Chapter 10 – ZAARE LULLABY

The Chinese bistro closed at nine.

Hamburger knew this because the woman behind the counter said it in Chinese and Christmas translated it with a gesture: two hands pressed together, eyes half-closed, and a slight nod of the head.

Before nine.

It was half-past seven.

Snow was falling outside. Different from during the day. Night snow was denser, quieter. It fell against the shop window, creating a layer through which the city could be seen only as shapeless lights.

Golden light.

Blue light.

Pink light.

Neon Prague.

They were sitting by the window. Hamburger had a mug of tea in front of him. He had arrived without ordering because the woman behind the counter evidently had her own system of rationing warmth. Christmas had an empty bowl with a little sauce at the bottom and a mug he had just finished drinking from. Two phones lay on the table, both face down.

Hamburger warmed his palms on the mug.

A warm mug in December. A thing for which there might be a Japanese word, or a Chinese one, or both, or none at all. But the thing itself existed before words and after words and between them.

His palms were warm.

That was enough.

Christmas was looking out the window. His cheeks were slightly red, his hair still damp. Hamburger watched him with fondness; he was already dear to him. Christmas turned around. He caught him, but Hamburger didn't look away. Hamburger could read Christmas's smile without a translator anymore. A smile that said: I know you were looking, and I liked it, but I won't say it out loud. Hamburger picked up his mug and took a drink.

Tea.

Ha.

The word in the mouth was almost right. The tone might have been wrong. Hamburger knew that. Chinese had tones, and so far he had mastered only one, the flat one, which is suited for expressions when you are reporting the weather. Not for the sentence "hands know it first". Not for the home of someone who sought home elsewhere. But for a single word at a small table, it was enough.

He picked up his phone.

He turned it over. The translator was still open from the walk. In the history remained sentences from the whole day — mixed Chinese and Czech, hybrids, sentences without a precise language, sentences that flowed from one into the other like water poured from one vessel into another.

Dnes.

Bistro.

Náplavka.

Plac.

Zhang Li.

Ha.

Hamburger asked:

How do you say — star? That star outside?

Christmas looked out the window, as if to check whether there really was a star outside.

Written in Chinese:

Xīngxīng. (Star.)

Hamburger stared at the word.

Xīngxīng.

He repeated it in his head. Two syllables, repeating. As if a star needed two sounds to exist.

He said it out loud.

Quietly, almost to the mug:

"Xīngxīng."

Christmas looked at him.

Hamburger looked at the table, focused on the pronunciation, the tones, the shape of the word in his mouth, the distance between how he heard it and how it came out.

Christmas wrote:

Hái kěyǐ. (Still okay.)

Hamburger read it. Then he laughed quietly. Still okay. A Prague-Chinese standard for the first Chinese word after years of German life.

Christmas smiled too.

The woman behind the counter behind them was moving something around — cups, bowls, a teapot — and the movement brought a quiet rhythmic sound. Otherwise, the bistro was silent. The second table was empty, the light in the front part a bit dimmed, as restaurants do when they start closing without saying so directly.

Hamburger picked up his phone. He stared at the screen for a moment, then typed:

Write me one more word. Any word.

Christmas read it. He thought for a moment and then wrote in Chinese:

Liú. (To stay. Or to let flow. It depends.)

Hamburger looked at the word.

Liú.

To stay. To let flow. It depends.

He repeated it inwardly. The tone was uncertain, and a different tone changes a word entirely. Christmas had told him—more precisely, written to him—before, but only now did Hamburger understand why. A word that could mean staying or letting flow depending on how you pronounced it was not a misunderstanding. It was a precision that says: it depends on what you feel when you open your mouth.

He said aloud:

“Liú.”

Christmas nodded. Then he pointed with his finger toward the river. It wasn't visible, but it was there. The gesture said: that word belongs there.

Hamburger understood.

Liú.

Water that remains by flowing.

And then out of nowhere came the thought of Hamburg — the place he came from, the place where German was spoken, where there was a harbor and the water also knew how to leave while staying behind. Hamburg as a liú. A place that let something flow and in doing so turned into something other than what Hamburger expected.

He took his phone, wrote in Czech:

I want to tell you something.

Christmas read it and waited.

There is a port in Hamburg. I used to go there when my pain was unbearable. I looked at the water. The water moved without a reason. I told myself: that is how I must move too. Without a reason. Just keep going.

Christmas read it.

I came to Prague precisely for that reason. Because of the water. Prague has a river too.

Christmas read the sentence twice. Hamburger saw the eyes scan the line, then return. Then Christmas wrote in Chinese:

Wǒ zhīdào nǐ wèishénme lái. (I know why you have come.)

Hamburger smiled at him. Christmas continued in Czech:

Not because you told me. Because water knows its way.

The woman behind the counter brought a small plate without asking.

Two pieces of something brown and round. Hamburger didn't know what it was. Christmas looked at it.

He said in Chinese:

Nǚshì, zhè shì shénme? (Ma'am, what is this?)

The lady behind the counter answered in Chinese, quickly, with the smile of people who cook because they want to, not just because they have to. Christmas listened and then turned to Hamburger.

He took his phone and typed in Czech:

She says: sweet thing. For the end of the day. When we're good guests.

Hamburger read it. Then he looked at the small plate. He took one piece. It was soft, slightly sticky to the touch — a sugar coating, or honey, or both.

He bit into it.

The taste was different from the angel wings from Christmas's room, different from the sweets at Prague stalls. Chinese sweetness, more complex, with a hint of ginger or cinnamon or something Hamburger couldn't name.

