Where You Need to Go

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D. had sensed that the monk would talk to her even before he approached. She couldn’t explain why. The encounter felt inevitable even before it happened, as if she were watching a reel of someone else’s life that she had watched before.

You are new here, the monk said, more a statement than a question. He was a tall man, with long, slender fingers that he held against his stomach. His jowls—beginning to droop slightly with the onset of old age—were peppered with little white hairs in the shadow of a beard. His irises were a bright blue with remarkably deep lines stretching out of their pupils, such that when D. looked directly into them, they appeared like plastic figurines, of the sort one might find in models of the human anatomy in a science classroom. For a moment D. wondered if his eyes were fake, the kind of thing A. studied in a lab where he tested prosthetics for resistance and glide and flexibility. The first time she had met A., which had been on a bus traveling from Oxford into London, he had explained how the average modern-day person was a cyborg to some degree with their reliance on contact lenses, coils, pacemakers, etcetera. Objects could regulate their bodies as much as, or better than, their God-given body parts could, and this was why A. studied what he did; there was a science to the function of all things, and he liked to identify the formulae that made life possible so that more possibilities could be brought to life.

It had been many months since D. had spoken to A., though she tried not to think about this. She was surprised that the monk—was he a monk? She assumed this was what he was, as much from his temperament as the robes he wore, and the black cap fitted snugly over his shaved head—had a high-pitched voice, such that had she been looking in another direction, she could have reasonably believed that the voice belonged to a middle-aged woman rather than an older man.

Why don’t you tell me about yourself, he said to D., as they stood beside a table laden with an assortment of biscuits and tea. He nodded passionately as D. attempted a meagre autobiography, interrupting early on to say, yes, I thought so, you didn’t strike me as German, but what brings you here, are you a Quaker?

D. asked, what is a Quaker? The monk looked at D., his crystalline eyes fixed on hers as if noticing something profound for the first time. Then he finally remarked that it was a funny question to ask, as, at that very moment, they were standing in a Quaker meeting house, having just come out of a Quaker meeting. Indeed, their conversation had been preceded by an hour of total silence, which D. had considered unusual; she had never been in a roomful of silent people before. The monk smiled and said that it was not uncommon for people to stumble into this room and find it was not what they expected. The first time he had walked into the building some thirty years before, he had done so in the company of a British woman he met one winter at a candlelight vigil. She had come to Berlin for a peace program, which met in a large and regal-looking building close to the river Spree, where the monk found himself returning even after the woman eventually went back to London, or was it Birmingham, or some other English city—they were no longer in touch. In the many years since, he would pay attention to the kinds of visitors who came to the meetings in Berlin, and though there were German newcomers all the time, most of the visitors, he noticed, came from abroad.

D. assumed, from the way the monk mulled upon this particular point, that she had been the focus of such observation when she walked into the meeting an hour before. When she asked about this, the monk did not look embarrassed or surprised, but rather amused, as he remarked, of course, and in a way you reminded me of Louise, maybe it is your blond hair. But lots of women have blond hair, D. replied. They do, the monk agreed. Maybe it was the moment you arrived, there was something about it that felt like a moment I had been in before, do you know what I mean? And this D. could understand, because as the monk spoke, she grew aware of the fact that most people had left the room, which was growing quiet save for a vague tapping in the distance, like the sound A. had made as they waited in that sanitized hospital in London.

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*
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The monk’s apartment was on the second floor of a walk-up building in east Berlin. There had once been an elevator, a rickety one with a sliding grill for a door, but it was long out of use and the residents had given up demanding management for its repair. The building residents got by with each other’s generosity, helping heave desks and sofas up the stairs in exchange for homemade cakes or bottles of wine. Despite this, none of them thought to visit each other in their apartments. Possibly it was the physical proximity of their homes that made emotional vulnerability feel dangerous. Or maybe it was a cultural thing, but what would he know?

By the time the monk was recounting this story, he and D. were sat on a long sofa in his living room. Outside, the light was beginning to wane, casting a soft, golden glow on the trees lining the pavement.

