In Times of Fading Light (7 page)

BOOK: In Times of Fading Light
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“Well, well,” said Kurt. “But why?”

Then his face suddenly went gray.

“What is it?” asked Irina.

But Kurt just raised his hand, signing to her not to interrupt. “You don’t mean that seriously,” he said into the receiver.

Then he listened for a while, saying quietly, several times, “Yes ... yes ... yes.”

And then the conversation seemed to break off.

“Hello,” said Kurt. “Hello?”

Was it Charlotte after all? Had something happened?

Slowly, Kurt came back to the table and sat down.

“Who was that?” asked Irina.

“Sasha,” said Kurt.

“Sasha?”

Kurt nodded.

“But what is it? Where is he?”

“In Giessen,” said Kurt quietly.

Her body reacted instantly, as if something had hit it, while it took her mind quite awhile to work out what Giessen meant.

For a long time, neither of them said anything.

At last, Kurt began filling his pipe. Now and then he breathed out heavily through his nose, a sound he made when he was at a loss.

His tobacco pouch crackled.

Then the door of Nadyeshda Ivanovna’s room creaked. Slowly, very slowly, her shuffle approached the living room. Stopped. Next, through the slightly open doorway, came Nadyeshda Ivanovna’s voice, thin but penetrating, rising in its own characteristic way.

“Don’t let Sasha forget to take a jar of pickles back with him after the party.”

Kurt stood up slowly, went around the table, opened the door fully, and said, “Nadyeshda Ivanovna, Sasha isn’t coming today.”

For a moment Nadyeshda Ivanovna was nonplussed. Then she said, “Never mind, the pickles will keep.”

“Nadyeshda Ivanovna ... ,” said Kurt. He raised both hands, lowered them again, and said, “Nadyeshda Ivanovna, please sit down for a moment.”

“Had breakfast already,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna.

“Please sit down for a moment,” Kurt repeated.

Nadyeshda Ivanovna slowly shuffled around the table, perched on the edge of a chair, put the jar of pickles that she had brought in with her on the table, and clasped her sinewy, work-worn hands.

“Nadyeshda Ivanovna,” said Kurt. “It’s like this: Sasha won’t be coming here for a while.”

“Is he sick?” asked Nadyeshda Ivanovna.

“No,” said Kurt. “Sasha is in the West.”

Nadyeshda Ivanovna thought about that. “In America?”

“No,” said Kurt. “Not in America, in the West. West Germany.”

“I know,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna. “West Germany, that’s in America.”

Irina couldn’t take any more of this. “Sasha has gone,” she screamed. “Dead, you understand, he’s dead!”

“Irina,” said Kurt in German. “You can’t say a thing like that!” And he told Nadyeshda Ivanovna, in Russian, “Sasha isn’t dead. Irina means he’s gone very far away. He won’t be coming here anymore.”

“He’ll come to visit,” said Nadyeshda Ivanovna.

“No,” said Kurt. “Not even to visit. I can’t tell you any more right now.” Nadyeshda Ivanovna slowly rose, shuffled back to her room. The door creaked as she closed it.

1959

Infinite.

Achim Schliepner said you can’t count to infinity.

Dreaming of counting to infinity, Alexander lay on his little plank bed. He dreamed of being the first person ever to count to infinity. He knew how to count already. He counted and counted. Counted himself to dizzy heights, millions, trillions, trillibillions, a thousand million trillibillions ... and all of a sudden he’d arrived. He had reached infinity! Roars of applause. Now he was famous. He was standing in an open black Chaika, the legendary Soviet parade car, encrusted with huge quantities of chrome and with rear fins like rockets. The vehicle rolled slowly down the street, which was lined with people to left and right, like on the First of May, all of them holding little black, red, and gold flags and waving to him ...

Then someone hit him on the head with a book. That was Frau Remschel, the kindergarten teacher, keeping watch on the children to make sure they were all asleep. Anyone not asleep got hit on the head with a book.

Mama came to fetch him. Twilight was already gathering. Soon the man would be along to light the gas lamps.

“Mama, when are we going to see Baba Nadya?”

“Not for some time yet, Sashenka.”

“Why does everything always take so long?”

“Sashenka, you ought to be glad it takes so long. When you’re grown up everything suddenly happens very fast.”

“Why?”

“It just does. When you’re older, time goes faster.”

An amazing discovery.

Then they were at the co-op store. The co-op was about halfway home.

It was a long way to go, particularly in the morning. The way home always seemed to him shorter. He wondered whether that was because, by afternoon, he was already a little bit older.

“Do you want to come in with me?” asked Mama. “Or would you rather wait outside?”

“Come in with you,” he said.

You got milk in exchange for coupons at the co-op. The salesgirl filled your can with a big ladle. It always used to be Frau Blumert filling the milk cans. But Frau Blumert had been arrested. And he knew why: for selling milk to people without any coupons. That’s what Achim Schliepner had told him. Buying milk without coupons was strictly forbidden. So Alexander was horrified when he heard the new salesgirl saying, “Never mind, Frau Umnitzer, you can bring your coupon in tomorrow.”

