Fernweh pv arek

His final term at Durmstrang had ended much like it began – with quiet. No fuss, no tears and hardly any goodbyes. Arkady silently gripped the hands of those he loved, the very few that made his stay in Russia tolerable, if enjoyable at times. A gesture that wordlessly screamed ‘see you soon’ and an assurance their distance would only be temporary. It did not mean much. Truthfully, Arek could not say the words aloud, as if God would strike him down for telling barefaced lies. He did not know if he would ever see these people again, and deep down he knew their worlds would keep spinning all the same without him, while Arek struggled to stay swept in their orbits.

He had informed his grandfather of his travels to America via letter; of course, as you would expect, Father Piotr did not take kindly to the news. A part of the boy fantasised of a reunion filled with apologies and regret, followed by a promise to make something of the shards of their relationship. He would return to playing the role of dutiful son, and his grandfather would resume his part as the stern but kind guardian he desired. Both could pretend for the summer that Arkady’s impending departure and career in magic was just a bad dream. Instead the letter he received from Poland was a blunt one. A stark reminder of exactly the kind of man his grandfather was. ‘If you can leave the country, you can certainly leave your home and family behind. I will not expect you back.’ Naturally, this was the old man’s diplomatic way of wiping his hands clean of the boy. He made it abundantly clear that all pastoral, fatherly duty over Arkady had long expired. A numbness had overcome Ark months before he received the reply, so strong that it took him alarmingly long to understand that this left him effectively homeless for four impossible months before he left for Massachusetts. He had no other family to his knowledge besides his estranged parents, and honestly, he felt no desire to seek them out. In Arkady’s 16 stretching years of life, he’d learnt that optimism had never gotten him very far, but it certainly did keep him sane. He forced himself to believe that things would work out one way or another. It was what little he had left of his faith in a higher power, and the boy practically clung to it like a buoy in the middle of a vast ocean.

For the summer, he would survive off couch-surfing and youth hostels, putting to use what few Muggle Euros he had to his name. It was not much, but his frugal upbringing served him well. He packed his enchanted satchel with all of his belongings; a cracked iPhone past its prime, a wand that he was not permitted to use, his clothes, his school supplies, his passport, a few hundred euros at most and a rosary he could not yet bring himself to discard. With that, he boarded a direct train to Hamburg, hiding in bathroom compartments from ticket wardens and binging pirated Robin Williams films to pass the time. He imagined himself a talented ingénu, running away from small-town-death and towards a land of opportunity in the Big City. A wise-cracking, wealthy professor would reluctantly take him in and teach him everything he knew, adopting the role of some brotherly-fatherly-figure. By the end of the summer, they would have a tearful argument, ending with Arkady boarding his plane to the States. His saviour would chase him down to the airport and call out to him, asking him to stay and Arkady would accept, running into his embrace as the aircraft took off without them. As the credits rolled in the back of his mind, Arkady continued to stare off at the rushing landscape to his side, teeth digging into his lip as he tried to make peace with reality. Anyway, Robin Williams had died two years ago now. Arkady’s heart never recovered, really.

Resourcefulness and pity-points became the currency keeping Arek afloat for the next month. He saved money by living off of apples, instant noodles and pastries about to be thrown out by a local baker. The two quickly became amicable acquaintances, earning Arkady a few days of generosity before the man regrettably informed him he could no longer afford to keep feeding the boy. And so, he moved on, as he soon learnt to do. Everyone’s altruism, however honest and well-meaning, had an expiry date. Thus began a cycle of introductions, pathetic explanations and shameful pleas, constantly toeing the line of overstaying his welcome with his kind-hearted benefactors. Hamburg was a city where nobody asked too many questions, to his relief. Sometimes Arek would get lucky, spending a few nights with a university student, a week with an artist, and another two weeks with an elderly woman renting a spare room out. Other less fortunate evenings, he would resign himself to a hostel room of twelve people at a time. He became hyper-vigilant, unable to sleep as roommates snored and drunken backpackers collapsed into bed at 3am. In a way, it was a lesson the boy sorely needed in survival and practicality. He began showering with all of his valuables and hiding his money in rolled up socks shoved deep into his pillowcases – only after he found himself robbed dry a few times.

Into his second month of wandering the city streets, things began to look up for Arkady. He found odd jobs here and there; gig-work was enough to cover slightly more luxurious living. As a kitchen-porter, he scalded the palms of his hands, scrubbing dishes and carrying boxes, all the while gift-wrapped in a sharp waistcoat and apron he kept pristine with pride. At the end of each shift, he earned himself a wad of cash and a free hot meal; occasionally doting hostesses and servers would even sneak him dessert. During the night, the boy cut his teeth as a stage-hand in Hamburg’s theatrical scene. He handed out pamphlets, come rain or shine, and mended props with a keenness his coworkers found incredibly endearing. He salvaged a few nights bunking with cast and crew members, and on his worst days, he would still have a plush chaise longue to curl up on backstage.

