Come to see me in the After Life!

The 'Note Affair' from three perspectives 

The girl in 1977 

(DE) When she woke up alone in a strange bed on that June morning in 1977, she was delighted with how the situation between her and the object of her desire had developed. 

The young man who owned this bed, indeed the entire stuffy, shabbily furnished student flat, was no longer there, but that didn't matter. They had spent the night together, which was the only thing that mattered. 

For months, she had had her eyes on this broad-shouldered, good-looking senior student who, when you met him in seminar rooms, in the university cafeteria or the library, seemed extremely aloof, almost disinterested in university life and even in pretty female students. 

He had also never appeared at the communal flats or various political organisations and circles where she moved. She had to grudgingly realise that he didn't frequent the local pubs she and her circle of friends visited. As there were many student pubs in Regensburg at the time, a targeted search was a hopeless endeavour. 

However, she was relieved to realise right at the beginning of her passion for this lonesome wolf that he was studying German and politics like her. That way, she could ensure they ran into each other more often. Her effect on men would do the rest; she was sure of that. 

Well, she was also in desperate need of some excitement this term, as she spent several hours a day on an intensive Latin course to take the Latin exam, a prerequisite for studying history and German in Bavaria. It wasn't much fun. She needed distraction. 

But he was more than just a distraction; he was a challenge. He was a man she didn't understand. She couldn't see or feel where he came from, what he stood for and where he wanted to go. All her friends and the flatmates in the communes had ideas of a more unrestrained way of life. They boasted about their life tasks and ideals, were curious about new experiences, were keen to experiment, and shunned conformity and stuffiness like the devil shuns holy water. 

She found none of this in him. Only in a few moments did she sense that he was also searching but very reserved, almost inhibited and seemed highly suspicious of any emphatic or idealistic behaviour. His sarcasm was unusual and sobering for her but also challenging. 

So, she had ended up in bed with him and didn't want to give up now. On the contrary, she felt she was entitled to a romance after all her efforts. She liked him and wanted to turn his indecision into determination. 

It was, therefore, strategically better not to wait in bed for him to return from his student job as a postman but to disappear, make herself scarce while at the same time not leaving another date to chance. 

So she left him a note: 'If you want to see me again, come to the afterlife".

The father, in 1977 

On the way to his son's student room on the southern outskirts of Regensburg, he racked his brains as to what to do next with his son. His youngest offspring had just passed his master's degree in political science with a minor in German studies and was now an academic. A success! But not yet a career. Even better than a simple academic would be a civil servant academic; perhaps even with a doctorate, his son would be the family's first and only one. 

After the war, he and his wife Maria moved from a small village in the middle of the Bavarian Forest further and further towards the city until they finally settled in Landshut in a lovely owner-occupied flat. 

Although they came from simple, almost poor rural backgrounds, they had built up a very decent middle-class life. He was able to prove himself as a policeman and became a detective. 

The fact that his son could now achieve a much higher social status and would undoubtedly do so in the future filled him with great satisfaction and pride. 

Today, he wanted to talk to his son about these ideas for the future. He would tell him how a degree in politics and German studies could lead to a respected, secure and well-paid job. If he needed anything else, he and his wife would support him. But the boy had to do something now, something meaningful, something profound, something proper, something practical! He wanted to make that clear to him. 

However, when he entered the attic room his son rented as a lodger, it was empty. The bed hadn't been made, and nobody had tidied up either. 

Good thing Maria couldn't see that! She would immediately roll up her sleeves and tidy up, complaining and grumbling, casting an extremely interested eye over this and that detail. He grinned.  

Well, he thought to himself, he might as well rummage around a bit while he had the chance. Then he wouldn't have come for nothing. Perhaps he would find clues about his son's future plans. As a criminal investigator, you were blessed with a particular gift for deduction! 

And then a handwritten note fell into his hands: 'If you want to see me again, come to the afterlife'.

Oh my goodness! Some foolish woman wanted to seduce his son into committing suicide together!  

As a "Woidler" (a forest man), as the stoic men of the Bavarian Forest are called in Bavaria, he was well aware of melancholy. It was a natural, but not significant, part of the general state of mind in the Bavarian Forest. At any rate, nobody really wanted to kill themselves, no matter how hard fate struck. 

He had also heard much about the wild and crazy student life in the big cities. The things these female students had on their minds! Even suicide! As a criminal investigator, he had already come across suicides. But his son and a madwoman like that? 

At the next opportunity, he would feel his son's tail and find out who he was hanging around with. With such indirect eavesdropping, which he had mastered quite well professionally, he would find out whether his son needed to be warned about this suicidal woman. He could get into hot water if she really did kill herself. 

