I didn’t go into all that detail, however. The little I had told Gisela was more than enough for her already. She seems not to want to know the truth about a world she has only ever regarded with pity and slight contempt from the other side of the Wall. She shies away from conversations like this and keeps her distance from us. I saw how she took Hartmut’s hand and placed it anxiously in hers, as if she were worried he might slip away from her, dive into the past and stay there.
The conversation swings round to Volker. Nobody knows for sure why he started drinking. It wasn’t as if everybody else in the agricultural collective drank. And apart from the frequent arguments he had with his father, his life wasn’t too bad. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he were Alfred’s son. Maybe he’s sensed it, because certainly nobody’s told him. A lie consumes people from the inside, Grandma Traudel always says. You can keep the lid on it for ages, but at some point it boils over—I’ve often heard her say that. I’m sure Volker’s drinking has something to do with this. When he was younger he even had a girlfriend. For a while they lived together at the farm, up in the attic rooms where Johannes and I are now staying. But Siegfried and Volker argued, and because Siegfried was the more capable of the two, Volker eventually had to go. He held it against everybody, especially Alfred, who on that occasion backed Siegfried even though he generally took Volker’s side. But Volker was unreliable. When he drank, he forgot about the animals, and no one would tolerate that.
Frieda goes into the sitting room. She doesn’t like talking about Volker, but she loves him nonetheless; after all, he is her eldest son. Alfred trudges after her in silence. And now Siegfried says something that takes everyone by surprise. He says, “If I checked my Stasi file to see who had informed on me, whose name do you think I’d find there?” He grins impishly and looks around. Marianne claps her hand over her mouth and Hartmut shakes his head. Gisela looks from one face to another and Johannes says, “I can imagine, Dad.”
And because Volker knows that Siegfried knows, he doesn’t like coming to the farm anymore.
Then we leave them at the table. Johannes takes my hand, leading me out into the hallway and up the stairs. His mind is on other things; he has a plan. He wants to go to Leipzig to look around the art college. It’s vacation time at the moment, but someone will be there, he says. He hasn’t asked whether I want to go with him. This is his road, and mine—this much I know—is currently heading in a different direction. It’s too early to say where. I’m lurching from one emotional state to another, living from one day to the next, always in the present, always in the now, and the now is Henner. Johannes and the future are unknowns.
10
Some days have passed. Dismal days, sad days, during which I’ve heard nothing from Henner nor seen him. He hasn’t even come to the shop. Marianne says he must be on a bender, or with some woman. This makes me frantic. But it’s my turn to answer him. “Come stay with me, just for a day . . .” His message was quite clear; it’s up to me.
Gisela and Hartmut have returned to Bavaria, taking Frieda with them. It’s her first ever trip abroad—we are still the GDR, after all. She was so excited that Marianne had to pack her case for her; Frieda had no idea what to bring. Normally she wears her apron dress day in, day out. Hartmut has promised to visit more often; he wants to be around to help Siegfried when the family gets the land back from the collective. And he’s more interested in those files than the rest of us put together.
I don’t know what to do. I’ve been over to Henner’s farm a few times, but it’s all locked up. Johannes went off to Leipzig yesterday and won’t be back for three days. I decide to go to the tavern, to ask whether the landlord needs any waitressing help for the rest of the summer. He’s opened a beer garden, and even tourists are beginning to come to this part of the world now. I make myself look nice: I put on a clean, pale-colored dress, a little lipstick, and my shoes with the low heels. Then I wander along the dusty lane to the tavern. It is early afternoon, hot and without a breath of wind. There’s a faint buzzing in the air.
When I enter the tavern I see Henner at the regulars’ table. He’s paralytic, and railing against the “criminal state that’s fucked up my life. Even my wife buggered off—she was with the Stasi, the old slut.” Straightaway my knees start trembling. He looks terrible: dirty, brutal—not at all how I’d like to see him. I steel myself and go over to the bar, then ask the landlord for a quiet word, hoping that Henner won’t notice me. His right hand, in a sticky pool of beer, is gripping the table for support, his left hand rests limply on his stained trouser leg. Don’t turn around, Henner, I say to myself, but that’s exactly what he does. He looks up at me, grins with a demented glint in his eye, and gives a brief chuckle. “Maria! The little doll!” he bellows. “It’s all so easy for her, she’s moving away from here and never coming back. Never! What does she see in Johannes, that boy?” And then he laughs so loudly that even the other drinkers look slightly embarrassed. My whole body is shaking, and the landlord says, “Fantastic, you can start next week. I really need the help this summer since Gabi’s expecting another child and she can’t do much at the moment.”
