No, his mother said. He will feel them.
* * *
—
A FEW WEEKENDS after his father left them, his mother packed some sandwiches and they boarded the train to Travemünde. It was Ibrahim’s first time at the beach. He ran right up to the tide as it pulled away, jumping back as it rushed in. They walked past a stretch of holiday homes and chalets.
When will we see Papa? he asked.
Soon, his mother said. Didn’t I promise to let you build sand castles first?
They packed wet sand with their hands.
Ibrahim’s sand castle had turrets and a moat that could be filled with seawater. The sea breeze was strong. When it blew his mother’s headscarf off, he thought she would be angry, but she merely swept her hair with the backs of her sandy hands and laughed. I’ll go get Papa, she said, kissing the top of his head as she stood up. Wait here.
His mother was away for a long time.
The back of his neck began to hurt from sunburn. Growing tired of refilling the moat, Ibrahim began to worry that his parents must have gone off without him. He did not dare move, for fear of their returning and not finding him there. It started to get cold when the sun went down. A kind elderly couple, cocooned individually in stripey beach towels, stopped to ask where his parents were. They found the address of the chalet in the backpack the mother had left with him.
* * *
—
THE RECEPTIONIST AT the chalet was blond, with very large breasts. She was filing her nails when Ibrahim came in with the couple. She was not wearing a bra. The elderly man tried to keep his eyes from slipping below her chin to her chest as he asked for the boss.
That would be me, the blonde said, putting the nail file down, crossing her arms under her chest. The elderly man looked at a loss. He cleared his throat, turning to his wife. Well, it’s like this, she kept saying at the beginning of every sentence, I’m not sure what the situation is, and I don’t want to judge. At the end she managed to round it off quite respectably with: We are just trying to help the boy.
When Ibrahim’s father appeared, he went down on a knee, as if expecting Ibrahim to race into his arms. Ibrahim shuffled over, pulling on his lower lip with his fingers. Why didn’t you write or ring in advance? his father said, ruffling his hair. Do you want something to eat, Max? Ibrahim was ushered into the bosom of the blond receptionist, who, postembrace, bent down and introduced herself as “a very good friend of your father.” Her cleavage was deep, decorated with a few wrinkles. In a child-sized bathrobe that was too short for him, and adult-sized bathroom slippers too large, Ibrahim ate baked beans and sausages and potatoes in the motel’s office as the adults had some sort of a discussion outside.
When his father came back in, he said: You’ll sleep here tonight.
Where’s Mama? Ibrahim asked.
She’ll be here for you tomorrow, his father said.
The large-breasted blonde opened up a small cot for him in the manager’s quarters that night, a large room located at the back of the property. When she leaned over to put on the bedclothes, Ibrahim saw the pinkish-brown spread of her big nipples. She kissed him goodnight, leaving the smell of sun and sunscreen on his cheek. He tried to turn to catch the smell, but he couldn’t, it drifted in and out from under his nose only when he wasn’t trying to smell it.
The next morning, they breakfasted together.
Ibrahim had muesli with milk as the blonde and his father took their coffee.
Could I please have some coffee, too?
He’s so sweet, the blonde said, letting him drink from her cup. Her lipstick mark was on the rim, and he put his mouth over the mark to match it, hoping for sun and sunscreen, but it came up crayons. Two policemen came to the resort and were shown to the office. His father sat with them in a corner, where they consulted in hushed tones. The blonde tried to interest Ibrahim in a crossword puzzle, but it was too difficult for him. A seven-letter word, the opposite of homesickness. She crushed him close to her. Carefully he leaned a shoulder into her breasts, which were practically sitting on the table, as he filled out the puzzle. He did not know the answer, but she told it to him, letter by letter: F-E-R-N-W-E-H.
Before he could finish filling out the tiny boxes on the paper, his father came back to the table. Max, his father said, they found your mother’s body in the sea.
* * *
—
LATE THAT NIGHT, Ibrahim lay very still in the cot with his eyes closed, barely breathing.
He could hear the blonde crying softly.
