Snowleg (50 page)

“By the way,” he said, “I was meant to give you this letter.”

“She wrote a letter to go with her ashes? That's quite bizarre.”

“She could be very insistent – well, you know that.”

Trapped between him and the envelope with her name scrawled on it, she burbled on: “I've heard that doctors are more affected by some cases than others. Who would have thought that my grandmother would be the one to get such treatment? She's not an obvious candidate – you should have heard what the doctor in Dösen said as she was leaving! Nevertheless, I think I can understand why you did it.”

But a vagueness had entered his eyes. Hidden behind his own gaze, he seemed not to see her – a motionless stooped figure whose spirit was indicated only by the hand that fretted with the walking stick.

“Of course you can,” patting his borrowed steed. “She's your grandmother.”

Her reflex of affront and frustration had vanished and now in place of relief a shyness paralysed her. She took a deep breath and resolved to confess herself. But her resolve faded as she looked at him. That's what attraction does, damn it. Anyway, what would she say? Tell him all that had happened? If you've had to stop telling stories, it's difficult to start up again. Besides, telling people your story doesn't tell them who you are.

She darted a hand inside the box. “Well, let's drink to the old battleaxe,” and held up the bottle of white wine. The letter could wait.

They toasted Frau Weschke.

She said in a tight voice, “To Marla.”

He brought the glass to his nose. “To Marla.” Tipped it and swallowed.

She pushed at a log on the fire with her foot and took another sip. “This is really good,” she said, surprised. It hadn't been chilled and it had been trundled over the hill from Milsen, but it was really good.

“Isn't it?” The wine made him feel better at once. The hair of the dog.

She read the label. “Saale-Unstrut, 1983.” She laughed, and it occurred to him that the laugh was a bit nervous. “I bought it for her.”

He looked at her again and put down to the wine a wave of extraordinary dizziness, similar to the one which had almost overwhelmed him at the zoo. When she opened the front door he had been mildly disappointed. At first sight, she had appeared quite neutral, severe even, but now, as she leaned back, he noticed a twist here, a touch there. A jewel at her neck that hadn't shown before, a good smell. He had mistaken simplicity for dowdiness and he saw that the cut of her black jersey and quilted trousers was rather elegant. Beside her he felt drab. “You know, you do take after your grandmother.”

She turned her face, a gleam in her grey-green eyes. “People say so. It's hard for me to tell.” Then, the wine making her flirtatious: “Who might your children take after?”

“Presuming I have children.”

“Yes, presuming you have children.”

He dug out his wallet and showed her a picture of Milo. She drew breath. She inspected it fiercely and returned it with a smile. “He's a nice-looking boy.” And pointed. “That's my eldest.” She walked over and removed a Polaroid photograph from under the fridge magnet. Handed it to him.

“God, they could be siblings,” he said. “But most children look the same to me.”

“You spoke to her – Katya.” Her voice didn't stumble when she imitated her daughter. “‘A man from the West is bringing Oma home.'” She moved away, giving him time to contemplate the girl, and looked out of the window at the studio converted now from the dovecote where she had discovered life could be joyful with not enough minutes in the day. In the black meadow pigs were up to their tails in slush. Beyond the hollyhocks and daphne that she had planted for making paper, she could see her neighbour's beehives and the farmer still ploughing. Drilled down by circumstance, she had dissolved into that landscape. A long time had passed since she had felt the need to be articulate about herself.

Her eyes strayed to the book on the table, open where she had left it to answer the door. If she hadn't stolen that book, if Peter hadn't followed her out of the Book Fair, if she hadn't gone with him to the Astoria . . . She might not have had a child. She might not have had two children. She might today be a fully fledged psychiatrist.

Eyes lowered, he went on looking at the photograph of their daughter.

She stared at him, and her shyness returned. She had expected to confess herself and then, like someone who has forgotten to ask the name of the person they've been conversing with, it had become too late. They were too far in. He had to recognise her on his own or not at all.

