The Turn of the Shoe

Now that their project is finished, now that the wall has been papered in yellow wall-paper and the dust has all been swept up, the bedroom looks noble. The morning sun, untouched by branches, is coming through the attic window, and the room is golden, safe. It’s pure again.

There’s simply nothing more to be done, so the Mother shuts the door and locks it with the brass key. Alone in the master suite, she showers, washing the dust from her hair and letting the water run hot. Once she’s dressed, she sits down at her mahogany desk and dials. After one ring, the little grey agency woman answers, and the Mother takes a breath and begins:

The last employee you sent to my home turned out to be a complete disgrace.

The Mother has had a whole lifetime of dealing with staff, and she knows how to get results. She doesn’t mince words, now or ever, really. Caustically, she explains the old nanny’s immediate abandonment of the Family, the fleeing in the night -- She left no note. It was highly unprofessional. Of course, the agency asks no questions. Instead, they apologize and grovel and clamor; they make all sorts of promises, and vow to send a new, very different, much-improved girl within the week. The Mother almost gets bored, listening to them beg for her business. Anything to make it up to you. We value you as a customer. We are so terribly sorry for the inconvenience.

The room is waiting and ready, and by Wednesday, there the new nanny is at the front gate, trying to figure out the buzzer. She’s young, with homemade clothes, stringy brown hair and scared eyes, and after getting over her initial bubbly excitement about the house’s gorgeous old wood, wow, window seats, is that a bonsai???, she is almost mechanically obedient and eager to please. In weeks to come, she will sweep the floor of her attic room and make her narrow spinster’s bed every morning. She will never take a sip of alcohol or caffeine (being some kind of strange American religion which forbids both). The Mother discovers that she thrives on kind words, so they ration these out to her sparingly. The children don’t seem to like her, exactly, but they are not overtly cruel, and the Father, true to his word, takes no notice of her at all.

Additionally, the Mother is happy to see that the new nanny, when outdoors, alternates between three pairs of sensible clogs, which she trades for house-shoes the instant she comes inside. It’s just another contrast to the old nanny, who seemed to own and wear only one pair of shoes - a perilous espadrille monstrosity in faux blue suede, with tacky ribbon straps that weaved their way drunkenly up the nanny’s white legs. They were the shoes of a 1920s prostitute, yet she wore them with every outfit, seemed never to take them off. She’d clunk up and down all three flights of stairs in them despite being told that the Family did not wear shoes in the house, despite the Mother having given her an old pair of silky house-slippers just to spare the old wood floors.

She was worst at dinner, which began precisely at six each night; ten minutes late, the nanny would clomp over and flounce into her chair. The Mother remembers dreading what would come next: the nanny would chew with her mouth open and her legs splayed. Even the five-year-old ate better, although the Father didn’t seem to notice it. Rice would fall from the old nanny’s plate; sauce would dribble onto the antique placemats. There are probably still breadcrumbs under her chair, crushed indelibly into the Persian rug.

What a blessing, then, to find that not all Americans abandon knives, push food onto their forks with their fingers, laugh with a mouth full of beans. The new nanny is a quiet, reasonable eater and a pleasant conversationalist, one who laughs quietly but does not speak unless spoken to. Moreover, after each meal, she leaps up, clears the plates away and tucks them into the dishwasher, all the while begging the Mother to go and have a rest. With a glass of wine in her hand, the Mother watches, amused, as the nanny energetically finishes up the kitchen and puts the children to bed. Then she comes back downstairs and sits, knitting an oblong brown blanket at the foot of the freshly-washed dining room table, a cup of mint tea by her side.

As a sort of offering, or thanks, the Mother takes to carrying home a bouquet of flowers with her from the florist near her office most days. More than the flowers themselves (which are pansies, water lilies, roses or orchids), she loves the way that the new nanny coos as if she’s never seen a blossom before; the way she takes the fragile stems out of the Mother’s arms, snips their thorns away, and puts them in a cut-glass vase. Their days are a heady success, scented with peonies.

But then one morning the Mother comes down for breakfast, adjusting her pearl earrings, to find the new nanny sitting at the table, a cup of tea in her hand, a frown on her face.

Die Kleine hat nicht so gut geschlafen, says the housekeeper knowledgeably, setting fruit onto the breakfast tray. She seems to be enjoying this, and so the Mother ignores her.

What seems to be the problem, Deborah? the Mother says. Did you not sleep well?

Well, oh no. Not badly, says the new nanny, toying with her teabag. I was just a little disturbed by the noise, is all. But it’s totally cool! No problem! And she smiles an unusual, quavery smile.

What noise? says the Mother, receiving her freshly-steamed morning cappuccino from the housekeeper and sipping it, the froth rustling against her lips. She notices that it’s lovely outside.

Oh, nothing, the girl is saying. It’s just – those darn stairs are so loud! What were you working on? You kept walking up and down the stairs the whole night.

The Mother is puzzled. She slept exceedingly well, and says it. You must have been dreaming. She plucks an orange slice out, and pops it into her mouth.

I don’t think I was dreaming, the girl says, it didn’t feel like a dream. And anyway, high heels walking up and down the stairs would be sort of a boring dream, wouldn’t it? She laughs. I don’t know what it was, then. Pipes, maybe.

Don’t be ridiculous, the Mother says, meanly, of course it was a dream. I’m off to work. She abandons the coffee; she gets up, she pulls on her coat, she tugs on her pumps and drives to the office where, an hour early, she sits at her desk and tries to keep the world from shaking. It has to be the pipes.

Unbidden, she thinks: if she is going to be perfectly honest with herself, what was really the trouble wasn’t the shoes or the eating, but rather the way it kept happening, night after night. And now there it was again, the steps on the stairs.

The Mother insists that she didn’t particularly care who her husband was sleeping with (the nanny) and who he wasn’t (her). Their marriage had been past that, in a way; she’d just wanted the pair of them, the Father and the nanny, not to be so ostentatious about it, so obvious about everything. The whole thing had just been so glaringly hard on the children, was all. Her poor kids had been forced to listen to their father’s footsteps head up to the nanny’s room, to hear night after night after night of him tramping through the big old house to go to his whore. With those stairs, it was as clear as if it had been in the room with her, and she’d lain awake for all of it, most nights: the knock, the murmured greeting, the giggling. The noises. And they’d thought they were being so sneaky.

At one point, the Mother had started to whisper it as the Father crept out of their room each night. “You must not wake the children,” but still he would walk away, leaving her there, her back to the doorway. “You must not wake the children…” If he ever heard her whispering, though, he gave no sign; his steps stayed as loud as ever, a fatal ear-splitting heartbeat in the center of their home.

It’d become increasingly clear to her that she had to do something. These night-time ramblings were taking a clear effect on her two darlings, who kept coming down in the mornings with little dark rings around their eyes. They never said anything, of course - to mention it would have been gauche, a coarseness they did not have. But you could tell that they heard it, all of it, and you could tell that it was hurting them – so she chose to take care of the problem. She doesn’t regret it, not for a second – she fixed things, and they’re better now, so she really has no choice but to ignore the new nanny’s theatrics. Noises or none, the really horrible part is all over – it’s been settled, and she wouldn’t do things differently, were she to do them again. That being that, the Mother gets to work, and forgets.

