This House Is Mine

by Dörte Hansen

“And Leon?” asked Theis.

  “He’s got them too, sweetie pie,” Britta said. “Vera’s getting rid of his right now.”

  * * *

  “Smaller than Willy,” Leon mumbled, “tiny baby dogs.” He put his hands together as though he were about to scoop up water. “They fit in there.”

  He remained silent for a bit while Vera pulled the fine comb through his hair, strand by strand. Then he turned around suddenly, stroked her cheek, and said, “My poor little baby.”

  Anne always did that when he fell, if he grazed his knees or skinned his hands. When the bleeding had stopped but it still hurt, she’d caress his cheek and say my poor little baby.

  Vera was so taken aback that she laughed.

  Much later that night, she pulled the covers over her head when the forgotten ones were parading through the hallway again. She put her hand on her own cheek, just once and only very briefly, and said, “You poor little baby.” Just once and only for a short time, and then never again. She was ashamed of herself for a long time after that. Vera Eckhoff, you maudlin old woman.

  22

  Resurrection

  SHE SAT IN HER BLACK coat under the sailboat that hung from the ceiling of the timber-frame church. The old organ sounded a little hoarse. She had last heard it at Karl’s funeral.

  Vera Eckhoff went to the church every year on Good Friday, not because she was pious but because she loved the passion hymns.

  Altland organs could sound as harmless as barrel organs at street festivals, and then a couple of bars later they would be pounding people into the pews. Uproarious, thunderous, they could put the fear of God into you, probably also make you a believer. But they calmed Vera down, consoled her. You could hear three hundred years of breathing and breathe along with it, as though things carried on forever.

  Anne was sitting next to her. A childless Easter weekend stretched out before her. She put on a face suitable for Good Friday.

  Weep, mine eyes, with tears o’er-flowing …

  The choir ladies’ soprano voices climbed cautiously up to the high notes—not all of them made it—while farmers and master craftsmen rumbled around in the bass range. Vera saw the guy from Hamburg sitting two rows in front of her, with his bicycle helmet on his lap. He grimaced when there were shaky notes, nudged the woman next to him, and they’d both grin. Two people who didn’t have a clue. Who didn’t understand that these songs needed to sound just as the apprehensive little church choir sang them.

  Anne almost fell apart right there in the church pew. She seemed to cry from the first note to the last. Vera didn’t look, and she pretended that she couldn’t feel her quaking next to her. A couple of times Vera even nodded off briefly, her back ramrod straight, her head still upright. She only closed her eyes, and never for long.

  Vera Eckhoff slept like an animal in flight, even in church on Good Friday, when the organ was supposed to soothe her.

  On the way back, they called on Karl. Otto Suhr was keeping the grave in good order. He had planted daffodils and small blue hyacinths. He knew what his clientele expected at Eastertime. There were many graves in the graveyard with daffodils and small blue hyacinths.

  “Doesn’t that freak you out?” asked Anne, “having your name on the headstone already?”

  Vera didn’t know what she was talking about. “That’s where I’ll be buried, and I’ve got it in writing. It’s good to know where you belong.”

  Easter was late that year. The cherry trees were already in bloom and there were dandelions between the trees, anarchic yellow under obedient branches. Plastic Easter eggs dangled from ornamental cherry and magnolia trees in people’s yards, and wooden bunnies with large-toothed grins leaned against fences and flowerpots.

  * * *

  Anne didn’t want to get on the horse at first. It had been so long since she had ridden. “Just at a walk and trot,” Vera said as she saddled Hela, the calmer of the two horses. Even Trakehners mellowed with age.

  Tourist buses edged along the main street, toward the market square. The village walking tours always departed from the church and ended in the only café.

  They found a gap between the buses and family cars. The horses knew the way to the Elbe, so Anne didn’t have to do very much. “Back straight,” said Vera. “Heels down.”

  Anne let Vera overtake her and observed her perfect posture that she didn’t need to strain herself to maintain. She sat like that on a chair or a garden bench too.

  They stayed on the grass. There was no wind, the river was calm. “It can also be otherwise,” Vera said, “now it’s just pretending it’s harmless.”