I don’t want that woman buried in Travemünde, she said. I don’t want her here.
I don’t want that either, his father said, but you saw how much it cost to freight the body back to Westphalia.
Can’t you just cremate it?
How bad d’you want me to look? I told you, she’s Muslim. They don’t do cremation.
Oh, it isn’t your problem! You weren’t even married to her! Why is this happening to us? The blonde blew her nose. And the kid? she whispered. You’re not planning to let him stay, are you?
The following morning, the boy’s mother’s body was buried in a corner of the local Travemünde cemetery. A few days later, Ibrahim’s father took the train back to Siegen with him to arrange matters. Ibrahim was to remain in school there, “where all your friends are.” Money would be sent to a guardian every month. A week later, when the paperwork was settled, his father boarded the train back to Travemünde. Chin up, m’boy, he said, as he left Ibrahim with a big bag of Haribo gummy bears. “To everyone’s surprise” (so began the letter from the social worker to his father; another year: “Against all odds”), Ibrahim did well in school and proceeded to gymnasium. He did well in gymnasium and passed the Abitur at seventeen. The social worker encouraged him to enroll in civil engineering for higher education. Lots of openings in that sector for the foreseeable future, takes a long time to build a carpet-bombed country back up.
No, he smiled. I would like to be some sort of an artist.
Art doesn’t quite pay, he was informed.
Why should it pay, Ibrahim thought, when it might be a reason to live?
10
The rust smell of beef broth hung heavy in the still air of Marlene’s apartment. Waiting for the stew to be done and expecting Bogie to call, her eyes were on whatever was playing on the TV, but the scent of the meat had reminded Marlene of how pot-au-feu had been taught her by her mother.
There was no meat in their pot whatsoever, only root vegetables, which they were thankful for, in the midst of that first world war. Marlene was to treat the rutabaga and potatoes like beef shank, the occasional carrot like bone marrow. Her mother would rap her smartly across the knuckles if she did not chop and prepare each cut of “meat” as if it was real sinew and gristle. Sitting down to sample their vegetarian pot-au-feu, Marlene competed with her mother to make the most platitudinous remarks, as they spooned tasteless broth into their mouths. How the meat slid off the bone and melted in your mouth!
In those years, Marlene invented with her mother all sorts of humdrum private games that made no sense outside of their household. Recalling all this, she was surprised that she now considered these some of her happiest days.
Her favorite was the Peter game.
For Marlene, the best part of the Peter game was that she alone controlled its duration. As long as she wore her father’s watch on her wrist, her mother had to call her Peter. Which one of them had originally devised the game neither of them could later recall, but it had been within the week the watch was presented to them in a velveteen-lined box, along with the certificate to confirm that the head of their household had died a hero’s death, while on reconnaissance patrol.
However many times she turned it over in her head and in whichever direction, Marlene could not see how it was heroic for a man, much less the one who had brought
her up so sternly, to have died not in battle but on patrol. When her mother found that offending line of the certificate besmirched by charcoal in a childish hand, she slapped Marlene so hard her ears buzzed, after which, bent over a kitchen chair, she was whipped over the backs of her legs with a birch switch. As Marlene undressed and drew her bathwater that evening, the afternoon’s upset all forgotten, her mother saw the crisscrossing welts the switch had raised on those pretty calves and hastened to hide her tears. The morning after the beating and bath, Marlene found her father’s old watch under her pillow, and soon after, the Peter game was invented. When Marlene was Peter, her mother, who affected a stoic parenting style, spoke to her in a softer and higher voice, touching her more often. The Peter game ended when her mother remarried. Suspecting the game’s untimely demise, Marlene had secretly worn her father’s watch under the lacy cuff of her itchy dress on the day of the wedding, and flashed it at her mother right after the ceremony, during the guest reception.
Not today, her mother said.
Not today who? Marlene said.
Not today, Marlene, her mother said, as young Peter burst into tears.
But paradise is locked and bolted
and the cherub is behind us.
We must make a journey around the world
to see if a back door has perhaps been left open.
