He could not keep his eyes closed. The eyelids were shaking and tiring themselves out. He opened his eyes again and saw that the praying mantis has moved up a few inches. He could see that there was this giant insect of some sort a few more inches further, in the striking distance of the slightly larger mantis. The stalking has been happening the entire night, presumably. From this mattress on the cold floor he could sense the tension.
But the tension wasn't just from the sloth drama on the medieval windowsill. He wanted to sit up, stand up and shout.
"Did you hear that Korean guy complaining? So funny. They didn't have a bed for him and he was crying to that chick from Hamburg. She's a hottie."
How was it that he understood them? Two German guys talking to each other on their comfortable bunk beds while he was down here on his mattress. He was in disbelief when he understood them. His two years of college German was for this moment, the moment of humiliation. As much as he loved languages, it was the first time he wished he hadn't taken German.
But it might not have mattered. He might have guessed what they were saying just by the snickering tone of their words. Just as he was very paranoid about those two guys, one being bald, in the S-Bahn. They had followed him into the car. They seemed not to be paying attention to him, but he didn't care; he was too busy being invisible. It was hard to be invisible when you're carrying a huge backpack that was twisting your body and you look different from everyone, even the many Turks in this country. He nearly ran out of the car when the door opened to his station, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he realized those two possible skinheads weren't following him.
When he emerged from the S-Bahn station, he was engulfed with darkness and cold rain. He was frustrated. He was nervous. He was scared. The map in his guidebook was hardly useful without much light. Danger was still lurking.
A castle. It must have stood out like a sore thumb in this quiet residential neighborhood. He shouldn't even need a map. But he gave up and spent another funny coin on calling the hostel. They told him how to get there, but the voice of a human being in this darkness was enough of a reassurance. They were not closing yet.
"Yeah, they messed things up. They put too many people in that room and there was no other free bed."
He said all this in heavily accented German. The pretty girl from Hamburg was listening attentively to him. Her attention nearly brought him to tears. She bought him a coke because the last of his funny German coin was used in that last phone call. He couldn't remember if he had thanked her; he was both exhausted by fear and shocked by her generosity. He didn't remember seeing his snickering roommates walk past, but they must have to know what they had talked about. He must have looked like a pathetic little Asian man next to a tall, tanned, blond young woman. He thought so, and his heart throbbed even louder, his anger and shame deepened.
But the shame had already been there. The disappointment. The helplessness. That last phone call wasn't the one made outside, but made after he had arrived. He was feeling extremely lonely when they told him he could only sleep in a mattress. Why him? Why do these things always happen to him? It didn't seem right. And in the throbbing anger of his stupor on this cold bed, he realized he should have complained, staked his claim on his rights, whatever they were. But Asian people never complain. He felt his anger about to burst out through the millions of pores of his skin. He opened his eyes again and saw his left hand forming a tight ball, a nasty grip, over a section of the thin bed sheet they had given him.
"I am not coming to join you."
That was all she said. They had broken up, just before he had arrived in Cologne. There wasn't anything surprising about this. They were supposed to meet in Cologne and resume their trip after she got sick in Zurich and sent him off.
"I am so stupid. She sent me off because she didn't want to be with me."
He felt the chill of the outside reborn within the cavity of his fleshy body. It was June and this country had the chilliest reception yet. He hung up the phone, his last two D-mark used up on this futile and blistering long distance phone call. But he felt fortunate to find a listening ear that could tolerate his broken German.
And yet, now, it all seemed undone. The snickering sound of those two Germans still rung loudly in his heart even though the only sound around, outside his fleshy body, was the tapering rain. The rejection, the confusion in the cold darkness, the mockery. Oh, the mockery. How could they call him a Korean?
He thought about that Hamburg girl with the small blue eyes and long blond hair and super fine skin. He felt even smaller, his pride shrink and pulled everything that was his identity into a small mass. He pulled the sleeping bag up his neck a bit more; the chill, be it from the inside or out, was tormenting him. He looked up and watched for fifteen minutes the slow movement of the mantis going up the nearly immobile insect. After the prey was crushed under the raptorial legs of the predator. After that he felt his left hand letting go of the piece of cloth, and he was lost in thoughts while his emotions subsided. The night finally had entered his exhausted body.
