The Summer House, Later

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The Summer House, Later Page 6

by Judith Hermann


  I talked casually about the weather, my plans for the winter, the new art show at the National Gallery; I felt safe. Sonja mentioned the party she planned to give again in November. I said I would like to come, and she smiled stiffly. ‘Will you go away with me in the spring?’ she suddenly asked. I, who had waited all this time, almost brimming with anticipation of finally being able to come out with it, offered her my prepared sentence, loudly, clearly, well articulated, and above all politely: ‘That won’t be possible because I’m going to marry Verena in March.’

  That’s when she threw me out. She stood up, pointed to the door with her outstretched arm and said, ‘Out.’

  I said, ‘Come on, Sonja, what’s that supposed to mean?’ and she repeated, ‘Out,’ without changing her expression. I started to laugh, I wasn’t sure whether she was serious, and then she screamed, ‘Out!’ in a voice I had never heard her use before. I got up uncertainly. I no longer knew what I had expected. I didn’t want to leave, no, not at all; I wanted to see Sonja lose her composure, I wanted her to cry and go on screaming and maybe hit me and I don’t know what else.

  But Sonja sat down again, turned her back on me, and stayed like that. I shifted from one foot to the other. It was quiet, and the river was disgustingly brown. I breathed, and nothing happened, and then I left, closing the door behind me. I listened – nothing. No outburst, no suppressed sobbing. Sonja didn’t ask me to come back.

  I cycled home, very slowly; I was – surprised. I had thought that our relationship would probably go on, would somehow go on.

  Sonja didn’t call, and that, at least, I had expected. It was a game, I knew the rules. I waited a week, then called her, naturally she didn’t answer the phone. I wrote her a letter, then another, then a third; lots of light, foolish chatter and helpless excuses. Of course she didn’t answer. I remained calm, I was familiar with this sort of thing. I thought, ‘Give her time.’

  I called her regularly three times a week, allowed the phone to ring ten times, then hung up. I worked, talked on the telephone with Verena, went out with Mick, dialled Sonja’s number the way one brushes one’s teeth or looks into the mailbox every morning. I was amused and proud of Sonja, proud of the tenacity with which she eluded me, but I also thought that the time had come to stop this foolishness. I wanted to see her. The weather was turning cold, and the first snow fell. I thought of the previous winter, of the nights she had sat with me, and I wanted to have all that again.

  I thought, ‘Come on, Sonja, answer the phone. Let’s go for a walk. I’ll warm up your hands, and everything will be just the way it was.’

  But in early December my most recent letter to Sonja was lying in my mailbox. In confusion I looked at my own handwriting and didn’t quite know what to make of it until I saw stamped on the back of the envelope ‘Addressee moved, no forwarding address’. I stood there in the lobby of my apartment house, uncomprehending. It was cold, and I was freezing. I put the letter back in the mailbox and, lurching from side to side, rode my bicycle through the snow along the river to the factory district; I was pedalling slowly and carefully and refused to think of anything. In front of Sonja’s house I chained the bicycle to a lamp-post and looked up at the blind dark windows. No curtains, no light, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. The front door creaked as I pushed it open; a smell of dampness and coal dust hung in the lobby. I had always had the impression that Sonja was the only one who lived here, and I suspected that the house was now completely empty. Nevertheless I climbed the stairs. On the third floor the railing had broken away, and the steps creaked alarmingly. I thought back to the party, the babble of voices, the music, Sonja standing next to the little red-haired woman in the seaweed-green dress. The name card next to her apartment door had been torn off. I pushed the doorbell; silence. I peeped through the keyhole into the long, white-painted, empty hallway of her apartment, and I knew that she was gone.

  I’m sure the house will soon be torn down. It is February. I keep putting coal into the stove, but it doesn’t get any warmer. I didn’t see Sonja again, and I haven’t heard anything more from her. The bare branches of the linden trees in the courtyard tap against my window, and it’s time to buy the Turkish boys a new soccer ball. I keep hoping that sometime I’ll run into the little red-haired woman so that I can ask her where Sonja is now living and how she’s doing. Sometimes, on the street, I have the feeling that someone is walking close behind me, then I turn around and there’s no one there, but the sense of irritation remains.

  The End of Something

  Sophie says, ‘That last year she just lay in bed all the time. On the left side of the bed; the right side was my grandfather’s. My grandfather was gone, and she would never lie on his side. Out of habit she woke up early, about six in the morning, a narrow strip of sky over the rooftops, antennas and chimneys, the pigeons on the gutters. I don’t know whether she saw all that. She lay under heavy feather quilts, her head cradled on three pillows, stucco roses on the ceiling and the bright glass shade of a lamp, reddish glass. Or green. I’m not sure anymore.’

