by Margo Gorman
‘I thought you liked it.’
‘It’s fine; the tips are good and I can walk to work. I’ve nothing to complain about but I wouldn’t pine if I never had to go back in the place again. It’s a holiday job and Jim’s used to people like me coming and going. I was thinking of taking a couple of weeks off anyway. I have a bit saved. Living at home, working in the evenings .. and all… means that I’ve hardly gone out.’
‘Well, I still think the two of you should go.’
‘Now Mary, there’s no way we’re going to go and leave you here on your own. Aisling’s talking a lot of sense – it would be a good experience for her. Why not a couple of weeks in Berlin – the amount we’d save on my flights and hotel would keep her going for a bit longer?’ Her father turned to her, ‘It might even give you some ideas about what you want to do when you finish your degree.’
‘Yeah, it might.’ Aisling kept her voice bright but was careful to make no concessions to her father’s attempt to score a goal for himself. She had only just finished her first year in DCU and already they were planning her future. She hadn’t told them yet how wrong the course was for her. She wasn’t nerdy enough for it. When she applied, Marketing and Business seemed the way to go, to combine her drawing with techno tools. Bound to be a money spinner too. Get a well-paid job in a global operation or set up as a freelance. Wrong choice. There was not a single person interested in hand-drawn cartoon graphics and their potential for use in marketing products. She knew if she went back next term, she wouldn’t last. Wrong time to tell the parents. Maybe after Berlin.
‘It’s only a funeral! Why would she hang about Berlin after that? You’d be on your own, Aisling – it’s not like you’d be with one of your friends.’
‘Well there’s Aunt Bridget too,’ her father was struggling but keeping his eye on the ball.
‘Now it’s Aunt Bridget – before it was a complete stranger whom you met a few times at funerals. You said it yourself; she’s a woman in her eighties. It’s hard enough to persuade Aisling to go and visit your mother in Drumcondra.’
‘That’s different.’
‘I don’t like the idea of her all alone in Berlin.’
Aisling came in fresh, ‘Mum, I can look after myself. I’ll find a student hostel or something on the Internet. And I don’t even need Dad to find me a flight; I’ll get that on the Internet too. I’ll just go and have a look now.’
‘She’s right, Mary. It would be a good experience for her. As you said, she’s never been to Berlin. Aunt Bridget would appreciate a younger person around.’
‘Everybody has good ideas – the breeding ground for disaster,’ Mary wiped condensation from the new window and put on the fan to expel the droplets of ‘smother mother’ in the air. She knew they thought it. No point in letting Diarmuid see how worried she was about Aisling too. She had good reason to be. Michael’s death came so quickly after the other business.
Aisling’s father gave her the raised eyebrow behind her mother’s back. It was the signal to back off. Be the other grown up. Bloody Michael. Even dead she had to dance around him. She hated him. The fishing trip was their father’s idea. He had to live with his decision to turn over in bed that morning. Michael was probably glad of the chance to top himself. Nobody even breathed suicide but Aisling knew even if they didn’t. No tragic accident. He’d left everything too tidy – even tidier than you would expect from Michael. The torn out pages from his journal clinched it. She was sure the pages had bits about her he didn’t want anyone else to read. And all that sugary stuff about Mum and Dad – even about her – in the last few pages, she didn’t believe it for one minute. It was all too neat – almost like a suicide note without admitting to the suicide. Now her mother had him practically canonised. She hated all this pussyfooting around. She hated him for not being there.
‘Whatever… I’ll go and have a look for flights.’
‘Good idea, I’ll come up in a minute.’
And so it was. Special offer on a direct Aer Lingus flight to Berlin. Too good to miss. Aisling waited just long enough to hustle her mother into confirmation before reserving it. Booked for two weeks. It was really cheap so even if she had to change it later, it would be no problem. Nobody knew when exactly the funeral would be.
‘The funeral could be any day. We have to go for it.’