Then I leave the room and just head off. I don’t know where I’m going, but instinctively I take the path to the woods. And when I’ve been walking for a long time, really quite far, I hear a panting behind me. Before I can work out what’s happening he’s overtaken me. He pulls me to the ground and the two of us collapse in a heap. Henner is lying on top of me and holds me tight. Until I stop struggling. Then he kneels over me and, with a sobriety to match his drunkenness in the tavern, says, “Now you’re coming with me!” I wipe the woodland earth from my dress and race back to the farm. After telling Marianne that I’m going to see my mother and don’t know when I’ll be back, I fetch what I need from the spiders’ nest, stash a few vegetables and a piece of meat from the shop in my bag, and leave. I’m sure I would have gone even if Johannes had been here. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
By the time I arrive he’s washed and put on fresh clothes. I’m astonished by how quickly he’s sobered up. I don’t want to talk yet; I punish him with my silence. Then I start chopping vegetables. I sweat the onions and garlic in butter, add the finely diced potatoes and the rest of the vegetables, some spices that I find in his kitchen, and cook for a quarter of an hour, stirring in a little cream and some flour. Then the meat: two thick sirloins, juicy and tender. “Set the table, Henner,” I say. “It’ll be ready soon.” All of a sudden he looks quite young. A sneer creeps across his face. But he sets the table without answering back.
He watches me throughout the meal, as if to make sure that I don’t disappear again. I like that, though I know I’m being vain and arrogant. I want him to look at me, desire me, me alone and no other. Me alone.
When we get up from the table and go to the other room I say something to him, something which I already know I will never say again. “Do what you want with me,” I whisper into his ear. And he does.
The next morning I’m woken by the dogs barking. Someone must be at the door, or maybe it’s just an animal. Needing to pee I try to get up. I lift my legs from the bed and lower them onto the cool floor, but they collapse beneath me. Henner hastens over and carries me to the bathroom and back again. It reminds me of cats who drag their little ones around between their teeth. Today Henner is my mother cat. I did cry a little last night, and at one point I asked him to stop. He replied quietly, but with an odd tone to his voice, that I should have thought about that earlier; now it was too late.
The dogs are quiet again, and Henner is washing me with a warm sponge. He strokes the hair from my face and wants to make me pure again. Then he makes tea and goes into the village to fetch some rolls. He stays with me all day, feeding and cleaning me. I’m not at all well. My head is hot and my mind scrambled, yet I feel happy. Just so long as he doesn’t leave my bedside; that makes me anxious. At dusk he puts a small lamp on the floor by the bed and starts reading a poem to me:
“With your cool, kind hands / Close all wounds / So that they bleed inwardly / Sweet mother of pain, you!” I close my eyes and slide back into my fever. “In silence the darkness extinguished me / I became a dead shadow in the day / Then I stepped from the hearth of joy / Out into the night. / . . . / You are in deep midnight / An unbegotten in a sweet womb / And never being, unformed! / You are in deep midnight.” Later I feel his cool hands on my feverish body, but I no longer know whether I’m awake or dreaming.
Grushenka, Grushenka, will you really stay with Dmitry?
That night he lies next to me and tosses and turns, getting no sleep. The fever alters my perception. It seems as if several meters are separating Henner and me, though I can touch him. Even my own arms and legs seem to be moving away from me. I abandon myself to this sensation, and lying on my tummy, my head on my arms, I doze off. Later I feel him inside me again. He takes me as he pleases—until he’s finally able to get to sleep.
One day turns into two, and I’m still here on the third day. Henner says I talked a lot in my delirium, but none of it made any sense.
I still feel so weak, and Johannes is coming back today. If he sees I’m not at the farm he’ll drive over to Mom’s to fetch me. Then it will all come out.
There are lots of empty cups beside the bed. Henner made herbal teas and spooned them into my mouth, at least that’s what he says. I can’t remember anything.
