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There was nothing remarkable about the meeting, except for how it ended. Ludwig’s carefully prepared closing remarks were met with a lukewarm scattering of applause from the crowd, and a raucous cheer of unseasonable thunder from the heavens above. It was the opening blast of a relentless storm, and ensuing crescendo of wind and rain did away with the usual after-work fraternizing he might have enjoyed with his colleagues. Even Feliciano didn’t linger—he left Ludwig on the steps with a kiss on the cheek, a promise to text, and the sound of Lovino's exaggerated gagging.
Ludwig waited around a little longer after he had left, loitering in the angular shadow of the Paul-Löbe-Haus. The rain beat hard on the worn streets of Berlin. The foggy petrichor was underscored by discordant notes of exhaust fumes and linden buds. Everyone wanted to be somewhere else.
Less poetic souls would’ve called the scene grim, but Ludwig found it calming. The rain pooled on the streets, running in orderly rivulets down to the gutters and into a sewer system that had once drained the impossible swamps of Brandenburg. His coworkers pooled on the sidewalks and drained out into the cars and taxis and a reliable web of rail lines. Everything was in its place, or getting there.
The peace was disturbed by the prickling feeling that he was being watched. Then footsteps, louder and faster by the second. Ludwig turned around in time to see Feliks bearing down on him. His hair was tossed about by the wind, narrow tie flapping like a flag as he made his approach.
“Hey, Fritz,” he called out. “You drive, right?”
“I do. And that’s not my name.”
“Whatever. Lutz. I need a ride. Where’d you park?”
Ludwig stopped and stared at him. He had never driven Feliks anywhere and didn’t feel compelled to start today. They didn’t get along, for reasons that might’ve called ‘despite everything,’ or ‘because of everything,’ depending on who you asked. He mentally sorted through possible replies for the most diplomatic option.
“Most visitors to the Reichstag prefer to commute on foot,” he said eventually, and gestured into the distance; a blocky silhouette was almost visible across the Spree. “That way. Continue across the bridge and you’ll reach Berlin Central—”
“It’s raining,” Feliks interrupted.
“It is.”
Feliks narrowed his eyes, fine features twisting into an annoyance bordering on contempt. “It’s raining,” he repeated, as if explaining something very simple to someone very stupid. “And I forgot my umbrella. And you have a car, so I want you to drive me.”
“It’s not going to last all day.”
“Please,” Feliks said with a huff and a toss of his damp blond hair.
The courtesy was enough to make Ludwig regard him for a moment, if only to verify that he hadn’t been taken by some delusional fever. But it was only Feliks as always. Feliks with raindrops sticking to his pale eyelashes, running down his cheeks and adding to the river that ran between them. Feliks with his eyes fixed east, towards a home which was too far to see for the fog. For a moment, Ludwig saw a ragged ghost under that well-groomed and glossy Polish politico—no doubt some strange affect of the rain and fog. It didn’t matter. He was going to say no, in so many words.
He was cut off by hurried footsteps fast approaching: Tauras had come chasing down the sidewalk after them, a mess of papers shoved under one arm and two bags slung over his shoulder.
“Sorry, sorry— Feliks, be polite—” He stopped to catch his breath and fumble with his stack of sodden paperwork. “Sorry, Liudvikas. I would take him, I was going to, but something’s come up at home—the election—I’ll have to catch a flight today to be back in time, and now my car won’t start—”
“Your car is a piece of junk,” Feliks cut in.
“—And I don’t know what I’m going to do.” He ran a hand through his mousy hair. “Do you think you could drive him, if you’re taking your car? I’m sorry even to ask, I know you must be busy—”
Just then, Tauras’ phone started ringing; he was startled into dropping all his papers. Ludwig bent to help pick them up, feeling a little sympathy for the perpetually frazzled and put-upon young man. He seemed to be melting in the rain, clearly worried for Feliks’ commute even as his boss harangued him over the phone. Ludwig met Tauras’s watery green gaze and mouthed ‘don’t worry about it’.
Tauras’ relief was clear and immediate, and Ludwig spent a half-second soaking in it. Some interior faculty in him acknowledged that being reliable and relied on, being trustworthy and trusted, felt good. Besides, the train station was only a few minutes away. He could survive a few minutes of anything, even Feliks Łukasiewicz. Tucking these thoughts away carefully, he turned back to face his newfound burden.
Feliks stared back with a bright-eyed smile. “So,” he said through a mouthful of gum, “Where’d you park?”
