“Hankering for something proper, are you?”
Achim indicated, stepped on the accelerator and overtook a moped.
Holger wiped his hands on his knees. Only now did he notice how tired he was. His head was hammering. He seldom drank. It just wasn’t compatible with the early-morning starts and training. He still had his sports shorts on. Achim had been anxious to get away on time. He probably couldn’t wait to see his wife again. After the presentation ceremony he had not even had time to say goodbye to Birgit properly. To be honest, that had suited him.
“Can you just pull over somewhere? I need a piss.”
He did not like farewells. He never knew what to say and was glad when it was over.
“Man, you’ve got the bladder of a girl.”
Achim was all right, a bear of a man. Not the fastest, but in long-range hand-grenade throwing he beat the lot of them. From a standing start, and with an action that looked like slow motion. His on-target rate was over 50 percent.
Achim glanced in the rearview mirror, let a car overtake, downshifted, signaled, and drove a little way along a rough farm track. Then he switched off the engine, took his hands off the steering wheel and turned to face him.
“There you go. All yours!”
Holger got out and went and stood facing the bank. He directed his stream at a patch of stinging nettles. The green hedges were choked with knotweed. Unripe blackberries hung in thorny hedges. Beyond the boundary strip, power lines led directly across the field to a single brick-built farmhouse with a wooden barn and, next to it, a flagpole without a flag. The corn was still green and swayed in the wind. It all looked so peaceful. The combine harvesters would be along at some point though. He felt the sun on the back of his neck.
He found himself thinking about how happy he had been when he had finished school and immediately received permission to embark on a degree. That feeling that now nothing could go wrong. And then his name on the roll of honor. In gothic lettering as on the certificate. His record was still unbroken.
And now? A couple of midges danced around him. He batted them away. If all went to plan, in three years’ time he would be a doctor. At least that was something tangible.
“Get a move on, mate.”
Of course, Birgit had asked once more when they would see each other again. He hadn’t known what to say to that.
He yawned. He pulled up his trousers by the waistband and walked back to the car.
Achim started the engine and set off again. Holger took his tracksuit jacket from the back seat, stuffed it between the seat back and the window frame, and laid his head on it. He looked at Achim. There were little beads of sweat on his forehead. Achim always knew exactly what he wanted. But you didn’t have to chat with him the whole time.
Holger turned to the window. Everything looked completely different from the car. He had only ever seen the route from the train.
They drove through a small village with cobbled streets. He looked at the people outdoors. An elderly lady in a house dress standing in her garden, with arms akimbo. A young couple with a pushchair crossing the road. Two boys on bicycles, weaving their way hands-free along the pavement.
Then he closed his eyes. The car vibrated. He tried to relax. He had been in the palace once before, with his parents. Soon after his swearing-in. In a suit even. But he couldn’t remember much about it now. Although everyone had talked about it. About the flags, the mirrored glass, the marble, the lines of people.
He didn’t know whether it had been his idea or Birgit’s. It was just how it worked out. They hadn’t had to wait in line for long either. And then, in the wine bar, they’d even got a table with a view over the Spree. On a Saturday evening too. It had all been so easy. He’d pulled out the chair for her and she’d sat down, as if it were all perfectly normal. Neither of them was appropriately dressed, but they didn’t care. Birgit thought they had something to celebrate. Although they hadn’t even won. She was the only girl he knew who shaved her armpits.
He opened his eyes and stared at the squashed insects on the windshield. The assault course was actually the toughest. Once you’d got that over and done with, the worst was out of the way. The water jump and the cross-country run were a walk in the park by comparison.
He straightened up again, rolled down the window, and leaned his elbow out. The air rushing by felt nice.
Outside, fields and woods went by, telephone poles, a huge tumbledown engine shed, an avenue of lime trees that seemed to go on and on. He was a doctor, though, wasn’t he. Or halfway there at least.
He crossed his arms behind his head.
The child stood in the cot with eyes wide open. One hand gripped the bars with fat fingers, the other was reaching over the top rail and flailing in her direction. Her little teeth flashed white in her laughing mouth.
