Go, Went, Gone

The next evening Richard searches Google for the keywords “Ethiopian” and “language teacher” (160) and feels ridiculous for doing so. The next day Osarobo comes to play the piano again. Richard teaches him a simple bass line. After he practices for a while, Richards shows him some videos of different pianists playing, “watching and listening as these three musicians use the black and white keys to tell stories that have nothing at all to do with the keys’ colors” (161). Osarobo leaves after three hours. When he is alone, Richard orders two tickets for the Christmas Oratorio, which will be performed in the Cathedral. 

The next day Richard learns that the chickenpox epidemic has ended. The men will be moved to Spandau the day after tomorrow. At home, Richard walks around the lake, which takes over two hours: “Maybe a circular walk could hold something together” (162). That evening he speaks with Sylvia on the phone and she suggests that maybe Spandau will turn out to be a better place for the refugees. He speaks with Detlef as well, and they arrange to get together to play cards soon. 

At the home, Richard tells Zair that he does not have children and Zair feels sorry for him: “Richard can tell by looking that he doesn’t understand how someone could voluntarily decide to die all alone” (164). Ithemba, Rashid, and Zair feed Richard and he feels sentimental and grateful.

In the news, Richard hears more reports of capsizing boats and drowning refugees. Osarobo told him at one point that he had seen them drown, and Richard had not known whether he was referring to the images on the news or things he had seen in person, but either way, “in these drowning figures he recognized himself, his friends, and those who’d sat beside him” (167).

Before driving to Spandau a couple of mornings later, Richard places fir branches on his parents’ graves, a yearly tradition that he always observes the Sunday before Advent. He knows that owning a cemetery plot is a luxury and thinks of the dead his refugee friends had seen:

For much of his life, he’s hoped in a tiny back corner of his soul that people from Africa mourn their dead less. Now, this back corner of his soul is occupied instead by shame: shame that for most of his lifetime he’s taken the easy way out (169). 

Richard helps the men prepare for their interviews upon which their acceptance into Germany will be contingent. They eat dinner together often and rehearse their histories, their goals, and their German language skills. 

The temperature goes below freezing for the first time that fall. Awad tells Richard he is happy to be indoors. The previous winter their tents at Oranienplatz collapsed under the weight of the snow. Osarobo continues to visit and practice the piano.

Most of the men are waiting to be interviewed or waiting to hear the results of their interview from the Foreigners Office. To Richard, “[t]ime feels different” (172). A siren begins to blare while he is talking with some of the men. It goes on for a while and Richard begins to wonder if there is legitimate cause for alarm. A refugee named Yaya runs out of the building. Staff members are yelling at him because he cut the wire to end the alarm. 

Richard goes to the Spandau residence with the tickets for the Christmas Oratorio, but Osarobo is in Italy renewing his papers. He worries that the young man might be gone for good. He has bought a roll-up piano keyboard for him with the thought that Osarobo could play it in the street. Now he is ashamed of his thought and wondered if he ever believed that the men would be able to stay in Germany: “Has he now truly relinquished all hope?” (175). 

Richard sees the status updates that some of the men post with their smartphones. They write of missing friends, or of missing their homes. They reassure each other online. Sometimes they try to help each other find lost family members on Facebook. Richard asks Apollo how he can afford a phone: “I don’t have a family. I don’t have anyone to send money to” (176). He notices how little Apollo eats. When Ithemba invites Richard to lunch, he serves him huge portions. Apollo says that too much food makes a man spoiled: “You can never know what is coming. It’s possible that you’ll have to go hungry again or that you’ll have nothing to drink, and you have to be able to endure that” (176).

Richard thinks of fairy tales and of how many of them have German origins: “Not so long ago, Richard thinks, the story of going abroad to find one’s fortune was a German one” (179). 

Richard wonders why each of the men needs their own transit pass, since they have no money to visit attractions. The men tell him that they often call their friends—who were sent to two other housing locations—and arrange visits, using their transit passes. Sometimes they visit Oranienplatz together and talk. There is still an information tent there from the days of their occupation, and it has been burned by xenophobic protestors three times but is always put back up.

Two days before Christmas Richard reads in the paper that, when the new year begins, men who belong in Magdeburg—a refugee shelter that is barely better than a slum—or in some Bavarian mountain village, will be sent back there. Because they arrived in Germany through Italy, the law will tell them that Italy is the only place where they can work, and they will be sent there, despite knowing that there is no work for them in Italy: “Today for dinner the law will devour hand, knee, nose, mouth, feet, eyes, brain, ribs, heart, or teeth. Some part of other” (184). 

Richard describes what each of his friends and acquaintances will be doing on Christmas Eve and Christmas, and then realizes that he is the only one in his circle who will be alone. He puts up a Christmas tree and decorates with a nativity. He calls Rashid and they arrange something on the phone, but Richard does not explain what it is to the reader yet. He goes to the market and buys goose legs because there are no full geese left to purchase. He remembers his wife setting up the figurines of the nativity. She always did it because her hands were more skillful, and he was always bumping and dropping them.