Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything (9 page)

13

August is my favorite month. The heat is still there, but it's not oppressive like July. I become faintly wistful when summer veers toward autumn and my birthday is around the corner. I'm going to be seventeen, and with each passing year I have a greater sense of my significance in the world. But now that our world has become so much larger, this feeling of importance is once again on the wane. On the farm I know I'm needed at least, although they'd get by fine without me.

I've hatched a clever plan: I'm going to spend my birthday with Henner. The timing works rather well. I'll have breakfast with the Brendels, and then Johannes will have to work all day because Siegfried will be away. After that I'll go and see my mother for an hour
or two. I'll tell her that if I don't get back to the farm, Johannes will be sad. She'll understand. Then I'll make my way across the fields, through the corn, which is now at waist height, and down the valley to Henner's farm.

Frieda arrives home today. We're all dying to hear what she has to say. But when she finally gets here she looks quite unwell and goes to lie down in her room. Hartmut says she's been tetchy for a few days, she hasn't even wanted to eat properly. I imagine a trip to Bavaria must be pretty major for someone like Frieda, who has spent her whole life on the farm, never going farther than the county town apart from one trip to the Baltic. And it turns out I'm right. Later she tells us how uncomfortable she felt so far from home, in Hartmut's guest room among all that modern furniture. She was anxious, and she missed Alfred. Alfred, of all people! She's overjoyed to be home, and by the evening she's back to her old self. “Did you do all the cooking, Maria?” she asks. This is the first time she hasn't addressed me in the third person.

It's Monday. Siegfried has gone and I'm on my way to the tavern, which is not open today except to the regulars. My first customers are the village drunks, and I'm delighted to see that Henner is not among them.

There's very little to do, just the same round over and over again: a schnapps, a beer, and the occasional plate of raw minced beef with egg and onions.

After two hours the landlord reckons I've mastered the basics, so he sends me home. The day is still young; Johannes is grafting in the animal sheds, and I read the story of the Karamazov brothers almost to the end.

Now I understand why Henner was pleased when I said I preferred Grushenka to Katarina Ivanov, despite the fact that she can be quite wicked. Dmitry is sentenced to twenty years in a Siberian
camp and Katarina visits him, even though she testified against him in court. All of a sudden Grushenka appears, and Katarina begs her forgiveness. Grushenka replies, “We're wicked, my dear girl, you and I! We're both wicked! How then are we to forgive one another—you me and I you? Just save him and I'll worship you all my life.” So she intends only to thank Katarina, not forgive her. Dmitry is plunged into despair, but Grushenka says, “It's her proud lips that spoke and not her heart . . . If she saves you, I'll forgive her everything.”

That's what Henner wants. The heart, not the pride.

But I save the final chapter, the funeral of Little Ilyusha, for later.

In the evening Johannes is so exhausted that he can barely stand. Hard labor on the farm is not his thing. I think Siegfried knows this, which is why he's letting him go. He's a reasonable man. Even Johannes's hands are different from his father's. Narrow, pale, and soft. Unlike Siegfried, when Johannes wields the pitchfork it doesn't look natural. You could say we have no word in the matter; our bodies are predetermined from the outset. Johannes's hands, Siegfried's paws, my own body, which just now seems to have been made for Henner alone.

I think of his hands, which are like Siegfried's, but also quite different. They're waiting to caress me.

Down below, Alfred is sitting idly on the bench. He seems happier, now that his Frieda is home. What binds them is their secret, a secret they will never disclose.

It's peaceful on the farm tonight. There's not a breath of wind in the leaves of the old chestnut tree. The cat is lying at Alfred's feet. Johannes is asleep, Lukas went to bed ages ago, Frieda is recovering from her adventure, and at last Marianne has the chance to leaf through her magazines, which recently she's been hiding from
Siegfried. The chickens are still running around, even though it's dark. I think about chasing them into the shed, but then assume Alfred is going to do it, so I get into bed beside Johannes.