She lifted the little girl up, laid her down on the chest of drawers next to the double bed, peeled off the onesie, the plastic pants, and the sodden cloth diaper.
The child babbled away, punched the air with choppy movements of her little fists, and kept kicking Marlene’s arms and breasts with her bare feet. The padded changing mat was printed all over with yellow teddy bears: one holding a bunch of balloons, one seesawing in an umbrella, and another riding on a pony. The sequence continually repeating.
She took the toddler, sat her on the potty, went into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove. Then she opened the wall cupboard, took out the tin of coffee and measured a spoonful of powder into a mug.
When she came back into the bedroom the child was chewing on a corner of the quilt, which had slipped off the double bed. She carefully extracted the saliva-drenched bit of fabric from her mouth, pressed the crocheted toadstool into the child’s hand, hoisted the quilt back onto the bed, and smoothed it out with a couple of sweeps of her hand. Then she lifted the little one back onto the mat and wiped her bottom with a damp flannel.
She was just passing the diaper, folded into a triangle, through the child’s legs when the kettle started whistling in the kitchen. The toadstool fell to the floor. With a few rapid movements she fastened the diaper and pulled the plastic pants on over it, picked up the little girl in her arms, and hurried into the kitchen.
She turned off the gas stove and poured boiling water onto the coffee powder. The child clung to her blouse and pressed her head to her neck. She felt the clenched little hands on her breast. She carried her over to the playpen in the living room and tried to extricate herself from her grasp.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s all right,” and managed to disentangle herself.
Then she went back into the bedroom, carried the potty to the bathroom, emptied it into the toilet, flushed, lowered the lid and sat down.
The window was tilted open. Outside, children were kicking a ball back and forth. Their shouts echoed around the new apartment blocks. She stood up, pushed the curtain aside, and looked out. A small boy was dangling upside down from the climbing frame. His hair hung like streaks in the air. A blonde girl wearing glasses, whom she had never seen before, sat alone on the seesaw. She held the handle firmly, stood up, pulled the plank up, let herself fall and crashed down onto a bit of car tire sticking out of the sand. Then she immediately stood up again, went on tiptoes and let herself drop down again, over and over. Marlene quickly closed the curtain again. The wash ought to be long finished by now.
She opened the drum, hauled the wet things out and stuffed them in the spin dryer over the bath. She used her right hand to hold the lid on firmly, and her left to slide the control knob downwards. The spinner started up. Water sloshed into the bathtub in several surges, first a big gush, then less each time, a thin, slowly dwindling stream. Once it was producing no more than droplets she let the machine come to a halt.
The rubber ring had slipped out again. She pushed it back, opened the lid and began lifting the laundry out of
the spinner one item at a time and hanging it on the clothesline strung across the bathroom. It was mostly cloth diapers, underwear, and handkerchiefs. There was no way they would be dry by tomorrow. Only last week she had had to strip the sheets in the morning because Holger had wet the bed. Unbelievable.
She closed the lid of the spin dryer.
She was about to carry the potty back to the bedroom when her gaze alighted on the medals hanging from the oval mirror in the hall. Athletics, decathlon, military multisports. Metal dangling on colorful ribbons. But she was still so young. She was so young.
She grabbed the medals and yanked them down. They fell to the floor with a clatter. The mirror wobbled but stayed on the wall.
She set the potty down in front of the cot, tilted the window open, went back into the hall, and picked up her coffee from the kitchen. Then she carried the mug into the living room, put it down on the green table, and flopped down on the settee.
The child was sitting in the playpen with legs wide apart, crying. Her face was flushed. A string of saliva hung from her mouth. In one of the yellow-lit aquariums, a shoal of iridescent blue neon tetras chased back and forth. Little air bubbles floated up. The guppies had disappeared. The pump hummed steadily. The black-and-white marbled catfish was feeding on the algae on the glass walls with its big suction mouth. Its white-rimmed eyes looked dead. The bedroom door slammed shut.
