Summer Lies

by Bernhard Schlink

  Aperitifs were served on the terrace, lunch at a long table in the adjoining room. After the soup the eldest son made a speech. Memories of the time when the children were young, celebration of how she had engaged herself in the life of the community after the children had left home, thanks for the love with which she had accompanied both children and grandchildren and accompanied them still—all of it a little dry, but well meant and well delivered. She pictured him leading a meeting or a conference. Her husband, her marriage, her divorce were not mentioned; it made her think of photographs out of the Russian Revolution that Stalin had retouched to eliminate Trotsky. As if he’d never existed.

  “Do you think I couldn’t bear it if you mentioned your father? That I didn’t know you see him and his wife? Or that you celebrated his eightieth birthday with them? You were all there in the picture in the newspaper!”

  “You’ve never once mentioned him since he moved out. So we thought …”

  “You thought? Why didn’t you ask?” One after the other, she gave her children a searching look, and the children looked back at her, puzzled. “Instead of asking, you thought. You thought if I don’t mention him, that means I can’t bear you to mention him. Did you think I’d crack? Or weep or scream or thrash about? Or forbid you to meet him? Or make you choose: him or me?” She shook her head.

  It was her youngest daughter who spoke again. “We were afraid you …”

  “Afraid? You were afraid of me? I’m so strong that I make you afraid, and so weak that I can’t cope if you mention your father? That makes no sense!” She realized she was getting louder and sharper. Now the grandchildren were looking at her crossly too.

  Her eldest son jumped in. “Everything in its own time. Each of us had our own history with Father, each of us is glad to be able for once to talk to you in peace about him. But right now we don’t want to hold up the waitresses from serving the next course, otherwise their whole program will be thrown off.”

  “The waitresses’ whole program …” She saw the pleading look on her youngest daughter’s face and said no more. It wasn’t difficult to remain silent over the salad, the sauerbraten, and the chocolate mousse. Everyone was talking, and she had to make an effort to hear what her neighbor or the person opposite her was saying. That’s what always happened to her when a lot of people were talking; her doctor had a name for it: party deafness, and the prognosis that nothing could be done about it. She had learned to turn to the person opposite her in a friendly way, to smile companionably from time to time, or nod, all while thinking about something else. Mostly her opposite number didn’t notice a thing.

  Before the coffee, her youngest granddaughter, Charlotte, stood up and tapped a spoon on her glass until everyone was paying attention. Her uncle had made a speech about their mother, now she wanted to make a speech about their grandmother. All of them sitting here, that is, her grandsons and granddaughters, had learned to read from their grandmother. Not words and sentences, they’d been taught that in school, but books. Whenever they were with her on holidays, their grandmother had read to them. She never got to the end of the book before the end of the holidays, but the book was always so exciting that they had to keep reading it all the way to the end themselves. Soon after school began again, Grandmother sent another book by the same author that they also had to read. “It was so wonderful that we persuaded Gran’fa and Anni to do the same. Thank you, Grandmother, for making us readers and giving us the joy we take in books.”

  Everyone applauded, and Charlotte came around the table with her glass. “Many, many happy returns, Grandmother!” She clinked glasses and gave her a kiss

  In the momentary silence, as Charlotte was returning to her seat and before conversation started up again, she asked, “Who’s Anni?” She asked although she knew this must be her ex-husband’s second wife and that her question would embarrass the others.

  “Anna is Father’s wife. The children call Grandfather Gran’fa and Anna Anni.” Her oldest son spoke calmly and matter-of-factly.

  “Father’s wife? You don’t mean me—do you mean Father’s second wife? Or is there already a third?” She knew she was being difficult. She didn’t mean to be, she just couldn’t stop.

  “Yes, Anna is Father’s second wife.”

  “Anni,” she pronounced the “i” ironically, “Anni. I suppose I should be thankful you don’t call her Granni and make her your second grandmother. Or do you sometimes call her Granni?” When no one answered, she asked again. “Charlotte, how is it, do you sometimes call Anni Granni?”

  “No, Grandmother, we only say Anni to Anni.”

  “And what’s she like, Anni whom you don’t call Granni?”

  Her youngest daughter weighed in. “Please, can we stop with this?”

  “We? No. We didn’t start this, so we can’t stop this. I started it.” She stood up. “And I can’t stop it. I’m going to lie down for a bit—will you come and pick me up with the car in a couple of hours for tea?”

  4

  She declined the offers to accompany her and went alone. What had become of her good intentions? At least she had got up and left. She would rather have kept going—could she have managed to get her children to lose control? The judge, to raise his voice and stamp his foot? And the museum director, to throw crockery on the floor or at the wall? And her daughters, to no longer look pleadingly at her but glare with real hate?

  When she was picked up by her eldest grandchild, she had no further desire to provoke or irritate anyone. It was a short journey, and along the way Ferdinand talked about the exam he had to take in a few weeks. She had always found him particularly even-tempered. Now she had to admit that he was particularly boring. She felt tired.

