“Get dressed.” My father gave my shoes a kick toward me. He picked up his own clothes and put them on with fierce movements as if they too had misbehaved. He took his fishing rod apart in angry bursts.
Almost under my breath, I repeated, “I want to go home, Papa.”
“Get dressed!” My father pulled my trousers out from under the fish as though he were performing a magic trick with a tablecloth. He flung them at me. Pieces of crushed fish flesh and skin stuck to them. Still crying, I put them on, then my socks and shoes.
“We’ll go home when the fucking fish begin to fly,” my father shouted. I tried hard to swallow my sobs and talk in a way that would reach him.
“I miss, I miss,” I stuttered. I wanted to tell him that I missed Becky and school and Ute, but the words wouldn’t come.
His anger was like a popped balloon—all the rage gone in an instant. He sat on the bank with his head in his hands.
“We can’t go home, Rapunzel.”
“Why not?” My voice was reedy.
“Mutti, she just isn’t there any more.” My father rushed the words without looking at me.
“She’ll be back from Germany soon though.” Even as I spoke, I knew that couldn’t be right; already more than two weeks and three days had passed since my father and I had sat beside the fire in London and he had told me that was how long it would be before Ute came home.
“No, that’s not what I mean. She’s gone, Punzel. She’s dead.” He still looked at the ground.
I remembered what I had told my headmaster and Mrs. Cass, and was frightened that, in saying it, I had made it happen.
“No, Papa. She’s just in Germany,” I said. “You’re wrong.”
“She’s gone. I’m sorry.”
“Gone where? Where?” My voice was a rising wail.
“I’m sorry.” He leaned in toward me, and I flinched as he held the upper part of my arms to my sides. My trousers were pinned against my thigh and I felt sick thinking about the fish brains soaking through the cloth. My father looked into my eyes and away. He pulled me to him, trapping me between his knees and burying his face in my hair. My head was squashed between his arm and his chest. His heart was loud, but his voice muffled. I thought I heard him say, “The wolf took her, Punzel.”
“No. No, Papa. No.” I struggled against him, but he held me too tight.
He made a noise similar to the one I had heard in the glasshouse, the night before we had left, but worse—like one of our rabbits caught in a wire trap, wretched and unnatural. He said something else into my hair which might have been, “The whole fucking world,” but I wasn’t sure. I stopped struggling and went floppy in his embrace, and the awful choking noises subsided. Without a word and without looking at me, he stood up and walked off into the trees, leaving me in an odd crouch between the decapitated trout and the river. I wanted to call after him to ask him why we had bought the seeds if she was dead, but I never did.
Although eventually the stench of the fish on my trousers blended with every other smell, to become one big stink that we stopped noticing, the red stain in the shape of a duckling never faded from my trousers. It was high up on the right thigh, so even when I had to slice them into shorts much later it stayed with me.
8
We followed the river as it wound through the landscape. Sometimes we had to make a detour into the woods, and once we waded through the shallows when our path was blocked by fallen trees. We crossed marshy land, jumping from one grassy hillock to another, but my father wobbled and only just stopped himself from toppling into the boggy water. He said it was too dangerous and we’d have to turn back and go around it. We rested at the top of a hill, with the water unravelling below us. The clouds were heavy over our heads, and the air thick like the fug in a steamy kitchen. The sky threatened a downpour which didn’t come.
My father unfolded the map and tilted it one way, then the other, matching the wooded landscape surrounding us with the features in front of him. I lay on my stomach, with my arm out and my palm upward, as steady as I could make it, waiting for the grasshopper sounding its scratchy rattle in the grass nearby. I told myself that if I caught the insect, Ute would not be dead and soon we would turn around and start going home. I was tired of walking and camping and catching squirrels. I wanted a bed and a bath and proper food. A quick green flash from nowhere and the grasshopper landed on my hand. It sat there like Joan of Arc in its armour and helmet, large amber eyes downcast and saintly.