Her gaze drifted over the rose-patterned wallpaper and the ocher-colored heater, then along the wall cabinet with the television set and the atlas, the two-volume encyclopedia and the illustrated books on socialist realism and the Olympic Games, passing over the snake plant and the cactuses on the windowsill and the cushion covers with flower motifs that she had embroidered during her pregnancy. Two small framed prints of sailing boats hung above the sofa. On the table was the fruit bowl Holger had turned on the lathe.
The mug was still full of coffee. She hadn’t touched it.
She got up and went to the playpen.
They could see the red light flashing even from afar. It was the crossroads by the Moeckow-Berg radio tower. Then they entered the wood that he knew so well. It immediately turned cool. Holger wound the window up. Achim indicated and pulled over on the right at the bus stop outside the old tollkeeper’s house.
“See you tomorrow then.”
His fingers skimmed the steering wheel. It had a silvery-shimmering fur cover.
“Thanks, Achim.”
Holger reached for his briefcase, opened the door, got out, and swung the passenger door shut.
The dark-blue Lada signaled and rejoined the road. Holger watched it go. He tried to remember the numbers and letters of the license plate, but he couldn’t. Eventually the car rounded a bend and disappeared into the wood.
He turned around and took the narrow, paved footpath on the left-hand side of the road. A single streetlight stood halfway along the route into the village. It was already lit, even though it was only just beginning to get dark. The old street cobbles shone in its glow.
The row of detached and semidetached houses began even before the village sign. Roses and delphiniums bloomed in the front gardens. Above the door to a stable turned garage, an old horse’s harness dangled from a rusty horseshoe. At the filthy bus shelter by the roundabout, a bunch of teenagers were hanging around with their bikes, smoking. Two of them glanced up briefly, gave him an almost imperceptible nod and went back into their huddle. At least they greeted him, even though he lived in one of the army blocks. He crossed the street. He could hear the stream burbling softly behind the hedge. A river helped you get your bearings at least. It was something tangible. Everything was easier when the requirements were clear.
After the bridge his route took him uphill. He turned onto the path behind the church. There was a ladies’ black bicycle with a crocheted spoke guard parked in front of the cooperative store. It wasn’t even locked. Behind it loomed the outline of the school building. In the left-hand window of the mayor’s yellow-painted bungalow, a curtain was pushed slightly to one side. Now you could see the three new apartment blocks too, all staggered. Some of the windows were lit up. This was where the tarmac ended and the sandy footpath began. It had grown cool all of a sudden. He stopped for a moment, took his tracksuit top off his shoulder and put it on.
Lying in between the play apparatus in the playground was a dirty, dented volleyball. The paint had already flaked off the lower bars of the climbing frame, even though it was still quite new, not even two years old. He looked up at the apartment. The light was on in the kitchen. The bathroom was dark. What had he expected? He didn’t know.
He opened the door and ascended the two flights of stairs, a step at a time. The television was on in Lippe’s apartment. His footsteps echoed. Outside the Splettstössers’ door there was a smell of pea stew.
Her gardening shoes stood next to the doormat. Earth stuck to them, and they were covered with a fine layer of dust. The doormat was askew. He shoved it straight with his feet. The nameplate on the door bore his name, her name, engraved in brass. He was so tired.
He rang the bell, even though he knew his key was in the front pocket of his briefcase. Inside the apartment, he heard the sound of the refrigerator door closing. It was an age before the door opened.
She already had her nightie on. She let him hug her, then turned away. He let go of her, put his briefcase down under the coat rack, crouched down and took off his shoes.
“Is the kid asleep?”
He looked up at her.
Marlene nodded briefly and disappeared into the kitchen. Everywhere was in darkness. Only the lamp above the kitchen table cast a circle of bright light on the tablecloth.
He slid his feet into his slippers and opened the bedroom door. The child was lying peacefully in her bed, both arms stretched out next to her head. She was breathing in long, regular breaths. He placed his index finger in the little half-open hand. How incredibly contented she looked. Then he pulled the covers up a little, left the room and quietly shut the door. His briefcase was still there at the foot of the coat rack. He picked it up.
