Turning

by Jessica J. Lee

  When we’d finished at the court, we got back into the Toyota and drove to the supermarket. He bought another gallon of Pure Spring Water and loaded it into the back seat. The enormity of the water bottle might have been the last straw for me, if it hadn’t already come some years earlier. Standing in the grocery aisle, waiting as he picked over the many varieties of plastic-capped, pasteurised water, I was struck with the feeling, years late, that I no longer had to live like this. I didn’t have to wait for someone else any more. In truth I hadn’t lived like this for three years, but that was the first time I’d felt it.

  He dropped me off and got out to give me a kiss. A last kiss, perhaps. Maybe we’ll see each other again. But, paperwork filed, we could kiss goodbye and mean it. And just as quickly, I got into another car and drove to the ocean. Out of the city, down the coast. And as I swam in the cold of the North Atlantic, it all washed away.

  —

  It’s late August by now, and I’m beginning to feel the summer slipping away. There’s still time, of course, but practicalities are crowding in once more: deadlines, work. By the end of September, I’m meant to have three chapters of my dissertation ready to submit. I’ve spent the summer refining them, parsing stories of nineteenth-century social reformers from those of landscape designers, distinguishing the words of Romantic poets from the hours of taped interviews I have with locals from the Heath. As I work my mind is thick and absent, in another land. But when I set out to the lakes, I’m here. My focus will grow sharper as the weather cools. For now, the heat still hangs heavily, but I can see the long stretch of autumn and winter lying ahead of me.

  When I’d begun swimming at the beginning of summer, it felt like too great a task, like something onerous I was using to punish myself. Swim here and swim alone. Make this place yours. I’d gone into it with anger, with expectation. It was penance. Swim until you find that feeling again, the feeling of freedom. I didn’t know that you could love someone and still be free.

  Three months on, I’ve settled into a rhythm. It feels a bit like when you’ve cycled a long way, your legs in constant rotation, and it’s easier to keep moving than to stop. Or when you’ve stepped off a boat and can still feel the water beneath you, even on dry land. It’s becoming normal. It doesn’t scare me for now.

  I’m on my bike, tracing the route up Prenzlauer Allee. Past the motorway at the edge of the city and on to the long suburban streets that drag through the surrounding villages – all stretched along a single street, bungalow house fronts and shop fronts opening on to the pavement. I bike absent-mindedly, mired in thoughts of upcoming deadlines and a vague concern about having enough water for the day. It’s another long trip, and I don’t want to repeat that day near Pätz. By now, as my legs have found their rhythm, I’ve devised a system. I pack a thermos of coffee. A bottle of water. A boiled egg, two slices of bread and a slice of cheese. Two carrots. A piece of chocolate. Every single time. Ritual.

  Don’t bike so fast. Breathe. Is it time to stop for water? The sun cuts a strong line across the pavement – thirty degrees.

  I’m thick in thought when the field opens before me. A scene I’ve seen a hundred times in a photograph, some photo saved on my phone from that day last November, with Jacob dressed in shorts and a red jacket, leaning on his bike, checking the map. Fields on either side and wind turbines in the distance. To the east, a hillside housing some Soviet bunker or something, he’d said. It was always some Soviet bunker.

  I’ve been here before. Struck by the bizarre recognition of a place I’ve been to just once but documented and carried around in my pocket for months, I feel strangely at home in the midst of these far-away fields. But glancing to my left, a tiny hunting blind peeks out atop the field. That isn’t in my picture. It isn’t in my memory of the place. This field, always autumnal in my mind, is now green with late summer and drenched in humid sun. It’s bigger than I remember. The reality of the place stretches wider than my memory. I ride on without stopping, a corner of my mind on him.

  Ahead I find a village with a crumbling stone church. Curving along the road I reach the point outside the city where the air turns to perfume at Schönwalde, thick with heady green pine and wet fern. Ivy droops from a small thicket of beech trees. My legs begin to tire in the dense, woody humidity. The lake is still ten kilometres away.