It was a gruelling day-to-day, but something about it gave him an immense sense of satisfaction. At night, he’d thumb the callouses on his palms, counting burns from kitchen work and flicking through leaflets he’d saved from the shows he had worked on. Seeing the fruits of his labour and slotting in noticed, but unbothered – it was more than he could have asked for. Hamburg turned out to be a city you could disappear into quite easily without making waves. Home to a perpetual rat-race, where everyone you met, be them students, workers or travellers, were oddly in it together. The current swept Arek up and he was content to stop resisting. One constant remained, however. St Michaelis’ doors remained open to wandering spirits such as himself. It was warm, quiet and no one asked questions or asked him to leave, unlike cafes that insisted he bought another drink to stay another hour. Though he felt unsure about finding comfort in the house of God, his old habits died hard. It was a small fragment of home, at the very least.

One evening, Arkady stumbled from the Theater im Hafen, limbs numbed and buzzing from stolen liquor. It had been the closing night of a particularly successful run and his twenty-something-year-old colleagues thought it would be amusing to get the boy drunk before sending him home. ‘Home’ of course was a slight complication – they had no idea Arkady had been sleeping amongst the prop furniture for the last week and had closed up the theatre before he could sneak back inside. Alas, he struggled to care, too enraptured by the bleeding streetlights and the golden-glow of their reflections upon puddles of rainwater. Rain kissed his forehead, dampening his blonde hair into strings of dirty brown as he giggled at nothing and stumbled his way towards a hostel for the evening. He could afford a bed – the night of celebration called for a little indulgence. He clambered into a room, filled with already sleeping bodies and bags strewn haphazardly across the floor. The boy held his breath, trying to manifest sobriety while narrowly dodging the hanging limbs of strangers resting on the top bunks. The room was silent but for the discernable sound of pages and sheets rustling from one corner. It happened to be the only bed with a bottom bunk free. In a brilliant moment of tipsy logic, he stepped onto the bedframe, peering up at his roommate with an irresistible grin. He found a boy of roughly the same age, laying wide awake with a book clutched to his heart. He whispered, words slurring ever so slightly in poor German.

“Psst– Fancy some company?”

“Psst— Lust auf Gesellschaft?”

The words were stumbling. The way he envisioned his own German would sound to the native outsider. Slurred, perhaps by unfamiliarity, for he was too oblivious to consider the possibility of drunkenness, the lacked the edge that the language prided itself for, the crisp grating against the air, the glottal stop that made each word its own self-sufficient unit. It sounded unfamiliar on his tongue, and he did not quite know, at that time, whether it was a product of his besotting or just an otherwise lack of skill. He decided not to ask.

After all, there was something oddly endearing in the stranger’s voice, a tone that suggested fellowship as their shared goal. If Anthonie could look past their garbled nature, it was almost a respite from the constant demands of Germany’s actual denizens. In some curious, liasoned way, he was all the more approachable.

Perhaps, in truth, it was a fruit of common ground. Amongst a room of strangers, adults, and otherwise disreputable travellers, the boy found safety in the other’s youthful features. Since childhood, he had been well versed in exchanges with those years his senior, yet they were in the secured space of ball rooms and dinner tables, a liminal space between the true world and a stage, where everybody, from the youngest of his newborn niece to his grandfather’s elderly disposition, was a performing actor. It was removed from the dirt and grime of the world’s truth, and for that, Anthonie had been grateful. For that, he had grown up distanced from the world’s inherent evils.

It was true that he was educated of them. He, even in this stage of teenage entitlement, was not blind that he enjoyed privileges most of the world did not. Harbouring an immense yet proportionate gratitude for the world and his upbringing, he recognised that winter ski chalets and summer surfing beach-houses was not a life everyone led. Growing up under his grandfather’s philanthropy company, it was well known to him that he was extraordinarily advantageous in life. It was not a position he would sabotage with carelessness. It was his duty, written upon the grandeur of that moral compass that did not falter with adolescence’s rebellion, to exert his power — and to use it to benefit the greater good.

More than a destiny, it was a fate he would make happen if the universe disagreed. That was the greatness he believed he was destined for.

Yet it was also true that he had never been plunged into them, and perhaps, for that, his dreams would merely be delusions. He had never been dipped head first into poverty, into a lack of education, into the lives that the world led in its underbelly. The odd times he had worked during the holidays were to gain experience, not to hunt down his next meal. No matter his performance, there would always be a hot pot of stew waiting for him at home to combat the chills of August, just before school started.

