Authors: Rudy Wiebe
Come Back (8 page)
DAILY PLANNER
1984:
July Thursday 26
Frankfurt leaning on hotel balcony. And below me, there’s Denn’s blond head! In lobby Mom, Dad, Denn Colin & parents, then Ailsa
Then Ailsa.
They had so sensibly planned everything, coordinated the city, the day, the hotel, the day trips—Europe for Joan was art, art—Yo and Hal and Dennis would arrive in Frankfurt by rental car from Vienna, Grant and Joan and their two children by air from Edmonton, Gabriel by train after a day sightseeing in Amsterdam. And within an hour of the planned 15:00 everyone was there, Hotel Stein across from the Frankfurt train station; everyone except Gabriel. They waited in the hotel lobby, waited on the
Allee
jammed with travellers flooding around the enormous
Hauptbahnhof
. Finally they left a message at the desk and went to their rooms to clean up for dinner, and Denn went out on their balcony to watch the people swirling over the
Platz
and suddenly a familiar voice shouted his name from above. Gabriel! Leaning down over a higher balcony railing. Already there the night before! And so all was—should have been—well, the two families together as they were so often in Edmonton—but without Miriam’s quick laugh calming everything—in a strange city surrounded by crowds of strangers, but easy, Hal thoughtlessly thought then, good home friends and easy, let Denn and Colin natter—
—“then Ailsa.” Gabriel printed the words with blue ballpoint in his University of Alberta Planner 1984. After their loud dinner already filled with travel adventure (inevitable toilet?) stories—none from Gabriel, going back up to his Frankfurt hotel room alone for the second night; but then Denn moved in with him.
DAILY PLANNER
1984:
July Friday 27
Frankfurt saw Roman ruins, Drei Roemer, the ugly gaps still left from WWII.
A: Are you really going to stay away for a whole year?
G: I probably won’t be able to stand it.
A: Good (quietly)
G: What?
A looking down, smiles. Scotland in her name. The great rock, “craig,” in the sea off Ayr is called Ailsa. Joan told me, laughing like she does, they had so little contact with their Scottish relatives they at least gave their kids Scottish names.
Dinner after Goethe Haus—pasta, A beside me. She found my hand on my leg.
July Saturday 28
Drive early, Dad & Grant & boys to Marburg, his old Uni, and Mom, Joan, Ailsa & me to Mainz. The Chagall windows in St. Stephan, still rebuilding it from the war (40 years), a blue shimmer over the chancel. Joan entranced. But A whispers: “Why are you mean to me?” I couldn’t answer. Evening, walk streets alone, too many others.
And same-day notes in the third tan notebook: unlimited space, for whatever he felt, and could write:
SPIRAL NOTEBOOK
(3):
July 28, 1984
I feel so terrible. Walking the Rheinufer/Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Ailsa showed clearly she likes me, all I
ever wanted. And I couldn’t talk to her. Felt like I was chained shut. She doesn’t /nobody/ knows how much I care
| Hope : | feeling expectation and desire |
| | a person or thing giving cause for this |
Give me your hand again, anywhere, I’ll kiss every one of your thin fingers
why can’t we be alone no people no church no age just all I ever wanted have mercy please one dream growing three years—can it already be three? so long so young please forgive me for
DAILY PLANNER
1984:
July Sunday 29
Heidelberg, after Castle hiked over bridge & Philosophenweg for view. A tries to put her arm in mine. “Are you mad at me?” Meal (pasta again) in Altstadt, sit beside her. Her hand again. “A year away, you’ll forget me.” Walking to cars we find a girl (dope, valium?) curled on street cobblestones. Scary and sad, we all just let her be. I drive our rental back to Frkfrt, A in back like always with kibitzing boys, no touch possible. But we have held hands twice.
SPIRAL NOTEBOOK
(3):
July 29, 1984
Ailsa Helen: born May 19, 1971
- Gaellic/Scot./English, Elsbeth/
Elizabeth: consecrated to God
- Greek/Helen: light, a torch—a flame, yes
loves pasta perogies ice cream
burns the outside of hot dogs before eating them
hates garlic swimming pools has great marks in art not phys. ed.
Dear Ailsa, Dearest Helen,
Consecrated, dedicated to all that is light and beautiful, flame of my being. Forgive me for acting so cool, for almost seeming mean/mad. It is absolutely not that this is really the case—just that my feelings are so strong I feel very awkward and apprehensive with both our families always so close around. Your pretty thin fingers, your lovely eyes are all that is beautiful in the world. Your affection for me is beyond dream. Forgive me if I at times seem standoffish, really that’s NOT what I mean, I care for you so deeply and do not want to hurt you ever, in any way. Hopefully the future will be better for us.
