The End of Days

by Jenny Erpenbeck

  Alone.

  Will he have to pick up her glasses to remember her eyes, her wallet to remember her fingers, a pair of shoes to see her feet eternally in their shoes, and her woolen blanket to remember until the end of days how her body looked when she was napping after lunch? How many objects and coverings will be needed if she is to retain at least a life of memory inside him? But probably there isn’t anything his mother’s hands, reaching out from the realm of the dead, will be able to grasp so firmly — no object, no piece of furniture, or item of clothing — as she grasps him, the one to whom she first bequeathed her heartbeat, and then, when he was still small, whose diapers she changed and whose nose she wiped, whom she looked at again and again, watching and observing him, and whom later, as he grew, she taught language and read to, whose hand she held to cross larger streets, whose hair she combed, whose sweater she pulled on over his head and whose shoes she tied, whom she looked at again and again, watching and observing him, whom she consoled when he fell down, whose temperature she took and whom she taught to ride a bicycle, to whom she said what she found good and proper and what wrong, what she found tedious, amusing, interesting, whom she looked at again and again, watching and observing him, whom she scolded, shouted at and cursed, and often also praised and kissed. For the first time now, he tries to see himself through his mother’s eyes, from the outside, as it were, but this is difficult. Strange, he thinks, that we use blind spot to designate a place that cannot clearly be seen because it is too close. Still, memory no doubt prefers to be able to exchange the bit of blindness for a living body.

  During spring break he’ll start cleaning out the house, and in the summer he’s supposed to move to a Home where he’ll spend the final year before he comes of age, his legal guardian told him.

  When the doorbell rings, he knows that on a Sunday it can be neither the mailman nor the housekeeper.

  The man looks at him with his own gray-blue eyes, and the mouth of the man looks exactly like his own mouth that he sees every morning in the mirror. With exactly the same sort of raspy voice he himself has, the man, after clearing his throat, says good day in Russian.

  In the pause that follows, German silence and Russian silence intermingle.

  And then the boy’s father grabs him by his shock of hair and pulls him in for a hug.

  Like an exhausted boxer, the boy remains briefly in his embrace before pushing away.

  From the hall you can see into his mother’s study.

  Is that where she wrote? his father asks.

  Yes.

  Would you make us some tea?

  The boy nods.

  While the boy puts on the kettle, takes out cups and tea from the cupboard, and finally pours the water, his father leans against the doorpost, watching his son move around busily, picking things up and putting them down.

  When the tea is ready, the boy’s father picks up the teapot and leads the way.

  Let’s sit in here, his father says, walking into his mother’s study.

  This is the first time for as long as the boy can remember that a visitor is taking a seat not in the parlor but at the little tea table in his mother’s study. On the wall is the wall hanging with the huge yellow sun.

  Do you really live in Kharkov?

  Why Kharkov?

  The boy shrugs. He sits bent over in his chair, the cup in his hands.

  At first the father hears only a regular dripping sound, then he sees the rings forming in his son’s teacup, a new ring each time a tear falls from the tip of the boy’s nose into the tea.

  When I met your mother, she was going through some difficult times.

  Everything started when I asked whether her husband had returned home yet and she burst into tears.

  I wanted to give her my handkerchief, but there was still a knot in it.

  The knot was so tight that I couldn’t get it open right away.

  That was how it started. . . .

  Maybe you need one yourself?

  Yes, please.

  The father pulls a pressed handkerchief out of his front pocket and gives it to his son.

  What was the knot supposed to remind you of?

  That there was an assembly that night.

  And then?

  I forgot the assembly.

  INTERMEZZO

  If she’d gone downstairs just five minutes later, she’d have missed the entrance to the underworld, which would have trundled on its way, offering its open hole to someone else instead; or if she’d taken that step with her right foot instead of her left, she wouldn’t have lost her footing; or if she’d been thinking not about this and that but about that and this, she’d have seen the steps instead of not seeing them. Even so, some death or other will eventually be her death. If not sooner, then later. Some entrance will have to be for her. Every last person, every he and every she, has an entrance meant for him, for her. So does this underworld consist only of holes? Is there nothing more to it? A different wind is blowing here. Is there nothing that could prevent a person from — sooner or later, here or there — stumbling right into it, flailing, falling, plummeting, sinking?