But three nights later the Mother wakes up with a jolt. She stares around the darkened bedroom, the Father snoring next to her, before she realizes what she’s hearing.

Coming down the stairs, there they are: uneven American footsteps. She listens as they pass her room, thunder down to the main floor, where they stop.

For a second she considers panicking, but then she takes herself firmly in hand. Ignore it, she says. Stay here. What is wrong with you? So she falls back into an uneasy sleep, full of dreams of footsteps and something sharp; she is relieved when it is morning, and even more relieved to come down the stairs and find the new nanny asleep on the eight-thousand-euro leather couch in the living room. Of course they were her footsteps. How could the Mother have thought anything else? The girl, in plaid holiday pajamas, has pulled the decorative throw over herself, and the couch’s folds are creased on her face.

Staff, the Mother thinks, and sighs. Then, loudly, she says, What are you doing down here? ice in her voice. What is wrong with your room?

The nanny wakes up; her eyes creak open; she gazes around, disoriented. Then she focuses – she sees the Mother standing over her, and a rather satisfying sort of panic comes over the girl’s face. She sits up, jerkily, and stammers. I – I just – can’t – She begins and then aborts several sentences. Her shoulders are shaking. You can’t win them all, the Mother thinks, resigned, and she waits for whatever crazy reason the nanny is going to give.

Finally the new girl manages it, her head in her hands and her eyes filling with tears. Do you have a different room I can stay in? There’s something really wrong with that one.

What on earth do you mean? says the Mother, disdainful. We just refurbished it. It is a beautiful room. It was my room when I was a girl here. Are you cold? If you’re cold, you can bring up the space heater from the basement.

I d-don’t… and now she’s really trying not to cry, her face contorting. It’s hideous. Her voice is hoarse and she says, Look, this is going to sound crazy, but. Did you ever – hear things when you slept there?

No, said the Mother, flatly.

I do, though, says the girl. I hear a tapping. It always starts with a tapping on the inside of the far wall. I used to think it was leaky pipes, but recently someone’s been saying things, too – the tapping’s, like, to get my attention, and then I hear this voice.

I am not interested any more, says the Mother. But the nanny continues, disobedient and unable to stop.

The voice says what are you doing, get out of here, get out of this bed, get out of my bed. Things like that – just all night. It’s like she’s right there next to me, whispering in my ear. I think it’s a demon. It must be. I’ve been ignoring it, but last night I saw her; she was horrible and real, she was coming at me, saying something, and … Her voice fades, and her head sinks into her hands, and she sits there, waiting for a verdict.

You know, the Mother says casually, I think we have to get you psychiatrically evaluated.

No, and the nanny is hysterical, no – I’m so sorry – really, I’m not crazy, forget I ever said anything. Look, she says, standing up, I’m fine! I’m going upstairs!

Please keep your voice down. This house has been in my family for years, the Mother announces, and I can say with certainty that it has no demons, or ghosts, or anything of the kind. And if I hear my children talking about spirits, you will be fired. Is that understood?

Yes, croaks the new nanny, quaking with tears, and she flees up the stairs.

There are some qualities, the Mother thinks, sitting down, unsteady on the warm leather, which are simply unacceptable in a staff member. There are some things which just necessitate cutting them loose. You know, she of all people deserved it, she reminds herself. She was a greedy messy baby who needed to be punished. Against her will, the Mother remembers that final night, the night that had come after a particularly trying day, a particularly loud shoe-clomping rice-spilling Father-fucking day. The night the old nanny left.

After everyone had gone to bed, the Mother walked up the spiral wooden stairs herself. She had learned, as a little girl, to place her feet at the corners in such a way that she could travel completely silently up all three flights. She was pleased to find that it still worked – nobody would know she was coming. She travelled slowly, caressing the banister, listening to her house settle and creak; the night was gentle, somehow. It had known what needed to be done, and so did she. On the top floor, she neither knocked nor stopped, but twisted open the old metal doorknob and walked in.

The nanny, mixed in with a pile of clothes, was slung sluttishly in the moonlight upon the Mother’s childhood bed. Her sexy nightie (how the Mother had shuddered to see them drying on the laundry line downstairs, in plain sight of the children) revealed bush, too much leg. It had a lace back, and was ripped in places. Topping it off, the nanny drooled slightly, and her spiked hair was askew.

Despite everything, it was weirdly vulnerable and childlike, and the Mother stood there for a second considering – but there, in the corner, were the shoes, waiting. So she’d done it: put one hand on the nanny’s warm cheek, raised the kitchen knife and brought its sharpened edge calmly across the nanny’s throat. It had been just like slaughtering a calf, really – the smooth parting of skin, the gushing redness. Of course the nanny had woken in a panic, and of course she’d tried to speak and move and thrash, but the Mother gave her the final courtesy of holding her close, of staring into her eyes as the blackness took her. The best part was that it had all been perfectly quiet – so quiet that, as the nanny’s limbs stopped thrashing, she could hear the Father’s soft knock, and the “Meg?” that came every night.

Shocked, she’d released the pile of dead meat that had been the nanny. She hadn’t known what would come next, she remembers realizing. How dumb was that? There was no plan for afterwards. In chagrin, she stared dumbly; then she walked to the door. It was impolite not to open a door when someone knocked, so she put her hand on the doorknob, she opened it wordlessly, and she held up her red, dripping hands. Please, they said, although that hadn’t been her intention. Please. Her face, realizing the humor of it all, had worn an off-kilter smile.

He froze. He stood.

And then he knelt. Without hesitating, her husband took the antique key out of the door – without aplomb, he locked her in. She heard his footsteps go down the stairs, all forty-two of them.

So that was it. He would go downstairs, now, to do whatever it was witnesses did – and she would stay here, with her bloodied hands, and wait, helpless, for the police to come. It had been worth it; seizing her last few moments of freedom she went and sat on the bed, the dead nanny companionable now that she was silent. The view out the windows was still the same view it’d been when she was a girl. Sitting here on this bed, one could imagine flying out and over the treetops; conversely, one could open the sash and, in one dirt-smackingly-harsh second, end it all. How close one was, in this room, to flying or death.

She didn’t hear the key turn in the lock but she did hear the footsteps. She turned around slowly, ready for it all to be over, and found that it was just him, her husband. Holding another knife, and gloves, and a garbage bag, and a tarp, all he said was: I’m sorry. I didn’t think you cared.

Quite suddenly, it was all different.

Working together, flashing knives quick in the night, they’d hacked her up like a cow. Neither of them flinched; they turned her into cutlets, ribs, steaks, breast, a pile of meat on a tarp, although the Mother surprised herself by needing to cover the sightless head as they worked. They stopped at dawn, and locked the door; the key rested in the Father’s pocket, and the children didn’t ask questions.

In nights to come, they remodeled extensively. Together, using hand-saws, they removed a section of the wall, and they put the tarp-covered nanny meat inside. The Father experienced a moment of weakness and wanted to keep the blue suede shoes, but when the Mother shot him a glance that said you are endangering this family, he tossed them behind the wall too.

It’s over, she reminds herself now. It is all walled up. The matter has been taken care of, and the wallpaper has been put on, no matter what the new girl is seeing or feeling. We can just – we can remove her, if necessary. We can fix it. We’ve fixed one, we can fix anything. We can do it together. She tells this to her husband, that night in their bed. They are holding hands, like witches, for it’s a pact that they’ve made, and for this she’s got to be grateful. She’s got to tell him everything.

