What You Can See from Here

by Mariana Leky

  He hadn’t counted on Mr. Rödder still being there, on his knees under the counter trying to hook up a modem. Unnoticed, Mr. Rödder scrambled on all fours to the travel section and held down the twin from the upper village until the police arrived. From then on, Mr. Rödder was much more even-keeled. Even his eyebrows, once in a constant state of agitation, calmed down. Mr. Rödder grumbled less. He no longer sidled between the shelves but strode proudly, conscious of having performed an important act.

  “There’s always something going on in your village,” Frederik wrote, and I wrote back asking if perhaps he didn’t have an email address so we could reach each other more quickly, since everything took so long this way. Frederik responded, with a delay, that naturally he wasn’t on email and: “By the way, I’m happy gravity is still here. And that we are, too.”

  My mother, who had started writing poetry, won second place in the local newspaper’s poetry competition, and Palm’s hunting blind collapsed without him in it. Surprisingly, it was the posts the optician hadn’t taken a saw to that had crumbled. The posts he had sawn lasted forever because he and Elsbeth had repaired them so well.

  The optician gave the Häubels’ third child a stamp collection album, and the mayor died; his heart stopped just as he was trying to attach the wreath to the maypole and he fell from the ladder stone-dead. “Please don’t tell me you dreamed of an okapi,” the mayor’s wife said to Selma, and Selma said nothing.

  * * *

  “What are enchanting oasis towns?” Selma asked with a book of photographs of Egypt on her lap, and the optician translated it for her.

  Friedhelm sang when he walked through the village and tipped his hat to everyone he met. The optician stuck his head into his perimeter and signaled to the dots that he had seen them. My father came to visit and brought me a glossy poster of a Venetian gondola that was so ugly I wondered if maybe he’d bought it at the gift shop and not in Venice. Mr. Rödder gave an interview to the local newspaper. Over a bowl of Flaming Temptation in the ice-cream parlor he spoke about heroism. And I went out with Andreas from the vocational school so that Selma would finally leave me in peace. Afterward Andreas came up to my apartment and, because I hadn’t counted on that and hadn’t cleaned up, all the chairs and the sofa were covered with clothes and newspapers. Andreas was about to sit on the still unpacked bookshelf in the corner. “Stop,” I said. “Not there, please.”

  “Where should I sit, then?” Andreas asked, and I had no idea where he should sit.

  Alaska needed a hip operation and the veterinarian warned us that he probably wouldn’t survive the procedure for the simple reason that, in theory, he shouldn’t even be alive. On the evening before the operation I wrote Frederik, “The operation went well. Alaska made it through the procedure extraordinarily well and is very lively.” On the day of the operation, my father called every half hour, from Alaska, of all places, to ask if there was any news, and only stopped when we told him we needed to keep the line free for the veterinarian.

  Alaska didn’t die. Alaska began yet another of his countless lives without dying in between, and after I’d put down a piece of the Christmas roast outside Marlies’s door and had turned to leave, I heard rattling as she undid the five locks on her door and opened it a crack.

  “What’s the name of the guy who said people should sit quietly in their rooms?” she asked.

  “Blaise Pascal.”

  “No, the other one.”

  “Oh right, Dr. Maschke.”

  * * *

  The shopkeeper bought a coffee dispenser and wrote COFFEE TO GO on a paper plate and hung it on the front door of the shop, but he soon took it down again because no one wanted a coffee to go. “Where I am supposed to go with a coffee?” the dead mayor’s wife asked.

  In Selma’s television series, Melissa betrayed Matthew with his half brother and Selma would never forgive her; and even though I didn’t know where I should put Andreas, he and I became a couple. It just worked out that way. It also happened that right after I’d kissed Andreas for the first time, I wrote to Frederik that I’d met someone who was very nice and whom I’d probably marry, and I was irritated that Frederik, who otherwise reacted to everything I wrote, didn’t mention Andreas at all in his next letter. He wrote about the moss on the roof, about work in the fields, about meditation, the guests in the monastery, and only at the very bottom of the last page: “P.S.: Congratulations, by the way.”

