Just Call Me Superhero (13 page)

I sat at the breakfast table and they all stared at me. All so sorrowful and sympathetic, what I really wanted to do was shout at them that they should look at me with normal faces again now.

“He left us when I was little!” I said to try to wipe that look off their faces. “He didn’t even call me on my birthday anymore or send me anything. I don’t give a shit, do you understand?” No idea why my voice cracked.

The funny thing was that I didn’t look at Janne at all. I looked at Marlon. As soon as I’d come to the table with my phone in hand my heart hadn’t skipped its usual beat at the sight of her. A pretty girl in a wheelchair.
Marek our father is died
. Now she was looking at me with the same affected look as the rest of them. I was back on the other side of the glass.

I got up and went across the lawn to the edge of the woods. I tried to make a call from there but the reception was no good. I kept dialing the number that the text had come from, it beeped, and then there was absolute silence on the line. Then I realized I should try from a different spot. As soon as I walked to a spot with better reception, the phone rang. It was Claudia.

I was relieved that her voice was halfway recognizable this time.

“The funeral is in four days,” said Claudia. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to pick you up before that. I have to help Tamara, she’s completely out of sorts. You’ll have to take the train. Can you manage that? Or should I send Dirk to get you?”

“Do I really have to?” I asked.

“Marek, I’m begging you. I know it’s difficult. I know you’re . . . with your new friends. But these things happen when they happen. He is after all . . . your father.”

“I haven’t had a real father for ages,” I said.

“If you only knew,” said Claudia.

I
sat on my suitcase beneath the information board that had no information at all. The train back to Berlin was supposed to come in half an hour. They all wanted to take me to the station but I refused. I had said that I wanted to be alone and that seemed to make sense to them. I also didn’t want the farmer and his tractor. I pulled my suitcase the long way, staying on the paved path, and my thoughts rattled in rhythm with the wheels.

They gathered around me to say goodbye and I set off quickly and didn’t look back even once. I had a lump in my throat but I couldn’t tell if it was because of my father or Janne or general Rottweiler-weltschmerz. It felt as if I’d been here for weeks, not two nights, one of which was awful and the other would have been the most beautiful night of my life if I hadn’t have slept through it. I tried to imagine myself going to another group meeting back in Berlin and I started laughing.

The loudspeaker crackled loudly and a few minutes later the regional train pulled in. I hoisted up my suitcase. The train was nearly empty and nobody looked at me. With my index finger I felt my face under my sunglasses to make sure nothing had changed over the last couple of days. Everything was the same as ever. If my father had seen me again it would have cost him a few nights of sleep for sure. At least in that regard he’d been lucky.

Claudia had sent me the address, with annotations, in a text. My father had lived in a village near Frankfurt called Einhausen, the same place where he and I had both been born. After he had discovered his love for our au pair, Claudia had gone back to Berlin with me. My father was born and bred in the state of Hesse and had his office there where his family had lived for generations.

I had to switch trains in Berlin, Hannover, and Frankfurt. The ride seemed like it would never end. The phone stuck in my hand. Claudia kept sending texts, where was I and how was I feeling. I wasn’t feeling a thing.

I didn’t have a phone number for Janne. Not even the guru’s number or anybody else’s number. Maybe I had the list with everyone’s contact info stuck in my suitcase somewhere, but probably not. Marlon would now have Janne to himself in Marenitz—oddly enough that thought didn’t upset me at all.

What was funny was that I almost missed Marlon more.

An old lady in a blue uniform, with swollen feet, pushed the refreshment cart down the aisle. Badly damaged venous valves, I thought, and I ordered myself a coffee. She took my coins without counting them and handed me a lukewarm paper cup.

People were not in such sound condition as I’d always thought. I let my gaze sweep over the backs of heads that I could see from my seat. Some of these people probably thought they were healthy and always would be. I used to think the same thing. My father, too, probably, and now he was dead.

Claudia had said that I should take a taxi from the station. They didn’t have time to pick me up because they needed to stay with Tamara and the little one. It was tougher than I thought to get a taxi. There wasn’t a single one waiting at the tiny station. I walked all around it, startling a couple of teenagers with beers in their hands. I wondered whether I’d be standing here if my father had used a condom with our au pair. Then with a sigh I opened the map function on my phone and tried to figure out which way I had to walk.

As I set out across a parking lot a taxi showed up. A man with a black mustache sat at the wheel, probably a Turk rather than a Pakistani I decided as I slid into the back seat next to some bags. I told him the address. He looked at me in the rearview mirror.

“Who did that?” he asked.

“A Rottweiler.” It had been a while since anyone had asked about it. About a week. An eternity.

“My brother-in-law had a Rottweiler.” The Turk sounded as if he was doing me a favor telling me. “Real nice. But such teeth!”

“If it was up to me I’d have them all ground into bonemeal. As far as I’m concerned, that could go for every dog on the planet.”

The Turk shook his head. “Not all. My brother-in-law’s Rottweiler is nice. But you really look different. What does your girl say?”

“She’s getting off with a blind guy,” I summed up our complicated love triangle for him.

“The girl blind, too?”

If only it were that easy, I thought. “She’s in a wheelchair and is the prettiest girl in the world.”

“Shit,” said the Turk understandingly.

