On vacation we met a German. He wanted to go south to the ocean for two nights. He invited us along. There will be many buses to take, he said. In the end we would stay in a place he knew on the beach. He had stayed there once before. His name was Jurgen. We said okay while eating dinner in the dining room of the boarding house. We were tired of the food they served us. We were tired of the same old tablecloth that was never washed. We ate with our plate rims shadowing stains from our breakfasts of black beans spilled days before. We could use a few days vacation from our vacation.
He explained a German word for which there was no translation in English. It means a good feeling people have when they are together, he said, and then he said the word. We could not pronounce the word. Iris said how trying to say the word hurt her throat. She took a drink of her water, she touched her pale skin at her small Adam’s apple.
We left the next morning. There were many buses. Each time we boarded a new bus we noticed how the people all looked like they had been on the last bus and the chickens on their laps looked the same as the chickens who had been on the last bus.
After the buses, there was a small boat. We had to wait for it to come. We waited at a bar that was outside. The roof was made of dry grass and we ordered ceviche along with our beers and Jurgen said we had best squeeze as much lime juice as we could on the ceviche so that we wouldn’t become sick.
Jurgen’s cheeks were always red and we told him we imagined him as a boy wearing lederhosen and standing on a mountain top covered with snow. He told us we imagined right.
When we boarded the boat, the people who had been on the buses, and their chickens, boarded too and so all the while crossing the river, we heard the chickens cluck and it was louder than the chug of the outboard motor.
When we reached the shore, Jurgen led us a down a road. We walked for a while, and then we cut in to the beach. We were on the ocean side and the waves were big. The house we stopped at had a porch and there was an old man sitting on the porch, smoking a pipe. Jurgen waved to him.
Here we are, Jurgen said. We set our backpacks down on the porch. The old man said hello and sucked in on his pipe.
You’ve got a nice view, Iris said, and the old man nodded and looked Iris up and down.
I’m dying to swim, Iris said.
Iris and I changed in our room. There were only two cots in the room. There was no other furniture. The window had no glass. It was just an opening cut into the wall. A large branch from a tree growing outside reached into the room. A few of its leaves had fallen to the floor.
We went into the hall wearing our bikinis with our towels wrapped around our waists and saw Jurgen come out of his room wearing his bathing trunks. As he came out of it, I saw in to Jurgen’s room and noticed there was just a cot there too, only there was no window at all.
The old man went into the water with us. He stood in the shallows still smoking his pipe. The water came up to his knees, but then when a wave came the water rose higher, above his waist.
Iris went deep. She yelled for me to come join her. She liked riding waves. Jurgen swam to her and I watched them a while. Iris always rode farther in on her waves than Jurgen. The old man laughed.
Didn’t you learn to swim in Germany? he called out to Jurgen.
I was standing in a bad place. The old man’s pipe smoke traveled to me. The waves broke right where I was standing, hitting me down low. I kept losing balance. I swam out to Iris in the deep. It took me a while. I had to duck my head and swim into tall oncoming waves. Something brushed against my leg. I thought it was Jurgen, horsing around, pretending to be a monster from the sea. But when I turned to look for him swimming around me in the water, he wasn’t there. He had ridden a wave all the way in. He was on the beach now, shaking his head back and forth, drying his hair the way a dog would dry his coat.
I rode the next wave in. It was small, without much push. When I stood up I was near the old man. So far as I can tell, he said, only one of you knows how to swim.
Iris was catching another wave, disappearing for a long time before she finally came up.
Later we lay on our towels on the beach and Jurgen, since he did not have a towel, lay on the sand. The old man did not have a towel either and so Iris sat up and patted one side of her towel. Share with me, she said and he sat down next to her.
The old man was not so old. He was sixty or so, he said he could not quite remember since he had been living here so long he had not celebrated birthdays. He did not know the date. His pipe was no longer lit, but still he sucked on it. Iris asked about a wife, about children. Jurgen slept, his chest turning red where his ribs poked out, the part of him closest to the sun.