I think the new nanny’s seeing the old nanny, she says, the words ridiculous but necessary. I think we have a – staff problem. She doesn’t say ghost problem.

He just nods.

What? Fix it, she demands, enraged. Her voice whines. We’ve got to. We’ve got to try.
I thought this might happen, he says somberly. I thought we might have had it coming. But I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it.

There always is! You can always fix things! she insists. You can’t just give up!

We can’t undo what’s been done, he says, looking at her. The knowledge that he’s disappointed and hurt and hiding it breaks her heart as, from far above, she hears it: a terrible noise like a thousand birds smacking a single windowpane. It’s a thudding and a tearing, a cracking and a breaking; ice in spring. As one, they freeze. They look at each other to see if either of them is imagining it.
By this, they know it’s real, what’s happening above them.The wall is breaking down, and things are coming out.

I can’t, said the Father. I can’t go. He looks, helpless, at her. I’ve done too much already. I’m sorry.

You coward, the Mother hisses. She is throwing on her bathrobe, the knife in the pocket clanging against her leg. You are hopeless! she yells behind herself and runs out of the room. And she loses herself in this anger once again, because anger is better than being hopeless, anything is, really, and she takes the stairs two at a time, screaming, Stop it! Stop it! You’re waking the chil –

But then there are loud footsteps above her, coming towards her. Fate is running down the spiral staircase.

The new nanny is naked. Her hands are bloody, and the fingernails are worn down to stubs; her wraithlike arms and face and chest are covered in dust and something else, something horrible that smells of rotted cheese and damp wood. It takes the Mother a second to realize that she is more than a few inches taller. On her feet, the laces inexpertly tied and swimming around her ankles, are a certain pair of blue shoes, back to wreak havoc. On her face, there is not fear nor wrath; she’s past those. Instead, the new nanny wears condescension.

The Mother suddenly notices that the children, standing in the door of their room, have seen it all, know it all, and so the knife is helpless in the Mother’s bathrobe pocket as the nanny walks past her and heads down the stairs, feet clomping, to call the police and do whatever it is witnesses do.

Stories.

In the past 24 hours, two friends of mine here have shared particularly awesome stories with me. I am now shamelessly repurposing them for my own use here on this blog.

1. My one friend is from the Northwest - well, Colorado, but she went to college in Seattle. About four years ago, one of her teachers in the German department passed around a card, and said to sign it.

"What's it for?" my friend asked.

"Oh, a student from our college just went to prison." Her professor didn't mention for what, or where, or why, and so, confused, Danielle signed.

And that's how she wound up writing on the sympathy card sent to Amanda Knox, one of her professor's favorite students.

"What did you write?" I asked.

Danielle thought for a moment, and then said, "Um, hope you get out soon? :)"


2. My other friend is from Israel. He and his girlfriend are hoity-toity research scientists here in Munich, but there is nothing snooty about them; they're on Munich's first English-speaking improv troupe with me and five other people. Last night, 5/8 of the troupe somehow didn't make it to practice, so the three of us canceled and went to the restaurant on the corner instead.

There, he regaled us with the tale of how, on one trip to the United States, he found himself at the Burning Man Festival in the middle of the Nevada desert at dusk, trying to tell the state troopers who'd surrounded him and his friends with their jeeps that the thing in his hand wasn't a joint, but a simple tobacco cigarette.

He was successful, somehow, but what is really remarkable about this story is that, at the time he was talking his way out of deportation, he was nearly naked - wearing only a flame-colored thong - and painted blue, with a third eye on his forehead, the visual image of which - if you know him - makes his story pretty much impossible to top.

That's all.

The next day.

So here is the down point:

All signs point to my job vanishing in two months. I'm great at writing emails to people, but chances are high that the entirety of the English-speaking department will be moved over to England in November, and I can probably either go with them and have a job or stay here and have no job. Again. And it's not like going with them is an option, because hello, England? Boyfriend?

The Irish girl I work with says that she is used to this by now. She has had multiple odd jobs here in the past three years - she's been a nanny too, of course - and is sort of lassez-faire about the whole thing. Both she and the other expatriate I work with (he's a Canadian former airline pilot who came to Germany because hello, it's Germany, and now he can't find a job and is therefore working in marketing, writing emails with a 22-year-old) are experts at this.

They stay because, well, things aren't any better in the US and Ireland right now. But the constant rotation of jobs seems to have hardened them into people who shrug and take what they can get, and it scares me.

Two days ago, a woman approached me on the street and gave me her phone number. She said, in swift German, that she owns a customer-service firm and is always looking for new representatives, and that if I wanted a job I should call her. I had no idea why... I think it was because I was wearing a bright red dress and looking very conspicuous. I halfway think she's a madam, and I halfway think she's terrifying, and I halfway am considering calling her, just because I have no clue what else exactly I am supposed to be doing here.

I forgot August!

Aw damn!

I looked at the list of my blog posts in the corner today to discover that I have updated precisely once a month for oh the past five months. And now I've gone and blown it by forgetting August - I am a once-every-two-months blogger instead of a once-a-month blogger now. Tarnation!

Oh well - I hope you'll cut me some slack, maybe-dear reader, since it is only the first of September. Also, a hell of a lot happened in August, especially considering that I initially thought it would be kind of a nothing month.

I initially thought this because the month began with me getting fired. Not fired, insists Nader, laid off - which is technically true. I didn't do anything wrong, really, not that I know of... it was more that the family I was nannying for decided I was not very necessary now that half of their children (read: one) were heading off to boarding school, and that the housekeeper could more-than-capably perform my job. Hats off to them, I thought as I pedaled away from their house for what I hadn't that morning known would be the last time... I'd realized this fact about a month ago, and had naively thought that it wasn't nearly as apparent to my bosses. I had apparently been mistaken.

So there I was, fired. I did not cry. Instead, I went shopping, and then Nader and I toasted my unemployment by going out for Indian food.

That was denial.

When Monday came, however, I felt the beginnings of crushing despair - the same kind of despair that had gripped me in March, back when I realized that my visa was only good for another twenty days. How would I survive? What other kind of work could I DO?

I spent another couple of days wallowing and making various declarations. "I will not work again," I said. "I will live off my savings!" (Yeah, right.) "I will become a novelist!" "I should probably just go back to nannying, it's all I'm really good at." "I shall learn to play the ukulele!"

And then, on Wednesday, my friend Alexa sent me a link to a job opening.

And then I applied for it, after much foot-dragging and ukulele-purchasing.

And then I went for an interview.

And then I got the job.

And then I applied for a visa, and they pushed the start date back a few weeks. And then I waited to see if the German government would allow me to work.

And then Nader finished one of his exams, and he was like "Hey why don't we go to Prague?" and so we went to Prague, which is (like Paris) absolutely as beautiful as everyone says it is. More so. And it is seedy, but in a sort of pleasant way, a way that makes you think you can get stuff for cheap, even though that is only due to the fact that their money has a deceptive exchange rate with the euro (24 krone to one euro? Who the hell can convert that quickly? I sure can't, and wound up buying a seventeen-euro salt and pepper shaker set because of it).

And then we took a bus back from Prague.

And then on the next day Maggie visited!