  At Wandlitz, I duck off the main road and into a quiet lane. It’s a town of twenty thousand, taking in the surrounding villages, and I love it. But there are incongruities here. It is a land of lakes, its name literally coming from a Slavic phrase meaning ‘people who live by the water’. And so it is: people come here for the water. Politicians from the East. And everyday people, fishermen, swimmers. With Soviet land reform, the lake became the state’s, but reunification changed so much. In 2003, a wealthy investor came, and the land beneath the lake was sold. The town couldn’t afford to keep it for themselves. Since then – property lines carved up and meticulously attended to – locals have paid rent for access to the lake, though the water is still theirs. Wandlitzer See is a sign of what we stand to lose, a contemporary fable in reunified Germany.

  The village road ahead is scattered with families ready for a last summer Sunday, laden with kickboards and kidsized rubber rings. Crowds huddle in the shade under the bakery’s outdoor umbrellas. It isn’t even noon yet, but the crowds snake out from the gates of the private Strandbad. I’m headed elsewhere.

  I duck on to a nearby lane and it’s quiet. I lock my bike to a signpost and wander down to the small stretch of green and sand, one of the few access points preserved for the public, abutting the private beach next door. I’ve hiked around Wandlitzer See a handful of times, but never stopped to swim here. Liepnitzsee is nearby and has become a habit. But now that I’ve arrived, I wonder if perhaps I’ve been mistaken to skip it so often.

  A deep blue stretches out smoothly towards the horizon, cut only by the occasional swimmer and a cluster of unwittingly humorous stand-up paddle-boarders. I swallow a laugh and take in the small beach, just a thin line of grassy lawn with a sliver of sand edging out into the shallows of the lake. It isn’t much.

  Undressing and stepping into the cold blue, I find that the shallows extend out a long way. A pair of naked toddlers splash by, and a pair of twenty-somethings in black shorts tap a beach ball between them. Wading out between them, I tuck down and submerge my shoulders in the cold. The lakes have become cooler these past weeks. Autumn is coming.

  Swimming out into the bracing wet, I roll on to my back and rest, blue below and blue above, the horizon marked only by swimmers. I could stay here all day, though I know full well that quieter lakes await me. I can’t linger if I am going to make it through the day. I have to pack up. A few more minutes in the cold, though, and then perhaps my legs will be ready. The next lake is eight kilometres away.

  —

  I plan to go to Großer Lottschesee, a spot of blue I spied on the map a day earlier, having never noticed it before. I’m continually amazed by how they seem to appear, small spots on a digital map I move around with my fingertips. Minuscule ponds and larger stretches of watery promise. My list keeps growing. This one appeared suddenly, as if it hadn’t been there before, as I was mapping my route across the northern sections of Wandlitz towards Ruhlsdorf.

  But Großer Lottschesee, I find, stands mired behind a railway line and a strip of fenced-off forest. The small blue line on my map points, instead, to the small, polypous lake to its south, connected by a grassed-in strip of water: Kleiner Lottschesee. A thimble of a lake at the end of a gravelly forest road, edged by a campground and a grassy, tiny park. A lake-side restaurant looms large to its side, and the chatter of older couples hums above the green.

  Settling next to a sloping spit of sand between an old man in a lawn chair and a couple watching the shore, I undress quickly and stack my clothes. This will be a quick stop, I decide – it is past noon and I want to eat, but lunch will have to wait until later.

  I step quickly i
nto the orange water. Disappearing instantly, my feet feel around instead for some clear ground. Sand, some sharp rocks, but not much else. Feeling safe enough, I push out into the deep, extending my arms ahead of me. It’s cold. A crack of fear opens and I think of what’s beneath me – opaque orange impeding my vision – and of snakes and sharp-toothed fish and leeches. I want out. I begin to panic, but with a breath, gliding out, I settle my vision on the horizon and focus. Think only of what you can see. A fear rebuked, but always returning.

  I swim on, out into the middle of the lake and around in an arc, towards another stretch of sandy shore. An old woman slides past me in the water, smiling. She is calm, and all I feel is fear. And then, the shallow returns and I feel my knees bump up against the ground. Back on my feet, I hurry out, my breath heaving after only a few minutes in the water. I hope no one notices.

  On the grass again, I wrap my towel around my shoulders and sit down, fumbling through my bag for dry clothes. The old man on the lawn chair, waving off a friend in an accent I’ve never heard before, turns to me.

