Beneath the article, there were two photos. The first showed the inside of the blue house and was captioned: The children were imprisoned in this filthy room for two days. The second photo was worse. It showed my grandparents, my father and me in the garden, though you couldn’t make out our faces, and the caption read: As if nothing had happened: the young kidnapper and her family enjoying iced tea in their garden.
I balled up the newspaper and was about to throw it at the kitchen wall, but then I thought better of it. I smoothed it out and shredded it into strips. Even that didn’t help. There was nothing I could do to that newspaper that would make me feel better.
44
You might think that everyone in the whole neighborhood was against us. After all, the place was full of people who were afraid that I would go out and abduct their children next, if I happened to get bored again. There were the broken windows and the shouting woman and the anger on Trudy’s face. The strange thing was that there were also people who came to our garden fence and didn’t shout. They simply came to talk to my grandfather and sometimes even to lay a hand on his shoulder. I watched from my window, so I couldn’t hear what they said, but after their visits, Grandpa always seemed happier, at least a little, and I would have liked to know what they had said to him.
And then just three days before I was leaving, we were sitting in deathly silence eating lunch in the garden. It was noon, and my grandfather was actually reading the newspaper, not just skimming it the way he had the past two weeks. If a reporter had come to the fence and taken a picture of us, the caption would definitely have read: The young kidnapper and her family enjoying a pleasant luncheon.
In the middle of this pleasant luncheon, Grandpa said, “George stopped by the fence earlier. He said people in town are talking—”
“Oh, so people are talking, are they?” Grandma said. “Your friend’s really got some hot news there!”
But Grandpa didn’t let himself get annoyed. He went on calmly, “The doctor who examined the children found multiple injuries. Multiple injuries, you understand. There were too many and they were too old for them to have happened during the abduction, so he called Child Protective Services. Now Christian Brandner is threatening to bring a suit against him for defamation of character. Somehow it got out in the neighborhood and George heard about it.”
That was when I stood up. The promise I had made to Julia and Max was suddenly so heavy I couldn’t carry it anymore. It was like a suitcase that you have to put down because you just can’t bear the load. So I set down my promise and felt an unbelievable anger rise up in me. I began to cry, and I shouted everything out. I told them absolutely everything, even the thing about the elephants and how Max had wanted to die. The beginning of the story my grandparents already knew—what happened with the picture frame, for example—but I told it all over again, all about Pablo, and Julia’s belly, and the tree house and the wet things. I showed them on my own body where Max’s cuts and bruises were, every one I could remember. I told about Julia and how she tried not to be there. I even admitted how I had stolen the hundred dollars, which made my grandmother gasp, and finally I explained about my promise, and how Mrs. Brandner would die if I told, and the children would be sent to a home. I told my grandparents why I couldn’t say anything before, and I cried until I was out of breath. When I finally stopped to breathe, I saw my grandparents sitting there at the garden table with wide-open eyes.
They sat there.
They just sat there and stared at me. My grandmother looked like she wanted to say something, but then she thought better of it and went into the house. Grandpa came over and stood beside me for a few seconds, then hugged me. He smelled like sweat and deodorant, and I didn’t know whether I liked it or not—I wasn’t used to him hugging me—but I didn’t have a chance to decide.
He said, “So, I think this has gone on long enough. I’m going inside to make a phone call.”
45
That evening, my grandfather was sitting on my bed, and I didn’t even wonder about it because the whole day had been so strange. Strange and depressing, too. My conscience felt better, but I’d still broken my promise to Julia and Max.
Instead of saying good night, I said, “Grandpa, what if Julia and Max are sent to a home, and he really kills their mother?”
My grandfather thought about it and said, “Their mother will be all right, and no matter what happens, the children are alive.”
“I don’t understand, Grandpa, what do you mean?”
He shrugged his shoulders and said he didn’t know for sure but he’d heard that this time Helen Brandner was really going to leave her husband and take her kids with her.
We sat quietly for a while, and then Grandpa said, “What you said about the elephants in Africa, Mascha. Those elephants don’t know they’re going to die.”
“But Julia told me!”
“Yes, it’s a legend. That’s what people say. But really, the old elephants go into the swamps because their teeth are worn down. In the swamp, there are soft plants that they can chew. And then they die there. In the swamp.”
“While they just happen to be there?”
“Yes, you could say that.”
“So they have no idea what’s going to happen to them, those elephants?”
“No, they just have bad teeth.”
It was never really clear how Grandpa knew this, but it wasn’t all that surprising to me. In addition to his grass mowing and his grumbling, he read a lot, usually in the evenings, after the local news was over. He grumbled his way through the newspapers, and he grumbled his way through the pages of old books. But they weren’t storybooks. They were the other kind of book. Books about real things—like elephants, for example.
After we’d sat there for a few more minutes, I asked, “Grandpa, do you think Grandma will ever talk to me again?”
“Mascha, of course she will! Just give her a little time. For her, for us, this has been a little unusual. And the hundred dollars, she still has to come to terms with that.”
“It was stupid, what I did. The whole thing was stupid. It didn’t work.”
“Let’s put it this way. There has probably never been another child on this earth who has done such a stupid thing.”
“Grandpa?”
“Yes?”
“How can you say what you just said so nicely?”
“Well, I guess it’s because there has also never been anyone in Clinton who has ever tried to help those children. Except Elsa Levine.”
“But Julia and Max hate me!”
“Maybe they do. For now. But imagine how they’ll feel when they’re older. When they know how things are going to work out for them. And when they remember what happened.”
