Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything (3 page)

4

Today I'm going to see my mother. It's about a forty-minute walk. You start by following the road and then cut across fields. We live in one of the larger villages, with about five hundred inhabitants. With houses scattered all over the place and no proper center, it's not half as pretty as the Brendels' village. There are only three farms left, and now on the edge of the village there are several modern blocks with very fancy apartments, as Grandma Traudel likes to call them. Mom and I don't agree with her: the apartments are small, you don't have your own garden, and you can hear it every time the neighbors cough.

We live in the old part of the village. Our house, painted reddish brown, is in a nice position, with the village pond directly
opposite. Alongside the house runs a narrow alley lined with fruit trees, which we spent hours playing in as children. It might not be the oldest house in the village, but it's by far the most old-fashioned. Grandpa Lorenz has refused to modernize it in any way; we don't even have a flush toilet. I don't know why he's been so stubborn, but Grandma Traudel says it's his way of punishing her for the reproachful looks she's given him while going on and on about the new developments.

You can see the baker's and the tavern from our house, while in the new part of the village there's a large co-op, the council offices with a small library, a kindergarten, and the primary school, which has its own garden. We used to grow vegetables there, and in the summer months we even supplied the school kitchen.

From our garden you can see the church and the parsonage. The pastor ministers not only to our village, but to the other parishes in the area, too. He doesn't have much to do; few people apart from the elderly go to church anymore. I was friends with some of the pastor's seven children. I remember how much I enjoyed saying grace before dinner, when the whole family chorused, “The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.” By contrast those lonely meals at home with my mother, during which we never said grace and often didn't even speak, made me miserable.

You can't see our garden from the alley. It's quite large, with two cherry trees, an apple tree, and a pear tree; a few currant bushes, raspberry canes, and strawberry beds; some rows of lettuce, carrots, onions, and potatoes; herb beds with parsley, chives, and dill; a rabbit hutch and a chicken shed.

When I arrive my mother is reading in a deckchair beneath the apple tree. She looks terribly thin. I'm mortified by her skinny legs, which stick out from beneath her dress like stalks. She's the only one around here who owns any books.
Effi Briest
and
Anna Karenina
are still her absolute favorites. I've spent many wonderful hours with these books, too, lost in daydreams and feeling the characters' suffering.

Grandma Traudel disapproved of all this—she only reads the newspaper—but she got used to it over time. My mother inherited her love of reading from her own parents, Sigrun and Hanno. Sigrun came from the Hamburg bourgeoisie, but two years after the war, when she was eighteen, she fell in love with a communist, Hanno Breede. She followed him to the northern part of the Soviet Occupation Zone. They found a house on the moors there and settled down. This was a blow for Sigrun's family—they'd never really liked Hanno. But Sigrun and Hanno had five children: Ernst, Wilhelm, Hannah, Torben, and Walther. My mother was the middle child and the only girl. The eldest and youngest sons died: Ernst died just after he was born, and Walther fell out of a window when he was four. It wasn't so high up, only three and a half meters, but the boy died on impact. Hanno worked as a newspaper editor in the local town and later ran the local agricultural collective.

“Oh, so you've come back, then,” my mother says, standing up. “Tell me, how's life at the Brendels'? And how are you?” She tilts her head to one side. “Are you still going to school? You left your math and physics books here.”

I'm not even going to attempt to lie, but I don't want to alarm her more than necessary, so I say, “Life's good at the Brendels', they treat me like their own daughter . . . but I don't go to school much . . . they're not too happy about that.” She looks at me, imploring, waiting for me to go on, and I say, “I don't know, Mom . . . maybe I won't do my leaving certificate, maybe instead I'll look for an apprenticeship or help out on the farm. I don't know yet. I don't think I'm going to finish school.”

She looks at me sadly. She has invested her hopes in me, but I can't fulfill them. All she says is, “Oh,” and after a long pause, “We'll
have to send off some applications then. The new academic year starts in September—that's just around the corner.”