When he got enough agreement, his relief bounded upstairs and whipped out his credit card. Done. He rang his aunt then to offer his sympathy and tell her Aisling was coming. The aunt was insistent Aisling should come and stay with her. The spare room was hers as long as she wanted. Aisling was annoyed about that. She didn’t really want to stay there, but she’d sort that out when she got there. And it would be handy to have somewhere to stay when she arrived. Her parents had never been to Berlin either. It was going to be her place, her show.
Her mother was annoyed at the speed of it all of course. To distract her Aisling asked her what to wear to the funeral. Borrow something dull enough. Leave her father texting. She knew the script. There was a big match in Croke Park at the weekend that he wanted to go to but daren’t mention it as a reason for not going to the funeral. He would be texting Desie telling him that he could make the match after all. Desie’s wife Maureen would ring Mum to suggest they meet up and go for a walk while the boys went to the match.
They were all so predictable and BORING! ‘If I thought that was all there was to look forward to when I’m as old as them, I’d top myself now too.’ Berlin might be something different with a bit of luck. A chance to rebury the fucking ghostly face that looked at her from the mirror. Time to ring around to find someone to cover her weekend shifts at the restaurant. Then to let Jim know about the funeral and maybe she wouldn’t be coming back to work. A quick dash on the DART to get a Guide to Berlin.
Lots of stuff about the Berlin wall. If they wanted it as a tourist attraction they should have hung onto more of it. Anyone who really wanted to visit the remains of the Berlin wall, should start in the States. Their final holiday as a family had been in California and they’d seen a huge chunk of the wall in the County Museum of Art in LA. Not a replica apparently; the real thing shipped out. There were chunks of wall all over the place. A cartoon strip materialised in her head around the nursery rhyme about the war of the Roses, or was it the Napoleonic wars? The one where the duke marched his men up and down hills pointlessly – a satire on his lack of skill in battle. The comic strip would be a global search to locate the Berlin wall. Where is the wall now? Who cares? When it was up it was up and when it was down it was down. When it was only half way up, it was neither up nor down.
Chapter Four – Shades of Ireland
Nod. Nod into open eyes and the feel of the rosary beads murmuring decades of joy. I can see my mother’s face. I can feel her in the beads that she gave me. I can hear her thoughts in my half sleep. Joyful mysteries carry her to her rest. Yola shouts me back, “Möchten Sie etwas?” Do I want anything? Shaking the inside feeling awake.
Yes. I want Katharina. I will lift the phone and ring her Handy to hear her voice again. Monika will know. When will I cancel it? She asked me. I said nothing. I don’t understand this daughter death. This morning I smelled her in her jacket. How can material hold her still when her skin and bone cannot? Now is the time for Yola to ask me if I want coffee and cake on a tray or will I come to the dining table. Sit alone or with her? I have no family now.
The family in Ireland evaporate with daily excuses of circumstance. Peggy rings me again to say how sorry not to be fit to travel. Someone will come. Diarmuid who drove me to my mother? I need flesh and blood. Yola dusts my record of Johnny Cash “Flesh and Blood needs Flesh and Blood and you’re the one I need.” Only Katharina. My secret love song for her. Did she know? She asked if I missed my family in Ireland. Only my mother, I told her. Why not visit? Impatient when I postponed time and time again. When my mother was ill in bed, Katharina bought the non-refundable ticket for me, knowing I could not waste it. Why n
ot go, Mama? Why not? You worked so hard all your life. Now you have time.
My only Flesh and Blood is gone. Do I want a stranger in my house? I would prefer to have Katharina’s body here and then the strangers could come and shake my hand. Waiting to bury my daughter and wishing I could be buried with her. Efficient Monika could arrange a double funeral. Yola would help. She comes every day now except Sunday. Katharina arranged that. Did she know then she was going to die?
Brigitte saw Katharina’s face white and anxious arguing with her. Her hair colour the colour of drying turf, dark as the earth but reflecting the light on the bracken trapped inside it. But Katharina didn’t look Irish – her hair fell from her face just below her jaw, smoothed into shape, German straight and determined. Her blue eyes were set apart above high cheekbones – no soft boggy Irishness around the eyes. At first the single stray grey strands rebelled but they were pulled out. When the grey strands became too many, first she cut it, and then she dyed it. Once she dyed it a deep aubergine colour. Defiance. When she lost weight and her hair was cut short; when she was ill; Brigitte could not look at her: she saw too many deaths in her face.