  The day after the party she became ill. No sneezing or coughing, no stomach pains or problems with her digestion. She simply had a high fever, against which neither fever-reducing medicines nor antibiotics had any effect. “A virus,” said the doctor, shrugging his shoulders. But he called the eldest son, who sent his second daughter to look after her. Emilia was eighteen and waiting to be accepted as a medical student.

  Emilia changed the bed linens, rubbed her back and arms with liniment, and put cold compresses on her legs. She brought fresh-squeezed orange juice in the mornings, freshly grated apple at midday, and red wine in the evenings, into which she had beaten the yolk of an egg, plus a steady supply of mint or chamomile tea. She aired out the room several times a day, and insisted several times a day on her taking a few steps through the room and down the corridor. Once a day she ran a bath, lifted her up, and carried her there. Emilia was a strong girl.

  It was five days before the fever began to abate. She didn’t want to die, but she was so exhausted that she didn’t care whether she lived or died, got better or remained ill. Perhaps she even hoped she would remain ill rather than get well again. She liked the feverish haze in which she awoke and out of which she sank into sleep, and that muted everything she saw and heard. Even better, it transformed the rocking of the tree branches outside the window into the dance of a fairy and the song of a blackbird into a sorceress’s call. She also loved the intensity with which she felt the heat of the bathwater and the coolness of the liniment on her skin. She even liked the cold shivers that shook her in the first days; it left her demanding warmth and nothing more, no room to think, no room to feel. Ah, and when the warmth did actually reach her!

  She became young again. The fever images and dreams were the fever images and dreams of her childhood. With the fairy and the sorceress came shreds of tales she had loved: Snow-White and Rose-Red, Little Brother and Little Sister, The Many-Furred Creature, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty. When the wind blew through the open window, she thought of the king’s bride who could command the wind—more than that she couldn’t remember. When she was young, she’d been a good skier; she dreamed she was gliding down a white slope, then took off and swayed over woods and valleys and villages. In another dream she had to meet someone, didn’t know who or wher
e, only that it was under a full moon, and how the song began that would be the way they recognized each other; when she woke up she felt she’d already dreamed the dream once before, when she was first in love, and she remembered the opening bars of an old hit song. The melody stayed with her all day. Once she dreamed she was at a ball and danced with a man who had only one arm, but who led her so surely and lightly that she didn’t have to move her legs; they wanted to dance until morning but before the first gray light of dawn came in the dream, she woke in the real gray light of dawn.

  Emilia often sat on the bed and held her hand. How safe and how light her hand felt in the strong hands of the strong young woman! Her thankfulness at being held, nursed, and cared for, at being allowed to be weak, at having to say and do nothing, reduced her to tears. When she cried, she couldn’t stop for a long time; her tears of thankfulness became tears of grief over everything in life that had not turned out the way it should have, and tears of loneliness. It felt good to be held by Emilia. At the same time she felt as lonely as if Emilia weren’t there at all.

  When she was recovering and the children came to visit, one after the other, it felt the same. The children were there, but she was so lonely, it was as if they weren’t. That’s the end of love, she thought. Being so alone with someone that you feel they’re not present.

  Emilia stayed, took her for short little walks and then longer ones, went with her to lunch in the restaurant in the building, and watched television with her in the evenings. She was always around.

  “Shouldn’t you be studying? Or earning money?”

  “I had a job. But your children decided I should dump it and take care of you, and they’re paying me the same as I would have been earning otherwise. It wasn’t a good job, it doesn’t matter at all.”

  “How long is your job with me?”

  Emilia laughed. “Till your children feel you’re well again.”

  “But what if I’m the one who notices first that I’m better?”

  “I thought you were pleased that I’m here.”

  “I don’t like it when other people know better than I do how I am and what I need.”

  Emilia nodded. “I understand that.”

  5

  Could she push Emilia out? The children would take it as proof that she was still unwell, as they had taken her behavior at her birthday as a symptom of her coming illness. Could she maybe bribe Emilia to convince the children that she was cured?

  “No,” Emilia laughed, “how would I explain to my parents that I suddenly have money? And if I don’t tell them and I behave as if I didn’t have money, I’ll have to get another job again.”

  That evening she tried again. “Could I not have given you the money as a gift?”

  “You’ve never given any one of us something that you haven’t also given all the others. When we were little you never once took one of us on an excursion that you didn’t repeat with all the others over the next two or three years.”

  “That was overdoing things a bit.”

  “Father always says that without you he would never have become a judge.”

  “Even so, it was overdoing things a bit. Would you be allowed to make a trip with me? A recuperative trip?”

  Emilia looked doubtful. “You mean a health cure?”

