Milk Teeth

by Helene Bukowski

  Someone whistled; we turned. Out of the forest came Kurt. Under his rabbit fur coat he was wearing a crumpled suit. His face was serious. He nodded at us. I was going to say something, but he shook his head.

  He just said, “I know.”

  “What do people say at funerals?” I asked him.

  Metta and Meisis lowered their heads.

  “That’s up to you.”

  I looked at him helplessly.

  “Maybe something Edith liked,” he said. “Wait a moment.”

  He went into the house and came back a short time later. In his hand he was holding a slim book with a worn cover. He gave it to me. I opened it and recognized the poems. Edith had known them all by heart. With my shoulders back, I stood at the fresh grave and read in a low voice.

  When I stopped speaking, a soft silence spread. The sky was dark blue, like water that’s a hundred meters deep.

  I DREAMED THAT THE RIVER ROSE AND BROKE ITS BANKS. FIRST IT FLOODED THE FOREST, THEN THE MEADOWS, FINALLY THE HOUSES.

  THE TERRITORY SILENTLY WENT UNDER.

  I DREAMED I WENT SWIMMING IN THIS WATER. I WORE EDITH’S WHITE SWIMSUIT AND SWAM WITH EVEN STROKES, THE SUNKEN LANDSCAPE FAR BENEATH ME, AND AS I REACHED THE MIDDLE OF THE RISING LAKE, I NOTICED THE WATER TASTED SALTY.

  I woke up and didn’t know where I was. The light had no permanence. I rubbed my eyes. Earth was stuck to my hands. I managed to focus my eyes and sit up. I had slept beside the grave. The dogs were gone. A heavy scent lay in the air. I turned toward the lilac bush; among the fleshy leaves bright violet blossoms had burst open. It was the first time in years. I lay down and decided to never get up again.

  74.

  The days that followed now seem to me, looking back, strangely distorted. I can’t remember if I actually slept. Only individual scenes stand clearly before my eyes, what happened between them has disintegrated.

  I remember Meisis wore the white rabbit fur coat that Edith had sewn for her. She sat like a snow hare in the shade of the house, out in the garden, in spite of the heat.

  I remember Metta crouching among the books in the living room and Meisis reading a fairy tale where seven brothers disappear, while I lay on the carpet and drew patterns on the ceiling with my eyes.

  I remember Kurt cooking onion soup in the kitchen and feeding the child because it was dazed and couldn’t move, and giving me some of the soup and speaking quietly to me.

  I remember standing at the window in the kitchen and watching the sun come up, and then closing my eyes, and when I opened them again it was evening, and the darkness was drawing in over the landscape.

  I remember Metta and Meisis sitting with me in Edith’s wardrobe, and using the flashlight, we looked at the pictures of the sea, the radio between us, and we listened to the quiet rushing sound that ebbed away and then became louder, just as Edith had described the sound of the waves.

  I remember us standing in the garden collecting empty snail shells in the last of the light and crushing them between stones, for hours, until we couldn’t find any more and our hands were all dusty.

  I remember all of this, but maybe I only dreamed it.

  75.

  I woke with a start, gasping for air, as if I had just been underwater. For the first time in a long time, I saw my surroundings clearly again. The sunlight cut sharp edges around the living room. I got up from the carpet.

  I found Meisis and Metta in the kitchen, where they sat at the table looking at me with serious faces. At their feet, the cat was crouching and still. All I could hear was its purring.

  “We’re going to cross the river,” Metta said, “before the people come and get us.”

  “What?”

  “We can’t wait any longer.”

  “If you try to cross the river you’ll drown.”

  “I’ve been training. I can do it. With Meisis too.”

  “But you don’t know what’s waiting for you on the other side.”

  “We can’t stay here. We have to try our luck.”

  “Come with us, Skalde,” Meisis said.

  I stared out the window. The garden lay there unchanged. I wished I could go into the pine forest. Lie flat on the ground and lose the feeling of my body.

  After a long pause I said, “I can’t.”

  “It’s just a question of technique,” Metta said. “I can teach you.”

  I shook my head. “The territory. I belong here.”

  “It will get even hotter here, you won’t be able to stop it,” Metta said.

  I didn’t respond and ran my finger over the grain of the sideboard. The cat jumped onto Meisis’s lap and curled up. Its eyes narrowed into small slits.

  “Skalde, please,” Meisis said.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, turning around and going outside. In the front garden, the lilac bush was still in bloom. I stood so close to it, the scent was the only thing I could perceive.

  TO LEAVE A FAMILIAR TERRITORY I COULD NAVIGATE BLIND. WHAT LASTS, AND WHAT REMAINS, IF I GO? WHO WILL REMEMBER THE PATH I LEAVE BEHIND?

  76.

  I drove the pickup to Gösta and Len’s. On the way I passed the cherry plum trees. Not a single fruit was hanging from the branches. As if it had never happened. I shook my head.

  I reached the house and knew straightaway that something had shifted. With a pounding heart I knocked on the door, but no one opened it. I tried pulling down the handle; the door wasn’t locked.