—
Ludwig had driven from the Reichstag building to the train station often enough to not need directions. He queued them up anyway, hoping that the lifeless drone of the GPS might preclude having a conversation with his passenger.
In the car, he began his journey as usual, by putting on his seat belt and fixing his phone on the dash mount. His passenger began by unwrapping another stick of gum, then chewing it very loudly while aimlessly rifling through the glove box. The rain had already stopped.
Ludwig cleared his throat. “There won’t be much traffic this time of day. It’ll be about ten minutes,” he said.
“Wow,” Feliks replied, drawing out the sound.
“Wow what?”
“I mean, I heard you people don’t have a speed limit or whatever, but damn. You must drive, like, fast fast.”
“I drive safely. And we’re not taking the autobahn to get to the train station. You can see it from here.”
“Huh?” Feliks popped his gum. “Fritz, I don’t live at the train station.”
Ludwig took a moment to process the reply, then stopped altogether once the thought ran its course. “Do think I’m going to drive you all the way back to Kraków?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“No.” He started the car.
When Feliks realised Ludwig was serious, he started kicking up a protest. “You’re seriously gonna make me take the train? There's not even a direct line! It’s like, 8 fucking hours—”
“Correct. And the ticket is 60 euro.” He paused. “If you don’t have the money, I’ll loan you—”
Feliks cut him off with a string of Polish words Ludwig didn’t know except that they weren’t polite. When he calmed down, he spat, “Keep your money, you miserable bastard. I hate you.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. If you hate me so much, I imagine you don’t want to be in the car with me. I’ll understand if you’d prefer to get out and walk.”
This reasonable argument didn’t have the desired effect on Feliks. After a minute driving, he heaved a melodramatic sigh. “You’re really gonna make me take the train?” He pursed his lips. “Really?”
“Really.”
“It’s an awful long way.”
“You should’ve thought about that.”
“I’ve had plenty of time to,” Feliks replied with a yawn. “Honesty, Lutz. Optics?”
Ludwig stiffened. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” he said quietly.
“Hey, you said it. Besides, you owe me one.”
Negotiated silence. Ludwig watched his knuckles turn white against the steering wheel.
Feliks paid him little attention. He flipped down the mirror and started fussing with his hair. “Your car is seriously nice, by the way. Don’t you want poor little me to marvel at your German engineering? It’s 6 hours with a captive audience.” He uncapped a tube of lip balm, and the car filled with a synthetic strawberry fume. “Right? Maybe I could learn from this, y’know? You’re always saying—”
“Put on your seat belt.”
“I bet you really are always saying that.” He fiddled with his seat belt, offering Ludwig a too-brief moment of silence. “Can I put on the radio?”
“No.”
“Can I open the window?”
“The air is on. Stop touching that.”
Feliks tossed the owner’s manual back into the glove box with a huff. “No fun allowed in the car, got it.”
“I can still make you get out and walk.”
“Nah, you won’t. You have a complex.”
Ludwig gave up arguing. Still not entirely sure where he was going, he pulled out onto the street and turned towards Moltke Bridge. Feliks quickly made himself at home in the passenger seat. He loosened his tie and wiggled out of his suit coat, then undid buttons on his shirt until Ludwig stopped him with an awkward cough. Finally, his turned his attention to the scene outside. The glass angles of Berlin Central Station loomed before them, then beside them, then receded in the rear-view mirror.
Feliks broke into bubbly, delighted laughter. “I totally knew you wouldn’t,” he said. “This is gonna be fun, seriously. We’re going on a road trip! Pretend like we’re friends, or whatever.”
“I’ll need to borrow some money for the tolls.”
“Oh? How the mighty have fallen.”
“I don’t carry złoty,” Ludwig said pointedly.
In normal circumstances, that might have been enough to provoke an argument. This time, though, Feliks found other matters more pressing. An exchange of coins was carried out, then he settled in and celebrated his victory with both feet kicked up onto the dash. He took further concessions in the form of Ludwig’s phone; Ludwig heard the clack of long nails on the screen as he input his home address. All forces were routed onto the A15 eastbound towards Breslau.
—
Ludwig had been bracing for the journey to be a little more trying. He and Feliks had strained relations at the best of times and at the worst of times they fought. Especially after a meeting, with both their minds still on policy and politics and the thousand little things they disagreed on. Feliks would start something, and Ludwig would bite back some edged retort, and they’d carry on until he really could say what he felt, until he could pull over and say Feliks, I don’t like you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry forever, I will never in my life stop being sorry, but you’re annoying and strange and I just don’t like you, and Feliks would either agree and be reasonable or start shouting and swearing. In either case, this fantasy usually ended with Ludwig leaving him on a curb somewhere in Wrocław and getting home in time to walk the dogs.
