FLYING

Published in THE CHRYSALIS READER Vol. 5 in 1998


FLYING
By: Don Kissil
Rev. 8/5/14
2,848 words


It was a warm May morning and a Friday, I believe. The flowers in town were as bright and cheerful as they would be all year. The tourists had not yet arrived en-masse and the snows had begun to melt in the Austrian Alps surrounding Innsbruck. Claire and I decided to see what spring flowers and birds had arrived at the top of the Nordkette cable car lift. In that radiant morning sun, we walked without a care along the Inns River to the funicular that would take us some 7,600 feet up the mountain peak. After boarding, we slowly swung our way up to the first stop.

We were somewhat surprised that on this spectacular morning all the funicular cars were empty, save for us and another younger couple. Suspecting language difficulties, I hesitated to engage them in any conversation. As I watched them, out of the corner of my eye, their faces were solemn and they talked only a little.

At the first stop I finally heard the woman speak. Her German was peppered with a strong central European accent, with a bit of English thrown in. He spoke almost monosyllabically, and in a Tyrolean dialect which even the best German-speakers cannot completely comprehend. Still, if they knew we were there, their guarded tones clearly suggested they had chosen to not recognize our presence. Claire and I nattered to each other about the snow and the flowers, but also in hushed voices. No one else entered our car and as the door slammed shut, we rocked and shook towards our next and final stop.

On this leg the mist also settled in and the wet snow on the ground appeared very dense. The car temperature had noticeably dropped. The ride was only seven or eight minutes long, but we rose at such a steep angle that I began to gulp and swallow air, as one does in an elevator that shoots upward too swiftly. Still there was no communication between the young couple and us.

We bumped into the last station, and as the doors slid open the man immediately jumped out and simply vanished. No, I don't mean that exactly, it was just that he disappeared from our view. In fact, he had leaped out of the funicular car and, like a great ape swung up out onto its roof, but with mist settling in we could not see where he'd gone.

The woman stepped out onto the landing and we followed. Claire and I zipped our ski jackets and searched our pockets for gloves.

I don't know why, but I spoke to the young woman using those ice-breaking words that strangers often say in new situations.

"Damn cold up here, and some difference from down below."

She looked at me with piercing dark eyes but a gentle smile and said:

"Oh, you're English."

"No, Americans, and you?"

"I'm Rumanian, from near Kishinev. Do you know where that is, she shrugged? Few do. And fewer Americans know anything about Rumania except for our famous Transylvanian Dracula."

"Kishinev, eh? That's in Moldavia, right close to Romania"

I replied, trying not to appear to smug, but hoping I had shattered her image of the geographically challenged American. I also said that my mother was born in Kishinev, so perhaps I had cheated a bit.

Her dark eyes brightened as she nodded her acknowledgement, and I immediately began to sense the "landsmann" develop. That's the European equivalent of our "homeboy" thing. So I followed quickly with:

"Where has your Mann disappeared?"

Unfortunately, I'd had used the German word for husband and she quickly corrected me by replying that Bertil was only her boyfriend, not her husband. She said that he would appear in a moment or so, which he did, in a big way.

As we looked back toward the cable car,a momentary clearing of the mist exposed Bertil atop the cable car with a huge nylon bag balanced precariously on his shoulder. It was nearly twenty feet long. He had one arm was crooked under and around it and his other extended to steady it as he jumped onto the landing alongside the car. In a flash and with the bag still balanced on his shoulder, he ran through the slushy snow past us toward an open field near the edge of the mountain.

"What is that thing he's carrying?" Claire asked.

"It's probably a big kite,"

I whispered. But that was not the case at all.
Bertil laid the bag on the ground and unzipped it along its length. To my astonishment he exposed an enormously, beautiful red and yellow butterfly looking thing, which he quickly removed from its cocoon and proceeded to spread its wings.

"A hang glider,"

I exploded, excitement creeping into my voice. The thin air carried my words to him and for the first time he looked directly at me. As we made eye contact he made a small but unfulfilled smile that made my stomach a bit queasy.

I quickly turned away and asked his girlfriend the inappropriate question:

"Here, in the Alps, in this weather, is he mad? Why does he do this, now and here?"

The girlfriend smiled a sardonic smile that hid much more than it told. But what she said totally surprised me.