Maggie, my best friend from high school, is a wholesome person who enjoys hearty things, and so together we visited farmer's markets, went on ten-mile bike trips, hiked a mountain, and cut a bouquet of mums to adorn our tiny apartment's little black table, the one that tends to leap out of nowhere and stab people in the knee.

And then I put her on a train to Florence, where she would be studying abroad for the next four months. And then I, jealous as the train pulled away and already missing her quiet presence in my hammock, vowed to visit her as soon as possible.

And then I went to four improv workshops (okay, this was throughout the month, but for dramatic purposes we'll say it happened all at once)... and this group of dramatically-enthusiastic young people from places like Israel and British Columbia and okay America was asking me to be on their secret improv troupe, and I was saying yes, and I start practice next week. And we'll see how Germanprov goes but I am highly optimistic.

And then - we're caught up - it was today, and suddenly I was starting my new job, which is a marketing job at a hip firm that operates by sending people free stuff and seeing what they say about it. And my job is answering people's emails in a polite and mildly witty manner, and I think I will be okay at it, and moreover there is a FREE COFFEE MACHINE.

So there. Now I can write all the stupid non-updatey posts I want, because I have told you EVERYTHING and you are probably satisfied. Right? Hopefully? Right?

Kisses!

Drawings

I realize I've been rather quiet, lately, on the blogging front. I'm sorry! It isn't intentional, really, more just neglect. Which is even less of an excuse, I know, but here is an entry so that the three people reading will forgive me.

I've been writing, sort of. I'm fixing up the terrible novel I wrote in a month and a half. We must wait, however, to see if it's completely horrific or not.

It hasn't helped that the girl I'm watching bought me colored pencils for my birthday. Nice ones, German ones. Germany's Schreibwaren (writing merchandise?) is awesome - all pens are efficient, successful, fluid, and all pencils are triangle-shaped, so as not to roll off your desk or coffee table or whatever. These pencils are no exception. They are awesome.

So I figured "What the hell", and bought myself a Moleskine. At the time of this writing, it is 1/4 full of failed drawings of tigers, 1/2 full of scrawled cursive writing, and 1/4 full of pencil art. A la Aaron King, I am now going to post said art on the Internet, just because I'm sad that there's nothing else in my blog recently.

Here's the first one. These are two girls I saw shopping together at H and M.



It seems strange to me that they were friends - strange and sort of beautiful. One of them was very Germanic, complete with short shorts, and the other, well...

Munich has a huge population of women in full-body black veils right now, because Saudi Arabia has come over to shop at Gucci with oil money and escape the heat. I don't like to admit it, but these women make me more uncomfortable than the whorehouses on Hansestrasse do. So it was nice to see one of them with a friend, instead of with a fashionably-dressed husband and a massive stroller...

Then here are some people I miss, drawn from memory.



It is Lisa's gift that she is really, really easy and fun to draw.

Meg is less so. I don't think this looks like her, but I do think it looks okay.



I keep trying to draw Nader, but it's hard because he moves a lot. And so I have to rely on memory, and because my memory is occasionally strange and addled by caffeine, they generally wind up not looking a lot like him. My self-portrait looks a bit like me, but only because I was not moving.



There are lots of other self-portraits in here. I am a willing subject, I guess.



This is me in the house where I nanny. It is much nicer than the drawing allows. Here is the garden, if you replaced the seaside behind it with a much more boring, much more hard-to-draw hedge:



And then there are my fictional character drawings. I don't know.

Jadis of Charn! The best witch ever! You know, the White Witch, but before she was White. But not before she was super-strong and could throw lamp-posts at people. I wrote a shitty sonnet about her on the page facing her.



And here's Coventry Patmore's The Angel in the House. I wrote all over the back of her, and didn't realize I'd kind of ruined her until it was too late.



There are more, but they're kind of weird, as are many things I do. So they're not going on the Internet. But here: a blog! Hooray...

I turned 22 today.

Technically I didn't turn 22 yet. I think I was born at 6:30 am or thereabouts - since I now live in Germany, I'm still practically 21 until 1:30 or so. Still, it would have been enough for my mother, who, if she were here, would have put up signs on the kitchen wall and greeted me, standing sleepily in her bathrobe, with "21 years ago today..." as she pressed me to her chest.

My father - after he'd woken up, had a decent amount of coffee and read a good bit of the paper - would have also been capable of nostalgia. At some point during the day, they both would decide to reminisce about the exact bloody details of my birth, and I would learn something new, probably.

It would have been expectant, as birthdays are - like New Year's and Halloween. "This will be my best birthday ever," I said as a child filled with certitude; as I grew, I learned that very often the best birthday ever is entirely out of your control, that no matter which theme you pick for your party, sometimes the family German Shepherd will still insist on vomiting in the middle of the obstacle course.

I never knew I would be in Germany on the day I turned 22. I don't think I ever really thought about turning 22, to be honest - I know I had high hopes for 21, but 22 seems insignificant.

Still, it's significant to others. Nader took a taxi home from the lab to arrive home last night at precisely midnight, and I have to end this now, because my little brother - who would, on my birthdays at home, still have been asleep downstairs for several hours - is on a plane, circling somewhere above Munich, waiting for me to pick him up and show him where I live now.

Advice for Graduates

A friend from JYM, last year's German exchange program, wrote me the other day. Having graduated at the normal time, she is now faced with the wide wide world and all the possibilities - and naturally, she asked if I had any advice re: moving to Munich.

I do, as it turns out. I have pages. I wrote on and on in response to a one-paragraph question. I hit "send" and watched in horror as my advice filled the screen.

Then I reread it, and it turns out that most of it isn't that bad. It's true that much of it is only applicable to people in exactly my situation (as she is, what with the German boyfriend living in StuSta and so on), but some of it is salvageable for any country anywhere! Not bad for before coffee!

So without further adieu, here it is: my advice to a graduate fleeing the US for another, more refined nation.

"Congratulations on graduating - and yeah, life in Munich is pretty great! It's been sixty degrees for at least a month, the bikers have become less aggressive, and we're about to experience StuStaCulum - the largest student party in Munich - directly in front of our back door. Also, knock on wood, it's rained way less this year. Party time!

Now for the bad news. In my experience, it's super hard to get a job in Germany as a native English speaker without them actually seeing you in person. I think this might be true for any country, but Germany is especially into a personal impression. I feel like they'll only hire you overseas if it's some corporate job for which you are ridiculously qualified. They're like that.

But if you're serious about moving here, why not just do it? As a lucky American, Germany will let you into the country for 3 months to search for jobs. You come in on a tourist visa, a friendly tourist visa that turns into an overstayed evil tourist visa if you're here longer than 90 days without fixing it... but I digress. If you've got money saved, come here, hang out, interview furiously. Don't worry about apartments: live with a friend. Live illegally in a supposedly unoccupied corner of StuSta's Green House. Live in a hostel! It seems risky, but it'll help if you somehow get one of those magical flexible-return-date plane tickets.

Second: what do you want to do? Jobs, here, are both easier and harder to come by than in the US - easier because hello, no economic crisis, no sad middle-aged man beating you out for an entry-level position, but harder because you um don't really speak German as well as you think you do.