  Everyone thought Andreas was very nice. They also found that we shared the same interests, because Andreas was also a bookseller. Whenever anyone asked how things were with Frederik, I just told them that things hadn’t worked out.

  “You can’t always choose which adventure you’re made for,” I said.

  “That’s not how I meant it, Luisa,” the optician said.

  * * *

  After one of my father’s visits, Mr. Rödder looked at the wall over the travel books for a long time. There was a Buddha mounted on that wall, a Moroccan mask, a necklace with a large Greenlandite pendant, a rug from Lima, a New York license plate, a framed Hard Rock Café Peking T-shirt, the scimitar, a Celtic cross, the saddlebag, a Chilean rainstick, the poster of the Venetian gondola, and a didgeridoo. “We now have more travel decorations than travel books,” Mr. Rödder said. He asked if I could imagine taking over the bookstore someday when he was no longer around.

  “But you are around,” I said, and two weeks later Frederik wrote: “That’s a nice offer, but is it what you really want? I think you’re actually made to travel the seven seas.”

  I was on my way to the bookstore when I read that. I ran back to my apartment and wrote Frederik that he was in no position to judge what anyone was made for in life. After all, he had completely withdrawn from real life into a mossy-roofed monastery and from there, talk is cheap. Frederik had started in on my blurriness again in his last letter, so I also wrote that someone who is never around can’t judge visibility, either. But as I wrote, I noticed how wrong I was: Frederik and I could see each other very well across the nine thousand kilometers, maybe even better than if we were close up.

  “Dear Luisa,” Frederik replied, “I’d like to know what real life is in your opinion.”

  * * *

  “What does scenic and craggy mean?” Selma asked with a photography book about Ireland open on her lap. The optician, who was standing in front of Selma’s living room in the dark and could therefore only see himself, translated the words and added, “just like my face.”

  Selma hung her wash to dry as carefully as if for future generations, Marlies ate peas straight from the can at night when she stood at the window, sure that no one would come to see her, and now and again someone in the village resolved to be more thankful, to take more joy in simple things, or just to be happy to be alive, at least until the next burst pipe or unexpected surcharge.

  Because the summer was so hot, the Apfelbach stream dried up. Now that it was dry, the optician spent an entire afternoon jumping over it with the Häubel children, and for my thirtieth birthday, Andreas gave me a gift certificate for a trip to the seaside. He suggested that we take over the bookstore together someday, that we might also move in together, and just as he made that suggestion, lying on my bed, the telephone rang in the hallway. I ran to answer it and although the call came from the other end of the world, there wasn’t any static, the connection was crystal-clear.

  “It’s me,” Frederik said. “Happy birthday.”

  I was hearing his voice for the first time in eight years. I closed my eyes, and on the inside of my eyelids I saw Frederik in black and white in the Uhlheck, standing between other black-and-white monks, his light-colored eyes appearing very dark behind my eyelids. He stood there and said, “My name is Frederik, by the way.”

  I wasn’t prepared for his call, but my blank was. It had been preparing for it for eight long years.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but this isn’t a good time.”

  Frederik was quiet for a moment. Then
he said, “You can’t imagine how complicated it is to make a phone call here. At least tell me how you’re doing.”

  “Fine,” I said, and then there was silence until Frederik said, “I’m fine, too, thanks. I’m just always hungry.”

  “That’s good,” I said, and then Frederik asked how things were with Alexander. “Andreas,” I said, and told him I really needed to hang up.

  “Don’t be so difficult, Luisa, I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “Good, very good,” my blank said, and I hung up. I lay down next to Andreas and didn’t sleep the entire night because Frederik had wanted to hear my voice. Two weeks later he wrote: “Calling is complicated, but not only because of me.”