It was Kleist Bogie served up today. Marlene recognized it instantly.
What a treat, she said, I love Kleist. His short stories were always reprinted in the evening papers in Berlin. I had a favorite one about a man who meets an old friend in a park, and they begin to talk about dancing bears and marionette theaters.
Can you imagine, Marlene, Bogie said. Kleist was in your evening papers. Have you seen what passes for writing in a paper these days?
Young people today were fanciful for nothing, Marlene thought abruptly, with no emotion. They wasted their imagination on any silly thing they laid their hands on. There’s nothing to imagine, she said to Bogie irritably. That’s just how it was. Then, regretting her tone and afraid it would turn him off her, she went on quickly with what she’d planned. Bogie, she softened her voice, which arrondissement are you in? If it isn’t too preposterous, would you like to come down to avenue Montaigne for my homemade pot-au-feu? My mother’s recipe. You’re not allowed upstairs, of course, but if you are agreeable, I will send my maid down with a bowl in an hour and a half. She is a Chinese girl in a pink uniform, there is no way you will miss her.
* * *
—
AN HOUR ON, the shanks had turned out dry and chewy. As none of Marlene’s windows could be opened, it was going to take some time for the smell of overcooked beef to dissipate. The stew was too thick and salty. When Marlene added half a glass of water, the consistency was irreparably weakened. She could not possibly send the maid down with a bowlful of this, and she was too proud to have her help wait empty-handed to inform Bogie that the dish had not been fit for his consumption. He would have to be stood up.
Take this away from me, Marlene said to the maid, pushing the bowl away. Get rid of it.
The maid stayed put, spooning up a mouthful of the stew.
She was saying something in her thick Chinese accent, blowing on a spoonful of stew and bringing it in Marlene’s direction. Marlene flipped the spoon away from her. The stew hit the side of the maid’s cheek before it slopped down her shoulder.
Are you an imbecile?
The maid looked at her.
I said, are you dumb?
The maid’s face fell. She cleaned her cheek on her sleeve and took everything away to the kitchen. Marlene channel-surfed to calm herself down, stabbing at the remote control every few seconds, not long enough for anything to settle.
Speed is how the cheetah survives as a predator that can’t defend itself in a fight—
You’re pretty good at giving orders, metal-mouth—now let’s see how good you are at taking ’em. Move away from my friends!—
Ruptured tank sends eleven million gallons of crude oil into the Alaskan—
Marlene muted the TV.
Straining her ears, she tried to listen out for the sound of crockery and running water in the kitchen. She heard nothing. The maid must have left the apartment without saying good-bye, and she was sitting alone in the dark again. Panicking, Marlene wanted to call out to the maid, but she could not remember her name. Had she never known it before?
Choupette, Marlene shouted, help!
The maid came running in, hands in sudsy kitchen gloves.
Madame?
So the maid was still here, as she well should be, and there was nothing to worry about. It’s all right now, Marlene said sharply. Carry on! The maid stood in the doorway as Marlene pushed the volume of the TV back up: In Honolulu, an ailing Ferdinand Marcos has offered to give back 90 percent of his holdings to the Filipino people in exchange for being buried next to his mother—
All right, Madame?
Go away, Marlene said. Don’t you know when to go away?
The maid left, holding up her gloves so as not to drip dishwater on the carpet. Watching the maid walk away from her, Marlene began to cry. She could not say why. The maid was unperturbed when she looked over her shoulder. She returned to the bed, removed her rubber gloves, and touched Marlene’s shoulder. When Marlene did not stop crying, the maid squeezed past the tables, took her shoes off, and lay next to her. She put one arm around Marlene and began to rock her gently. Marlene felt the warmth of her body. She was sobbing now. The maid began to sing in Chinese. God knows what she was singing, but listening to her nasal voice calmed Marlene down. The maid smelled so clean. She smelled of washing detergent. When the maid finished singing, she let go of Marlene, climbed off the bed, put on her shoes, and looked embarrassed. Marlene herself had not felt embarrassed in a long time, but the maid was making her feel self-conscious now. Not knowing what to do to make everything less uncomfortable, she fished out a twenty-franc note from under her sheepskin and passed it to the maid.