So I'd look for jobs that attract native English speakers - both for the obvious reasons and for other, more technical legal ones, which I'll explain in a minute. (Unless you are an engineer or computer genius or have some other valuable skill that transcends language, of course, in which case what am I doing giving you advice? Go do whatever it is you do to get jobs, you well-educated person you, and I, the English major, will continue angrily blogging in her bathrobe while you earn much more money than me.)

In my experience, the absolute easiest-to-get - although shittiest-paying - job is in a bilingual kindergarten or preschool. They are everywhere, and a good way to improve one's German. If you like children at all, have any experience whatsoever, and don't come off as a serial killer in person, do it. The hours can be terrible, but German children are ADORABLE.

Other options:

There is always the good old standby: teaching English. Here in Munich, a freelance teaching visa is (apparently, although I wouldn't know) easy to get. But: you have to have job offers at two schools in order for them to take you seriously at the visa office, and it helps if you have some kind of flimsy TEFL qualification, available online or in an intense and expensive 6-week course somewhere. Another drawback is that you have to be really, really good at doing your own taxes and finding your own health insurance. Also, as in child-caring, the pay is weird, the hours erratic - unless you really love it and are talented at it, of course, in which case you can find a sweet gig at a corporation somewhere.

Then there is my route: nannying. Felicity Nannies - look them up! It's how I found my ridiculously easy job. They're an agency devoted to placing English-speaking nannies in families that want their children exposed to the language. This job will not improve your German, at least if you're me. It may even wither it. However, it may also place you in an elegant mansion with two well-behaved teenagers and bowls of expensive fruit. I'm just saying.

Last of all comes the option I considered first: English-speaking secretarial work. Apparently these jobs can be well-paying, rewarding, and have loads of upward mobility. If you've ever done anything like this before and are really good at wearing suits, hit patent offices and law offices up. They may just need your skills.

None of these are probably what you want to do for the rest of your life. They are, however, good ways of being allowed to stay in Germany - visas are a little hard to come by, especially since your employer has to be able to prove that the job can't be done by an EU citizen. Mine got around it by putting "will instruct our children in the American way of life" on the visa form. I still have no idea what that means, but it worked.

If you want to continue emailing applications before you take the plunge and actually move there, go ahead: just keep in mind that a German employer expects a personalized cover letter, a 2-page CV (WITH education information on it; sources vary on what that means), and a Bewerbungsmappe, which is basically copies of every certificate you have. (Diploma, certifications, immunization records... kidding, but still). So if you want to scan that stuff into your computer, do it it now, before you leave; life will be much easier later. Scan everything, every document you've ever received ever. Germans love documents. Have all of them.

Last of all - you're expected to have health insurance if you're in the country. I'd advise doing what I did: my worried mother bought me a not-very-comprehensive travel healthcare package good for five months, and then when I got a job my employers decided to pay for it, so now I have a shiny card in pinks and yellows with my name on it. Hooray! However, if you're going the freelance route, be aware that you'll have to provide your own, and there are only so many agencies that the Bavarian government finds acceptable... I'd buy one month of travel insurance, then try to find some while you're here.

Best of luck. My advice basically boils down to this: you can fuck things up a lot and you'll still be okay. I never thought they'd let me stay in the country, but look at me now!

Love,

Jessie.

PS, toytowngermany.com. Jobs, apartment, expatriates, angry vitriolic forum rages, funny stuff - all about living in Germany as an expatriate. Just don't spend too much time on it. Oh, how easy it is to spend too much time on it...

Die Drehung der Schraube

Gentle reader (i.e. dear friend Keri, assorted relatives),

It has been three months exactly since I arrived in Munich.

And three months is the amount of time an American tourist visa waiver lasts here.

But luckily, I am not on a plane home to St. Paul. No, I am still sitting happily in Studentenstadt - next to me is my passport, open to my fancy new work visa. It is a pink sheet that covers two pages; on one page is a large, intricate block of text, and on the other is a mug-shot of me in which I resemble a lady rapist.

Gentle reader, this visa is good for three years. Three... freaking... years. How did this happen?

I am employed - so employed - by a small, very persistent German woman. She is meticulously dressed, with a well-coiffed bob and tailored clothing - I've taken to calling her Lucille Bluth subconsciously. I cannot tell you her real name, nor the name of the high-profile international company of which she is the German CEO - in my work contract, it says that "the employee agrees not to disclose to any third party any information whatsoever arising from or connected in any way to the employment, including information gleaned by the employee regarding the employer and the employer's family during the course of employment". This blog is probably pushing it.

Still, I cannot keep secret the fact that I am now a governess, or tutor, or nanny, or whatever.

Nor can I conceal the fact that I work for a very, as the nannying agency called it in their newsletter, "high-profile family".

Their house is four stories tall, which is huge for Munich. They have a garden full of manicured, shaped hedges. They have a small gazebo. They have a housekeeper, who is a very kind woman who speaks English with me and shows me repeatedly how to brew a cappuccino in the Nescafe machine.

Yes, a cappuccino. This is a great job, says Nader - says facts.

I am less positive - I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop, because how can I be paid to do this? Daily I bike through the park, past the river, and down cobblestoned streets; I put my key into their front gate and show myself in. There is, as I said, coffee. If I like, I can come an hour early and eat lunch with one of the children and the aforementioned housekeeper. I did, a day ago, and it was delicious, and at the end of it the housekeeper would not let me load the dishwasher.

Ah, yes, the children - there's no catch there, either. They are not squalling babies or tempestuous seven-year-olds -- they are a bespectacled, mild-mannered teenaged boy and a gentle pre-teenaged girl who runs from room to room, skidding in her socks. Both have had multiple British and American au pairs as babies, so they already speak damn good - if rusty - English. (Theoretically, at least on the contract, my job to "instruct them in American culture", which, short of showing them the entirety of The Simpsons, I'm not sure how to do. But, being that they are good listeners, it shouldn't be hard.)

The point is that the whole gig seems much too perfect, especially if you consider what I'm being paid. The zenith is that I don't have to be at work until two, leaving mornings free for making eggs and toast and picnicking in the park.

With any other job, if it had a list of this many pluses and virtually no minuses, I would be happy to accept it at face value. However, there is just too much fiction about nannying to make this possible.

I blame Professor Bradley Deane for my discomfort. In freshman year, around this time of the year, we read The Turn of the Screw. If you don't know, this is a Henry James ghost story, written in 1898, about a young nanny who takes what seems initially to be a perfect assignment. She is at a lovely home in the country with a housekeeper and two obedient, beautiful children. But then slowly creepy stuff happens, she starts seeing ghostly figures, she learns that the previous nanny died on the premises, she becomes steadily more creeped out by the housekeeper, she winds up strangling the boy.... etcetera etcetera.

Thank you, Bradley Deane. Because of your class, I walk up and down the spiral staircase of the house, on my guard, watching out for the ghosts of previous au pairs who had affairs with the gardener and experienced an angelic fall. I attempt to concentrate on other, more cheery nanny fiction - The Sound of Music would seem a more appropriate choice, Salzburg is like an hour and a half away even - but still, I must be wary.

If I find out that a previous nanny was named Anything Jessel, I'm totally out of there, biking as fast as I can over the scenic cobblestones...

PS, all of this is just to hide how smug I feel. This job totally rocks.