“Can we eat grasshoppers, Papa?” I whispered, so that the insect wouldn’t be alarmed and jump away. My father still stood looking at the map and tapping his compass as though he would have preferred north to be in a different place.
“Papa,” I hissed, “can we eat grasshoppers?”
“Yes,” he said, concentrating on the map and not looking down, “but they’re better boiled because of the tapeworms.”
“Do they taste nicer when they’re boiled?”
“What?” he glanced at me, and the grasshopper launched itself back onto the battlefield, just as my fist was closing around it. When I opened my hand, the creature was gone. My heart sank. I rolled onto my side and stared up at my father—a giant, holding back the heavy sky with the width and power of his shoulders.
“The tapeworms,” I said.
“Tapeworms? What?” He was still distracted, putting the map back in his rucksack pocket.
“How about grass? Is that nice to eat?” I picked a blade and put it in my mouth. It tasted the same as its colour.
“Come on, Punzel. Time to find die Hütte.” He lifted his rucksack onto his shoulders. Tied to the bottom was a dead rabbit, dangling from its hind legs.
“I wouldn’t like to eat snails.” I stood up. “That wouldn’t be right, taking them out of their houses.”
My father picked up my rucksack, helped me into it, and moved off in the direction of the glittering water.
“Papa? When can we go home?” I said in a voice so quiet he didn’t answer. I followed on behind him.
The sky pressed down on the land, leaving us walking in a narrow strip of air, charged with electricity. With one more check of the map my father said we had gone far enough. We sat down, high above the river on a shelf of rock, looking over a gorge which water, although colourless and insubstantial when cupped by hands, had worn through stone. On our left, the water forced itself through a narrow gap so that it burst out, roaring and rushing over rocks and boulders, falling to a pool far below our feet. There, the water was still for a time until it moved onward, widening, spitting and foaming through more boulders. I sat beside my father, my chin in my hands, watching him from the corner of my eye, trying to sidle inside his head without him knowing. On the other side of the river, stringy trees and bushes jostled for position between slabs of rock similar to the one we sat on.
“Maybe there’s a bridge a bit farther down, Papa,” I shouted over the noise of the roiling water. He gave me a sideways look that meant I had said something ridiculous.
“No, we have to cross down there,” he shouted back, standing up on the slippery rock. I crawled away from the edge on my hands and knees, and the two of us picked our way downstream until the bank was level with the water. In the middle, the river was a deep green, scattered with rocks poking their noses up for a breath. The water charged around them, creating eddies and whirlpools. Closer to the bank, the current dragged lengths of weed along with it so it seemed that long-haired women swam just under the surface, never coming up for air. My father selected a strong branch from under the trees, broke a stick from it, tossed the stick as far as he could into the river and, for a second or two, we watched it speed downstream, dance around the rocks, and vanish.
“You should have taught me how to swim,” I said.
My father took off all his clothes, except his underpants, then put his boots back on and told me to do the same. He crouched down beside me and looked me straight in the eyes and made me promise I would sit where I was
and not move so he could see me at all times. That was the only reference he ever made to the fish incident. He had behaved so normally afterward that, later, I wasn’t sure it had ever happened.
My father stuffed our clothes into his rucksack and held it tight to his chest. He walked into the water without noticing the cold; there was just a slight shudder when it came above his thighs. Every now and again he glanced back to check that I still sat where he had left me. I rested my head on my knees and watched him. The water came up to the top of his chest and he moved the rucksack higher, holding it above his head, feeling his way across the rocks. My father staggered, and when the water came up to his chin he had to tilt his head toward the sky. He forced his way forward until more of his torso emerged, until he reached the far bank and dropped the rucksack onto the stony edge. He came back toward me and did the same thing with my rucksack. Finally, back on my side of the river, my father took the branch he had found, held it horizontally, and tied me to it, looping a length of rope once around my waist and around my wrists. He stood beside me and we both gripped the branch, as if we were holding on to the front bar on a fairground waltzer.
If we make it across, we can go home, I said to myself.
Side by side we stepped into the water.