  Only people who had no idea about water trusted it—and young people who no longer knew what it was like to have the dear Elbe suddenly in their front room, whipped up and voracious on a stormy night.

  But even Vera, who didn’t trust the river, could see how beautiful it was when it was bathed in the spring sunshine.

  Anne followed her onto the dike, and they trotted in the direction of Stade. Endless rows of fruit trees extended from the luscious dike all the way to the arid hinterland, little trees without crowns, spindle trees, which didn’t require much space and bore a lot of fruit. And between the rows of trees were ditches and canals that looked as though they’d been cut with an ax.

  The river and the land on a tight rein. A landscape that appeared to be bridled. Vera seemed a perfect fit for this land. Anne saw the large farmhouses—ornamental gables with impeccable timber frames, their front yards full of flowers, each flower bed well conceived and thoroughly weeded, all the lawns cleanly edged, every yard neatly swept—and she wondered why Vera’s house didn’t look like that. Why someone who held her world on a tight rein would let chaos reign in her house and her backyard.

  There was one stretch of sandy shore along the Elbe, the last that the river still had left. The rest already lay as if in a plaster bed, heavily graveled and straightened.

  Anne’s horse suddenly gathered speed and she couldn’t get it to stop. Vera had galloped off ahead of her; then Anne’s horse too fell into a gentle, rocking gallop.

  She dropped the reins and clung tightly to the saddle. Her feet were slipping out of the stirrups. She cried out briefly, then swore at Vera, but the horse appeared to love this stretch of beach. It snorted, rocked, and did nothing to hurt her. It slowed down, trotted for a few meters, then fell into a steady walking pace. Anne was able to angle for her stirrups, and then took up the reins again.

  “Your posture needs a bit of work,” Vera said.

  Heinrich Luehrs saw Vera’s niece laughing as they rode past his house on their way back, without a riding helmet of course, either of them. They greeted him like lady knights and arced around his yellow sand. Turning a new leaf, it seemed.

  Anne slept like a stone that night. Not even the collapsible crates kept her awake, or the house with its creaking and strange mutterings.

  The birds woke her in the morning. They sounded hysterical, they were going nuts. It was springtime.

  Her muscles were so stiff that she barely got out of bed. She went into the bathroom and heard Vera coming in with the dogs. They always took their walk at dawn.

  Dirk zum Felde drove by on his tractor with Theis next to him. They were taking a trailer full of wood to the dike, old apple crates, branches, and pallets—a load for the bonfire on Easter Saturday. And they weren’t the only ones. Half the village seemed to be ferrying firewood around.

  Vera didn’t care much for the spectacle. In every little hick town, piles of wood were set alight, and it was just as pointless as the pumpkin nonsense in the autumn.

  Children in hideous costumes, frightening people to death and then expecting candy in return. But no one came to sing at New Year’s anymore. People were tired of the old customs and were borrowing new ones.

  She didn’t understand why large fires were even allowed in a thatched-roof area. She had already phoned the mayor, Helmut Junge, an old hunting buddy.

  “Vera,
my dear, the fire department’s running it! Drop by and have a bratwurst on me. The entire village will be there, and safety comes first, I can assure you.”

  She didn’t go. What did Helmut Junge know about flying sparks and thatch? His bungalow had a good flammability rating. You could probably pour gasoline all over it and it still wouldn’t catch.

  She would once again spend half the night walking around the house with her dogs, watching for fires until the flames and sparks above the dike disappeared, the volunteer fire department switched off its hi-fi equipment and dismantled its grills and beer stands, and the last Easter fire fans hobbled over to their cars as straight as laths, or propped themselves against her hedge to pee. Although they never did that more than once, because there was still no command that Vera’s dogs liked better than Attack!

  Heinrich Luehrs didn’t care much for the bonfire either. That was something for the young. He himself didn’t go along. He had enough to do.

  Jochen always came to visit with Steffi and the kids on Easter Sunday, because they didn’t have a yard in Hannover, and Heinrich had to be the Easter bunny.