  Sophie says, ‘Excuse me,’ and bites her lips. She looks out of the window. The windows of the cafe are large, and one can see all of Helmholtz Square. It’s empty, bumpy cobblestones glistening in the rain. The wind whirls leaves up into the air, and a grey dog prowls around the corner. Sophie smiles out the window. ‘My father would come at nine, make tea and a soft-boiled egg, slice some bread and put it all on her bedside table, the tea on the teapot warmer; she liked its candlelight. And then she would scold and nag and accuse him, year after year after year. He would never answer her back, but just leave. He lived only two houses down the street, very close. In the summertime he could wave to my grandmother from his balcony but she never waved back. She’d eat by herself, there above the morning rooftops, antennas and chimneys, then she’d lie down again, and look into the tealight of the little warmer till it went out. She would lie there like that till evening came, sleeping or lying there awake. It could be that there was no longer any difference, the hours flowing one into another, the light wandering through the room, no clock on the table, towards evening the strip of sky over the rooftops grey-blue moving into black.’

  Sophie looks up at the sky over Helmholtz Square, as though to compare. The sky over Helmholtz Square is pale and heavy with rain. Sophie turns away and looks around the cafe, holding the coffee cup with both hands. She still looks cold. She squeezes her eyes shut and clears her throat, her expression rather reserved, distant. She says, ‘Then my mother would arrive, warm up my grandmother’s dinner, wash her laundry, see to the stove in winter, make the bed. My grandmother would put on her sweater, stockings, slippers; with her walker she would push herself like a turtle into the living room and sink into the sofa, turn on the television set. She was given one pack of cigarettes a day. Three cans of beer and three glasses of schnapps, and she always hid the three cans of beer under her behind, pretended she hadn’t been given any, simply wanted more beer. She would say to my mother, her daughter, “You begrudge me everything.” My mother would pull the beer cans out from beneath my grandmother without saying a word. She would look around in the kitchen for another hiding place for the schnapps bottle that my grandmother – at night? on all fours? in pain, in the morning light, with clenched teeth and groaning? or triumphant? – always found anyway.’

  Now Sophie laughs. A little. She laughs and looks into her coffee cup. ‘Just imagine it. She could no longer walk – she could only crawl and drag herself around with her walker – but she found the schnapps no matter where it was hidden. Way at the back of the closet, in the pocket of a coat hanging on the coat rack, in the oven, between the flowerboxes on the balcony: she would find it and drink it all and put the empty bottle outside the apartment door. I think she saw it as a sort of game. She always won. Always.’

  It’s getting dark outside, beginning to rain. Drizzle, maybe snow already. Somebody walks past the big window, hands in the pockets of his coat, s
houlders hunched. He slows down and looks in at Sophie, but she doesn’t notice. She says, ‘I’d like to have some wine.’ She says, ‘Okay? We’ll have some wine in a bit. In any case, my grandmother would then eat whatever my mother put before her, sighing as she did so and continually pressing her left hand to her breast. She was fat and heavy, and her fingers were twisted with gout. My mother would sit next to her and they would watch television, and then they would smoke a cigarette together, and my grandmother would say, “Twilight hour.” When my mother got ready to leave my grandmother would break out in tears and become childish and angry and cling to her, threatening and yelling, and my mother would sit down again, but then finally she would go. Sometime during the night, when it snowed on the television screen and all the fights had gone out in the street, my grandmother would push herself back into the bedroom with the walker. Would sit down on the edge of the bed and stare into the dark and think, I don’t know about what, would lie down and then fall asleep. Day after day. In the summer she sometimes had a beer on the balcony among the geraniums, to which she would whisper conspiratorially. We washed her hair once a week; then, crouched over the tub she would giggle and say, “It itches so much, oh that feels good.” She wet her bed and then lay there crying and miserable till evening. But sometimes she sang and winked with her left eye and laughed about something we knew nothing about, laughed till the tears came. She never listened to music. She would lie in the stillness among the pillows on her bed, in the stillness that had once been noisy, back when her two children were still there and her husband.’

  Sophie looks about her. At this hour, between late afternoon and evening, the cafe is quite empty. Candles burn on the tables where no one is sitting, and the waitress leans against the bar smoking a cigarette, her eyes half closed. ‘Is she listening to us?’ Sophie whispers. She pulls her chair closer to the table and cradles her chin in both hands. The waitress doesn’t move. Rain beats against the window panes, outside the sound of a car engine that refuses to start. Sophie says resolutely, ‘In that final year my grandmother was suspicious of the whole world. She saw men in the corner behind the stove, and she would hide her purse under the mattress, in the bedside table, in a pillow case. “Unpack the things you took from me!” she would scream while my mother was warming up her food in the kitchen, and then she would list all the things my father was supposedly taking out of the apartment every morning – furs and silverware and jewellery and the medals of the grandfathers, money and bankbooks, pots and jars. She would tug at my mother’s jacket and say, “Stolen jacket.” She would gasp and call for the police, and my mother would just stand there, looking at her without saying a word. And my grandmother would push herself into the kitchen with her walker, check the cabinets and drawers, then break into tears and say, “I don’t want to go on.” Still, she lay in bed all day and waited.’

