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Title: Die Sprache der Blinden 15a/?
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laguera25
Fandom: Rammstein
Rating FRM
Pairing: Richard Kruspe/OFC
Disclaimer: Richard Z. Kruspe is a real person, with family and friends who love him. I am not one of them. I do not know him. This is a work of complete fiction, and should be read as such. No defamation is intended. For entertainment only.
Part I Part IIa Part IIb Part III Part IVa Part IVb Part V Part VIa Part VIb Part VIIa Part VIIb Part VIII Part IX Part Xa Part Xb Part XIa Part XIb Part XIIa Part XIIb Part XIIIa Part XIIIb Part XIV
They'd settled into a routine of sorts over the next five days, though it had been fluid and lazy and easily amendable when the need arose. Sometimes, he had awoken with his nose buried in her hair and his cock twitching against the swell of her ass, and sometimes, he'd awoken to find her propped in bed, elbows on the comforter and nose in a book. Sometimes when he'd awoken, she hadn't been in the bed at all, but performing light stretching exercises on the floor beside the radiator, barefoot and supple as she reached for the indolent point of her toes, or in the shower, humming like a dryad as the water thundered through the pipes, or sipping tea and nibbling toast at the kitchen table as she scrolled through the news from home on her laptop. But he'd always found her, and she'd always greeted him with a lingering good-morning kiss. She'd never shied from his sleep-puffy face or remnants of Morpheus' dreaming dust in the corners of his eyes or the age lines in his face or the whisper of last night's meal on his breath. She'd just smiled and ruffled his tousled hair and swatted his ass, and when he'd shuffled into the kitchen, there had always been a pot of strong Turkish coffee and a bowl of sugar. She'd always tasted of tea and buttered toast and cinnamon dental floss and smelled of vanilla and almonds and his warm bedclothes, a fact which had prompted him to smile into her hair.
And there had been the sex, of course. In the mornings, when the sun was low and drowsy on the horizon and the radiator chuffed and rumbled in its corner. In the bed and in the shower and in the tub, a tangle of sluicing water and slippery skin and clutching limbs. On the sofa with her still-damp hair fanned over the cushions or tickling his lips as he mapped her. Once, he'd even had her on the kitchen counter, skirt hiked over her hips and panties dangling from one ankle and heels digging into his ass as he'd pistoned into her. She'd laughed then, laughed and muttered that it wasn't her fault if the damn counter buckled, but the laughter had been soft and warm, and he'd laughed with her as he'd pictured having to explain the sagging, sweat-smeared countertop to a politely-befuddled maintenance worker.
In the evenings, with snow spitting and pattering against the window, languid and lazy and tasting of wine. She was different during their nocturnal couplings, more primal, and tightly-wound beneath his steadying, coaxing, clutching hands. She had smelled different, too, of snow and salt and leather and yellowing pages from her hours spent scouring bookshops. Warm fabric and heated skin and ink and dust. She was hungrier, nipping and lapping and curling her fingers to rake his skin with her nails. She was needier at night and less embarrassed by her need as she clucked and hummed and grunted to his movements, and sometimes, she'd bid him use her harder in a raw, glottal voice so unlike her morning laughter. Sometimes her unalloyed need had startled him and brought him back to the question of how long it had been since she'd invited a man into her bed, but it hadn't been for him to ask, and anyhow, it had made little difference when she was sated and spent and boneless in his one-armed embrace as he'd smoked a post-coital cigarette and let the last of the tension leave him on the lazy tendrils of exhaled smoke.
He'd learned her over the course of those heady, unhurried days, devoted himself to the study of her as he'd once devoted himself to the study of notes and measures and chords and frets and fingering. He'd learned that she shivered whenever he drew his callused fingertips over her ribs, and that she made the most delicious, delirious sounds whenever he let his lips ghost over the sensitive flesh at the hollow of her throat. He'd also learned that if he thrust his fingers into her panting, moaning mouth while he took her on all fours, she would suckle them with keening, wanton fervor, hips bucking and rolling beneath him in arrhythmic waves.
He'd learned her beyond the bedsheets as well. Her body clock was set to the rhythms of a teacher's life, and so she often rose with the sun, slipping from the quiet warmth of his bedroom to cook eggs and toast while he snored into him pillow and his fingers twitched at the prickle of phantom frets. She took sugar with her morning tea, but she preferred honey, and she took her eggs with a liberal dusting of black pepper. She missed the inky grit of newsprint beneath her fingers and lamented bitterly that technology had robbed her of one of her favorite morning rituals, the chance to do the crossword puzzle while she crunched heavily-buttered toast. The op-ed page of The New York Times seldom failed to produce an expression of thunderous indignation, and if he were awake enough, she would gladly explain her outrage to him while he convinced his eyes to remain open between sips of scalding black coffee.
She preferred to walk in the early afternoons, to amble through the city with her messenger bag over her shoulder and take in the sights and sounds and the smells of the city. She often sat on a bench in the Lindenstrasse with a book and read as long as the light allowed or until hunger drove her to one of the innumerable bakeries and specialty shops for a turnover or a bagel or a sandwich on thick, black rye. She loved to window shop, but she rarely bought anything save for books, which she brought back to the flat with alarming regularity, holding them aloft like tattered, dusty trophies. Old books and new, German and English. Small mass-market paperbacks and weighty tomes. Anthologies and histories and biographies of dead kings and despotic Roman emperors. Books soon sat in tidy stacks on his bedside tables and the coffee table and the kitchen table. She brought back so many that she'd begun to joke rather uneasily that she needed another suitcase.
She loved pomegranates and passionfruit and popcorn sprinkled with sugar. She liked the latter best when she ate it with her head on his shoulder, popping handfuls into her mouth while they watched old episodes of Tatoert and he drank beer to settle the insistent voice of the music inside his head, a voice that sounded like nylon and fuzztones and feedback from a Marshall stack. She thought tea tasted best when it came from a brown betty teapot, and she coveted one of the stubby, haughty, dowager's pots with a wistful longing. She was utterly unfazed by his strident snores, but fought trenchantly for her share of the covers, and she loved to curl into his warm spaces like a burrowing animal.
The most glorious thing he'd learned about her was that she was a self-contained and self-sustaining goddess. While she plainly enjoyed his company--the undisguised delight in her eyes when he plopped beside her on his couch and invited her to nestle where she would never failed to inspire a giddy fillip inside his chest--she was equally content to leave him to his own devices. If she had woken in the morning to find that he'd locked himself in his office with his Powerbook and his Rammfire and recorded a new arrangement for the album or for use in a future solo project, she hadn't come thumping into his carefully-arranged workspace to pull him away with demands to accompany her to the open-air markets or scowled at him when he'd roused himself from his creative trance to forage for cold cuts in the refrigerator. She'd respected his process and let him come when he would, and when he came to her, he'd been met with a pleased yet knowing smile. If she wearied of waiting for him, she retired to the couch with a book or left a note on the kitchen counter and went for a walk in the city and returned in the late afternoon, smelling of salt and heated skin and brimming with tales of the sights and sounds she had experienced. He'd seen his native city through an outsider's eyes, and it had amused and fascinated him by turns to hear her describe a market that had long since faded into the background of his awareness.
That isn't to say that he hadn't made a concerted effort to spend time with her. He had often invited her to join him in his morning exercises, and they'd spent a laughing, fumbling morning in a pile of tangled limbs as he'd taught her the five Tibetan rites. Her soft hair had tickled his nose as he'd braced her while she practiced the fourth rite, and the scent of her had clung to his skin as he'd watched her struggle to attain the proscribed positions. She'd laughed and teetered and fumbled, but she'd also been gamely earnest in her efforts, and he'd delighted in watching the hypnotic rise and fall of her belly as she'd closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The copper of her eyelashes had been startling against the smooth paleness of her skin, and he'd been tempted to reach out and brush his rough fingertips over them, to see if they felt like a moth's wings beneath them, light and fluttering and curiously alive.
He'd occasionally accompanied her on her ambles through the city, had torn himself from his guitar and the solitude of his office to bundle himself in his winter coat and muffler and let her lead him through the streets he knew as intimately as a lover's body. She did not tug him, a terrier straining at a leash, but rather moved like the eddying currents of a river, urging him along with her naked avidity for the city and its rich, decadent history. She'd threaded her arm through his and simply drifted, eyes bright and searching behind her muffler. She'd blundered onto to the tourist traps hawking t-shirts and insipid postcards of the Rathaus and the Brandenburg Tor, but she'd also found her way into the nooks and crannies of the city, the little-traveled byways and sidestreets frequented by locals and lifers. More than once, he'd found himself standing outside a shop he had forgotten existed, blinking at it in bemused incredulity and fumbling in his pocket for a lighter while Calliope had disentangled herself to inspect the goods on display in the window. He'd followed her into cheese shops and wine shops and watched in poorly-concealed amusement as she'd peered at everything and sidled over to the befuddled proprietor to pepper them with questions in her resolute, imperfect German. He'd watched as German reserve and implacability had met American exuberance and stoic old men had been reduced to head-scratching speechlessness by her enthusiasm. More often then not, she'd left the shop with a parcel in hand, and more often still, he'd looked back to see the proprietor shaking his head and groping for his customary aplomb.
