I notice that all the blinds are raised, and just flimsy, netted curtains form a barrier between the inside and outside worlds. I could easily be seen by the inhabitants, so I slump further down in my car seat and continue to watch. My heart is doing strange things: rapid-fire beats and then a sickly wobble. I anchor my thoughts on the leather steering wheel and the solid ring I am twisting around on my finger. There is someone walking up the street, coming straight towards me, a small, slow-moving figure, and I suddenly realise that I have got the days of the week confused. It must be Friday, and it’s Käthe walking to her cleaning job at the Seyfrieds’, three doors down. Käthe, who pulled me into her house one day to show me the small pig she kept boarded up under the kitchen table. The poor creature squealed and butted its head against the rough planks of wood, and I watched in horror as Käthe thrust shrivelled cobs of corn in and out of its mouth in a teasing manner. All the while the pig crashing and grunting as Käthe laughed deep in her throat, her mouth a ruined black hole.
But it can’t be Käthe, can it? I do the quick calculation and work out that she must be ninety-five now, or dead.
The person walks past my car and I see it is a boy of about eleven or twelve wearing shorts and a red soccer shirt. He turns to stare at me; a slow, deliberate, searching look. I don’t recognise a thing about him—he could be a boy from anywhere in the world, even a boy in Australia. But it’s a look that I instantly recognise: suspicion before it turns to a quiet loathing.
* * *
I am driving to a different town, this time Scheinfeld, though now I keep calling it Seinfeld in my head. A bit of humour won’t do me any harm. The countryside is beautiful, but I can’t be distracted by the lush fields and the commanding castle that dominates the hill and skyline. I need to focus on driving on the right-hand side of the road and keeping my eyes open for anything meaningful. I need to buy some different clothes, something that will make me blend in more. I had forgotten how necessary it was to fit in. I follow the route marked out for me to the outskirts of town, and then slow down to find parking outside the clothing store. Obviously the latest discount shop to open up in Scheinfeld. But what does ‘latest’ mean? This store could have been here for the last twenty years.
The first thing that strikes me when I walk inside is the spiralling racks of sale items. The second thing that strikes me is that the racks are in the shape of swastikas. Surely this is a mistake? I head for the sections marked Damen, and rifle through the items, not knowing what I am looking for. A shop assistant comes up to me, a stunning girl with blonde highlighted hair and perfect honey skin.
‘Kann ich Ihnen helfen?’
‘Ich brauche... size 6 jeans.’
‘Oh, you are American?’
‘No. English,’ I lie.
She scans my body. ‘I will bring you size 8.’
I take a couple of items with me and follow her to the cubicle, where I get undressed. The clothes are completely wrong for my body shape, accentuate my big thighs and small breasts. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. I will dispose of them afterwards. I think about what was in fashion back then, the three distinctive looks: cord jeans and Fruit of the Loom shirts; the post-hippie flowing garments, where even the boys wore the Indian cotton scarves with their T-shirts—a look that still makes my heart lurch every time I see a man wearing a light cotton scarf; and then the Trachten revival. The girls knitting the tight-fitting cardigans during English class; cinched-in jackets to match their traditional Bavarian outfits. You needed bigger breasts for that look.
I keep the clothes on and go to the counter to pay for them. The shop attendant studies my hands. ‘I like your rings.’
‘Danke,’ is all I can say.
Outside, the sky is so beautiful and the day so warm that I want to be like a lizard and bask in the sun. I think about buying some food and sitting in a park. Instead, I get into the car and start driving, not using the GPS but relying on some inner compass. I find myself passing restaurants and bakeries, and I keep driving until I stop outside the Gymnasium, the local high school. The main building is like a grey office block, but the taller front façade is rendered the whitest of white and has colourful geometric patterns painted all over it. I only remember the grey brick part. This is where I took classes in Year 13, the Abitur year, even though I had already graduated high school in Australia. The place where the Religion and Ethics teacher, Herr Strang, with his stringy hair and yellowed cat teeth, asked me what my religion was, and I answered in my newly minted German, Vereinigte Kirche . Uniting Church. And then something changed in his expression and he grabbed my arm and pulled me out to the front of the class, his voice full of invective and venom, and even with my imperfect German I knew I had been branded as dangerous.