“When it gets too deep for you to stand, keep holding on with your hands and let your legs float out behind. I’ll be beside you, remember. It will be fine,” said my father. It sounded as though he was reassuring himself as much as me. I didn’t like the way the weed women wrapped themselves around my ankles. We were stepping into the unknown; anything could have been under there with them. The water was colder than it had been the day before, perhaps because of the oppressive heat in the air, or maybe because of the swirling speed of it. And it was noisier. Once we were past the vegetation, stones prodded under my shoes, and the shifting, restless riverbed tried to trick me and tip me over.
“That’s a good girl. Nice and careful. We’ll be at the other side in no time,” he said, and I wanted to believe him.
Icy inch by icy inch we crept in; the water chilled my knees, a thousand bees stung my thighs, and a cold deep pain rose between my legs, until I was waist-deep, and then chest-deep, standing on the tips of my toes. The river treated us like boulders, its flow buffeting us, splitting and regrouping beyond our bodies.
In the middle, the noise of rushing and churning was overwhelming. My father shouted, “Keep close to me! Keep close!” and something else, but the water snatched away every other word and spat them out far downstream. I could still touch rocks with my shoes, but the river, greater and stronger than me, picked my feet up and took them away. They didn’t float behind me like my father had said they would; instead they were pulled and jerked as if they were a rag doll’s. I gripped the branch so tightly I could see white knuckles. I was lifted off my feet and the stick came up to meet my face, or my face went down to the water. It filled my mouth and throat. I could taste it at the back of my nose, dirty and coarse. I tried to cry out, to let my father know, but more water choked me. My legs twisted. My father’s eyes were wide and his mouth was open, but I was already under the surface when he shouted for me to hold on.
The current lifted my legs forward. My wrists were still bound, tied to the branch. My hair became the weed, dark strands whipping across my face, dragging with the flow. I went under and my father let go of his end of the branch. For an instant, his hands were on my waist, but I slipped away and it was just me and the angry river. It took me and played with me, turning me over and over, around the rocks and so fast that time slowed, and under the surface all was quiet. I could see whirlpools down there, where the disturbed liquid lifted and shifted the pebbles on the bottom and each time they moved a spurt of silt moved with them. I danced with them, was held by them, let go and became the water, flowing with it.
My father shouted, a small voice from far away. “Peggy! Punzel!”
I opened my eyes to the roaring water, slamming me between rocks. My hand was full of pain, trapped between the branch and stone. And my father was holding me around my waist again while he tried to untie me. The water was still struggling to take me, slapping my head forward. My father gave up with the tangle of rope and lifted me, still attached to the branch, over to the bank. He laid me on my back with my arms outstretched, and I moved my head to the side, coughing and spewing water.
“Fuck, fuck. Peggy!” His nails were bitten down to his fingertips and he found it difficult to pick at the knots in the rope, which had tightened around me when I had been tossed and turned in the water. He worked at them until they loosened, then he shifted me onto my side and slapped my back. He picked me up, floppy, and held me in his arms.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Where does it hurt? Here?” He pushed my hair out of my face. “Does it hurt here?”
Realizing that I was on the bank and still alive, I cried, dry choking tears. My father, misunderstanding, began to check me all over, bending my knees and elbows and wiggling my fingers. One knee was grazed and oozed watery blood. The other was already swelling and changing colour. My wrists were sore where they had been rubbed between the rope and the branch. But when my father had examined me all over and was satisfied that my injuries were superficial, he opened my mouth to look at my teeth.
“About eight years old, if I were to hazard a guess,” he said in his army voice. It made me laugh, and he laughed with me and kissed my forehead and kissed my cheeks, his face wet, but not from the river.
“I lost one of my shoes,” I said in a whisper. We both looked at my feet—a wet shoe on one foot but only a sock on the other. My chin began to wobble again.
“I promise, Peggy . . .”
“Rapunzel,” I said.