I’m feeling uneasy; I must get back to the farm before Johannes. I need to go. Now. Henner has washed my clothes and brings them to me in bed. He looks at me for a long time. His eyes are asking what I remember of these nights, whether he went too far. I leave him with his unspoken question; I don’t know the answer myself.
Daylight enters the dark room. After struggling to get dressed I step out of the house as if out of time. Everything inside is old. The walls, the bed, and somehow Henner too. He walks me to the gate and says, “I’m here, Maria, you know that.” This time he doesn’t give me a note as I leave.
Alfred is standing and watching at the Brendels’ front door. He gives me a Frieda-like greeting, says, “Oh, so she’s back. Did she have a nice time at her mother’s?” A mischievous grin forms on his thin lips, and he narrows his eyes. But before I can answer him the Wartburg comes to a stop behind me and Johannes gets out. My heart is pounding and I can feel a throbbing in my head. Lying is the worst sin, Grandma Traudel used to say when Lorenz was having one of his wild spells. I think she’s right.
11
Johannes is so excited about the last few days, thank God, that he doesn’t notice how quiet I am. This time he’s the one talking nineteen to the dozen, about the city, which still looks horribly gray, about the people he met at the art college and the specialist photography course they run there. One of the students told him that the photos he brought with him were really good. He’s got an eye for light and composition—those were the exact words. “Light and composition,” Johannes repeats reverently.
Then he wants to take my dress off and I go rigid. Since I’ve got my period I don’t have to lie. It started yesterday at Henner’s, and I didn’t have anything on me. He just put some thick towels on the sheets, changing them often. He wasn’t at all fazed. I don’t think Johannes could have done that.
We get around to talking about the city, and about the portfolio that Johannes needs to put together if he applies. He wants to make a series about the village: its inhabitants and their houses, both inside and out. It can’t be too documentary, as he puts it, it has to be art, and art looks different. I couldn’t say how an artistic photograph differs from a documentary one, but Johannes is in the process of explaining it to me. And yet his words don’t reach me.
Later I tell him about my summer job at the tavern. He thinks it’s a good idea, because he’s going to be spending most of the coming weeks taking photos and working in the darkroom. He goes in there now, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
I’m not the same girl I once was. But who am I?
The heat up in our attic rooms forces me outside; I take The Brothers Karamazov with me.
Lukas is down in the shop today, helping his mother. Marianne is in a shockingly bad mood. Since Frieda went off to Bavaria she’s had twice as much work to do. Frieda cooks for the entire family, and now Marianne has to do it herself, even though she’s not that great in the kitchen. Frieda should be back in a week. She rang once; she called the co-op and Marianne went scooting over there. Apparently Frieda didn’t sound happy; in fact she just grumbled the whole time.
Marianne brings up the subject of the meat that I took, which Henner found so delicious. She says sternly, “It’s sweet of you to bring your mother something, but you can’t just take it without asking.” She’s absolutely right, and I swear blind that next time I’ll ask her permission.
Out in the meadow the grass has grown tall again. It is August, and another hay harvest is imminent. I lie on the riverbank with The Brothers Karamazov, and as I start reading I realize that it all sounds familiar, even though I can’t have read it before. This continues for dozens of pages. I’m quite sure I hadn’t got this far—I’d used a bookmark—and yet I know what is about to happen.
Dmitry isn’t the murderer. It was the servant Smerdyakov, probably an illegal child of the old—and now dead—Fyodor Karamazov. He claims that the middle brother, Ivan, gave him the idea of committing the murder. But this doesn’t exonerate Dmitry in the slightest, as there’s no statement, and the day before the trial begins, Smerdyakov hangs himself. People say of Grushenka that she was the undoing of both father and son. The city women are especially malicious about her.
