This House Is Mine

by Dörte Hansen

  “How small you were, Vera,” he mumbled suddenly. Then he began whistling softly.

  She looked at his profile for a while. His cheeks were so sunken and his eyes were all red with fatigue.

  “Karl,” she said, “shall I give you something so you can sleep?”

  He repositioned his leg, the stiff one. Then he stared at the grass, which was teeming with ants, and reached for his cigarettes.

  “You don’t mean the drops, do you?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  In the night, the alpine doctor had to be fetched again, and they needed the medicine later on as well. Karl lay in his bed, small and fluttering like a bird, and his voice was so weak that Vera didn’t hear him at first.

  When she realized what he was saying, she helped him get dressed, took him by the arm, and they walked as slowly as a bride and groom through the hallway and out into the garden.

  Once Karl was seated on the bench, she draped a blanket around his shoulders and gave him his cigarettes. Then she went back into the house and returned with a glass of apple juice from Heinrich Luehrs in one hand and a smaller glass in the other. Karl Eckhoff was a slip of a man. He wouldn’t need all that much.

  It was very dark with just a sliver of moon overhead. On Elbe island, young seagulls were cheeping, sleepless, restless, hungry all the time. The leaves of the white poplars rushed in the night’s wind as if asking for peace and quiet. “Shhhh.”

  Karl took the glass out of her hand. Vera cupped her hand under his elbows, held his arm very gently, because he was shaking so much, and then he chugged the stuff like he would schnapps, shuddered, and said, “Like a club over the head.” Vera quickly slipped him the apple juice.

  She couldn’t help thinking of Ida in her black costume hanging from the ceiling beam. She took Karl’s hand and held it tight. He didn’t let go of her until he slumped over to the side. Vera remained seated next to him on Ida’s wedding bench until she heard the blackbirds’ morning song.

  The last Eckhoff, a refugee. She didn’t make a sound.

  * * *

  Heinrich then had to help her carry Karl back to his bed and he didn’t ask any questions. Old Eckhoff had passed away peacefully, the rest was nobody’s business. They sat in the kitchen until Dr. Schuett had completed the death certificate, and Heinrich stayed until Otto Suhr arrived with the hearse.

  Vera did the right thing for once. Karl Eckhoff got a grave, as was fitting. Otto Suhr knew the routine. An obituary and cards, a condolence book, and a coffee table laden with butter cake. The neighbors all came, as did a couple of Vera’s old patients, and two classmates of Karl’s, the only ones still living, came from the village as well.

  Pastor Herwig kept it short. They sang O take my hand, dear Father, and placed Karl Eckhoff next to his parents.

  Their buddies from the hunting club stood at the graveside in their green jackets, sweating in the July heat, and sounded the last death-halloo, out of tune as always, but Vera was grateful nonetheless.

  In the church, for funerals, Otto Suhr always reserved the front three pews for family members, but the first row sufficed for Karl Eckhoff.

  Heinrich Luehrs, who was sitting farther back, got up after the organ started playing and sat in the front row next to Vera, even though he didn’t belong there. He imagined that there was now some whispering going on behind him.

  But a person alone in the family pew wasn’t a pretty sight to behold.

  He didn’t know that Vera’s sister was in the church.

  Vera herself discovered Marlene only at the graveside. Then she saw Marlene’s daughter too, and started to cry. Up until then she’d held up well. Heinrich Luehrs had never been a hero at funerals. The receptions afterward were the worst. All that jabbering. Now that Vera’s sister had linked arms with her and she was no longer alone, he didn’t feel like he had to go.

  * * *

  After the funeral, Marlene and Anne stayed with Vera, who looked like a ghost. They sent her to bed, then opened all the windows, cleaned the filthy windowpanes, and scrubbed down all the floors and wall tiles. They dusted the furniture, took Karl Eckhoff’s clothes to the dump, and threw out all the old food in the fridge.

  Anne drove back to Hamburg the following day, but Marlene stayed and made soups, poured them into plastic containers, and put them in the freezer. She woke Vera up only to eat, kept the bedroom door ajar, watched over her like a sister for three days and nights until Vera was back on her feet and as snappy as a guard dog.