The son in the year 2024 

Yes, what must he have thought, my poor father, when he read that: 'If you want to see me again, come to the afterlife'. 

He had just appeared as a witness in a Regensburg court. This was a regular duty for the investigating detective. He had become accustomed to appearing before judges and public prosecutors. I never noticed him getting into the car nervously in the morning on such days. However, the defendants' lawyers sometimes seemed to have him in a tight spot because, as I know from occasional comments, he was not on good terms with them.

Ticked off. Such trips to court were always a bit of a holiday. Away from the smoke-filled offices where the interrogation protocols were hacked into the typewriters non-stop. Away from the creaking corridors and the repurposed high stucco rooms in the old Landshut mansion, where several dozen men and a few female detectives competed fiercely. After the court appearance, there was always a little time to take a deep breath and stroll around. A snack break in a pub on the way home; a short visit to one of the two brothers in Regensburg, still with the hard, chiselled seriousness that a court appearance leaves behind.

Today, for once, there was even more time. He had never visited his son's student accommodation in the previous five or six years. He never bothered his son in the university town, which was only an hour away, because his son knew what he was doing. And how right he was. Recently, the family hopeful had scored top marks in his exams. So what could be more natural than to surprise him at his home today, to the delight of them both? After all, the years of hard academic work had borne fruit. All their hopes had been fulfilled. Their son's future life would feel like a perfectly polished slide. 

I still don't know how he knew which of the many student accommodations in Regensburg he would find me in. I had moved out of my shared flat a few months earlier because of my exams. There were too many binges, too much youthful surrogate family, and too little stamina and discipline, which I only painstakingly painted on the wall at the weekends with my parents.

Nor do I know how he managed to enter the room. Was the door unlocked? Had he won over the young woman living on the ground floor as an accomplice? Had he perhaps even held the police badge, which he was wearing on a chain in his trouser pocket, under her nose? In any case, I can rule out the possibility that he had to search long before the ominous piece of paper with the ticket to the afterlife fell into his hand. After the exams, I radically got rid of books, folders, papers and other study stuff. Only the shifts at the Regensburg post office had to be survived. Anything written, though, reliably put me into a deep sleep.

From today's perspective, I would like to help my father understand what he read. It's just a stupid misunderstanding, Dad. This isn't the afterlife you're thinking of. It's just a student pub. I'm glad you're here. Quite surprising, I wasn't expecting it. But now let's do something great together, which we have never done. Man, I'm exhausted from the night shift. 

Instead, he stands alone in the untidy room. The dishevelled bed sends no message; if it does, it's not a good one. Nothing else in this absurdly empty place is cosy, beautiful or inspires confidence. But above all, I'm not there and can't resolve the misunderstanding. I can't make him think more pleasant thoughts.

Only in my imagination do I see the film of how the day ends for him. Maybe he won't stay long in this room where the air is suddenly stale. Perhaps he no longer has an eye for the sympathetic woman downstairs who has unlocked the door for him and whom he now walks past like a zombie. I can't imagine that he laughed at himself and the tricky note on the journey back to Landshut. The man had seen too many actual suicides, probably of young, desperate people, in his police career. And he never laughed anyway; at best, he smiled.

But I still marvel to this day at the composure with which he brought the matter to an end that day. He didn't raise hell to save his son from danger, as I would almost certainly have done in the same situation. As a policeman, he would have known where to press the alarm buttons in such cases. He drove home, and the day turned out differently than he had imagined. Perhaps he would turn up at the nicotine-infested police villa that afternoon and plunge into the protocols for the next real suicide.

He probably spoke to my mum that evening about the scribbled message, and she reassured him. There is no real imminent danger. Who knows what they write to each other? Why did you visit him if you didn't even know he was there? It's your own fault. It's quite possible that this familiar marital speech helped him to re-calibrate. His worries about his son, to whom he was so close, probably subsided after this lecture. No one could harm his offspring, not even someone who left such odd messages in a shabby flat.  

However, I realised a few weeks later that he wasn't indifferent to the note affair. And now my memories are, admittedly, quite hazy. I know that he took me aside on one occasion, probably at the weekend at my parents' house, and warned me about the author of the note. I know he gave the warning quietly but firmly. I remember first being taken aback and then laughing with relief when I told him the amazingly simple solution to the riddle.

And to my shame, there is also the memory of the secret joy that flashed through my mind for seconds. It serves you right; why are you rummaging around in my room and reading messages that are none of your business? Because today, and I know this for a fact, I would like to comfort him, greet him laughing at the door, throw the note in the corner and keep him from going home for as long as possible. (SAGT.)