There was nothing else for me to do but leave the classroom. Then I starting running. I ran down the hallway headed for the safety of the girls’ toilets and almost collided with Frau Lang, the Senior English teacher. Seeing my tears she steered me to an empty room and asked me what had happened.
‘Ah,’ she said slowly. ‘You meant to say Vereinigung der Kirche. The Uniting Church, not Unification Church. That is the Moonies cult.’
Frau Lang with the comforting overstretched woollen pullovers, green tweed skirts, thick black stockings and sensible moccasins. She was the only teacher I liked—and who I thought liked me, until I worked out she only spent time with me in order to practise her English.
I’ve begun shivering, so I turn on the ignition and keep driving through the older part of town. I look for the café where I spent hours in clouds of cigarette smoke, eating plum pastries whilst wagging school. Now I crave buttery, flaky pastry, and would kill for a cigarette despite the fact I haven’t smoked since university days. I turn down Kirche Strasse, and this is so familiar that it hurts to see it. There is the post office, where once a month I would stand inside the private wooden phone booth at the back of the room dialling a number, and feeding coins into the metal slot as if it was a hungry beast. There’d be a click and then the sound of the coins falling, metal raining upon metal, and my mother’s muffled voice like she was trapped at the bottom of the ocean, Hello luv, the familiarity setting me off into a convulsion of sobs. And the two postal workers, men in their fifties with dyed black hair and bellies hoisted over tight belts, calling out something in German after I had finished talking. Do you want to go out drinking?
Suddenly I want to park the car and go inside and find that same old-fashioned phone set and ring the same number. A part of me wants to believe that my mother will still be alive, sitting on the damped-down furrows of the ocean floor, and will pick up one more time.
* * *
I keep on driving. I see a sign which says Freibad, and translate it literally, Free Bath, although I know it is the sign for the open-air swimming pool. The trick is not to do the translation word for word, but to allow the German to exist as if there is no other option. I never learned this, nor did I dream in German as promised. But I developed a stutter; my tongue got stuck on the thick army of consonants and the ichs were like a fishbone caught at the back of my throat.
I see a forest ahead, and slow down to see if there is somewhere to park. I pull into a section of unsealed road, and park next to an empty van. There are numerous trails to be followed, each path littered with brown, powdery pine needles. I need to stretch out my cramped legs and make the most of this unscheduled break. I stride along, able to see great distances ahead, as there is no undergrowth, just tree poles and long-legged shadows. The day has warmed up and with every footfall more of the fragrance of the forest is released.
This forest reminds me of that holiday place. A village in the north on the East German border, which I have forgotten the name of. All I know is that it felt like we were driving for hours on the fast-moving autobahn while I slept in the back of the car as if I were the family dog. Each day I walked the forest trails on my own, and the unexpected blush of wild raspberries and the sweet trill of birdsong
weren’t enough to break through my darkness. And then one day, when walking along a different path, I emerged into cleared farmland and saw the high wire-mesh fence and a large sign: Achtung! Zonengrenze! There was no need to translate this into English. Set about fifty metres back from the border line was a tall lookout tower, a relic from the cold war: an enclosed metal and glass hut with a viewing platform and a single outer ladder. By narrowing my eyes I could make out the shape of a guard inside the hut staring back at me through one of the three panelled windows. I stood for ages watching the guard, and then, not knowing why, I raised a hand and waved at him, and then I saw him waving back. A thrill cut through me like ice, a sensation so swift and invigorating that I craved to feel it again. The next day and the next, I returned to the very same spot to wave at the guard, but he never waved back, just stood there watching as I inched closer and closer to the border fence.