I thought you were German, D. said, putting down her mug. The monk laughed, a deep, bellyful laugh, and as he did the black cap slid off the smooth dome of his forehead and towards the crown. I am German, he affirmed, but I am from the beautiful south. Bavaria, do you know it? D. shook her head and the monk pointed at a map hung on the wall beside the sliding doors leading to the balcony, and D. noticed a faint red line drawn around a southeastern cluster of cities. You must know Oktoberfest, the monk said, the Brits—he said the word with a certain forced enthusiasm, as if he had anticipated saying this word for some time—love drinking too, do they not? I am from a small town south of Munich, you would never have heard of it, it was so tiny that I left for university and never went back.

What about your family? D. asked, and the monk cast his eyes towards the map, saying, well, I don’t really have a family, actually, but—he paused and cleared his throat—well, that’s all. He stood up and shuffled to the kitchen to refill the teapot with hot water. While he tinkered in the kitchen, D. walked towards the balcony doors and slid them wide open.

A chill blasted into the room so quickly that, had the sofa not been right behind her, D. would have toppled onto the ground like a leaf caught in a gale. When the monk returned, he glanced at the open doors before looking at D., who sat on the sofa breathing heavily, the cold air billowing through the room in gusts and erasing the pungent scent of incense that had enveloped the space moments before. Cautiously, she returned his gaze. But where she had anticipated anger or dismay was merely intrigue and—was this what it was?—a gentle sadness. The monk said, please excuse me. Then, placing the teapot on the small coffee table that separated them, he put his face in his hands and began to cry.

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*
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A. was stern-faced and broad-shouldered, the kind of man in his late twenties who carried nothing but objects in his pockets on weekend trips. Admiring the straight line of his nose as he looked at the screen announcing the various stops in central London that were approaching, D. had felt the stirring of something wholly unnatural within her stomach, something foreboding but nonetheless exciting, which is why she asked if he wouldn’t like to go for a drink after they got off the bus. A. looked over at her then, his head lolling sideways on his neck in the way a dog might cock its doe-eyed face towards its owner, his thin lips shuffling into a smile.

I’d like that, he said.

Was it so random then, what eventually happened? It was as if A. had boarded the bus in Oxford with the express intention of doing exactly what he did: engage a stranger in an activity that permanently risks binding two people together, however tenuous the link might become with time or lost passion. D. was too dazed to understand the gravity of such an action, to her it was very fresh and exciting; she had not slept with a man for many months. As A.’s animal desire unfolded around her in her apartment, she felt herself become not the subject of her own lived reality but instead some indecipherable moment from her past. Though she tried very hard to remember what this memory was, the information remained a tantalizing mystery that waved its tail beguilingly at her as it ran off into the deep bog of her history, while the heaving, panting creature beside her yapped for her attention in the present.

It wasn’t as if she had no agency over her life, but rather too much of it, D. thought later, in the bathroom, sometime after A. had left. She realized that she did not know where he would’ve gone, whether it was to a party, back to Oxford, or to another woman’s home. Though she had a way of finding out if she had the desire for it, she did not have the obligation. A. had given her his number, after all. He had done so as they lay in bed exchanging uncomplicated stories from each other’s lives; he had talked about his work, complained about some colleague or the other, and explained how his mother had emigrated to England from Germany when she was six years old. Did she consider herself German or English? D. asked, and though A. had told the story with the kind of fluency that only frequent retellings allow, he had paused for a moment, indicating that D.’s question had dammed the flow of such recollections. That’s a good question, he finally remarked. I think she would consider herself more English, though I can’t tell you why. Or actually—his eyes lit up as he placed his hand on D.’s breast, though the gesture was more tender than erotic, as if he was placing a hand on a baby’s head—it makes sense why she would think that. I think humans are more prone to identifying themselves as what they choose to be, not by the circumstances given to them at birth.

D. thought about this as she lathered her body in the shower and prepared herself for bed. She pulled the soiled bedsheet off her mattress and collected a fresh one from the closet, which she fitted along the bed’s corners. Then she nestled under her duvet and fell into a deep sleep, though it was the opposite of dreamless. It was full of animals running across a vast expanse not unlike a savannah. The animals spoke to one another in a common language that was indecipherable to D., though it was amazing how a mysterious language had not only emerged from the limitations of her own mind but logically held together, because if it didn’t then the animals wouldn’t have understood one another as they did in the dream. She had this dream several nights in a row before it eventually tapered off, by which time her liaison with A. took on the diffuse watercolor quality of a dream itself. In that period, neither of them reached out to the other. D. was happy to keep it this way, or rather, she did not feel the ugly feelings that other women in her situation may have had, which became, in their absence, a kind of happiness.

