Stella (11 page)

I didn’t read your letter in front of him, or in the garden or in the road. I knew it was your very last letter, so I had to read it alone in my room at home. Through the envelope, I could feel that there was a postcard inside. It was a photograph of a landscape, inviting people to visit a museum of oceanography, and showed a dolphin leaping into the air, to come down on top of a wave. There was just a single sentence written in English on the blank side of the card: “Love, Christian, is a warm wave bearing us up,” and then there was her signature, Stella. I put the postcard beside our picture, propped against my English grammar book, and felt an instinctive pang at the idea that I had missed something, or had been cheated of
something, that I had wanted more than anything else in the world.

I often repeated that sentence. I felt that it was a confession, a promise, and an answer to the question that I had thought of asking but never did.

I repeated it as I looked at our photograph, and that evening as well, when a sharp shower of rain pattered against my window, a dry pattering, rain that wasn’t rain: Georg Bisanz was standing outside, picking up another handful of sand to throw against my windowpane. As soon as he saw me standing there he pointed to himself and me, and I beckoned to him to come up. Georg, her favorite student. He didn’t stop to look around and see what my room was like, he felt he had to tell me what he had just found out, and it concerned me in particular. Since it was his job to carry the exercise books home for Stella, he knew her father. Georg had met him down by the navigation marks, he said, and they hadn’t said much to each other, but now he knew that Stella was going to be buried at sea. The two of them, the old radio operator and his daughter, had discussed all such things with each other long ago, and they both wanted to be buried at sea when their time came. So now that was to be her funeral. “Will you be coming?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

The undertakers who arranged burials at sea had their place down by the little river mouth, a plain, windowless brick building where they worked, father and son, wearing black even in the mornings, with expressions of professional sympathy on their faces. Yes, they could tell us at once when Ms. Petersen’s funeral was to be. They waddled as they moved, and I couldn’t help it, but they looked to me like two penguins. She was to be laid to rest on Friday morning. When I said, rather too quickly, that I wasn’t a family member, one of the penguins explained, with impeccable regret, that the boat would hold only a limited number of mourners, it was a shallow vessel, a converted landing craft, and as a great many mourners had already reserved—“reserved” was the word he used—including the entire school staff, they were fully booked. That was how he put it: “fully booked.”

There was only a slight wind that Friday. The sky was covered with clouds, the waterfowl had left, a sense of its old indifference, so it seemed to me, lay above the bleak expanse of water. With my father’s permission, Frederik and I took our tug. Frederik steered the
Endurance
, careful to keep at a distance, never crossing
the course of the other vessel. Throttling back the engine, we followed the former landing craft to the place where she was to be buried, across from Bird Island. I don’t know who had decided just where it would be. When we reached the spot, the undertakers’ vessel slackened speed, and Frederik stopped too. Both craft were rolling gently in the slate-gray sea, too far apart for any sound to carry. “Take the binoculars,” said Frederik. Through the lenses I recognized our principal, several of my teachers, and the old radio operator. There were two wreaths lying on deck, a few bunches of flowers, and an urn standing in the middle of the flowers. Beside it, on a canvas chair, sat a stout pastor. The pastor smoothly rose to his feet and stood there firmly; he spread out his arms, obviously pronouncing a blessing first, and then, speaking with his eyes on the urn—I suppose he was turning directly to you, Stella—giving what must have been an abbreviated account of your life, nodding at several sentences, as if he didn’t want anyone to doubt what he said. I was not the only one to expect him to turn to your father, as he finally did. Then the men took off their hats, and they all took and held each other’s hands. Their shoulders slumped slightly. I saw that our art teacher was
weeping. The binocular lenses were clouding over. I was shaking, and had to hold tight to the rail. I felt our tug was beginning to heel over. Frederik must have been watching me, because he said with sympathy, “Sit down, boy.”

