Chapter 9 – Christmas and Hamburger

Are you outside?

Hamburger wrote:

In twenty minutes.

Christmas:

Náplavka?

Hamburger wrote:

Yeah.

He put the phone down beside him and looked at the ceiling. A white ceiling, a white light bulb, no gold line. No room in Hamburg. No empty hook waiting for him from the corner.

It was clear outside.

Prague in the bright December morning had a different face than Prague in snow or rain. The snow from previous days remained on roofs and windowsills, but the sidewalks were beaten down to wetness and the air ironically clean, when winter is present yet still friendly.

Hamburger walked down Vodičkova Street. His shoes sang on the damp asphalt and he had less on his mind than before.

Christmas was waiting at Náplavka. He stood by the railing and looked at the river. Green jacket, dark hair, red gloves that Hamburger hadn't seen before. Two red dots in the December gray. He didn't have a phone in his hand. He just stood.

Hamburger came over to him. Christmas looked up. He nodded. A small nod, the acceptance of presence.

The Vltava flowed dark and calm beneath them. Near the edge of the stones was a thin layer of ice, transparent and fragile, with the water underneath. The air smelled wonderfully of the river.

Hamburger picked up his phone:

How did you sleep?

Christmas si to přečetl:

Fine. You?

Hamburger wrote:

Taky.

Christmas pointed a finger at the river. At nothing specific. Just at the water. That movement when you point at a thing worth pointing at, even if the other person sees it too.

Hamburger looked at the Vltava River.

Sie bewegt sich ohne Grund. (She moves for no reason.)

The thought came in German, and Hamburger didn't translate it. He let it be. Water moved without reason the same way in every language.

They walked along the river, without a plan, just along the water. Red gloves next to Hamburger's dark pockets. Hamburger thought to himself: red gloves. He had bought them himself, received them, or simply had them and didn't care about the color. Maybe the latter. Christmas didn't look like a man who would spend a long time deciding on the color of his gloves in the morning. More like a man who reaches for something warm and only afterwards realizes it's red.

Hamburger picked up his phone:

Where were you as a boy?

Christmas read it, took off his gloves and wrote in Czech:

Prague. Still Prague.

Hamburger wrote:

Nowhere else?

Christmas:

Dad was from Brno. We used to go there.

Then he added in Chinese:

Dàn Brno bù shì wǒ de chéngshì. (But Brno is not my city.)

Hamburger read the translation and smiled at the transition. Chinese grammar, a Czech city name in the middle, and yet the sentence held together.

He typed:

I'm from Prague, but I only grew up here for a bit. Then Germany.

Christmas read it. Then he wrote in Czech:

Why Germany?

Hamburger wrote:

Football. Then I stayed.

Christmas read it. He looked at Hamburger directly, not just from the side. At his hands, his shoes, the way he stood.

Then he wrote in Chinese:

Nǐ hái tī qiú ma? (Do you still play football?)

Hamburger read the translation.

He typed:

No. I stopped.

Christmas:

Why?

Hamburger looked at the screen for a moment. Then he wrote:

It stopped making sense. One day I went to practice and then never again.

Christmas read it and nodded.

They walked on along the river.

The embankment opened up into a wider section.

In summer, there used to be markets, cafes, and boats. Christmas knew this, even though he couldn't see it now, because river banks have a life of their own in summer. In winter, the embankment was empty: stone, water, leafless trees. A few people with dogs. A single runner in a reflective vest. An older gentleman feeding bread to the gulls.

Christmas stopped.

He watched the gulls. Hamburger stood next to him and waited.

Wǒ ài kàn niǎo. (I like watching birds.)

Then in Czech:

They're simple.

Hamburger read it. Then he wrote:

What is simple about them?

Christmas thought about it. Hamburger could see it in his expression—searching for a sentence for something that is clear on the inside, but the way out is complicated.

Finally, he wrote in Czech, slowly:

They don't lie. They just are where they are.

Hamburger wrote:

People are also where they are. We just tell ourselves we're somewhere else.

Christmas read it, then looked at Hamburger.