They went together shopping for wigs. They laughed together that day and went to Café Buchwald for Kaffee und Kuchen. They both loved Café Buchwald. Katharina could hardly finish her cake although they had no lunch. She played with the strawberry cheesecake and talked of her memories of the first time her mother took her there and the other times too. Brigitte wanted to ask Katharina did she ever take Monika there, but she could not. She wanted to keep the wig buying day as a happy day, to store it with other happy days. A day of crisp, speckled leaves skittering ahead of them down the street. A little girl holding her mother’s hand skipped the joy of loving back into life. A pause to admire the small pumpkins displayed among the yellow and red-brown chrysanthemums of autumn. ‘I’ll get some of them for you.’ The wonder of chestnuts, kurbis and pinecones arranged on the windowsill. German homework on the table between them. Katharina correcting the bad habits of Brigitte’s German grammar. English for laughter and fun. German for work.
The wig was for Katharina’s 60th birthday . Monika didn’t know about it. Katharina wanted to surprise her. No celebration now. She will wear it in her coffin instead.
‘It’s better than going to the hairdresser,’ she laughed when she got a wig that reproduced the colour of her own hair. The wig might have fooled Monika but it would never fool Brigitte. It was too neat. There were no stray signs of rebellion. Katharina shook its cloak-like cover over her face to conceal the death in her dark eyes. Once, on the rare occasion that she stayed during her cancer death sentence, Brigitte found her in the bathroom, wisps of hair floating off her skull as she knelt by the toilet bowl. Brigitte said nothing and left her there. That was how they were together. How they had always been for so long now. So little to say because there was too much left unsaid for too long.
Brigitte hated Katharina’s way of thinking and not saying. Her white face a silent accusation. How could Brigitte have told her the worst about that place? It would sully the life she’d rescued from dirt and death.
‘There’s nothing you need to do. Monika will do it all,’ she said once.
‘I couldn’t do it anyway,’ Brigitte told herself. ‘I always knew someone else would do it for Katharina because I would go first, of course.’
Glad of Monika for that at least. Not those memories of the worst times when Katharina did not visit for weeks.
‘I might as well be dead.’ Did I mean it then? I mean it now for sure. Then, I said it to hurt my Katharina. I was angry when she went with Monika to Greece. Did they walk the same sunsets as Katya walked with me? ‘Not so much as a postcard,’ I said to her. I lied. One did come but I hid it. She put it in an envelope so that it would come faster. I know that too.
‘I might as well. I don’t understand, Mama? What do these words mean?’ Her eyes and nose wrinkled into the question like when she was a child. I was angrier then because there was no German life in that. I could not tell her it was my mother’s voice speaking those words not mine.
‘I might as well be dead for all they care.’
I knew it was a lie but still I went to my mother when she was weak and waiting to die. Now I have no-one to see me off. Self-pity, you selfish old woman.
Yola says she will stay until someone comes from Ireland. Yola talks of the farm in Poland. ‘Heimweh,’ she said, patting her chest. And you? Homesick? No I lied. Do I miss my Heimat? She did not know any word in English for ‘Heimat’. To her it meant something more than home, a place where you belonged. I tell her I don’t belong in Ireland for sure. But I am a foreigner in Germany. I need no heimat.
I do not say. Better to be heimatless than pitted one against another. Rounded buttocks of one nationality. Skinny Hintern of another. An outcast torn limb from limb eats the soul if you have one. Better not to be typecast guilty or innocent. Trapped in hate, I am the same. Let whomsoever who is not guilty throw the first stone. The greatest victory of any Reich – to take the fear of the other and twist it in our gut to make a holocaust of hope. I am the same but different too I hope. Katharina is my difference. Katharina was my difference.
‘I love you, Mama.’
She liked to say those words in English. Always. Even at the worst times.
I tell Yola I miss half-knowing people. Neighbours who might turn the knife in your back but might help you in a crisis. Here you know people or they are strangers. There, there were people that you knew to see, knew to hear about, knew to say hello to but not much more. People whom you hardly knew but you would go to their wake if they died.