Now I am walking through a different forest but it could be the same. Same forest, different girl. I want to remember what it is like to be cleaved by ice. I think about the guard and wonder if he is still alive, and what it was like for him to finally cross over the border when East and West were reunited. And would he remember the girl who stood there waving, so brazen and free, moving closer and closer to the fence in a dangerous dance, not knowing whether she wanted to be loved or shot?
I keep on walking and see two figures up ahead. As they approach me I can see it is two men, and one is carrying a long, metallic object. At first I think it is a rifle, but then as they pass, I can see that it is an oversized camera lens, the sort serious photographers use. They give me a cursory nod, and say, ‘Grüss Gott.’ I translate it immediately in my head. Greetings from God.
They expect the same from me, but I can’t say the words. There is nothing good or holy about today.
* * *
I am back in Markt Bibart, sitting in my hired car with my eyes trained on the house. The sun has moved to that point in the sky that makes you feel the day is already done. Summer time throws me; it feels like late afternoon now, when it’s actually seven o’clock at night. I watch the largest top floor window for the slightest of movements. This is where the people will be having dinner, sitting at the built-in breakfast table with the home-made straw dolls dressed in traditional Trachten lined up along the sill. Although the dolls have no faces, they still have the uncanny ability to watch your every movement.
Some of the houses in the street have their blinds already drawn shut. The louvres are like eyelids, they open and shut, choosing to see what they want. I remember walking along this street and imagining the people at the windows as fat, dilating pupils that widened suddenly when they saw me or Herr Schulz’s newly acquired, mail-order Thai bride, who he paraded like a sex toy.
The occupants will probably be having their Abendbrot by now. There is a mechanical bread cutter hidden in a cupboard, which will slice the bread in perfect width to accompany the evening cheese and the cold cuts. This is what I ate each night and what fattened me up, not unlike Käthe’s poor imprisoned pig. Most nights the family would finish dinner and retire to the sitting area to watch television, or the kids would go to their bedrooms to do their homework, while I descended to my downstairs lodgings. On occasion, when the father had too much beer, and the capillaries in his nose were fit to burst, he would invite me to stay at the kitchen alcove. Placing a bottle of wine and a bowl of nuts in front of me, he would begin his discussion about politics, NATO and the rise of Petra Kelly and the Greens Party, Die Grünen. Nothing in my German classes back home prepared me for such conversation; there was no opportunity to talk about the whereabouts of a train station or how the linden trees are reflected in a mirror-smooth lake. So my only contribution was to eat the nuts and drink the sickly sweet wine, saying all the while, ‘Eben. Eben. Eben.’ Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
This failure to speak still haunts me. Another failure to add to the list. Like the trip to the Berlin conference in summer, where I’d met up with the other exchange students from around the world: the Australians spiralling in for their first official camp, and the northern hemisphere students spiralling out, their undying adoration for Mutti and Papa still hot on their lips. West Berlin—where it felt like I was the only person overwhelmed by the multi-floored shopping Mecca KaDeWe, the galah-pink drinks at city street bars, and the frenzied dancing on nightclub floors fashioned like giant silver ashtrays. And then crossing over to the eastern side of the wall, and seeing how the colour was instantly sucked out of the air, the same kind of drabness everywhere—the same dull shop fronts, the same coats, the same cuts of meat, the same generic-brown wash of peasantry. And then knowing that when you return back to the glittering west, to the kaleidoscope of technicolour, it will be the same monochrome sky that will follow you wherever you go.
There is movement now at the window, shapes shifting as if in a mood lamp. It could be the mother of the house, bending over to clear the table. It might be the husband, standing to slap another slice of salami on his bread. In any case I have done my due diligence: I know the family still lives in this house. The mother would be a similar age to my own mother if she was still alive, though they couldn’t have been more different in appearance and temperament. Frau Bauer, a large-boned woman with hair lacquered into a platinum helmet—nothing soft or generous about her, nothing gentle in the way she wiped the table down around me, leaving a little circle of dirt around my hands, while I stayed talking with her husband. And her twelve-year-old daughter, Konstanze, a clone of her mother, her giant spy eye searching my room for clues: the chocolate wrappers hidden under my bed; the stack of English novels piled up like contraband; the dead insects in the bath-tub, their mothy wings turning to dust.