  In the fall of ’89, the partition between the Eastern and Western parts of Germany collapses: it gets flattened, breached and scorned, and the mob that’s been working itself into a frenzy stampedes out of its own country and flings itself into the arms of its capitalist brothers and sisters — joy, rapture and sweet oblivion — an entire body politic is emptied out, thrown up (why is it throwing when you throw up), surrendering all power, all sovereignty, then collapsing, spent. Now another wind is blowing, something that used to be called a life is now called forty years of waiting that have only now proved worthwhile. What’s a five-year plan? Everything is being called by different names, new “shores” on the horizon. Words, which long ago stopped being as real as a bag of flour or a pair of shoes, have failed, becoming economically unsustainable. Twenty sorts of butter, whereas before there was just one, rents are now being multiplied by ten, different plays are being put on at the theater, the Russians are closing their barracks and selling their forefathers’ fur hats, uniform jackets, and medals from the Great Patriotic War at the Strasse des 17. Juni flea market. On June 17, 1953, workers in East Berlin staged a revolt against the excessive quotas being imposed on them, but they were unsuccessful, while the miner and early activist Adolf Hennecke (pioneer of the quota) was now living in a villa in Pankow. Down with privileges! In 1990, former government ministers, currently unemployed, lean on their garden fences, chatting with retirees out walking their dogs. Whether they will be allowed to hold on to these properties is being looked into. The Easterners head to the West to collect their welcome payments, and return home Westerners. East is no longer anything more than a point on the compass. The publishing house that printed the books of the estimable author goes bankrupt. The readers have other things to do than read these days, first they want a trip to the Canaries. It is not enough to be eighteen years old. The century that used to be so young is now terribly old. His mother, too, is old.

  Her son comes to visit her on Sunday at four.

  She says she’s realized that she’s been hiding things and she no longer remembers where. She says she’s no longer herself.

  The housekeeper brings coffee and cake on a tray, then she goes back out again.

  Mother to son: Should I kill myself?

  Her son says: Of course not, Mother.

  He says: Oh, Mother.

  He says: How can you ask such a thing?

  The son visits his mother on Sunday at four, his mother has a forearm that is completely black and blue. He asks: Did you fall?

  No, his mother says. She says that her skin just turns black and blue like that in certain spots all by itself.

  In the kitchen, the housekeeper tells the son that she doesn’t think that’s true, but his mother never tells her anything.

  The son comes to visit his mother on Sunday at four. As the housekeeper is taking his coat, she
says that his mother has only been awake for half an hour since when she arrived in the morning to start work, she’d found his mother sitting fully dressed on the edge of the bed, where she’d apparently been since the evening before. So she put her to bed for the day.

  Thank you, the son says. Thank you so much for all your trouble.

  Then the housekeeper calls the son at 7:30 in the morning, saying his mother is not at home. Is she with him? The son says: No. He says: I’ll be right over.

  The son cancels a meeting, tells his older child that he’ll have to take the bus to school and that he should get a move on since it is already late, asks his wife to take their younger child to school, and his wife says: Are you out of your mind? I’ve got make-up at 8:30, oh right, the father says, and calls his daughter’s school to say she’s ill, when he hangs up, his daughter says: It’s bad to tell lies, and her father says: Get a book, read, and wait until I get home.

  Then the son drives to his mother’s house.

  The housekeeper says: What am I supposed to do?

  The son: It’s not your fault.

  The son goes searching for his mother in all the surrounding streets. Somewhere or other, she is sitting on the curb in her nightshirt, crying.

  That night, when the children are in bed, the son says to his wife:

  Things can’t go on like this with my mother.

  His wife says: I don’t know what you mean.

  My mother owns a large house.

  His wife says: Forget it.

  The man says: I know it wouldn’t be easy for you.

  The woman: She kept trying to turn the children against me. If you’re in the mood for a war, sure, let’s go move in with her.

  The man: But she can’t look after herself anymore.

  She didn’t help me with the children even once that entire year you were in Leningrad.

  It’s just that she can’t take it when the boy plays his music so loud.

  And the girl?

  It was just too much responsibility for her.

  You see, now I’m the one who can’t take it, and it’s just too much responsibility for me.

  We’re all going to be old some day.

  I’ll be damned if I’ll go blackmailing my children when the time comes.

  She’s not blackmailing me.

  Oh, really?

  She doesn’t know what she’s doing any longer.

  Serves her right for playing the know-it-all for so many years.

  What an ugly thing to say.

  Now she’s even going to drive us apart.

  Nonsense.

  BOOK V

  1

  The week Frau Hoffmann is going to die, the day after her ninetieth birthday, Sister Renate has the early shift.