That look lasted longer than a second or two. Hamburger held it. Then Christmas slowly nodded. As if saying yes. That he knew it. And that it was enough for it to have been said once.

The older gentleman with the bread left and the gulls scattered across the river. White shapes over the dark water. Then they were gone.

Christmas took his phone and wrote in Czech:

Are you here because of Dominik?

Hamburger stopped. The question came out of nowhere. He read the sentence once more.

Are you here because of Dominik?

He typed:

How do you know about Dominique?

Christmas stopped short. He looked at him and then back at the screen.

Dominique's?

Hamburger nodded.

Christmas didn't type anything for a moment. He just stood with the phone in his hand, as if those two names had overlapped for a second.

Then he wrote:

I don't know. I meant Dominik. My Dominik.

Hamburger read it.

My Dominik.

Only then did it dawn on him what Christmas had actually written before. Not Dominique. Dominik. A Czech name. Almost the same and yet different. Like an echo that came from another room.

He typed:

I had Dominique.

Christmas read the sentence. Once. Twice.

Then he looked at Hamburger:

You came from Hamburg. It's December. You look like someone who left because of someone. And Dominik just left me.

Hamburger read it.

You look like someone who left because of someone.

He typed:

A little.

Christmas asked no further. He didn't demand more.

Wǒ dǒng. (Chápu.)

Christmas stood on the corner and looked down the street, which sloped gently toward the river, toward the less visible part of the embankment. Something was happening down there. Hamburger noticed it later.

Lights.

Big, technical lights mounted on tripods. White and direct. Cables. Yellow tape. People in jackets. Walkie-talkies. A black shelter by the monitors. Extras in historical costumes, but with down jackets over their shoulders, because Prague in December doesn't wait for rolling to start.

It wasn't a great magical set. Or maybe it was, but up close movie magic always looks like a lot of cables, thermoses, wet shoes, someone kneeling by an electrical case, someone holding a cup of tea, someone looking for gloves, someone shouting not to step here or there. The movie world stood on dirty cobblestones and pretended it would be beautiful in a moment.

Christmas took a few steps down into the street. Hamburger followed him.

At the edge of the set, yellow tape was strung up, separating the rest of the world from the camera frame. By the tape stood a man around thirty, a black vest over a warm jacket, keys on a carabiner at his belt, a walkie-talkie in his hand, and the expression of a man who is here to make things work even though nothing wants to work.

Pavel.

A voice came over the walkie-talkie and Pavel reacted immediately, waving his hands and getting upset. Hamburger thought to himself that he probably had a to-do list in his head that doubled every minute.

Pavel spotted them.

"Please don't cross here right now. We're setting up a shot."

In Czech, directly, without anger. Just information.

Hamburger picked up his phone, then remembered that Christmas understood Czech, and put the phone away again. Christmas was standing by the tape, watching the set.

Behind the tape, someone was arguing. Tensely, professionally, in the cold. Everyone is rushing, everyone is freezing, everyone knows that arguing takes time, but you can't move forward without it.

A woman with a clipboard stood by the monitor, pointing at a paper.

The script supervisor.

A thick jacket, scarf pulled up high to her neck, a pencil behind her ear, a folder in her hand with papers sticking out, colorful sticky notes and small printed photos. A stopwatch on her wrist. She looked like a person who remembers things nobody else wants to remember.

“She didn't have gloves here,” she said.

In Czech. Calmly. Precisely.

The actress was sitting on a low stool a short distance from the house wall. Over her historical costume she wore a large down jacket, gloves on her hands, and her hair styled in a way that looked finished only from the front. From the side, hairpins were visible. She was beautiful, but right now she was mostly tired. Beauty on set between takes didn't have the power of a poster. It was human, freezing, a bit frayed.

Zhang Li.

Hamburger didn't know her. He had no reason to. He didn't know Chinese movies, Chinese actresses, or that world. But he saw her, and the sight was strong enough.

Zhang Li raised her hands in reddish-brown gloves.