  Marlene’s soups came with a price, Vera knew, and she didn’t want to pay it.

  She didn’t want to talk about Us with her half sister, didn’t want to see her walk through Ida Eckhoff’s hallway or let her drink from the old gold-rimmed cups.

  She didn’t want to show her the small black album that contained the photographs that Marlene lacked: Hildegard von Kamcke in her bright dresses and with her beautiful horses. Hildegard Eckhoff on stilts beneath the fruit trees.

  Vera didn’t want to share these pictures with Marlene.

  She’d shaken her hand and continued to give her cherries on those July Sundays when Marlene would turn up with empty buckets, wanting to pick some fruit. Vera had also set up ladders and put coffee and apple juice out on the table in the yard.

  She hadn’t asked her into the house, but Marlene had gone in regardless, as though it were also her home, as though she and Vera had more in common than their thin, straight noses and their brown eyes.

  * * *

  Vera had buried Karl and then sat by herself on the family bench just eight months ago.

  Now she was sitting here with Marlene’s grandchild on her lap and Marlene’s daughter was sleeping in Ida Eckhoff’s parlor.

  She didn’t know who was calling the shots in her life at the moment.

  13

  Elbe Frogs

  LEON’S SNOWSUIT WAS FILTHY. HIS fingernails, too. Anne didn’t even look down at the boots. She knew what they must be like.

  The Elbe Frogs looked different. In the parking lot of their day care center, shortly before nine o’clock, they hopped out of their large family cars into their mothers’ arms. In the backseats, their little brothers and sisters occupied Maxi-Cosi car seats—Elbe tadpoles, Frogs in the making. The minivans and station wagons in which the three- to six-year-old Elbe Frogs were punctually delivered to the morning circle at the village day care center looked like rolling ads for the multichild family. Their rear windows bore blue and pink stickers: LASSE & LENA ON BOARD or VIVIENNE & BEN & PAUL ON TOUR—like vehicle inspection stickers certifying good family planning.

  Anne let Leon climb out of his stroller and took his hand. He looked serious and pale as they made their way to the entrance through the hustle and bustle. The Elbe Frogs’ jackets and snow pants were vibrant and their hats, scarves, and gloves were all color coordinated. The girls’ long hair fell over their shoulders in pretty braids, and when they took off their hats you could see that their barrettes matched too.

  Anne thought back to Leon’s day care center in Hamburg and to the rat’s-nest hairstyles sported by the little girls there. If they didn’t feel like letting their parents brush out their tousles in the morning, they would arrive at day care with their hair unbrushed. And in Ottensen, the children wore weird clothes—skirts and pants on top of one another, spotted, striped, checked, whatever, unmatched socks and gloves, any old scarves with any old hats thrown any old way onto their heads and around their necks—often the result of an autonomous decision by the child in front of the wardrobe, which was respected, of course, even if the child looked like he or she had been dressed in clothes donated after a natural disaster. Hey, if you think that looks good, you wear it, sweetie.

  Their children’s slightly waiflike hobo-look, which could also be achieved with extremely expensive clothing, was an expression of the Hamburg-Ottensen professionals’ parenting style. Nonconformist and creative, wild and insubordinate, that’s how they liked their sons and dau
ghters. A solid crust of mud on their rubber boots and fingernails completed the look. The last thing they wanted was clean-cut, obedient children.

  Here, Leon was placed in the Bumblebee group. During their interview, the head of the day care center had asked him what his favorite animal was, and now Leon had a picture of a bunny above his cubbyhole—and his name spelled out in blue wooden letters.

  Sigrid Pape had set some time aside for the new child and mother. Anne could see her registering key facts: moved here from Hamburg, only child, single mother (with a strange bag made of upcycled truck tarp), Dr. Eckhoff’s niece. Music teacher/carpenter, now that was some combination. In response to Anne’s questions and answers, she merely raised her right eyebrow a couple of times. Sigrid Pape sat smiling opposite the two new arrivals. Her blond hair was short and chic, she had jazzed up her beige cardigan with a hand-painted silk scarf, and her eyes behind those rimless glasses were subtly made up. Sigrid Pape had led the Elbe Frogs for over twenty years. She’d seen a lot and had no problem with this slightly mousy duo from Hamburg.

