Chapter 3 – After you left

Morning came again.

And then again.

Hamburger woke up on Thursday — or Wednesday, or Friday. The days began to blur together so that each had the same color. Moldy gray. Gray Hamburg, gray room, gray air in the kitchen. Even the coffee suddenly had a gray character, as if it had lost its aroma, as if the perfume of his day had left along with Dominique.

He lay and looked at the golden line on the ceiling.

It was still there. It hadn't vanished overnight, hadn't healed over, hadn't faded. A golden streak where the paint had pulled away from the beam. Hamburger looked at it and wondered why he hadn't just painted over it right away. Back when he first noticed it. Back when Dominique said it looked like intentional design.

He paints over it.

Not now, but he will repaint it.

He got up, went to the bathroom. He stood under the shower for too long. The water felt good. Hamburger stood under it and tried not to think about anything. But instead, specific things kept coming: the empty hook in the hallway, the second mug hidden in the back of the cabinet, the tin of Dominique's espresso.

It was still there.

Hamburger hadn't moved it, thrown it out, or hidden it.

Why would he.

It would be too final, too soon, too much like an admission. That tin with the gold lid belonged to something that had ended, and throwing away something that has ended requires knowing that it has ended. Hamburger knew it, but his body felt it completely differently. And the head isn't necessarily ahead just because it's right. It runs on momentum. The body always knew more slowly, but more truly.

The shower turned cold and Hamburger turned it off.

He walked around the apartment in a towel and did nothing. That was new—this capacity for doing nothing. Just a week ago he had a structure. Training, breakfast, planning, people, places, movement. Now there was just the apartment. In the apartment was him. And inside him was an empty space in the shape of an organ he knew everything about and couldn't fix.

A football stood on the windowsill.

Hamburger looked at it. Dark blue, a little worn down in one spot. On the left, right where he used to tend to kick with his forehand. He had bought it back when he still trained seriously, right before he moved to Hamburg permanently. Back when his body had a different rhythm and every day made physical sense.

Now the ball sat in the alcove like an object from another life. From a version of Hamburger that he couldn't quite return to.

He walked past it.

He got dressed. Not as distinctively as the day before. Sweatpants, a hoodie, warm socks. Home clothes for a man who isn't going anywhere.

In the kitchen, he opened the fridge. It was half empty. This is where a man lives who doesn't shop anymore. Eggs. Old cheese. Yogurt two days past its expiration date—Hamburger rolled it over in his hand. It was fine. Expired yogurt wasn't his biggest problem. Butter. A bowl of cooked rice. Half an orange wrapped in plastic. No fruit, no things to cook a real lunch with.

He mixed the butter with the rice, salted it, and spread it on a sliced roll. He waited for the eggs. If he had any extra energy, he'd laugh that he was having his first homemade sushi.

He stood by the stove, stirring the eggs in the pan and watching the whites turn from transparent to white. The apartment was quiet as always, Hamburg outside was quiet as always, and the pan hissed.

The silence in the apartment was different from the silence in the docks.

In the docks it was simple: air, water, distant mechanical noise. Here it was full. Full of absences.

He ate an egg by the window. He was biting into a sushi roll, nicely garnished with an orange, that's for sure.

He looked out at the street below. Two women with a stroller, an old man with a dog, a cyclist in a reflective vest. Everyone had a direction. Everyone knew where they were going. Hamburger was eating an egg with a fork and thinking that this was precisely the problem with Hamburg: Hamburg didn't stop its step because one person left. It was too big, too fluid, too used to movement.

Hamburger stood in silence for a moment.

He finished eating. He watched the street activity for a moment longer before taking his plate to the sink and remaining by the counter. In front of him was a cabinet, slightly ajar, with a tin of Dominique's espresso behind the glass.

He closed the cabinet.

Then he opened it again.

Then he closed it again.

He took the phone from the table.

It was about noon.

He sat on the sofa with the phone in his hand, the blank search bar open on the screen. He hadn't typed anything into it. He just stared at the white rectangle and behind it at the phone's wallpaper—abstract, blue-and-white, out of context, set months ago at random because he had stopped minding it.

What does he actually want to know?

Trains to Prague.

He typed it before he even had time to ask himself why. His hand did it. His head caught up only afterward and said: oh. Prague. Okay.

The results overwhelmed him quickly. Timetables, train companies, buses, airports. An option via Berlin, an option with a direct connection, different times, different prices. Hamburger scrolled. He didn't have a plan in his head. More of a feeling that had arrived at 2:45 in the night and then hadn't shrunk at all, just grew stronger and stronger. It couldn't be ignored because it occupied his entire head.

Prague.

Why Prague?

