No, she didn't know what it was in German. Was it because she never cared about Daniel enough to ask him to teach her? Or was it because he had never said that to her to begin with...?
Vanessa Googled it online immediately because it bothered her.
'Ich mag Dich'. It turned out that she knew what it was. She had received a souvenir, heart-shaped gingerbread during Oktoberfest from one of her American girlfriends when they visited many years ago. It felt like receiving a friendship ring from your girlfriend in high school because you are not getting one from your boyfriend anytime soon. A second prize.
"I saw her many years ago together with Daniel," Vanessa typed. This was the first time his name slipped out. It was only natural to write his name. Arnold and Daniel were housemates for the entire year of the exchange program. Arnold knew all about Vanessa and Daniel. "What about Marcel?" Her fingers added immediately somehow. Not letting herself nor Arnold linger on the mention of Daniel.
"Marcel and his wife got a divorce," Arnold replied.
"Gosh, really? They have kids together, don't they?" Vanessa typed those useless words on the chat and wondered when the Linkedin God would close her account for wasting people's time with non-work-related chitchats.
"Yes, three."
Vanessa was suddenly hit by a wave of sadness. She was there, with Daniel, at their wedding. That was the reason why she was in Germany, to attend their wedding. Vanessa recalled writing a poem for them as a gift.
Immediately she fired up Chrome and went into her Gmail. It wasn't even hard. She only typed the name Marcel on the search bar and the autocomplete suggestion came up with the sender Marcel-Maria-Hochzeit-dot-gmail-dot-com. 'Hockzeit' meant wedding. And Maria was the name of his wife. She was also Patel's best friend from uni. They all went to the same place. Marcel was from Germany and Maria was from Malaysia. They used to hang out together all the time.
Vanessa clicked on the suggestion and opened up the wedding invitation from Marcel and Maria. It had all the typical things one would expect. Attached were two photographs. One was a photograph of a Smart-For-Two (a car), something they wanted everyone to help purchase. The other was a wedding picture of them in Malaysian traditional style clothing. They had a family celebration in Malaysia with Maria's side of the family. It was a grand affair as were most wedding celebrations in the Southeast Asian culture. They looked so happy in the photo, with Marcel gently hugging Maria on the waist from behind. Below the bottom of the picture showed a date, May, and the location, Altenreit, Germany.
Vanessa felt like a part of her brain must have gone to mush in the past fifteen years because of all the hormones raging through her body from the various stages of womanhood she experienced which she would rather not think about anymore. She had somehow no recollection of having ever heard of this place. But it was not all her. This place looked so remote that even Google asked if she meant Altenheim Germany, Alternate Germany, or Altensteig Germany, instead.
She clicked into this vast pale blue area on the Google Map window to enlarge it, but was greeted with nothing but more pale blue area of nothingness. On zooming out, she found out that it was in the middle of a forest. The closest big city was Munich, 192 kilometers away.
Scanning the invitation once more, she found the word 'castle' on it. Vanessa could imagine the excitement she felt when she received the invitation, not only to attend a wedding in a foreign country, but also one that was held inside a castle. She remembered snapshots of it. A video of her sitting in a dim hall smiling at the bride and groom who were giving a thank you speech came to her. She did not feel the warm presence of Daniel next to her in this memory, but he must have been there. She wouldn't dream of going there without him. He must have driven her there and sat next to her, but doing what to each other? Were they ignoring each other while maintaining a façade of polite tolerance for appearance's sake?
The wedding was held the year after graduation.
What had happened by then?
Some couples collect the fruit of their labor, a marriage, crystalized by their affection for each other that transcend cultures and geographies. Some couples transcended geographies and cultures but lost their affection for each other.
Vanessa tried to remember if she felt any relief at that wedding, or only lamentations. She couldn't remember.
Just like cops bringing suspects back to crime scenes to jolt their memories, she wanted to bring herself there, to Altenreit, a place that almost did not exist, that commemorated marriages and relationships that turned into phantoms, to see what was really there. If there ever was true love, there would be signs of it surely?
Vanessa laughed at the crazy idea of dropping everything and going to Germany and filed it away.
"How's Daniel?" she asked eventually.
"I thought you would know more than me," Arnold said. "I haven't seen him in years. The last time I met him was in Münster."
Münster, that's where I will go, not Altenreit, Vanessa decided.