Then D. woke up one morning feeling as if her stomach had collapsed into a steaming knot. Upon arriving in the bathroom, a stream of vomit hurtled from her mouth into the gaping hole of the toilet bowl and floated there, guileless and slick. Oh, she intuited, there is something growing inside me. She thought of A. and felt sick.

That night, she dreamt of the talking animals.

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*
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Looking at the monk as he wiped away his tears, D. asked, in English, have I done something wrong? She did not know how to say this in German, which she regretted. She had arrived in Berlin hoping to gain a new vocabulary for the things she wanted to say and never had a precedent for, like I know we barely know each other but I find myself in a complicated situation, or, maybe it would be best if we discussed this in person.

No, sweetheart, the monk said, I’m fine. The two of them sat still for a while before the monk perked up. Are you hungry? he asked. As if the question had ruptured her body’s fourth wall, a slow growl emerged from her empty stomach, and the monk smiled.

That is that then, he said, we will have Brotzeit. He disappeared into the kitchen again while D. walked out onto the balcony and looked at the apartments on the other side of the street. Lights were beginning to turn on in the little blocky squares signifying windows and homes, and in one of them D. could see a young woman pull her long blond hair into a ponytail whose tips grazed her shoulders.

Where I’m from, we call this Brotzeit, or bread time. The monk’s voice, first a vague murmur in the distance, clarified into resonance as he returned to the living room with a large tray in his hands. On the tray was an assortment of pre-packaged goods: a creamy coleslaw-like dish with strips of pink ham; two kinds of pâté, though D. could not identify what they were made of; baby carrots and sliced radishes; slivers of cheese; several slices of rye bread stacked horizontally on a blue porcelain plate. But that’s the Bavarian way of calling it, the monk continued. Berliners call this Abendbrot, or evening bread.

D. picked up a slice of bread and took a tentative bite. It was dense and grainy, almost bitter. She watched the monk place cheese and a sliver of ham onto his bread and she followed suit, copying the order with which he assembled each mouthful. You can make this however you want, the monk instructed, sounding amused, you don’t have to follow me. Look—he rolled a pickle into a slice of cheese as one would fold tobacco into rolling paper—you could even do this. Then he put the contraption in his mouth, clapped his hands to rid them of crumbs, and stood up to close the balcony doors. D. rolled a pickle into a slice of cheese and ate it; the pickle was sweet, its juices pungent, and she found that the cheese cut through the boisterousness of its flavor. The monk returned to the sofa and assembled another bite, but as he did so he said, keeping his eyes trained on what his fingers were doing, this could be a mad thing, you see, but perhaps you know Louise, or have heard of her.

For a moment D. didn’t say anything, she didn’t know who he was referring to when he said Louise. It was a perfectly ordinary name, practically every other woman seemed to be called Louise in London, there was Louise the barista at the corner coffee shop, Louise the up-and-coming folk singer on Instagram, Louise the neighbor who lived two floors above and carried faux Longchamp bags in a range of primary colors. It was neighbor Louise who had been smoking outside the building when D. came home from the hospital, who had looked her up and down and said, oh honey, it was Louise’s arms in which D. had wept. Just as D. was about to say that she did not know who he was talking about, it dawned upon her where she had heard the name that day. Your Louise?

The monk sighed then laughed then sighed again and said, I suppose, yes, my Louise, Louise the Englishwoman from the winter of ‘93.

D. recalled that A.’s mother was also named Louise, which she knew because A. had a curious way of referring to his mother by her first name, as if she was a stranger who, by manner of pure coincidence, became a substantial rather than incidental figure in his life when he emerged from between her legs. Of the many observations that D. collected, like curiously shaped seashells, from her conversation with A. about the situation in which they had found themselves, this had been among the more clarifying. But she couldn’t say that this particular observation determined the final outcome more than the others. Rather, these observations were all discrete and independent, becoming significant insofar as they formed, along with the other observations, a tableaux of reasons that convinced her enough to decide what she did. In the absence of the realization of what the alternative option would’ve led to, was there any way of finding out what would have been the right thing to do? Is there ever a right way to go about things? Is that what people call the truth?