His mother was still searching her purse.

“But I don’t want any milk,” said Alexander.

“What did you say?”

Horror had muted his voice. He could hardly get the words out.

“I don’t want any milk,” he repeated quietly.

His mother picked up her milk can. “You really don’t want any milk?”

They left the co-op. His legs would barely move. His mother knelt down beside him. “What’s the matter, Sashenka?”

His voice halting, he told her his fears. His mother laughed.

“Oh, Sashenka, no one’s going to arrest me!”

He began crying. His mother picked him up and kissed him.

Lapotchka,
she called him, “little paw.”

He was given a piece of honey cake at the baker’s. The sweetness of the honey mingled on his lips with his salty tears. Gradually the world went back to normal.

“But Frau Blumert was arrested,” he said.

“Oh, nonsense!” Mama rolled her eyes. “We’re not in the Soviet Union here!”

“Why?”

“Just a manner of speaking,” said Mama. “I don’t want you telling Granny that people get arrested in the Soviet Union.”

They all lived on Steinweg. Granny and Wilhelm lived downstairs.

Mama and Papa and Alexander lived upstairs.

Papa was a doctor. Not a real doctor, a doctor of typing on a typewriter. Papa was very tall and very strong and knew everything. Mama didn’t know everything. Mama didn’t even know German properly.

“So what’s the word for
kryssa
in German?”

And Mama was already out of her depth.

On the other hand, Mama had fought in the war. She’d fought the Germans.

“Did you shoot any of them dead?”

“No, Sashenka, I didn’t do any shooting. I was a paramedic, I looked after people who got hurt.”

All the same, he was full of pride. His mama had won the war. The Germans had lost it. Although oddly enough, Papa was German himself.

“Did you fight Mama?”

“No, I was already in the Soviet Union when the war began.”

“Why?”

“Because I cleared out of Germany.”

“Then what?”

“Then I chopped trees down.”

“Then what?”

“Then I met Mama.”

“Then what?”

“Then you were born.”

Born—he thought of it as something like boring a hole in the earth.

The way Granny’s lawn sprinkler did. The lawn sprinkler was a long pole with a pointed end that bored into the lawn. He wasn’t sure about the rest of it, but it was all something to do with earth.

On Sundays he got into bed with his parents. One Sunday he put a finger up his bottom and said, “Smell that!”

“Ugh!” cried his father, jumping out of bed.

An amazing discovery again—even your own shit smells bad.

Then they did morning exercises with hula hoops.

“Hoops are modern these days,” said Mama.

Mama was modern herself. Papa wasn’t so modern. He always wanted to keep his old things.

“These shoes are still all right,” he said.

But Mama said, “They’re not modern these days.”

Penetrating: the smell when Mama singed the chicken over the gas flame.

The good bit: Papa liked white meat best.

The incredible bit: to think that parents would have a midday nap of their own free will.

Later, a game of chess. Papa gave him a start by playing without his two rooks, but all the same he always won.

“Morphy could beat his father when he was six years old,” said Papa.

Well, that wasn’t so bad. Alexander was only four. He’d have to get to be five first, and after that there was still time. Plenty of time for him to beat his father at chess.

Weekdays: those were Monday to Friday. And also, as he now knew, there was First Friday and Second Friday. On Second Fridays he went to Granny’s.

Had to have a bath first. Comb his hair. And then, he’d guessed as much, Mama would bring out the scissors.

“You always have to snip at my hair when I go to see Granny.”

“Keep still, do!”

“But it tickles!”

That summed it up—the typical going-to-see-Granny feeling, well washed, in his bathrobe, little snippets of hair tickling the back of his neck.

“Off you go, then,
lapotchka,
” said Mama.

Mama stood at the top of the stairs. Granny stood at the bottom of the stairs.

“Come along then, my little sparrow,” said Granny.

He turned and waved to Mama. That was meant to show her that she could go away now. He didn’t want her to hear Granny call him “my little sparrow.” And he didn’t want Granny to hear Mama call him
“lapotchka.”

But Mama didn’t take the hint. Just stood there, nodding to him.

Slowly, very slowly, and clinging to the banisters, he made his way down, until the steps turned a corner and the broad staircase reached the hall, where the pink shell into which Wilhelm had fitted an electric lightbulb, no one knew how, always shone in the evening.

Granny’s world. Everything here was a little bit different. And he immediately began talking differently himself, kind of
complicated.

“Granny, will we have our secret again today?”

“Of course, my little sparrow.”

First they set the table. Alexander scurried busily between the kitchen and the salon, as Granny called the big living room.

The rules of table setting (they held good only for this lowest floor of the house): first came the napkins, placed in silver rings, lying on the outside of each place setting. Then the knife, then the individual breadboard. At Granny’s, you ate straight off wooden plates. They were very practical, because you could cut the crusts off your bread more easily, and bread crusts didn’t agree with Wilhelm. The spoon was placed horizontally above the plate. You used the spoon for Granny’s famous lemon cream.

Lemon cream was Alexander’s favorite dessert. He wasn’t sure how it had come to be his favorite, because he hated lemon cream. All the same, now it was his favorite dessert—at Granny’s.

