Title.

Gazing Upon the Danube

Peter Saloom 


“Do you wish to roam farther and farther? See! The good lies so near. Only learn to seize good fortune, for good fortune’s always here.”

                                 -Goethe

      Every night at half past six when the weather is fair and his work is finished, Herr Bachmeier arrives at the Schwedenplatz Station carried along in a clean aluminum subway car. As the door slides open and people rush out onto the underground platform, he thinks, 'this is my life.' And every night he steps out of the train car and onto the dark grey cement, shuffles along with the throngs of evening commuters, and glides up the escalator to where it dumps the busy people out onto Franz-Josefs-Kai. North along this road he walks, with the river to his right and the city that has been his home all his life to the left. Below the iron railing that lines the river, he can see the early activities of the homeless who camp along the cement embankment of the Danube. He thinks, 'They are coming home just as I am,' and he walks, with his hands in the pockets of his royal blue coveralls further north along Franz-Josefs-Kai. Here and there amongst the crowds he can see the matching blue uniforms worn by the laborers of Vienna. They wear the same clothes as he does, but to himself he thinks, 'They are not like me.'

      At the next corner, Herr Bachmeier turns right on to the bridge of Lilienbrunngasse and walks along the cement sidewalk over the slow moving river. Cars and busses crowd the thin, one-way bridge as they shuttle the Viennese to their homes across the river, taxis and trucks, Mercedes and Peugots. Halfway across the bridge, Herr Bachmeier stops and leans his elbows on the metal railing overlooking the river.  From where he stands he can see south along the Danube. He can see the bridge at Taborstrasse; he can see the few small boats that dock along the river and host scenic cruises for tourists. From inside his coveralls Herr Bachmeier pulls out a cigar and removes it from the cellophane wrapping. Just like every night, he pinches off the end of the cigar with his front teeth and lights up with a pair of matches. He spits the bit of tobacco on his tongue down over the railing and flicks the extinguished matches after them thinking, 'Where do all my matches go?' The smooth, still cool smoke of a new cigar takes his mind from the day's work and the hustle and bustle around him. For a moment it seems to Herr Bachmeier that it is only he and the river, the Danube, in open dialogue.

      'And I know where my matches go,' he thinks to himself. 'You take them away to all the places you flow through. Funny to think the matches I light my evening cigar with should see more of the world than I, a man. Oh when I was young,' he says silently to the river, 'I had dreams of criss-crossing this world and leaving my mark here and there, finding adventure, stories, and women.' He chuckles the smoke into staccato clouds about his head. 

      He exhales the smoke of the burning Dominican wrapper and tastes the tropical soil of a place he will never see. As the smoke dances along his senses he feels the longing for a place so far from Vienna. He loses sight of the floating matches and bids them a safe trip south. 'Next stop Bratislava,' he thinks, 'then Budapest, Belgrade and the Black Sea. Oh Danube, you’ve seen so much more of this earth than I ever will.  Tell me, where have you been? Where are you going to? Oh of course, I already know.'

      Herr Bachmeier stands on the Lilienbrunngasse Bridge and stares down into the dark evening water of the Danube. The sunset reflects a fiery orange and lavender light from the water as the smoke from his cigar takes to the breeze and vanishes. It’s in the evening at this time that Herr Bachmeier seems to be most at peace. Locked in the hypnotic movement of the river he forgets the life of toil and labor he has led. He forgets the hardship that his family, who he loves dearly, has had to endure at times when money was short or work was hard to find. Here, he lets his mind wander along the curving path of the Danube River. He traces it in his mind, where it begins in the Black Forest of Germany, south through villages and cities. He imagines it as it would flow through Linz and beside the towering walls of the monastery at Melk or Klosterneuburg.  The water passing under his feet means something more to him than most would attribute to a river. 'What is this river to me?' he asks himself. 'Is it a thing of beauty? Yes to be sure, but that’s not why I come each night and stand on this bridge.'

      Often, Herr Bachmeier thinks back to his younger days when as a twenty-something many of his fellow schoolmates and childhood friends were making plans for their lives. He recalls the trips they made around Europe, places like London, Paris, Berlin. They came home with suits on and stories about the prominent French architect with the beautiful daughter who had brought him into the family business, or the industrious American that had recruited him to help build his empire in steel. They spoke of the exotic places that Herr Bachmeier had only seen in post cards or the windows of travel agencies.  And he thought to himself, 'I should certainly travel about, but how am I to do so? I am married already with a child on the way. I work six days a week to afford the rent and food we need. I save but little and that only for emergencies. Certainly I couldn’t leave my young wife and baby at home. These men are still young boys with no responsibility. Oh how I am jealous when they return with there stories. One of my boyhood friends, a man named Claus, came back from Paris with a story of how he kissed a beautiful young woman all dressed in silk and furs, a mile in the sky atop the Eiffel Tower. A mile high! I laughed at him and said surely it was no higher than the steeple of St. Stephans. He chuckled and told me that Stephansdom could not hold up one leg of the Eiffel Tower. To think, the tallest steeple in Europe not tall enough to be a leg!'

      Herr Bachmeier remembered the way everyone looked at Claus and all the rest who came home from abroad with admiration. They were romantic heroes, he thought, he could see the confidence in their stride. And on this evening, instead of reaching the peace he was accustomed to through his communion with the Danube, he was disturbed by the thought that his whole life had not amounted to anything more than the millions and millions of commoners who had come before him and would come after. This contemplation left Herr Bachmeier with a shiver as he exhaled the smoke from his cigar. Even the smoke seemed to poke at his insecurities as it freely took to the wind, twirled and left his stationary life behind. He thought, 'What have I ever made of myself but a slave to wages and work? What stories have I to tell?'

      And looking down over the slow moving Danube, just as every night before, with his elbows leaning on the steel railing, he thought, 'River, why do I come to you?' And as though in response, the thought began to dawn on him that perhaps he does not come to the Danube each evening. Rather, it is possible the Danube comes to him. 'Yes,' he thought, 'it is always coming here, to Vienna for me.' And in this new understanding of his, he saw the river for the first time in his life as similar to himself. Herr Bachmeier stood on the Lilienbrunngasse Bridge and began to realize that this river was a laborer just as he was, that each day tirelessly it flowed its course, it stayed within its confining banks. It moved as it was instructed to by the universe, it was common, it toiled, and it was still free. He thought, 'I move like a droplet of water in a river of common men that flows across each peopled continent of the world. And as one I am small but in the grand scope I am a mighty river of progress.' He thought, 'My story is the story of the world. I am needed and depended on just like you, river. My life flows like your waters along a chosen path, a noble path, a path I can be proud of until the day I empty into the black sea.'

      That evening Herr Bachmeier exhaled the last of his cigar and tasted not the rich tropical soil of an unreachable continent but the tangible culmination of the labor of someone just like him. He dropped the stub of the cigar into a river not singular in its flow but amalgamated from the countless drops of water that made it great. He drove his hands into the royal blue pockets of his coveralls, the uniform that declared him a drop in the bucket he was now happy to fall into. Herr Bachmeier turned to go and thought, 'Danube, I am a worker just like you.' Night flowed in over Vienna as the current of time brought the day to its inevitable close.