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*
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D. told A. that the advice she had received was both convoluted and straightforward: the convoluted part involved the options that they had. The straightforward part was how the universal consensus seemed to be that the choice belonged to the woman. As D. spoke, A. listened with his brows furrowed and his gloved hands wrapped around a disposable coffee cup branded with snowflakes and candy canes. It was December, the sun would be setting in an hour and the park would soon be closing. D. assumed that, should the conversation take longer than this, then A. would have suggestions for where they could go. After all they were in Oxford, he had requested they meet where he was, as the weeks leading up to the winter vacation were often the busiest at his lab.

Okay, A. said, his voice measured and calm. Okay. Okay. Okay. He finished what remained in his coffee cup and crushed it in his hands. A line of brown liquid dribbled onto his grey gloves; the cup evidently had not been fully emptied. D. handed him the napkin she had picked up from the café, and he took it hastily from her.

Well then, he said, once he had sorted himself out, what would you like to do?

I don’t know, D. said. A. sat up a little straighter. What would help you decide in that case? In the near distance, a schoolboy kicked a football towards his friend, who missed the pass, and though the ball shot directly at the bench where D. and A. sat, neither of them moved to stop it. As the ball rolled buoyantly past their legs, the rough outline of the schoolboy became clearer as he neared the bench. D. noticed that a large red birthmark dominated the smooth paleness of his right cheek, which creased indignantly as the boy made a face.

Cheeky bastard, A. said. The boy did not hear this remark, but D. did. She asked A. what they should do. A. said, what do you mean? It’s too late to get the ball. D. shook her head, saying, no. About the baby.

A. sighed, a deep, prolonged noise that, as quickly as it had manifested at the level of his lips, feverishly rose to the level of a snarl. What baby? He looked at D. with incredulity stamped across his face. Then he crossed his arms and lay back against the bench as the schoolboys resumed the final rounds of their game. Look, no offence, he said, but we barely know each other. We met on a bus and slept together, just once. We haven’t spoken since, and all of a sudden we have this... situation on our hands. Don’t you think it would be irresponsible to, you know... He waved his hands generically in the air. To allow things to carry on? One of the schoolboys checked his watch and said something indiscernible to the other, who slung the football into the crook of his right elbow. Then they began walking in the direction of the park gates, deep in some juvenile conversation, their shoulders bumping at every second or third step.

Anyways, A. continued, suppose it was up to me. I don’t think it would be a good idea. I don’t know if it’d be fair for, you know, for it.

In the twilight shade, A.’s face became a sketch of what it was in the daylight, haphazard and full of unknown possibility. I thought you said people could become what they choose to be, not by the circumstances given to them at birth. D. was surprised by her own words. A. sighed and ran a hand through his hair, which was thinning along the hairline. He looked very tired or deeply regretful, though it couldn’t be both, his moroseness had a singular and untainted quality to it, as if channeling the pure substance of one emotion.

Did I say that? he said. He sighed again. That’s something my mother used to say. To justify the fact that I grew up without a dad. Did I tell you that? That I grew up without a dad? A. shrugged. I suppose I turned out alright. But how would I know what the alternative would’ve been? There’s no way of knowing. And I suppose it doesn’t matter now.

A. stood up and D. followed. They began walking towards the park gates, where a man wearing a high-vis vest nodded at people, bidding them a good rest of the afternoon. Outside, the two schoolboys bent their heads over one of their phones. They were watching a video. The screen lit up their faces and their expressions appeared unbelievably aged in their sudden pallor.

I hate to be so blunt, but I’m not ready to have a child right now, said A. I can barely get my life together as is. And I would hate to live the rest of my life knowing that somewhere, out there, is a child growing up without me. Do you know what I mean?

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*
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In the winter of 1993, the monk explained, Louise had dropped out of a doctorate in education and signed up for a Berlin-based peace program on a whim. The kind of woman who did not believe in owning much, she arrived in the city with one suitcase and a purple backpack full of things that she intended either to use up or give away. Her informal vow of simplicity was quite Quakerly by nature, though she had not always been a Quaker; she had started attending Quaker meetings the year before she arrived in Berlin, at the suggestion of a friend who was Jewish by birth and agnostic by choice until, one fateful July day, she encountered a remarkable peace during a Quaker silence that could only be described as heaven-sent. After some time, it was God that eventually advised Louise to stop being in school and begin living life where it mattered, or so she liked to say. She quit her doctorate and headed east.