When I wander out into the yard the next morning, Marianne is crying on the bench. Her elbows are propped on her legs and her face is buried in her hands. She's sobbing so loudly that it's not long before Alfred and Frieda appear at the windows. Then I see the catastrophe with my own eyes: a fox has been by and all the chickens are dead.

Worst of all is that it should happen now, while Siegfried is away and Marianne is in charge. He has his views on women, one of which is that you can't trust them to do things by themselves, or everything goes belly-up. That's unfair, but he won't be argued with. We wonder what we should do, and Johannes suggests that we buy new chickens. But this sets off Marianne again, and she says, “He'd notice at once. Come on, he knows every animal here personally.” She really does say “personally,” and for some reason this makes me want to laugh, but I hold myself together as best I can.

Eventually I head over to the tavern to start my shift, and from there I call Hartmut. I can scarcely believe that we'll soon have our own telephone line. It seems like the height of luxury, and I make a promise to myself never to forget this time, when it was different. Hartmut isn't at home, but Siegfried comes to the phone and listens in silence as I tell him what happened. I didn't think he would say much, and I was right. “You just can't trust them to do things by themselves,” he says after a lengthy pause. Then he hangs up. The entire day is under a cloud.

When I get back to the farm that evening I see a car in the drive I don't recognize. It's my father; he's sitting on the bench waiting for me.

I should say about my father that he isn't really a father at all.

I remember very little. I was always told that Dad was away working, and when he came home on leave the arguments would start again almost immediately. Perhaps Mom started them too; at any rate there was a lot of shouting. What I most remember about him is that he was never there. He seldom lived with us even though they were married. First came the work trips, then the Russian gas pipeline. On leave he was permanently restless, pacing up and down, going for long walks in the woods. Even on the coldest winter days, he insisted the barbecue was lit in the garden. It was a habit he picked up in Russia, where they barbecued all the time. Vodka kept the men warm and the women wore thick fur coats. Oh yes, the women. When he was home on leave he'd often go into town to buy ladies' underwear. They didn't have enough of it in Russia, he said, and you could sell it easily there. I don't believe he ever sold any.

He didn't even know what year I was in at school, and once, when he made a very poor attempt to try and teach me something, I said, “I'm not listening to you,” and he replied, “You're as stupid as your mother.” I can still hear those words today; they've left a painful echo in my mind. Mom kept finding photographs and letters in his pockets. As the pipeline progressed, so the women changed.

I hated him for a long time. His beard, his expression, his small, restless eyes, his hurried way of walking and talking—I hated everything about him. I only ever saw my mother looking depressed. She went around in a haze of sadness, which then stole over me, too, and gnawed away at my soul with increasing ferocity. I knew I'd never be rid of it.

Then he built us the house—it was the only time he was with us for a good while—but in fact he didn't build it for us as a family, only for my mother and me. It didn't make me any happier, because we were alone in it. But when he left for good I felt better. My mother didn't, and I've never understood that.

Later I realized what had driven him away each time: a longing to see the world and its far horizons. The GDR was far too small for that. This little country, surrounded by a wall, was like an animal in a cage. In Russia, by contrast, everything was expansive, on a vast scale and seemingly endless. There he could breathe more easily than in our village. And the women sweetened the loneliness he suffered, but which he sought time and again.

I forgave him long ago, even though he denied me something which no presents or excuses can make up for: my childhood—this slice of our lives that everyone says is pure bliss. I don't know what such happiness feels like, but the longing for it has not gone away.

Grandma Traudel has often told me that I'm like him; she said I've inherited his restlessness and obstinacy. And there he is, sitting on the bench: Ulrich, my father.

He smiles, jumps up, and gives me a hug. Then we go for a little walk.

“Why aren't you living at home anymore?” he asks, and his eyes roam across the fields.

“Because I prefer it here,” I say bluntly, and that's enough for him.

“What about you?” I ask. “I've heard you're getting married again.”

“Yes,” he says, nodding contentedly. “I'm going to give it another go. She's a fine girl, Nastja.”

“Just turned nineteen, I heard,” I say, annoyed at the spikiness in my voice, but he doesn't notice.