How carefully the old radio operator picked up the urn, holding it close. He carried it to the stern of the vessel, and there, at a sign from the pastor, he opened it and held it out over the water. I had to keep thinking, Stella, that it was just a thin trail of ashes I saw coming out of the urn, drifting in the air for a moment, then settling on the water. The sea quickly absorbed the ashes, leaving no trace behind, nothing to show they had ever been there. I could guess only at a silent disappearance, the grammar of farewell. Although your father stood there and stood there, staring at the water, there was nothing even he could do but pick up one of the wreaths. He didn’t just drop it into the water, he flung it far out to sea with surprising force. After him, other people picked up the flowers and threw them into the water. Most of the flowers were tied together, but our sports teacher and two more of the staff untied the bunches and let the flowers drop one by one overboard, where a very light current caught them, and it
seemed to me as if they were shining as they rocked on the rippling water. At that moment I knew that those drifting flowers, emblems of my loss, would be a part of my unhappiness forever, and I would never be able to forget the consolation they offered.

There was no doubt of it: the flowers were drifting toward Bird Island. Soon they would be cast up there, on the beach that so few people ever visited. I’ll collect you, I thought, I’ll come here on my own and keep you from rotting away like seaweed torn loose by rough seas, I’ll put the flowers in the bird warden’s hut and lay them out there to dry, they’ll always be there in that place, a place that knew us, it will all be there and stay there. I’ll go there during the vacation and sleep on the seagrass mattress. In my sleep we’ll come close to each other, Stella, your breasts will touch my back, I’ll turn to you and caress you, everything I’ve stored in my memory will come back again. What’s past did happen, all the same, and it will last, and in the company of pain and the sorrow that goes with it, I’ll try to find what can never be brought back.

When the craft carrying the mourners got under way, coming very slowly in to the bridge outside the Seaview Hotel, I asked Frederik not to follow it just
yet but to go once around Bird Island. He looked at me in surprise, but then he did as I had asked.

I looked, but I didn’t really see anything that came within my field of vision. I saw Stella sitting on the tree trunk that had been washed up, sitting there in her green swimsuit, smoking, and looking as if something amused her, maybe the way I waded toward her through the waist-high water. Less certain of myself now, I gave the figure of the sitting woman your face, Stella, and while the
Endurance
rounded Bird Island a little way from the shore, I imagined that we were walking along the beach and under the alders hand in hand, and suddenly became aware that we both had secret rights of ownership here. I wasn’t interested in what Frederik thought. Once past the little promontory where there were only a few birds chattering—that eternal quarrel of theirs, beaks open, wings spread—Frederik asked me if I wanted to go ashore. I dismissed the idea with a gesture, and told him he could go home now, following the other vessel with the mourners. Their landing craft was already secured to the bridge outside the Seaview Hotel, and I saw through the binoculars that they had disembarked and were sitting at tables in the garden cafe.

Life—in the nature of the place, life obviously reigned here. Waiters were carrying out food and drink to the tables, mainly beer and sausages and meatballs with potato salad, and fruit tarts were also being ordered. I found a place to sit at a round table which was already occupied by Mr. Kugler the art teacher, with Tordsen the harbor master beside him. I said hello to Hans Hansen, from my class, and nodded to someone I didn’t know, a round-headed man. His name was Püschkereit, a former staff member who had retired years ago, but he still kept in close touch with the school. He had taught history. I discovered that this Püschkereit came from Masuria in East Prussia. As soon as he said anything people began smiling, and I couldn’t help smiling myself, because he used diminutives or pet words for everything. While silence weighed down on the other tables, and people exchanged glances full of meaning to suit the occasion, Püschkereit thought he ought to tell the story of a funeral in his own family, the funeral of his grandfather, who had lived and died happy in a modest little house. After the meal everyone who was willing and able to tell anecdotes about the life of the deceased had spoken of his kindness, his obstinacy, his friendly cunning,
but also his good heart and his sense of humor. After that, when the memory of the dead grandfather had been recalled at such length that he seemed to be there among the mourners—many of the anecdotes were addressed directly to the coffin standing there in the parlor—a hired musician had appeared and played music on his accordion for dancing. The harbor master, obviously used to thinking in terms of space, wondered whether there had been any room for dancing, to which Püschkereit said, “Oh yes, once we’d stood the coffin up on end there was plenty of room.” He had taught history before my time. I am sure the old radio operator, sitting at the next table, had been listening too and disapproved of this tale. He rose, asked for attention, and said calmly, “No speeches, please, no speech-making here.”