When she and the monk met, she had only been in Berlin for a week. The monk found her very beautiful, though not in an exquisite, unattainable way; rather, there was a homely, approachable quality to her that endeared him, it was what had given him—an awkward man in his late-twenties who had barely grown into himself—the courage to ask her on a date. Louise wore her long, blond hair in two plaits down her back. On her face was an explosion of freckles. The monk fell in love quickly. Every time he closed his eyes, it was Louise he saw: Louise sitting at the vigil with a lit candle held against her chest; Louise at the coffee shop cradling a cup in her hands; Louise sitting with her eyes closed at the meeting house, her hands palm-upwards on her denim-jean lap. When the monk asked her what she thought about in the silence, Louise explained that the point was not to think, but to listen. If he stilled himself enough, a small, quiet voice would arrive in his heart like a naked flame brought into a sanctuary from a harsh wind. The voice will tell you everything you need and want to know, she said, and in not knowing what she really meant, he had no choice but to believe her.

He believed her when she said that she had never been as happy as she was in Berlin; in Berlin she felt whole, as if her entire life had been preparation for this. He believed her when she said that his heart was special, that he would go on to touch the hearts of many others as he had touched hers. But he could not believe her when he said, Louise, I love you very much, and she replied, I love you too, but not enough. It did not make sense; he could not reconcile the way she was convinced that life needed to be lived contingently, with her rigid orientations towards God and what it meant to follow the guidance of her own spirit. He could not believe the relentlessness of his own devotion.

This isn’t my place, Louise said, as the spring turned into the summer, and she would turn away from him after making love. You must understand, I am being called back to England. The monk was dumbfounded by this. Who is calling you? he asked. His heart flared with anger, and the realization of love’s violence struck him mute. Louise—beautiful Louise, her hair plaited against her back, her slender arms crossed against her chest—laughed and said, not without some sorrow in her voice, haven’t you learned, Friedrich? It is not a person who is calling me but that small, quiet voice. And the voice doesn’t always obey the rules of love. Faith and the universe do not function by rules so logically and clearly given. At the end of the day, the mystery of the world is what gives it its all-encompassing power. You cannot run away from what you can never know, even if you try.

In the summer of 1994, Louise dropped out of the peace program and returned to England with a suitcase and a purple backpack. Every Sunday for six months, the monk returned to the Quaker meeting house, though he was not sure why. Then one day, in the silence, the monk heard a voice; it said, heed me. When he returned home, there was a letter on the doorstep. The letter was from Louise, though there was no return address. She wrote that she was back in England. In several months, she would be having a baby. One day, the monk would meet the baby, and she and he would catch up on all the years that they had missed. But until then, she bid him well, and requested that he not try to reach her.

So, the monk said, that’s the story of me and Louise. We met in the winter of 1993. I heard from her last the winter of 1994, then I never heard from her again. Though it was dark in the apartment, he made no moves to turn on the lights. D. watched a sliver of light rush along the ground from an unknown source. It darted across the carpeted floor, the coffee table, her legs on the sofa. Then it dissolved into the darkness.

Friedrich, D. said, I think I know your Louise.

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*
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The facts were thus: that D. and A. went to the clinic on a Tuesday. The procedure lasted just under half an hour. After D. had had some rest, A. hailed a cab and brought D. to her building. D. said she would be alright on her own, he could leave if he wanted, and he said, okay. He rode the cab to the train station and returned to Oxford as D. fell first into neighbor Louise’s arms, then into her bed, where she fell asleep. In the days that followed, A. wrote D. to ask if she was okay. There were moments in which she feared the pain would never end. After three or so months, A. stopped texting, and it was around this time that D. considered uprooting herself and going someplace else. Nine months after her visit to the hospital, D. packed her bags and went to Berlin, though she could not explain why. It was a compulsion. She felt it had to be done.