He asked himself the question and answered honestly: because it is far enough from Hamburg for the apartment not to be in sight, and close enough so that the next day he could lean his back against the wall at home. Because Czech is his language, even though he hadn't used it for a long time. German was ringing in his head. German was the language of his everyday life, from ordering coffee, shopping, training, to the pain of the last months. Czech had somehow aged. He didn't even think in it anymore. It was physically older and he often had to fish for words literally from his depths. It was just like the rug in the room that you trip over because you know it so well that you don't factor it in. And those crumbs in it, you can't even vacuum them out. And those crumbs, those are the Czech words. He sees them, but picking them up from those depths is impossible.

Prague, where nobody knows him like this — aching and uncertain after his escapade with Dominique.

He clicked on a specific connection via Berlin, departure tomorrow morning, arrival in the afternoon. The price lower than he expected. December before Christmas, a time when tourists don't travel, or do they travel elsewhere?

He didn't buy a ticket right away.

He closed the window and put his phone on his knee. He sat like that for a moment. Outside the window, the silence of Hamburg flowed past. Hamburger just stared.

After you left, the room stayed warm.

It was like captions under a picture that kept coming back to him. A burner has to cool down first, too, before you put your hand on it.

And only then does the journey await you.

He could have cleaned up. He could have carefully packed Dominique's things — small items, nothing major, a few books, one sweater in the drawer, that tin can. He could have put them in a box, sent them back or pushed them out of sight. Doing what people do when a relationship ends and the space needs a new shape too!

Except cleaning up would mean pretending it was over.

And it wasn't over.

Dominique's things could stay. The room could grow cold on its own. Hamburger won't be in it, and so he won't be bumping into every single thing that bears the traces of his relationship. Over time, the room will do as it sees fit with what was left inside it. Hamburger will return then — or maybe not. He'll come back and paint over the gold line. Throw out the espresso. Push aside the box in the corner. Or none of that.

But not now. Now is not the time. Now is not over.

He picked up the phone again and bought a ticket.

He did it quickly, without hesitation, the way things that are right are done. Not ostentatiously right. Just quiet, visceral. The hand needed no instruction.

Name. Card. Confirmation.

Train tomorrow at 8:24.

Arrival Prague Holešovice at 15:52.

Tomorrow.

Nothing dramatic. No screaming goodbye.

Just a ticket in his email and a suitcase that wasn't standing by the door yet.

He spent the afternoon packing. Laboriously, without energy, with breaks.

He pulled the suitcase out of the closet. It was too big for one week, but Hamburger had no idea how long he would be in Prague. A week. Two. A month. He didn't know and refused to know. Knowing would mean planning. And planning would mean that Prague was in the plan. And it wasn't. Prague was the movement of his soul.

The body needs different air.

Clothes. He opened the wardrobe and looked inside. He took dark things. Things that made him visible. A jacket with an asymmetrical zipper. A coat, a bit too long and with a high collar. A warmer sweater, dark blue, bought last November at the market in the Schanzenviertel. Trousers with a glossy detail and a couple of t-shirts to go with them.

Then came Christmas Prague.

December.

Hamburger, however, had no deal with Christmas.

Christmas is for people who have somewhere to go. Hamburger practically had somewhere to go. There is family, friends, a safety net. Only with the holidays he always felt out of their rhythm, out of the certainty that the holidays are safe. Last Christmas he spent here, in Hamburg, in this apartment. Dominique was there and it was good, or -ish, or at least he wasn't alone.

Back then that was enough.

Now he was alone.

And he went to Prague.

He folded a sweater into the suitcase. Then he folded a T-shirt and added that too. Then he stopped thinking and just kept folding—systematically and without emotion, like someone doing a chore, otherwise he would never have packed.

Charger. Headphones. Toiletries into a small pouch and the pouch into the suitcase. Sleepwear.

A book.

He reached for a book from the pile on the sideboard, then put it back. Not this one. Dominique had bought him this one. Now it just carried the bad scent of the moment he had handed it to him back then.

He took another one, from the shelf, at random, without reading the title.

A book with a black cover.

All right.

The suitcase was full.

Hamburger sat down on the bed and stared at what lay inside. Clothes, a charger, toiletries, a book. Enough for an indefinite stay in a city where he would be living in a hostel and have no privacy. The book would give the impression that he knew French, but he didn't. And he wouldn't read it anyway. Just for the feeling of being settled.

Hostel.

He hadn't booked it yet. He picked up his phone, searched, and chose a place near Vodičkova Street. Center. Affordable price. Reviews without extremes in either direction. An average place. Clean, functional, anonymous. A place where you don't have to explain to anyone who you are and why you're coming.

Done.

He hung up the phone.