She spoke in Chinese, irritated, faster than all the Chinese sentences Hamburger had heard from Christmas so far:

Wǒ míngmíng dài le. Shàng yí tiáo wǒ yě dài zhe. Nǐmen zěnme xiànzài cái shuō? (I definitely had them. I had them in the last take too. Why are you only telling me this now?)

Hamburger didn't understand a word, but he could feel the tone. A tone tinged with exhaustion and a hint of paranoia.

Standing next to Zhang Li was an interpreter with a notepad. A young man in a long coat, polished, professional, far too clean for the wet operation all around them. He translated into Czech:

“She says she had the gloves on in the previous shot as well.”

The script girl's expression didn't change.

"She shouldn't have."

The actress didn't understand the Czech reply, but from the tone she gathered the direction.

She spoke again, this time slower, harder:

Wǒ dài le. Wǒ jìde hěn qīngchǔ. (I had them. I remember it completely clearly.)

The interpreter translated:

“She says she had them. She remembers it clearly.”

The script supervisor looked at the monitor.

“Playback, please. The previous take.”

The video operator, a young guy with his cap pulled down low over his forehead, sat by the monitor, searching through the recording. His fingers danced swiftly across the controller, but his face remained expressionless. On the screen, a street appeared, Zhang Li without a jacket, in the light, in costume, with her hand raised.

Bez rukavic.

Skriptka ukázala na monitor.

"Here. You didn't."

The interpreter turned to Zhang Li.

Shàng yí tiáo nǐ méi dài shǒutào. (In the last take, you weren't wearing gloves.)

Zhang Li got up wearily. She didn't take off her gloves right away. First, she looked at her hands as if she had to make sure they were actually on. Then she pulled them off, finger by finger.

She said in Chinese:

Wǒ zhēn de bù zhīdào xiànzài shì nǎ yí chǎng. Wǒ yǐwéi tā yǐjīng líkāi le. Kěshì nǐmen shuō hái méi yǒu. Wǒ yǐwéi tā yǐjīng dòng le. Kěshì nǐmen shuō hái bù néng dòng. (I really don't know which scene this is anymore. I thought she had already left. But you say not yet. I thought she had already moved. But you say she still mustn't move.)

The interpreter took a breath.

He translated slowly, evenly:

„She says she no longer knows which scene this is. She thought her character had already left, but you say not yet. She thought she had already moved on internally, but you say she must not move yet.“

The script supervisor lowered her eyes to the script.

„That's exactly it,“ she said. „She hasn't left yet. In this scene, the others don't know it yet. Only she knows. And her hands are free, because they aren't yet protecting what comes after.“

The acting coach, an older man with thick frames and a woolen cap, stood nearby. He stepped closer, having heard that they were finally talking about something that wasn't just gloves.

"Exactly," he said. "It cannot be defense. Not yet. It is the exhaustion before defense."

The interpreter began to translate:

Tā hái bù néng fángyù… (He must not defend himself yet…)

Zhang Li listened to him, and her face was closing up with fatigue once more. She understood the words, but something in them simply got lost in translation. The translation was correct, formal, usable, and yet somehow it missed her understanding.

Christmas a Hamburger raised their heads.

Slightly forward, like an animal that had heard a frequency it was tuned to.

Hamburger saw it.

Christmas had been standing quietly by the tape, half-hidden behind the yellow stripe of light that didn't belong to him. Only his shoulders straightened a little.

Zhang Li kept talking, faster, more fluently, as if she were no longer speaking to the crew, but to the space that had tired her out.

Tā měi yí cì dōu bù yíyàng. Yí cì tā hái xiāngxìn tā kěyǐ huíqù, yí cì tā yǐjīng zhīdào huí bù qù le. Ránhòu nǐmen ràng wǒ yòng yíyàng de shǒu zǒu guòqù. Wǒ zěnme zǒu? (She is different every time. One time she still believes she can go back, another time she already knows she cannot go back. And you want me to walk through with the same hands. How am I supposed to walk?)

The interpreter hesitated.

Christmas said it quietly, in Chinese, almost before he realized he was speaking:

Yīnwèi shǒu xiān zhīdào. (Because the hands know first.)

Not everyone turned around. But Zhang Li did.