The old man once had a wife. He had left her in an apartment in a city with a river that turned to ice in the winter and that she would walk on with her toy dogs, schnauzers or szitsus, he could not remember which. She threw them balls and it was something to watch the dogs skitter and skate across the ice in pursuit of the balls. The old man shook his head, remembering. There was a son who came to visit once. It was he who had helped build the porch and the back rooms where we slept, our room with the window without glass. Now the son built bridges. I call him The Connector, the old man said.
What does he call you? Iris wanted to know.
Old man, the old man said.
We were all hungry, but it wasn’t quite dinner yet. The old man said he had beers, but we would have to pay for them. Of course, we said. We drank them on the porch. All of Jurgen had turned red now, from the sun and from the beer. Even his eyes were red and he said it was from the salt. He said he always kept his eyes open when swimming underwater, just in case there was something to see.
Then the old man said it again. He said, As far as I can tell there is only one of you here who knows how to swim.
I can swim, Jurgen said. Germany has pools. Everyone is expected to know how to swim.
You all sink though, what with all that bread and beer, the old man said.
What is it you’ve got against Germany? Jurgen said. The old man shook his head.
Not much, he said, maybe I just have something against Germans.
Iris laughed. Where is there to eat around here? she said.
There is only one place, the old man said. I always have whatever fish they have caught that day. You’ll like it, he said to Iris.
We went to change out of our bathing suits and when I walked past the old man’s bedroom I saw that he had left the door open and in there he too had a cot and a window, but his window had glass and the glass needed cleaning. It was yellow with what must have been pipe smoke and it was hard to imagine how much light it let in.
We walked with our beers on the beach to the one place that served food. Ordering was fast, the same all around of what the only meal was, blind river dolphin. We touched the necks of our beers together in a toast. To our vacation from our vacation, Jurgen said.
You won’t like the blind river dolphin, the old man said to Jurgen, it doesn’t come with heavy bread and a slab of butter.
Maybe I won’t like it because it’s blind, Jurgen answered. We laughed. The old man nodded.
How did someone like you get to know these two lovely women? The old man asked, looking at Iris while he spoke.
It’s German, Jurgen said, to be friendly to everyone while on vacation. It’s sort of an unwritten rule, when a German goes on vacation, he goes to meet people, and not just to take in the sights.
Tell me, the old man said, you weren’t taking in the sights when you spotted these two girls.
The food came. Iris and I ate small bits of the blind river dolphin, but mostly we drank beer. The old man ate very little too, and he kept ordering more beer for Iris and me, but he told Jurgen he could pay for himself.
All right, Jurgen said and Jurgen took big mouthfuls of his blind river dolphin.
Then, when Jurgen had finished a few beers, he patted the old man in the back and said the word in German again, the word he called the good word that meant the good feeling between people in a group, the word that hurt Iris’ throat to say.
Can you say the good word? Jurgen said to the old man. The old man shook his head.
I can’t, he said.
Try, Jurgen said. The old man stood up. In one hand he held his beer, with the other hand he pushed on Jurgen’s shoulder, sending him backward onto the floor where there lay scattered sand that had blown from the beach in the breeze through the open doorway or had come in on the bottoms of our shoes. One of the legs on Jurgen’s wooden chair was now split. He got up and righted the chair. He sat back down on it and while he did I could hear the sound of the wood splintering, splitting some more. He would fall again soon. Jurgen reached up and smoothed down his hair.
I’ll pretend that didn’t happen, he said.
The old man did not sit back down. He stood by the table as if waiting for the check to come or for us to leave.
We must all be tired from the sun, Iris said. Jurgen, you’re burnt, she said.
Vinegar can help, I said. Iris nodded.
Yes, vinegar, she said.
It’s a good word to know. Everyone should know it, Jurgen said. Germans, Americans, everyone because it’s about everyone getting along.
The old man hooked his foot around Jurgen’s chair leg, and he pulled. Jurgen fell off. He stayed on the floor this time and did not bother to try and sit back down again in the chair whose leg was now completely broken. He crossed his legs there on the floor. He reached up and found his fork and took another bite of his blind river dolphin without being able to see what portion the tines of his fork had pierced.
