He locks the gate from the outside with the spare key he’s taking with him because you never know. Zeiss Ikon. Quality German workmanship. When he arrived at the crack of dawn, the handle of the gate was wet with dew. The architect now leaves the front garden through the little gate in the fence and steps onto the sandy road outside. If you start walking and then turn around again, you see the house from the front, as if you’d never been inside, you see exactly the same sight that greeted you as you arrived. He puts the key in his trouser pocket and goes over to the car. The gardener must still be asleep. Later in the day, he’ll perhaps saw up the large blue spruce that got blown down the day before yesterday. But by then the owner of this blue spruce, who also owns the dirt clinging to its roots that now lie exposed, will be in West Berlin.
THE GARDENER
IN THE SPRING he puts in a flowerbed along the side of the house that faces the road, filling it at the householder’s request with poppies, peonies and yellow coneflowers, with a big angel’s trumpet in the middle. For the border, he just pokes a few box twigs into the earth all around the flowers, they’ll put down roots and grow. In summer he sets out sprinklers on both lawns, twice each day they will bow to one side and than the other for half an hour, once early in the morning and once at dusk, meanwhile he waters the flowerbed, roses and shrubs. He cuts off the withered blooms and prunes the box tree. In the fall he harvests walnuts for the first time, coaxing the nuts from their soft husks that stain his hands brown, in the fall he gathers the dry branches that have broken off from the oaks and also a few of the pine trees during storms, he saws them into pieces, chops them up for firewood and stacks the logs in the woodshed.
By 1936, the potato beetle had already crossed the Rhine and was continuing on toward the East, in 1937 it reached the Elbe River, and now, in 1938, it is beleaguering the region around Berlin. With great patience the gardener plucks the beetles over and over from the leaves of the angel’s trumpet, which as the only representative of the nightshade family in the garden has been heavily affected by this plague. He crushes the eggs of these pests and even tries to seek out and destroy their pupae by digging up the earth all around the bush. This summer the sandy road is black with beetles for days on end. At the beginning of the infestation, the leaves of the bush with its splendid red blossoms merely have holes in them and display tattered edges, but by summer’s end all that remains of the bush is its skeleton, a few of the leaves’ ribs and the bare main shoots of the bush itself, the blossoms having long since fallen to the ground. On instructions from the householder, the gardener removes what is left of the angel’s trumpet and plants a cypress in its place as the new centerpiece for the flowerbed.
THE CLOTH MANUFACTURER
HERMINE AND ARTHUR, his parents.
He himself, Ludwig, the firstborn.
His sister Elisabeth, married to Ernst.
Their daughter Doris, his niece.
Then his wife Anna.
And now the children: Elliot and baby Elisabeth, named for his sister.
Elliot rolls the ball to his little sister. The ball rolls across the grass, stopping in the rose-bed. Elisabeth doesn’t want to retrieve it, she knows the roses will prick her, and so her brother runs over, twisting his way between the blossoms, bending them to the left and right with his elbows and using his foot to knock the ball back onto the grass. The roses are mingling their red with the deeper red of a bougainvillea growing up the wall of the house and sending its blooms arching across the living room window.
In the morning they drive east in the Adler, following the road that runs along the shore. Adler, says Arthur, the senior partner, quality German workmanship. Yes, he, Ludwig, says. They don’t deliver all the way out here do they?, his father asks. Sure they do, Ludwig replies, after all, they delivered to us, didn’t they? Beside him sits his mother Hermine, and in the back seat Arthur, his father, and Anna. Arthur and Hermine, Ludwig’s parents, have come to visit. Two weeks later they go home again. Anna has put on her white suit in honor of her in-laws. 1 jacket and 1 skirt (Peek & Cloppenburg), acquired for purposes of emigration, early 1936, 43 marks 70.
Home. There’s a commotion on the property next door, the surveyors have arrived, a few workmen and their client, an architect from Berlin. He is standing there in knickerbockers and mimes a greeting. Heil. Here, I’ll give you a boost, says Ludwig, the uncle, to Doris, his niece. The pine tree has a sort of wooden hump around shoulder height, he lifts the child up and settles her there. So what do you see, he asks. A church tower, Doris says, pointing at the lake.