“Yes. Nineteen. But a fine girl,” he repeats, as if it were an achievement to be a fine girl at nineteen.

“I'm not going to school anymore, Dad,” I say, and he looks over at the sawmill, which isn't working today.

“Have you finished, then?”

“No, I'm just not going anymore.”

He doesn't seem surprised, and says, “You can still go places even if you don't finish school. Besides, you're eighteen tomorrow; you're old enough to know what you're doing. By the way, I brought you a present.”

“Seventeen,” I say. “I'm only going to be seventeen.”

“Seventeen?” He sounds astonished. “Really? Well, I'm sure you'll do the right thing, Maria.”

“Yes, I'll do the right thing.” In the distance the bullocks are standing by the river, drinking their fill.

I think of Siegfried and how sometimes, with one considered sentence, he announces a decision that no one is then able to dispute. I feel terribly weak by comparison.

“What about Johannes?” he asks, obviously trying to change the subject. “Is that all going well? He's a fine chap, your boyfriend.”

“Yes, he is,” I say flatly. I wonder what Dad would make of Henner. Maybe they'd get on and go drinking together.

“Come on, let's go back. I'll give you your present. Then I'd better be off.”

“Back to Nastja?” I ask, and he nods. Then we cross the fields in silence, past the cows and the new calf, through the barn to his car, a Lada, and he takes out a large present, wrapped in gold paper.

“What have you got planned for tomorrow? Are you going to celebrate with Johannes?” he asks as he opens the car door.

I feel a sudden urge to tell him everything, absolutely everything. He wouldn't reproach me, I know. He's my father. He'd understand. But he's already in the car, speeding away.

14

When I wake up my heart is already pounding. I am seventeen. Johannes got up especially to make me breakfast. We stay in bed and eat fresh rolls with jam, and yogurt with honey; we drink coffee and orange juice. It's still early, but Johannes has to start work. I hear Marianne grumbling outside—where is he? She can't be expected to do all this on her own! She knows we can hear her. His present to me is a photograph in a frame he made himself. The photo is of me standing by the fence at the back of the vegetable garden. I'm wearing a short dress with a white cardigan, looking toward the railway line. There's a soft, somewhat gloomy light; dusk is approaching. Everything in the picture is blurry, except for my face. I don't know when he took this photo, or rather, I don't remember. I thank him profusely and shoo him out into the yard.

Then I fetch my father's present. Another picture. A horribly gaudy, abstract oil painting by some Russian artist. At first all I can see are colors, but gradually shapes emerge from the jumble, arranged around a female form in the center: a single eye, a heart, a cross. The woman has shining red hair, and she's wearing a summer hat decorated with flowers; its rim merges with a sea of green tones. Her breasts are naked, and to her left I can make out the face of an Orthodox priest. A man is kneeling before the priest, but looking at the woman. There's a large hand around his throat. Then everything blurs into a garish red. I only need to blink and it's a formless mass of color once more. I feel miserable again, wrap the picture back in its shiny paper and slide it under the bed.

I have plenty of time. If I went straight to Henner's we'd have almost twelve hours until dark. But first I have to visit my mother.

Johannes will be busy until dusk at least; he finds the work harder going than his father. I put on my prettiest dress, a bright green, flared cotton number, tight around the bust and printed with small pink flowers. It's handmade to my design. Grandma Traudel was annoyed that I always wore pants, probably because she had never worn pants in her life, not even in the iciest of winters. There are two seamstresses in the village, so she bought the material, and I was allowed to choose the style I wanted.

I brush my hair until it shines, then I tie it into a simple bun. On the stairs I bump into Frieda and Alfred, on their way out into the yard. They wish me a happy birthday and Frieda fetches an envelope from the kitchen. It contains twenty western marks.

Then I hurry as fast as I can to my mother's. She's been waiting for me, and there's a bunch of flowers on the table. Traudel and Lorenz are there, too. It's almost eight o'clock; as I count the vanishing hours I'm like a cat on a hot tin roof. Mom gives me a book, some spotted tights, and a lovely scarf. So I won't have to keep borrowing one from Marianne, she tells me. We have cake and chat about nothing
in particular. For my sake they're probably trying to avoid the more sensitive subjects. My grandparents also give me an envelope, with exactly the same amount in it as Frieda's.

