted the disabled starter at an Autobahn service station by asking people to push his car. With a lot of skill and patience, he doctored the malfunctioning clutch in situations where he needed it most. The dead generator he outsmarted by obtaining a used battery from another service station. All of it in twenty-four hours without sleep or food. Then, in the early morning hours, he rolled into Germersheim and found a parking spot next to what appeared to be a recreational park near the River Rhein, somewhat outside of town. Walter pulled the bed cover out of the trunk and rolled himself up on the rear seat, where he fell asleep instantly.
The sleep did not last long because of persistent knocking on the window above his head. With sleepy eyes but immediately wide awake, not sure what was going on, he noticed one person staring down at him and another standing in the background.
“Hey, what are you doing? Do you need any help? Can we do something for you?” Seedy questions from a very seedy character directed at him.
He opened the window a bit and told the guy with wild eyes and a gold chain around his neck, “I am tired, please leave me alone. Thanks.”
Reluctantly, the two sinister types strolled away, sometimes looking back at the car. Walter knew he had to be careful with them. He heard his stomach growl and felt a sharp sensation of hunger. It made him move into a sitting position, look out the windows, and consider his options. He knew the car would not move an inch without starter and electricity, as well as a clutch, which needed repair. The longer he considered, the hungrier he felt. It drove him out of the Avant, which he locked with his key, and then walked toward town. Not many people roamed the streets at that time.
He took the first opportunity to ask a young man if he knew where the welfare office was. The man did not. It took two more attempts before Walter knew where he had to go. The office had not yet opened for the day. When it finally did, Walter explained to an agent that he had no money and needed something to eat. He filled out a form, signed it, and received about four dollars in cash. They also told him he could find an unemployment office nearby. First, however, Walter went into the next open bakery and coffee shop to buy a cup of coffee and a doughnut with the money. After the purchase, he had no more.
This experience was Walter’s first encounter with hunger devoid of satisfaction, and he did not like it. Quite the opposite, it created a force in him that affected his brain more than anything else he’d ever encountered. Concentrating on one issue, he quickly went to the unemployment office, where they could not help him with cash but gave vague advice: in the harbor area, he might find a day-labor job. When Walter walked to the exit of the German unemployment office, he noticed that the American forces also had an office in the same building. There he unsuccessfully asked for work as well. He even tried to apply for refuge in the USA, but they did not take him seriously and sent him away.
After these efforts, the hunger returned. Walter had an idea. He walked for twenty minutes back to the car to get the twelve-string guitar. In the car, he smoked the last bits and pieces of the previous summer’s hemp harvest, which gave him a little lift. As he walked back to town, he noticed a water tap sticking out of a house wall, which worked when he turned it on. He put his head underneath the cool running water and drank a few gulps. As he continued walking with his dripping wet hair, a car in the familiar colors of green and white with a blue bulb on the roof stopped next to him.
“What are you doing here, and where are you going?” said a cop from inside the patrol car.
Walter explained his intentions, and the cop said, “Sit in the back of the car. We need to check you out.”
Walter got in. They drove to a police station where he had to wait in the general reception room while the officers used his identification for further inspection. When one of them told him to follow him into a room, Walter sat down at a table, where another man in plain clothes already sat.
“We see here that recently you were arrested for attempted car theft. Why are you here now?”
“I bought the car, and I would like to sing some of my songs for the people in Germersheim and perhaps make some money. Why don’t you contact my friend Andreas von Mauler? He is a state secretary in the interior ministry.”
The officers left the room, and after a while, one came back with his ID card and said, “You can go now, but do not beg for money in our town—we shall arrest you.”
Walter could hardly understand what the person told him because all he wanted was food. Swiftly he stepped out of the station and made his way back into the direction they had come from. After two hours, he once again entered the old town and found the square he remembered and felt comfortable with performing in public. The shadows had extended, he did not need to stand in the hot afternoon sun.
By the time Walter was halfway through his first song, he realized how the energy drained out of him as he used his voice. He stopped singing but continued playing guitar. An old woman emerged from an alley on the other side of the square. Painfully slowly, she made her way in his direction. Old age had shrunken her frame. She walked bent over on a cane and tried to stay in the shadow of buildings, but kept aiming steadily toward Walter. When she reached him, she did not look at him directly but placed a couple of coins in his open guitar case. She did not say a word. The only person Walter encountered on that plaza before hunger and thirst ceased his performance.
The next twenty-four hours remained blurry in Walter’s memory. He had no idea what to do and forgot why he came to this town. He remembered some visitors at his base camp in the Avant. With their help, he survived the ensuing occurrences. People realized he needed food, water, anything to maintain his physical condition. Regular pedestrians left a bag of potato chips, half a bottle of water, and some chocolate. The two lowlife characters who had knocked on his window the first morning, however, appeared occasionally, like vultures tracking a dying animal. They left nothing else with Walter except additional concern. He spent most of the time on the backseat and tried to relax.