  It used to be that Steffi would bring the eggs and chocolate bunnies and Jochen would hide them. The children weren’t allowed to see what they were doing. They had to go into the house and be kept busy for fifteen minutes until Jochen was finished, and they managed to wreck his place in that short length of time.

  Now they were both so big that they weren’t interested in Easter eggs. They just wanted to look for candy, which Heinrich Luehrs could hide himself. He did it very early in the morning, long before they arrived.

  He even set the table ahead of time. They brought rolls from Hannover, along with most everything else. They didn’t like his things. The ham couldn’t be smoked, his butter cheese was too fatty, and there was also something wrong with the juice last year. “Don’t stress yourself out, Father. We’ll bring everything!” And his napkins were awful, hares on Rollerblades juggling brightly colored eggs. He sometimes thought that Vera did it on purpose, always bought him the worst Easter napkins that she could find at Edeka. “That’s all they had left, Hinni.”

  She’d said that last year as well, and they were just as bad then—sheep in skirts pulling an Easter cart. He wondered whether he just shouldn’t put them out. Steffi would tease him again. What great napkins Granddad has! But then he thought of Elisabeth’s beautiful white Easter tablecloth. He didn’t want Jochen’s kids making even more of a mess of it than they had last time, so in the end he decided to place the ludicrous napkins next to the plates after all. It was best if you just didn’t look.

  * * *

  Last year Anne had bought an egg coloring kit at the organic supermarket, and brown eggs because there were no white ones left in the whole of Ottensen. When they were finished, the Easter eggs looked like washed-out clothes—reddish, greenish, yellowish, hideous. “Jeez,” Christoph had said, “no kid wants to find that in his Easter basket.” So they’d snuck into Leon’s room for his paint box and touched up the sad eggs all evening, drinking wine and looking forward so much to Easter with their little boy.

  Anne walked through the rows of cherry trees as fast as she could with her stiff muscles. She smoked way too much on her child-free weekends. It still hurt so much and it wasn’t getting any better.

  They’d be going to the Fischi again to hunt for Easter eggs. Without Anne, with Carola, no worries. Just as with becoming a father. Without Anne, with Carola, no problem.

  The only problem was her, the bitter one, the killjoy who couldn’t delight in the happiness of others. “For goodness’ sake, Anne, Carola’s doing everything she can.”

  She was reaching out to Anne, had called her, wanted to talk things out with her, clear things up.

  They already had pretty much everything, and now they wanted the rest. Absolution, reconciliation, the blessing of the abandoned woman, who was now supposed to remove the final blemish on their happiness.

  Anne had no intention of letting them off the hook.

  She picked up speed, tried to outrun the self-pity, but failed again.

  The Edeka store stocked only one kind of red wine that she liked. She was going to buy two bottles and drink them this evening so she could sleep.

  Then throw up tomorrow at the mere thought of an Easter egg.

  * * *

  “The Easter bonfire,” Britta said on the phone, “it kicks off at seven.” Again she didn’t ask, she just hung up.

  Dirk zum Felde was selling beer in a dark-blue volunteer fire department jacket. They all wore their uniforms when on duty at the Easter fire. He tapped his finger against his outrageous cap and pushed a bottle of Jever to her across the counter.

  “The first beer’s on me. Britta’s over there somewhere.”

  It seemed as if, with the exception of Vera and Heinrich, the entire village was at the dike. The fire department had turned out in force. They’d parked their fire truck within sight and had already set their stalls up in the morning.

  Anne found Britta at one of the little bonfires that had been lit especially for the children. She was standing among her pack with a pom-pom hat on her head and a large plastic bowl under her arm.

  Anne recognized Britta’s mother-in-law next to her. They were laughing together, and the man next to them had to be Dirk zum Felde’s father.

  Theis was the first to see Anne. He ran up to her.

  “Where’s Leon?”

  When he realized that Leon wasn’t going to be coming at all, his bottom lip started to quiver. “We made more bread-on-a-stick dough mix especially,” his sister explained, pointing at the plastic bowl.