  Selma asked the optician, whose face really had become craggy, if it wasn’t about time he started thinking about retirement. But there was nothing wrong with the optician, who was almost as old as Selma, that is, almost seventy-seven, aside from a weakness in the muscles of his lower back that rendered them unable to relieve the burden of his disks, and he dismissed the idea energetically. “I will work until the day of my death. That’s my preference. You’ll see, Selma: I will die with my head in the perimeter.” And that was what happened many years later, only Selma was no longer around to see it.

  * * *

  “What does merciless drought mean?” Selma asked, holding up a photography book of Namibia. The optician translated the words and added, “as you can see.”

  The optician was still carrying around the sentence about how something not seen can’t disappear, and still no one could explain it. “I’m sorry,” Frederik wrote. “Please tell the optician that I don’t understand the sentence, either.” The shopkeeper asked how things were with Frederik; the optician declared that it really was time to repair the weak spot in Selma’s floor properly because it was an impossible state of affairs even though it had been possible for decades, and then he forgot about it again; the widow from the House of Contemplation left Friedhelm because she preferred being a widow after all; the wife of the dead mayor moved in with her daughter in the county seat; and then the Häubels’ third child disappeared.

  The entire village set out looking for him. We searched in all the houses, the stalls, the barns, and we searched the Uhlheck. The child was called Martin because he was named after Martin. He was ten years old.

  “No,” Selma said when we asked about her dreams the previous night. “No, definitely not.”

  We weren’t worried about the usual dangers, but about the most outlandish ones. We were afraid that a door somewhere might have opened and the Häubels’ child been ripped from life. But three hours later, the boy came home unharmed. He had been hiding in the dead mayor’s former cowshed, way in the back next to the discarded milking machine. We’d all passed right by him, and when he heard our collective fear, he hadn’t dared come out of his hiding place.

  When Andreas gave me a kiss on the forehead one morning before he drove to work, a cursory kiss, like the ones the characters in Selma’s series, all of whom by now had been played by multiple actors, gave each other, I told him we had to break up. Andreas put down his backpack and looked at me, not at all surprised, as if he had been expecting it for a long time. “And why?” he asked nevertheless, before listing all the plans he’d made for us. “Why?” he asked again, and because nothing better occurred to me, I said, “Because I’m made to travel the seven seas.”

  Andreas took from my desk the gift certificate for the trip to the seaside that he’d given me and I still hadn’t redeemed.

  “You didn’t even want to travel to one sea,” he objected.

  Then Andreas left, and I didn’t stick my foot in the door as he closed it.

  I felt dizzy. I had rarely opposed anything that was happening to me.

  While I was considering what to do next, I noticed I was holding a butter knife as I stood in front of the bookshelf that had not been unpacked for eight years. I cut open the packaging. The assembly instructions included twenty-six steps, but I still gave it a try. And while I was assembling the bookshelf, I hought of Frederik’s letter in which he’d asked what real life was in my opinion. I thought of Martin and the fogged-up window he had leaned against with his eyes closed in intense concentration, also of the strand of hair on his head that never stayed combed down. I thought of Elsbeth’s hydrangea-like swim cap, of Mr. Rödder’s breath that smelled of violets, of Selma’s old skin that looked like bark. I thought of the table in Alberto’s ice-cream parlor at which I’d been rewarded with a small Secret Love the first time I read the sugar packet horoscope aloud by myself. I thought of Alaska and how he lifted his head when he left a room, how he weighed whether it was worth getting up and coming with us, and how he usually decided it was. I thought of the optician, who, all his life, was always ready to help others. I thought of Palm, of Palm’s wild eyes when I was young, and of Palm now, how he nodded and said nothing, nodded and said nothing.

  I thought of the station clock, under which the optician taught us to tell time and about time zones. I thought about all the time in the world, all the time zones I’d had anything to do with, and of the two watches on my father’s wrist. That’s real life, I thought, the whole expanse of life, and after the seventh point in the instruction manual, I crumpled it up and kept assembling without it. In the end, I had a bookshelf that stood relatively straight.