  The boy clearly didn’t get much fresh air, but that would now change. Otherwise an unremarkable child, cute, somewhat unkempt. She made a shorthand notation in Leon’s file just to be on the safe side. RH4WK. Her teachers all knew the code and would record his state of hygiene every four weeks. Perhaps the move had simply been too much for the mother; that sort of thing happened and mostly resolved itself.

  If not, Sigrid Pape would schedule a little parents’ meeting. That usually worked wonders.

  Now she just had to discuss the nonsense about the meals. “Frau Hove, you asked if there was a vegetarian lunch option for the children.”

  That was all she needed! Sigrid Pape and her colleagues already had enough on their plates with all the peanut, tomato, dairy, and gluten allergies that were now all too common among the children in the countryside too. And on top of that there were two little ones with diabetes and, as usual in day care, lots of I-don’t-like-this-I-don’t-like-that. They managed to feed the Elbe Frogs fish once a week, but they weren’t about to start with spelt meatballs and unripe spelt grain mush as well.

  Sigrid Pape had as little faith in a vegetarian diet as she had in this chummy parenting style that was becoming increasingly common of late.

  Feeding them tofu sausages and letting the children call them by their first names. They couldn’t be serious! As a mother or father you had to keep it together now and again. That’s how Sigrid saw it anyway.

  “We could have Leon eat only the side dishes. If that’s what you’d like.”

  Anne thought back to the grueling and emotional lacto-ovo-wholefood-kosher-halal-vegan debates in Leon’s Hamburg day care and tried to imagine those mothers studying the Elbe Frogs’ meal plan, their faces upon seeing bratwurst, goulash, or meat loaf.

  “No problem, that’s fine,” she said.

  * * *

  Leon took off his boots and put them in his cubbyhole, and they hung his snowsuit up on his hook. The cubbyhole to the right of Leon’s had a hammerhead shark sticker on it. Green overalls were hanging on the hook, and above them in blue wooden letters was the name Theis.

  Anne looked into the Bumblebees’ room and saw the little exterminator playing on the mat. He was building a complex intersection out of Legos with two other boys. Theis zum Felde looked as though he had ripped out two or three acres of fruit trees before heading off to day care. His face was rosy, his white-blond hair was cropped very short, and he was wearing a checked shirt with the sleeves pushed up. “Look, Leon, that’s the boy who came by our place on his tractor. You know him already.”

  Leon didn’t look very happy. Perhaps he was thinking about the squashed moth. He looked at the builders on the mat, then at his mother. “Anne, stay with me.”

  “Sure, I’ll come in with you for a bit.”

  The teacher, Wiebke Quast, watched with irritation as Anne removed her shoes, entered the room, and sat on the floor with Leon. Mothers on the play mat—it just kept getting better and better.

  Her colleague Elke arrived with the breakfast dishes, saw Anne, then looked at Wiebke and raised her shoulders inquiringly. Wiebke Quast, the leader of the Bumblebee group, rolled her eyes momentarily, then went over to Anne and tried to handle the situation with humor.

  “Oh, good morning, I didn’t know we had a new colleague!” She shook Anne’s hand firmly.

  Anne laughed, got up, introduced herself—then sat back down. Leon climbed into her lap, leaned his head against her chest, stuck his index finger in his mouth, and from this safe distance, watched the three boys playing pileup at their Lego-junction. As their Matchbox cars smashed into each other, the collisions were accompanied by dramatic crashing sounds.

  The woman on the play mat was still showing no signs of leaving. It was getting a bit weird. Wiebke Quast made her presence known in the center of the room by clearing her throat, clapping her hands once, and calling out: “Good morning, Bumblebees, it’s time for us to have breakfast, so we must ALL say good-bye to our mommies!”

  There, it finally seemed to be sinking in. Anne looked up and it slowly dawned on her that the Elbe Frogs’ settling-in routine was somewhat different from the one in Leon’s day care in Hamburg, where the children parted from their parents very slowly. It was ten whole days before Leon spent an entire morning there without either Anne or Christoph, because he’d been only two at the time, not four.

  Anne tried to ease Leon gently off her lap.