  Britta pressed the bowl into her mother-in-law’s hands, lifted Theis up, smacked a kiss on his cheek, and wiped his face quickly with a Kleenex. Then she went over to Anne and did the same.

  Britta’s father-in-law took Theis over to the bratwurst stand. They brought a round of Thuringer sausages back. Anne wasn’t asked and didn’t ask any questions. She just went off and got a round of beers.

  “I’m Helmut,” the father-in-law mumbled. He was wearing a Prince Henry hat and said nothing but “Cheers!” for the rest of the evening.

  When it turned cold, people started huddling around the fire. “And afterward we’ll all stink like smoked eels again.” Britta’s mother-in-law sighed. It didn’t seem to bother her, though.

  Children marauded back and forth in large gangs, poking the dying embers with long sticks, pressing the charred bread-on-a-stick into their parents’ hands, and asking for money for french fries.

  The grown-ups gradually lost track of things. They were alternating between cold beer and hot apple punch. Everyone knew everyone else and they were all chatting. Anne learned names and got to know faces, and then forgot them again.

  RESCUE—EXTINGUISH—SAVE—PROTECT was written on the firemen’s jackets. They were mostly blond, but only one had a dimple in his cheek.

  “Woman with curls,” he said, “I’ll buy you a beer. And is there anything else I can do for you?”

  It was already late. She’d have taken him without a dimple too. He could do a whole lot for her.

  Vera heard unusual noises coming from Ida’s apartment. She shut the kitchen door, and the next morning, before it was completely light, she met a man in a fireman’s jacket in her hallway; he was carrying his boots and wishing her a happy Easter.

  “Woop, woop, woop,” she said, disappearing into her kitchen with a grin on her face.

  * * *

  Heinrich Luehrs was standing out on the lawn. From her kitchen window, Vera could see him clenching his fists behind his back as his grandchildren trampled his flower beds, rummaged under the hedge, and bent the branches of his forsythia bushes.

  Jochen was standing beside his father with an Easter basket in each hand, which the boys were throwing their loot into: bunnies, chickens, eggs, and beetles.

  “Ben and Noah, stand still!” shouted Steffi, who was taking photos with her iPhone
. “Look over here! Hold the bunny up, wontcha? One more time, dammit!”

  The boy snapped the Easter bunny’s head off, then held both parts up to the camera with a sneer. His brother found a chocolate chick behind a tub of flowers. He was fed up with this easy-peasy, stupid-ass hiding game. He took the chick and threw it at his granddad’s head.

  “Always a treat,” Vera said. Anne stirred her coffee and watched the spectacle in silence. The parents gave their sons a proper talking-to.

  Heinrich left the whole lot of them standing on the lawn and went inside.

  “We’ll cheer him up again this evening,” Vera said.

  * * *

  Heinrich arrived at seven thirty on the dot in a white shirt. He brought a bottle of Moselle pinot noir, and they ate roast rabbit, of all things. “We don’t like lamb.”

  They toasted one another with lovely old crystal glasses. The tablecloth was a bit thin in spots, but it was white.

  Anne suddenly wondered whether she was in the way.

  * * *

  When Vera woke her up the following morning, the sun had just come up. “Come on,” she said, “I want to show you something.”

  They went outside, past the cherry trees and over the ditches to the apple trees that Dirk zum Felde had planted only a couple of years before. They were still small but had already started to blossom.

  Now they were covered in ice. The branches, leaves, and blossoms looked as though they’d been cast in glass. The trees were like candelabras, sparkling brightly in the early morning sunlight. It was like walking through a hall of mirrors. They walked in silence and couldn’t hear a thing except for their own footsteps on the icy grass and the seagulls overhead. Large drops of water were dripping from the trees because the ice was melting in the sun.

  “You don’t get to see that very often,” Vera said. They stopped, their hands in their pockets, and looked. It was very beautiful.

  “Everything’s shot,” Anne said.

  Vera shook her head.

  They called it frost-protection sprinkling. The farmers did it on cold spring nights. They sprayed the blossoms with fine water droplets that then formed a thin layer of ice during the night. Frost protection through icing up. Coats of ice for the blooms.