The artist pulls Marie off the chair and onto the floor. At some point Marie is wearing nothing but her high-heeled boots, and then not even those. On the computer screen you see a wall of bookshelves, the back of an empty chair, a window, and outside, a darker sky.
This Side of the Oder
Koberling is standing on the hill as they arrive. The hill is a mound of soil that Koberling piled up with his own hands in the middle of the garden two years ago. Back then Constance had laughed and called it ‘Field Marshal Hill’; he had countered with ‘Napoleon Hill’, and the name stuck. From there he has a view of the lawn, the veranda, the shady entrance to the kitchen, and the rolling meadows beyond which flows the Oder.
Koberling is standing on Napoleon Hill and smoking a cigarette; he shades his eyes with one hand and stares toward the horizon. Somewhere over there is the Oder, hidden in its riverbed. Somewhere over there, too, is Constance, taking her daily walk in the afternoon heat. The child is sleeping in the kitchen, exhausted by the summer. Koberling brushes away a wasp and thinks of autumn. The sound of a car’s engine comes creeping up the sandy road like an illusion. Koberling turns his head, listening, and squints; no, no car ever comes driving up the sandy road except his own. It’s not an illusion though. The sound of a diesel engine, a crunch of pebbles, Koberling beside himself, his heart pounding. Out of the corner of his right eye he catches sight of an old Mercedes. Koberling remains motionless, wants to be invisible, thinks, Keep on going. The Mercedes stops in front of the garden gate. Dust from the road swirls up, the door opens on the passenger side and Anna climbs out. Koberling recognizes her immediately. She looks the same as before, same as back then, only bigger, taller, a grown-up child. ‘Koberling!’ she shouts and stalks around the car in high-heeled shoes, stopping at the garden gate. She’s wearing a red dress and is deeply tanned. The window on the driver’s side is being rolled down and a young man with matted hair sticks his head out, yawning. Koberling has butterflies in his stomach and says very softly and viciously, ‘Pothead.’
‘Hey!’ Anna shouts. ‘We’ve just come back from Poland. We don’t have any money left, and we thought we could stay with you, just for a few days. Koberling! Do you remember me?’
Koberling crushes the cigarette under his foot and comes down off the hill. ‘I remember you. I can hear you. No need to shout like that.’
Anna’s hand is on the handle of the garden gate, and the pothead is languidly peeling himself out of the car. Now Koberling can see that he’s wearing unbelievably dirty jeans. Max calls from the kitchen in a sleepy and cracked child’s voice, and Koberling knows that the light is falling on the little bed they’ve made for him on the window seat and that the flies are circling the lamp; suddenly he feels weak, overwhelmed. Where is Constance, he thinks, Constance who could be taking all this off my shoulders, because I don’t want any visitors and especially no potheads.
He wipes the sweat from his upper lip and takes the pebbled path towards the garden gate. The crunch of the pebbles is surprisingly loud. Anna, Koberling thinks. Anna. You and your clown father, ridiculous buffoon, circus fool. When you were a child I once slapped you because you jumped on my back while I was meditating on the lawn in front of your house. When you were a child you didn’t matter to me. I sat in the kitchen with your clown father and we talked and drank ourselves under the table. At worst you got on my nerves with your chocolate-smeared mouth, and you still get on my nerves now.
Koberling pushes back the bolt and pulls open the garden gate, smiling like an idiot, sweating incredibly. ‘Wow, Koberling,’ Anna says, grins, and follows this with a sort of ‘Oh. Wow, Koberling. It must be years since the last time we saw each other. Years!’
‘Yes,’ Koberling says, ‘Years.’
The pothead takes two lethargic steps toward Koberling, and extends a dirty hand. Koberling doesn’t take it. He remains protectively near the gate as though this would make them understand, as though the mere presence of the silent and tense bastion of his body would make it clear to them that they should leave. That visitors were not welcome here. That old friendships no longer counted. But they do not understand. They stand there and stare. Koberling turns and takes the gravel path back to the veranda and, speaking into the blue, says, ‘You can stay if you want to. There’s a guest room in the attic’
Toward evening Constance returns from her walk, no later than usual but for Koberling later than ever before. He’s sitting on the veranda with Anna and the pothead, whose name he doesn’t want to know, smoking one cigarette after the other. Max squats on the floor in front of the pothead, listening to his jumbled stories. Extraterrestrials, Druids, New Guinea, the end of the world. Max’s mouth is wide open, a rope of spittle running down his chin, his left hand resting on one of the pothead’s shoes: from time to time he tugs gently and absently at the shoelaces. Koberling resents Max’s unprejudiced trust in this pothead. What an idiot, Koberling thinks. Max, this guy’s what I’d call an idiot.