"If you are truly descended from Rumanian stock, then you would probably be interested in a good story and, if you and your lady would be so kind as to join me for a coffee while Bertil suits up and checks his winds, I will tell you the tale."

We immediately warmed to her coffee offer. The mountain top temperature, and the heavy mist made our decision easy and Claire and I followed her lead.

The woman was tall and thin and, despite her heavy boots, had the tiny feet of a ballerina. She carried her back-pack as would an athlete, and she led us to a small table surrounded by four benches near the back of the car barn. She moved with an air of someone who had been here many times before.

The woman, whose name I still did not know, pulled a large thermos filled with hot coffee and some plastic cups from her back-pack and placed them carefully on the table before us. Then she reached into her pack again and retrieved a small bottle of schnapps and poured a hefty kiss into her empty cup. She nodded, silently asking if we would like the same, and, equally without words, both Claire and I nodded. The steaming hot coffee temporarily fogged my glasses.

She removed her cap and tossed it onto a nail near the window. Her long, shiny, black hair stayed tied in a school teacher's bun. As we all began to relax, she began her story:

"Bertil, my boyfriend, is the son of a Tyrolean civil servant, a postman in fact. And Franz, Bertil's father, as a young man, was extremely well-read in Greek mythology. Franz dreamed of flying like Icarus to the sun, and, in point of fact, many years before the hang gliding craze had taken hold, Franz had been inventing and reinventing different types of lifting kites, gliders and other soaring devices. As a true Tyrol, Franz also loved his mountains where it was quiet and not only could his imagination soar but someday, with his inventions, his body would as well.

"Franz married young and to his very opposite type. As the Asians say (and I'm not exactly certain of my English here) he married the Yin for his Yang. She was a hot-blooded Spaniard from Andalusia, Seville, I believe, who was as grounded and earthy as Franz was airborne. Lust and love-making was for Maritza as natural as eating and dancing. Maritza simply loved men. She loved to tease and tantalize them and Franz tolerated her passions. Franz did this purely for his love of Maritza, as only those who truly love can understand.

"She was careful always to keep Franz happy and indulge his every whim. And thus, Maritza could maintain her double life - having a string of affairs - while Franz was off at work, delivering the mail."

I looked over at Claire to see how these very personal things the woman was saying were playing on her, but Claire's eyes were riveted on the story teller, for the lilt and timbre of her voice was hypnotic.

"Not long after their marriage Maritza became pregnant and Bertil was born. Still with the postal service, Franz relocated here, to Innsbruck, with Maritza and their young son. Maritza took to Innsbruck well enough, and as soon as possible, placed young Bertil in school, thus providing for her continued freedom. She took a part-time job as a waitress in a Spanish restaurant in the Alt Stadt. Franz built a workshop behind their rented house and spent much of his spare time working with his dreams and in the evenings taking care of young Bertil. Bertil came to love his father and son and father bonded into each others' fantasies. But as the genes often determine, Bertil grew to have the fire of his mother and the soul of his father, and I can verify the truth of that.

"Bertil would often accompany his father up into the mountains to test one of his new inventions and he learned the feeling for flight very early. He was light, strong and, in fact, fearless in the air and Franz capitalized on his son's eagerness. Their trips into the mountains were a boon to Maritza. She could thus continue with the intrigues and affairs she loved, while they could indulge themselves in their work, unbothered by the need to return home at a prescribed time.

"As time progressed, Franz and Bertil built a small cabin right here on the mountain top, about a hundred meters up from where we now sit. They slowly transported Franz's entire workshop into it. As Bertil grew into his early twenties, he began to slowly break away from Franz, as, I believe, most young men will."

As she took another sip of her schnapps-laced coffee, I broke in to ask:

"My dear young woman, I still do not know your name."

Either she did not hear, or chose not to answer, for she simply picked up the thread of her tale and continued.
I cannot deny it I was entranced by her tale. She seemed to become more beautiful as the sun broke through the window and provided her with a special radiance. I was transfixed.

She told things too private for strangers to hear. And many of them I cannot (or perhaps choose-not) to remember. She studied linguistics while Bertil studied dentistry at the same University. It was the University of Bucharest in Rumania where they met, and he was her first lover. During vacations she would accompany Bertil back to Innsbruck and there she met Maritza and Franz. She instantly liked his father, whom it was clear Bertil took after, whereas Maritza frightened her, though she could never quite understand why.
They lived together, she and Bertil, for six years but never married.