There was a feeling of realisation when he stepped into the real world, and just almost, he felt like a hero on Campbell’s monomyth, entering a realm completely unfamiliar to him. It was a realm where the monsters were people, and the people were ruthless. He had just stepped off the solace of the Mist Glider, no more than 24 hours ago, yet already his skin tingled with vigilance. These adults surrounding him, the German woman who had asked him if she could turn off the lights — behind their smiles, they might as well have been here to murder him.

It was a ridiculous notion. He carried no abundance of Euros, and who would find unassuming, unrecognisable coins of any use?

There were no lines on the stranger’s face, except for the one that split his lips. Who was Anthonie kidding? It was not the age, it was not the way his voice bent German on its axis, it was not even way his clumsiness lured him into a belief of safety — it was that grin that crossed his face. And that grin, to Anthonie, whether he be friend or siren, was entirely irroestiable.

Anthonie, half-understanding his words with his native knowledge of Afrikaans, deemed that the stranger asked for his company. His eyes slid downwards, body barely shifting as his hands laid stoically on the copy of the Bell Jar, still resting close to his chest. Beneath him, sat on the lower bunk, he examined the boy. Under the bare illumination of the moon, he could not quite make him out. The rays of the moon angled themselves in just the right direction, and under the light of silver deity, Anthonie could see his own cerulean reflected in the powder blue of the stranger’s eyes. The moment was almost cathartic.

“Ja, aber nicht auf Deutsch,” he returned. A small smile crept up his face at his own admittance that he was not quite proficient in the language. He hoped this stranger, with his slurring words and his butchered stops, would understand his pain. Noun cases, especially, tired him out after his first few attempts at trying to grasp this language. It was not until adulthood that he would speak a mouth of fluent German, but that was a compromise he was not against making. He could spend these few years torture free.

Perhaps it was not quite a great idea to jump off the bunk bed rather than climb off. He made a thud on the floor that was bound to have awoken the other travellers. No matter. Half of them were drunk regardless; they would sleep deeply. He casted a glance at the stranger, before his eyes shifted across the room, in search for an exit. Light peeked through the bottom of the door, yet he did not want to step into the fluorescent corridors that vaguely smelt of — in fact, he decided not to dwell on what exactly it could have smelt like. Sometimes, ignorance was bliss.

Finally, his eyes landed on a window. It was the sort that could have been slid up, located, both conveniently and inconveniently, right beside the stranger’s bed. Conveniently, because they could slip into the darkness without acknowledgement from the other travellers. Inconveniently, because it was wedged just between Anthonie and the stranger’s beds, and two lanky teenagers would have to combat the one small window. Offering the stranger a conspirator’s look, he unlatched the window and slid it up, letting in the sweltering breeze of the European summer. The air hit him like a wall of heat, and he grimaced in memory of South Africa’s much different Julys. He unhooked the screen, and before he could reconsider, had one foot outside of the window already.

Truthfully, Anthonie did not, at all, consider the fact that he might have been stepping into open air. Thankfully, however, he was caught by a balcony, and his feet landed steadily. It was so small, however, that his hands immediately gripped onto the railings as his body found perch. Turning back, he offered a hand to the stranger, and if he would take it, would assist him to a level position. Back against the brick wall of the hostel, he slid down to the ground, and sat with one knee drawn to his chest. Waiting for the stranger to sit down as well, his eyes instinctively turned up towards the night sky. They were a different collection of stars than the ones he was accustomed to in his homeland. Polaris shown the way for lost travellers like he and his companion. A smile graced his face, and before it flitted away, it was one he would turn towards the fellow teenager, just to ensure that he had seen it.

Preceded by a steady silence, Anthonie then deemed it appropriate to introduce himself. Into the night, he uttered his name. The night seemed to respond as a bird cawed. It was odd, introducing himself only by his first. He had been so accustomed to the full pleasantry, always attaching his surname and at times, even a middle name, which made his grandfather smile with particular fondness. Just the word Anthonie, somehow, stripped him away form part of his identity. Yet he supposed, sat on this unfamiliar balcony, under a rooftop of unfamiliar stars, with this unfamiliar stranger he did not yet even know the name of, it was also freeing.

He could just be Anthonie, with nothing attached to his name.

His eyes slid over to Arkady after his introduction, and he subsided the urge to shake hands. More than a formality, it was also a show of respect, though perhaps one inappropriate for the situation they found themselves in. Instead, he simply inclined his head in a slight nod. His next words seemed to be a musing, one that was almost lost to the wind as he spoke. They were light, flighty, and full of possibility. “Arkady, what brings you here?”

translation: yes, but not in German.

@Arkady Piecyk | Banner by Prat Pass