Anna sits cross-legged in a wicker chair, staring at Koberling, and lapses into childhood recollections. ‘Something once happened with you, Koberling. Some funny business, I can’t remember what exactly. I only know that you and my father were sitting at the kitchen table late into the night. Hey, Koberling, do you remember?’
Koberling makes no attempt to help her. He could haul out that business about the slap. He could tell her that as a child during those summers in the country she really was brown as a hazelnut. He could flatter her and remind her of all the silly children’s jokes she used to tell, which her clown father proudly wrote down in an orange-coloured notebook. He could tell her that she used to be skinny and wiry, that she would disappear in the morning, taking the bridge across the river, into the woods, and not come back till evening, scratched all over, her legs covered with ticks. He could say, ‘Your clown of a father left you alone. He allowed you to do whatever you wanted, so you’d simply disappear for the entire day. You weren’t really there, not for any of us, and presumably that’s your big childhood trauma today.’
But he doesn’t feel like it. She doesn’t interest him. Her clown father no longer interests him. He would like to sit here, in silence, undisturbed. Koberling lights another cigarette and realizes that he has been grinding his teeth all this time. Constance comes walking up the gravel path, a bounce in her step, dreadfully relaxed. Too late, Koberling thinks, too late my dear, for now they’re here and they won’t be leaving soon.
Constance recognizes Anna immediately. She smiles a beaming and convincing smile, claps her hands softly and briefly holds them up to her face. She laughs, and plants her hands on her hips. Koberling is disgusted. He can anticipate what she’s about to say: ‘Anna! Little skinny Anna, and at least fifteen years older now. I can’t believe it’s really you sitting here!’ Anna beams, looking embarrassed. She introduces the pothead, then looks over at Koberling, shy. Koberling suddenly pushes back his chair and flees into the kitchen. Little skinny Anna. What nonsense. He takes olives, cheese, salami, out of the refrigerator. Cut the bread, uncork the wine, the same as back then, the same as always. Now we’ll eat supper, Koberling thinks. Now we’ll eat, now we’ll do something, even if it’s only eating the goddamn food.
Darkness comes early because it’s almost autumn. Under the plum trees at the back of the garden the light is already grey; the Oder will be pink and light blue by now. Koberling thinks it’s taken him forty-seven years to find out that the wheat fields and the lakes and rivers become light again just before night falls. He needed this house to find that out. Maybe also Max, and Constance, too. If things were normal the child would already be sleeping, snoring softly, his cheeks red. He himself would be sitting on the veranda with Constance, reading or not talking. At some point he would sit down at his computer and type two or three sentences of dialogue for one of the screenplays he writes for a living. Two or three short and strange sentences, like every other evening. The light of the desk lamp would be green, because green is calm
ing. The moths would tumble against the window screen, and he would find it both good and shitty living like this.
Now, though, the pothead is standing on Napoleon Hill rolling himself a joint. What a jerk. His absurd Zippo lighter flares up, and Koberling can smell the sweetish hashish. He thinks of Rose Martenstein. Rose Martenstein who came to a carnival party dressed as the Queen of the Night and collapsed unconscious on the kitchen floor after eating a hashish cookie, a doll in black satin. Sure, he had smoked hashish too. With Anna’s clown father, for one. They’d be sitting in the garden, smoking one joint after another, and Anna’s clown father would shout, ‘Swazi grass!’ and, ‘Off to Swaziland!’ till Koberling fell off his chair, laughing. Anna would be sleeping in her room under mosquito netting, talking in her sleep, and Koberling didn’t know that twelve years later his own round-headed child Max would be born. How should he have known? How could he have? Back then he didn’t even want to acknowledge Anna.
