“Just turned nineteen, I heard,” I say, annoyed at the spikiness in my voice, but he doesn’t notice.
“Yes. Nineteen. But a fine girl,” he repeats, as if it were an achievement to be a fine girl at nineteen.
“I’m not going to school anymore, Dad,” I say, and he looks over at the sawmill, which isn’t working today.
“Have you finished, then?”
“No, I’m just not going anymore.”
He doesn’t seem surprised, and says, “You can still go places even if you don’t finish school. Besides, you’re eighteen tomorrow; you’re old enough to know what you’re doing. By the way, I brought you a present.”
“Seventeen,” I say. “I’m only going to be seventeen.”
“Seventeen?” He sounds astonished. “Really? Well, I’m sure you’ll do the right thing, Maria.”
“Yes, I’ll do the right thing.” In the distance the bullocks are standing by the river, drinking their fill.
I think of Siegfried and how sometimes, with one considered sentence, he announces a decision that no one is then able to dispute. I feel terribly weak by comparison.
“What about Johannes?” he asks, obviously trying to change the subject. “Is that all going well? He’s a fine chap, your boyfriend.”
“Yes, he is,” I say flatly. I wonder what Dad would make of Henner. Maybe they’d get on and go drinking together.
“Come on, let’s go back. I’ll give you your present. Then I’d better be off.”
“Back to Nastja?” I ask, and he nods. Then we cross the fields in silence, past the cows and the new calf, through the barn to his car, a Lada, and he takes out a large present, wrapped in gold paper.
“What have you got planned for tomorrow? Are you going to celebrate with Johannes?” he asks as he opens the car door.
I feel a sudden urge to tell him everything, absolutely everything. He wouldn’t reproach me, I know. He’s my father. He’d understand. But he’s already in the car, speeding away.
14
When I wake up my heart is already pounding. I am seventeen. Johannes got up especially to make me breakfast. We stay in bed and eat fresh rolls with jam, and yogurt with honey; we drink coffee and orange juice. It’s still early, but Johannes has to start work. I hear Marianne grumbling outside—where is he? She can’t be expected to do all this on her own! She knows we can hear her. His present to me is a photograph in a frame he made himself. The photo is of me standing by the fence at the back of the vegetable garden. I’m wearing a short dress with a white cardigan, looking toward the railway line. There’s a soft, somewhat gloomy light; dusk is approaching. Everything in the picture is blurry, except for my face. I don’t know when he took this photo, or rather, I don’t remember. I thank him profusely and shoo him out into the yard.
Then I fetch my father’s present. Another picture. A horribly gaudy, abstract oil painting by some Russian artist. At first all I can see are colors, but gradually shapes emerge from the jumble, arranged around a female form in the center: a single eye, a heart, a cross. The woman has shining red hair, and she’s wearing a summer hat decorated with flowers; its rim merges with a sea of green tones. Her breasts are naked, and to her left I can make out the face of an Orthodox priest. A man is kneeling before the priest, but looking at the woman. There’s a large hand around his throat. Then everything blurs into a garish red. I only need to blink and it’s a formless mass of color once more. I feel miserable again, wrap the picture back in its shiny paper and slide it under the bed.
I have plenty of time. If I went straight to Henner’s we’d have almost twelve hours until dark. But first I have to visit my mother.
Johannes will be busy until dusk at least; he finds the work harder going than his father. I put on my prettiest dress, a bright green, flared cotton number, tight around the bust and printed with small pink flowers. It’s handmade to my design. Grandma Traudel was annoyed that I always wore pants, probably because she had never worn pants in her life, not even in the iciest of winters. There are two seamstresses in the village, so she bought the material, and I was allowed to choose the style I wanted.
I brush my hair until it shines, then I tie it into a simple bun. On the stairs I bump into Frieda and Alfred, on their way out into the yard. They wish me a happy birthday and Frieda fetches an envelope from the kitchen. It contains twenty western marks.