The maid shook her head.
Take it, Marlene snapped.
No, Madame, the maid insisted.
Marlene brandished the note as far as she could. The maid stepped back, where Marlene could not reach her from the bed. She put her hands behind her and shook her head again. Ugh, Marlene said as she stretched over the bed. The maid burst into a bright peal of laughter. It was the first time Marlene had heard her laugh. She began laughing, too. The maid perked up and asked: Want to try to walk, Madame? The maid came over, supporting Marlene’s weight by slipping her shoulder under her arm and holding up her torso. One by one she slid Marlene’s legs to touch the floor as she heaved her up into a standing position.
Left, right, left, right, Madame. See?
Very slowly they bisected the room, from the bed to the TV.
When the bad bones began to hurt, Marlene felt her body tense up. Noticing this, the maid supported Marlene’s weight more fully, hefting her into a half piggyback. Marlene tightened her arms around the maid. Is okay, Madame? Marlene nodded, digging her chin into the maid’s shoulder. They reached the bed, and the maid bent her knees for Marlene to roll over. What would happen if she didn’t let go? The maid’s body was so warm. Madame? The maid was still in a crouch, waiting for Marlene to settle herself. Trying to kill me, are you? Marlene complained aloud as she shrugged herself off. I could have had a heart attack!
Without a word the maid left the room.
Marlene sat very still as she waited to see what would happen next. If the maid did not return, she dared herself, I’ll never move again. No, she added on with a dash of bravado, if she doesn’t return, I’ll set the room on fire. Anxiously she regarded the doorway. A short while later, that now-familiar silhouette reappeared, carrying two steaming bowls of reheated stew.
About time, Marlene said primly,
I’m starving.
With relish they shared the overdone pot-au-feu.
11
At the end of Ibrahim’s freshman year in Berlin, a pig’s head was hung on the door of his dorm room with the words GOATFUCKERS GO HOME TO ANATOLIA scrawled in black marker across the snout. The school administration expressed its concern and apologies for “a tasteless prank,” but declined to reveal the identity of the perpetrators.
As long as the perpetrators were unnamed, Ibrahim refused to allow the pig’s head to be taken down.
He skipped classes to guard the festering pig’s head, but still the culprits went unpunished. Finally a fleet-footed janitor was sent to remove the offending article in the middle of the night. After this, Ibrahim was known around campus as Pighead, and no one would go near him. In his second year, in addition to dabbling in photography (in the style of Daidō Moriyama, whose photo books he had first chanced upon in the Orientalisch section of the library, rather than the Fotografie section; he took it upon himself to rectify this, to the puzzlement of the librarian, a nice lady who paired her bifocals with pastel florals), classical German and French literature (with a focus on Sturm und Drang Romanticism), and a bit of philosophy (German idealism, and in particular Schleiermacher), Ibrahim proposed as his final-year project an attempt to remove the ARBEIT MACHT FREI sign above the old Sachsenhausen concentration camp on the outskirts of the city, alongside a paper on lexical semantics. What could WORK SETS FREE mean in a time of genocidal totalitarianism then, and a split capitalism-communism Cold War dichotomy now?
If I had only half your ambition, his advising professor quipped, thinking it was an elaborate joke. I look forward to the paper.
* * *
—
MIDWAY THROUGH THE semester, Ibrahim went alone, armed with a diamond-blade reciprocating saw, a monkey wrench, an extendable two-step ladder, a portable trolley with cable wire ties, some rope, and a big sheet of canvas, all stuffed into a large backpacker knapsack, to Sachsenhausen. He’d dressed in a special outfit he’d assembled from several visits to thrift shops: an American football jersey (Minnesota Vikings #7), cargo pants that ended midshin, Velcro-strapped sandals, and a baseball cap. He laughed out loud when he saw his reflection.
Delayed Rays of a Star Page 24