  The week Frau Hoffmann is going to die, the day after her ninetieth birthday, she is sharing a room — just as she’s done for seven months now — with Frau Buschwitz, whose habit it is to scratch and slap anyone who comes within three feet of her. The day Frau Buschwitz moved into Frau Hoffmann’s room, Frau Hoffmann fought her first and only battle with her new roommate, she’d approached Frau Buschwitz intending a friendly greeting, whereupon Frau Buschwitz took a swipe at her, as was her wont, prompting Frau Hoffmann in her surprise to hunt for the nearest object within reach that she might use to defend herself, and what she found was a piece of zwieback lying on the table. She scraped this zwieback right across Frau Buschwitz’s face, whereupon Frau Buschwitz retreated. From then on, Frau Hoffmann has never gone within three feet of her roommate.

  This week, too — the week she is going to die, the day after her ninetieth birthday — begins with a Monday, just like every other week, and this Monday, too, begins with breakfast at eight, just like every other day. Breakfast begins, as always, with the attendant on duty pushing her in her wheelchair from her room to the breakfast room, giving Frau Buschwitz a wide berth.

  What is a Monday? Frau Hoffmann sits at the long table, as always, between Frau Schröder and Frau Millner, who are still able to sit in chairs. Between the chairs of Frau Schröder and Frau Millner, a place, as always, has been left empty for her wheelchair. Frau Hoffmann’s red hair is now gray as well, such that a person who knew her before would have a hard time picking her out from among all the many nodding, tilted, dozing, or bent gray- and white-haired heads. When Frau Hoffmann speaks at breakfast, it disturbs no one here, for the ears of all these ladies and gentlemen are really quite old. And if jam falls on her blouse, it disturbs no one, for the eyes of all these ladies and gentlemen are old as well. After a few bites she pushes her breakfast plate away and refuses to eat anything more.

  Thousands have been invited here for this meal, from many different levels. But this I cannot eat.

  Sister Renate, who is pouring tea, says:

  But Frau Hoffmann, there really aren’t thousands of us here.

  Yes — thousands! And I don’t know why these people have assembled here, I cannot determine the cause, the purpose of this meeting — but it must have a purpose!

  Frau Hoffmann, please eat your breakfast.

  It’s so paltry! There ought to be more selection. Why are all these thousands eating this mess that is served here?

  Fresh rolls straight from the bakery, Frau Hoffmann.

  There’ll have to be a discussion of this some time, this food and the purpose of everyone having only this paltry mess to eat — but I haven’t yet been able to speak with anyone about this.

  But, but, Frau Hoffmann.

  I can’t eat it. First I must determine what sort of development — developments of all different sorts! — these individuals have gone through, what motivates them, what might win them over, and what not.

  *

  Between 8:30 and 9:30, after the breakfast has been cleared away, it isn’t worth having yourself wheeled back into your room. You sit where you are. At 9:30 everyone in wheelchairs goes to the exercise room, where the fingers, hands, feet and heads of those who can no longer get up, or at least not on their own, are worked over, and at 11:00 it’s back to the day room. From 11:00 until 11:30 everyone sits there. The TV is on. On the wall is a large clock. Some are asleep in their wheelchairs, wrapped up in blankets.

  She would like to read. If she held the book close to her eyes, she would even be able to decipher the letters, but her arms and hands aren’t strong enough to hold the book.

  Frau Zeisig was an excellent skier.

  Down we go! I so wish I could go whizzing down the slope just once more, but it’s not possible.

  Herr Behrendt was a pastor.

  I so wish I could write something down sometimes, but my head won’t cooperate.

  Frau Braun walked all the way from Heydekrug on the Memel to Berlin after the war, with three children.

  No one can quite imagine what that means anymore.

  And all of them survived.

  All three of them proper, lovely children.

  From the kitchen, the clinking of plates can be heard.

  My oldest recently celebrated his own golden anniversary.

  It smells of stew. The staff sets the table. The day room is full of desires. At 11:30 lunch is served.

  Frau Hoffmann says to Frau Millner, who is hard of hearing:

  We have to organize our group. A few of them will show up early, others late — we have to coordinate all of that and then await orders from leadership.

  Frau Millner doesn’t look at Frau Hoffmann, she is trying to spear the little shreds of chicken in her fricassee on her fork.

  We cannot under any circumstances take action until the orders have reached us.

  Frau Millner nods, but not because she agrees with Frau Hoffmann; she nods because the fricassee tastes good.