Past Ithaka

When I lived in San Francisco I waited tables at a small bistro that should have attracted more tourists than it did, a clean place if shabby on the outside, and open late. One night – I don't recall when exactly, or what time, but that it was the middle of the week, a Thursday – I was preparing to close when a man came in and sat down at a table in the corner. Such latecomers are always an annoyance, and on top of the annoyance was the strange choice of such a remote table in an otherwise empty room. But business had been exceedingly poor, and so I decided to serve him.

He was an older man, perhaps in his sixties, short and rather stocky, narrow shouldered, with hair that had once been fine and blonde and was now thinning and gray. He wore glasses and an old looking blazer, and sat very quietly with one elbow on the table top. I bid him good evening and asked what I could bring him. He asked for the wine list.

Carefully he picked through the list, his tongue pressing visibly against his teeth.

“Malbec,” he decided, “this Malbec from Mendoza.” And he smiled.

“That one is only available by the bottle,” I said.

“And that's how I want it.”

He had a peculiar accent, distinctly foreign but not exactly recognizable. It seemed Latin with some words and Germanic with others, with some of the r's trilled and some flat and American. I brought out the wine and took a glass from one of the other tables.

“It is late,” he said. “I seem to be the last customer tonight.”

I thought he was apologizing for keeping me past closing time, so I told him it was no trouble at all.

“If it's no trouble, young man, have a seat and help me with this bottle. I don't think anyone else is coming.”

I didn't see why not, so I flipped the door sign from Open to Closed, took a glass from another table, and sat down. He had already started.

“You have such an interesting accent,” I told him. “Are you from Europe?”

He drank deeply and smiled again. “I can see you are a bright boy, bright and sensitive. I like that. Some men must cultivate sensitivity – ” he poured another glass “ – but others are born with it. You can see stories in fragments. Clearly you're some kind of writer, or something like that.”

“I write a little.”

“Clearly. Then perhaps you who are so sensitive to stories would like to hear mine.”

I nodded. He poured more wine.

“My name is Enrique Kessler, and I was born in Buenos Aires. My father, Heinrich Kessler, was from Baden, an officer in the army and a well-known equestrian. His grandfather, my great-grandfather, served with great distinction in the cavalry against the French. My grandfather I never knew, because he was killed in East Africa during the First World War. My father was a great tall man with blond hair. He met my mother on a skiing trip. She was the daughter of a prosperous Tyrolean landholder. From her I inherited my sturdy body and robust health; I got my father's coloring and fastidiousness.

“My father was an officer. I said that already. The army was not nearly as well managed as people think it was, not on the personal level. My father did poorly as an officer. He perhaps would done better in the Waffen SS. In the army were no gentlemen, apart from my father, and the discipline was lax. He stayed with the Wehrmacht out of respect for his father and grandfather and all the Kesslers who had served before them with horse and sword.

“Maybe it was the army that made him leave, I don't know. In 1939 he and my mother and my brother Franz, later Francisco, left Baden for Buenos Aires. I was born in 1943. My father worked at the Banco Central. Francisco played football and rugby. He was very much like my father.

“I never knew my father as he was, because in spring of 1945, when I was two years old, he had a heart attack. He was sitting in the parlor reading the Times of London, and stared blankly at a photo of some American soldiers in Poland – the first thing his eyes landed on, you see – and simply fell over in his chair. His family had heart problems, you see, and he ate so much sausage and meat that it must have only gotten worse with him.

“He was never the same after that, they say. He began to drink and smoke many cigarettes. When I was a young man your age my father was already old and tired looking, and his athlete's body had gone flabby. I promised myself then that I would never smoke-- and look where it's landed me. The doctors said the smoking killed my father. I, on the other hand, have perfect lungs.

“When I was sixteen I went to Havana to work as an apprentice manager in a small cigar factory, owned by the brother of one of my father's colleagues at the bank. Or anyway I tried to go to Havana, but the mutiny there prevented me from leaving Veracruz harbor. I wired my mother to ask for money, and spent some time in Mexico City as a bohemian. I lived on a street where everyone was a student or an artist. Of course I couldn't stay there. I needed to work. The next year I went back to Buenos Aires. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to go to university or the army. My mother's second cousin lived on a ranch in Paraguay; I thought it might prove something of an adventure to go there. It wasn't. It was hard work and the food was bad, and all the old man ever did was talk about the war.

“So I was twenty years old, and I had lived in three countries, and I was bored. That was the year my father died, and I received a decent inheritance. At his funeral was the man from the bank whose brother had owned the cigar factory in Cuba. He introduced me to an American gentleman who worked in the transport industry, shipping things across the Atlantic, I don't remember what exactly. Anyway I impressed this second man and he hired me, and sent me to work in a company office in Tel Aviv, where I lived five years.

“I saw the 67 War on the cover of the Times and talked to soldiers who had come back from the front. They were ecstatic because they had won. I was unhappy, though, because I was not making much at my job, and Israel was beginning to bore me. Beach towns are all boring, I think. I quit and went to Cairo, which was crowded and filthy, and then to Alexandria, which was as boring as Tel Aviv but with a number of Germans who liked me and welcomed me. I had a little difficulty in Alexandria with a certain girl – German, not Arab, thank God – and I decided to take this opportunity to see Europe. I had never been. In all the time I spent in Israel I never left Tel Aviv.

“You're very young, so you can't know that Europe was a mess in those years. Only the Swiss remained civil, but I couldn't get in – passport problems. Italy was filthy. The people were like South Americans, like the Indians, with the same gangster tendencies. Everyone was on strike. But my mother's family lived there, near Bolzen, and I stayed with them for several months before I moved to Trieste to work with another shipping company.

“In 1972 I found out that Francisco had died. My mother had written a letter to her sister in Bolzen, and one of my young cousins who admired me brought it to my office. Francisco had moved to Chile some several years before and had joined Allende's party, the idiot. Now he had disappeared. They were unpleasant times everywhere.

“An American girl worked in the office with me, and taught me English. We got married and moved to Virginia. She worked while I looked for a job, which took some time. Then I got hired and we moved to Seattle. I didn't want to be so near her parents, who were so prying, and the doctor there was stupid enough to tell me to stop drinking even though my health was perfect. I don't like prying in-laws and I don't like doctors, especially not idiot doctors, so I was glad to move. We had two sons, and then later two more kids who must be about your age. The oldest two are in New England. Susanna is studying in Chicago. Henry was working in Colombia, and I'm not sure where he is now; he hasn't written me for some time. My wife is back in Virginia with her parents. I live in Seattle now.”

He sat back and delicately wiped a drop from his lip. I asked him, “What brings you to San Francisco?”

He smiled again. “I knew you were bright. You were born sensitive. That's why you're a writer. You can read where there aren't any words written. You can hear an old man's tale and see a novel.

“I come here for the air, and for the little cafes like this one. I come for the fog. I like the bridges over the water.”

He stood up stiffly and removed a wad of bills from his blazer pocket to pay. He looked at me rather sharply.

“Listen though, young man. I know you're a writer and that you're smart. But don't write down any of this. You must promise me that you'll never write down that story.”

I promised, and held the door open for him as he left. His little form melted in the fog. I followed him with my eyes as long as I could, and went back in to lock up. When I left the streetlight was out, and a crumpled newspaper, half drowned in the gutter, fluttered weakly in the breeze.