I can eat like this. Who needs a chair? he said.
We should leave, Iris said.
No, the old man said. More beer, he said. He called to the waiter. Just for the girls, he said.
Iris stood up and went to an empty table and found another chair. She brought it behind Jurgen.
Take a seat, she said, and he did. Then Iris sat back down in her own chair.
Tell us more about your son, Iris said to the old man. When will he come next? she said.
The Connector? The old man said and he shrugged. Hell if I know, he said.
Do you miss the city? I asked the old man.
Only the river that turns to ice in the winter, the old man said. Then he smiled and laughed, oh those little fucking dogs, he said. You should have seen them slide.
Iris was drunk now. She stood up to use the restroom and she teetered as if the floor beneath us had shifted. The old man went to her and took her by the arm and helped her find her way.
Let’s go, Jurgen said to me.
Go? I said.
They won’t miss us, he said. That old man’s off his rocker. Let’s swim, he said.
I looked out at the ocean. The sky was so dark I could barely see the water, I just had the sense that it was there.
You go on, I said. I’ll wait for her. Sometimes her shoulder gets loose and she needs me, I said.
Loose? Jurgen said.
Mmm, I said. When she drinks like this sometimes it goes and then I have to push it back in. I have to stand her up against a wall and push with all my might, until she tells me it’s back in.
In Germany there’s a simple operation for that, Jurgen said.
Yeah, well, we have it in the states too, only difficult part is paying for it. Costs money, I said.
You’re American, you’re rich. You can pay for it, Jurgen said.
Oh, sure, I said. Go on and swim, I said. I moved my head in the direction of the ocean I could barely see.
All right, but then come join me later, won’t you? Jurgen said.
Sure, I said. He left and he was drunk too, again the floor beneath us seemed to shift as he walked across it, like a man aboard a ship rolling in the waves.
They did not come back. I waited a while. I looked down at my plate and I could see the blind river dolphin that was cooked in a white sauce, starting to turn brown. I went in search of Iris. I opened the bathroom door and both Iris and the old man were in there. He had Iris up against the wall and was pushing on her hard. Her eyes were closed because of the pain. When he got her shoulder back in she smiled and opened her eyes. All better, she said and reached for her bottle of beer that had been set on the porcelain sink and she took a long drink.
Back at the table she said, where’d our German go?
He said for a swim, I said.
A swim, doesn’t that sound like fun? Iris said to the old man.
The old man said he would enjoy that, watching her swim.
No, all of us, let’s swim, Iris said. She started walking out the door, hitting the door jamb accidentally and then laughing and saying, “Oh, excuse me,” to the door jamb.
The old man paid while I followed Iris out onto the sand. The top layer of the sand at first was still warm from the sun, but then after a second it felt cold as my feet sunk down beneath the top layer, hitting wet sand.
Jurgen! Iris yelled. There was no answer from the black ocean water.
Iris bent over and pushed her bottle of beer upright in the sand so it would not tip over and then she took off her clothes.
The old man came and helped her with her shirt. Watch that shoulder, he said.
Naked, Iris’ thin body glowed and then she ran and dove in and disappeared.
I wish I were young, the old man said to me, watching the place where Iris disappeared.
All along the shore the wet sand shone with bits of something phosphorescent.
Looks like snow, I said. I kicked it up.
It was Jurgen who came out, as if Iris had turned into him beneath the water and it was he who walked toward us now naked and shaking the water from his hair.
Come on in, Jurgen said to me.
I shook my head.
I’ll help you, Jurgen said. He went to lift up my shirt but I held my shirt down.
Where’s Iris? I said.
I don’t know. Where is she? Jurgen said. Then he looked down and saw Iris’ beer planted in the sand and he picked it up and drank the rest of it down.
The old man yelled for her. He ran into the ocean. He dove down and then came up and then dove down again.
The current had carried her. She came out of the water farther down the beach than where she had gone in. She walked back toward us while the old man was still looking for her in the water, yelling out her name.