The pothead on top of Napoleon Hill turns around and motions to Koberling with his joint. Koberling gestures back an exaggerated refusal, and the pothead shrugs and ambles down off the hill. The glowing end of his joint disappears between the plum trees, and Koberling lingers irresolutely near the kitchen door. Constance and Anna are still sitting on the veranda, Max on Constance’s lap, thumb in mouth. The child hasn’t said a word to Koberling in the last four hours. He has clung to Anna or the pothead by turns, behaving as though he’d never seen another human being other than his mother and Koberling. Koberling thinks that’s wrong. Max ought to be hiding behind him, ought to be asking him whether these guests are okay or not.
Anna talks about Poland. Max stares at her and from time to time breathes deeply, in and out. ‘I can’t understand why you still haven’t been there when it’s so close. They have storks there the way Berlin has pigeons. The Poles were mowing the fields, and sixty or seventy storks were walking in the furrows behind the tractors, looking for insects. And you wouldn’t believe what ice-cream eaters the Poles are. Lody and lody, wherever you look they’re constantly eating ice-cream.’
Max takes his thumb out of his mouth and says very clearly, ‘Ice-cream.’ Koberling feels tenderness creeping up his back. What a weird conversation. And the child picks out the one word he knows – ice-cream.
Anna talks, gestures with her hands, is constantly tucking her hair behind her ears. ‘Constance. How are you doing here?’
Constance’s voice, very deep and a little husky. Doing well. It’s lonely. Koberling doesn’t want a lot of visitors, a retreat after all those years in the city, a summer retreat; anyway in the autumn it’s back to Berlin. Long days. Hot days. Koberling spending a lot of time at his desk – a lie – and she herself going on walks through the Oderbruch, the Oder marshes, a most beautiful bit of nature. Good for the child too. Children belong in the country. Max is happy, she is too. And Koberling? He has trouble with being happy, but still …
Constance’s hand, always arranging things. Constance, the perpetual organizer. Four, five sentences, a life forged in one casting, one stroke of the pen and no more questions. It’s that simple. In the shade by the kitchen door Koberling closes his eyes and opens them again. Anna has stopped talking. Now, in the total darkness, a sudden indignant croaking of frogs. A brief moment. Anna lights a cigarette and says, ‘Yes,’ begins again to tell her Poland stories, the ice-cream stories, her voice sounding somewhat remote, disconcerted. In the dark Koberling senses Constance’s smile. He is surprised at how calmly she sits there listening to Anna’s stories. In fact he is surprised at the interest she’s showing in these guests, the obvious pleasure she takes in their visit. It doesn’t matter who comes, Koberling thinks. It just doesn’t matter. Anyone could be sitting here and she’d listen the same way, eagerly, glad to have a break from me for a while. It’s because we’ve been here by ourselves the entire summer. But that’s what we had agreed to do. We wanted to be by ourselves. I wanted to be alone.
Koberling goes back into the kitchen, turns out the light and sits down on Max’s little day bed by the window. The contours in the garden have become sharper. Anna’s red dress is dark, appears black. Koberling looks at her and feels nothing. She is young, has her father’s clown face, everything round, round eyes, round mouth. A gap between her teeth that’s going to make her look common ten years from now. Brown hair, very brown skin.
She’s probably taking classes at the university, Koberling thinks. Journalism, and a foreign language. The pothead probably tends bar in some trendy hangout and apart from that squanders his days. In the summertime they load their friends into old cars, drive to the Brandenburg lakes, guzzle wine till they pass out, and are convinced that the things that happen to them don’t happen to anyone else. Idiotic. All of it idiotic. He rubs his eyes and feels tired. The days when he used to ask everyone, ‘What do you think?’ and ‘What do you do?’ are over. Koberling can’t imagine that he ever asked these questions. Disgusting, almost embarrassing, recollections of sitting around in bars all night, of swapping ideals, the destruction of illusions, carefully tended common interests. Hypocrisy, all of it, Koberling thinks. Anna’s clown father was always just waiting for me to stop speaking so that he could begin with his Utopias, his crazy head-in-the-clouds realities. And the same with me. I argued with him, I just wanted to out-talk him, when actually we both should have kept our mouths shut.