It didn’t escape my attention that Mr. Kugler was suddenly looking closely at me, frankly and as if assessing me, and after a while he gestured to me to come over and sit beside him. He told me that the staff had decided to hold an hour of remembrance in Ms. Petersen’s honor, in the big hall next Wednesday. “Of course one of the students ought to say a few words, and you are your class’s president, Christian,
so I thought of you. And I wasn’t the only one to think you should do it,” he said, adding that it was to be a solemn celebration. I couldn’t do it, Stella, I couldn’t accept his offer, because while I was thinking about what I’d be expected to do and what I could say, a memory rose in me so violently, such an overpowering memory, that I couldn’t suppress it: I saw the pillow before my eyes, the territory we had found for ourselves and shared. I understood that I couldn’t give anything like that away in school, because if I did I risked destroying what meant everything to me. Perhaps the source of our happiness must rest in silence forever. No, Stella, I didn’t want to speak during the hour of remembrance. Kugler said he was sorry about that, and I asked him to forgive me for backing out. And I didn’t want to stay any longer among the mourners, who were eating and drinking and moving from table to table to exchange comments on what had just happened. I didn’t want to stay there, I couldn’t, I just wanted to be alone.

Just as the moment for me to retreat in silence seemed to have come, I heard the droning of a powerful ship’s engine coming closer. It made everyone stop and listen. A speedboat came into view, one of
the new craft from the nearby naval station, towing a yacht after it on a long line, a yacht with a broken mast. I wasn’t surprised that one of the naval station’s boats had been brought in to salvage it, the navy had done emergency service many times, standing by anyone in difficulties out at sea, and bringing home many damaged vessels. It was the
Pole Star
, as the yacht was called, and very likely they had plugged the leaks for now and were bringing her in to the little wharf beside the naval station. Tordsen thought so too. The
Pole Star
—I just wished I knew who had thought up that name. The fast little tug passed us at a leisurely pace; no one was on deck. Not the tug itself but its image will stay in my mind forever. I guessed that at the time, and I had guessed right.

I set off for home, walking along the beach. My eyes were stinging. Empty mussel shells broke and crunched beneath my feet, no one seemed to have noticed me leaving. I was wrong. Where the old ship’s boat lay keel upward on the beach—a bleached, untarred wreckage of a boat—I heard a call. Principal Block was sitting on the boat. He was not in the garden cafe with the others, he had chosen this place to be
alone. With a slight wave of his hand, he invited me to come and sit down with him. Principal Block, who was usually so stiff and reserved, wanted to speak to me. For a while we sat there together in silence, watching the tug move out into the open sea. Suddenly he turned to me, looked at me with frank goodwill, and said, “We’re going to meet in the school hall, Christian, for an hour of remembrance. Several people will speak in memory of Ms. Petersen.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ve just heard about it.”

“You’re class president for your year,” he said. “We thought it would be a good idea if you were to say something, speaking for the students, just briefly, just paying tribute, a few words on what the loss of our very popular teacher means to you.” Since I did not reply at once, he went on. “If I’m not mistaken, this loss affects you personally.”

I just nodded. I couldn’t prevent tears from coming to my eyes. He saw that without surprise, and touched my hand, thought for a moment, and then asked, “Well, what do you say, Christian?”

I could sense that my refusal would disappoint him, but all the same I said, “I can’t do it.”

If he had asked me why not, I couldn’t have told him. At the most, I would only have been able to say it was too early, perhaps still too soon. But he appeared satisfied, and asked only, “You’ll be at the hour of remembrance all the same, though, won’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’ll be there.”

Copyright © 2008 by Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, Hamburg
Originally published in German as
Schweigeminute
by Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, Hamburg, 2008.