  Inside, I called their names but received no answer. In the living room it smelled of sweat. The television was switched off. The kitchen looked like it had just been cleaned. Nothing was out of place. I leaned over the sink and noticed the remnants of CELANDINE. Small yellow flowers and dark green leaves. My stomach dropped.

  I stepped out the back door and walked through the heat to the vegetable garden. In the middle of the beds was the sun lounger. Gösta and Len were lying on it. They were holding each other, their eyes closed, but they weren’t sleeping. That they had chosen their death had something peaceful about it, and yet nothing was as it should be anymore. I lost my balance, slipped, lay down. All I could see was the sky, the harmonious blue. I didn’t move, and my gaze swam.

  At some point I noticed a speck high up above, a disturbance in the color. The speck got nearer, became larger. It was a seagull. It sank farther and farther down and circled over the garden; for a moment it hovered motionless in the sky. Then it let itself be carried back up on the air, climbed higher and higher, and disappeared in a northerly direction, there, where the sea was. Till then, I had never believed in signs.

  I stood, crouched down next to the dead women, said goodbye by touching their hands one last time.

  In the house I looked for a message they might have left for me. What I found was a bag positioned in the middle of their bed. In it were two life jackets, sewn together Styrofoam. Reflectors. In my head the image of the river appeared, the water no longer unbeatable. In the bag was also a video cassette. RECORDINGS OF THE TERRITORY: THE LAST YEAR, Len had written on white tape, and aside from that, a note: LEAVING HAS NEVER BEEN EASY FOR ANYONE.

  I put everything back in the bag and left the house.

  77.

  The lilac had almost withered. In a few days, nothing would be left of the heavy flowers. I parked the pickup next to the sand path, just as I always had, only this would be the last time. For a long while, I stared through the windscreen at the house. I tried to get a lasting impression of it, and yet I knew that I wouldn’t be able to hold on to it in all its clarity.

  I climbed out. The sand crunched beneath my feet. Before I opened the door, I touched the place where the paint was flaking off.

  In the hallway, I picked up Edith’s coat, which was lying on the tiles, and put it on. I met my determined gaze in the mirror.

  Meisis and Metta were sitting in the kitchen. It seemed like they hadn’t moved since I’d left the house. Only the cat had gone. I stood before them and said, “Let’s go.”

  I
collected my notes. I really had hidden them all over the house and in every conceivable nook. I piled up the pieces of paper on the kitchen table. The years compressed into words and letters of the alphabet. I took the tin can with my milk teeth too. When I reached the window halfway up the stairs, I formed a gun with my left hand and aimed it at the evening sky. I whispered, “Bang, bang.”

  In the kitchen I bound the notes, the can with the teeth, and the video cassette in a plastic bag to form a waterproof package. Meisis filled a rucksack with the food we still had left. Metta stood still.

  On a piece of paper I wrote Kurt a message. If he wanted, he should live in the house. I placed the note in the middle of the table.

  The last of the light made the trunks of the pines glow red. Meisis walked out. Under my soles the grass snapped, as if about to catch fire. Before stepping into the forest, I took one last look back. The sun was setting behind the house. The sky looked like it was burning. My heart was heavy while I said goodbye. It felt unimaginable to know that I would never be coming back. I nodded to the house one final time and stepped between the pines, stepped into the familiar scent of the trees, following Metta and Meisis. We took our time. Sometimes I paused and laid my hand on the cracked bark of a tree. If it were possible to fold up the forest and keep it, I would have stowed it in my coat pocket.

  The trees thinned out: we had reached the river. The water gleamed like black lacquer. The sight of the concrete bridge occupied a large part of the landscape.

  A moth got caught in my hair. I freed it carefully and thought of Gösta’s butterfly collection. Would someone take it on? Or would everything just be lost? I forbade myself from thinking of it any longer.

  We climbed down to the water and looked at the other side. Meisis and I put on the life jackets.

  You have to move like a frog, I heard Edith’s voice in my head. I stuffed the plastic bag into the inside pocket of my coat.

  Metta and Meisis looked at me.

  We held hands. I hesitated for a moment, then I nodded, and we waded into the river. For a moment we felt the current. The farther we went in, the more it tore at us.

  “Don’t let go of me,” I shouted to Meisis. Then I began to swim. The world tipped, and the only thing I heard was the roar of the water. It received me, as if it had been waiting for me for years.

  About the Author

  Helene Bukowski, born in Berlin in 1993, is studying creative writing and cultural journalism in Hildesheim. She is the co-author of the documentary film “Zehn Wochen Sommer,” which won a Grimme Special Cultural Award in 2015. Her writing has appeared in various journals and anthologies, and she was the co-editor of BELLA triste. Milk Teeth is her debut novel.

  About the Translator

  Jen Calleja is the author of I’m Afraid That’s All We’ve Got Time For (Prototype), Goblins (Rough Trade Books) and Serious Justice (Test Centre). She is a literary translator from German of Marion Poschmann, Wim Wenders, Kerstin Hensel, Michelle Steinbeck, Gregor Hens, and more. Her translation of The Pine Islands was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019.