Seven Things

Here it is:

Things I Hate in a Novel

1. Long blocks of text full of irregular punctuation and jammed-together words because that's the only way the author knows how to be dramatic. "andhe is touching her and myheadis spinningand oh god how how they are all dead"... COME ON.

2. I hate how, in children's books, characters' parents always have clearly-defined, lucrative occupations. Who does, nowadays? Still, these people: they are Writers, or Doctors, or Artists. For example, in A Wrinkle in Time, Meg Murry's mother is a famous scientist who makes dinner on her Bunsen burner in the lab in their home, doing so while brushing back her long, auburn, perfect hair. Also, COME ON.

3. Similarly: it sucks when characters don't have to worry about money AT ALL, because some deus ex machina god has jumped into the plot and taken care of that for them. For instance, since Meg's family is apparently independently wealthy, even though they are a single-parent household, they do not have to worry about money, more just the fact that her father and genius little brother have been kidnapped by a giant alien brain. Also see: Henry and Clare in The Time Traveler's Wife.

4. Untranslated foreign language in the text, I'm talking to you, dead ERNEST HEMINGWAY. (Unless the character telling the story also can't understand what's going on -- in which case, go ahead.)

5. Intricate science-fiction societies, the governance of which is unnecessarily explained at the beginning of the book. By the same token, elaborately-described machines when a simple plot device would work just as well. H. G. Wells it, don't Jules Verne it! (See: http://beatonna.livejournal.com/125341.html)

6. Combination of 4 and 5: Authorially made-up languages. I know Tolkien is Tolkien, but I'm still annoyed by the audacity of Elvish.

7. Description.

I may have to learn to come to terms with this one.



Things I Like in a Novel

1. Lovable characters who would make terrible friends.

2. Characters who come from a variety of socioeconomic classes, like Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus Smith, even though Virginia Woolf was sort of classist and the novel is still called "Mrs. Dalloway".

3. Thinly-veiled, thoroughly-embellished autobiographical narratives -- I'm looking at you, Jonathan Safran Foer and Marjane Satrapi!

4. Love, but ONLY between two fully-realized three-dimensional characters. (Okay, yes, this is entirely about The Time-Traveler's Wife. Upon my fourth rereading of it, Clare seems less like a human and more like a Disney princess. Either that, or I'm just suspicious of long auburn hair on characters in general.)

5. A bunch of tales woven in and around a central plot (see: anything Neil Gaiman has ever written ever / Jeffery Eugenides' Middlesex).

6. When tragic things happen in funny ways, or when funny things, on a closer look, are tragedies.

7. When the historical is personal, but when the historical doesn't override the growth and importance of the protagonist. Salome is about John the Baptist, but it's also about self-destructive lust; Persepolis is about the Iranian Revolution, but it's really about leaving / returning.


I'm sure there are a billion people out there who disagree with me, especially about the anti-Tolkien bits. If you're reading this, and read books at all, I want to know what your lists look like. They're probably much different than mine, especially if you're Nader, in which case your second list would read "Medical literature" and "Facebook".

JeNoWriMo

For Christmas, I got this book called "No Plot? No Problem!". It's written by Chris Baty, the guy who started National Novel-Writing Month in 1999. He used to work at some kind of massive pre-recession dotcom business, and now he's a full-time writer -- apparently the sort of man who's successful at everything he does. It's hard to stop resenting him and start reading, but read I did, and I sort of like his breezy, plebian approach to writing.

Baty claims that what's holding most people back from writing their novel is not lack of ideas, but the lack of pressure associated with the activity. When you have days -- as I do currently -- filled with uncertain goals and far too much free time, you tend to spend them reading old Savage Love columns (so many old Savage Love columns) and doing the dishes, not writing bestsellers. Baty's idea is that, instead of dicking around and getting to it eventually, prospective writers should take one month and turn it into a sort of Writing Boot Camp -- a free-for-all writestravaganza in which any words added to one's Word document are good words, uncriticized words. It seems silly, but the guy has sold three novels since he started doing this, so I guess it's worth it to listen to him.

His words are especially important because I'm coming up on a giant mountain of free time, a mountain that a deadline would probably do some good for. My final job update is this: I'm about to accept the English-teaching Kinderbetreuung job I've been offered, since they called yesterday and offered me the potential of more money if they can get approval from what the secretary called "the big boss". Plus, the babies are adorable.

However, the position doesn't open until April 18th -- APRIL 18TH; I'm currently poor, and cannot shop to fill my time; and Nader has exams until mid-March. Basically, my only foreseeable tasks for the next month are keeping myself and the dishes clean while filling out the mountain of German paperwork necessary for a work permit.

So in order to keep me away from the Savage Love archives, I should probably write something, right? I'm going to do it -- try for 50,000 words of SOMETHING. I don't know if that something will ever see daylight, but maybe that's as it should be (see: all the fanfiction I wrote from ninth to eleventh grades). This is by March 21st, when my boyfriend finishes his exams and we can have fun again instead of learning about robots and typing for hours.

Los geht's! Goal forward!

PS, Chris Baty says that the support of friends and relatives is quite important during this period, if by "support" you mean "teasing about the novel that I am or am not writing". So go on, tease me, mock me if I do not complete something! Or else I'll go nuts from German inactivity and read every sex-advice column on the planet!

Laim: Less than Lame!

JOB SITUATION UPDATE:

So... Starnberg is too far away. I sent the family an email being like, "I really liked you guys! But I can't travel 1.5 hours every day...(andalsoyourchildrenareincrediblyoverpriviliged)". That's one job down, and since I only had one left, it would seem that the decision is made.

Instead, it's just been made more complicated. Problem is, I am an interview addict.

Seriously -- why do I do this to myself? Twice this week I've woken up much earlier than necessary, put on like six coats of mascara, accidentally kicked stuff in our tiny apartment over and made my sleeping boyfriend go "nnngghhh" pathetically, scrawled down the U-Bahn directions to some place far away from everything I know, and run to the train station while rabidly eating some sort of carbohydrate.

Then I've walked into the establishment with trepidation. I've noted the decoration and attempted to observe key details like "Do the teachers look happy? Do they look well fed?", then I've shaken some hands, then I've listened, nodding, for a while.

And then... the decision.

One of the two interviews I went on this week was the second interview at the Kinderbetreuung (place to shove kids for the day). It was the "let's see if you do well in practice" interview; I spent half a day there, monitoring eating, changing diapers, playing board games.

Happily, it turned out that the children are not the dead little zombies I thought they were. Rather, they are adorable cuddly babies who want to tell me things -- loud, running, screaming cuddly babies, but still. One in particular, this little mocha-colored man named Otto, has a habit of non-sequiturs that's incredibly endearing. Sample conversation:

Teacher: Otto, what's your name?

Otto: Zwei! (Two!)

Teacher: No, Otto, your name. Who are you?

Otto: Ich putze meine Zahne! (I brush my teeth!)

It was all cute, and the four hours went by very quickly. And at the end of it all there was a conversation (finally sitting in big-people chairs) with the two women in the office, a talk in which they said, "We think you'll do fine here, and we're formally offering it to you", at which I was sort of "hurray" and sort of frozen. I asked if I could have until the end of the week to decide.

I don't know what stopped me from saying yes that day. I think it was the same things I'd had a problem with before -- that the job pays 800 euro a month (which is much, much less than any nanny makes), that it's far away, that it's early, that I don't feel very qualified for it.