Then I hurry as fast as I can to my mother’s. She’s been waiting for me, and there’s a bunch of flowers on the table. Traudel and Lorenz are there, too. It’s almost eight o’clock; as I count the vanishing hours I’m like a cat on a hot tin roof. Mom gives me a book, some spotted tights, and a lovely scarf. So I won’t have to keep borrowing one from Marianne, she tells me. We have cake and chat about nothing in particular. For my sake they’re probably trying to avoid the more sensitive subjects. My grandparents also give me an envelope, with exactly the same amount in it as Frieda’s.
I shovel cake into my mouth and say over and over again how good it is. And then the lies come to my lips as easily as pleasantries. I no longer recognize myself. I don’t even have a bad conscience; my need for Henner is simply too great. Shortly before half past nine I leave the house by the garden door and set off. Past the church and cemetery, past the last few houses in the village and into the woods. The most direct route to the farms goes through the woods, down the cliffs to the river, across the railway bridge and along the tracks to Henner’s. Carrying a leather satchel with my presents, I begin my descent. People often come climbing here from town, with ropes and all sorts of equipment, but I don’t need any of that. I maneuver myself down with the help of small trees that jut out from the rock face. When it gets steep I take off my shoes and do what I did when I was a child. We often clambered up and down here, and only once did someone fall. His name was Heiko, and he broke his collarbone, an arm, and both ankles. He was pretty lucky. I get to the bottom unscathed and walk along the railway sleepers to the bridge. I put my right ear to the tracks and can hear the humming of a train in the distance. When it passes I dash over the bridge and across the pasture to the farm. It’s taken me less than twenty-five minutes.
But when I reach the gate I realize that Henner doesn’t know it’s my birthday, or that I’m coming. I wait for a while. My breathing returns to normal and I listen for a sign of life from the farm, from this place that spits me out each time, like an unwelcome foreign body.
I can hear the dogs barking. They can’t have been far, as the noise is now coming from just the other side of the gate. He’ll be here soon, I just need to wait. But it’s ages before I hear the crunch of the gravel under his heavy shoes. He opens the gate a little way and pulls me in before closing it again. Each time I enter his realm, I don’t know who I will be when I leave it. Outside the world is renewing itself, but here time stands still.
Henner pushes me into the house and up the stairs to a room I’ve never seen before. It’s his mother’s bedroom. The bed is by the window and the walls are lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling. Unusually for them, the villagers haven’t exaggerated on this score.
In the right-hand corner is a tiled stove, and there’s a stripy woven carpet on the floor. The bed has been freshly made. He sits me on its edge and positions himself between my legs. He looks down at me, one hand lifting my head, the other undoing his pants. Just this movement, the certainty of his desire, makes me feel light-headed and erases everything from my mind. I am pure emotion.
It’s only later that we find words again, only once our bodies have spoken. I tell him I am seventeen now, a woman, but he just smiles. It’s not yet midday. We lie there quietly, his right arm around me, our feet stroking each other. I’m worried that he may have spoiled me forever; what can possibly follow a feeling like this? I’ve never been so happy. My body twitches and shudders, and I snuggle up to him more closely. I feel as if he has preempted something.
Henner jolts me out of my thoughts; he suggests we take a trip somewhere.
The old Volga stands by the gate. A miracle it still runs; the car is older than I am. He only bought it recently. I don’t ask where we’re going; I don’t care in the slightest. We drive along the narrow track until we reach the road, and then turn left. That way we don’t have to pass the Brendels’ farm or the tavern. I’m tired, and the constant humming and rocking of the car eventually lulls me to sleep. When I wake up we’re almost at the border. To the right and left are the watchtowers with their sniper posts, but they’re no longer occupied. I can see the checkpoint in front of us. We stop briefly, show our ID cards. The border guard nods, his gaze wanders from me to Henner and back again, then we drive straight through. I still find it hard to believe, this freedom of movement. What is happening here and what it means for all of us is only slowly dawning on me. Henner is more important than anything now; all my thoughts and feelings are reserved for him.
We drive for a good hour until we come to a small town. We park the car in a side street, then get out and walk. Henner is wearing his dusty shoes and stained pants, but for once his shirt is a gleaming white. He has his hands in his pockets and he says nothing. We stroll through a wide pedestrian zone with a huge number of shops on either side. People are sitting out in cafés, and some of them stare at us. I can sense their eyes in my back. They must think he’s my father, and I urgently feel the need to touch him. But I don’t.