The swallows are flying low above me—rain is on its way. I can see Siegfried by the dam in the distance. He’s getting more cheerful by the day, on account of the grand plans he’s been hatching. His new buzzwords are “biodynamic agriculture,” which Hartmut talked about at length. In Bavaria, he said, there were so-called “Demeter” farms, cultivating in much the same way as Siegfried on his farm, but getting a decent sum of money for their products. There was a specific philosophy behind it, and the name Rudolf Steiner cropped up. It was all about “living interactions” and “cosmic rhythms in crop farming.” At that point Marianne almost fell over laughing, and kept repeating the words “cosmic rhythms” as she danced mysteriously about the kitchen. She can be rather silly sometimes, even though she’s not young anymore—well, she’s younger than Henner, but that’s different. But Hartmut was undeterred, and quoting this Steiner, he said, “A farm is true to its essential nature, in the best sense of the word, if it is conceived as a kind of individual entity in itself.” Siegfried grasped the meaning of this at once, while Marianne was still chortling with laughter, and Frieda and Alfred just shook their heads. “It’s a philosophy, Mother,” Hartmut tried to explain, but it was no good. Then he talked about the “animal as a creature with a soul” and the importance of the ruminant for the quality of the soil. The animal must be able, Hartmut said, “to relate to its environment via its senses.” “This means,” he concluded solemnly, because we were all looking at him with puzzled expressions, “that the cow must go to the pasture!” Marianne couldn’t control herself any longer.
When Siegfried had had enough of his wife’s cackling and his mother’s head-shaking, he went out into the meadows with Hartmut and Gisela. Taking exception to this, Marianne said to Frieda, “They obviously think we’re a little thick here in the East, them and their animals with souls.” But then she took out an encyclopedia and looked up “Demeter.” She found the picture of the goddess rather beautiful and asked us whether we agreed that she looked a little like Demeter. In truth you couldn’t deny a certain similarity.
I’d love to know what Siegfried is thinking, the way he’s standing there, his legs planted firmly on the ground and his eyes roaming the countryside.
That evening I join the family again at the table. Alfred has already gone to bed. Ever since Frieda left he has seemed somehow unwell. There is a lo
t of talk today, much more than usual. Siegfried is planning a visit to one of those farms, to see what makes them so special. “It’s not magic, it’s farming,” he says, and now Marianne is nodding enthusiastically. Johannes starts talking about his application to art college and his father raises no objections, which surprises us all. His only suggestion is that Johannes should take his time, have a thorough look at the college, and, if it’s not right for him, he can come back home. There’s going to be plenty of work on the farm in the future. Later we all drink wine, and then an argument flares up that proves uncomfortable for everyone.
Marianne seldom drinks, but when she does she has little self-control and she’ll put away a whole bottle of wine by herself. Our tongues are loosened, there’s much laughter, but then the conversation turns to Henner. Siegfried says Henner’s best years are behind him; there’s not much left in the tank. The GDR took it all out of him. Marianne comes to Henner’s defense, says he’s still quite dashing, and just lately he’s become much more affable. Something must have happened, she says, for him to be in such good form, and if he could just leave off the booze, surely he’d be able to whip the farm into shape again. “You like old Henner, don’t you?” Siegfried says, and then Marianne says something which must have been the wine talking, but maybe there’s some truth to it, deep down: “I wouldn’t kick him out of bed if I didn’t have you, Siggi.” Those are her exact words. This is all way too much for Siegfried, and for Johannes, too, who gives his mother a filthy look. She notices immediately and shuts up, which is all well and good, but now it’s out of the bag and the evening is ruined. Another subject comes up for discussion. This one must have been brewing for a while, and Siegfried can’t keep it bottled up any longer. It’s about the housekeeping. Money has started disappearing from the pot, something that never used to happen. Meanwhile, small tubes of fancy face creams and bottles of perfume have appeared in the bathroom, and lying about in the sitting room are magazines with flawless-looking women on the covers. The West has given rise to these material desires, and a woman like Marianne finds it hard to resist them. But all this leaves Siegfried cold. He couldn’t care less whether or not his wife’s skin feels softer, or whether she smells of hay or lilac. I imagine he might prefer hay. We don’t know whether it was the saucy comment about Henner or the money wasted that had made Siegfried so irate, but he gets up, takes an empty wine bottle, and smashes it against the edge of the table. Then he screams, “You’re not going to make a fool of me, Marianne—others have already tried and regretted it!” He storms out of the room and into the yard, still screaming: “You just can’t trust women! It’ll always be the same! Damn women!” He doesn’t come back until late. Johannes says he’s seen his father like that only once before. It was at the village party two years ago when Marianne danced rather too intimately with the landlord’s brother, whom everybody knew was with the Stasi. Both of them were drunk, and alcohol doesn’t bring out the best in Siegfried, even though he’s generally a reasonable man.
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