IN THE DEPARTURE LOUNGE

Betwixt and between. Neither here nor there. Not at home and not away. Between two worlds. One dead. The other powerless to be born. In Limbo. You can't quite relax, because you have to keep an eye open for changes. Change is always threatening. Different flight time. Different gate. Run run run – and when you get there, you're in too much of a hurry to look up properly and see if the plane's going where you're supposed to be going. Happened to me once at Heathrow. Not that I got on the wrong flight, you understand. That might have been romantic. Sliding Doors. New life. New opportunities. If only I'd. But I didn't. No. Nothing like that. I ran in late. I'd been faffing, looking at things, thinking about buying this, buying that, bargains, calculations, all the idle stuff you do when you're in between with nothing to hang on to, and then I suddenly caught sight of a screen, last call, boarding now, and I hadn't realised before that the gate I had to get to was the furthest away, and airports are BIG, baby. They don't have those little electric cars for no reason, you know, not just because they missed out on Scalextric as kids, no way. In Frankfurt, they have bicycles. Germans are green, you see.

Anyway, I digress. But don't I always, before I get to the place I'm supposed to be going to, before I get to the place that's supposed to be taking me to the place I'm supposed to be going to, while I'm in the departure lounge of the story, on my way to... wherever? Anyway, I rushed into the room and it was empty, empty, empty, and there was a door over the far side and I knew where it led, it led out into that flexy thing, like a giant vacuum hose, all corrugated, that swings out and joins on to the aircraft and I ran down it, too fast, and I slipped up because it was slippery, because it was drizzling outside and the drizzle had blown in and the floor was wet and slimy and I fell down, and the drizzle had come in because there was NOTHING connected to the other end, it was open and empty because the plane had already GONE!!!

That empty feeling in the pit of the stomach you get when some girl dumps you, or you realise you've smashed the rear light of the car you're parking behind, you've done something wrong and it is not, absolutely not, reparable. That's what I had. I tried rationalising, next flight, next day, but then all the elaborate timetable would go to pot, and it was elaborate, because I was meeting students of mine that I'd sent all over Germany and Austria as language assistants, travelling by rail, whistlestop, between two trains, a couple of hours chatting in a station buffet (often the best food in town, to tell the truth, that's European culture for you, especially Salzburg, try it when you're next there), and I walked out in deep despair and realised that the flight number on the flipover indicator referred to the NEXT little room, which was still full of people, looking a little impatient by now, because whatever the screen had said to me the flight WASN'T boarding! [Probably waiting for a delivery of halal kosher vegan salami for the in-flight meal.]

So what did I learn from that little escapade? Not to trust signs, unless you know how to interpret them. Be especially wary of switching off your mind. Be on your guard against the mental state you get into in departure lounges. That's what I learnt. But, as with everything you learn, did I remember it? And did I apply it? Listen. Learn.

It was a German airport. Which one? Not Frankfurt, for sure. That's vast. It sprawls. Designed by an algebraic topologist familiar with the problem of the seven Königsberg bridges (don't worry – you can't cross all of them only once without repeating yourself – there's a proof, but I've forgotten it, if I ever remembered it, and anyway Königsberg itself was smashed up in the war, and the Russians who took it have never given it back, even though it was the city of Kant, the greatest German philosopher ever, so the Russians certainly wouldn't have bothered about reconstructing it, the way the Poles rebuilt Warsaw from Canaletto's pictures) – Frankfurt is all nodes and ways on that you have to retrace. No shortcuts. The diagram makes it look like a four-leafed clover, for what that’s worth.

I think it was Stuttgart. Ought to be a major hub, but isn't. But what a design! That roof! Not unlike King's College Chapel re-imagined in struts and corrugated aluminium. Crossed with a yurt and a one-sided mediaeval knight's pavilion. It rises to a point, but never comes down again on the other side. If only life could be like that! But then I suppose you'd have to die at the climax. Why am I chary of that? Because I like to hope there might be another, even greater climax to come afterwards? Or because I want to savour the decline? Or because I'm just windy?

Stuttgart. And it was deserted. But beautiful. Maybe the one makes up for the other. A trouble shared is a trouble halved. A pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled. But sometimes you think: I appreciate this, but nobody else will. So I'm glad they're not here to spoil my enjoyment.