He'd even taken her to a bierkeller, had dressed in his favorite cashmere sweater and varnished his nails in black lacquer and escorted her on his arm to the old tavern, where they'd sat at the small tables and drunk the strong lagers and eaten their fill of meats and cheeses and black bread. She'd been radiant in her white angora sweater and simple pearl earrings, rosy-cheeked and tousled by the wind. She'd allowed him to order the beer selection for her, and then she'd carefully perused the menu with such fierce concentration that he'd laughed around a puff of smoke.
She'd looked up from her menu, an uncertain smile playing in the corners of her mouth. "What?"
"You look like you're studying for an exam."
The rosiness of her cheeks had deepened. "I'm a woman who likes to know all her options. Something wrong with that?"
"No. Not at all." He'd shaken his head and taken another drag from his cigarette.
She'd made a skeptical grunt in the back of her throat, but her hand had drifted over the tabletop to rest lightly atop his own. "I like your nails," she'd murmured absently, gaze still fixed on the menu.
"Yes? Thank you."
Another grunt, this one of acknowledgment.
Even then, she'd let him be, had let him drift amid the din of other conversations while the waiter dawdled among other patrons and engaged in idle chatter with the florid publican who hunkered behind his bar like the gatekeeper of a medieval fortress. He'd smoked his cigarettes and drunk his lager and soaked in the sounds of home, the solidity of the stone floor beneath his feet. He could not deny, nor would he apologize for, his torrid love affair with that bawdy, brassy young upstart across the sea who exuded raw sexuality from every pore and then wallowed in piety and shame and threw itself upon the mercy of a vengeful god with no pity in his manmade bones, but neither could he deny the connection he felt to this piece of earth in his bones, the stirring of memories embedded deep within muscle and bone. He hadn't been born in Berlin, it was true, but he'd come to manhood and discovered himself in its pubs and beerhalls and lost his demons on its streets. It had been his creative incubator, and its dark undercurrents had fed and sustained him when he could scarcely feed himself and the only thoughts inside his addled, starving had been for the next note and the next bump of cocaine. He could have gone anywhere when the wall had fallen in small chunks and great, crumbling slabs, but he had returned to the heart of the East, where he'd found Till and Christoph and Paul and cast his lot with a family of his own making, his own choosing. When wealth had found him and he could have gone anywhere in the world, he had remained there, and he might well have remained there forever if he hadn't taken that fateful trip across the sea and fallen under the thrall of Caron and that gaudy, glorious, unrepentant, clanking city, with its excess and its bravado and its gritty, grimy, seedy sensuality, and sitting there with a good lager thick on his tongue, he'd thought he would die there, and never mind the wistful dreams of spending his twilight years on the golden sands of a South African beach.
Now and then, he'd thought of returning to Berlin, to its contrast of grim austerity and voluptuous decadence, but he'd known he never would. His feet were too familiar with paths he'd hoped Calliope's feet would never discover, much less tread, and his soul still remembered too fondly the white oblivion that waited for him there. The grim austerity held no mercy, and the voluptuous decadence masked a rot that threatened to seep inside if he courted it too long. Better to stay beyond its reach, in cities with bright lights to distract him from his dark thoughts and dispel the shadows in which his father hid.
But he'd missed his city, just as he sometimes missed the tickling burn of cocaine in his nostrils, and sharing it with Calliope had pleased him. Her easy presence had transformed it from a city of familiar shadows into a city of rediscovered pleasures, and he'd delighted in watching her absorb the city between sips of lager. She'd watched the other patrons with keen interest, as though she were cataloging them, and her eyes had danced over the thick rim of her stein.
He'd taken a swallow from his own stein and closed his hand over hers. "Anything interesting?" he'd asked.
She'd started. "Oh, sorry. I was woolgathering." She'd given his fingers an apologetic squeeze. "Habit I picked up as a kid when I got tired of eavesdropping on my parents' conversation on long roadtrips."
"You looked like you were people-watching."
"I was," she'd admitted. "I was trying to decide what kind of characters they'd be if I were to write the next Literary Masterpiece."
"Oh? Anyone interesting?"
She'd taken a sip of lager and discreetly uncurled her finger to point discreetly at a woman slumped at a table, alone with a glass of cheap house wine. "An expatriate who came here for love ten years ago. The love affair withered within a year, but the love affair with the city lasted longer. She stayed on, tried to piece her life back together, and when that didn't work, she tried to create a new life; but the life she scraped together was so much dead skin worn like an overcoat. Life had color once, before it all bled out through her broken heart, but now it's dead and grey, and she's too tired to find her bootstraps again. She wants to go home, but she left with her head high and her back stiff, and she's too ashamed to crawl home with head hung and back broken. Pride is a gift, but it's also bitter and cold as gristle when you have to swallow it. So she comes in here most every night and swills cheap booze, and every now and then, she snares some strapping young lad looking for someone to lift the unwelcome burden of his virginity or to shield him from his loneliness. The barkeep feels sorry for her, so he occasionally gives her one on the house. Most of the time, he gives it to her in the stockroom, quick and dirty between tugs on the tap. He gets laid, and she gets to tell herself that life might be better tomorrow."
"You put a lot of thought into this," he'd mused.
She'd shrugged. "Dreamers usually do." Another careful sip of beer, a bird dipping its beak into a fountain. "You mean to tell me you've never done the same thing?"
"I used to sit in my lessons and imagine alternative explanations for things. The stories the teachers told didn't interest me."
He'd been tempted to ask her who she thought he would be if he were a character in her story, but he'd been afraid of her answer, afraid he might hear too much naked truth in it. He'd been afraid to hear Caron's voice spilling from those pretty lips, cutting and critical and cruel. She would not mean to hurt him; she was not possessed of Caron's casual malice, but cruelty was no less painful when delivered by an unknowing mouth, and so he'd swallowed the impulse with a gulp of beer and steered her to the safer subject of the menu on the table before her.
She'd ordered knackwurst and rotkohl, and he'd nearly drowned in his beer at the face she'd pulled when she'd bitten into a forkful of the tart cabbage. He'd hacked and sputtered ungallantly into the back of his palm as her face had puckered into a moue of disgust. Her eyes had begun to water as she'd struggled to swallow the tangle of fermented cabbage. Her distinctly American sense of civility had clashed with her American palate and her instinctive need to expel the offending morsel, and she'd brought her loosely-fisted hand to her mouth as she'd suppressed her rebellious gorge and chewed with the mulish determination of a soldier cresting a hill with his weapon at the ready.
"You can spit it out," he'd told her between sniggers and thin, beer-congested coughs, and offered her his linen napkin.
She'd refused it with a furious flap of her hand and redoubled her efforts to conquer the briny cabbage. She'd closed her streaming eyes, and her throat had worked spasmodically to force it down her gullet. She'd painted such a picture of misery that he'd thought to place a comforting hand on her nape, but before he could, she'd coughed and cleared her throat, and her eyelids had fluttered open as though she were emerging from a deep and terrible dream.
"Oh, God," she'd croaked, and pressed her lips to her knuckles to forestall further mutiny from her stomach.
"It's not for everyone," he'd offered diplomatically, and brushed an errant strand of hair from her face. "It might've been a bad preparation. Some people can go a bit overboard with the brine. You're welcome to order something else, or you can share in my stew." He'd nudged the steaming bowl towards her.
She'd spared him a grateful, apologetic glance and swiped at her watery eyes with the cool planchette of her fingertips. "I'm sorry, " she'd managed. "I don't want to be such an uncultured philistine."
"All I want you to be is who you are," he'd replied placidly, and the sunny brilliance of her answering smile had made his stomach flutter.
She'd gladly partaken of his proffered stew, had dipped her spoon into the thick, rich melange of vegetables and stewed rabbit and eaten in slow, thoughtful bites. She'd shared her sausage in turn, and they'd lingered, nibbling on the food before them and simply relaxing, feet stretched and crossed beneath the table and occasionally grazing one another as they flexed pleasantly-crackling toes. She'd smiled slyly at the not-so-incidental contact and patted his hand, and when he'd excused himself to smother his relentless nicotine urge in the biting December cold, she'd chuckled and taken a long draught of lager.
He'd fallen into the rhythm of such easy domesticity, had relished the opportunity to let go of the throttle and breathe, to close his eyes and let the air fill his lungs and remain there like a buoyant weightlessness in the center of his chest. He lost and found himself in the freedom to live his life in her company rather than build it around her. She was quiet and unobtrusive, his schoene Hexe, and she'd drifted through his rooms like dust and smoke, there only when he'd needed her and content to curl on the sofa with a book. The night before their sojourn to the bierkeller, he'd retired to his small office studio with the intention of fiddling about just long enough to rouse himself from the fetters of sleep and too much idleness, and when he'd next found himself in the slipstream of time and awareness, he'd found that morning had long since given way to afternoon. He'd blinked and set aside his guitar and sworn softly under his breath, and then he'd hurried into the wider world of his apartment, sure he would find either an angry Calliope or a terse note saying that she had wearied of waiting for him to retrieve his head from the clouds--or somewhere far less kind--and gone in search of more stimulating company. Instead, when he'd crept cautiously into the living room, muscles tense with anticipation, he'd found her on the couch with an open journal resting against her knees. She'd been nibbling absently on the end of her pen, and her bare feet had kneaded the cushions in an amiable massage.
