The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [86]
A worn postcard on my wall shows golden Winged Victory against a dark background. Inside the Louvre, day turns to night, the crowd empties out, the security systems are activated, and all is still. She stands there, Nike, the goddess who symbolizes the precise moment when victory was granted by the gods to the ancient Greeks…and to me.
Erin Byrne writes articles and essays that dive deeper into travel, cultural, and political themes. Her essays have won numerous awards, including Gold Solas Awards and the Grand Prize at Book Passage Travel, Food and Photography Conference. Erin’s work has appeared in Everywhere magazine, World Hum, The Literary Traveler, Brave New Traveler, and a variety of other publications. She is currently working on a collection of essays about Paris. A complete list of awards and links to Erin’s work can be found at www.e-byrne.com.
PETER WORTSMAN
Protected
A dinner table conversation in Berlin reveals more than the author expected.
IT WAS MY LAST NIGHT IN THE LAVISH VILLA ON THE LAKE in Berlin-Wannsee where I had holed up for the winter.1 A noted Indian economist was scheduled to lecture on the underlying causes of the global financial crisis and its effects on the developing world. Call me an escapist, but I was not inclined to listen to the sad statistics. The world’s affairs would muddle on without me, I thought, intending to grab a quick bite and slip off unnoticed to attend to my packing.
Such dinners were always a festive affair, the guest list sprinkled with Berlin society. My tablemate to the left, the wife of the German theologian seated beside the Indian economist, was a tall, stately woman of late middle age with prominent cheekbones, Prussian blue eyes, and tightly braided, blond hair, who wore her years like a string of pearls. Straight-backed, head held high, as if she were not seated at table, but rather astride a saddle, ears pricked for the sound of a hunting horn, she had what in former times would have been called an aristocratic bearing.
Socially maladroit and constitutionally incapable of making small talk, a tendency further aggravated by chronic insomnia, I either clam up on such occasions or put my foot in my mouth.
Prodding myself to say something before taking up knife and fork to dispatch the appetizer, two luscious-looking, seared sea scallops on a bed of wilted seaweed, I wished her, “Bon appétit!”
“Gesegnete Mahlzeit! (Blessed meal),” she replied.
“Bless the chef!” I countered, immediately regretting the flippancy of my ill-considered response. “Please forgive me, but I’m not a believer.”
She smiled to make clear that she took no offense. “Religion is a personal matter. My faith,” she affirmed, “makes me feel beschützt (protected).”
A striking choice of words, I thought, while savoring the flavor and firmness of the first scallop. “I myself altogether lack the foundation of faith,” I confessed. “Given my family history, feeling protected is simply not in the cards.”
She seemed concerned, sympathetic, as though suddenly fathoming that I was missing a middle finger.
“I’m the child of refugees,” I said to set the record straight.
“Oh?”
I might have changed the subject but I chose not to. With me it’s a compulsion, a need to lay my cards on the table.
“My father’s departure from his native Vienna was…” I searched for the appropriate adjective, “precipitous.”
“Precipitous?”
“Involuntary,” I clarified.
“I see.”
Decorum should have compelled me to change the subject. But impatiently lapping up the second scallop whole, my tongue rattled on.
“Huddled, to hide his prominent