And the script supervisor looked up from her script.

Christmas stood by the tape, and Zhang Li's red gloves hung in her hand like evidence, but no longer just a continuity detail. Suddenly they were hands. A character. Time. Something that is about to happen, but hasn't happened yet.

Zhang Li looked at Christmas.

Nǐ shuō shénme? (What did you say?)

Christmas went quiet for a moment. Hamburger stood next to him and felt something shift in the space. He witnessed a small miracle, because for the first time since he had known him, Christmas didn't have to lean on his phone.

Christmas replied in Chinese. Fluently. Without a screen. Without a stutter.

Wǒ shuō, shǒu xiān zhīdào. Tā rén hái méi líkāi, kěshì shǒu yǐjīng zhīdào tā huì líkāi. Suǒyǐ bù néng tài kōng. Yě bù néng tài jǐn. Rúguǒ dài shǒutào, tā jiù hǎoxiàng yǐjīng zài fángzhe shénme. Rúguǒ méiyǒu, tā hái lái bù jí bǎ zìjǐ cáng qǐlái. (I'm saying the hands know first. She hasn't left yet, but her hands already know she's going to leave. That's why they can't be completely empty. Nor can they be too tight. If she wore gloves, it would look like she was already defending herself against something. Without them, she hasn't had time to hide yet.)

Hamburger didn't understand the words, but he heard that admirable stream of words. He heard sentences coming out of Christmas one after another, fast and naturally, like water. He heard a different breathing rhythm. A different bodily support. Christmas's face was suddenly not the face of someone looking for a way out of his own words. He was in his own language. He stood firmly in it.

The interpreter tried to catch the translation, but the script supervisor anticipated him with a glance.

“What is he saying?” she asked.

Christmas turned to her.

Only now did he pick up his phone. Not because he needed it for himself, but to rebuild a bridge of communication. He wrote in Czech, more slowly:

I'm saying the hands know it first. She hasn't left yet, but her hands already know she's going to leave. They mustn't be completely empty, but they mustn't protect themselves yet. Gloves would mean she's already defending herself. Without gloves, she hasn't had time to hide yet.

He turned the screen around.

The script supervisor read it.

The acting coach did too, over her shoulder.

Pavel, who had been standing the whole time with a walkie-talkie and looking as though he had no time for metaphors, read it too.

The script supervisor nodded slowly.

"Yeah," she said. "That's exact continuity."

The acting coach looked at Zhang Li.

"Yes. The hands know it first. That's it."

The interpreter started translating again, but Zhang Li stopped him with a brief gesture.

Wǒ dǒng le. (I understand.)

Then she looked at Christmas and added more softly:

Nǐ de zhōngwén hěn qíguài. (Your Chinese is strange.)

Christmas froze almost imperceptibly.

Qíguài? (Strange?)

Zhang Li still had her gloves in her hand. She stood half in costume and half in her own winter. Her puffer jacket hung over her shoulders, but she hadn't zipped it all the way up. She was an actress and she was a character and she was a woman who had been arguing about gloves a moment ago and was now looking at a strange boy from Prague who spoke her language in a way that wasn't textbook, tourist or native.

She said:

Bù shì huài de qíguài. Xiàng yí gè rén zài bié de dìfāng zhǎo jiā, ránhòu bǎ jiā dài huílái le. (Not bad strange. Like a person who looked for a home elsewhere and then brought it back.)

Christmas listened.

Hamburger listened too, but didn't understand. For the first time it didn't bother him and at the same time it hurt. With the pain of a tape lying on the ground between him and the world that Christmas had just stepped into without him.

Christmas slowly turned toward Hamburger.

He took his phone. He wrote in Czech:

He says my Chinese is strange. Like someone who looked for a home elsewhere and then brought it back.

Hamburger read it.

Then Christmas added:

Chinese in my mouth sounds like the home of someone who looked for a home elsewhere.

Hamburger read the sentence for a long time.

Chinese in my mouth sounds like the home of someone who looked for a home elsewhere.