There was nothing like a good wake to help you face life in death. A lie. Or maybe a mix of truth and lie. In truth Brigitte didn’t miss the trudging around the countryside to the homes of half-known neighbours or distant relatives to pray, gossip, laugh and cry over a corpse that she barely recognised. She was glad to leave that Ireland behind when she came to Berlin as a slip of a girl.
Since the death of her mother, Peggy kept up regular contact. Funny that it should be Peggy who would ring more and more often.
‘The phone is my little luxury,’ she would say and share details of her children, grandchildren – neighbours even. It was Peggy she rang first to tell about Katharina. Liam’s voice, when she did ring, was full of accusation that she kept in touch with Peggy and had told her first. Liam was always her favourite – he was her baby when he was born. She was ten years old – old enough to help nurse him. It was Brigitte who could get him to sleep in the big bed before his older brothers joined him later. It was Brigitte who would change the bed in the middle of the night as the others fumed at him piddling again. When their mother died, he had turned mulish and bitter and refused contact with all the family except Brigitte because she had come when called.
She went because Peggy told her Liam was at the end of his tether and would hardly speak to any of them. Their mother needed someone to stay there at nights and Liam could not spend every night, disturbed by her distress. None of the others would share the burden. The oldest, Michael, was away in England and just as well because he would not be much use anyway as he needed looking after himself. Apparently he had a fondness for the bottle. Peggy was in Dublin and claimed she was needed to look after her son Conor who was still living at home and her two grandchildren, Aisling and Michael, after school. John-Joe and Marion lived a mile up the road, but neither could bear to leave their comfortable modern house to be there in the old house with a range hungry for heat, and a wind under the door that could cut corn. Her brother James was in Boston making his fortune. Brigitte remembered the night before he left, the determination on his face that he would be the equal of anybody and come back with dollars in his pocket or not at all. Ireland was too full of quisling arse lickers for him to continue to live there. He made his money all right and married an Irish woman over there who came from a family with roots in Galway. He rarely came to Ireland but
offered great hospitality to anyone who would go to him. He had found work for all of John-Joe and Marion’s children and they rarely came back now either.
Liam must have been desperate when he rang Peggy. Not a one of them expected Brigitte to come back after so long away. None of them knew it was just after Katharina had moved out. Brigitte had no need to work. Her pension was more than enough.
‘Why not go?’ Katharina said, and she was happy to arrange it all. Peggy’s son, Diarmuid, picked her up at the airport and drove her to Leitrim. She sat in the front seat of his BMW, grateful for the periods of polite silence. At every corner, no matter how remote, there were new houses being built or shopping centres or retail outlets. It was all too fast, too comfortable and unfamiliar.
The old house at home was smaller than she remembered. To make conversation, Diarmuid puzzled over how they had all fitted into the three bedrooms upstairs. At the time theirs was one of the biggest houses. There were plenty of bigger families in smaller houses. Liam had done his best to transport their parents’ bedroom from upstairs to what was once the good room downstairs so that it would be familiar. When her grandmother lived and died there, it was still called the parlour. Now it was mother’s room. Diarmuid paced around the kitchen drinking the mug of tea and eating sandwiches they’d bought in the garage where they stopped. He stayed barely an hour before heading back to Dublin. The whole country seemed to have shrunk to a small island with incongruous houses on every corner.
Shake their hands now for Katharina’s wake. Daughter death mixing with mother death. Alone with her mother in the old home, her mother became the child. She was in a half-sleep a lot of the time that first week after Brigitte arrived. It was hard to know if she was conscious – even when Brigitte was spooning water and food into her mouth. In the moments of fullest consciousness, she would call for Liam to bring her porridge but did not look surprised when it came in the hands of Brigitte. Brigitte fitted in with the rituals Liam had set up for himself. Yet there was time enough for her to find her own routine around Liam and the carer who came to wash and change their mother. Brigitte prepared meals for herself and Liam. She baked, cleaned the house, washed and dried the sheets and nightclothes. Back to the days of survival with her baby.