Where Johannes Brahms Was Born

Joel pauses on the little terrace before Hanne's front door. She'll certainly shoot him a look with those large eyes of hers when he waltzes in at 11 in the morning, even if it is Pascal, her wild 14-year-old, who needs the talking-to. But Hanne has been around the block. She understands what it means to search for love.

The courtyard is strewn with bottles and plastic cups from last night's Bastille Day celebrations. Buildings on either side of the courtyard are laced together by strings of colored bulbs, their light feeble in the sun. Once a third building enclosed the courtyard but it didn't survive the war and now the yard opens to the street like a window. Hanne claimed to have rented the house because of the yellow plum tree that arches over it and bears translucent, golden fruit.

"Morgen." Pascal sits naked, framed by his window, writing in a notebook, song lyrics for his band perhaps. The sill is where he used to chat with Sybille, his girlfriend from across the courtyard until she dumped him the week before. One leg shields from view what is not meant to be seen, but only just, an arrangement of discretion and tease executed by someone who knows people look at him. A shell hangs from a leather thong around his neck and a sliver of earring shines through thickets of hair. He is tall for his age, lithe, and dark-eyed. His position has him lit to the best advantage; sunlight burnishes his calf and dabs a shoulder. Joel imagines standing close enough to breathe in the naked Pascal as he might a handsome stranger waking beside him. Pascal's knowing smile reads Joel's mind. "Congratulations. You're the first schwul American I've met," he had said after Joel moved in. He let Joel know that he'd had erotic encounters with male friends, even if he is drawn to women "at the moment." It is hard imagining a kid his age in Dubuque speaking with such poise, and Pascal clearly enjoys playing the enlightened northern European. He returns to his writing, allowing Joel—and Sybille—to observe him so engaged. He'll be the first thing she sees when she looks out of her window, part of Pascal's plan to get her back, Joel supposes.

Joel feels like a native with a paper bag of Brötchen from the local bakery, ordered in German, more or less. He has been in Hamburg for a little over a year and sleeps on Hanne's couch in return for hauling cases of mineral water down to her basement cabaret, working the espresso maker and sweeping up, and he fills in if a singer needs a pianist, too. Hanne's cabaret is stuck in an anarchist/hippie-flavored time warp of the sort Joel associates with college coffeehouses. Last night Beate Schumacher sang blues with a distinctly Prussian lilt: Sommertihme, when ze living ist eassy... Hanne has asked her back in a couple of weeks. Germans love die Blues. Beate Schumacher told Joel that when she goes to New York in the fall she will head straight to Harlem and not waste time in museums. "Blacks, zey are ze real Americans," she says. "Zey have soul."

The large front room is clear of last night's debris left over from post-show carousing; so Hanne must have gotten up especially early that morning, a bad sign, because it also means that Todd hadn't stayed over. Pascal's artwork fills the living room walls and an entire corner is taken up by his drum set. A radio crackles in the kitchen. "Bonjour, mon petit." Hanne's French is left over from her time in Lyon when she still lived with Pascal's father. Her cigarette is gummed between her lips as she heaves a large cooking pot into the dish drainer. "You look half asleep, Liebling. There's coffee." Her henna-red hair is the color of the velvet used to line jewelry boxes and is pulled back, shiny as...