“I promise, Punzel, that we will come back and look for it and I will teach you how to swim.” He was solemn, as if he were making a very serious vow. “But we’re nearly at die Hütte. We need to reach the cabin before it gets too late.” He carried me up to the rucksacks and dressed me and dressed himself. He wrapped my shoeless foot in an empty canvas food bag and secured it to my ankle with a piece of string. Inside my head I made a vow too—that I would never go in the water again.
The walking was slower after that. I hobbled along behind him, my grazes stinging and my foot feeling all the stones and roots in the ground through the bag. My father used a stick again to beat an uphill path through the undergrowth. He held back branches for us to pass beneath, but he hurried, excitedly urging me on. He didn’t get his map out again; we just walked away from the river, and after another ten minutes the bushes thinned and we came into a space where the trees were much less dense. Ahead of us in a small clearing was a single-storey wooden cabin.
9
London, November 1985
After breakfast, I lay on the sofa as I often did, my eyes shut, drifting off in the overheated sitting room. There were so many possibilities for activity, but all were optional and all seemed pointless when our lives didn’t depend on any of them. I could watch television, try to read a book, write down my thoughts and draw pictures of what I remembered, as Dr. Bernadette urged me to do, or I could listen once more to The Railway Children; I had checked and it was still in the sideboard. Ute had given up trying to encourage me out of my lethargy and was simply happy that I was downstairs, where she could keep an eye on me. She didn’t understand that because there was so much choice, I chose to do nothing. I preferred to lie still, with my mind empty.
But today, I let a few of the memories in: singing La Campanella, my voice echoing off the high rocks; lying under the trees, watching summer midges dance; sheltering from the rain in the lee of the mountain, my back protected by its massive presence. Still half asleep, I heard the music and recalled it spilling from the cabin, mixing with birdsong and wind in the grass. I remembered being sure that the last summer would never end. On the sofa, in London, the music became louder, richer. It was no longer just one or two voices, but chords and harmonies, layers
of sound we had never achieved in the forest. I woke fully and understood that actual wooden hammers were tapping real metal strings, which in turn were reverberating against a soundboard. Ute was playing the piano. It was a lullaby I had heard often when I was in my bed as a child, when she forgot to come upstairs and I had taken comfort from the music, as if it were tucking me in and kissing me goodnight.
Resting on the sofa, I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be sleeping. For a long time I lay still and let the music caress me while I thought about the last time I had heard Ute play—just before she had left for her concert tour. No one had thought to tell me she was going; one day I had come home and she was gone. That is what happened; that is how I remember it. But the doctors say my brain plays tricks on me, that I have been deficient in vitamin B for too long and my memory doesn’t work the way it should. They have diagnosed Korsakoff’s syndrome and prescribed large orange pills, which Ute makes me take with my first sip of black tea in the morning. They think I’ve forgotten things that really happened and have invented others. Two days ago, after I had swallowed the pill and Ute was watching me gobble my porridge in the glasshouse, I asked her why she had left so suddenly that summer. She looked down at the plate of toast balanced on her lap and said she didn’t remember. I knew she was lying.
When Ute had finished the piece she was playing, through my half-closed eyes I saw her get up from the piano. She came and stood over me, stretched out on the sofa. She reached out a hand as though to brush hair from my forehead, but recoiled when we both heard a car pull up outside. A car door slammed, and the front door opened. Oskar rushed down the hall and into the kitchen.
“Mum!” he called. “Mum, I’m starving!”
I heard the suction noise of the fridge opening. Ute left the sitting room and I rose to follow her, watching her pick up Oskar’s trail of discarded coat, gloves, and scarf. I passed the thermostat in the hall and turned the wheel until I heard the heating click off. Oskar stood in the kitchen, with a yogurt in his hand. He had taken the top off and was licking pink gloop out with his tongue. I wanted to do it too, but instead I stood watching with my back pressed into the kitchen counter, amazed and enchanted by this creature that was my brother. With his clothes over her arm, Ute tutted and held out a teaspoon she had taken from the cutlery drawer.
Our Endless Numbered Days: A Novel Page 7