And as he read it, Zhang Li was still standing on the set, half in role, half out of role, with gloves in her hand and bare fingers in the winter. It wasn't a wise sentence from a poster. It was the sentence of a woman who right then didn't know herself where exactly her body ended and the character began.

That's why she could say it.

Hamburger picked up his phone.

He typed:

Beautiful sentence.

Christmas read it.

Then he wrote in Chinese:

Tā shuō: bú shì tā, shì nǐ. (She says: it isn't her. It is you.)

Hamburger read the translation.

It isn't her. It is you.

He stood on the edge of the film set and thought to himself: both things are true. Zhang Li spoke the sentence. Christmas brought it to him. And something changed in between.

Meanwhile, the script supervisor made a note on the paper. Not a big one. Just a few words about the shot.

No gloves.

Hands know sooner.

Then she stuck a small colored note to the edge of the script, as if something completely ordinary had just happened. Maybe it was ordinary on set. A single sentence to save continuity. A single detail that prevents unnecessary reshoots. A single gloveless hand.

Pavel lifted the tape a little.

„Alright, thanks. Please stand here, but don't get in the shot.“

Hamburger nodded.

Christmas too.

They were now standing behind the tape, but closer than before. Neither inside nor outside. In a narrow in-between space where one could watch, but not interfere.

The set began to reassemble into the frame.

The technicians adjusted the lights. The video operator checked the image. The script supervisor stood by the monitor with the script, looking not at the beauty of the shot, but at its continuity. The acting coach spoke quietly to Zhang Li, almost without gestures. Zhang Li laid her gloves on the stool.

Bare hands.

Long fingers in winter. Slightly reddish fingertips.

The director, whom Hamburger only noticed now, sat behind the monitor. A small man with a large cap, focused, almost motionless. He raised a hand.

Silence.

Film silence. That silence when twenty people stop doing twenty small things and everyone waits for one thing that lasts a few seconds.

Take.

Zhang Li moved.

She had no gloves.

The movement began in the chest, but did not reach the shoulders. The hands remained loose, not empty. They weren't protecting themselves. Not yet. And yet there was information in them that they would soon have to protect themselves. Fatigue was not sadness. It was not a breakdown. It was a weight that the character was not yet allowed to admit to others, only to her body.

Hamburger watched the shot.

And then he no longer watched the shot.

He watched Christmas.

Christmas stood beside him and looked at Zhang Li with an intensity Hamburger had never seen in him before. He looked like a man who knows what is happening and doesn't need to explain it to anyone.

Hamburger was in awe, something inside him stopped.

Until that moment, he knew Christmas through slow typing, through a translator, through trembling fingers, through quiet nods, through the impossibility of ordering a hamburger in Czech. He knew him as someone to wait for. As someone to stay beside.

Now he saw a different Christmas.

A fast one.

Precise.

Present.

Someone who heard the flow of Chinese and wasn't terrified. Someone who stood in it. Someone who didn't move through the language like a guest, but like someone who had their feet on the ground in it.

Hamburger didn't understand the words.

But for the first time, he heard what Christmas sounded like when he didn't have to wait for his own language.

And that sound was beautiful.

The shot ended.

"Cut," said the director.

Nobody clapped. A film set didn't work like that. People simply slipped back into their operational stances. The technicians relaxed their bodies. The video operator leaned toward the monitor. The script supervisor wrote something down. Zhang Li remained standing in character a second longer than the others, then she took a breath and was a woman in winter again.

She reached for her down jacket.

She left her gloves on the stool.

The script supervisor noticed it.

And she said nothing.

Mei, a producer with a tablet tucked under her arm who had been dealing with something at a monitor until then, came over only after that. Short hair, a quick step, an earpiece in one ear. The look of someone who handles things by going to handle them in person.

"Thanks," she said to Christmas in Czech. "That helped."

Then she looked at Hamburger.

„Jste s ním?“

Hamburger nodded.

„Mluvíte čínsky?“

“No,” said Hamburger.

Mei stopped for a moment. She was piecing together what she saw.

„But you're good at it,“ she said.

Hamburger didn't know what that meant.

Mei added:

„Some people make a fuss about language. You don't.“

Hamburger nodded.