I don't know what to say. I was expecting her to hit the roof and force me to go back to school. In fact that's probably what I wanted her to do. She's the mother, after all. And I'm the child.

But she falls silent, and I say faintly, “Have you heard from Dad?”

“Ye-es,” she says, her voice rising as she draws out the word to a second syllable. “He's getting married again.”

“What? When?” I ask in horror, but I'm happy that the subject has changed to something that diverts the attention from me.

“Her name's Nastja and she's from Leningrad. But they're going to live near here. And I think she's already pregnant.” I feel myself tingling all over. “She's nineteen, by the way,” my mother adds, pursing her lips.

“Maybe we'll be friends, then,” I say as dispassionately as I can. But she appears not to have heard me. She's had her hair cut, and she looks tired. The factory where she had an office job for almost ten years closed last week. But I don't understand why she had to have her hair cut. It was so beautiful, thick and slightly wavy, much more beautiful than my own.

“We need to have a proper talk sometime, Maria,” she now says sternly, even though her reedy voice suggests otherwise. “You know I lost my job, and I don't have any prospects of finding another one. I don't know what the future holds. Somehow, of course, life goes on, but I haven't a clue what we're going to live off.” She picks at her fingernails. “Ah, well,” she says, “I've still got a little money put aside—from the sale of the house. But your father doesn't pay any maintenance for you and, to be honest, I'd rather you learned a profession. Staying put with the Brendels is crazy, don't you think?”

We're facing each other, but she's not looking at me. Her feet are bare and I feel sorry for her. I'd like to give her an answer, give her a solution, I even feel obliged to have a plan; it was my decision to
move out, after all—at sixteen! You don't just leave home at sixteen without any idea what you're going to do. But I have no idea. I feel utterly empty.

Now she looks at me, with that particular expression which asks:
Maybe you can help me out, too. What should I do? Tell me, Maria!

But I don't even know myself, Mom. Can't you understand that?

This is the way it always is: there will be no decision unless I make it myself.

Such emptiness—

I go into the house, climb the stairs to my attic room, this ancient room with its nineteenth-century cupboards and bed, its saggy mattress in three sections. Above the bed hangs a Symbolist picture called
Nymphs and Saturn
, and I've often dreamed I was in it. The nymph in the middle wears a blue headband, and her face is most clearly visible. She's supposed to look like my mother did when she was a girl. The picture came from her father, and it's right for her.

You can't see my desk beneath the gable window because it's buried under mountains of books and notes. I hurriedly gather a few things together—pens, a pad, a few old passport photos, a book—grab some clothes from my wardrobe, and chuck everything into a suitcase. I'm going to have to find work, I think; I don't have any money.

Then I put the case down, it's too heavy to carry back all that way. I run down the stairs, past my mother's two small rooms and the tiny room where my great-grandmother Milda sleeps. She spends her days packing leftover food into small plastic bags and stashing it in cupboards, where it can rot away in peace. I pass my grandparents' apartment in the basement and go through the back door into the garden. My mother is still standing like a statue beneath the apple tree. I give her a fleeting but firm embrace and promise to come back soon. Then out into the alley, out of the village, away, away, away, just away. I feel calmer when the village is out of sight.

On the walk back I cut across the cornfield. The young plants come up to my knees; the harvest won't be for a good couple of months yet. I rarely come this way; it passes Henner's farm, which means I have to pass the dogs and horses so wild only Henner can ride them. When he's on good form he looks like a landowner from another era, tearing across the pasture at a gallop, his dogs running beside him. He not a man of the modern age, more like someone who's been born in the wrong century. Marianne says he's in better shape, he must have stopped drinking. No one seriously believes that, but when he was last in the shop he was stone-cold sober.

The corn tickles my legs, my dress catches on the leaves. I brush the plants with my hands, which feel quite numb after my visit to my mother.