“But—how are things going to work out?”
Grandpa couldn’t say. Instead, he told me a little more about Elsa Levine: how no one would believe her back then because fathers who beat their children half to death didn’t fit with the whole image of Clinton being peaceful and orderly and fancy. How not even the Brandners’ neighbors, who must have heard or seen something, had believed Elsa Levine because Mr. Brandner was the owner of the car dealership, and everyone knew him.
What I didn’t understand was why my grandfather hadn’t believed her then, since he believed me now. I said that to him, and he thought about it for a long time before he finally spoke.
“Well, I listened too closely to your grandmother. She said we shouldn’t mix ourselves up in it. You know, Mascha, I just wanted to be left in peace. I think I wanted what your grandmother did: for nothing to change.”
“That’s weird. It’s so totally boring here. It wouldn’t be all that bad, you know. I mean, if something changed around here.”
“For you, sure. But for many of us, this is all we have. We don’t want any darkness.”
“Huh. Grandpa, is there anything that
could have been done? I mean, was there any right way to have done something?”
“If only we knew. I think anything anyone did would have been a bit problematic.”
“What did the doctor see?”
“Blue bruises everywhere, new ones and old, various cuts. A broken bone that was never set correctly. It must have been awful.”
“I know. I saw Max myself.”
“It was Julia they were talking about. It was the worst with her.”
“Julia? Really?”
“Mascha, I don’t believe those children ever lived in a peaceful house. And we were just happy we didn’t have to know about it.”
“Grandpa! We have to do something.”
“I agree. I made a call earlier. Well, we have an appointment for tomorrow.”
Then Grandpa explained to me what I could expect to happen the next day, and eventually he said good night, went to the door but turned back one last time.
“Mascha?” he said.
“Yes, Grandpa?”
“They harvested the field. And they tore down the house.”
46
When we left the next morning, I felt like a toddler who had just learned to walk. I hadn’t been out on the street for two weeks. I set one foot carefully in front of the other. Somehow I had imagined that there would be a thousand people out there, or at least ten, pointing and shouting, but not even Trudy was there. It was just like it had always been.
We could have simply taken a left and then walked in the direction of town, but I asked my grandfather if we could make a detour. I had a large envelope with me that I wanted to leave in front of Julia’s door.
Grandpa didn’t really like this idea, and I couldn’t blame him. I might as well have asked him if we could go to the zoo and take a swim with the crocodiles. Even so, he nodded after a moment. We changed direction and walked side by side through the neighborhood filled with fading hydrangeas, where neither of us was particularly welcome anymore.
The closer we got to the Brandners’ house, the more we saw the curtains moving behind the windows of the houses we walked past—people were peering out at us. There were even a few who stood at their fences and shook their heads silently. We saw Mr. Benrath, too, and I wondered how much of the story he knew. He walked up to his fence and nodded at us in a very friendly way, even smiled. It might just have been that he was thinking of all the cream he had in his refrigerator, but suddenly he called out, “John! Mascha!” And then, quietly, he added, “Unbelievable.”
“Yes,” said my grandfather, and his voice sounded happy and a little surprised.
Mrs. Johnson was in front of her door, just as usual. She flung out her words with an exaggerated smile, “Terrible, just terrible,” she said. “What’s wrong with the mother of those children? It’s no wonder what happened!”
My grandfather grumbled back at her that sometimes nothing’s as simple as it seems, and that she ought to know.
We were just a few yards from the Brandners’ house. It stood harmlessly across the street, and Grandpa said, “Hurry, Mascha, we have an appointment.”
As I was walking up to the Brandners’ house, I worried I was doing something idiotic. I had no idea what to do if I saw Mr. Brandner. I bent down in front of the door to lay the package on the step, and that’s when exactly the thing happened that I didn’t want to happen.
The door opened.
It wasn’t Mr. Brandner who came out, though, which was lucky for me, because he would have definitely roared at me and I would have passed out in terror and we would have missed our appointment. No, it was Mrs. Brandner. The door opened so fast, I didn’t have time to hide from her or run away, so I just looked at her. At first glance I barely recognized her. She looked almost like new. The purple-yellow blotch on her face was still there, but something was different. She seemed stronger. I could see Julia and Max in her face, the same green eyes with golden flecks. She didn’t smile, but she didn’t seem angry or upset either.
Then, after we’d looked at each other for a while, she said in a quiet but firm voice, “They told me what happened.”
“Here,” I said. “This is a charger. It’s for Julia.”
Mrs. Brandner reached out to take the envelope, and for an instant our hands touched.
Then I heard my grandfather calling, “Mascha, come on!”
I looked at Mrs. Brandner one last time. Grandpa stood there watching me, and I knew that the time had come.
It was time to tell my story.
Acknowledgments
An enormous thank you to Stacey Barney for remembering me and for all your support on this project. Thanks also to Alex, for everything; to Lucy and Willa, for being yourselves; and to the amazing women of my writing space, Powderkeg, where most of the work on translation was done.
—Elizabeth Gaffney
SUSAN KRELLER is a freelance journalist and writer. She has been nominated for the German Children’s Literature Award twice and has won the Kranichsteiner literary prize. You Can’t See the Elephants (Elefanten sieht man nicht), her debut novel, is already the winner of seven international awards and has been translated into six languages.
ELIZABETH GAFFNEY, a native Brooklynite, studied philosophy and German at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. She is the author of the novels When the World Was Young and Metropolis.
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