I want to cry now for the girl who was stuck in that downstairs room, but she feels like a fiction to me. I begin to doubt that she ever existed. I feel, with every passing year, the skin cells being shed and replaced miraculously with something else. It is far easier to believe that girl is gone than to know she is still there, buried beneath calcified layers of scar tissue and time.
* * *
I must have fallen asleep. I notice a missed call from my father and plan to phone him later, at a time when I can breathe energy again into his frail frame, keeping him alive more for me than him. There is a crick in my neck where my head has leaned at an unnatural angle against the car window. It feels like I am on a plane: my legs are cramped and restricted by the steering wheel and the too-tight jeans. I am cold, yet my nostril breath is mare-hot, misting up all the windows. I draw two circles in the driver’s side to look out of, and see that it is light outside. A new day. I adjust the rear-view mirror, and examine my face in the darkling glass. Yesterday’s makeup is wearing thin, and cannot disguise the deep lines on my forehead and around my lips. I should have come here ten years ago when I was at my peak, but there was always this thought recycled in my head: You can always be prettier, thinner, richer... The two circles act as inadequate binoculars. There is this sense that I am missing something else out there, smeared under the mist. I enlarge the left-hand eye circle, and can see some people in the distance leaving a house. Why so early? And I wonder if it is Sunday and I’ve lost another day, and they are off to one of the churches in the village—the only choice being that narrow doorway between Catholic and Lutheran.
I am so intent on trying to see where they are going that I fail to see the door of my own house open and the people spilling out. Now it is too late to gird myself for what I have come to do, and the family have spotted the car and they are walking over to me. I grope the seat next to me as I keep my eyes trained on the four figures, blindly trying to find my pair of sunglasses, my useless disguise. They are almost at the car, and there is nothing to do but meet them face on, through the two circles of light. My two eyes, and their eight staring back at me. I wait for that flicker of recognition, and when it comes, my right hand reaches for the ignition and my foot hits the floor hard. Before I know it, I am acceleratin
g as if at the speed of light, driving away from pointed fingers and words on the wind. I keep on driving until I reach the safety of the outskirts of town and idle at the intersection, my ticking heart the only sound in the still car.
The logical part of my brain knows they are not the same family. The mother and father are far too young to even be the host children, and their dark hair and skin and their short stature do not match the family DNA profile. The name ‘Bauer’ must be more common than I think.
Thirty-four years in the waiting, and I feel cheated. No chance to prepare for that right moment, to turn on my iPhone and show them the photos of my riverside apartment, nor open up my LinkedIn profile to reveal my impressive career. No chance to wipe out any trace of that girl at the Bavarian districts’ dinner, the girl who stood in front of the club members and their wives with her stuttering slide show of Perth. The kangaroo paws, the black swans, the fallen soldiers at Kings Park, the fake Tudor of London Court. Wipe out the disappointment of the host family as they remember the procession of the other clubs’ students who came before her—the fresh-faced beauties blowing kisses to sweet koalas, the impossibly blue skies over Sydney Harbour. The dawning realisation that they got the raw end of the deal, the B-side of the record.
I want to see how their lives stayed small whilst mine opened up wider than the Indian Ocean. But now I realise that they, too, must have moved on: to bigger cities, to better houses, giving birth to the next generation of taller and smarter Bauers. And Germany has moved on, too. There’s a new version of Germany, one without any borders, welcoming all who seek safety and refuge, and with greater religious freedoms than simply Lutheran or Catholic. The old Germany has been laid to rest, just like the politician Petra Kelly, shot in the head while she lay sleeping.
Maybe it would have been enough just to sit in the car staring up at that window, touching my tongue against the roof of my mouth, fashioning ‘fuck you’ silently, the same way I do in board meetings when the men speak over me.
Fabulous Lives Page 9