He'd watched her in silence until she'd sensed his presence and lifted her gaze from the page in front of her. She'd smiled around the pen cap in the corner of her mouth, and then she'd retracted the nib with a click.
"Hello," she'd said. "Good morning?", and the rush of water in his ears had been so loud that he'd had to retreat into the kitchen and drown it out with the guttural whirr of his electric coffee grinder.
The night before he'd departed for his holiday with Khira Li, they'd been tangled in his bed, watching Tatoert reruns in the dark with a bowl of sugared popcorn between them. He'd had little use for the show and its grim melodrama, but it had amused Calliope, and he'd thought a few hours of bad television a fair exchange for her good humor. So he'd combated the boredom with drags from a cigarette and pulls from a bottle of beer and idly combed his fingers through the silken strands of her hair.
She'd reached out and snatched a few kernels of sugared corn from the bowl that teetered precariously on the uneven shelf of his belly. "That guy must be dreadfully bound-up," she'd observed wryly as the lead investigator had glowered inscrutably at a sliver of acrylic trapped inside his tweezers.
"Why do you watch this show?" He'd taken a drag from his cigarette and blown it out, careful not to blow it into her eyes.
He'd felt the shrug of one shoulder against his ribs and heard the crunch and crackle of popcorn as she'd popped it into her mouth, styrofoam peanuts rustling in a faint breeze. "A slice of home, I guess, and it seems safer than the shows on other channels. I was flipping channels yesterday and saw some guy's unit in high definition."
He'd snorted. "Don't tell me you object to televised nudity."
More rustling from the bowl as she'd reached for another handful. "Not in principle, but there are just some people you don't want to see naked."
He could hardly argue the point. For every nubile young that that had bared her breasts while astride her drunken boyfriend's shoulders, there were dozens of weedy, desperate women with more bravado than breast or sweaty, red-faced girls with brawny arms and wide hips and drooping breasts in desperate need of a winch. While he never begrudged them their moxie and even silently applauded it, he had scant desire to see their wares, and so he customarily sought refuge from the ocular assault by pretending to concentrate on his finger work.
For a time, the only sounds in the room had been the ill-tempered muttering of the constipated scientist, the rustle and crackle of Calliope tunneling to the bottom of the popcorn bowl, and the cool slosh of beer against glass.
Then, "Richard?"
"Hmm?" The slosh of beer as he lowered the bottle.
"Do you know of a Catholic church that might have a Christmas mass?"
"You're Catholic?" he'd blurted.
"Is that so terrible?" she'd countered, bemused, and raised her head from the firm pillow of his chest.
"No. No, of course not. It's just a bit surprising, that's all." His mind had turned to their conversation in the grocery store, when she'd baldly declared her support for abortion as they fondled tomatoes.
"Not all of us are pious Sister Marys who keep our knees closed and our fingers curled 'round our rosaries, and not all of us blindly follow Papal bulls. I don't give a damn what His Holiness says, the Lord isn't using him like a ham radio to broadcast His will to the faithful," she'd retorted peevishly, and shifted beneath the bedclothes. "Besides, if I lapsed any further, I'd find myself in Hell's basement."
"But you want to go to Mass."
Another shrug, and she'd shifted again and pushed down the bedsheets to rest a night-cool hand on his belly. "I was Confirmed when I was twelve by the same priest who'd baptized me and my siblings. Some roots run deep. Besides, it's tradition, and there's comfort in that. My family's gone to Mass on Christmas Eve for forever, and I see no reason to break with that. It won't be in the same church, but we'll be doing the same thing."
"I think the Herz-Jesu Kirche is nearest, but I don't know the schedule. I've never been. Sorry."
Calliope had made no comment, but her fingers had stirred idle circles around his bellybutton.
On the television, the grim-faced investigator had been interrogating a sullen, sallow drug dealer. He'd muted it and let the remote sink into the soft expanse of down comforter. "Will you be all right alone?" As thrilled as he'd been to spend the holiday with Khira Li, now that he'd come to it, it had seemed unfair and perhaps even a trifle cruel to leave Calliope behind to drift through Christmas with none for company, not even the lonely, inconsiderate stranger who'd invited her in the first place.
"Of course. I'm a big girl, and this isn't my first trip to the land of beer and bratwurst."
"That isn't what I meant," he'd said softly, and gently stroked her temple.
"I'll be fine," she'd assured him, and briefly turned to mouth his chest. "I have book, a phone, and considerable knowledge of how to use both."
It's not the same, he'd wanted to say, but he hadn't pressed. To do so might've aggravated the loneliness she was trying so hard to hide behind her careful facade of convivial American politeness, and who was he to disturb the peace she had managed to find in her acceptance of this bittersweet status quo? So he'd stroked her hair and smoked his cigarettes down to the filter and cast guilty glances at the outline of his luggage, neatly-stacked and waiting beside the bedroom door.
They would do something special upon his return, he'd decided as she'd drowsed on his chest and her body had gone slack with the release of sleep. He would take her for a Doener, perhaps, or maybe she would prefer the doener kebabs. Aside from her visceral rejection of the rotkohl at the bierkeller, she had proven quite culinarily-adventurous; maybe she'd like a quiet evening of sashimi at Gingi Sushi, or maybe he could cook a dinner of sausage and peppers or his famous roast duck of which he'd boasted in San Francisco. He had offered to make it for her, after all, and he hardly wanted to prove so unreliable a partner so early in their dance. Not when there were too many opportunities for dismal failure looming on the horizon, carried in on the wings of the impending tour and its attendant press junket.
She'd seen him off the next morning, hair tousled and eyes puffy with reluctant wakefulness and feet shod in her mouse slippers. She'd offered to make him breakfast, but he'd been distracted and light-limbed with anticipation, and so she'd settled for pressing a cup of coffee and a slice of thickly-buttered toast into his hands and watching him wolf both down as he stood over the kitchen sink. She'd offered him nothing but a sleepy smile as she'd slouched at the kitchen table with her chin propped on her upturned palm, and he'd been grateful for the quiet. The chance to spend time with Khira Li never failed to throw him into a state of nervous agitation, and the combination of nerves and adrenaline often sharpened his tongue, made him cutting and peremptory in his impatience to begin his adventure.
It's a trait that has worsened as Khira has grown; she's blossomed from a little girl in white Easter dresses into a beautiful young woman he scarcely dares to recognize, and he can't shake the unsettling, heartsick feeling that she won't be his little girl much longer. Soon, some stupid boy with more bravado than brains would catch her eye and capture her heart, and she would fly away with him to establish the happily-ever-after that has so far eluded him. Soon he'll be left with nothing but photo albums and a handful of memories that he's wrested from the gluttonous jaws of life in the studio and on the road. The prospect of being left behind fills him with a sour-bellied dread, and so, he clings to her whenever he can and prays that it won't be the last chance he'll ever have.
It's not a truth he can articulate well, not even to those he loves, and even if he could have done, it wasn't one he'd been willing to share with Calliope, enamored as he'd been of her by then, and so, he'd kept his distance and hovered over the sink and waited for his cellphone to announce Khira's arrival downstairs.
If Calliope had been hurt by his aloofness, she'd shown no sign of it. She'd sat at the kitchen table with her elbows propped on the table as she'd stirred her tea in sluggish circles. Occasionally, she'd yawned behind her hand or rubbed at her drooping eyelids and picked up her mug of tea to blow desultorily at the rising steam.
"Walther will be here if you need anything," he'd said to distract himself from the obdurate silence of his cellphone, and wiped crumbs from the corners of his mouth with the ball of his thumb.
Another gusty yawn. "I'm sure he'll be thrilled to wait on me hand and foot," she'd muttered indistinctly from behind the back of her hand. Walther had been polite, but he'd remained wary of her, spooked by her American pedigree and no doubt haunted by memories of Caron's explosive fits of temper. She'd rubbed her eyes with the meaty heel of her palm and taken a sip of tea, the spoon jutting over the rim like a grounding stake.
"I'll be back on the twenty-seventh," he'd said quietly.
"Stop worrying and enjoy your holiday," she'd answered lightly, but he hadn't missed the way her gaze had roamed the apartment. She'd looked lost, a battered survivor left behind at the shipwreck while the others went for help.
He'd considered asking her along. Perhaps she could bring a few of her favorite books and curl up before the lodge fireplace while he and Khira hit the slopes. She was certainly less demanding and less obtrusive than most of his most of his former lovers had been, and it would be a kinder way to spend Christmas than alone in his bachelor's apartment with naked men on television and dour concierges in the lobby.