The room was still silent and still warm. It had lasted for days, so stubborn was that heat. It refused to acknowledge what had happened. Hamburger has been quietly going crazy from it these past few days. The room is warm. The room knows someone was there. The room does not know that someone is not coming back.

Hamburger knew it differently than on that first morning. Without that bodily drunkenness, without the tilted room, without the fall onto the carpet at 2:45. It had already settled inside him like something to carry on with, a bit like a gallstone.

The night before departure.

In the apartment, Hamburger was doing the things people do when they leave for a longer time. He turned the tap and checked again that it was really turned off. He checked the stove. He checked the windows. Two closed. The third in the kitchen slightly ajar. He closed it and then cracked it open slightly again, because a closed-up apartment stinks after a month without ventilation. And then he closed it again.

The suitcase stood by the door.

Hamburger walked across the room, leaving shortly, and with every step the apartment changed its character. In every step a farewell. Should he even be leaving?

A rug. A sofa. A sideboard. A carousel behind the books, hidden, but Hamburger knew where it was. A golden line on the ceiling. The window with the lights of Hamburg behind it.

The bed was made. He undressed, lay down. Closed his eyes. The silence was different.

It wasn't as full as on the first night. It was emptier. Like when large things are taken out of a room and only the echo of the space remains. The room was still warm, but the warmth was thinner. That layer of sadness was more bearable. As if the room were finally coming to terms with what had happened. As if the air were slowly updating its information.

Half-asleep, Hamburger thought of Hamburg.

To the harbor. To the dark water and low sky. To the water's ability to move without instructions. To the street below the window. To the old car that always parked there. To the traffic light around the corner, its green-orange-red-green on certain nights functioning like hypnosis. To the docks, the fish market on Sunday morning, the scent of the Alster in summer.

Hamburg was a good city.

He liked it. He loved it the way you love a place that shaped you physically to the marrow of your bones. Four years in Hamburg. With sports, then without sports, then with Dominique, then without Dominique. Four years in this apartment.

The Hamburger would leave and Hamburg would stay. That was alright. Cities have this ability. That's why it's worth having a favorite place. It will be there when he returns. The golden line will be there. The faucet that drips a little will be there. The cupboard with Dominique's espresso will be there.

The Hamburger would be in Prague.

He fell asleep out of nowhere. He was awake and then he simply wasn't. No 2:45, no carousels of shadows, and also without the attack of physical pain that had laid him out on the carpet on the first night.

He just slept.

The morning was already different.

Alarm at 6:30. He turned it off at the very first ring. He didn't wait for the second. He had been awake earlier. The darkness outside was slowly fading to gray, but the train was leaving at 8:24 and Hamburger needed time.

A quick shower.

Coffee. He drank it standing by the stove, hot, fast, almost tasteless. Thinking wasn't part of it.

He got dressed.

A jacket with an asymmetric zipper. Dark trousers. Platform shoes. A long dark scarf wrapped twice. A golden hoop earring. Glasses. The suitcase was packed.

He walked through the room.

Kitchen. Cabinet closed. Stove turned off. Espresso stood behind the glass. Hamburger placed his hand on the cabinet. Just for a moment.

Hallway.

Mirror. A narrow reflection. Jacket, belt, glasses, scarf. A body for Prague. A body dressed for a journey Hamburger didn't know yet.

An empty hook. An empty hook. Just a hook.

He took his suitcase.

He opened the door. The building had that typical stairwell chill, separated from the apartments. Hamburger went down and slid the suitcase down the stairs a bit, Hamburger grabbed it by the handle, and opened the street door with his elbow.

Gray, wet sidewalk, air with the promise of rain, the streetlamps were still lit—it was only half past six, the darkness hadn't fully left, it had just paled. A car drove down the street with a wet swish. Hamburger pulled his phone out of his pocket, checked the route to the station. Twenty minutes on foot or ten by subway. Hamburger decided to walk.

He had time.

The street at 6:45 in the morning has a different character than the street at twelve or at three at night. It is quieter, but differently so. People are going to work, the first tram rings in the distance, a bakery with open doors and the smell of fresh bread. A few dog walkers – and presumably a lost cyclist.

Hamburger walked away.

The suitcase was heavier than he expected, and his boots squelched against the pavement to the rhythm of awakening Hamburg.

The bridge across the canal was one of his favorite spots in Hamburg — nothing architecturally exceptional, but the water beneath it was always calm and reflected the surrounding lights. Hamburger stopped for a moment.

He looked at the water.

The canal was quiet. The reflections of the lamps danced slowly. The air smelled of water, somewhat metallic and river-like, with that specific scent of slow-moving urban canal water in winter.