But it was also something else combined with those other things -- it was the fact that, although I was to be hired as the English teacher, I spent so much of the day inadequately explaining things to children in German, feeling overwhelmed, swept up in it. Although it was "English Day!", the class sang one English song and then the rest of the day was "Zieh dich mal aus, bitte" and "Was hast du gesagt?" -- the place was far from bilingual, and so were the kids. Most of them spoke little to no English, and I couldn't see myself, a single person trying desperately to keep up with the wave of diaper-changing and feeding, changing that.

And then.

And then I got, that same day, an email back from the principal of Munich's only English-speaking Montessori school, asking me to come in for an interview the next morning at ten. Nervously, feeling as if I were cheating on the job I already had, I said yes.

If you're not familiar with the concept (I wasn't), a Montessori school believes that children learn most between 2.5 and 6; that formal instruction, in these periods, is silly; that the best way to teach children is through a series of self-selected games. Which sounds like hippie bullshit, but isn't.

I observed a classroom this morning, hovering creepily in the corner -- the Montessori philosophy demands that children receive no positive reinforcement from grownups when they complete a game (as I was informed after I'd excitedly wanted to help a tiny curly-haired girl complete a horsey puzzle -- informed, and given a handbook and a pencil to keep me busy). Rather, adults are there to answer questions and keep order; qualified teachers are there to teach one-on-one lesson games, games with numbers made of sandpaper and beads and mats.

The kids here may have been older than they were in the Kinderbetreuung, but the room was still amazingly quiet, the contrast evident -- the floors had no carpets, but no noise was echoing. Instead, the children were playing calmly; two boys built a massive tower out of wood blocks; a kid painted; one little boy was sitting in the corner, listening intently to a pair of headphones. It was like a science fiction book, like here was a group of children raised in a laboratory, reared from birth to use their supernatural intelligence for ill.

Now normally, as anyone who has seen my closet can attest, I am not a fan of order, but after the screaming poopy German chaos of the previous day, I was intrigued. These children were not only learning English -- they were learning math, and handwriting, and fine motor skills -- and all of that without hitting each other. No hitting at all!

Also, it didn't hurt that the teachers here looked cleaner, more Zenlike, better-dressed. Most of them had been there for multiple years; the girl who tipped me off to the job opening, Kerry, had worked there since 2004 and seemed none the worse for wear. "I'm doing this while I pursue my opera-singing career!" she said cheerfully in her Australian accent. I instantly wanted to be her friend.

When I heard (trying to act nonchalant) that the starting salary was more than comfortable and that the pauses in the school calendar were more than ample, I was hooked. Being cocky from my most recent job offer, I thought I had it made.

And then the principal, an ex-military man from Illinois who was like a loquacious cross between J.K. Simmons and my father, had to go be all aloof. "Well, you probably won't hear from me for a week or so," he said. "You're the first person we've interviewed, and next week I'll be talking to other candidates! Then we'll go into a second round."

I was shocked. How dare he? MY JOB!

I walked out feeling like I'd just auditioned for a musical -- sort of excited, sort of shaky, unable to wait until the cast list got posted. As I unlatched the cute little gate and walked out into the cold, I realized that now, I even-more didn't know what to do.

So, friends: is there some business way to string the first job offer along while I wait for word from the military man? Or should I say yes to it -- am I just being enchanted by the novelty of the second thing? Or should I give up on children entirely and just be a barista for the rest of my life? Or... or... or...

Damn options.

Jobs

My job search here in Munich has been a haphazard process. I showed up six weeks ago with a degree, little to no money and roughly zero knowledge of how one writes a resume. I spent days lolling around in my at-the-time tiny bed and bemoaning fate while perusing the Internet.

Slowly, a month and a half later, I have made progress. I have still been in bed on the Internet all day, but the bed is much larger -- thanks to Nader's ebay abilities -- and now, sitting in my inbox, are two messages from people who want to have me as their employee. Hurray!... sort of!

The first is from a woman I met yesterday. She was of a type one meets here; she had crinkly skin and white hair, she was wearing metallic blue eyeliner and a wool coat woven in many colors, like Joseph's. She slightly resembled Meryl Streep, which instantly frightened me in a sort of visceral, Devil-Wears-Prada way.

We sat down in a room covered in flower appliques and toys and green paint. You see, the job she was offering is at a child jail.

Not really, but sort of.

It's a "Kinderbetreuung", which translates to "place to shove your kids for the day". The school's website explains that many mothers nowadays would really prefer to work, and so why not place your children at our wonderfully-colored nest of rooms, where they will learn about snow and leaves and telephones and music and all sorts of different languages?

Intrigued by the web site, I applied as one of the people who would be teaching them all these different languages. I thought the job would be more that of an English teacher -- as in, I'd have formal lesson time and song time and stuff -- but it turns out, my job would more be to yell at the children in English all day. "It's surprising what they pick up!" she said in her elegant Germanic accent, eyes crinkling.

With me, it might be mostly swear words, I thought.

After she spoke with me, and decided my lack of a teaching license wouldn't really be a problem, we toured the facilities. They're cute -- there's a mini baby rock-climbing wall, a room full of beanbag chairs, and a bunch of rice on the floor. I met all eighty-five children ranging in age from zero to six; they were almost creepily intrigued by me, would move happily towards the doors as soon as Angelika opened them. I liked the five-year-olds best, and hoped, as Angelika steered me towards what would be my classroom, that the children inside were equally pleasant.

"I wasn't sure at first, since we need someone with a teaching degree, but I think actually that we need someone like you," she said. "All happy and cheerful! And so smart! And you must be smart, to deal with children," she said, and smiled, and I got all puffed up with pride. And then she opened the door.

The room seemed darker, more bare than other rooms. It smelled of cooked food and something stale. The babies inside drooled up at me, twelve of them, rice falling from their mouths. The teachers sat next to them on tiny stools, their eyes dead.

One girl with thick, dark-brown hair cut into a bob rose from her stool. "Hello," she said dully.

"Oh, this is the Maria!" Angelika said fondly. "She is the English teacher here, and she will be leaving us, unfortunately. You would be her protege!"

"Yes," Maria said. I couldn't place her accent. "I will be going to Sweden!" and her eyes glowed, imagining Sweden.

There wasn't much else to say, so I shook the other teachers' hands and moved on.

In the office, I made an appointment to come back next week for a second interview -- an interview at which they would give me a letter of employment, the first step to a work visa. I was excited, because I've been waiting for that letter for so long -- I can only legally stay in the country for six more weeks without it -- but I walked away entirely uncertain, thinking of the falling rice, the babies. For this, I won the sonnet contest?

The second job offer is from a family twenty miles outside of Munich. They live in a beautiful oak-floored slopy-roofed building just a few blocks from this massive gorgeous lake. I would be their after-school nanny, their snack-maker, their homework-doer.

Their children, whom I met last week, are precious -- they are native French speakers but, having spent years in the US, sound like they're from Iowa. They enjoy all sorts of hobbies and have wonderful toys; their bedrooms are Child Paradise, with lofted beds and wood ceilings and a massive dollhouse and a guitar set and beanbag chairs and wow.