  ‘You know,’ Sophie said, ‘it really isn’t easy. To dredge up those memories, bit by bit. I forget so quickly. Especially faces, I always forget faces, in fact I forget them immediately, I can no longer remember the face of my grandmother either. She was always cold. And under her feather quilts she wore wool cardigans, scarves, heavy stockings. In spite of that she’d say, “I want fresh air.” Even in winter all the windows in the bedroom had to be open. But in the living room little fan heaters stood all around the sofa, blowing hot air into her face, and she would say, “I don’t know, I’m still cold.” Her hair was white. She would let the egg yolk ooze over her bread in the morning and drink her tea black, without sugar. There was a telephone in the living room and another in the bedroom, and sometimes her son would call from the luminous distance of his villa in the suburbs to inquire about her health as well as his sister’s. My grandmother, lying in her urine and in pain, would take a deep breath, hold the phone close to her ear and say into the room, “All right, everything is all right.”’

  Sophie gets up, much too quickly, and goes to the toilet. She is so thin, her legs like little sticks in the heavy wool stockings. She walks very erect, shoulders held high, stiff-backed. The waitress watches her and yawns, bored, the coffee machine rumbles. No one is left in the room; the rain is now a cloudburst, and the candle on the table is drowning in melted wax. Sophie comes back, sits down again, lights a cigarette, inhales deeply, watches the smoke. She looks tired. She says, ‘My grandmother used to smoke these long cigarettes, long, light ladies’ cigarettes. She never inhaled, and she always watched the smoke. Like me. Or, me like her. She’d knock on the wall with her fist whenever my mother was too slow for her. Once she sat up in bed, pointed at the back of her head, where her white hair had become curled, and said, “This means that I will die soon.” Or sometimes, and then always with her eyes turned to the sky above the rooftops, above the antennas, “God doesn’t want me.” She could tell two complete stories, or maybe we only wanted to hear those two. The war story – the Russians already on the outskirts of Berlin and my grandmother on the train fleeing with her children; the train stopping suddenly, no station, no town or village, and her six-year-old son needing to pee, “Really had to pee,” my grandmother would say as though uninvolved. So she let him get off, into the open field: the rape was already in bloom and it was a warm day. My grandmother waited in the door of the train, and her six-year-old son ran into the yellow rape, yelling childish things, and peed; just then the train started up again, unexpectedly, much too quickly, and the child was left in the rape field, open-mouthed, supposedly wearing a blue sailor suit. I don’t know the end of the story. At any rate, he didn’t die. The post-war story – the two-room apartment in the summertime, her husband already gone, and geraniums on the balcony, my grandmother, as usual in the kitchen, her daughter and her son in the living room, the daughter and the son shooting pebbles with slingshots. My grandmother was peeling potatoes, slicing cabbage. “Bet I can shoot your eye out,” her daughter, my mother, said to the son in the living room. “Bet you can’t,” said the son, and the daughter, his sister, took aim, shot and hit her target. The daughter screamed. The son didn’t scream, and the daughter, my mother, stood in the kitchen doorway, covered her face with her hands and whispered, “I hit his eye, the left one,” kept whispering it over and over again. My grandmother got up, potato peel and cabbage slicer falling to the floor, and ran into the living room. There stood her son, the pebble was stuck in the middle of his left eye, stuck there like a stone eye. “So I pulled it out,” my grandmother would say, very simply. Her son got glass eyes, five little brown glass eyes to wear in turn, and when the brother and sister quarrelled my mother would toss the glass eyes around the room and say, “Go find them, cripple,” and my grandmother would giggle. Why. There were no other stories.’