Henner asks me whether I’d like to buy something; he wants to give me a present, a dress, perhaps. I look at women and girls we pass and wonder what I would have to buy to look a little more like them. He walks beside me, his gaze fixed inward; he doesn’t notice them, the other women. For the moment we are enough for each other. I don’t need a new dress.
He stops farther on at a café in a small square with a fountain. We sit at a table. Once again I find the choice overwhelming. Cappuccino, single and double espresso, and normal coffee in a cup or pot. Henner seems just as bewildered, and when the waiter comes I remember the trip to Munich and say, “Two cappuccinos, please.” We drink slowly and don’t say much. His hand is on my leg under the table. Then I have an idea. Just as Johannes did that time, I say I have to go and “get something.” He doesn’t seem bothered, he just says, “Don’t go too far. You don’t know your way around here.” But in fact I am gone for some time, because what I’m looking for isn’t that easy to find in the West, either. Somehow I find that comforting.
When I come back he’s standing by the café. His arms are crossed and he’s looking out for me. His face is stony. As I approach him he uncrosses his arms and lets them drop lifelessly, but they tense up again and he clenches his fists.
“For Christ’s sake, Maria, where were you? I thought something had happened.”
I want to answer him, but without giving away my secret, so I lie: “I got lost.”
“For Christ’s sake, Maria!” But he says nothing more. Then he grabs my hand and pulls me through the crowds, past the colorful displays in shop windows, and now there is something I want after all: a pair of shoes I saw when I was on my own. Black with low heels and crisscross straps. But he’s not going to stop; he doesn’t say anything, either, and we drive home.
On the way back he’s grumpy and tight lipped. I feel awful. From time to time he glances at me, but remains silent. The Volga groans and moans, and he’s driving so fast that I’m thrown all over the place when we turn corners. I’m terrified that he might send me straight home.
But at some point after we’ve crossed the border, on one of our bumpy country roads, he puts his hand on my neck and strokes me with his rough fingertips that feel like cats’ tongues. I sigh. We arrive just before five o’clock; we still have three hours.
He relaxes the moment we get back to the farm; the dogs spring up at him, and when he closes the gate he shuts out all those things that unsettle him. Then he goes to see the horses in the stables.
I unpack my bag and start cooking. When Gisela was staying with us she gave Marianne a recipe for chicken soup that she said is delicious. It’s meant to be for women who have just given birth, she said, but that doesn’t matter—men like it, too.
I take two chicken legs, wash them carefully, then put them in a pot with about three liters of water. I add the usual vegetables for soup—carrots, celery, kohlrabi—a few raisins, an apple, three small onions, six cloves of garlic, one leek, and the ingredients I spent an age hunting for, making Henner so worried: lotus root, dates, and angelica root. Finally I stir in a heaped dessert spoon of bouillon powder and some salt, and leave it to cook for two hours. At the end you strain the liquid, discarding everything but the meat, which you take off the bone and chop into small pieces. What you are left with is a clear soup and the meat.
When he enters he stops by the door and sniffs. Then his gaze falls on the apron I had found in the cupboard beside the pots and pans and thrown on over my dress. It belonged to his grandmother, who died only a few years ago, age almost ninety. He comes over, twirls me around, laughs, and says, “I like that.” And while the soup is cooking we go back up to the room with the books.
Later I dress slowly. The apron is on the floor by the bed and I leave it there. He’s standing by the window, looking at me. There’s a hint of sadness in his face, but this may just be the dimness of the evening light.
We go downstairs to the kitchen and I serve the soup. He’s sitting at the table, reading a book. I say, “Read it to me, Henner!”
His voice is soft, he articulates the words slowly and deliberately: “These lonely people, so raw and so driven by their urges, but full of goodness to one another, to the animals and to the earth.”
“I really like that,” I interrupt him, wanting to know the name of the book, but he says, “Come again soon. Then I’ll tell you.” With a smile he sets the book aside.
