He was part of my dream, of course--but then I was part of his dream, too. Eternities of darkness... As the sun strikes the Bavarian Alps, it erases the last of the morning's blue shadows from Elaine's raven hair. Rebounding from the windowpanes of Kehlstein House behind us, its rays spark amethyst in her eyes and copper on her lips. She watches in silence as the lakes and chasms below come alive, one by one surrendering their phantom cloaks to the cleansing onslaught of light. The cobalt blue waters reflect the white-capped majesty of Zugspitze, the highest peak in all of Germany, and miniature copies of us perched on the summit of Zugspitze's neighbor, Kehlstein. On the slopes, a thousand shades of that singular ignoble color, rock, are born. The salt mines in the Salzbergwerk valley reveal their hoards like bright diamonds, a scattering of brisance against the rock. Elaine's eyes take it all in--while I watch her. "Elaine," I begin. "Go away. I don't want you here." She doesn't look away from the magnificent view. "Then why do you summon me?" The question is rhetorical, and she doesn't bother to answer. We've had this discussion before. Long moments pass. Daybreak widens to a searing seam. In its pure intensity, I find the courage to try again. "Elaine--" "Quiet!" she all but screams. "Can't you just enjoy the sunrise?" Then, as if to compensate for scolding me, she plays, as always, the tour guide, pointing out sights on the horizon. "Hitler, Goering, and Borman all maintained chalets here. Once they were connected by a network of underground tunnels and bunkers, but very little remains today. Only Hitler's Eagle's Nest remains intact." Her face echoes another place and time as she speaks of these things, for the moment clean of the emotions with which she continually wrestles. It's always this way, the magic of the tourist sights occupying her completely. I've never determined whether she's actually visited these places to which she brings me or merely dreamed of them, but I choose to believe the former. The details are too exact to be a fantasy. She knows the places we visit. "It's easy to see why Hitler built here," she adds. "The view alone is worth what it must have cost him to bring the materials so high." I wonder if she includes in that figure the cost in human lives. From here, it's easy to see Munich and the town of Dachau with its infamous concentration camp--Nazi Germany's first. I've no idea how many perished in its shower-disguised gas chambers, how many souls were consumed in its belching crematorium. But then, I don't know how I know any of these things. I don't know who I am. Or even where I am when she does not dream of me. Memories to me are deja vú hauntings in the back of my mind, nagging premonitions and wraith-like suppositions. Like now: a little Carmelite convent outside Dachau; continual prayers for Dachau's victims; the lighting of a single blood red candle before an altar. These things are a mystery to me, as unfamiliar, yet proper, as the face that I wear, as the role I've come to play in Elaine's dreams. Tentatively, I touch the bare slope of her arm. Before she slips out of reach, I see her tremble. A pale rose climbs her throat, and her breath catches. As for me, the contact of my fingertips on her flesh brings on such a feeling of gestalt that, when broken, it momentarily occludes the rising sun. "From here you can even see der Führer's native Austria," Elaine continues, fighting to ignore my advance. "In that direction, on a clear morning, I bet you can see Ludwig's castle." I can see it in my mind: the Castle of Neuschwanstein rising above a forest near Füssen, the castle that earned King Ludwig II the title of Mad Ludwig for its extravagance, easily the inspiration for every Disney castle since Sleeping Beauty. But I've never been there . . . Have I? Yet I know about Ludwig, can see him clearly in my mind as if we were friends in a past life (dream?). I know that he committed suicide, drowning himself just days after they officially declared him mad and Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck drew Bavaria into the German Empire. Does Elaine create me complete with these memories? Do I know these things only because she has given them to me? Or is there an innate source for my nebulous past? Eyes glowing, she turns from the spectacular view to face the Eagle's Nest, now a restaurant which the Germans insist be called Kehlstein House. The building looks to me as if it's hiding against the landscape, as if it's ashamed of its place in history, its granite blocks as cold as the grey dawn, as cold as the compound in Dachau. "I'm going in," Elaine declares. "I think I'll have a gebirgler frühschoppen." "A what?" "A mountaineer's morning pint," she answers, "the traditional drink of Berchtesgaden. I think I'll have a sausage with it: Weisswurst, Stadtwurst, Bratwurst, Blutwurst perhaps. I'm sure they have all of those and more." The thought of Bavarian sausage and beer makes me want to be sick. "Sounds wonderful. I'll go with you." "No." "Elaine, we can't continue like this. Whatever it is you think I've done, I can fix it. You know that I love you. You've just got to tell me--" "You don't know what love is. And there's nothing you can say, nothing you can do, to fix this." She doesn't retreat as I reach for her and, though I recognize the cruel set of her eyes, I offer no defense. It's a scene we've played more than once, in Paris, in Yellowstone, in Caracas, Jerusalem, Australia, and Palermo . . . wherever her dreams have taken us. Placing her delicate hand against my chest, she shoves me back . . . over the railing. I see her face as I fall, deathly pale, eyes like dark pools, paladins to secret fears and desires. The set of her seductive mouth speaks of regret and satisfaction, a contradictory combination that would be indecipherable if I hadn't seen it so many times before. She loves me. She loves me not. Arms flailing, I fall into the thin air's chill embrace... |
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