That was perhaps the only thing he actually did.

Mei walked back to the monitor.

Pavel held the tape aside again so they could leave. He didn't have time for them anymore, but he nodded to them as if they were slightly less of strangers on the set than they had been ten minutes ago.

Christmas a Hamburger stepped back across the yellow tape onto the street.

Prague beyond the set was still the same — wet cobblestones, a gray sky, the golden light of shop windows, tram wires. The film world stayed behind them, but something of it followed them. Not the lights. Not the cables. More like the feeling that alongside the real city, other cities exist that open for just a moment and close again.

Christmas took his phone and wrote in Czech:

Was it weird?

Hamburger wrote:

What?

Christmas:

For you. In there. You didn't understand.

Hamburger read the sentence, wrote slowly:

I didn't understand the words. But you.

Christmas read it.

He looked at the display longer than usual.

Then he wrote in Chinese:

Nǐ ràng wǒ gǎnjué dào… ānquán. (You make me feel… safe.)

Hamburger read the translation.

You make me feel safe.

He stood on the sidewalk behind the film set and thought: that's exact.

I am here. As long as you want.

Christmas read it.

He nodded.

Me too.

Hamburger put his phone in his pocket.

Christmas put his phone in his pocket.

They walked, and as Prague is round and streets loop back, they walked down and found themselves by the river once more.

The Vltava.

Hamburger leaned against the railing. Christmas next to him.

The snow began to fall lightly again. The finest snow, almost white air. Not weight, more of a presence. It landed on Christmas's hair. On Hamburger's scarf too.

Hamburger stared at the water.

His head was quiet. Simple quiet.

Christmas took out his phone.

Wǒ bù zhīdào, rúhé shì zhè yàng. (I don't know how this is.)

Hamburger read it.

He typed:

What?

Christmas wrote in Czech:

You. Prague. Set. Today.

Dàn hǎo, tā cúnzài. (But it's good that it exists.)

Hamburger smiled. He wrote nothing. He kept looking at the river.

Silence for a moment. Then Christmas picked up his phone.

Are you going to learn Chinese?

Hamburger looked at the question. There was something natural in it. Not hard. Just quiet. Christmas didn't mean: now. Rather: if you stay around long enough.

Hamburger saw the yellow tape of the film set in front of him again. He saw Christmas behind it, in the stream of language he didn't know how to enter. He saw that if he stayed only where he was now, he would know him from one side only. He would sit next to him, walk the streets with him, drink tea with him, but another important stream, the stream around him, would flow without him.

And he didn't want to stand behind the tape.

He picked up his phone.

He wrote in Chinese, slowly, using a translator:

Wǒ bù zhīdào rúhé. (I don't know how.)

Then underneath in Czech:

But I want to.

Christmas read it. Then he looked at Hamburger. Directly. With that look Hamburger already knew. And then he slowly nodded, once. In the silence, it sounded like sealing a promise.

Hamburger looked back at the river.

I want to.

Not I'll try.

Not we'll see.

I want to.

I want to step into a world where Christmas works. I want to learn at least enough so that the world isn't behind caution tape. I want to hear Chinese and have a foothold in it, even if that foothold is just the first word from a small bistro.

Ha.

Tea.

Hamburger said it aloud. Quietly, for the river.

"Cha."

Christmas turned around.

Hamburger pointed a finger at the Vltava's current.

"It moves without reason."

Christmas listened to that.

Then he wrote in Chinese:

Shuǐ zhīdào zìjǐ de lù. (Water knows its own way.)

Hamburger read the translation.

Water knows its own way.

He nodded.

It was snowing.

And in that silence, it sounded like a second confirmation of a promise.

The tram wire above the embankment moved in the wind. A quiet sound. Metallic, silver, like a note held just a little too long. Hamburger heard it. Christmas heard it too.

Hamburger thought to himself: this is it.

Concretely present, physically present, in jackets, red gloves, snow in their hair, and two people by the railing who had learned to be alongside each other in a way that doesn't need every word translated.

He thought one more thing:

I won't wait for Christmas to ever return to the old language. I will follow him into the new one.