The Wrong Side of the Crossing

The border checkpoint at Halmstad closed at midnight. I arrived at ten past. The guard was still there, which meant the checkpoint was technically open, which meant I was technically not too late. The guard looked at my passport the way guards do - not reading it, weighing it. He turned to the photo page. Then to me. Then to the photo page.

I'd been driving since Karlstad. Six hours of pine forest and one wrong turn at a roundabout that put me on the E6 north instead of south. The correction cost me forty minutes. The GPS recalculated. I did not.

The guard said something in Swedish. I said, "English?" He said, "Purpose of visit." I said, "Personal." He said, "What personal." I said, "My father crossed here in 1989. I'm trying to cross the same way."

He looked at me. I'd like to say he looked at me with understanding. He looked at me the way you look at someone who's just said something true that doesn't answer the question.

"My father crossed at this checkpoint in December 1989. He had no passport. He had a bag of clothes and a letter from his sister in Malmö. The guards let him through. I have a passport. I have no letter. I'm trying to cross the same way."

The guard put the passport on the counter. He didn't stamp it. He said, "The checkpoint is closed."

"I know. You're still here."

"I'm closing."

"You haven't closed."

He looked at the passport on the counter. He looked at the booth behind him - the lamp, the logbook, the rubber stamp that says HALMSTAD in a way that makes the town sound permanent. He looked at the road behind me - empty, dark, pines on both sides, the kind of road that looks like it leads somewhere but actually leads to more pines.

"You can't cross the same way," he said. "Your father crossed with nothing. You have a passport. You have a car. You have a GPS. You can cross any way you want."

"I know. That's the problem."

He didn't understand that. I didn't expect him to. I didn't understand it myself until I said it. The problem isn't the crossing. The problem is that the crossing is easy now. My father crawled through a tunnel with a bag of clothes and a letter, and the tunnel was the fracture - the point where one life ended and another started, and the crossing cost him everything. I can drive through the same checkpoint in a rented Volvo with a passport and a GPS and the crossing costs nothing. The cost being nothing. That's the problem. The fracture that costs nothing doesn't fracture. It opens.

No - it's not a door. A door has a frame. This has a booth and a barrier and a guard who wants to go home. The guard is not my father's guard. The barrier is not my father's tunnel. The checkpoint is not the checkpoint. They moved the building in 2003. The road is the same but the building is new and the barrier is aluminum and the lamp is LED. The tunnel my father crawled through is a museum now. You can visit it for sixty kronor. There's a plaque.

I said, "Can I turn around here?"

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Is there a place to turn around?"

He pointed behind me. The dark road. The pines.

I turned the car around in the checkpoint's car park. Three-point turn. The headlights swept the booth as I turned and the guard was already writing in his logbook. He didn't look up. The barrier was still down. He hadn't raised it. I hadn't asked him to.

Driving south, the pines were the same pines. The road was the same road. The GPS said I'd be in Helsingborg in two hours and fourteen minutes. The GPS knew where I was going. I didn't. I was going south because south was the direction the car was facing. My father went south in 1989 because south was where Malmö was. South was where the letter said to go. South was where his sister was. I don't have a sister in Malmö. I don't have a letter. I have a passport and a GPS and a rented Volvo and no reason to be at a closed checkpoint at ten past midnight in December.

Actually I have one reason. My father crossed here. He crawled through a tunnel and arrived in a country that let him stay. He died in that country, in a house in Malmö, in a bed by a window that faced south. The window faced the direction he came from. I always thought that was an accident. The house faced south because south got the light. But maybe he chose the room. Maybe he chose the bed. Maybe he wanted to face the direction he came from so he'd never forget which direction the crossing was.

I'm driving south. The pines are the same pines. The road is the same road. I'm crossing the same border in the same direction in the same car - no. Not the same car. Not the same road. Not the same border. The same direction. South. The direction is the only thing that's the same.

The GPS says: turn right in four hundred metres. I turn right. The road is smaller. The pines are closer. The headlights reach less far. The GPS says: continue for twelve kilometres. I continue. The GPS says nothing for twelve kilometres. The silence is the kind of silence that means the GPS doesn't know where I am either.

Actually it knows. It just doesn't have anything to say. The road ends at a farm. The farm has a light on. The light is warm. The light is the first warm thing I've seen since Karlstad. I stop the car. I don't get out. The light is in a window. The window faces south.

The window faces the same direction my father's window faced. South. The direction you face when you want to remember where you came from. Or the direction you face when you want to forget. I don't know which. My father never said. He said the tunnel was dark and the letter was warm and his sister opened the door. He didn't say which direction the window faced. I found that out myself, standing in his room after he died, looking at the window, looking south, looking at the direction he'd been looking for thirty years.

The farm light goes off. Someone is sleeping. Someone who doesn't know I'm in their car park at one in the morning, looking at their window. I turn the car around. Three-point turn. The headlights sweep the farm.

I drive back to the E6. The GPS recalculates. I drive south. The GPS says: Helsingborg, one hour and forty-three minutes. I drive. The pines are the same pines. The road is the same road. The direction is the same direction. The crossing is not the same crossing. The crossing was never the same crossing. The crossing changes when you cross it. That's what my father knew. That's what the guard didn't know. That's what the GPS can't know because the GPS only knows where you are, not where you've been.

I cross the border at Helsingborg. There's no checkpoint. There's no barrier. There's a sign that says WELCOME TO DENMARK and a bridge and a toll booth. I pay the toll. The toll costs. The toll fractures. Actually the toll just takes money, which is nothing, which is the problem.

My father's fracture was a tunnel. Mine is a toll booth. The fracture got smaller. The crossing got easier. The cost got nothing. And I'm driving south over a bridge in a rented Volvo at two in the morning, and the sea is below me, and the sea is the same sea, and the direction is the same direction, and I am my father's son, and I am not my father, and the crossing is not the crossing.

Actually it is. It opens where I stand.