  Sophie looks surprised. Not sad, not yet. She rubs her eyes with both hands, and presses her thumbs to her lids. There’s a trace of a smile, just barely. She looks at the waitress who slowly pushes herself away from the bar and sidles over to the table, like a sleepwalker. The waitress, wiping her hands on her apron, says nothing. Sophie says in a totally strange voice, ‘I would like a glass of dry red wine,’ and the waitress slinks back to the bar; did she get that? ‘We’ll see,’ Sophie says. ‘My grandmother left her apartment one more time, one last time, when her granddaughter – not me, the other one – had her eighteenth birthday and her son rented the Lake Terraces and hired an organ grinder and laid on a huge buffet. “A little bit of everything,” the son said into the telephone, and my grandmother lay in her bed and looked at the sky above the rooftops, the antennas, and said, “Yes, I’d like to come.” “You’ll need a present,” my mother said. “She’s going to be eighteen, you have to give her something. Give me some money and I’ll buy it for you.” But my grandmother casually waved her away with her left hand, saying she already had a present, not to worry. “Where did you get it?” my mother asked, “There’s no way you can buy anything, you can’t even leave the apartment.” My grandmother refused to answer her. Counted the days. Had her hair washed, the blue d
ress taken out of the closet, her good dress she said, “As blue as my eyes”. She stopped nagging. Looked at my father in the morning without a word, threw money at him from her bed, notes out of the slits in the mattress, the pillow cases, said, “Take it, I don’t want it anymore.” On her granddaughter’s birthday she left her apartment in a wheelchair, carried out and loaded into a van by three men; while they perspired my grandmother sat in the wheelchair like a queen, holding a basket in her lap with the wrapped present inside. “What is it?” She shook her head, almost indulgently, said, “Oh, just wait and see.” We followed the van in our car, and I could see her, could see her white head pressed against the window: from time to time she wiped the fogged-up pane with her hand. The entire journey she looked out of the window – what did she see? I can’t tell. At the Lake Terraces they wheeled her to die head of the table, between her son and her granddaughter. Everyone was very cheerful and talked to her and put plates full of food and glasses of wine in front of her, but she drank nothing, she ate nothing. She handed the present to her granddaughter, who was sitting next to her with a dutiful, reverent expression on her face. It grew quiet at the table. The son laughed – the grandmother is giving her granddaughter a gift. The granddaughter carefully tore open the wrapping paper, felt the present, then hesitated, pulled the paper off completely and held up a yellow pot lid, already somewhat dented on the edges. “What is it?” she asked – a puzzle, a symbol? She was eighteen years old and she smiled at my grandmother. “It’s the cover of the pot you stole from me,” said my grandmother, “just like you stole everything else from me.” And then, very slowly, she raised her hand and put it over her left eye and turned to her son and looked at him with her right eye. It really was as blue as her good dress.’

  The waitress puts the wine on the table and stares at Sophie, Sophie does not stare back. She says, ‘Thanks,’ and takes a hefty swig of the wine, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. The door opens and the wind blows in, the smell of rain, two, three customers in wet coats, their faces flushed. Sophie doesn’t turn around. She is no longer cold; she has red cheeks now, and the tiredness around her eyes is gone. ‘I’m almost finished. The story is almost over, finished, it won’t take much longer, is that okay? Later that night they pushed her in the wheelchair one last time down to the lake. She sat there and stared into the darkness, on the other shore little lights, and the soft lapping of the waves, “What’s the point?” said my grandmother, and they brought her back home in the van. She let them put her to bed and turned away from them and said to my mother, who was standing by the door, “Goodnight.” The next morning my father came over, made tea and a soft-boiled egg, sliced bread, and put it all in front of her, the tea on the little warmer, the egg yolk already on the bread; “The tealight,” said my grandmother, “the tealight,” that was all. “But it’s already lit,” said my father, “look, it’s burning.” And my grandmother said, “Yes,” and closed her eyes. My father left. Went shopping, then back home. He heard the telephone ringing while he was still out on the stairs, ringing incessantly. My father unlocked the apartment door, dropped his shopping bags, took the receiver off the hook and said, “Hello,” No answer. He listened some more, wanted to hang up again, but then did hear something after all, from very far away, really far away. Crying? Or screaming? A cry of pain? Actually a rustling, a crackling, something totally unreal, how he suddenly knew – I don’t know. He dropped the phone and ran out of the apartment, down the stairs, and out into the street. It was February, just like today, and cold. My father ran fast. Two houses away. He ran. Pushed open the front door, ran up the three flights of stairs, he was probably trembling and also afraid; the apartment door was stuck, I think, he must have dropped the key three or four times. He pushed against the door until it opened. The entry hall was small, and something smelled. The door to the bedroom was ajar and behind it, a bright glow. I no longer know whether it was four steps or five to the bedroom; my father stood in the doorway and saw my grandmother. She was all aflame. She had got out of bed, somehow, and was standing in the middle of the room, next to the bed. The bed was burning, my grandmother’s nightgown was burning, her stockings, her scarf, her hair, her face and her blue eyes; she was all ablaze and no longer screaming, the sky above the rooftops, the antennas, grey and smoky … She was, my father said later – he couldn’t rightly say – but she was actually dancing as she burned,’ says Sophie, not crying, with an embarrassed smile.

 

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