The first raindrops were beginning to fall when the maroon-coloured 2CV pulled in at the side of the road. I was surprised to see that the driver was a woman. I gestured towards the rear seat with my rucksack and she nodded, so I opened the door and threw the bags in the back before settling in myself. The 2CV is not the most comfortable car for long distances, but beggars can't be choosers.
I asked the driver how far she was going. She said Kaiserslautern. I wasn't familiar with this name so I looked it up on my map--this is something I always did to ensure I did not get taken out of my way. There's an American base there, she said, it's where I work. I found the spot and saw that it was in the general direction I was going in so I said thanks, my name is Dean. And my name is Ursula, she replied, turning very briefly to look at me. She wore dark-rimmed glasses and had her hair tied back in a bun. I figured mid-twenties.
Are you American, I asked. Her thin lips formed a smile before she said No, but I speak English all the time at the Base. I've been there for five years, but I'm from Belgium, near Arlon. I come home every week-end. I told her I was Irish and that I was heading South, in the general direction of Greece.
Is this your first time in Germany?
No, I said, I hitched across the North of Germany three years ago, from Amsterdam to Copenhagen. And I was at the World Youth Conference in East Berlin last year.
Is that a Communist thing?
I lied and said No, not really.
Her brows furrowed slightly. There are too many Communists in Germany, I think. I see they are putting some of them on trial now, the Baader-Meinhoff gang. But you'll have to visit Heidelberg, it's a beautiful old university town.
Yes, I've heard of it, also read about it in Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong and in one of my favourites, Of Human Bondage.
I haven't read those books, much too big for my little head, I'm afraid.
We crossed the Mosel valley, with the fairy-tale castles dotting the hill-sides. This is a great region for wine, she said. The Romans planted the vines here because they thought wine had medical properties.
Oh, any excuse, I replied. They used to say the same thing about whiskey in my country.
We followed the course of the Saar river down through the Saarland.
Isn't this a long trip to make every week-end, I asked.
Maybe, but I love driving, it makes me feel good. I have only been coming home at week-ends for the last few months, since I broke up with my boy-friend. I'm still trying to get over that. She laughed nervously.
There was silence for a bit and I took a great interest in the passing scenery.
It's difficult, she said. We were together for over three years.
Yes, that is a long time. Was he an American?
Yes, he's a soldier. I wanted to marry him, but some things are meant not to be.
When the rain eased off we pulled into a layby where some Gypsies had a stall and bought a punnet of strawberries. Physically, Ursula reminded me of my cousin Maire, who had left the convent but was failing to make it in the lay world. She had a well-endowed figure and wore the kind of dress that would look better on her mother. I wondered how old she was and asked a couple of questions in a roundabout way that made her out to be 25. She said she was seeing a guy in Belgium, but she didn't think anything serious would come of it--he was a few years younger than her. Just a boy, she said, gazing into the distance, a Turkish boy.
When the rain started again we resumed our ride. I asked her if she preferred foreign men. She smiled again her grim little smile.
That's just the way the cookie crumbles. I never had a real boy-friend in Belgium. After school I went to a translation college and then got my first job at the Base. I was happy to get away. Then I met Bill, my boy-friend, my ex-boyfriend, and started to leave all my problems from adolescence behind me.
You weren't happy at home in Belgium?
Not so much unhappy, I suppose, as frustrated, in a small country town, where everybody talked about everybody else and the most exciting time of the week was going to church on Sundays. I did not want the life my mother had, to be a prisoner in the home.
Were you living with Bill?
He moved in with me after we were going together for about six months. I have a nice apartment on the Base. He was the first man I slept with, and before it started to go sour it was very good.
Do you have any friends at the base?
Not really. At the beginning, I spent most of my spare time with Bill. Our neighbours were blacks, and black women are bitches. They will lie and cheat to get what they want. I wasn't impolite, I greeted them on the street, but I knew they were watching my Bill.
Is Bill coloured?
He's black. He's a tall, good-looking guy, and that's why the black bitches wanted him. As I said, at first everything was great. It was exciting to be with him, he was so different, so sexy. He was a great lover, and made me forget the sexual guilt from my upbringing, my frustrations.
Then what happened?
Slowly, so slowly that I did not notice it at the time, things changed. He was working later, spending more time with his friends. I thought that that's the way relationships go, like in cycles of intensity. The worst part was when he stopped making love. We still slept in the same bed, but there was no real warmth, and that went on for months.
She stopped talking and I could imagine she was casting her mind back to that painful time.
I said, was there some special reason? Well, because I was inexperienced, I thought it was my fault. I tried to talk to him and asked him what was wrong with me. I began to hate myself, I felt depressed and unattractive. Sometimes I cried myself to sleep. That kind of situation can't last. And it didn't. We saw less and less of each other, until it dawned on me that he could not be spending all this time at work or with his friends. I started following him at night to find out where he was going, and sure enough, his was spending his time at another apartment. I found out it belonged to a young black woman who worked in the personnel department. Despite the way our relationship had deteriorated, I was really shocked. I had never imagined he would do that and the feeling was awful.
That night I confronted him with it and he admitted he had been seeing her--well, he couldn't deny it, could he--and we discussed it over the next day which we both had off and he thought about things and said he wanted to stay with me. But that night he just lay awake all night in bed without moving, and didn't go to work the next day. And when I came home in the evening he was still sitting in the same armchair where I had left him that morning. I went into the kitchen to prepare some food but came out when I heard a disturbance outside the house and I went to where he was looking out the window. She was at the end of our front garden, his black woman, calling to him. When she saw me she pulled off her high-heeled shoe and threw it through the window, smashing the glass. She was shouting at the top of her voice. Bill said he would go out and quiet her down, and he took his coat and went out and they stood talking for a few minutes at the end of the garden. And then he walked off with her and didn't come back that night, or any other night.