He'd opened his mouth to broach the subject, but before he could, the phone had rung, high and shrill and chipper in the stuporous, cautious silence, and thoughts of Khira had swamped his mind and left room for nothing else. He'd abandoned his unfinished coffee and strode towards the front door and his waiting luggage, flipping open the phone as he'd gone. It was a series of motions he'd perfected over the years of dragging overstuffed baggage through airport terminals while answering insistent phone calls from harried management demanding to know why he was late and dodging goggling, clutching fans.
"Hallo," he'd said into the phone as he'd bent to pick up the handle of his rolling suitcase and the bulging pair of duffel bags. "Hello, sweetheart. Yes, I'm ready. I'm coming down right now. No, I won't. Uh huh. I love you, too. Bye." He'd cast a quick glance over his shoulder as the click of a broken connection had sounded in his ear, and he'd stopped, the shoulder strap of one duffel dangling limply over his forearm.
Calliope had risen from her seat at the table to stand beside it, and her hands had fluttered and twined restlessly, flexing as she'd stretched them. She'd offered him a fragile, tentative smile and brushed a stray forelock from her forehead, but her eyes had been lost and a little sad, and she'd sidled from foot to foot as though she were unsure of the proper protocol at this hurried moment of parting.
Oh, he'd thought as he'd stood with the phone still hissing in his ear. Oh, I didn't think this one through, did I? he'd thought dismally.
Do you ever? Caron had prodded ruthlessly inside his head.
He'd closed the phone and let the duffel slide off his forearm to the floor, and then he'd pocketed the phone and closed the distance between them to rest his hands on her hips. "I'm-," he'd begun, and stopped. He hadn't been sorry to see his daughter, not in the slightest. Calliope had been gazing earnestly up at him with her lovely, unsettling eyes, and he'd brought his hands up to cup her face. "We will do something together when I return," he'd promised her. "Anything you like. Maybe you'll find a new restaurant to try or a new bookshop you've yet to plunder. Whatever pleases you, mmm?" He'd smiled hopefully and drawn his thumbs over the delicate spars of her cheekbones.
Her own hands had come to rest upon his shoulders, and she'd risen on her toes to plant a soft, chaste kiss on his lips. "Have a wonderful time." A gentle caress at his nape, and then she'd dropped to her soles and stepped away, a maidservant making way for her master.
"You, too," his mouth had offered before his distracted brain could think better of it, and he'd winced and closed his eyes against a rush of embarrassment. Smooth, Kruspe, smooth. I'm sure she'll be living it up with tho ghosts while you're on the slopes in Switzerland. He'd opened his mouth to apologize.
She'd raised a hand to forestall him. "I'll be fine. Just go and have a merry Christmas, mmm? I'll be here when you get back."
He'd closed his eyes again, this time in gratitude. He'd clasped her upraised hand and brought it to his lips, where he'd planted soft, warm kisses along the knuckles. "Anything you like," he'd murmured, and hoped it proved a richer consolation than it sounded.
She'd smiled and squeezed his hand. "Go on now. You don't want to keep her waiting."
He'd briefly stroked her temple and savored the pleased, longing flutter of her eyelids, and then he'd turned and retrieved his duffel from the floor. He'd opened the front door and pulled his rolling suitcase through it, and then he'd turned and stood uncertainly on the threshold, one hand resting on the cool knob. Calliope had mustered a wave and another resolute smile, and then she'd squared her shoulders and bustled to the table and begun to clear it of her half-full mug of tea. She'd worked with stoic determination, and the last glimpse he'd had of her before he'd closed the door had been of her staring into the dregs of his coffee with thin-lipped resolve. In the queer winter light, she'd looked like a ghost, and he'd shivered despite his muffler and knit cap and his woolen overcoat. It's a family holiday, not a horror movie, he'd chided himself as he'd closed the door with a soft snick and left her to the company of her books and the mercy of the ghosts within the walls, but he'd resolved to call her often with a reminder of friendly voices in the night.
He's ashamed to admit it now, but it was a resolution he had not honored. Oh, he'd had the best of intentions when he'd walked out the door, but he'd also been cursed with a one-track mind, that merciless gift that had made him a rich and lonely man, and five minutes into the drive to Switzerland, Khira Li had been all he could see. He'd forgotten everything but her, even his lovely witch, and he'd lost himself to the rhythms and pleasures of early fatherhood, when he'd had Khira to himself and they could take long, rambling drives in the car. Khira had inherited his imagination, and she'd sat in the seat and prattled for hours about the truths only her child's eyes could see. Fairies in the light stanchions that dotted the motorways and lions in the tall grasses that danced alongside the steel guardrails. She would talk until her vocabulary and her body were spent, and then she would sleep, body slack and head bobbing to the rhythm of the road. Even when she was small, her personality had been fierce and larger than the confines of her little, sturdy body, and time had done nothing to dim it. Only the topics of conversation had changed, from fairies and unicorns to her modeling portfolio and scummy talent agents and the final projects for her school studies. And music, and clothes, and the jerk who'd spent several fruitless months trying to worm his way into her affections and her pants. That last seldom failed to inspire a bout of heartburn and the uncontrollable urge to squeeze the steering wheel until it groaned in protest.
Her personality had filled the car and his heart, and even the spacious ski lodge could scarcely contain it. He'd spent those days ignoring the protests of his knees and ankles and quietly marveling at the young woman he'd produced. He'd skied the intermediate slopes and watched his breath freeze on his cheeks as he'd stopped to watch her speed by, throwing up plumes of white powder and bidding him follow. C'mon, Daddy! You're not getting old, are you? she would tease, and in that moment, he would feel very old, indeed, old and unmanned, and fumbling for his rightful place in time as he tried to reconcile the glowing young woman before him with the grinning, twirling, gap-toothed child of his fondest memories.
Once, when they'd been having a snowball fight behind the lodge, he'd experienced a queer doubling-back in time, and for a moment, he'd thought he'd seen the Khira of his memories grinning at him from the snowdrifts, snow dusted in her long, blonde hair and glittering on the ends of her eyelashes, but just then, Khira had landed a perfect shot squarely in his face, and when he'd sputtered and blinked to clear his eyes of the powdery snow, she had been gone, and in her place had been the Khira of now, red-cheeked and impossibly grown up.
The sudden loss of her had been acute, an icepick to the center of his chest, and his arms had gone slack as he'd fought the stinging burn of threatening tears. He'd dropped the snow he'd gathered for another snowball and stared at her, frozen breath sharp as glass against the roof of his mouth. Khira's laughter had quickly become concern, and she'd laid down her icy arms in turn and blundered to him, a baby penguin flopping and floundering over the hillocks and dunes. The snow had crunched underfoot as she'd come, and the fabric of her goosedown jacket had hissed and crackled as her arms had flapped and pinwheeled for balance.
Vati, are you okay? she'd demanded anxiously, and peered solicitously at his wind-chapped-face.
How could he tell her that he was mourning the child she had been? He'd huffed brittle laughter and shaken his head and salted the tip of her nose with snow and enveloped her in a fierce, one-armed hug. I'm fine. If your plan was to wear me out on the slopes and collect your inheritance, then you'll have to try harder, he'd teased.
Daddy! she'd squealed in mock outrage, and swatted him on the shoulder. That's not funny, she'd fumed, and beneath the playful indignation, he'd seen genuine hurt, and so he'd shifted to embrace her with both arms.
No, but perhaps you won't be so fond of me when I'm eighty years old and out of my head and trying to go to the beach in my grandson's Speedos.
She'd pulled a face. Eugh. Thanks for that, Dad. Then she'd pressed her cheek to his. I'll always be fond of you, Vati, she'd assured him with the serene confidence of a child who had once believed in fairies, and then she'd stepped back with the careless agility of the young and bent to scoop snow into her mittened palm. That's why I'm giving you a headstart before I unleash my fury. She'd flashed him a devilish grin as her hands had smoothed and molded the snow into a tight ball. Five, four, three...
He'd laughed and retreated, arms raised to shield his face from the impending onslaught, and Khira had come following after, arm cocked and laughter spilling from her lips like music.
Time with Khira was perfect happiness, and Calliope, bless her, hadn't intruded upon it with so much as a phone call. Her only contact had been a text message sent on Christmas Eve: Merry Christmas. Hope you're having fun. It had prompted a wistful smile, and he'd meant to call her, he truly had, but then Khira had bid him come see the tree that had been unveiled in the lodge, and he'd forgotten again, beckoned by the merriment in her voice and the rare opportunity to see childish wonder writ large upon her face. Later, he'd been too logy with happiness and the heavy sweetness of Christollen and lebkuechen, and by the time he'd emerged from his sugar coma and regained his senses, the Christmas-Day sun had risen to reveal a winter fantasyland of icicles and trees decorated with shimmering garlands of snow and ice.
He should have called her that morning, he supposes, should have torn himself away from Khira and spent ten minutes on the phone with the woman who would prove to be his most stalwart ally and faithful companion, but happiness and contentment have an unfortunate habit of making him selfish and oblivious, and so he'd let it slide, told himself that he would be back in Berlin soon enough, with plenty of time to ply her with attention and affection. Calliope was hardy and self-sufficient and had no need of him; Khira was the flesh of his flesh and the blood of his blood, and soon, she would have no need of him, either.