He’ll give himself a heart attack, Jurgen said.
I ran in after him. She’s here, I yelled, but he was yelling so loud and diving back down so often, he could not hear me.
I stepped on him. I think it was his back I stepped on. He must have been down low, on the bottom’s surface, reaching and digging for where she might be. I went under and pulled him up. We found her, I told him. He gasped.
Thank God, he said.
We went back to the old man’s place. He wouldn’t let Jurgen in until he was dry. He told him to stay on the porch and let the wind dry him. Meanwhile the old man himself was very wet. The shirt and shorts he wore dripped on the floor in his hallway as he made his way to the closet and brought towels for Iris.
Two’s enough, she said, and handed me one. He had brought her four.
Well, thanks for the dinner, Iris said to the old man, and then Iris and I went into our room and shut the door.
Before I fell asleep I could hear the old man lock the front door and then I heard him go into his bedroom and shut the door.
I’m wide awake, Iris said while she lay on her cot, but then a second later I could hear her softly snoring.
I woke up later to Jurgen climbing down the large branch that came in through the open window of our room.
More leaves fell because of him climbing on it and the sound they made reminded me of rain.
Bastard locked me out, Jurgen said, jumping down onto the end of my cot. My body bounced up on the cot’s mattress when he did it.
Jurgen didn’t leave. He stayed sitting on the end of my cot that was now covered with leaves, leaning his back against the wall.
He asked about America. He wanted to know where I lived. I described for him the building and the heating duct in the building that ran through all the floors and how it was easy to hear what the neighbors upstairs or downstairs were talking about because the sound carried, up and down the duct. I told him it wasn’t that good German feeling thing, either. I didn’t like hearing other people talk. I didn’t like knowing they were so close by. He wanted to know if I had a boyfriend. I told him I didn’t think I did when I left, but I might when I get back.
Americans don’t talk straight, he said. Germans do. Ask me a question, he said. Any question and I’ll answer it.
I didn’t want Jurgen at the foot of my cot any longer. I couldn’t stretch out my legs and lay down. I wanted to sleep.
All right, one question, I said. I tried to think of what to ask him. I didn’t know. I pictured him at the restaurant, how he got back on the chair again with the broken leg after the first time he fell.
All right, I said, If Hitler were around again today, would you join him? I asked.
Jurgen shook his head, Hitler, Nazi Germany, that’s all foreigners seem to remember about Germany.
Not true, I said. I remembered how they ate heavy bread and drank beer.
Do you think when Hitler and all of them decided to go after the Jews together that they had that feeling, the German word you know I can’t say? I said.
Jurgen said the word.
Yes, that. Did they have it? I asked.
Yes, no, maybe, Jurgen said.
That’s not a straight answer, you’re answering like an American now, I said.
Yes, they had it, Jurgen said.
I shook my head. That’s funny, I said, to think they had the best feeling of all to do the worst thing.
Then Iris said it. She said the word. She must have been listening. When she said it, it sounded like she was German, like she was Jurgen saying it.
Jurgen jumped off my cot, trailing some of the leaves with him, sending them to the floor. Perfect, Iris. You said it perfectly, he said, going over to her.
It didn’t hurt my throat this time, Iris said. I’m getting the hang of it, she said and then she closed her eyes and started softly snoring again.
The next day, the old man knocked on our door. He had breakfast on a tray for Iris. He said he had walked to the restaurant early in the morning and had asked them to fix it for her. But Iris was sick from drinking too much. Ugh, she said when the old man brought the tray close to her, lifting a napkin covering a plate, showing her fried eggs and fried silver sardines, still with their heads and their eyes, their mouths partly open, showing small sharp teeth.
The old man started to walk away with the tray and back himself out the door, but then Iris said, Not the coffee, leave the coffee, and the old man lifted the coffee for her and held it to her mouth so she could drink.