Max slides off Constance’s lap, walks across the veranda and stands at the kitchen door. ‘Why d’you sit there in the dark?’ His voice is a little hoarse.
‘Darkness is the friend of thieves,’ Koberling says. ‘Come on. Time for bed, time for the sand dragon and all that stuff.’ He stands and lifts Max up: the child smells of summer and country-road dirt. ‘Promise me,’ Koberling feels like saying to him, ‘promise me that …’ But he doesn’t say it.
‘Are you two going to bed?’ Constance asks from the veranda, her wicker chair creaking as she gets up.
‘Yes,’ Koberling replies, hurrying to the stairs, ‘we’re going to bed.’ In his arms Max is already asleep. Anna calls out, ‘Goodnight, Koberling!’
When he wakes up the next morning she is standing at the foot of his bed, smiling, her head cocked to one side, like a bird’s. Glittering sunlight streams in through the window, and a fly bumps against the panes of glass. Koberling squints in the bright light and gropes under the covers for Constance, who is no longer lying beside him. No dreams, he thinks with relief. I didn’t dream, not about her clown father nor about the past, not about smoking grass nor about sex.
Anna is shaking the bedstead so hard it sets her hair flying. ‘Koberling! You sleepyhead! It’s already noon, the others all drove to the city, and breakfast is ready. You’re supposed to get up and show me the Oderbruch!’
‘Says who?’ Koberling asks. He is suddenly furious, sleep in his eyes and a bad taste in his mouth. That Anna should have dared to come in here, bursting into the intimacy of his bedroom like a child. She probably sneaked through the house first, looking into chests and drawers with her naïve curiosity. Koberling sits up and pulls the covers over his chest. ‘Out,’ he says, ‘get out now. I want to get up by myself. I want to be left in peace.’
Anna lets go of the bedstead, still smiling, and walks toward the door. ‘I’ll be in the garden, in case you want to know.’ Koberling doesn’t want to know and doesn’t answer. He waits until he hears her footsteps downstairs in the kitchen and closes his eyes again. Lying there. Just lying there, in a state of exhaustion, on a seesaw between waking and dreaming. He has never felt refreshed and rested in the morning after eight hours of sleep. Always exhausted. Before, at night in his one-room apartment, Berlin and winter, he used to go to sleep dreading all the days, months, years that still awaited him. Time. Time that had to be filled up, conquered, annihilated. Then Constance came. A shared two-room apartment, Berlin and winter. In his memory always winter, warmth under the quilt, the commitment to Constance that was connected with a feeling of capitulation
. Constance, behind whom Koberling hid and never emerged. Refuge and acquiescence. They used to fall asleep next to each other, saying, ‘Fly slowly.’ Time retreated, his dread crouched in the farthest recess of his mind. Then finally Lunow, this house, the breathing of the child, time completely dissolving. And then, again the dread – even greater than ever before – some nights when a car drove by and projected the circling shadow of the Venetian blinds on the ceiling of their room. Perhaps because of this his exhaustion. Because sleep has to overcome dread, always.
Finished, Koberling thinks. Finished and done. It can’t be that two little people from Berlin can walk in here and get me all mixed up. Mixed up about what? He gets up and opens the window. The fly moves out into the open in a straight line and is gone. Outside, the sky, a vast blue vault, and a newly woven spider web trembling in the window frame.
In the kitchen there’s coffee on the table and an egg tucked into its woollen cosy. Constance has left him a note. Dear Koberling, went shopping with Max and Tom, back sometime in the afternoon, why don’t you show Anna the Oderbruch, hugs and kisses.
Show Anna the Oderbruch. An imposition. Koberling looks at the little beelike squiggle that Max has put under Constance’s large flowing script and places his hand on his stomach. He rolls the egg undecidedly across the wooden table top, pours coffee into a mug and sits down on the veranda. Anna, barefoot, is in the orchard picking raspberries. The noonday heat is oppressive and close, and Koberling already longs for the evening. The coffee is lukewarm and tastes bitter, leaving a furry taste on his tongue. Koberling pours it over the veranda railing into the flowerbed and says softly, ‘For Janis.’
The Summer House, Later Page 12