She taught languages at a local college in Rumania but he never practiced his dentistry. Soon after completing dental college, he returned to Innsbruck to work as a ski instructor. She said she never married (perhaps dreaming that she and Bertil would eventually get together) but told of several lovers she'd taken over the course of the next five years.

Then suddenly her voice seemed to change. It was imperceptible at first, but then took on an unexpected stridency.

"Then one evening I got this strange phone call from Bertil requesting that I come to Innsbruck immediately. No explanations, `Just come,' he pleaded in a voice I had never heard in him before.

"It was about this time of year, yes, I clearly remember, it was the 7th of May that evening we met at the train station in Innsbruck. I could immediately see that a great tragedy had somehow befallen him. From the central train station we quickly walked to that little upstairs restaurant in the old town, they call it the J'rgele. Perhaps you know it?"

She blew a light breath over the top of her coffee cup before taking another sip. I nodded and said we'd eaten there often. She continued.

"He did not speak but just as we reached the door of the steps leading up to the restaurant, Bertil grabbed me tightly, swung me around into his arms and kissed me hard on the lips. Not a passionate kiss, just a hard one and clearly full of anger. Then he said: `Marry me!'

"His words did not reach me as quickly as the anger in his kiss, and I asked him what was the matter."

" `Maritza is dead! Franz is lost, our cabin in the mountains is burned beyond repair, and I don't know what to do.'"

"We did not go into the restaurant, but moved off to a darkened bench in a nearby park where he buried his head in my arms and cried like a child.

"Get hold of yourself Bertil, and tell me what has happened. Shall we go for a drink? Please... Speak to me!

"In a moment or two, he began to compose himself. He then told me what had happened. He told it quickly, almost spitting out the words like he'd just eaten something foul!"

" You knew Maritza and her ways, as well as I did. Franz knew, all our friends, and even you knew, that mother liked to have many men in her life. But we never spoke of it. One day Franz went up to our mountain cabin and found her in his bed with one of the cable car mechanics. He was a friend... my father and I had known him for years.

" `Something must have snapped in Franz. The coroner said that Maritza was found wrapped in the arms of her lover and both were shot through the head at close range.

" `The cops told me that Franz tried to set fire to the cabin, but only his workshop area had burned. That small part in the back of the workshop where Franz and I would sometimes sleep when we were working late, that had not burned. And that's where they found Maritza.

" `To make matters more bizarre, they found Franz's flying harness at the edge of the mountainside at our favorite jumping off place, but did not find his wings.

" `It is the judgment of the police that Franz killed mother and jumped off the mountainside with only his wings, to try and fly away. His body has not been discovered and it's been more than two weeks now.

" `Somehow, damn it," Bertil said," I feel he is not buried in the snow on the mountainside as the cops insist, but still up there, flying about. I'm devastated and lost. I don't know what to do. I must try to find Franz.

" `When I was a boy he would tell me the story of Icarus and how, when he angered the gods, they killed him; but that if I was a good boy, the gods would never kill me. And that someday I, too, would fly with wings of my own. I soon knew the difference between his dreams and reality but I'm not so certain that Franz ever did.

" My dear friend,' he pleaded, with a wistfulness in his voice that I could remember from when we were still lovers, `Help me to find Franz. Help me to find my father. For I know in my heart he's flying around out there, waiting for me.'"

"Without thinking, I said, But, what can I do?"

"`Come with me up to the top of Nordkette Lift and help me search. Tomorrow morning, at first light, we will go by funicular and with your help I will suit up in my own wings to search the thermals for Franz.'"

"And I did just that, then. And today as well, just as I have done every year on this same day for the past five years, Bertil soars and kettles down and about the mountains searching for his father, and, somehow, I support his search.

"No, we never married. I still teach at the same college in Rumania, and he still gives ski lessons, but we meet here each year to continue the search. Oh, yes, I know it's futile, but how else can I be with my lover and my friend who has never lost his dream to fly?
"Care for another schnapps? Bertil will be ready at any moment now and I must bring him his coffee and give him a kiss goodbye before he jumps.

"Oh, yes my name is also Maritza," she winked a saucy smile, "but I'm nothing like Bertil's mother.

Tschss!"

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