When he went to take out the packet containing the sandwiches, he discovered the ball with the duck inside. He took it with him into the kitchen.
Marlene was sitting at the kitchen table with her head tilted back.
“We didn’t win, but I’ve got a present for the littl’un.” He placed the ball in front of her on the table. Then he went to the refrigerator, opened the door, looked inside for a moment and closed it again. Next to the sink were some peeled potatoes and green asparagus. He would have liked to make himself a chamomile tea, but he didn’t dare use the kettle.
He went over to the table, pulled out the chair, sat down, touched her fleetingly on the arm, but then didn’t know what to do next and took his hand away again.
Only now did she look at him. He drew his shoulders back and breathed deeply, in and out. Her eyes were almost black.
Lacus Luxuriae
Kinau’s Selenographs
* Gottfried Adolf Kinau, a priest and amateur astronomer from Suhl in Thuringia, dedicated more than thirty years of his life to selenography. His topographical drawings of the moon were much admired by the contemporary l`unar research community for their meticulousness.
† Only a few of the documents containing Kinau’s observations have survived to this day, including his essay “Lunar Rilles,” dating from 1848. Of his selenographs, only two had been published in Sirius, a journal of popular astronomy, and they are presumed to have been lost to fire, as part of its image collection, during the Second World War.
In 1932, the International Astronomical Union gave the name “Kinau” to a crater in the southern highlands on the nearside of the moon, as originally proposed by astronomer Edmund Neison in 1876. Who’s Who in the Moon, a handbook of lunar nomenclature published in 1938 by the British Astronomical Association
, contains the following entry: C. A. Kinau (?–1850). Botanist and selenographer. He had an official post on the estate of the Prince of Schwarzenberg in southern Bohemia, and published in 1842 two works on Poisonous Plants and Fungi. Despite a worldwide search, no botanist by the name of Kinau could be found. In 2007, he was replaced in the U.S. survey authority’s records by the priest Gottfried Adolf Kinau as the man who gave his name to the crater. To this day, no trace has ever been found of C. A. Kinau.
Knowing when and under which constellations I was born does little to illuminate the subject of our investigation. Suffice it to mention that my entry into the earthly world fell on one of those annually recurring nights in which the Leonids reveal themselves, in one of the most impressive celestial light spectacles visible to the naked eye, at least back in the days when the blackness of the night had not yet been diluted to a perpetual twilight by the glare of gas lamps and their inglorious successors. One year, as a young student, I was treated to a blazing shower of shooting stars around the time of my birthday, a festive rain of fire which soon filled the entire firmament with innumerable flaring meteors and planted in me that invisible seed which would eventually germinate some decades hence and bring forth the most passionate blossom: my love of the starlit night, of the planets and their satellites, which is what ultimately led me to that certainly higher, yet also undeniably remote sphere which I am now obliged to call my home.
At first, though, I was seized—a natural consequence of my rural upbringing—by a penchant for botany, and there awakened in me a fervent desire, on completion of my studies in Advanced Forestry, to acquire a permanent paid position with a broad scope that would enable me to advance my research.
I found it in my local vicinity as an administrator for the southern estates of His Highness Prince Johann Adolf zu Schwarzenberg, the second to bear this name, and as such my role was initially to oversee the leasehold farm of Bzy, then the Forbes estate, two tracts of land particularly exposed to the adverse effects of their unprotected location on the right bank of the Moldau, until the reform instituted by the supreme authorities dispatched me to the central seat of princely power, namely the large castle perched on a steep rock above the Moldau in the town of Krumau. I grew fond of this region, despite its harsh, damp climate with its early and late frosts, for which the fertile but weather-beaten soil barely compensated, especially since agricultural conditions became increasingly difficult the closer the lands of this sprawling territory were to the Bohemian Wood—a vast forest whose quasiprimeval interior was inhabited by wild bears.
An Inventory of Losses Page 19