Cont'd next entry
Author:
laguera25Fandom: Rammstein
Rating FRM
Pairing: Richard Kruspe/OFC
Disclaimer: Richard Z. Kruspe is a real person, with family and friends who love him. I am not one of them. I do not know him. This is a work of complete fiction, and should be read as such. No defamation is intended. For entertainment only.
Part I Part IIa Part IIb Part III Part IVa Part IVb Part V Part VIa Part VIb Part VIIa Part VIIb Part VIII Part IX Part Xa Part Xb Part XIa Part XIb Part XIIa Part XIIb Part XIIIa Part XIIIb Part XIV
They'd settled into a routine of sorts over the next five days, though it had been fluid and lazy and easily amendable when the need arose. Sometimes, he had awoken with his nose buried in her hair and his cock twitching against the swell of her ass, and sometimes, he'd awoken to find her propped in bed, elbows on the comforter and nose in a book. Sometimes when he'd awoken, she hadn't been in the bed at all, but performing light stretching exercises on the floor beside the radiator, barefoot and supple as she reached for the indolent point of her toes, or in the shower, humming like a dryad as the water thundered through the pipes, or sipping tea and nibbling toast at the kitchen table as she scrolled through the news from home on her laptop. But he'd always found her, and she'd always greeted him with a lingering good-morning kiss. She'd never shied from his sleep-puffy face or remnants of Morpheus' dreaming dust in the corners of his eyes or the age lines in his face or the whisper of last night's meal on his breath. She'd just smiled and ruffled his tousled hair and swatted his ass, and when he'd shuffled into the kitchen, there had always been a pot of strong Turkish coffee and a bowl of sugar. She'd always tasted of tea and buttered toast and cinnamon dental floss and smelled of vanilla and almonds and his warm bedclothes, a fact which had prompted him to smile into her hair.
And there had been the sex, of course. In the mornings, when the sun was low and drowsy on the horizon and the radiator chuffed and rumbled in its corner. In the bed and in the shower and in the tub, a tangle of sluicing water and slippery skin and clutching limbs. On the sofa with her still-damp hair fanned over the cushions or tickling his lips as he mapped her. Once, he'd even had her on the kitchen counter, skirt hiked over her hips and panties dangling from one ankle and heels digging into his ass as he'd pistoned into her. She'd laughed then, laughed and muttered that it wasn't her fault if the damn counter buckled, but the laughter had been soft and warm, and he'd laughed with her as he'd pictured having to explain the sagging, sweat-smeared countertop to a politely-befuddled maintenance worker.
In the evenings, with snow spitting and pattering against the window, languid and lazy and tasting of wine. She was different during their nocturnal couplings, more primal, and tightly-wound beneath his steadying, coaxing, clutching hands. She had smelled different, too, of snow and salt and leather and yellowing pages from her hours spent scouring bookshops. Warm fabric and heated skin and ink and dust. She was hungrier, nipping and lapping and curling her fingers to rake his skin with her nails. She was needier at night and less embarrassed by her need as she clucked and hummed and grunted to his movements, and sometimes, she'd bid him use her harder in a raw, glottal voice so unlike her morning laughter. Sometimes her unalloyed need had startled him and brought him back to the question of how long it had been since she'd invited a man into her bed, but it hadn't been for him to ask, and anyhow, it had made little difference when she was sated and spent and boneless in his one-armed embrace as he'd smoked a post-coital cigarette and let the last of the tension leave him on the lazy tendrils of exhaled smoke.
He'd learned her over the course of those heady, unhurried days, devoted himself to the study of her as he'd once devoted himself to the study of notes and measures and chords and frets and fingering. He'd learned that she shivered whenever he drew his callused fingertips over her ribs, and that she made the most delicious, delirious sounds whenever he let his lips ghost over the sensitive flesh at the hollow of her throat. He'd also learned that if he thrust his fingers into her panting, moaning mouth while he took her on all fours, she would suckle them with keening, wanton fervor, hips bucking and rolling beneath him in arrhythmic waves.
He'd learned her beyond the bedsheets as well. Her body clock was set to the rhythms of a teacher's life, and so she often rose with the sun, slipping from the quiet warmth of his bedroom to cook eggs and toast while he snored into him pillow and his fingers twitched at the prickle of phantom frets. She took sugar with her morning tea, but she preferred honey, and she took her eggs with a liberal dusting of black pepper. She missed the inky grit of newsprint beneath her fingers and lamented bitterly that technology had robbed her of one of her favorite morning rituals, the chance to do the crossword puzzle while she crunched heavily-buttered toast. The op-ed page of The New York Times seldom failed to produce an expression of thunderous indignation, and if he were awake enough, she would gladly explain her outrage to him while he convinced his eyes to remain open between sips of scalding black coffee.
She preferred to walk in the early afternoons, to amble through the city with her messenger bag over her shoulder and take in the sights and sounds and the smells of the city. She often sat on a bench in the Lindenstrasse with a book and read as long as the light allowed or until hunger drove her to one of the innumerable bakeries and specialty shops for a turnover or a bagel or a sandwich on thick, black rye. She loved to window shop, but she rarely bought anything save for books, which she brought back to the flat with alarming regularity, holding them aloft like tattered, dusty trophies. Old books and new, German and English. Small mass-market paperbacks and weighty tomes. Anthologies and histories and biographies of dead kings and despotic Roman emperors. Books soon sat in tidy stacks on his bedside tables and the coffee table and the kitchen table. She brought back so many that she'd begun to joke rather uneasily that she needed another suitcase.
She loved pomegranates and passionfruit and popcorn sprinkled with sugar. She liked the latter best when she ate it with her head on his shoulder, popping handfuls into her mouth while they watched old episodes of Tatoert and he drank beer to settle the insistent voice of the music inside his head, a voice that sounded like nylon and fuzztones and feedback from a Marshall stack. She thought tea tasted best when it came from a brown betty teapot, and she coveted one of the stubby, haughty, dowager's pots with a wistful longing. She was utterly unfazed by his strident snores, but fought trenchantly for her share of the covers, and she loved to curl into his warm spaces like a burrowing animal.
The most glorious thing he'd learned about her was that she was a self-contained and self-sustaining goddess. While she plainly enjoyed his company--the undisguised delight in her eyes when he plopped beside her on his couch and invited her to nestle where she would never failed to inspire a giddy fillip inside his chest--she was equally content to leave him to his own devices. If she had woken in the morning to find that he'd locked himself in his office with his Powerbook and his Rammfire and recorded a new arrangement for the album or for use in a future solo project, she hadn't come thumping into his carefully-arranged workspace to pull him away with demands to accompany her to the open-air markets or scowled at him when he'd roused himself from his creative trance to forage for cold cuts in the refrigerator. She'd respected his process and let him come when he would, and when he came to her, he'd been met with a pleased yet knowing smile. If she wearied of waiting for him, she retired to the couch with a book or left a note on the kitchen counter and went for a walk in the city and returned in the late afternoon, smelling of salt and heated skin and brimming with tales of the sights and sounds she had experienced. He'd seen his native city through an outsider's eyes, and it had amused and fascinated him by turns to hear her describe a market that had long since faded into the background of his awareness.
That isn't to say that he hadn't made a concerted effort to spend time with her. He had often invited her to join him in his morning exercises, and they'd spent a laughing, fumbling morning in a pile of tangled limbs as he'd taught her the five Tibetan rites. Her soft hair had tickled his nose as he'd braced her while she practiced the fourth rite, and the scent of her had clung to his skin as he'd watched her struggle to attain the proscribed positions. She'd laughed and teetered and fumbled, but she'd also been gamely earnest in her efforts, and he'd delighted in watching the hypnotic rise and fall of her belly as she'd closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The copper of her eyelashes had been startling against the smooth paleness of her skin, and he'd been tempted to reach out and brush his rough fingertips over them, to see if they felt like a moth's wings beneath them, light and fluttering and curiously alive.
He'd occasionally accompanied her on her ambles through the city, had torn himself from his guitar and the solitude of his office to bundle himself in his winter coat and muffler and let her lead him through the streets he knew as intimately as a lover's body. She did not tug him, a terrier straining at a leash, but rather moved like the eddying currents of a river, urging him along with her naked avidity for the city and its rich, decadent history. She'd threaded her arm through his and simply drifted, eyes bright and searching behind her muffler. She'd blundered onto to the tourist traps hawking t-shirts and insipid postcards of the Rathaus and the Brandenburg Tor, but she'd also found her way into the nooks and crannies of the city, the little-traveled byways and sidestreets frequented by locals and lifers. More than once, he'd found himself standing outside a shop he had forgotten existed, blinking at it in bemused incredulity and fumbling in his pocket for a lighter while Calliope had disentangled herself to inspect the goods on display in the window. He'd followed her into cheese shops and wine shops and watched in poorly-concealed amusement as she'd peered at everything and sidled over to the befuddled proprietor to pepper them with questions in her resolute, imperfect German. He'd watched as German reserve and implacability had met American exuberance and stoic old men had been reduced to head-scratching speechlessness by her enthusiasm. More often then not, she'd left the shop with a parcel in hand, and more often still, he'd looked back to see the proprietor shaking his head and groping for his customary aplomb.