Nobody selling Glühwein. Probably just as well. All the alcohol evaporates when it sits all day in stainless steel pots, and the wine itself isn't great to start with. No Lebkuchen. No Plätzchen – those little star-shaped almond biscuits you eat every day in Advent, when you light the candle in the middle of the Advent wreath and sit around and think Christmassy thoughts. None of those horrid little Krampus-figures made out of the shells of some nut or other, possibly the tackiest element of the German Christmas Market. But there was a tree.

[Did I mention it was Christmas? No. I just took it for granted, somehow. But it's important to know. It'll help you understand.]

The tree competed with the roof, and came a creditable second. If it had come first, they wouldn't have been able to fit it in, of course, or it would have looked silly, with the last few centimetres doubled over wispily against the corrugated aluminium. It glittered with baubles and tinsel, helped by the multi-angled spotlights on the roof struts that lit everything but never shone in your eyes. Light everywhere – but you could never be quite sure where it was coming from.

There were presents on it, too, and that worried me. Who could they be for? Not the workers at the airport, surely? They'd gone home, as far as I could tell, apart from the one who checked me in. Not for the passengers, either. For nobody? For effect? Just so things looked right? What kind of symbolism was that? Empty boxes in gaudy paper – no, let's be fair, it was relatively tasteful, bright but tasteful, this is Germany, after all, not the UK – but empty: the season of giving – a good impression, and nothing else. Bit too true, that. Not an insight to dwell on, in the season of goodwill. Trouble is, I know the original Latin and understand it, and it doesn't say exactly what you think it should.

In the departure lounge. On my way somewhere else. I forget where the plane was coming from. I knew where it was going to: home. Well, one of the London airports. Not a stopover. Just a pick-up. I looked hard, but I couldn't see a screen. I knew the time, though, and there was a big clock, and there was, as with life, only one way out. But I didn't want to go there just yet. I knew it would be cramped and dingy and functional, only just enough space, and I was enjoying the vastness of the hall with its celestial roof, fretted with golden fire... and the solitude and the silence.

Then I noticed them. I'd not seen them come in. Perhaps I was in too much of a reverie. Three men. One trolley. Odd, lumpy luggage. Not your smooth Samsonite, designed for the overhead locker or under the seat. Three pieces. One each? No labels, not to identify the airline, not to identify the owner. And there was a kind of exotic smell with them. No, two different smells, actually, one sickly sweet, one bitter and pungent. Not the sort of thing you expect in Germany, smells.

I didn't hide behind the tree deliberately, you know. It just sort of happened. And I didn't listen. I just sort of heard. Excellent acoustics in all German public buildings. It goes with the territory.

“This time?” said the black one. He was really handsome and shiny, not sweating, just glowing from inside. There were some kind of initiation slashes on his cheeks, well scarred over, youthful indiscretions that guaranteed reliability for the rest of life, and he was dressed like a Nigerian chief, those wonderful stripy robes, rich colours in the best possible combinations, showing up European regal velvet as the monotonous vulgarity of indoor, pasty-faced people when compared to the orange of the sun and the brown of the earth in all their many gradations. And he had one of those round hats that are never too tall and never too flat, but just right.

“Maybe,” said the blonde one. Scandinavian, I thought. Blue eyes, like shadows on snow. A pale tan acquired from soaking up every single drop of sun on long, long days. A deliberate tone of voice, replete with self-questioning, like a Swedish accent.

“One time,” said the third. “Sometime.” He was shorter than the other two. Swarthy. Dark brown eyes. A chin with stubble, but not quite a beard. “Why don't we ever try – ?”

“My part of the world?” said the African, swirling his robe, that hung over his arm like the drape of a toga.

“We did,” said the Swede. “The ones there always have guns.”

“Which you make and sell to them.”

“My part of the world,” said the swarthy one. “Or the New World, for that matter.”

“They have guns, too,” said the Swede.

“Which they wrest from their oppressors, in the tireless struggle to – ”

“Oppress somebody else,” said the African, resettling his hat, as if he wasn't quite happy with it.