  ‘Ist es kalt?’

  I hesitate and he repeats himself, clarifying.

  ‘Das Wasser. Das Wetter ist heiß, aber das Wasser ist kalt.’

  I nod, awkwardly fumbling through my explanation that it wasn’t too cold, I swim in winter normally, but he’s already moved on, registering the ineptitude of my German.

  ‘Woher kommst du?’

  ‘Kanada,’ I reply, receiving a look of confusion. I notice the large hearing aid in his ear and repeat myself, articulating. ‘Kanada.’

  ‘Oh, so you speak English then!’ He laughs. ‘We all speak English here.’

  I apologise. ‘I normally try to speak German.’ I’m clutching my dry clothes; I need to get going.

  ‘Canada is different,’ he begins, and then trails off about his nephew who lives in Quebec but hates it because he moved there from San Diego. ‘It’s a bit different. Michigan is cold.’

  He isn’t making sense. I try not to look confused, but I’m struggling to follow his line of thought, nodding. He asks what I am doing here. Explaining briefly how I came to be in Berlin, he registers only that I came via London and laughs in delight.

  ‘So you know all about the English accent then! You lyyyke to swim in layyykes.’ He’s pleased with himself. Thoroughly confused but smiling, I pack up my things and throw on my clothes. These small fragments, these small exchanges, are a way in to this place. I won’t see this man again, and within a few minutes I’ll have forgotten this confusing conversation. But it matters to me, all the same.

  I pop a handful of almonds into my mouth and stand up, waving goodbye. An awkward exit. He continues laughing to himself. I wish him a good day by the lake and wander off into the woods.

  —

  Zum Großer Lottschesee is a small forest lane stretching across the top of the lake. I pedal along it, winding my bike around the steel posts blocking cars from the forest. I’m completely alone.

  Eight kilometres along from here sits Bernsteinsee, my third lake of the day, lunch and a rest in the glorious sun. But first this road: closely packed gravel scattered with pine cones, snaking through a pinewood skirted with fern. Sunlight cuts in occasionally, casting bright stripes through the green and orange. There’s still the citrus smell of warm pine.

  The ground here is bedded moss, and I think of last November again, the moss, the picnic. I’d bring him here, I decide, before remembering that it isn’t possible. Even if it was, I wouldn’t. I shunt the memory off to the corner of my mind.

  Halfway along the lane, the ground softens and the grey gravel becomes sand. My bike shudders and slips in its tracks, and I step off, cursing. I am only halfway there, and if the road is sandy the rest of the way I’ll have to walk. It’s another four kilometres at least.

  Fuck. The trees open into a wide cornfield and what was a sheltered, mild warmth becomes a searing, buzzing heat. A ball of fire in a sky of watery blue. Sand stretches ahead of me, through the fields and past a dilapidated farm building. I have to keep walking.

  Thirst creeps to the edges of my mouth. Slinging my back-pack off to get water, I bump my bike bell, and its brisk ring echoes across the land. I am really, really alone out here. Looking down, I notice cloven footprints dotting a winding path on the ground in front of me. There’s a hunting blind on the edge of the field, but no one is here.

  Twenty minutes pass as I push my bike through the sand. It’s been a lot worse, I think, all the while cursing the decision to take this road. Why don’t I carry paper maps? For a moment, I think of that day in Pätz, but then two white posts creep on to the horizon, followed by a cluster of small houses. The end of the road, pavement again. I’m almost there. After that road, the lake.

  —

  Through a break in the trees, the turquoise sheet of Bernsteinsee, another former sand quarry, flashes into view. It is said the name emerged because locals used to find bits of amber – fossilised from pine resin – in the lake bed. The reality of it is far less romantic. Children’s shrieks hum across the air, and the pavement becomes crowded with beachgoers. I’d never heard of Bernsteinsee until a few weeks ago, but can see immediately that it’s not an isolated, secret place. Queues of cars creep into an overflowing car park dropped just beneath an enormous, golden crescent of beach. The sand stretches at least two hundred metres towards the lake, with fringes of grass clumped about, creating nooks along the shore. It is swarming with sunbathers. This is basically the middle of nowhere, I think, puzzled, as I lock my lonesome bike amidst the cars.