Iris did not leave the room. The sun outside was too strong for her eyes. The old man, every so often, would open up the door and look in on Iris, and then he would close the door and tiptoe through his house. I think he even stopped smoking his pipe, so as not to let the smell bother her. Jurgen and I sat on the porch and Jurgen talked. The old man came out and told us to keep it down, to let Iris sleep. Jurgen would keep his voice down for a while. Then, forgetting, he would raise it again. The old man was telling Jurgen to keep it down again when the Connector walked up the beach. At first, of course, we did not know it was the Connector, but later we learned.
Old Man, he said to the old man, I wrote to you. I told you I was coming.
I never received the letter, the old man said to his son. The Connector shook his head. He went into the old man’s room. When he came out, he was holding up a piece of paper.
It was on your desk, he said to the old man. The old man took the paper and he read it.
This is the first I’ve seen of this letter, the old man said.
The Connector laughed, oh, Old Man, he said and then he put an arm across his father, and brought him close, a kind of half-hug.
Later, when the old man went to check on Iris, the Connector and Jurgen and I sat outside on the porch and the Connector said he had been worried about his father here all alone. Did we notice anything peculiar about his behavior? He asked.
Yes, Jurgen said.
No, I said. We don’t know him, how could we guess what was peculiar and what wasn’t? I said.
He’s a nut job, Jurgen said. He tried to fight with me.
I’m thinking, the Connector said, that I can’t leave him here alone much longer. He’ll have to come back with me. I can get care for him at home, he said.
When Iris finally came out of her room, the Connector smiled.
How do you do? the Connector said and he stood tall and straight and shook Iris’ hand for a long time, as if Iris were famous and he was so glad to finally meet her.
The old man hurried onto the porch behind Iris. Don’t listen to a damn thing he says, the old man said, looking at Iris. He’s all his mother, the old man said.
I’m you too. What about our thumbs? The Connector said. He held up his thumb and made his father hold up his too. See, look, the Connector showed Iris. We have the same thumbs.
And they did. Except for the Connector’s thumb being paler, not darkly weathered by this country’s sun, their thumbs could be the same.
We all laughed. Drinks, we need drinks, Jurgen said, and for once the old man agreed with Jurgen and sent Jurgen into the house to get beer from the cooler.
Iris wanted to know where he was from. Did the Connector live in that city, the one with the river that froze in winter?
The Connector said he did. He told Iris how she would have to come and visit. He would show her the river, it was beautiful and the water turned pale green when it froze. The Connector said he would take her to restaurants in buildings reaching high above the city’s skyline.
Iris smiled, how nice, she said. She looked out at the ocean, and then she said, anybody up for a swim? I think it’ll clear my head, she said.
The Connector was the first to say yes, then the old man said yes. Jurgen said he was going to stay and take a nap. He was tired from drinking beer in the afternoon and that in Germany, that’s how they did it, they sometimes drank in the afternoon and then took a nap and later they could embrace the night.
The Connector could swim. He and Iris went far out. The old man stood in the shallows watching. They did not ride the waves in. They stayed in the deep, floating, treading water, talking, I could tell. I went up to my waist. I rode the small waves that lacked push. Once in a while I could catch a bit of what they were saying. The Connector talked about bridges and his projects and how he sometimes stood on the supports and girders and felt the wind off the river trying to knock him down.
At the restaurant that night, the Connector had us play a game. Guess what I’m thinking of, he said. We guessed and guessed, using questions requiring yes or no answers. Oh, come on, the Connector said, ask better questions.
We don’t want to play this game, the old man said. We’re not in school, he said.
It’s all right, I can guess this, Iris said and she did. She guessed anchor. She was right. The Connector said, Bravo! And because she won, she had to drink a shot of tequila.
She guessed correctly often. She drank a lot of shots. Then again, after our meal, she wanted to go swimming.
Come this time, Jurgen said to me. So I did.
We were all in the water. The old man had come out with us. He had left his pipe behind. Race me, the old man said to his son. The Connector looked out across the water, to the deep where his father was facing.
To where? he said.
Afraid? the old man said. I’ll beat you, he said. Come on, he said. On the count of three, he said. One, two, three. Then he swam hard. He swam and soon the sound of his kicking in the water and his arms splashing became distant. The Connector did not race.