At noon the next day, by pure force of hunger, he cleaned himself up as well as he could and dressed in his cleanest shirt and pair of faded jeans. Walter made his way into town with only one thought in his brain: “I need food!” As he passed through a narrow street, he noticed an open restaurant serving German food for lunch. Instinctively, he went inside, walked through the busy dining area, and sat at a table. The table had been prepared with white cloth and silverware. When the waiter approached him, Walter asked for the menu. The room contained a bar on one side and large windows overlooking the street on the other. About five tables were occupied, as was the bar area. Walter studied the menu carefully in front of him and selected the pork escalope with French fries and salad. He added a large glass of draft beer to drink.
The waiter left with his order and returned shortly with the beer. Walter drank gratefully from the glass and almost emptied it with one gulp. Some people looked at him and smiled. When the entrée arrived and the waiter placed it onto the table, Walter made sure to cut the meat in small pieces and took only one French fry at a time. He gobbled from the salad occasionally in small quantities. Walter made sure to get the most out of it. When he finished the last fragment of food, he emptied the glass of beer. The waiter came back, asked whether he wanted anything else, and when Walter said “No thanks,” placed the bill on the table.
Walter said, “Excuse me. I need to tell you something. I do not have any money. Please ask the owner if I can work for what I consumed, clean the dishes or something. He can also call the police—I do not care.”
Within two minutes, a man arrived at the table, looking very angry, and said, “Get out of here!” while pointing with his extended arm toward the door. The man quickly went back to behind the bar.
Walter got up and walked to the exit. When he moved through the thick curtain that covered the exit in a half circle, he noticed movement in his peripheral vision. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the man who had told him to leave. The guy had a long kitchen knife in his hand and wild eyes and was advancing toward him. Walter quickly pushed the door open and jumped down the two steps into the lane. It might have saved his life. As he jumped, he could feel the air pressure on his back, generated by the power of the upward stab of the knife.
Unsteady on his legs because of the additional adrenaline rush, but appreciating the feeling in his stomach, Walter made his way back to the car. As he came closer to the parking spot, he noticed from a distance that the trunk door stood somewhat ajar; he did not remember leaving it open that way. When Walter looked inside the trunk, he saw to his dismay that the guitar and the sound mixer had been taken; at the same time, he knew who had done it.
Once again, he went back to town, this time negotiating his way to the police station where the cops had taken him before. He filed a police report in writing regarding the missing valuables from his car, describing the people he knew took the goods. Then he returned to his camp. During this time, Walter had been overwhelmed by extreme paranoia. While his hunger was relieved briefly, he became aware of the perils in this place but had no idea what else to do. He forgot the option to ask for help. Walter may not have known whom to ask. Instead, he used his last dried chemical blob.
Throughout the night, Walter experienced the space without fear and perceived himself disconnected from anything he had known before. At one point in the trip, he remembered his daughter, Magda, and then he rested his head against the closed car window and all of a sudden shouted from deep within, “Magda, Magda, Magda!”
Two police officers arrived very early in the morning as the drug subsided and asked him to get into the patrol car. Responsively, Walter left the black monster. He had just gone through a stage of thinking about the festival in Zurich, wondering if he would ever get there in time. He thought the police investigation had been successful, and they had finally found out who he was. They picked him up to give him a lift to Zurich, where he would be able to sing in front of a large crowd. Excitedly, he seated himself in the back of the patrol car but did not talk to the officers, who did not talk to him. As the vehicle proceeded onto the Autobahn first and then continued on a federal highway, he was assured that the trip would end in Zurich.
Only when the police vehicle stopped after about an hour in front of a building with certain characteristics did he begin to doubt that he would ever reach Zurich on this journey. Large glass doors opened into a wide hall with a reception area. Elevators were on one side, and people in white coats were walking around. A particular, familiar smell of cleaning solutions dissolved Walter’s final hope into reality.
Only after a week could he accept it. Initially, he was very thankful for the thinly sliced pieces of bread with processed cheese and cold cuts and watered-down peppermint tea. He also accepted the all-numbing drugs they gave him.
Quickly he reduced their quantity by saving them under his tongue and spitting them out again. These drugs blocked thought, emotion, and basic human conduct. When Walter discovered a weekly attendance list for a Sunday church service, he put his name down, and they allowed him to leave the station to go to a nearby chapel on the hospital premises. He sat between fellow locked-in beings and took the song-book in front of him while the organ reverberated. For the first time since his confirmation, he wholeheartedly sang a religious hymn as the tears streamed down his cheeks. They were triggered by the flood of emotions that arose from profound depth within.