I imagine they're a little lonely -- they moved to Munich six months ago and their German is not quite up there yet, since they go to the International School and speak English all day. Still, they have many friends. Did I mention how charming they are? And the girl in particular enjoys me; she is nine, and likes books, and made me listen to her read three picture books out loud, and asked repeatedly when I could come back. I, not knowing much about the nanny visa situation, said "I don't know."

My original plan, in moving here, was to have exactly this sort of mind-numbing job -- a job at which my brain could wander and do other things, a job full of scooping rice and changing diapers and watching two well-mannered children play peacefully upstairs. And then, on the train and at nights, I would work on a book, some sort of book, just to say that I'd have written a book.

But maybe it wouldn't be mind-numbing at all. Maybe I'm being silly and it would be exhausting.

Maybe my resume would have a huge vacant year in it, a year in which I did nothing but change diapers and assist with addition homework. And maybe this would be a problem for any sort of lucrative brain-absorbing job in the future.

And I don't know if I'd be saying yes just to say yes -- saying yes just because it's the easy option, because both of these people want me so much.

And could my ego take it? On the train ride back, phrases kept thundering repeatedly in my head, phrases like "This is why you took Grammar and Language?" But maybe that'd be a good thing...

I don't know, maybe they're both too far away -- what if there's something better closer? The kindergarten is in Pasing, which is 45 minutes away; the nanny job is in Starnberg, which is an hour and a half. I don't know if I can ride that much train each day.

I don't know if I'm supposed to be initially very excited about a job or not.

I don't know.

Does anyone else?

Ulysses

I don't know why it took me so long to get back to JYM, really. I've been in Munich for a month now -- more than a month -- and until today, I hadn't visited the offices of the program that had brought me here.

"I've been busy," I told myself as I walked down that familiar street -- Gabelsbergerstrasse -- walked past all the engineering students, past the expensive corner pizza place and the music high school and all that old Nazi architecture. "I've been applying for jobs. I had things to do."

Really, I think it was just that I was afraid I'd walk in the door and they wouldn't care -- that any affection for me they'd professed had been thoroughly faked, that now that they had my thousands of euro and had processed my transcript, they would pretend never to have heard of me.

But there it was, the sign, the stone walls -- I walked to the door (the weather was still cold and gray) and I pressed the doorbell, and it buzzed, and I turned the knob but somehow it wouldn't open, it just spun in a circle, so I just kept turning it in a panic that this is how they would find me, back and without a job and not even able to open a door for God's sake, and then all of a sudden it was turning the other way on its own and the door was opening and there was Patrizia, office assistant, vengeful angel, former theater professor, her hair curlier than ever.

"Du hast es wieder zugesperrt!" she said. (You locked it again! Haha!). "Wie geht's??! Komm rein, komm rein!"

For whatever reason - I blame the children I've been babysitting in German for the past month -- speaking the language is no longer scary for me. I feel like my grammar hasn't gotten any better, but I'm no longer afraid of independently producing words -- I produced words for a solid half hour today, sitting with Patrizia in her office and stirring the cappuccino she'd made me. We talked about jobs, her job, my potential job, another ex-JYM student living in Munich who might be able to help me out, Brijhette (<3),>

H.P., my favorite semi-lazy German professor, had apparently invited his friend (his genius lies in the fact that he has many, many friends) to speak. Normally I would have bowed out, but I was intrigued: the man sitting in the library was a translator.

Literary translators, here in Munich, are a rare breed -- one must be well-established, a writer on one's own already; one must be experienced and know how to shop around manuscripts; one must be an experienced researcher; one must know that literary translating doesn't pay the bills.

Apparently, one must also know that literary translating can, on occasion, nearly kill you. That's what I learned today, mostly.

The man sitting in the library was a man about my height, a man with an annoyed brow and a silver beard and spectacles and two coats. Patrizia approached him. "Hallo, _____, darf ich jemand vorstellen? Das ist die Jessica, eine ehemalige JYM-Studentin; sie ist wiedergekommen, um Arbeit zu suchen..." (She's come back to look for work!)

The man took my hand, shook it somberly. Then he said, auf Deutsch, "And of course, also because of a boyfriend, yes?"

I laughed like hell. "Yes."

That was all he needed to know about me. I asked him what he was going to be talking about, and he said, "Do you know Danielewski?"

I didn't recognize the name, and was ashamed. "Noo?" I said sheepishly, a literature major.

He began to expound, talking mainly to Patrizia, glancing occasionally at me -- "The young in America enjoy his books; there have been many blogs written about them, their mirrored-ness, their inscrutability, and so of course now we must translate them into German, for the young folk here to read. But there are many problems with the text, even more than there were with the first novel -- for instance, how do you translate that title? Is it "Haus aus Blaettern" or "Haus dass Verlaesst"?---"

"WAIT," I said. "You mean, 'House of Leaves?'"

He looked at me.

I was going to say something about how much I'd hated that book, but instead I just nodded. "Yeah, I do know it!"

"House of Leaves" is this black-covered brick of a book. Later, in Hans-Peter's class, a girl was asked to summarize it, and she said, "It's about a house that is a labyrinth, and it's a book that is also a labyrinth". I'd never thought of it like that, but it's true -- the text jumps around the page, the footnotes are a story in themselves, pages will be jam-packed with print or nearly empty. I found it annoying, frankly -- it was cute at first, but I am a lazy reader, one who does not want to constantly be shifting a brick-weight book around in a circle in order to find out what happens. The main characters also seemed annoyed by the sort of visual art they were trapped in, and retaliated by being two-dimensional, which made me even more not want to finish it.

"I can see how that'd be hard to translate," I said.

"Just wait until you see the other one," he said, fuming, and he went to his bag and pulled out a well-marked copy of the author's less-successful second novel "Only Revolutions". I opened it to find pages that look like this:

"Oh god," I said. "It's like Ulysses, except..."

"Yes, quite," he said.

Apparently, it's about two young people who carry on a romance that lasts for 200 years and a road trip that travels across America. That's it. "Nothing else really happens," he says. "It's just very... Facebook. It is what the young in America want right now. It is a truly American book."

Translation of this book required the man to surf through thousands of web pages for each book-page he translated -- in the margin, aided by Wikipedia, the author had chosen to write events that happened on the day the book was taking place. Generally, with the aid of the Internet and native speakers, he could figure it out, but once he'd encountered a word that "ONLY OCCURRED IN THE TEXT. It was NOWHERE else on the Internet." Except for a discussion board posting about the novel, that is.

On the board -- which was full of people gushing about how awesome the book was -- he posted the baffling page with the baffling word, with the sentence, "If anyone can tell me what this means, I will give them ten free copies of this book."

Nobody could.

The man talked for thirty minutes. Patrizia and I stood and nodded; Patrizia, on occasion, added helpful things; I mostly made what I thought were intelligent-sounding noises and sent vague "get me a job like yours even if it's hell" rays in his direction. It was like being in a lecture, but a lecture where not only were you judging the professor, he was also judging you, sitting up there behind his podium with a furrowed brow and -- when you chose to speak -- a careful appraisal of your German abilities.

I fear I came up short -- once or twice Patrizia had to translate for me into better German -- but at least now I've met someone semi-famous, or at least someone who has in his possession, printed out, an angry email from one of his colleagues to Danielewski that says, in summary, "Take your book and shove it. I can't make any sense of this bullshit. How is this published??"