He also drank camomile tea and ate processed cheese at Granny’s. That was all part of the Granny feeling. Like the little hairs tickling the back of his neck.

The butter had to be placed where Wilhelm could easily reach it. There, done it.

In between setting the table he and Granny had their secret. The secret was eating toast in the kitchen. Crunchy nibbles, they called it. The fact was that crunchy nibbles didn’t agree with Wilhelm. But watching other people eat crunchy nibbles didn’t agree with him either. It gave him goose bumps, Granny said. So they ate their crunchy nibbles on the sly, in the kitchen. With jam.

Until Wilhelm appeared.

“Well,
hombre?
” And Wilhelm roughly took hold of his face.

Wilhelm had a small head, but his hands were big. That was because Wilhelm had once been a manual laborer. Today Wilhelm was something very important. But he still had a manual laborer’s hands. One of them was large enough to cover Alexander’s face. Alexander retched; his mouth was still full of toast.

“So let’s see what kind of monkey feed you two have ready for us,” said Wilhelm, stalking into the salon.

“Wilhelm’s little joke,” Granny whispered to Alexander.

Alexander assumed that Wilhelm was so funny because he wasn’t his real grandpa. That was why he was just called Wilhelm. If you accidentally said “Grandpa Wilhelm,” he popped his dentures out, which terrified Alexander.

They ate supper to the sound of music from the record player. It was a dark box with a semicircular lid that opened upward.

Wilhelm was against music. “You and that eternal stuff of yours,” he said.

But he was the only one who could work the record player, so Granny begged. “Wilhelm dear, do put on a record for us. Alexander loves listening to Jorge Negrete.”

Finally Wilhelm took a record out of the bottom of the box, slipped it out of its sleeve, picked up a brush, and then, holding the record so that he touched only the edges and the center, ran the brush over the grooves with slightly exaggerated circular movements, holding the record up to the light again and again. Then he spent a little while searching for the little spindly thing that had to go through the hole in the middle of the record—you couldn’t see it while you were busy above the circular plate on which the record would lie, so it was a tricky process. Once he had done it successfully, Wilhelm set the speed, bent down, twisting his neck so that Alexander could see the top of his bald patch, and cautiously lowered the needle until the mysterious crackling sound was heard. Then came the music.

Hungry ’gator. Alexander could easily imagine a hungry alligator, but he wasn’t sure what it had to do with the music. As his parents had no record player at home, the hungry ’gator song was about the only music he knew. But he knew it very well:

México lindo y querido

si muero lejos de ti

que digan que estoy dormido

y que me traigan aquí

He didn’t understand a word of it, although he could have sung along with the refrain.

“Know why the Indians are called Indians?” asked Wilhelm, slapping a slice of bread down on his wooden plate.

Alexander did know why the Indians were called Indians, because Wilhelm had already told him twice. For that very reason, he hesitated.

“Aha,” said Wilhelm. “He doesn’t know. Young people these days—they don’t know anything!”

He deposited a helping of butter on his bread and spread it in a single movement.

“Columbus,” said Wilhelm, “called the Indians Indians because he thought he was in India.
Comprende?
And we still call them by the same name. Nonsense, eh?”

He spread a thick layer of liver sausage on the bread and butter.

“The Indians,” said Wilhelm, “are the original inhabitants of the American continent. America belongs to them. But instead ...”

He placed a pickle on top of the bread and liver sausage, or more precisely he
threw
it at the bread and liver sausage, but the pickle fell off again and landed on the tablecloth.

“Instead,” he said, “today they are the poorest of the poor. Dispossessed, exploited, oppressed.”

Then he cut the pickle in half, pressed the halves deep into the liver sausage, and began munching noisily.

“That,” said Wilhelm, “is capitalism.”

After supper Granny and Alexander went into the conservatory. It was warm and damp in the conservatory, and there was a sweetish but also salty smell, almost like in the zoo. The indoor fountain hummed quietly. Among cacti and rubber plants, things that Granny had brought back from Mexico stood or lay around: coral, shells, items made of genuine silver, the skin of a rattlesnake that Wilhelm personally had killed with a machete. On the wall hung the sawlike snout of a real sawfish, almost two meters long and as improbable as a unicorn’s horn. But best of all was the stuffed baby shark. Its rough skin gave Alexander the creeps.

They sat on the bed (Granny’s bed was in the conservatory because it was the only room where she could sleep easily), and Granny began telling stories. She told him about her travels: horse-riding trips that went on for days; voyages in a canoe; piranhas that ate whole cows; scorpions that got into your shoes; raindrops as big as coconuts; and a jungle so dense that you had to cut yourself a way through it with a machete, and on your way back you found the path already overgrown again.

Today Granny told him about the Aztecs. Last time she had told the tale of how the Aztecs wandered through the desert. Now he heard the story of when they found the deserted city, and because there was no one living there, the Aztecs thought it had been the home of the gods and called it Teotihuacán—
the place where you become God.

BOOK: In Times of Fading Light
10.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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