Henner finds this mothers’ soup “exquisite,” as he emphatically puts it. He adds that he’s never tasted a chicken soup like it. I act as if this were perfectly normal; I don’t want to show how delighted I am. But when I leave his house later on, I’m bursting with pride.
15
My pride evaporates on the way back to the Brendels’; I feel sordid and cruel. Johannes is waiting for his girlfriend, Frieda has probably prepared dinner, but I am sated in every respect. I don’t understand how I can deceive these people who have taken me in so warmly, the Brendels. I’m utterly ashamed of myself, but I cannot regret what I have done.
Luckily Johannes is still working in one of the pastures when I get home. But it will be dark in half an hour at most, hardly long enough to wipe the rapture from my face. I saw it myself in the mirror, and Henner said, “You look completely different, Maria. Much more beautiful.” I wonder whether here on the farm they’ll notice it too. But they don’t, and in some way that eases my conscience. And yet their cluelessness almost maddens me. Only Alfred’s noticed it. At dinner he gives me looks, sending shivers down my spine. I don’t believe he’s thought it. He’s felt it. He doesn’t think much, but he has a good instinct.
My poor Johannes is so tired, and doesn’t realize how happy that makes me. His exhaustion is my temporary salvation. Over dinner he tells me that he plans to start on the photographs of the village as soon as Siegfried returns. He’s already asked around and most people seem quite happy about it. Marianne always goes quiet when she hears him talk about art school. Someone’s told her there are drugs in the city.
Johannes brushes this off, saying he’s not interested in drugs, and then asks his mother, “Does Henner ever come to the shop? I’d like to see if I could go and photograph his farm. I might get some good pictures, what with the dogs, the horses, and the old house.” Marianne nods and says she’ll ask him the next time he comes. I can’t stomach another mouthful. But Johannes is full of ideas, and his tiredness seems to have dissipated. “Maria,” he says, “you could come with me. I’m sure Henner wouldn’t object to me taking photos of you there.” On the contrary, I think, he’d most certainly object. Alfred is q
uivering. His ugly face hangs briefly over his bowl of soup, and then his sideways glance cuts me in two. He’s going to come out with it, I think. It’s all over. Part of me would be delighted to be rid of this unbearable tension. He slurps up his soup slowly, and I look him brazenly in the eye until he lowers his head again. Now Johannes is really fired up. “Maria,” he says, “they’d be fantastic photos in that old house. Everything looks like it did in the old days. He hasn’t even got a bathroom, only an old washbasin, and it’s his grandparents’ furniture, isn’t it, Mom?”
“Yes, you’re right,” she says, and I can see the ideas buzzing around his head. Frieda says that Henner still fetches his water from the well in the yard. No wonder his wife didn’t fancy hanging around. The flowers trembling in the chill of death, waiting to be mown down, I think, but I must have said it out loud, because Johannes asks, “What did you say?” Marianne looks at me inquisitively, and so I have to repeat it. I give them the whole verse: “We are the wanderers without goal, / The clouds blown away by the wind, / The flowers trembling in the chill of death, / Waiting to be mown down.” Marianne says it’s a bit morbid, but Johannes finds it beautiful. He asks me how I know it. Keeping my eyes on Alfred I say, “I read it at my mother’s; I spent the day there.” But Alfred goes on eating and doesn’t look at me again. The cat slithers around my legs, and its purring sounds like rumbling thunder. Outside the birds are singing.
I’m a terrible liar, I think, and a truly terrible person. I hear the others as if they’re far in the distance. I can feel the cat’s tongue on my leg, which awakens a memory. Alfred laughs suddenly and Frieda joins in. I don’t have a clue what they’re laughing about, but in my ears it is a diabolical sound. The only reason he’s saying nothing is to torture me, I now think; he wants to savor it to the very end, until everything has to come out. He is a monster. All at once I am revolted by his fawning love for Frieda. But I can also understand why he’s so bitter and twisted—a man who always got the short end of the stick, who once upon a time might have been given the opportunity to run the farm himself. He can’t take it out on any of the others; this is his home, after all, and Frieda would never forgive him if he did anything to harm Siegfried or Marianne. But I don’t belong here. No one would blame him for it; I imagine they’d even be thankful if he opened their eyes to the real Maria.
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