None of this came to pass, though, because Feliks was asleep before they even reached the border. After the first hour passed in unbroken silence, Ludwig felt obliged to confirm that he was even still alive. His suit coat was draped over his front like a blanket; moved by an emotion he couldn’t have named, Ludwig turned on the heat.
They drove on over the Oder and into Poland, but Feliks still showed no sign of waking. Ludwig couldn’t tell if it was lucky or alarming. He studied his passenger in the dying light, a series of brief glances afforded by adaptive cruise control and automatic lane-keeping. The action felt foreign. It was as if he had never really seen Feliks before in his life. Maybe he never had. Feliks was hard to look at sometimes, the walking shadow of all his worst mistakes.
But he was beautiful, Ludwig realised, especially now that he wasn’t endlessly chattering and squirming around. His fine features had an ageless quality that was almost unsettling. It was easy to forget that Feliks was older than him, older than the very concept of him, by centuries. Feliks’s delicate face could’ve belonged to a teenager, his slim wrists and porcelain skin betrayed none of the hardship he’d lived through.
As if sensing his stare, Feliks blinked himself awake. “Eyes on the road, Fritz,” he yawned. “Unless you want me to drive? Are you tired?”
“No,” Ludwig intoned. And then, “Go back to sleep.”
Feliks yawned again, pulled his jacket tighter around his narrow shoulders and complied without further argument. Ludwig turned his attention to the scenery instead. The road to Kraków wound through beautiful stretches of silent countryside. Juniper bushes huddled in copses on gently sloping hills; the sunset seemed to set the yellowed summer grass ablaze. Once he was certain that Feliks was fast asleep, Ludwig turned on the radio, flipping through grainy traffic reports and advertisements before eventually settling on inoffensive classical piano.
The scenery in Silesia wasn’t actually much different to that in Brandenburg. The same narrow pines lined the highways here as back home. The same sun sank slowly towards the same dark horizon. Ludwig wondered about that. He and Feliks didn’t look exactly alike, but they weren’t dissimilar. If you didn’t know better, you might mistake them for brothers. And if you went a few minutes without seeing a road sign, you could mistake this place for either nation.
Maybe it was both of them, he mused. Something they shared, for better or for worse, forever. The tangled line where they met traced the shadow of a tangled history they would never escape. Whatever they felt for each other, they would always be connected—just a breath apart, as they were now. Every town they passed had two names. Ludwig had built the very road they were driving on. The memory of it was visceral, and stinging, and so very recent. It was a miracle that Feliks trusted him at all, let alone enough to fall asleep next to him.
Sometimes he wished Feliks hated him. It would’ve made more sense and it would’ve been simpler. Then he could stop wishing Feliks liked him. Anything would be better than this, this awkward harmony of guilt and resentment that twisted them into opposing shapes. Maybe what he wanted most of all was for things to just be normal. He was driving a friend to Kraków. He had offered a ride to a colleague after work. He wanted to go home. Ludwig stifled a yawn. Both the scenery and his thoughts blurred into monotony.
—
“I know you drive safe or whatever,” Feliks said sleepily, “But isn’t this a little slow? Like, even for you?”
The car was stopped. It was just after sunset, the last of the spring sunshine bleeding out into the treeline. The buzzing fluorescent glow of the gas station behind them revealed a mundane scene: They were at a highway rest stop, alone in the parking lot save for a few stalled trucks. Feliks took in each of these details in turn, then yawned and stretched out like a cat.
“It’s not safe to drive while tired,” Ludwig explained. “It’s important take regular breaks every two hours at least. Actually, that’s a major cause of accidents in—”
“Actually, save the lecture, unless you’re trying to put me to sleep too. Take a nap, whatever. Just hurry up.”
Ludwig stretched his stiff legs and cracked the car door, letting in a trickle of cool air and the drone of traffic from the highway. It was already getting late, and they had hours still to go. There was always construction on the A4 and a half dozen toll booths besides. Feliks would want to stop and eat. With a heavy sigh, Ludwig swallowed the fact that he wouldn’t be getting home until tomorrow.
Fully returned to wakefulness, Feliks began squirming around in his seat. “Where are we?” he asked.
“An hour past Posen.”
“Poznań? How much farther?”
Ludwig didn’t reply. Feliks should at least know his own geography. He probably did know and just wanted attention. “The longer you talk,” Ludwig said, “the longer we’re going to spend sitting here. Make a choice.”
