The Story
In a small two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor of a senior-living building in Cleveland, a man named Hans Becker had been talking to his houseplants for sixty years. The houseplants were his furniture. There were nineteen of them. They had names. He lived alone. He ate cereal for dinner because he was the kind of old man who eats cereal for dinner. He had a girlfriend named Marie. Nobody had ever met Marie. The family had been hearing about Marie for forty-five years. Marie was a doctor in Stuttgart. Marie was a violinist in Vienna. Last Easter, Marie was a ballerina in Hamburg. Hans's nephew Jonas, who was twenty-one then, asked him over potato salad at the family barbecue, Uncle Hans, where exactly does Marie live. Hans said, very calmly, into his potato salad, very far away, Jonas. Very far away. Some women are very far away. The whole family laughed. Hans laughed loudest. He went home that evening and wrote a letter to Marie. He did not mail it. He had not mailed any of them in sixty years.
Every Christmas, Hans came to his sister's house with two presents. One for the family. One for Marie. The Marie present was always wrapped in the same brown paper with the same blue ribbon. Inside the Marie present was always a small bouquet of HYACINTHS — purple ones — Marie's favorite flower, Hans said. Every Christmas, Hans's sister set the Marie present on the small side-table beside the Christmas tree. Every Christmas, Hans took the Marie present home with him in the evening, unwrapped, untouched. The hyacinths went into a small clear glass vase on his bedside table, beside a small framed black-and-white photograph of a young woman with bright eyes and dark hair, taken in 1961. Every Easter, Hans baked Marie a small cake. He saved her a piece. He left it in the refrigerator for a week. Then he ate it himself, slice by slice, after his cereal-dinners. Every Valentine's Day, he sent Jonas a text message. The text message said only — Marie sends her love. Jonas had been receiving it for fifteen years.
In the summer of Jonas's twenty-fourth year, the family had a barbecue in his mother's backyard. Hans came in his usual outfit — faded brown corduroy jacket over a checked button-down, brown trousers, brown leather oxfords scuffed at the toes — and he brought, as he always did, two presents wrapped in the same brown paper with the same blue ribbon. The family present was a tin of shortbread cookies. The Marie present was a small bouquet of purple hyacinths in a glass vase. Jonas's cousin Petra, who was eight, sat beside Hans and asked, Onkel Hans, how come Marie never comes to the barbecue. Hans looked at her eight-year-old face for a long moment. He said, in a voice gentler than the family had ever heard him use, Marie has been very busy this year. Petra said, every year. Hans said, every year. Petra asked, will you ever marry her, Onkel. Hans looked over Petra's shoulder at the maple tree at the back of the yard, and he said very softly, very far away, little one. Some women are very far away. And then he laughed. The whole family laughed. Petra laughed because everyone else was laughing. Hans went home that evening and wrote letter number sixty-three.
Hans died on a Tuesday in September at the age of ninety-one, in the same recliner he had been sitting in for thirty years, with a bowl of cornflakes still on the side table beside him. His sister called Jonas on the morning he was found. She said, Jonas, I cannot do it. I cannot go through his apartment. He was my brother and I do not have the strength. Jonas was twenty-six. He had not yet learned that there are some things in a family that fall to one quiet member, who turns out to be quietly good at them. He took a Friday off work. He drove to the senior-living building. He went up to the fourth floor. He let himself in with the spare key Hans had given him three Christmases ago. Hans had said at the time, this is for when. Jonas had not asked when when. Hans had not explained. Now Jonas knew. The apartment was full of houseplants. They needed water. Jonas watered them. He talked to them while he watered them, the way Hans had. He said, hello, Beethoven. Hello, Schiller. Hello, Goethe. Then he sat in Hans's recliner. He looked at the hyacinths in the small clear vase on the side table, still fresh from the previous week, and he began to cry.
It took Jonas the better part of the Friday afternoon to find the key. It was taped under the recliner. Inside the locked dresser drawer in Hans's bedroom were sixty-five letters. They were arranged in a wood box, oldest at the bottom, most recent at the top. Each one was in its own pale-cream envelope, addressed in careful blue-ink German handwriting to — Marie Becker, 14 Schönhauser Allee, Berlin-Pankow, East Germany. None of them had been mailed. The stamps on the envelopes were East German stamps from 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, the years had advanced — every stamp pristine, never canceled. Every letter dated August thirteenth — the anniversary of the Wall. The most recent letter was dated the August before Hans died — one month, almost to the day. Jonas opened it carefully, the cream paper crackling a little. The letter was, like the others, in German, in Hans's careful handwriting. Jonas could read German. His mother had taught him. He read this one out loud to the empty apartment. The letter said — My Marie. I am sorry I could not cross the Wall to find you. I am sorry I never married, because no one was you. I have held my breath when the phone rings for sixty-five years. The Wall came down thirty-six years ago. I never went. I do not know why I never went. Forgive me. Yours always, your Hans.
Jonas drove home from his Uncle Hans's apartment that Friday with a small wood box on the passenger seat of his car. The box contained sixty-five unopened letters, each in its own cream envelope addressed in careful blue-ink German handwriting to a woman who had been twenty-two years old in 1961 and was now, if she was still alive, eighty-seven. Marie Becker had a forty-percent chance of being alive, Jonas thought. He had calculated it on the drive home. He had taken the German actuarial tables from the senior-living building's office because Hans had kept them. Hans had clearly checked. Hans had not gone. Jonas booked a flight for Saturday morning. Direct, Cleveland to Berlin, with the box in his carry-on bag. He did not pack much else. He wore his Onkel Hans's faded brown corduroy jacket over the checked button-down he had bought to look a little bit like him at the Berlin train station. The whole flight, Jonas slept with the wood box on the empty seat beside him, his hand on top of it. The flight attendants noticed. They did not ask. When the plane landed in Berlin on Saturday afternoon, Jonas walked through the long bright glass terminal with the box tucked under his right arm, like a man carrying something his uncle had given him sixty-five years ago. Some women are very far away. Some women a man holds his breath for a whole life. Some men do not have the courage to find them. Some nephews do.
The Lesson
Some people we tease for forty-five years turn out to have been carrying a single quiet weight that whole time. Some men talk to their houseplants because there is no one else left in the room they would have spent their lives with. Some women are very far away. Some courage skips a generation. The brave thing is to find them anyway.