Ah, the senior partner says, what a view. Like Paradise, says Hermine, his mother. Arthur and Hermine, Ludwig’s parents, have come to visit. For the photograph taken by some other vacationer, his—Ludwig’s—wife Anna perches on the hood of the Adler while Hermine, his mother, leans against the little wall behind which the mountain descends steeply to the sea. His father Arthur and he are standing behind the women. The mountain range on the far side of the bay becomes a backdrop that holds the four of them together. After lunch they’ll drive down to the lagoon and the beach, perhaps they’ll go swimming, the waters of the Indian Ocean are gentle and warm, quite different from the western coastline where the Atlantic Ocean rages. Two weeks later Arthur and Hermine, Ludwig’s parents, go home again.
I don’t want to anymore, baby Elisabeth says in English and runs into the house. Elliot picks up the ball, lets it bounce a few times between his hand and the ground, and then he too goes inside. It’s so warm now in the house in the middle of summer that the candles on the Christmas tree are drooping again.
Just imagine, the senior partner says, standing with his trouser legs rolled up in the warm water of the lagoon, my racing dinghy capsized this spring, right near the shore. Your father got into the water himself and helped right it again says Hermine, his mother. With rolled-up trouser legs in the Märkisches Meer. With rolled-up trouser legs in the Indian Ocean. The boy from the village who sailed it over from the boatyard was white as a sheet, his mother says. You have to keep in mind that he was under the boat for a moment. That frightened him. Arthur and Hermine, Ludwig’s parents, have come to visit. Two weeks later they go home again.
Home. When it rains, you can smell the leaves in the forest and the sand. It’s all so small and mild, the landscape surrounding the lake, so manageable. The leaves and the sand are so close, it’s as if you might, if you wanted, pull them on over your head. And the lake always laps at the shore so gently, licking the hand you dip into it like a young dog, and the water is soft and shallow.
Ludwig named the little girl Elisabeth after his own sister. As if his sister had slid so far beneath the Earth’s surface that she came out again on the other side, she slid through the entire Earth and that same year was given birth to by his wife on the other side of the world. And what about Elisabeth’s, his sister’s daughter Doris?
The metal of the spade scrapes past pebbles, making a sharp sound on its way into the soil. To the left, on the property next door, a foundation is being dug. Heil.
Elliot leaps with a single bound down the pair of steps leading out of the house onto the lawn and then ambles over to the fig tree to pick a few of its fresh fruits. Anna calls to him from the open window of the living room: Bring some back for Elisabeth too. Elliot replies in English: All right. For his children, Elliot and baby Elisabeth, he planted the fig tree and also the pineapple in the back section of the garden.
Why is there Lametta hanging on the tree, baby Elisabeth asks him, pointing at the tinsel. It’s supposed to look as if the tree, der Baum, were standing in a snowy Winterwald, he replies, replies Ludwig, her father. What is a snowy Winterwald? the baby asks, Elisabeth. A deep forest, he says, in which the ground and all the branches are covered with thick Schnee, and there are icicles dangling from all the branches.
Let’s wait and see how things develop, he says, says Ludwig to his father. But at least the willow will get planted today, his father, Arthur, says to h
im, holding out the shovel, I promised Doris. From the property next door one can hear the masons’ trowels tapping against the brick. Heil. The owner’s working right alongside them, his father says, he’s not too proud to lend a hand. Ludwig digs the hole for the willow tree. The earth is black and moist so close to the water.
Always in the springtime the gardener here freshens the earth for the roses. He turns the compost and sifts it. Ludwig himself prunes the rosebushes. Céleste and New Dawn, they flourish here better than anywhere else in the world, because there is never frost. What splendid roses, his mother says, Hermine. Arthur and Hermine, Ludwig’s parents, have come to visit. A week and a half later they go home again. And make sure to leave the outward facing buds when you prune, his mother says, Hermine. I know, he says, Ludwig, and pours out more tea. 1 tea service (made by Rosenthal), purchased in 1932 for 37 marks 80.
The coffee and tea importer on the other side is laying his foundation already, says Arthur, his father. Ludwig is digging the hole for the willow tree. Same architect, says his mother: your neighbor on the left. He’s helping brick up the chimney himself, I saw him up there before, says Arthur, Ludwig’s father, he’s a good man. All Anna wants right now is a dock and a bathing house, says Ludwig, and then we’ll see how things go. The workers on the property to the right exchange shouts. That’s got to be enough, says Ludwig, thrusting the spade into the ground beside the pit. His father is gazing at the quietly plashing Märkisches Meer. Home. This is your inheritance, his father says to him. I know, he, Ludwig, says, his father’s only son.