  But he turned around right away and clung to her. “Leon, I’ve got to go now. This isn’t a day care for mommies, it’s a day care for kids, right?”

  When she stood up, Leon hugged her right leg tightly and let himself be dragged across the room like a ball and chain. “DON’T GO AWAY!”

  Anne dragged her son behind her as far as the door. Then Wiebke Quast came over, unclasped her new Bumblebee from his mother’s leg with the expert touch of a day care teacher, and lifted him up.

  “So, Leon, you come with me, and, Mommy, you LEAVE REALLY FAST right now, then we can get started STRAIGHTAWAY with our morning circle. The Bumblebees can’t wait to meet you, Leon. Say bye-bye, Mommy! Bye-bye, Mommy!” She shut the door quickly.

  Anne stood in the hallway in her stocking feet among all the snowsuits and wet boots. A janitor was wiping up the muddy puddles on the floor, but Anne was already standing in one of them. She hovered near the door with soaking wet feet and heard Leon shouting.

  “ANNE, COME BACK! ANNE!! ANNE!!!”

  From her office, Sigrid Pape could also hear the new kid from Hamburg acting up a bit. Oh well, it’s always difficult at first, she said to herself, as the boy’s mother, slim as a whip, walked past her window with her weird messenger bag. Her clothes were really dark, even her hat was black, and her pants were way too wide. Is that how women in Hamburg were dressing these days?

  Frau Hove wouldn’t have an easy time settling in here. People who let their children call them by their first names never had it easy. Sigrid Pape could only advise against that.

  * * *

  At first Anne didn’t know what to do with herself. She resisted the urge to look for the window of the Bumblebees’ room but checked again to make sure that her cell phone was on.

  “If there are any problems, we’ll get in touch,” Wiebke Quast had said. “You don’t need to worry.”

  But what constituted a problem in Wiebke Quast’s world? A four-year-old clinging to his mother’s leg and screaming obviously wasn’t one.

  The trees in people’s front yards were still bare. But in the tidy flower beds around the old thatched-roof houses in the center of the village, the first crocuses were blooming, and Anne wished she had a dress in those same colors—yellow and white and violet—colors emblematic of this spring, which was going to be different from previous ones.

  She would buy Leon a few gardening tools: a spade, some flower seeds, and a watering can; then he could show little Theis in his green overalls what
was what. And sooner or later he’d also need a tractor to pedal around. She hadn’t seen any balance bikes around here yet.

  The new development in which the day care center was located ended in a farm track, so Anne continued walking along the narrow gravelly path.

  On either side of her there were now only fruit trees, endless, bare rows, apple or cherry perhaps. She hadn’t a clue. They could also be plum or pear trees for all she knew. Some were big and gnarled and stretched their twisted limbs out like bewitched people in an enchanted forest might do, but most of them were graceful, delicate little trees, supported by posts to which they were tied by wire cables. Like galley slaves, Anne thought, not trees to be climbed and shaken, and they obviously didn’t give their fruit willingly either.

  She saw a man in a thick parka pruning branches with a pair of electric shears. He must have just started, since he’d clipped only five or six trees and there were loads still to go. He raised his hand curtly as she passed, and Anne nodded back. It wasn’t until she’d gone another few steps that she realized who he was.

  She turned around and walked back, but Dirk zum Felde didn’t seem to be aware that she was there. He carried on pruning the branches of his apple trees in a practiced way until she was standing right beside him. Then he looked at her and raised his eyebrows quizzically. Anne put out her hand, and it took him a moment to realize what she wanted. He hung the pruning shears on a snap hook on his belt, then took off his right work glove and shook her hand.

  “Anne Hove.” She squeezed his hand quite tightly. “I’ve moved into Vera Eckhoff’s place. We had the pleasure of meeting briefly already.”

  Dirk zum Felde almost laughed out loud. He felt as though he were watching a badly dubbed movie. The woman and her voice just didn’t go together. She was five foot three at most, looked like Bambi, and sounded as though she’d spent twenty years behind the bar of a harbor dive.

  “Dirk zum Felde,” he said. “You recently gave me the finger awfully nicely. Do we have a problem?” He was wearing the cap with the earflaps again and his eyes were so bright that they almost looked transparent.