Feliks mumbled some languid retort—barely intelligible through another yawn—as he undid his seat belt. Then he slipped out into the dark.
—
The saccharine chime of Ludwig’s phone alarm woke him fifteen minutes later, and the line of accumulated notifications provided a little useful information. It was nearly 9 o’clock. Feliciano had made it home alright. Tauras had tried to call him 4 times and then wired over 200 euro.
All at once, he remembered about Feliks. The passenger seat was still empty, with only a crumpled jacket and the fading scent of strawberry left behind. For an indulgent moment, Ludwig imagined that he’d gotten bored of waiting and decided to hitchhike the rest of the way home.
When the moment passed, he got out of the car and went looking.
Feliks wasn’t hard to find. In the last dregs of the sunset, his pale skin seemed to glow. Just for a moment, Ludwig saw in him a thousand years of history. One moment he was playing with a lighter, the next he held black-winged hussar’s sabre. He was dripping with a szlachta’s gold and furs. The light made a halo of his windblown blond hair; he might have been a saint. It was a world Ludwig knew only through paintings. He had come alive in a time of steam and iron, in a world determined to make all else into history. And yet here Feliks stood.
The crunch of his own boots on gravel broke the spell. Feliks greeted him with an absent nod, then turned back around to contemplate the stretch of no man’s land between him and the highway. Cigarette smoke rose into the sky and mixed with the clouds overhead.
“Enjoying the view?” Ludwig said.
Feliks replied without moving. “Don’t condescend to me, Fritz.”
Silence again. There really was no view here to speak of. A wall of dark forest loomed behind 4 lanes of empty highway. Far in the distance, the red-tipped glow of a radio tower winked below the first evening stars. The anonymity of it all was almost remarkable.
An unseasonable wind swept through the parking lot. Feliks shivered in his shirt-sleeves. Wordlessly, Ludwig took off his jacket and passed it over.
Feliks took it with a thin smile. “Still trying to play the good guy?” He laughed through a breath of smoke. “You’re hot and cold, that’s your problem. Sometimes I think you want me, and sometimes I think you wish I was dead.”
“I don’t wish that.”
“So you do want me?”
The exhaustion creeping up Ludwig’s spine was one that sleep would not fix. He barely understood his thoughts well enough to think them; forming them into words felt insurmountable. What would he say? A convenient lie? ‘I almost hate you more than I hate myself’. The truth? ‘I have dreamed of you every night I’ve been alive.’ There were a million answers, all of them wrong.
After a moment, he began slowly. “I wouldn’t ask you to ever consider me a friend. I wouldn’t ask you,” he said, stumbling, “to forgive me. I couldn’t. And I know that nothing will ever change what’s in our past. But if there could be some future where I mean something else—“
“You talk too much.”
“I want you to like me.”
This bare truth seemed to satisfy Feliks. This time there was no bitterness in his smile, though it was more to himself and the road ahead than to Ludwig. “Cigarette?” he offered.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” Ludwig mused.
“You don’t know anything about me, Fritz.” He handed over a cigarette. “For your chauffeuring, I’ll offer your favorite: Payment in-kind.”
“I told you to stop that.”
“Tragedy plus time.”
“You’re not funny.” A moment passed. “Do you have a light?”
Feliks grabbed him by the collar. Ludwig closed his eyes reflexively. He felt, rather than saw, the spark that passed between them.
—
Ludwig didn’t remember the rest of their conversation, if there really was one. The walk back to the car was likewise hazy. It was a blurry of memory closeness and warmth and Feliks’ thin body pressed against his.
He wasn’t clearly aware of anything until they were back in the car, and then it was too much all at once. Feliks started it. After a few moments of silence, he undid the last of his buttons and pulled the lapels of Ludwig’s jacket over his pale throat instead. It was barely permission, but it was enough.
That mess of blonde hair was just a silky as it looked. Ludwig grabbed at him freely, pulling him close and kissing him hungrily. Feliks leaned in to it, scrambling closer until he was halfway over the seat. The waxy taste of strawberry lip balm mixed with a lingering note of cigarette smoke, a dizzying combination.
Wandering hands pawed at his shirt. Ludwig’s breath caught in his throat, his mind totally blank. It felt good. He felt Feliks laugh, warm breath tickling his neck. “Be honest, how long have you wanted this?”
“Stop talking,” Ludwig said. “Please.”