In the distance I can see Henner. He's in the paddock, wearing old riding boots, narrow brown pants, and a filthy shirt that must once have been white. The dogs are lazing in the shade of an apple tree. Marianne told me that they even killed one of his foals last year. After that, he beat the dogs with a stick until they howled.

I walk slowly, thinking about my mother; she looked so sad. What will become of her without my father, without a job, having to live with her in-laws? It was her sadness that drove me from the house. It drains every scrap of energy from my body, and the joy from my heart.

Henner truly is a handsome man. I realized that when he was in the shop: a hulking body that moves powerfully, but with fine facial features. He has deep-set, expressive eyes surrounded by small, dark lines, and a hint of bitterness around his mouth, although when he smiles it disappears completely. You can't tell that he's a drinker.

Suddenly he turns around. The dogs leap up as if obeying a command, and in a few bounds they're at the paddock fence. “Henner!” I scream. “Get them away!” He laughs, throwing back his head.

“They don't like skinny girls!” he shouts back at me, but whistles to them all the same.

My legs are trembling. I feel queer, as Marianne would say, and collapse in a heap. Tears flood my eyes. I don't know what's happening to me; I sob and sob, burying my face in my arms. I only snap out of it when I feel Henner's hands, and his heady, sour, male scent envelops me. He strokes my head—I'd never have thought he could be so tender—and slowly pulls me up. I don't dare open my eyes, and he whispers soothingly to me, “It's all right, Maria, nothing happened. It's all right, I'll take you back to the farm.” I can barely walk; his arm is around me and his hand brushes my breast: it feels like it's burning. I stop. “Shhh,” he says, gripping my arm. In a single, fluid stroke his hand moves down my neck, across my breasts, tummy, to my inner thigh, then up a little. I wrestle free and run, but he soon catches me again, and this time he looks at me quite differently.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I didn't mean to frighten you, I'm really sorry. Don't say a word to anyone, Maria. Do you hear me?” Holding me with his outstretched arm he goes on talking softly: “Nothing happened, did it? Nothing at all!” I nod silently, he lets go of me, and I walk away without turning around.

There is a commotion at the farm. Siegfried has discovered some thin, transparent tubing beneath the steering wheel of the Wartburg. He followed the tube to its origin and found a plastic container of vodka under the hood. Only one person could have put it there. When I walk into the yard I see Siegfried and Alfred standing by the door: Alfred with his head bowed; Siegfried gesticulating wildly. I creep past them—they don't even notice I'm there—go upstairs to the attic and get into bed with
The Brothers Karamazov
. Zossima has died, but not before sharing the wisdom of a lifetime with his fellow monks: “Brothers, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his
sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth.”

And then that incredible thing happens: Zossima's body decomposes on the very day he dies!

At teatime we all gather in the garden. There's cake with fresh strawberries, coffee, and water. Marianne asks me how my visit to my mother went. But when I try to formulate a reply I burst out laughing, shocking everyone at the table. Siegfried gives me a serious glance, and holding back the tears I try to explain what Madame Khokhlakov said about Zossima: that she hadn't expected such behavior. Such behavior! I'm practically falling about with laughter. As if Zossima decomposed of his own will, as if he'd told himself, “I know, I'll play a trick on them. I'll just decompose right now instead of taking a few days—or not at all, like some saints.” The parents exchange glances; Frieda acts as if nothing's happening. Nobody else is laughing.

Johannes grins as best he can with a mouth full of strawberry cake. In his lap is his camera, he hasn't been able to put it down for days. The family was horrified when they heard how much he'd paid for it; he could have bought a car with that money. Frieda wanted him to go traveling; he ought to go to Greece, she said; it's meant to be stunning, sheer paradise. Those were her words:
sheer pa-ra-dise
. There had been a travel program on the television about Santorini. Now that they can go wherever they like, he should have gone to Greece—he could even have flown there. Yes, that's what the boy should have done with the money. But Johannes has other plans. Up in the attic there is a small room without any windows. And in this room Johannes has a secret. In a minute he'll show me what it is.