With all my hope, my love, Gabriel Thomas Wiens
DAILY PLANNER
1984:
July Monday 30
(W Germany–France–W. Germany) Had to leave Frkft.—but with great hope—they’re driving to Paris. Parents, Denn, I drove to Alb. Schweitzer town Kayserberg, Fr. Good to concentrate on traffic, crowded Autobahn. Night in Freiburg Ger. hotel, ate pasta in memory now more than dream!
July Tuesday 31
Climbed Freiburg huge gothic spire, Denn hung out waving, scared Mom. Drove through Black Forest.
Round hills, bent roads. Crazy laughs with Denn.
Lonely
August Wednesday 1
Dostoevsky plaque at Baden-Baden, baths sulphur, high castle ruins, mountains and forest. He never got over being a gambler, but wrote—dare to be a gambler!
August Thursday 2
(W. Germany–France) lv. alone again, Strasbourg tr. station, lots of strangers, evening 8:00: this, all this that we love within us … the dried up riverbeds of ancient mothers, the whole silent landscape under the clear heavens—all this, my dearest girl, preceded you (Rilke)
August Friday 3
Nice, arrive 8 in the morning small “Terror in Nice” got it stopped walking, to Albert Hotel and there was Fred, as planned quiet Karen O is with him
Fred:
Deo gratias
for that year at Winnipeg College where Gabe met young people from all over Canada—so why didn’t he meet a Karen too? He must have, there were dozens.
August Sunday 5
(France–Italia) Chagall Museum, Nice: whole Old Testament floats for him, in blue, stunning. But the thick erect snake and Eve with red apple, Adam groping. O Joan mother mother. All 3 of us on evening train to Milano
SPIRAL NOTEBOOK
(3):
August 7, 1984
Dearest Ailsa,
I’m in Italia sitting on a rock embankment in the resort town of Desenzano overlooking the lake called Lago di Garda. It took an hour and a half by train to get here from Milano. It is 10:30 in the morning and the big French boys who were playing in the water near me, making the usual beach sounds, have rented paddleboats and are disappearing into the hazy lake.
Since I cannot remember your family’s art itinerary, I can’t place at this moment, August 7, 10:40 am, your whereabouts. (Oh Ailsa, I do care, very much. Back in Edmonton, if I hadn’t had the opportunity to see you for a while, I would drive past your house to see if your bedroom light was on or off.) Here the only closeness I can get, so much feebler, is by my meals. I’ve eaten lasagna 3 times already, in memory of you and your hands and Chagall blue. I saw an enormous museum of his paintings in Nice, and every painting had something of you and blue in it.
I would never deliberately be mean to you. There are times, like in Mainz, when I’ve seen your sensitive soul, at least I think I have. I would so much love to know more about what goes on behind those green eyes.
Please, forgive me when I acted foolishly those few days we had in Germany. I have nothing but tender feelings towards you, Ailsa, it’s that I felt extremely awkward near you so long and together with our
parents and our always joking brothers; which is why I want to be alone with you, and we never have been, or were walking then, so I never felt I could explain what I am trying to do making this trip. You said so quietly in Frankfurt, “Good,” when I confessed I probably couldn’t stay away for a year. And believe me, I felt so good then, too.
Now I took a walk, got some things to eat at the market here, there are hundreds of sellers. And the thought struck me: I don’t really want to be here, at this dull, supposed to be beautiful! lake—and it is, I can see that—in the middle of north Italy. But I am, far away from you, here, searching to try and say what is on my mind, but I don’t really know where I could stand with you, or what I could explain. To show my feelings I tried to arrange some verses from the Song of Solomon that I was reading in Nice August 3, 4, in the Holy Bible (with pictures by Chagall too). I admit I’ve walked the streets of Nice and Milano trying to find you. Once in a while I found someone with eyes like yours, or very young with lovely shoulders, but of course they were never you. And those girls didn’t care about me, or even noticed I was alive in front of them.
Yet, there are some places I want to see here in Europe. I must say that I will be back by at least Christmas, most likely a lot sooner.
But then what! This question was already on my mind on the street in Heidelberg, the night of the unconscious valium (?) girl. I was in a state of melancholia because I knew those few seconds walking
beside you were going to pass, so fast, everything goes. Your affection and goodness … there, in Germany, I had the opportunity to show you how I care for you, and because I’m so shy and feel so awkward in front of the others, because I (stupidly) keep thinking ahead to when we won’t be together, I couldn’t show you. Only hide my worry, think ahead and worry. Isn’t that foolish?
So this letter is a declaration to you, a sensitive, beautiful and very young lady.
I love you, Ailsa Helen, birthday Wednesday May 19, 1971. How I long for you to be here, to talk with me. Please write me so I know you exist.
Even now, in this letter, I cannot express the feelings and thoughts … there is so much we could say, but never do, and so much we shouldn’t say but barely do. Here I don’t know if I can even try to mail this letter.