He'd even taken her to a bierkeller, had dressed in his favorite cashmere sweater and varnished his nails in black lacquer and escorted her on his arm to the old tavern, where they'd sat at the small tables and drunk the strong lagers and eaten their fill of meats and cheeses and black bread. She'd been radiant in her white angora sweater and simple pearl earrings, rosy-cheeked and tousled by the wind. She'd allowed him to order the beer selection for her, and then she'd carefully perused the menu with such fierce concentration that he'd laughed around a puff of smoke.
She'd looked up from her menu, an uncertain smile playing in the corners of her mouth. "What?"
"You look like you're studying for an exam."
The rosiness of her cheeks had deepened. "I'm a woman who likes to know all her options. Something wrong with that?"
"No. Not at all." He'd shaken his head and taken another drag from his cigarette.
She'd made a skeptical grunt in the back of her throat, but her hand had drifted over the tabletop to rest lightly atop his own. "I like your nails," she'd murmured absently, gaze still fixed on the menu.
"Yes? Thank you."
Another grunt, this one of acknowledgment.
Even then, she'd let him be, had let him drift amid the din of other conversations while the waiter dawdled among other patrons and engaged in idle chatter with the florid publican who hunkered behind his bar like the gatekeeper of a medieval fortress. He'd smoked his cigarettes and drunk his lager and soaked in the sounds of home, the solidity of the stone floor beneath his feet. He could not deny, nor would he apologize for, his torrid love affair with that bawdy, brassy young upstart across the sea who exuded raw sexuality from every pore and then wallowed in piety and shame and threw itself upon the mercy of a vengeful god with no pity in his manmade bones, but neither could he deny the connection he felt to this piece of earth in his bones, the stirring of memories embedded deep within muscle and bone. He hadn't been born in Berlin, it was true, but he'd come to manhood and discovered himself in its pubs and beerhalls and lost his demons on its streets. It had been his creative incubator, and its dark undercurrents had fed and sustained him when he could scarcely feed himself and the only thoughts inside his addled, starving had been for the next note and the next bump of cocaine. He could have gone anywhere when the wall had fallen in small chunks and great, crumbling slabs, but he had returned to the heart of the East, where he'd found Till and Christoph and Paul and cast his lot with a family of his own making, his own choosing. When wealth had found him and he could have gone anywhere in the world, he had remained there, and he might well have remained there forever if he hadn't taken that fateful trip across the sea and fallen under the thrall of Caron and that gaudy, glorious, unrepentant, clanking city, with its excess and its bravado and its gritty, grimy, seedy sensuality, and sitting there with a good lager thick on his tongue, he'd thought he would die there, and never mind the wistful dreams of spending his twilight years on the golden sands of a South African beach.
Now and then, he'd thought of returning to Berlin, to its contrast of grim austerity and voluptuous decadence, but he'd known he never would. His feet were too familiar with paths he'd hoped Calliope's feet would never discover, much less tread, and his soul still remembered too fondly the white oblivion that waited for him there. The grim austerity held no mercy, and the voluptuous decadence masked a rot that threatened to seep inside if he courted it too long. Better to stay beyond its reach, in cities with bright lights to distract him from his dark thoughts and dispel the shadows in which his father hid.
But he'd missed his city, just as he sometimes missed the tickling burn of cocaine in his nostrils, and sharing it with Calliope had pleased him. Her easy presence had transformed it from a city of familiar shadows into a city of rediscovered pleasures, and he'd delighted in watching her absorb the city between sips of lager. She'd watched the other patrons with keen interest, as though she were cataloging them, and her eyes had danced over the thick rim of her stein.
He'd taken a swallow from his own stein and closed his hand over hers. "Anything interesting?" he'd asked.
She'd started. "Oh, sorry. I was woolgathering." She'd given his fingers an apologetic squeeze. "Habit I picked up as a kid when I got tired of eavesdropping on my parents' conversation on long roadtrips."
"You looked like you were people-watching."
"I was," she'd admitted. "I was trying to decide what kind of characters they'd be if I were to write the next Literary Masterpiece."
"Oh? Anyone interesting?"
She'd taken a sip of lager and discreetly uncurled her finger to point discreetly at a woman slumped at a table, alone with a glass of cheap house wine. "An expatriate who came here for love ten years ago. The love affair withered within a year, but the love affair with the city lasted longer. She stayed on, tried to piece her life back together, and when that didn't work, she tried to create a new life; but the life she scraped together was so much dead skin worn like an overcoat. Life had color once, before it all bled out through her broken heart, but now it's dead and grey, and she's too tired to find her bootstraps again. She wants to go home, but she left with her head high and her back stiff, and she's too ashamed to crawl home with head hung and back broken. Pride is a gift, but it's also bitter and cold as gristle when you have to swallow it. So she comes in here most every night and swills cheap booze, and every now and then, she snares some strapping young lad looking for someone to lift the unwelcome burden of his virginity or to shield him from his loneliness. The barkeep feels sorry for her, so he occasionally gives her one on the house. Most of the time, he gives it to her in the stockroom, quick and dirty between tugs on the tap. He gets laid, and she gets to tell herself that life might be better tomorrow."
"You put a lot of thought into this," he'd mused.
She'd shrugged. "Dreamers usually do." Another careful sip of beer, a bird dipping its beak into a fountain. "You mean to tell me you've never done the same thing?"
"I used to sit in my lessons and imagine alternative explanations for things. The stories the teachers told didn't interest me."
He'd been tempted to ask her who she thought he would be if he were a character in her story, but he'd been afraid of her answer, afraid he might hear too much naked truth in it. He'd been afraid to hear Caron's voice spilling from those pretty lips, cutting and critical and cruel. She would not mean to hurt him; she was not possessed of Caron's casual malice, but cruelty was no less painful when delivered by an unknowing mouth, and so he'd swallowed the impulse with a gulp of beer and steered her to the safer subject of the menu on the table before her.
She'd ordered knackwurst and rotkohl, and he'd nearly drowned in his beer at the face she'd pulled when she'd bitten into a forkful of the tart cabbage. He'd hacked and sputtered ungallantly into the back of his palm as her face had puckered into a moue of disgust. Her eyes had begun to water as she'd struggled to swallow the tangle of fermented cabbage. Her distinctly American sense of civility had clashed with her American palate and her instinctive need to expel the offending morsel, and she'd brought her loosely-fisted hand to her mouth as she'd suppressed her rebellious gorge and chewed with the mulish determination of a soldier cresting a hill with his weapon at the ready.
"You can spit it out," he'd told her between sniggers and thin, beer-congested coughs, and offered her his linen napkin.
She'd refused it with a furious flap of her hand and redoubled her efforts to conquer the briny cabbage. She'd closed her streaming eyes, and her throat had worked spasmodically to force it down her gullet. She'd painted such a picture of misery that he'd thought to place a comforting hand on her nape, but before he could, she'd coughed and cleared her throat, and her eyelids had fluttered open as though she were emerging from a deep and terrible dream.
"Oh, God," she'd croaked, and pressed her lips to her knuckles to forestall further mutiny from her stomach.
"It's not for everyone," he'd offered diplomatically, and brushed an errant strand of hair from her face. "It might've been a bad preparation. Some people can go a bit overboard with the brine. You're welcome to order something else, or you can share in my stew." He'd nudged the steaming bowl towards her.
She'd spared him a grateful, apologetic glance and swiped at her watery eyes with the cool planchette of her fingertips. "I'm sorry, " she'd managed. "I don't want to be such an uncultured philistine."
"All I want you to be is who you are," he'd replied placidly, and the sunny brilliance of her answering smile had made his stomach flutter.
She'd gladly partaken of his proffered stew, had dipped her spoon into the thick, rich melange of vegetables and stewed rabbit and eaten in slow, thoughtful bites. She'd shared her sausage in turn, and they'd lingered, nibbling on the food before them and simply relaxing, feet stretched and crossed beneath the table and occasionally grazing one another as they flexed pleasantly-crackling toes. She'd smiled slyly at the not-so-incidental contact and patted his hand, and when he'd excused himself to smother his relentless nicotine urge in the biting December cold, she'd chuckled and taken a long draught of lager.
He'd fallen into the rhythm of such easy domesticity, had relished the opportunity to let go of the throttle and breathe, to close his eyes and let the air fill his lungs and remain there like a buoyant weightlessness in the center of his chest. He lost and found himself in the freedom to live his life in her company rather than build it around her. She was quiet and unobtrusive, his schoene Hexe, and she'd drifted through his rooms like dust and smoke, there only when he'd needed her and content to curl on the sofa with a book. The night before their sojourn to the bierkeller, he'd retired to his small office studio with the intention of fiddling about just long enough to rouse himself from the fetters of sleep and too much idleness, and when he'd next found himself in the slipstream of time and awareness, he'd found that morning had long since given way to afternoon. He'd blinked and set aside his guitar and sworn softly under his breath, and then he'd hurried into the wider world of his apartment, sure he would find either an angry Calliope or a terse note saying that she had wearied of waiting for him to retrieve his head from the clouds--or somewhere far less kind--and gone in search of more stimulating company. Instead, when he'd crept cautiously into the living room, muscles tense with anticipation, he'd found her on the couch with an open journal resting against her knees. She'd been nibbling absently on the end of her pen, and her bare feet had kneaded the cushions in an amiable massage.