Come on back, Old Man, the Connector said. Old Man? he called. The Connector went out after his father; Iris and Jurgen and I went back to shore. We put on our clothes.
He builds bridges, Iris said. Quite remarkable, she said.
It’s not like he builds them with his hands, he just draws them on paper, Jurgen said.
The Connector and the old man came back, but the old man would not walk back with us to the house. The old man walked ahead, almost running. Come on, can’t you keep up? he said over his shoulder to his son.
On the walk back to the house Jurgen said we should get to bed early, we planned to leave the next day to catch the boat and the many buses back to the boarding house where we had started our vacation. I agreed with him and we left Iris and the Connector and the old man on the porch, still drinking what was left of the beers. Jurgen went to his bedroom and I went to mine.
When I woke up Iris was loose, her shoulder was out of its socket and she was standing by my bed, waking me up, moaning with pain.
Please, put it back in, she said. I got out of bed and stood her up against the wall. I began to push on her shoulder hard. When I did it I heard something coming from the hallway. It was the sound of fist fighting. I heard grunts and I heard the old man saying stop, stop. Still, I hadn’t put Iris’ shoulder back in yet, so I did not go and see what was the matter. I tried to push as hard as the sound of the fists hitting. It was more like slamming is what I was doing. I did it in time with the hits. I think it helped. I slammed into Iris hard. I threw my weight into her.
There, it’s in, she said. But I still kept slamming. Maybe I kept slamming her and hurting her because I kept thinking how if it hadn’t been for Iris, no one would be fighting now. If Iris wasn’t so nice to everyone, not everyone would want her. If she hadn’t patted her beach towel asking the Old Man to sit down next to her and making him feel good, then maybe he never would have fallen for her. Maybe if she hadn’t played along with the Connector at his guessing game, he wouldn’t have fallen for her either. I thought how Iris was like the good word itself, she was what the word meant, only she didn’t know it. She was the good word walking, the good word living and breathing. The good word talking. It wasn’t until she cried stop, that I stopped.
I helped Iris to her cot and then I looked into the hallway. The old man was down and the Connector was standing over him, holding a wet cloth and wiping his father’s brow.
When the Connector saw me he said, more to himself than to me, I really think it’s time I took him home.
When we left in the morning neither the old man nor the Connector was awake. We went walking with our backpacks down the beach, heading for the boat on the river side that would take us to the buses.
On the first bus back home to the boarding house, we again sat with more people and chickens. It was hot and Iris said what she would not give for a drink. An old woman beside her understood, and she pulled out a bottle that looked old, that looked like it had spent years lost at sea. The liquid in the bottle looked old too, it was pale yellow and reminded me of the color of the window glass in the old man’s room. She passed Iris the bottle and Iris drank and drank. The old woman smiled and nodded her head and lifted her hand in a gesture letting Iris know she could drink more. When Iris was finished, she said the word, the German word, to Jurgen and me and then she taught the old woman how to say the word and the old woman learned how to say it too. Then the entire bus wanted to learn the word. They all said it. All the men and women with chickens on their laps practiced saying the good word. Jurgen stood up in the aisle saying the word so they could repeat it after him. He lifted his arms, palms up, getting everyone to say it louder, and they did. Everyone was saying it, even the chickens seemed to be saying it, their clucks really the good word and not clucks at all.
“The Good Word,” written by Yannick Murphy. Copyright © 2008 by Yannick Murphy. Used with permission. All rights reserved. This story was originally published in issue #109 of One Story and appeared in Best Non-Required Reading 2009.
Yannick Murphy is the author of THIS IS THE WATER, published this summer by Harper Perennial, THE CALL, SIGNED, MATA HARI, HERE THEY COME, and THE SEA OF TREES. Her story collections include STORIES IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE and IN A BEAR’S EYE. She is the recipient of various awards including a Pushcart Prize, a Laurence L. and Thomas Winship/PEN New England Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, a National Endowment for the Arts award, and a Chesterfield Screenwriting award.