I shovel cake into my mouth and say over and over again how good it is. And then the lies come to my lips as easily as pleasantries. I no longer recognize myself. I don't even have a bad conscience; my need for Henner is simply too great. Shortly before half past nine I leave the house by the garden door and set off. Past the church and cemetery, past the last few houses in the village and into the woods. The most direct route to the farms goes through the woods, down the cliffs to the river, across the railway bridge and along the tracks to Henner's. Carrying a leather satchel with my presents, I begin my descent. People often come climbing here from town, with ropes and all sorts of equipment, but I don't need any of that. I maneuver myself down with the help of small trees that jut out from the rock face. When it gets steep I take off my shoes and do what I did when I was a child. We often clambered up and down here, and only once did someone fall. His name was Heiko, and he broke his collarbone, an arm, and both ankles. He was pretty lucky. I get to the bottom unscathed and walk along the railway sleepers to the bridge. I put my right ear to the tracks and can hear the humming of a train in the distance. When it passes I dash over the bridge and across the pasture to the farm. It's taken me less than twenty-five minutes.

But when I reach the gate I realize that Henner doesn't know it's my birthday, or that I'm coming. I wait for a while. My breathing returns to normal and I listen for a sign of life from the farm, from this place that spits me out each time, like an unwelcome foreign body.

I can hear the dogs barking. They can't have been far, as the noise is now coming from just the other side of the gate. He'll be here soon, I just need to wait. But it's ages before I hear the crunch of the gravel under his heavy shoes. He opens the gate a little way and pulls me in before closing it again. Each time I enter his realm, I don't know
who I will be when I leave it. Outside the world is renewing itself, but here time stands still.

Henner pushes me into the house and up the stairs to a room I've never seen before. It's his mother's bedroom. The bed is by the window and the walls are lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling. Unusually for them, the villagers haven't exaggerated on this score.

In the right-hand corner is a tiled stove, and there's a stripy woven carpet on the floor. The bed has been freshly made. He sits me on its edge and positions himself between my legs. He looks down at me, one hand lifting my head, the other undoing his pants. Just this movement, the certainty of his desire, makes me feel light-headed and erases everything from my mind. I am pure emotion.

It's only later that we find words again, only once our bodies have spoken. I tell him I am seventeen now, a woman, but he just smiles. It's not yet midday. We lie there quietly, his right arm around me, our feet stroking each other. I'm worried that he may have spoiled me forever; what can possibly follow a feeling like this? I've never been so happy. My body twitches and shudders, and I snuggle up to him more closely. I feel as if he has preempted something.

Henner jolts me out of my thoughts; he suggests we take a trip somewhere.

The old Volga stands by the gate. A miracle it still runs; the car is older than I am. He only bought it recently. I don't ask where we're going; I don't care in the slightest. We drive along the narrow track until we reach the road, and then turn left. That way we don't have to pass the Brendels' farm or the tavern. I'm tired, and the constant humming and rocking of the car eventually lulls me to sleep. When I wake up we're almost at the border. To the right and left are the watchtowers with their sniper posts, but they're no longer occupied. I can see the checkpoint in front of us. We stop briefly, show our ID cards. The border guard nods, his gaze wanders from me to Henner
and back again, then we drive straight through. I still find it hard to believe, this freedom of movement. What is happening here and what it means for all of us is only slowly dawning on me. Henner is more important than anything now; all my thoughts and feelings are reserved for him.

We drive for a good hour until we come to a small town. We park the car in a side street, then get out and walk. Henner is wearing his dusty shoes and stained pants, but for once his shirt is a gleaming white. He has his hands in his pockets and he says nothing. We stroll through a wide pedestrian zone with a huge number of shops on either side. People are sitting out in cafés, and some of them stare at us. I can sense their eyes in my back. They must think he's my father, and I urgently feel the need to touch him. But I don't.