  Torn between principles and hunger, I peek around for an entrance to the lake away from the private Strandbad. Private beaches make me furious. But clusters of families line the entrance, and beyond them I see only fences. I’m too hungry for this. I wander towards the gates, ready to pay, but instead see an empty ticket hut. There’s no one manning the desk, so I saunter by, glancing to my side in case someone stops me. No one does.

  And then the beach opens before me, yellow-gold and dry in all directions, tall grass screening the blue. A line of volleyball nets is busily occupied. A portable DJ stall sends its rhythmic thud into the hot air. This isn’t exactly what I’d expected.

  I’m desperate to sit down and I search for shade, anywhere, but I can’t find any. I stumble through the sand towards a quieter corner with a small white sign scrawled in red: FKK. Freikörperkultur, Germany’s naturist movement, a remnant of the East, thrives in the lake-going culture. Nearby, a group of older, tanned Germans lie splayed and naked in the sand.

  I find a scrap of light shadow beneath a bush and huddle there, my back to the water. Unboxing my lunch, I begin to eat, furiously and with delight. I need to drink water, I remember – it’s thirty-two degrees and I’ve been out for hours. I crack a hard-boiled egg, rolling its crumpling shell along the tupperware’s lid. No salt, but it’s perfect.

  Fed and watered at last, I take in my surroundings. Next to me, a young woman hides in the shade, her red shoulders shining. An older couple share a newspaper nearby. I want to sit and rest, but my blanket is stretched atop roots and twigs, so instead I throw off my clothes and tuck them into my back-pack. I wander towards the water through a ten-foot mouth of sand amidst the grass. Old men wade to their knees and children bob with water-wings.

  I step in, quickly jog past them, and then the ground drops off suddenly beneath me. Plötzlich, the German word for ‘suddenly’, so perfectly captures the plot-twist motion that finds me swallowing a mouthful of water and searching for my swimming legs, the moment when the foggy shallows turn immediately to deep, mineral green. And suddenly, unexpectedly, I’m afloat.

  There is nothing to be afraid of here. Fear forgotten, for now. Jolly swimmers surround me on all sides: a man in cartoonish goggles – Too old to be in those goggles, like my mother, I think, but whatever – and a greying, round old man, rolling along the water’s surface. Ahead of me is a raft, manned by two young boys in trunks and water-wi
ngs.

  I swim out, looking for stillness, but there’s no peace here. The lake itself is a joy – cold and clear – but that summer hum and the distant techno thud carry across the water. I want to be alone. I want to go again, I think, restless. I can’t sit still today. I have one lake left.

  —

  I dodge across the road, and in seconds I’m at Kiessee. The map shows a folded-over rectangle in blue, shaped like a u. I see only a large, square building ahead of me, and hear only the mosquito-zip of wires beyond it. I read the sign: Wasserski.

  Shit. I spent my whole day out and now this. Waterskiing? Men in board shorts saunter past while every few moments cheers rise from the crowds. A wakeboarder has splashed some tentative onlookers, who are now laughing in the shallows, soaked. The map said there was swimming here.

  I wander past the crush of onlookers, towards a small patch of trees. And then the small cluster of trees opens on to a quiet stretch of lawn and sand, insulated from the zip-line hum of the skiers by a veritable wall of plants. Grass edges along Kiessee’s shore, and along the right-hand side of the lake’s u-shaped body, I see sloping courses of sand reaching to shore. Like Bernsteinsee across the road, Kiessee is a remnant from the sand pits. A campsite sits along the far edge, but here, there is just a rustic bench and a patch of grass, with still, silent water ahead of me.

  Undressing, I peer down into the sandy, pale blue and see a school of striped, glistening perch exploring the shallows. I step in up to my ankles and they remain, scattering only as I walk out up to my waist. The water here is glorious – crisp and glinting, like light filtered through an aquamarine gemstone.

  I’ve been waiting for this lake all summer. Sandy without feeling murky, cold and clear but emerald at its deepest. My toes dance in and out of sight as I tread water, taking in the quietude of this empty lake. The waterskiers have disappeared.