The eucalyptus trees rustle louder than any other tree Ludwig has ever heard, their rustling is louder than that of beeches, lindens or birches, louder than the pines, oaks and alders. Ludwig loves this rustling, and for this reason he always sits down to rest with Anna and the children in the shade of these massive, scaly trees whenever the opportunity presents itself, just to hear the wind getting caught amid their millions of silvery leaves.
Arthur, father of Ludwig and Elisabeth, grandfather of Doris, raises the slender trunk from the ground, places it in the hole, calls Doris over and says to her: Hold this! Doris balances from the edge of the hole, holding onto the little trunk with both hands. Home. The women come closer. Anna is carrying Doris’s shoes in her hand, Elisabeth says to Ludwig: How lovely it’s going to be here. Quite, Ludwig says.
Between the excoriated trunks of the tall trees, monkeys are leaping about. The strongest of them are allowed to take their share of the booty before the others. If you feed them, they’ll think you’re weaker than they are and attack you violently when you stop giving them food or aren’t quick enough about it. Just stop calmly where you are and walk backward. Into the car, Ludwig says to Elliot and Elisabeth. Anna says: And leave the windows rolled up.
Arthur says to him, Ludwig, his son: Let me take a turn, and he picks up the spade himself and tosses the earth back into the hole all around the root ball. Ludwig places his arm around Anna, his future wife, and the two of them look at the broad, glittering surface of the lake. Home. Why does everyone like looking at the water so much, Doris asks. I don’t know, Anna replies. Doris says, maybe because there’s so much empty sky above a lake, because everyone likes to see nothing sometimes. You can let go now, Arthur says to Doris.
The eucalyptus trees dry out the ground all the way down, they rob all the other plants of water. And after every forest fire, it is their seeds that are the first to sprout, crowding out all other growth. By regularly shedding its dry branches, the eucalyptus saves water and encourages the development of the fires that are so beneficial not to the individual tree but to the distribution of the species as a whole. Thanks to the high oil content of its wood, its trunks are quicker to catch fire than other trees. Between the regrown trunks, the forest floor is bare, the earth burned reddish by the blaze. The leaves of the eucalyptus trees rustle louder than those of any other tree Ludwig has ever heard.
When the willow tree has grown up tall and can tickle the fish with its hair, you’ll still be coming here to visit your cousins, and you’ll remember the day you helped plant it, grandmother Hermine says to little Doris. My cousins? Doris asks. You never know, says Arthur and smiles at his future daughter-in-law, Anna. Hermine says: They’re still swimming around in Abraham’s sausage pot. Can you eat them? Doris asks. Nonsense, says Ludwig, her uncle, and says: Come give me a hand. The two of them trample the earth firm around the trunk of the tree. With one pair of big shoes, purchased in 1932 for 35 marks, and one pair of small bare feet. Home.
Elliot and baby Elisabeth are running from the stream of the sprinkler that keeps turning to one side and then the other, they let themselves be sprayed with water and then race off again. Elliot tears a leaf from the fig tree and uses it to wave the drops in Elisabeth’s direction. Elisabeth tears off a leaf too and holds it in front of her face to hide from her big brother.
Doris picks up a few acorns and tosses them in the lake. Look, fish, she says, pointing out, for the benefit of her uncle Ludwig, the circular waves. Petri Heil. Tomorrow will be the topping out ceremony at the architect’s.
Ludwig calls: What are you two playing over there? Baby Elisabeth holds the fig leaf before her face and whispers: The expulsion to Paradise.
Hermine and Arthur, his parents.
He himself, Ludwig, the firstborn.
His sister Elisabeth, married to Ernst.
Their daughter, his niece, Doris.
Then his wife Anna.
And now the children: Elliot and baby Elisabeth, named for his own sister.
Doris, says Grandfather Arthur, it’s time for us to go fill a bucket to water the tree so it will grow well.
Ludwig knows that because of the dry branches that frequently fall it is not without its dangers to lie down to rest in a eucalyptus grove. But he loves to hear the leaves rustle. Back home he liked to play the piano. Back home he was a cloth maker like his father. Here he has opened an auto repair shop and specializes in clutches and brakes. Here his gardener must allow an official to stick a pencil into his curly hair. The pencil stays put. Here-upon the gardener gets a big C stamped in his passport and is forbidden to enter public parks. Since he, Ludwig, arrived here he hasn’t so much as touched a piano. Baby Elisabeth plays his playing here, she takes lessons and is learning quickly as if she, even before she was born, had been able to take this with her from home, something that carries no weight: music.
Visitation Page 4