“Yes, maybe you're right,” she said. “Maybe all children do look alike.”

He gave back the image of a girl with black hair cut level with her jaw as her mother's might have been. “Or maybe all photographers make them look alike.”

“Where's Milo's mother?”

“We're not together. He's with her right now. Tell me, could I get to Dorna easily from here?”

“Dorna? Well, actually Katya's boyfriend is coming to pick her up. I'm sure they can drop you – as the crow flies, it's amazingly close. Why, do you know someone in Dorna?”

The idea, which had been forming ever since the train stopped at Dorna station, had crystallised on the walk to Frau Metzel's house. He thought, I can kill two birds before I return to Berlin. “My father's buried there.”

“Your father.” She nodded to herself.

“I've only just found out, as a matter of fact.”

Now that he wanted to leave, she felt an urge to detain him. “Is that what you were doing in Leipzig – looking for him?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“What were you doing?” and heard the false vagueness in her voice.

“Nothing much.” Then: “Thinking. I don't get the chance at the hospital.” But he sounded to her like a man on autopilot. He had discharged his duty and was on his way home. He was just being civil.

“Thinking?” in the rasping manner of her grandmother. “What about?”

He had been about to say that he wouldn't bother to wait for Katya's boyfriend and could he telephone for a taxi, but he heard the fired-up note in her voice, like a conversation he might have had with Frau Weschke, and this made him want to answer her question. “I was thinking about how you can do things, say things, that you don't mean – and how this can haunt you.”

She raised her hand to slap something on her arm, but thought better of it. His failure to recognise her gave her room to move, a leverage. But what to do with her advantage? The ladybird landed on the table and she stared at it. “Gunter Schabowski said a sentence he didn't mean and it opened the Wall. What things are
you
talking about?”

They had been standing and now they sat down. He moved his chair forward. “I was wondering how you expiate a wrong that you've done – oh, years and years ago.” His hand covered his brow. “When you're young, you do such stupid things. Things that when you look back make you aghast. When you're young, you
do
hurt people without thinking. I mean, you must be familiar with this feeling . . .” He wondered if he was embarrassing her, and then, himself embarrassed, shut up.

She turned to the window – he could see her cheeks moving where she bit them – and he was conscious of a constraint to her look.

He had been thinking about time, he went on – and immediately regretted saying it. It sounded pretentious and yet he had never felt more need to speak with honesty. “What happens when you do something awful and you're not forgiven for it, or you're not in a position to be able to ask for forgiveness. How do you get yourself forgiven?” But he was dissatisfied with what he was saying. He had never been good at philosophy. “I know that this sounds like nonsense out of context.”

She lowered her gaze to the fire and twisted a strand of hair behind her ear, winding him in. “Did you reach a conclusion?”

He glanced downwards. “I don't think I did.”

“Would you like another glass of wine?”

She got up and poured it.

This time the wine burned through him. How flippant he sounded. All of a sudden, he felt terrible.

She sat down again, her hands darting back to her lap. “You're speaking in abstractions.”

“It's not important. I'm talking about something that's dead and buried.”

She realised it wasn't going to happen. She was safe. She pushed the bottle forward. “Tell me.”

He sat sideways in his chair, his mouth open and his hand fiddling with the cane. He began to talk, not seeing her, his eyes glistening. Speaking about a girl he had met when he was a medical student. The wine a truth serum.

“We were getting to know each other when I killed a promise.”

“How so?” Her voice was soft, but he could see the tension in her hands. Under the table, Shadow quivered in sleep.

“It's not –”

“Go on,” she said with a little smile that he couldn't interpret, and he was aware of the dramatic light on her cheeks and the darker hollows of her eyes. He noticed how dark her eyebrows were and saw refracted in her eyes – was it Frau Weschke? “Tell me,” she said, again.

