Histories. Or, “So it goes.”

I was just outside in the courtyard beside my dorm building to get some fresh air while computing. Sure, I could open my balcony doors and do it that way, but then the temperature of my room drops fast, and takes a few hours to warm back up. By sitting outside, I get to chill myself rapidly, then run back indoors and enjoy the toasty warmth of my den. Plus outside the signal’s better, so I can surf faster. It’s worth enduring 2° temperatures, trust me.

While I was computing on a bench in the courtyard, softly headbanging with my headphones on, an old lady sidled up beside me and began to stare at me, almost imploringly. I popped off my headphones and smiled at her, said, “Good afternoon.” She ambled over to me and began to rebuke me for sitting outside in the cold.

“It’s freezing out here! Don’t you know you’re going to get sick?”
“Well, I wanted the fresh air. It’s a little chilly, but it beats sitting in my room. I’ll probably go back in soon.”
“You’re right you will. You should now. Here, take these.”

She handed me an unopened bag of menthol eucalyptus cough drops.

“Oh! Thank you, that’s really not necessary, I’m fine. I don’t feel sick at all! I’ll go in in just a minute.”
“Young man, take them. If you don’t, you’ll get sick. Go on, take them and then give some to your friends inside, too. I don’t want any of you getting sick this winter.”

I took them. She smiled and explained to me that she always looks out for young people, because they’re so much more interesting than old people. Man, did I have trouble coming up with something to say back to that! She nodded to me, wished me a good day, shushed my thank yous, and caned over to the place where the tree used to be.

I watched her stand there for a while, looking at where there is no tree. I called over to her, “I miss that tree.” She turned to face me. “I know I haven’t lived here long,” I went on, “but I really liked it.”

She walked back over to the bench I was sitting on and stood in front of me, just looking at me.

She began to tell me stories. As I’ve explained, the building complex our dorm is in is also known as a house for the seeing impaired—das Haus der Blinden. She lives here as a widow, her blind husband having died a long time ago. In recent years, the student housing agency in Munich bought out part of the building in order to use it as a dormitory. This meant that, practically overnight, a building whose halls were once draped with the quiet of unspoken sadnesses became bursting with youthful laughter and revelry. The building management repainted the walls.

She told me how the building had looked during the war, when the akido hall was still a massive bakery, which baked every day and shipped the food off to the soldiers, wherever they might have been at that time. There was a podiatrist’s office, too, and a provisions place for the elderly, infirm, or weak. She spoke of these things happily, as if to say she considered herself lucky to be so well taken care of. I’ve often noticed that Bavarians aren’t always looking over their shoulders at the revenant of the war, that they remember instead the cobalt blue of the Alps in the distance on that one day when autumn came so quickly.

How her husband went blind I’m not clear on. She had explained to me that many of the people living in the house were men who had lost their sight due to industrial accidents, working as machinists or some other type of manual labor. Her husband, though, could have been born blind: I know that she married him when he was blind.

Marrying a blind man wasn’t something her parents took lightly. Both were chronically hospitalized, but had remained bright and coherent, never suffering. One day while visiting her father in the hospital, she told him she was going to marry the blind man. “That’s a big decision to make,” her father said. “Marrying a blind man is no small thing. It will change the way you live.” She assured him that she knew that, and understood what it would mean to live with him. Her father began to express his concern that a blind man could not care for his daughter well enough. Apparently, the man didn’t earn very much money, and didn’t appear to be living well. She explained that this meager appearance was due to the fact that they had been saving money together, in order to buy a nice place with a lot of furniture.

The father realized there was no talking her out of it. He went and retrieved his money, his meager savings from what I can only assume had been a long life of rather grueling labor. He took his money and handed it to his daughter, looked her right in the eyes, and asked, “Do you still want to marry this man?” As if having money to call her own would change her mind. “Yes,” she said. “You will live with him and you will be happy?” “Yes,” she said. “Good. Then I can die.”

And he died. She with the money still in hand, her dead father lying next to her, a very lucky blind man waiting somewhere just for her.

She lived a very happy life with her blind husband. She regaled me with tales of his brilliance. In just two and half years, he got degrees in German, French, and Italian from the university. He worked as a telephone operator, and he was great at it. Everyone in the town talked about how smart he was. And he was handsome, too, he was tall, with broad shoulders and light eyes, which were a little differently colored—something to do with the blindness. When they would go out to eat, he would wear the nicest shirt and tie, have perfectly combed hair, brilliantly shining shoes (she was so proud of those shoes). She would get compliments from everyone about how handsomely he always presented himself, how lucky she was to have a husband like him.

She told me all these things with a conviction that bade me understand them and believe them not for her sake, so I would compliment and congratulate her, but so that I could understand her husband as the person he was. So that I would have a sense of how much I should respect him and the memory of him for all that he had been, with or without her.

I could not understand how he died. I think he fell from somewhere, and she was nearby when it happened. The doctor came and told her he was dead. She told me the story so calmly and matter-of-factly that at first I wasn’t even sure I understood the subject matter.

She said, “But that’s life. Here one minute, gone the next.” And she went back to the spot where there is no longer a tree.

I hope you enjoyed your cough drop.