D. was surprised that the monk was not more surprised by her revelation.

Somehow I felt that this would be the case, he said. Sometimes I get the sense that things happen for a reason. But of course, that’s not true. There are eight billion people in the world and in each person a billion ways of seeing reality. So how many truths does that make in total? A number too large to matter. Within each life is a permutation of all the lives it could have been, but wasn’t. The life that is and must be is the life that appears truest to us when we leave it up to the divine, but the divine does not operate on a reasoning basis.

Amazed by his indifference, D. asked if the monk ever wondered about his son, especially after what had happened to her, that long and lonely day at the hospital, the even longer months that followed. Maintaining the ordinary cadence of his voice, the monk said: of course. Every day of my life I think about that child. But the child, though mine, is also not mine; he has not known me a day of his life.

D. looked into the monk’s eyes and saw A., the fixity of his convictions. She felt her knees shake. She took a deep breath. Please, she said, I want to know that I did the right thing. Perhaps I could’ve kept the child and raised the child without him. But now the child is gone, I’ll never have the child back again, and I’ll never know what that other life could have been.

But you must understand, there is no such thing as “the right thing,” the monk said. Circumstances have a way of building their own sense then unraveling it; and isn’t that life?

There was a child growing inside me once.

The closest thing we have to “the right thing” will always be contingent.

Don’t you understand? D. cried out against her own will. Are you listening to me?

My dear, there is no such thing as total clarity, only contradiction. But there is a way to find comfort in that contradiction. And that begins with doing what we are compelled to do, going where we need to go.

But how? D. sulked. I struggle to know what to believe.

I don’t know if anyone doesn’t.

And even if I did know, I don’t know whether this would remain true at any other moment. Do you know what I mean?

The monk nodded, smiling. I do.

Isn’t it irresponsible just to obey, to obey... whatever you call it—the inner voice? When there are people to whom we are accountable, situations that demand our attention, places that need us there? D. paused. If Louise did not stay with you in Berlin, then don’t you think it would’ve been the right thing for her to let you know your own son?

We could spend the entire evening wondering what could’ve happened had Louise stayed in Berlin. Had I known my child as my own. But in that world you and I would not be here together, sharing Brotzeit.

Surely you would’ve preferred the alternative.

But had Louise not left, I would not be the man I am. You may not have had your child, and we would not have been here together, in Berlin, having this conversation.

Right. D. placed a hand on her stomach. Right.

Things turn out to be what they are, and we live with that.

Together D. and the monk sat in a deepening, darkening silence that grew and grew. Eventually she remarked that it was late, she should probably start heading home, and the monk stood up to walk her to the door. As D. crouched down to lace up her boots, he asked, before you go, my dear, tell me one thing—what brought you to the Quaker meeting today? D. thought back to the afternoon in reverse, her entering the regal building, walking near the Reichstag and along the river Spree, waking up in the morning to a silent house and an empty stomach. I’m not sure, she said. I saw a sign about sitting in silence somewhere and thought, why not.

It felt to you like the right thing to do.

I suppose.

So you know, the monk said. When she stood up, he opened his arms for a farewell embrace, and they hugged on the threshold between the corridor and his apartment, she on one side, he on the other.

Goodbye, the monk said. Go safely.

Thank you.

The monk shut the door and D. descended the stairs to the building’s entrance. She did not pass anyone on the way. Outside, it had begun to snow, and a thin layer of ice covered the pavement. Taking care not to slip, D. drew her arms around herself—it was cold now, much colder than earlier—and walked towards the train station as the apartment lights around her cast a warm glow on the streets. It was silent all the way to the station. Her boots crunched on ice. Then all of a sudden, D. felt her body give way as she slipped in one fell swoop onto the ground.

For a while she stayed there, unmoving. She did not feel any compulsion to get up. As she lay on the pavement, suddenly, miraculously, inexplicably, she felt the great compulsion to laugh, a laugh that warmed every part of her body and lifted her back onto her feet. It was all so ridiculous. It was all so beautiful. It was exactly what was going to happen; it was something she had not wanted to happen at all. Resuming her walk to the station, which now sat on the other side of a crosswalk where a little green man flashed in a small black box, D. felt—for the first time since she had arrived in Berlin—the distinct sense that she knew exactly where her feet were taking her. She knew where she needed to go.

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