Peter had rehearsed over and over what he was going to say. He might as well say it to Frau Weschke's granddaughter as to anyone – it was Frau Weschke, after all, who had returned him to Leipzig. And there was a texture to this woman's listening that kept him needing to talk.

“Over the weekend I've come to realise it's far and away the worst thing I've ever done.”

She opened the envelope, ripping the silence. “Let me read this, let me see what she's written,” surprised to hear her voice so level. She unfolded Frau Weschke's letter and the seconds passed, the only sound the dog panting and the tap-tap-tap of his shoes on the blue and white circle pattern of the linoleum floor. When he glanced up, tears were running down her face.

Poor old thing, said Peter to himself. But he couldn't bear to look. He couldn't bear to be wept over today. It wasn't what he was here for.

“It was a terrific funeral.” His voice light again, he picked up the earlier conversation. It had been a mistake to talk about himself when she had her own grieving to do. “The whole of the nursing-home staff came, every one of them. She was a very special lady. Everyone understood that you were taking care of your exhibition. And it's all right. It's a tremendous step to have – even I know that.”

But it was no good. Whether encouraged by the contents of the letter or by what he had said or by the flow of wine, tears continued to stream from her eyes. She tried to laugh, tried to say something. All that came out was a sobbing wheeze.

He got up and stood behind her chair and rested his unsuspecting arm on her shoulder and listened to her crying. God knows, he had seen a lot of weeping women in his working life, but for once these tears seemed to be aimed at him.

His face wavered indistinct in front of her. She did nothing for a while. Then her hand reached slowly up and clung to his. “Sorry.”

He lifted her hand – and, struck by an unexpected feeling of understanding for his mother, kissed it.

“I'm so sorry,” with the back of her other hand wiping an eye, “I'll get over this in a second.”

“Don't apologise.” He said it kindly. He knew that those who go delivering ashes to the recently bereaved have to be prepared to accept a few tears. But he wasn't strong enough to cope with more of this. He had had an appalling weekend. The last thing he needed was for Frau Weschke's granddaughter – this perfectly nice, rather sad woman – to cave in on him.

Meanwhile, he had nowhere to fix his gaze. It wandered over the table. The window. The kitchen. The fridge made a singing noise and it was now that he made out all manner of snapshots magnetised to its door. The majority were Polaroids, probably taken with the large camera on the shelf above, and although he couldn't quite see what they were he had the impression of a lawn in winter, close-ups of leaves, furs. “Are these your preliminary photos –”

A car horn interrupted. Two at a time someone ran down the staircase and bounded with elephant's feet along the corridor. “Coming!”

A girl charged into the kitchen. About eighteen, her dark hair still damp. She retrieved her jacket from the door and was about to head straight back out when her mother stood up and grabbed her as she ran past.

“Hold on, slow down. I want you to meet someone. This is Peter. Peter, this is Katya.”

She gave him a quick, unseeing glance. Tall, generous mouth, slanted eyes. “Hello.”

“You spoke to him on the phone. He's brought Oma's ashes.”

“Oh. Yes. Hi.” Politely, she held out a hand, poised and distracted in the way that teenagers are. “Oh, Mutti, I forgot, the dentist called on Friday. He wants you to ring him – hey, are you all right?”

Frau Metzel tore off a strip of kitchen roll and blew her nose. “It's nothing, darling. Peter also brought a letter from Oma. It's made me very sad, I'm afraid.”

There was no time to discuss it further because there was a knock that was not really a knock and a young man strolled into the kitchen.

“Sören!”

He was dressed in a tight red shirt and kissed Katya on the lips. “We're late,” waving a car key on its chain and catching it. He was prematurely bald with a square, clean-shaven face, a turned-up nose and a long neck.

Flushed, Katya caught sight of the plastic urn on the table. “Are these Oma's? Gosh, they're heavy! But she looks good in a bottle.” She put it down. Eager to leave.