Feliks found other work for his mouth. He kissed him again, needy and insistent. Ludwig bit at him hard enough to leave marks, savoring the high whines and gasps he drew out with each gesture. All the while, Feliks’s hands were moving. Nimble fingers traced lines over his chest, his waist, his hips, his belt. Ludwig let him do it, the last of his self-restraint rapidly dissolving.
Then Feliks stopped, a thin line of spit still hanging from his bruised lips. “Ludwig,” he teased. “I thought you said no fun allowed in the car?”
—
Morning came. Ludwig was pulled from a dreamless sleep by the blare of his 7 o’clock alarm. It took him a painful, scattered moment to find and deactivate it; his phone was in his pocket and his pants were tangled in a bedsheet lying halfway across the room. The memory of the previous day came back, and then the previous night. It began in his car and ended in the first travelers’ motel they could find.
The room’s single window let in a draft and an uninspiring view of the day awaiting him; it was frost on the grass and dust on pavement and heavy clouds choking a dimly lit sky. They were near Łódź, according to the nearest road sign—a place he couldn’t have furnished a meaningful compliment about in about in the best of times. The outskirt they found themselves in offered little more charm than the city proper. It was a petrol station and a motel and a restaurant ambiguously christened Restarauntja. Everything in view was gray. The other side of the bed was cold. Ludwig dressed in the same clothes he’d discarded yesterday and went outside.
Feliks sat on the curb, painting the sky that much grayer with an intermittent clouds of menthol smoke. He tossed Ludwig a nod as he approached, and fished around in his pocket for another cigarette.
The brisk, bleak morning doused any sparks that might’ve remained from the previous night. “Did you sleep well?” Ludwig asked.
“Nah.” Feliks took a long drag. “Had this awful nightmare.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“You were in it.”
Ludwig finished his cigarette in silence.
For a few minutes they were alone, accompanied only by the wind and the smoke and the occasional whine of a diesel engine rattling past on its way to somewhere else. A single black car pulled off; a moment later and Ludwig was forced to acknowledge it was a taxi.
Feliks stomped his cigarette out on the curb and had a short exchange with the driver which Ludwig overheard most of but understood little of. The meaning was clear enough. The taxi was going to take Feliks to Łódź Fabryczna and out of his life, for now. It was over. Ludwig reached for his wallet and passed over the whole of its contents.
Feliks thumbed through the bills. “40 euro? Was it really that bad?”
“For the train,” Ludwig said through gritted teeth.
Feliks laughed, and in spite of himself and everything Ludwig wanted to laugh too. The morning was freezing and the afternoon would be cold, but somewhere, somehow, the sun would shine again.
The taxi driver drummed on the steering wheel impatiently, eager as either of them to depart. Feliks turned around, and stopped then turned back. “Thanks,” he said.
“Any time,” Ludwig replied mildly.
“You mean that?”
“No.”
“Will I see you again?”
Ludwig paused to think. Of course they’d see each other again. There was work and politics and sports and the economy—it wasn’t possible for them to avoid each other. But he had a feeling this wasn’t what Feliks was asking. “If you want to,” he replied.
It was the right answer. Feliks tossed him one last smile and then he was gone, leaving in a haze of chemical strawberry and diesel exhaust and unforgiving frost.
Ludwig sat in the parking lot long after his car had warmed and the directions were queued up. He remained there until the sun was breaking over the trees and burning off the morning mist, and Feliks would’ve long since boarded the train home and left the monochrome monotony of the road behind.
From here to Kraków was 300 kilometers. If he left now, he could be at Feliks’s apartment before noon. But what would he do when he got there? To say sorry again, to kiss him again, to see him again, if he wanted? They could share another cigarette, smoke ‘til the whole world was gray as Łódź and the cold light of morning couldn’t find them even if it wanted to.
It was with a methodical and diligent sort of self control that Ludwig left the parking lot and headed west back towards Berlin. He wanted Feliks to like him. He didn’t need Feliks to love him. Those truths had to remain uncomplicated lest they become incomprehensible, like that hazy swirl of needing and wanting that he’d found himself lost in yesterday night. Yesterday night he’d traded the constant shapeless weight of who he was and what he had done for who he was with and what he was doing, and that was a road that led to a place Ludwig had never been.
And so he went home. That was simpler. The miles between then and here slipped by easily, and before long Ludwig was leaving the autobahn behind for the familiar tableau of Berlin in April. The sun scattered brilliantly off the glass of the train station, the linden trees swayed in the wind. And as the sunset blazed out on the horizon in the west, he found himself looking back east, into the distance, into the past, and into the night.