He'd watched her in silence until she'd sensed his presence and lifted her gaze from the page in front of her. She'd smiled around the pen cap in the corner of her mouth, and then she'd retracted the nib with a click.
"Hello," she'd said. "Good morning?", and the rush of water in his ears had been so loud that he'd had to retreat into the kitchen and drown it out with the guttural whirr of his electric coffee grinder.
The night before he'd departed for his holiday with Khira Li, they'd been tangled in his bed, watching Tatoert reruns in the dark with a bowl of sugared popcorn between them. He'd had little use for the show and its grim melodrama, but it had amused Calliope, and he'd thought a few hours of bad television a fair exchange for her good humor. So he'd combated the boredom with drags from a cigarette and pulls from a bottle of beer and idly combed his fingers through the silken strands of her hair.
She'd reached out and snatched a few kernels of sugared corn from the bowl that teetered precariously on the uneven shelf of his belly. "That guy must be dreadfully bound-up," she'd observed wryly as the lead investigator had glowered inscrutably at a sliver of acrylic trapped inside his tweezers.
"Why do you watch this show?" He'd taken a drag from his cigarette and blown it out, careful not to blow it into her eyes.
He'd felt the shrug of one shoulder against his ribs and heard the crunch and crackle of popcorn as she'd popped it into her mouth, styrofoam peanuts rustling in a faint breeze. "A slice of home, I guess, and it seems safer than the shows on other channels. I was flipping channels yesterday and saw some guy's unit in high definition."
He'd snorted. "Don't tell me you object to televised nudity."
More rustling from the bowl as she'd reached for another handful. "Not in principle, but there are just some people you don't want to see naked."
He could hardly argue the point. For every nubile young that that had bared her breasts while astride her drunken boyfriend's shoulders, there were dozens of weedy, desperate women with more bravado than breast or sweaty, red-faced girls with brawny arms and wide hips and drooping breasts in desperate need of a winch. While he never begrudged them their moxie and even silently applauded it, he had scant desire to see their wares, and so he customarily sought refuge from the ocular assault by pretending to concentrate on his finger work.
For a time, the only sounds in the room had been the ill-tempered muttering of the constipated scientist, the rustle and crackle of Calliope tunneling to the bottom of the popcorn bowl, and the cool slosh of beer against glass.
Then, "Richard?"
"Hmm?" The slosh of beer as he lowered the bottle.
"Do you know of a Catholic church that might have a Christmas mass?"
"You're Catholic?" he'd blurted.
"Is that so terrible?" she'd countered, bemused, and raised her head from the firm pillow of his chest.
"No. No, of course not. It's just a bit surprising, that's all." His mind had turned to their conversation in the grocery store, when she'd baldly declared her support for abortion as they fondled tomatoes.
"Not all of us are pious Sister Marys who keep our knees closed and our fingers curled 'round our rosaries, and not all of us blindly follow Papal bulls. I don't give a damn what His Holiness says, the Lord isn't using him like a ham radio to broadcast His will to the faithful," she'd retorted peevishly, and shifted beneath the bedclothes. "Besides, if I lapsed any further, I'd find myself in Hell's basement."
"But you want to go to Mass."
Another shrug, and she'd shifted again and pushed down the bedsheets to rest a night-cool hand on his belly. "I was Confirmed when I was twelve by the same priest who'd baptized me and my siblings. Some roots run deep. Besides, it's tradition, and there's comfort in that. My family's gone to Mass on Christmas Eve for forever, and I see no reason to break with that. It won't be in the same church, but we'll be doing the same thing."
"I think the Herz-Jesu Kirche is nearest, but I don't know the schedule. I've never been. Sorry."
Calliope had made no comment, but her fingers had stirred idle circles around his bellybutton.
On the television, the grim-faced investigator had been interrogating a sullen, sallow drug dealer. He'd muted it and let the remote sink into the soft expanse of down comforter. "Will you be all right alone?" As thrilled as he'd been to spend the holiday with Khira Li, now that he'd come to it, it had seemed unfair and perhaps even a trifle cruel to leave Calliope behind to drift through Christmas with none for company, not even the lonely, inconsiderate stranger who'd invited her in the first place.
"Of course. I'm a big girl, and this isn't my first trip to the land of beer and bratwurst."
"That isn't what I meant," he'd said softly, and gently stroked her temple.
"I'll be fine," she'd assured him, and briefly turned to mouth his chest. "I have book, a phone, and considerable knowledge of how to use both."
It's not the same, he'd wanted to say, but he hadn't pressed. To do so might've aggravated the loneliness she was trying so hard to hide behind her careful facade of convivial American politeness, and who was he to disturb the peace she had managed to find in her acceptance of this bittersweet status quo? So he'd stroked her hair and smoked his cigarettes down to the filter and cast guilty glances at the outline of his luggage, neatly-stacked and waiting beside the bedroom door.
They would do something special upon his return, he'd decided as she'd drowsed on his chest and her body had gone slack with the release of sleep. He would take her for a Doener, perhaps, or maybe she would prefer the doener kebabs. Aside from her visceral rejection of the rotkohl at the bierkeller, she had proven quite culinarily-adventurous; maybe she'd like a quiet evening of sashimi at Gingi Sushi, or maybe he could cook a dinner of sausage and peppers or his famous roast duck of which he'd boasted in San Francisco. He had offered to make it for her, after all, and he hardly wanted to prove so unreliable a partner so early in their dance. Not when there were too many opportunities for dismal failure looming on the horizon, carried in on the wings of the impending tour and its attendant press junket.
She'd seen him off the next morning, hair tousled and eyes puffy with reluctant wakefulness and feet shod in her mouse slippers. She'd offered to make him breakfast, but he'd been distracted and light-limbed with anticipation, and so she'd settled for pressing a cup of coffee and a slice of thickly-buttered toast into his hands and watching him wolf both down as he stood over the kitchen sink. She'd offered him nothing but a sleepy smile as she'd slouched at the kitchen table with her chin propped on her upturned palm, and he'd been grateful for the quiet. The chance to spend time with Khira Li never failed to throw him into a state of nervous agitation, and the combination of nerves and adrenaline often sharpened his tongue, made him cutting and peremptory in his impatience to begin his adventure.
It's a trait that has worsened as Khira has grown; she's blossomed from a little girl in white Easter dresses into a beautiful young woman he scarcely dares to recognize, and he can't shake the unsettling, heartsick feeling that she won't be his little girl much longer. Soon, some stupid boy with more bravado than brains would catch her eye and capture her heart, and she would fly away with him to establish the happily-ever-after that has so far eluded him. Soon he'll be left with nothing but photo albums and a handful of memories that he's wrested from the gluttonous jaws of life in the studio and on the road. The prospect of being left behind fills him with a sour-bellied dread, and so, he clings to her whenever he can and prays that it won't be the last chance he'll ever have.
It's not a truth he can articulate well, not even to those he loves, and even if he could have done, it wasn't one he'd been willing to share with Calliope, enamored as he'd been of her by then, and so, he'd kept his distance and hovered over the sink and waited for his cellphone to announce Khira's arrival downstairs.
If Calliope had been hurt by his aloofness, she'd shown no sign of it. She'd sat at the kitchen table with her elbows propped on the table as she'd stirred her tea in sluggish circles. Occasionally, she'd yawned behind her hand or rubbed at her drooping eyelids and picked up her mug of tea to blow desultorily at the rising steam.
"Walther will be here if you need anything," he'd said to distract himself from the obdurate silence of his cellphone, and wiped crumbs from the corners of his mouth with the ball of his thumb.
Another gusty yawn. "I'm sure he'll be thrilled to wait on me hand and foot," she'd muttered indistinctly from behind the back of her hand. Walther had been polite, but he'd remained wary of her, spooked by her American pedigree and no doubt haunted by memories of Caron's explosive fits of temper. She'd rubbed her eyes with the meaty heel of her palm and taken a sip of tea, the spoon jutting over the rim like a grounding stake.
"I'll be back on the twenty-seventh," he'd said quietly.
"Stop worrying and enjoy your holiday," she'd answered lightly, but he hadn't missed the way her gaze had roamed the apartment. She'd looked lost, a battered survivor left behind at the shipwreck while the others went for help.
He'd considered asking her along. Perhaps she could bring a few of her favorite books and curl up before the lodge fireplace while he and Khira hit the slopes. She was certainly less demanding and less obtrusive than most of his most of his former lovers had been, and it would be a kinder way to spend Christmas than alone in his bachelor's apartment with naked men on television and dour concierges in the lobby.