“You know,” said the Swede, “the first one really seemed quite acceptable – ”

“In himself he was,” said the African, “but – ”

“The followers,” said the swarthy one, and they all looked at each other and sighed.

“We could always ask the locals,” said the Swede.

“Not a good idea,” said the African. “Remember what happened last time we tried it?”

Suddenly my mind was filled with an image from Breughel. Blood on snow. Not from a Christmas card. Not The Return of the Hunters.

“What do the signs say?” asked the swarthy one.

“Ah,” said the Swede, “the signs – ”

The African lifted his head to the sky, or rather the roof. Light everywhere – but you could never be quite sure where it was coming from. Then he brought his gaze back down and swept it around the room.

“The signs say – no smoking!”

All three of them laughed heartily with the relief of broken tension. But then the African spotted something else. I couldn't see what it was, because I was on the right of the tree, and partly behind it, and what he was pointing at was on the tree's left. But it must have impressed them all, because they exchanged glances in a highly meaningful way, and their eyes got a light in them that hadn't been there before, and their faces were lit by smiles of anticipation and excitement, and the swarthy one grabbed the trolley and started pushing it in the indicated direction, and because it was a German trolley, that was exactly where it went, and it went so fast and so smoothly that by the time I'd cautiously circled round the tree there was no sign of them at all.

Where had they gone? One wall was entirely glass, reflecting the tree and the baubles till you got dizzy. One wall had the door in it that I'd come through, and the doors to the toilets signed clearly in the international equivalent of Chinese ideograms (toilets for people in skirts, thus including caber tossers and ceremonial Greek guards; and toilets for people in trousers, i.e. everybody else). The third wall contained the exit to the flight gate [I had a feeling there was really only one] and the fourth was taken up by the tree, which was pretty broad at its base.

I looked and looked, and then I saw it. A door of ordinary proportions, plain, well-carpentered wood, with a sturdy frame, and chalked on the lintel a common inscription in German-speaking lands at that time of year: 19 + C + M + B + 96 (though I may have got the last pair of figures wrong – it was a while ago). It looked to me like a cleaner's cupboard, to be honest – somewhere to stack the dustpans and brushes and mops and buckets. But it did have the only lintel within human reach, and the Swabians are pretty strong on scrubbing and sweeping, so any well-appointed airport would have to have such a place.

Should I have... I mean, I did actually put a hand on the handle, but it didn't seem to want to... and then there was an enormous tick of the clock, and I spun round, and it said half-past, and panic seized me (and you will understand why) and I raced through the door in the other wall, and the flight was just boarding, at just the right time, because this was Germany after all, and I caught it, and had a nice quarter litre bottle of white Württemberger (Obertürkheimer would have been perfect, but it wasn't, though it was very presentable) and got home in time for Christmas. People usually prefer to go where they know they're going, rather than... Don't you think?

But Christmas doesn't last, does it? And nowadays we tend to ignore what comes after it: those people who arrived too late for the angels, whatever the pictures tell you – not all artists are as reliable as Canaletto (the shepherds had gone by then, too, since sheep can't look after themselves forever). I read a story once about a fourth one, who turned up thirty-three years too late, and found... well, I expect you can imagine what he found.

There's a special word for it, of course, a Greek word, and I fancy myself at Greek etymology, epiphany. In all the other Greek words I know, epi means after or outside, like epidermis, and an epitaph is written on the grave or after the burial and an epigram is written on something... But I gather that an epiphany is an appearance, as in “positively the last...” of somebody famous, and critics of Proust and Joyce use the term for those amazing experiences great writers have (rot them!), that remain forever in the memory and pop up repeatedly in extremely lengthy prose works [come on, this is quite a short one!] like the first time Proust tasted a madeleine, or the first time he sat on the toilet without the seat down by mistake.

I think I'd rather stick to an English term, though, take Shakespeare for my model, and call it: Twelfth Night; or, What You Will.

But sometimes I really do think about them. Travelling hopefully. Never arriving. Just like the rest of us, in fact; all stuck in the departure lounge, waiting for our flight to be called – but very reluctant to leave just yet.

December 2^nd, 2008, 20.35-23.29