  On the way to the bookstore, I stopped in the ice-cream parlor. “What’ll it be?” Alberto asked.

  “I’d like a large Secret Love,” I said.

  * * *

  The photography book for Selma’s eightieth birthday was one about Iceland, and she didn’t ask the optician any questions.

  The optician had been glad it was about Iceland because he knew Selma would like it. Iceland was pleasant and the people there believed outlandish things. Elsbeth would have liked it, too.

  “You’re not asking me about any words,” the optician said.

  “I’m not reading any,” Selma said, and smiled. “I’m much too excited.”

  Selma had put on lipstick and mascara. Her cheeks were rosy, and she looked incredibly young.

  And then, when we heard the first guests outside—the entire village comes to an eightieth birthday party—Selma snapped the book shut.

  CHASING AWAY THE DEER

  “Well?” Mr. Rödder asked after we had squeezed our way through the door into the back room of the shop. “Have you considered it?”

  “No, but you’re still around,” I said.

  Mr. Rödder balanced on his tiptoes. “Yes, well,” he said, looking at me gravely, “when you saw away at a tree and it falls over, you can’t say: ‘It will only really be felled once it’s lying on the ground.’ It’s already falling.”

  “Are you not well?”

  “I am valiantly striding toward the age of sixty-five,” he murmured. “At that age, you can say you feel the saw.”

  He was right, but it didn’t change the fact that he would go on well past sixty-five. Mr. Rödder would even make it to 101 and would do so valiantly. He would reach such an advanced age the local newspaper would ask him for the secret of his indestructible health, and Mr. Rödder would answer: “I suppose it’s the violet pastilles.”

  “Mr. Rödder,” I said, “I need a few days off.”

  “Visitor from Japan?”

  “No, but my grandmother’s not very well.”

  “Oh, of course you can have time off. And please give your grandmother my best, even though we’ve never met.”

  * * *

  A few weeks earlier, Selma had waited for me in her wheelchair in front of the village shop because the ramp had given way under the weight of a detergent delivery. Near her, a bag of rolls sat on the sill of the shop window. Selma didn’t know they belonged to the mayor’s second wife, who had been so caught up in a discussion with the optician about the advantages and disadvantages of contact lenses that she’d forgotten them. Selma was hungry and her errands were dragging on. She ope
ned the bag, took out a currant bun, tore off a piece, and put the bun quickly back in the bag.

  Not long afterward, she started forgetting names. “Remind me the name of Melissa and Matthew’s son, the one who got involved in that terrible problem with drugs,” she would ask, for example, and if anyone tried to tell her a name, she would call out, “Wait, don’t tell me!” because she wanted to remember it on her own. Or because she thought it was enough if someone else could remember the name.

  She started forgetting birthdays and doctor’s appointments.

  “You haven’t eaten found bread lately, have you?” I asked her.

  “No,” Selma said, but then she would have forgotten that, too.

  * * *

  She also lost one of the earrings that Elsbeth had given her for her seventieth birthday, made of two somewhat oversized artificial pearls. When she realized the earring was missing, Selma started to cry, and didn’t stop for half the night. At first I thought she wasn’t actually crying over the earring at all, but over the dwindling of her abilities, over Elsbeth and all the other people she had lost in the course of her life. But Selma had no feel for metaphors. She was simply crying over the lost earring.

  She started saying peculiar things. “The forest is creeping into me,” she said when the optician and I pushed her over the Uhlheck. “You know what? I think the forest is sharing my thoughts.”

  The optician and I ignored this, as if Selma hadn’t spoken, but the forest rustled even louder than usual.

  Selma began frequently saying sentences with the words never or always and said them like someone who had reached the end of her life and could, indeed, form judgments about what had always been and what never had.

  “I never really left this house,” she said, patting the flank of her home one day when we returned from our walk in the Uhlheck. “I’ve always liked blackberry jam very much,” she said one morning as she spooned some on her toast.