Hamburger stood there, knowing he wasn't saying goodbye. This wasn't some sentimental departure with a gaze at the water and the awareness that he would return changed from who he was now. He wasn't living in a movie. He stopped by the bridge because he always stopped here, and he was stopping now too, because this habit was his and would remain even after he returned from Prague.

He walked on.

The station.

Hamburg Hauptbahnhof had that hall-like silence which was paradoxically noisy — the echo of footsteps, train announcements in two languages, coffee stands, the voice of the loudspeaker, the murmur of the crowd. Hamburger bought coffee in a paper cup from a stand — dark, without sugar — and went to look for his platform.

The train was there.

Red and white, long, on the platform with a slight mist around the wheels. Hamburger checked his ticket on his phone, walked along the carriages, looked for his, found it and boarded. A corridor, luggage racks — the suitcase was too large for the rack, Hamburger slid it into the stand by the entrance to the carriage. His seat was by the window. Reserved.

The window was wet on the outside, droplets of water stretching into arcs as the air pressure of the moving train dictated their path, but now they hung and it looked like they would run down. Hamburger stared at them.

And then the train moved. Quietly at first, almost imperceptibly — just a slight shift beneath the seat, a vibration like when a car starts up and isn't moving yet. Then the platform began to slide away, slowly, then faster, and the people on the platform moved as if in slow motion, and then the platform was behind and there were only the tracks and buildings, streets, parks, canals, a port somewhere in the south. Hamburger knew where he was. He knew where that bridge was. He knew where that street was and in it that house and in that house that apartment with the gold trim. He knew it and didn't look back at it. He looked ahead — or rather into the moving image that sped past, and then there was the edge of the city, the suburbs, industrial areas, roads, forests, an open winter landscape, grey and as yet without snow.

Hamburger put earphones in his ears. His phone lay on his thigh. He didn't check the news. He didn't check social media — he had deleted or abandoned them. The presence of other people online tired him from the vantage point of seeing himself through their eyes.

Outside the window was Germany. Plains, trees, motorways. Grey sky. Here and there a town — a small town, a church spire, a factory, a petrol station. Hamburger looked at it and in the white noise there was no stream of thought, just that quiet register of movement: I am here, the train is moving, the landscape is changing.

He fell asleep. His head dropped to the window, his cheek against the cold glass. He woke up half an hour or an hour later, he didn't know. His mouth was dry. The landscape was a bit different — more wooded, slightly hilly, southern Germany.

And then Berlin.

Berlin Hauptbahnhof was large and made of glass and absurdly bright for a December morning. Hamburger transferred, dragging his suitcase behind him, not buying any new coffee. The platform for the train to Prague, a different carriage, a different seat — this time not by the window, but Hamburger didn't care about the choice. The carriage was half-empty. A few passengers with suitcases, an older couple with a map that looked like a tourist map — only he couldn't imagine finding anything in it.

The train set off in a southern direction. Beyond Berlin, the landscape opened up again. Hamburger wasn't used to traveling in this direction; he traveled through the north, to the coast, or to the west, or by plane, never overland on this line. It felt somewhat foreign to him, entirely without any points of reference.

Hamburger took off his headphones. The clatter of the wheels on the tracks — regular, rhythmic, slightly hypnotic. The older couple behind him spoke quietly in German, with that smooth rhythm of long-term intimacy where sentences don't end and the other person doesn't need to hear the end because they already know it.

Hamburger looked out the window and then with a snap and Germany was the Czech Republic and with it came Czech. The loudspeaker in the carriage — until now in German — added an announcement in Czech. Ticket inspection is approaching. A short sentence, neutral, a female voice, pure Czech without an accent, technical and everyday. Specific words in a specific language. Not German, not English, not any foreign language on the platform or in a shop or through headphones. The Czech of his older self. German was the language of this self, of this Hamburger, who had lived in Hamburg for four years and smoked and stopped smoking, who loved the harbor air and bought things at the flea market and had a black and gold apartment with a carousel. German sat in his mouth as naturally as breathing. Czech hasn't for a long time. That was deeper down. Hamburger thought to himself: how long has it been since I thought in Czech — in full sentences, quickly and without translation. Prague will force him. Prague will challenge him. It will offer him a language he knows and yet doesn't know.

The conductor arrived.

Hamburger took out his phone, showed his ticket. The conductor scanned it, nodded, and moved on. No exchange of words. Hamburger put his phone back in his pocket and looked out the window again.

Zuhause. (Home.)

The thought came in German — of course in German, he didn't know how else. December was rushing past outside the window.

Prague was getting closer — slightly larger towns around, a bit denser development, the highway closer, more lights. Then like platforms that arrived and departed. Then like a landscape that began to take on a Prague-specific feel — and suddenly from the loudspeaker: Prague Holešovice.