Christmas took the second piece.

They ate.

Without a word.

The woman behind the counter went back and started turning off the rear light. The front one was still on, but the silence of the space made it clear: just a moment longer, and then.

Hamburger rested his elbows on the table.

He looked at Christmas. Christmas stared thoughtfully at the table.

Hamburger picked up his phone:

I want to learn one word a day. No more. One.

Christmas read it. Then he wrote in Czech:

Today you learned three.

Hamburger wrote:

Which ones?

Christmas wrote:

Chá. Xīngxīng. Liú.

Hamburger read them.

Tea.

Star.

To stay or let flow.

Three words. He didn't pronounce a single one perfectly. He said them aloud.

“Cha. Xīngxīng. Liú.”

The woman behind the counter turned off the back light.

The bistro narrowed its eyes. The front light remained the only one, golden and small. It shone just enough to reveal the table, two mugs, two faces, the snow outside the window.

Christmas picked up his phone.

Written in Chinese:

Nǐ juéde lěng ma? (Are you cold?)

Hamburger looked at the sentence.

He typed:

No.

Christmas wrote:

Me neither.

Hamburger smiled.

That was the whole conversation. Two sentences about the temperature.

Outside the window, it wasn't snowing. Hamburger didn't notice until the snow had already stopped falling. The lights behind the glass came into focus. Prague got its contours back. The golden light of the shop window opposite. The blue reflection of the tram wire. A neon sign around the corner that glowed red and said something in Czech. Hamburger read it without wanting to read. He saw only the red light on the white snow.

Beautiful.

Banally beautiful, the way things are in December when something lights up that doesn't have to, snow is where it wasn't, and a person sits at a small table with a mug of tea and thinks: Beautiful.

Christmas was looking out the window too.

Hamburger watched him.

And then:

Hamburg.

2:45.

A metal carousel behind the books.

Shadows on the wall.

A candle that went out.

And then that tone.

The after-resonance of a note.

Vroucnopotir.

A word on the tip of the tongue. As if it were sitting in a half-sleep somewhere where things exist that the body knows before the mind does.

Hamburger did not say it aloud.

He didn't write it.

He only felt it behind his sternum. In the place where back then at 2:45 he had sensed the direction. Where the body knew sooner that Hamburg wasn't a place where he should stay. Where something that had been standing still for so long moved for the first time.

Back then, that sound was telling him:

leave.

Now it was telling him:

you are here.

Hamburger picked up his mug. Finished his tea. Put the mug down on the table next to Christmas's. Two mugs. This time both of them empty, drunk down to the last drop.

Christmas noticed. Picked up his mug. Moved it closer to Hamburger's. One next to the other.

Things that repeat and have their own memory. Cups at the Hot Grill. Mugs at the Chinese bistro. Anchors placed in the middle so the table knows where the two people who belong together are.

The woman behind the counter came to their table. Not with the bill. With a small bottle and two glasses. The glasses were transparent, tiny, the kind you pour a little into, but with the awareness of abundance. She poured a bit of clear, slightly yellowish liquid into each.

She said something briefly in Chinese.

Christmas replied to her.

He says: to warm up. For the way home.

The woman behind the counter took the bottle away. Hamburger took a glass. Christmas took a glass. They looked at each other.

They got dressed. Jacket, scarf. Christmas reached into his pocket and pulled out red gloves. He put them on. Hamburger pulled up his jacket collar. Phones in pockets.

Hamburger turned to the table.

Two empty mugs, two small glasses, and a paper placemat with Chinese characters were left there.

Christmas turned around too. He looked at what was left behind.

The street was quiet. Just houses, lights in the windows, and a sidewalk with footprints in the snow. Then another street. Christmas walked through it like someone who knew it. Hamburger behind him. Shoes on the pavement quietly, the snow muffled the sound.

Then across the bridge, down the stairs, and they were in the small square where the Christmas tree stood. Christmas stopped.

He stood by the tree and looked up. At the garlands of white lights. Hamburger stood next to him. Christmas took out his phone.

He typed a single word in Chinese:

Měi. (Beautiful.)

Hamburger looked at the tree. At the light. At the snow.

Then he wrote:

Yeah.

Snow started falling again. Softly. The quiet kind that comes when you no longer even remember snow, and suddenly it's in your hair. Christmas raised his head. The snow fell on his face.

Hamburger saw him.

Snow in his hair.

Snow on the face.

Prague in December, exactly as it is. Not cinematic, not perfect. Concrete. Christmas with red gloves, damp hair and snow on her eyelashes looked up at the tree as if searching in it for a dream no one else knew about.

Perhaps he found him there.

Hamburger had slow fingers. Pinyin pieced together from a dictionary and a translator, unreliable with tones, probably not entirely correct.

Wǒ xiǎng liú. (I want to stay.)

Christmas took off his glove.

He reached out his hand to him. Hamburger took it in his own.

Christmas didn't turn to look at Hamburger. He still stood with his head tilted slightly upward, toward the tree, toward the light, toward the snow. But his hand in Hamburger's hand was firm.

Hamburger looked up too.

At the tree.

At the snowflakes falling beneath the lamplight.

Xīngxīng.

Then came the tone of the night at 2:45, when Hamburger was lying on the carpet and half-asleep heard something that made no sense to him.

Vroucnopotir.

Like the reverberation of something lingering.

Hamburger stood hand in hand with Christmas.

And none of that needed translation.