After
a safe landing at Frankfurt International Airport I was waiting for my baggage
at the turnstiles when I saw her. She had cut her hair and let it go back to
her natural color—a honey blonde and she looked fantastic. She smiled that
familiar crooked grin and waved at me from a distance of no more than twenty
feet. The closer she got the more beautiful she appeared. It was more than two
months since I had seen her last, when she and her mother, sister and baby
Janelle had left. I could see Maria had come with another young girl who
apparently had a car, but she had left Janelle at home, thinking she was too
young and susceptible to strange germs one usually finds in airports after the
flyers are confined to breathe the same stale air for hours on end.
Her
family had a large A-frame house near the Black Forest in a small town about
thirty miles east of Frankfurt by the name of Obertshausen. It was a four bedroom house with a bonus room
upstairs—like a loft where Maria and I slept in a rollaway bed and Janelle
stayed in a crib on the warmest part of the room near the heating vent. I guess
her step-parents were rather progressive or they thought that I was going to
marry Maria therefore had no problem with our sharing the same bed. Hans, her
stepfather, had a wine cellar in the basement and an assortment of every kind
of Bavarian beer you could imagine. I was still bending the right elbow at the
time and we shared a few choice brews as well as many other local types of
liquor, much to my delight. It was very odd living in a house of strangers who
thought that they had taken in the “token Jew” to their household. Suzanne had
explained to me that when she was a little girl back in the early thirties she
had joined the Nazi party. She said at first it was a lot fun, they would sing
songs and have cookouts and campfires. Her mother said she never trusted Adolph
Hitler at all—he reminded her of a used car salesman. She warned Suzanne that
her association with the Nazi party was going to lead to big trouble. One day
Suzanne noticed that one of her best friends, the daughter of a Jewish family,
had suddenly vanished off the face of the earth. One day the family was living
there a few doors down and the next day the house was empty without any
forwarding address. Soon all the Jews in the small town were gone without a
trace. Her mother said it was because of Hitler and his hatred for the Jews.
Suzanne left the party soon after that.
Not
only was Suzanne an ex-Nazi but she was a very active member of the Church of
Scientology. Upstairs in her office (she was also a dentist, who reminded me of
Laurence Olivier’s character, Szell, in Marathon Man) was her e-meter,
originally known as the Hubbard Electrometer, is a device the Scientologists
use to reflect
or indicate whether or not a person has been relieved from spiritual impediment
of past experiences. One evening at supper, I had asked her about her
involvement in Scientology and expressed a curiosity about the e-meter. She
asked me if I wanted to give it a try and me, being the kind of person who
never backs down from a challenge or a new experience, decided to give it a go.
Her office looked like a shrine dedicated to
everything L. Ron Hubbard. She had all his books on the shelf (even the weird
science fiction ones) and literature in piles scattered about the room
promoting the benefits of Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard’s theory on which
Scientology is based. I sat down on her office chair and she connected the
wires from the e-meter to various parts of my body. I felt like Frankenstein’s
monster getting ready to be re-animated and had to stifle a laugh looking at
the primitive apparatus. It looked like something I might have constructed with
my Erector Set when I was a kid. I could hear her humming and hawing behind me
and it made me wonder what kind of readings she was getting. Was I going to
pass the test? Would I have past life problems that would inhibit my
relationship with her step-daughter?
She silently unhooked the wires from my body and
I get up from the chair. “Well, did I pass the audition?” I asked.
“You did fine. It looks like you are a very old
soul,” she said but I could tell she was holding something back.
“What do you mean, old soul?”
“You have had many past lives, hundreds and
hundreds of them. If it is alright with you, I would like to take you down to
the Center and have you tested by our leader.”
“Uh, well you see...” I didn’t really want to get
into a whole rigmarole since I was only going to be in Germany for a limited
time and Maria and I were booked to go to Paris by train in a couple of days.
“I think I’ll pass on the invitation, if that’s all right with you.”
“Yes, of course. I only thought you might want to
take it to the next level, only out of interest in the lives you might have led
in the past.”
“I think I’ll concentrate on the life I’m living
now, but thanks just the same.”
That night Maria and I went into town to a
Chinese restaurant and sat in a booth behind an ornately carved wooden wall.
There were all these L shaped patterns in the carvings and when I inspected
them more closely I could see they were connecting Swastika’s. The food was
good but I told Maria that I felt uncomfortable there and there was no way I
was going to go anywhere near the ovens. We left before the fortune cookies
arrived. I had had enough messages for one day, thank you very much.
Maria
and I left Frankfurt on the train bound for Paris two days later. The scenery
was beautiful—the snow covered Alsace Lorraine hills and valleys nearly took my
breath away. We got a cheap bottle of wine and some German cold cuts for dinner
and within a few hours I was feeling sick to my stomach. It felt like I was
coming down with some kind of virus or flu, feeling weak and dizzy. Of all
times to get sick, It was my first time in Paris—the city of lights. When we
got off the train Maria had to help steady my slow and deliberate gait to the
pharmacie, thinking they might have some medication that would help, or maybe
they could direst me to a doctor—preferably one who spoke English. She said
there was a fine physician in the next building. I staggered over there and to
my chagrin the doors were locked. I looked at the directory and couldn’t figure
out which one was the doctor the lady at the pharmacie had recommended. I told
Maria to go back and get the name of the doctor while I leaned against the
door. I saw a woman leaving the building so I waited for her to exit then I
grabbed the door before it closed. I was now in the building but didn’t know
much more than that. I walked into the first office I came to and sat down in
the waiting room.
The
receptionist didn’t speak any English so I did my best to communicate my
situation to her. I thought I was going to pass out but managed to remember my
basic French from high school. “Je suis tres mal,” I said.
“O
oui. Un moment,” she said.
After
a few minutes I was directed to a room where the nurse had indicated for me to
lie down and remove my shirt with hand signals. I could understand that much
since taking off one’s clothes translated nicely in any language, so I
complied. Soon a young doctor with a pencil thin mustache came into the room.
Fortunately he spoke English and told me to lie back while he examined me. He
took my blood pressure and stuck a thermometer in my mouth. I had a low grade
fever, so he had ruled out some kind of influenza. Then he looked at my feet
and could see they were swollen around the ankles.
“My
friend,” he said. “You have food poisoning. What have you been eating?”
“I
had some wine and cold cuts on the train from Germany,” I told him.
“Ah,
the train. I wouldn’t have eaten anything those pigs serve on those trains. I
always bring my own food. But, it is too late for that. I am going to give you
some medication to help with your stomach cramps and diarrhea, but what you
need is rest and to drink plenty of fluids. The sickness should pass within 12
to 24 hours.”
“Great!
I am only in town for a couple of days. Isn’t there anything else you can give
me to speed up the process?”
“I’m
afraid not. The poison has to run its course.”
I
left the office and saw Maria in the lobby. She was a little upset that I
hadn’t told her where I was but she understood when I told her about the food
poisoning. She was smart and had not eaten any of the salami or pepperoni and
had luckily avoided the sickness.
We
checked into the hotel somewhere near Notre Dame de Lorette but all I saw the
first night was the view from the bathroom. The next morning I was feeling a
little better but I was so nauseated with the thought of any type of rich food
entering my system. That night I was able to eat some Spaghetti Bolognese; it
was the only food I could digest without getting sick to my stomach. What a
shame to be in one of the greatest culinary cities in the world and be limited
to Spaghetti Bolognese. At least I could manage to down a couple of shots of
the green fairy, Pernod Absinthe (the favorite drink of Ernest Hemingway and F.
Scott Fitzgerald), without giving it all back to the lavatorie—vivé la France.
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