Henner asks me whether I'd like to buy something; he wants to give me a present, a dress, perhaps. I look at women and girls we pass and wonder what I would have to buy to look a little more like them. He walks beside me, his gaze fixed inward; he doesn't notice them, the other women. For the moment we are enough for each other. I don't need a new dress.

He stops farther on at a café in a small square with a fountain. We sit at a table. Once again I find the choice overwhelming. Cappuccino, single and double espresso, and normal coffee in a cup or pot. Henner seems just as bewildered, and when the waiter comes I remember the trip to Munich and say, “Two cappuccinos, please.” We drink slowly and don't say much. His hand is on my leg under the table. Then I have an idea. Just as Johannes did that time, I say I have to go and “get something.” He doesn't seem bothered, he just says, “Don't go too far. You don't know your way around here.” But in fact I am gone for some time, because what I'm looking for isn't that easy to find in the West, either. Somehow I find that comforting.

When I come back he's standing by the café. His arms are crossed and he's looking out for me. His face is stony. As I approach him he
uncrosses his arms and lets them drop lifelessly, but they tense up again and he clenches his fists.

“For Christ's sake, Maria, where were you? I thought something had happened.”

I want to answer him, but without giving away my secret, so I lie: “I got lost.”

“For Christ's sake, Maria!” But he says nothing more. Then he grabs my hand and pulls me through the crowds, past the colorful displays in shop windows, and now there is something I want after all: a pair of shoes I saw when I was on my own. Black with low heels and crisscross straps. But he's not going to stop; he doesn't say anything, either, and we drive home.

On the way back he's grumpy and tight lipped. I feel awful. From time to time he glances at me, but remains silent. The Volga groans and moans, and he's driving so fast that I'm thrown all over the place when we turn corners. I'm terrified that he might send me straight home.

But at some point after we've crossed the border, on one of our bumpy country roads, he puts his hand on my neck and strokes me with his rough fingertips that feel like cats' tongues. I sigh. We arrive just before five o'clock; we still have three hours.

He relaxes the moment we get back to the farm; the dogs spring up at him, and when he closes the gate he shuts out all those things that unsettle him. Then he goes to see the horses in the stables.

I unpack my bag and start cooking. When Gisela was staying with us she gave Marianne a recipe for chicken soup that she said is delicious. It's meant to be for women who have just given birth, she said, but that doesn't matter—men like it, too.

I take two chicken legs, wash them carefully, then put them in a pot with about three liters of water. I add the usual vegetables for soup—carrots, celery, kohlrabi—a few raisins, an apple, three small onions, six cloves of garlic, one leek, and the ingredients I spent an
age hunting for, making Henner so worried: lotus root, dates, and angelica root. Finally I stir in a heaped dessert spoon of bouillon powder and some salt, and leave it to cook for two hours. At the end you strain the liquid, discarding everything but the meat, which you take off the bone and chop into small pieces. What you are left with is a clear soup and the meat.

When he enters he stops by the door and sniffs. Then his gaze falls on the apron I had found in the cupboard beside the pots and pans and thrown on over my dress. It belonged to his grandmother, who died only a few years ago, age almost ninety. He comes over, twirls me around, laughs, and says, “I like that.” And while the soup is cooking we go back up to the room with the books.

Later I dress slowly. The apron is on the floor by the bed and I leave it there. He's standing by the window, looking at me. There's a hint of sadness in his face, but this may just be the dimness of the evening light.

We go downstairs to the kitchen and I serve the soup. He's sitting at the table, reading a book. I say, “Read it to me, Henner!”

His voice is soft, he articulates the words slowly and deliberately: “These lonely people, so raw and so driven by their urges, but full of goodness to one another, to the animals and to the earth.”

“I really like that,” I interrupt him, wanting to know the name of the book, but he says, “Come again soon. Then I'll tell you.” With a smile he sets the book aside.

Henner finds this mothers' soup “exquisite,” as he emphatically puts it. He adds that he's never tasted a chicken soup like it. I act as if this were perfectly normal; I don't want to show how delighted I am. But when I leave his house later on, I'm bursting with pride.