  “I’d like to get away. The apartment feels like a prison and you like my guard. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is, and it would still be that way even if you were a saint.” She smiled. “No, it’s that way even though you are a saint. I would never have made it without you.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “South.”

  “I can’t just tell Mother and Father I’m going south with you! We need a destination and a route and stopping places, and they have to know where they can call the police to have them look for us if we don’t check in. And how do you want to go? By car? My parents will never allow it. Well, perhaps if I did the driving, but not with you driving. While you were still healthy, they were already talking about calling the police to have you come in and be tested, so that you fail and will no longer be allowed to drive. Now that you’re ill …”

  She listened to her granddaughter in astonishment. How anxious this strong girl was, and how fixated on her parents. What destination, what route, what stopping places should she give? “Isn’t it enough if we say each morning where we’ll be that evening? If we say first thing in the morning that we’ll be in Zurich by nightfall?”

  She didn’t want to go to Zurich. She also didn’t want to go south. She wanted to go to the city where she’d begun her studies in the late forties. Yes, the city was in the south. But it wasn’t “the South.” In the spring and fall it got a lot of rain, and in the winter snow. Only in the summer was it seductively beautiful.

  At least that was how she saw the city in her mind’s eye. She hadn’t been there since her student days. Because there had been no opportunity? Because she’d shied away from it? Because she didn’t want to lose the magical memory of that last summer, the summer with the student who had only one arm and with whom she danced at the doctors’ ball and then again just now in her fever dream? He had worn a dark suit with the left sleeve tucked into the left pocket, he had steered her lightly and confidently with his right arm, and was the best dancer she danced with all evening. Besides which he talked easily, told the story of how he’d lost his arm to a bomb at fifteen as though it were a joke, and spoke of the philosophers he was studying as if they were idiosyncratic friends.

  Or had she not been back because she didn’t want to be reminded of the pain of parting? He had taken her home after the ball and kissed her at the door and they’d seen each other again the very next day and every day after that until suddenly he went away. It was September, most of the students had left the city, she had stayed because of him and spun her parents, who were expecting her back home, some tale about a practical training course. She accompanied him to the station, and he promised to write, to phone, and to be back soon. But she never heard from him again.

  Emilia phoned her parents from out on the balcony. Afterward she reported that her parents had agreed, but expected a call each morning, each noon, and each evening. “I’m responsible, Grandmother, and I hope you won’t make it too hard for me.”

  “You mean I mustn’t run away? Or get drunk? Or get tangled up with strange men?”

  “You know what I mean, Grandmother.”

  No, I don’t know—but she didn’t say that.

  6

  The next morning Emilia was taking the burden of responsibility more lightly, and looking forward to the trip. She was fascinated that it was to the city where her grandmother had been as old as she herself was now. During the journey she started to ask questions: about the city, about the university, how her courses had been organized, the lives of the students, how their lodgings had been, and what they ate, and what they did for enjoyment, whether what they wanted after the war was to have fun or make money, whether they’d flirted a lot, and what precautions they’d taken.

  “Did you meet Gran’fa while you were a student?”

  “We met already when we were children; our parents were friends.”

  “Doesn’t sound very exciting. I like exciting. I broke up with Felix because I didn’t want to drag any school stuff on to university. The next thing should be the next thing. Felix was okay, but now I want more than okay. I’ve read that it can work when parents arrange their children’s marriages. Not for me. I …”

  “That’s not how it was. Our parents didn’t arrange our marriage, they were just friends. We saw each other a couple of times as children, that’s all.”

  “I don’t know. Parents give children messages the children aren’t even aware of. That the parents aren’t necessarily aware of, either. The parents just think their children suit each other because they come from similar families with similar status and similar incomes and it would be great if they got married. They think it every time they see the children t
ogether. They make little comments, little insinuations, little encouragements, that attach themselves like little barbs.”

  And so it went. Emilia had read that girls in the fifties still believed a kiss could make them pregnant. That men filed for divorce the day after the wedding night if they discovered their wives were no longer virgins. That sports were popular with girls, because they could say their hymens had torn during exercise. That young women rinsed their vaginas with vinegar after sex so as not to get pregnant, and stuck themselves with knitting needles to abort. “Am I glad none of it’s like that these days. When you got married and you were a virgin, weren’t you terrified on your wedding night? Was Gran’fa actually the only man you ever slept with in your life? Don’t you feel you missed something?”

  While her granddaughter was talking, she looked at her smooth, pretty face, with its bright eyes, its strong chin, its mouth opening and closing busily as it poured out one idiocy after another. She didn’t know whether to laugh or tell her off. Was her whole generation like that? Did they all live so exclusively in the present that they only had the most warped concept of the past? She tried to describe the war and the years after the war, the dreams of girls and women back then, the boys and men they met, the relations between the sexes. But her descriptions were faded and dull; she thought so herself. So she started to talk about herself. When she came to the kiss after the ball, she wished she had left out the story with the one-armed student. But it was already too late.