I Can’t Forget

Two weeks back in Munich and I think I’ve found the peace I’d come for. Munich is, as I remembered, a felicitous town with musicians on every corner: Mozart concertos, Bach sonatas, a Billie Holiday tune here and there. Even the heavyset gothic Cathedral of Our Lady is lightened by choirs singing hosannas to the highest. It has been four years, no breaks, since Will was killed and I joined up: Officer Candidate School, Special Forces, language school, deployment. More about that later.

On Wednesday I strolled into the gardens leading to the Stadtische Galerie. The museum is housed in a gold-colored Tuscan villa, once the home of the painter Franz von Lenbach. The first gallery was filled with people smiling at Klee’s colorful and cheerful work: “Southern Gardens:” vivid orange, red, blue and green-blue patches. And “Rose Garden:” carnelian, cerise and scarlet geometric figures.

The next gallery was strangely deserted. Klee’s “Ravaged Place” hung on the far wall: a bruise-purple building with dabbled white roof askew in the background of the painting. It once had four walls, but now, almost like a stage set, only the building’s façade remains. Its gaping window holes are shaded violet black, wraiths curling behind them. Two smaller structures tilt in from outside the frame. Their windows, too, are vacant eyes to the sky. In the foreground, headstones and two forgotten mines.

My mind flashed to the scene we’d passed on the last patrol. It had been a long day. We’d beaten off two insurgent attacks and were within a couple miles of base. Over the ridge we saw the village. Smoke still curling. Crumbled dun-colored mud houses. Wooden framing sticking out at unnatural angles. A parched flattened land. Fragments of clothing fluttering from splintered windows. Blackened shards. Blood streaked arms and legs, and a doll, littering the ground.

I slumped, found a museum bench, sat down, my head in my hands. My heart was pounding. I was nauseous, like the time I was in the back of an old bus traveling down some broken-up mountain road breathing diesel fumes and greasy mutton. I kept tasting the sausage I had for lunch. It was hot and I couldn’t get up, trapped between two men, asleep. I squeezed my head tighter and tighter to quiet the clattering explosions going off in my skull.

Dad, a Nam vet, never told me about this. But he was career; maybe it’s different for them. My twin brother Will had followed Dad’s lead. He didn’t have the chance to tell me; he died at Shahi Khot in 2002. I’d stayed away from everything Army, until what happened to Will. He was so enthusiastic about helping the Afghan people; I had to finish what he started. That’s the way it was with us, we’d done that for one another from the time we were two.

* * *

Someone struck me. I jumped; nearly knocking the man down. Slowly, I saw him, the attendant, a thin wispy haired man carved by age. I was back in the museum.

“Bitte, are you well?” he asked.

I’m sure he’d only tapped me on the shoulder.

“I’ll be fine, danke.”

“Me, I never come in this room,” he said. “Too many thoughts, too many memories I don’t want to have.”

Looking down at him, I asked, “Der Zweite Weltkrieg? “

He nodded and mumbled, “Stalingrad. I can’t forget.”

He looked at me, eyes filling with tears. His lips moved, but no words came out. Finally, he placed a thin arthritic hand on my arm, and held tightly; comradeship across wars and years.

I walked slowly out of the Galerie, and back through the Plaza of Our Lady, hoping the music would salve the memories.

That evening I was taking the train up to Frankfurt for my flight. Leave was over. I’d be at my command in Kabul in 24 hours. In a way I’m glad. I’m not haunted by memories there.