He'd opened his mouth to broach the subject, but before he could, the phone had rung, high and shrill and chipper in the stuporous, cautious silence, and thoughts of Khira had swamped his mind and left room for nothing else. He'd abandoned his unfinished coffee and strode towards the front door and his waiting luggage, flipping open the phone as he'd gone. It was a series of motions he'd perfected over the years of dragging overstuffed baggage through airport terminals while answering insistent phone calls from harried management demanding to know why he was late and dodging goggling, clutching fans.
"Hallo," he'd said into the phone as he'd bent to pick up the handle of his rolling suitcase and the bulging pair of duffel bags. "Hello, sweetheart. Yes, I'm ready. I'm coming down right now. No, I won't. Uh huh. I love you, too. Bye." He'd cast a quick glance over his shoulder as the click of a broken connection had sounded in his ear, and he'd stopped, the shoulder strap of one duffel dangling limply over his forearm.
Calliope had risen from her seat at the table to stand beside it, and her hands had fluttered and twined restlessly, flexing as she'd stretched them. She'd offered him a fragile, tentative smile and brushed a stray forelock from her forehead, but her eyes had been lost and a little sad, and she'd sidled from foot to foot as though she were unsure of the proper protocol at this hurried moment of parting.
Oh, he'd thought as he'd stood with the phone still hissing in his ear. Oh, I didn't think this one through, did I? he'd thought dismally.
Do you ever? Caron had prodded ruthlessly inside his head.
He'd closed the phone and let the duffel slide off his forearm to the floor, and then he'd pocketed the phone and closed the distance between them to rest his hands on her hips. "I'm-," he'd begun, and stopped. He hadn't been sorry to see his daughter, not in the slightest. Calliope had been gazing earnestly up at him with her lovely, unsettling eyes, and he'd brought his hands up to cup her face. "We will do something together when I return," he'd promised her. "Anything you like. Maybe you'll find a new restaurant to try or a new bookshop you've yet to plunder. Whatever pleases you, mmm?" He'd smiled hopefully and drawn his thumbs over the delicate spars of her cheekbones.
Her own hands had come to rest upon his shoulders, and she'd risen on her toes to plant a soft, chaste kiss on his lips. "Have a wonderful time." A gentle caress at his nape, and then she'd dropped to her soles and stepped away, a maidservant making way for her master.
"You, too," his mouth had offered before his distracted brain could think better of it, and he'd winced and closed his eyes against a rush of embarrassment. Smooth, Kruspe, smooth. I'm sure she'll be living it up with tho ghosts while you're on the slopes in Switzerland. He'd opened his mouth to apologize.
She'd raised a hand to forestall him. "I'll be fine. Just go and have a merry Christmas, mmm? I'll be here when you get back."
He'd closed his eyes again, this time in gratitude. He'd clasped her upraised hand and brought it to his lips, where he'd planted soft, warm kisses along the knuckles. "Anything you like," he'd murmured, and hoped it proved a richer consolation than it sounded.
She'd smiled and squeezed his hand. "Go on now. You don't want to keep her waiting."
He'd briefly stroked her temple and savored the pleased, longing flutter of her eyelids, and then he'd turned and retrieved his duffel from the floor. He'd opened the front door and pulled his rolling suitcase through it, and then he'd turned and stood uncertainly on the threshold, one hand resting on the cool knob. Calliope had mustered a wave and another resolute smile, and then she'd squared her shoulders and bustled to the table and begun to clear it of her half-full mug of tea. She'd worked with stoic determination, and the last glimpse he'd had of her before he'd closed the door had been of her staring into the dregs of his coffee with thin-lipped resolve. In the queer winter light, she'd looked like a ghost, and he'd shivered despite his muffler and knit cap and his woolen overcoat. It's a family holiday, not a horror movie, he'd chided himself as he'd closed the door with a soft snick and left her to the company of her books and the mercy of the ghosts within the walls, but he'd resolved to call her often with a reminder of friendly voices in the night.
He's ashamed to admit it now, but it was a resolution he had not honored. Oh, he'd had the best of intentions when he'd walked out the door, but he'd also been cursed with a one-track mind, that merciless gift that had made him a rich and lonely man, and five minutes into the drive to Switzerland, Khira Li had been all he could see. He'd forgotten everything but her, even his lovely witch, and he'd lost himself to the rhythms and pleasures of early fatherhood, when he'd had Khira to himself and they could take long, rambling drives in the car. Khira had inherited his imagination, and she'd sat in the seat and prattled for hours about the truths only her child's eyes could see. Fairies in the light stanchions that dotted the motorways and lions in the tall grasses that danced alongside the steel guardrails. She would talk until her vocabulary and her body were spent, and then she would sleep, body slack and head bobbing to the rhythm of the road. Even when she was small, her personality had been fierce and larger than the confines of her little, sturdy body, and time had done nothing to dim it. Only the topics of conversation had changed, from fairies and unicorns to her modeling portfolio and scummy talent agents and the final projects for her school studies. And music, and clothes, and the jerk who'd spent several fruitless months trying to worm his way into her affections and her pants. That last seldom failed to inspire a bout of heartburn and the uncontrollable urge to squeeze the steering wheel until it groaned in protest.
Her personality had filled the car and his heart, and even the spacious ski lodge could scarcely contain it. He'd spent those days ignoring the protests of his knees and ankles and quietly marveling at the young woman he'd produced. He'd skied the intermediate slopes and watched his breath freeze on his cheeks as he'd stopped to watch her speed by, throwing up plumes of white powder and bidding him follow. C'mon, Daddy! You're not getting old, are you? she would tease, and in that moment, he would feel very old, indeed, old and unmanned, and fumbling for his rightful place in time as he tried to reconcile the glowing young woman before him with the grinning, twirling, gap-toothed child of his fondest memories.
Once, when they'd been having a snowball fight behind the lodge, he'd experienced a queer doubling-back in time, and for a moment, he'd thought he'd seen the Khira of his memories grinning at him from the snowdrifts, snow dusted in her long, blonde hair and glittering on the ends of her eyelashes, but just then, Khira had landed a perfect shot squarely in his face, and when he'd sputtered and blinked to clear his eyes of the powdery snow, she had been gone, and in her place had been the Khira of now, red-cheeked and impossibly grown up.
The sudden loss of her had been acute, an icepick to the center of his chest, and his arms had gone slack as he'd fought the stinging burn of threatening tears. He'd dropped the snow he'd gathered for another snowball and stared at her, frozen breath sharp as glass against the roof of his mouth. Khira's laughter had quickly become concern, and she'd laid down her icy arms in turn and blundered to him, a baby penguin flopping and floundering over the hillocks and dunes. The snow had crunched underfoot as she'd come, and the fabric of her goosedown jacket had hissed and crackled as her arms had flapped and pinwheeled for balance.
Vati, are you okay? she'd demanded anxiously, and peered solicitously at his wind-chapped-face.
How could he tell her that he was mourning the child she had been? He'd huffed brittle laughter and shaken his head and salted the tip of her nose with snow and enveloped her in a fierce, one-armed hug. I'm fine. If your plan was to wear me out on the slopes and collect your inheritance, then you'll have to try harder, he'd teased.
Daddy! she'd squealed in mock outrage, and swatted him on the shoulder. That's not funny, she'd fumed, and beneath the playful indignation, he'd seen genuine hurt, and so he'd shifted to embrace her with both arms.
No, but perhaps you won't be so fond of me when I'm eighty years old and out of my head and trying to go to the beach in my grandson's Speedos.
She'd pulled a face. Eugh. Thanks for that, Dad. Then she'd pressed her cheek to his. I'll always be fond of you, Vati, she'd assured him with the serene confidence of a child who had once believed in fairies, and then she'd stepped back with the careless agility of the young and bent to scoop snow into her mittened palm. That's why I'm giving you a headstart before I unleash my fury. She'd flashed him a devilish grin as her hands had smoothed and molded the snow into a tight ball. Five, four, three...
He'd laughed and retreated, arms raised to shield his face from the impending onslaught, and Khira had come following after, arm cocked and laughter spilling from her lips like music.
Time with Khira was perfect happiness, and Calliope, bless her, hadn't intruded upon it with so much as a phone call. Her only contact had been a text message sent on Christmas Eve: Merry Christmas. Hope you're having fun. It had prompted a wistful smile, and he'd meant to call her, he truly had, but then Khira had bid him come see the tree that had been unveiled in the lodge, and he'd forgotten again, beckoned by the merriment in her voice and the rare opportunity to see childish wonder writ large upon her face. Later, he'd been too logy with happiness and the heavy sweetness of Christollen and lebkuechen, and by the time he'd emerged from his sugar coma and regained his senses, the Christmas-Day sun had risen to reveal a winter fantasyland of icicles and trees decorated with shimmering garlands of snow and ice.
He should have called her that morning, he supposes, should have torn himself away from Khira and spent ten minutes on the phone with the woman who would prove to be his most stalwart ally and faithful companion, but happiness and contentment have an unfortunate habit of making him selfish and oblivious, and so he'd let it slide, told himself that he would be back in Berlin soon enough, with plenty of time to ply her with attention and affection. Calliope was hardy and self-sufficient and had no need of him; Khira was the flesh of his flesh and the blood of his blood, and soon, she would have no need of him, either.
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