After ten minutes I realized he was fucking with me. Einhausen wasn’t that big. It was a dump with ten thousand residents, you could
walk
all the way through town in fifteen minutes.

“We almost there?”

“Almost there,” the Turk echoed. “What are you here for?”

“My father died,” I said and couldn’t believe that he was suddenly pissed off and yelled that I shouldn’t fuck with him. It took a lot of effort to convince him to still take me all the way to my destination.

I
stood before a gray box that was mostly hidden behind a meter-high hedgerow that smelled like cough syrup. On the gate was a plaque with my last name on it, engraved in rounded letters. The place was a nightmare in concrete. After all those years in our historic landmarked building, I wasn’t prepared for this. For a second I wondered if maybe what came between my parents wasn’t Tamara at all but rather aesthetic differences. Those were harder to overcome than a pregnant au pair. Even under happier circumstances I wouldn’t have been happy to enter this mausoleum. But the taxi was already gone and the driver had kept my change. I rang the bell.

It buzzed and I pushed open the gate. The yard was wide and lined with low hedges that also reminded me of a cemetery. I headed toward the door, from which hung a wreath, that also reminded me of a . . . The door opened.

I attempted a smile so painstaking that it pulled at my ear.

In the doorway appeared a tyke with spiky blond hair, just like mine had been. He was wearing Star Wars pajamas and slippers with bunny ears. His expression suddenly became the famous painting by Edvard Munch. Then he disappeared in a flash and his Scream echoed from somewhere inside the house. As I got nearer to the door I could hear him swearing loudly that he would never do
it
again if the man with the hat would just please, please go away.

And then I landed in Tamara’s arms.

Unlike the old days I didn’t have to stand on my tiptoes to be able to look down Tamara’s shirt. I flushed thinking how present Tamara’s breasts had been during that year at our place. As far as I could tell, my perspective was the only thing that had changed in the equation.

“Sincere condolences,” I mumbled, blindsided by the slew of postpubescent thoughts hitting me. Then I finally looked her in the eyes.

In the past I’d always found Tamara very pretty. That was basically still true, even though my standard of beauty had shifted significantly because of Janne. Compared to Janne, any other woman looked like a rough draft And at the moment Tamara wasn’t exactly bursting with life. She had red splotches on her cheeks and dark rings under her bloodshot eyes. She looked about as old as Claudia. And just to prove it, Claudia came up beside her.

“My sweetie,” said Claudia, her lips trembling as she stretched out her arms to me.

I didn’t understand whatever it was she whispered in my ear. She probably passed on her condolences, too. I said, “Likewise,” and looked at her so as not to have to look at Tamara or at the decor inside this concrete grotto. The stone floor beneath my feet was black with white specks, and somewhere farther back a fireplace with a curved mantel crept into my field of vision.

But I couldn’t count the lines on my mother’s face forever, so I turned back to Tamara with a sigh. Everything that had happened to me leading up to this moment suddenly rushed through my head and I wanted to turn away to spare the young widow’s nerves.

But Tamara walked around me so she was standing directly in front of me. She grabbed my chin with her hand. Spellbound, she scanned my face, but when she went to remove my sunglasses I shoved her hand aside. I broke out in a sweat. I saved myself by staring once again at her cleavage.

“You look . . . ” Tamara exhaled. My cheeks began to tingle. Claudia coughed quietly.

“Tammy,” she said, “I think you need to check on the little one.”

I sat on the leather sofa next to Claudia, who was looking through some folder as if her life depended on it. On the floor above us, war had broken out. Tamara screamed in a language I took for Ukrainian, and Ferdi answered in German.

“I AM NOT GOING DOWNSTAIRS!!”

Ukrainian chatter.

“I’M SCARED ANYWAY!”

Ukrainian chatter.

“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU! PAPA NEEDS TO COME HOME!!”

Claudia looked at the ceiling and wiped a tear from her cheek.

“Leave the boy alone,” I shouted. “He’s not the only person who’s afraid of me.”

Tamara’s Ukrainian rose to a pitch that rattled my bones.

“HE IS NOT AND NEVER WAS MY BROTHER!” the child screamed.

“Marek, come upstairs so you can meet each other,” shouted Tamara.

“NOOOOOOO!! PLEASE NO!! PLEASE NO!!!”

There was nothing else I could do, so I covered my ears with my hands. My nerves weren’t so strong at the moment either. Claudia played as if she was just continuing to read something in her folder. Though it had been a long time since she flipped the page. I wondered whether it was her heartbeat or mine that I was hearing. I took one hand off my ear and took another apple from the glass bowl. I’d already eaten four just out of nervousness. There were three left. The hard chewing was calming.

Tamara came running down the stairs and made another attempt at hugging me.

“I’m sorry, Marek. Ferdi is stubborn. You were the same way once, heaven knows. I apologize. It’ll get better.”

“Hmmmhmmm.” My mouth was stuffed.

“The boy has just lost his father,” Claudia said almost as an aside.

“Which one?”

“Both.” Claudia looked at Tamara over her glasses. “Presumably both boys.”

T
wo hours later I was pining for the villa in Marenitz. It was unbearable. I had no idea what I was supposed to do here. Claudia made it easy on herself by keeping her nose buried in the paperwork and pulling something out every once in a while for Tamara.

“You need to copy this. This needs to be filed. This is for the life insurance.”

“Okay,” answered Tamara without looking at the documents.

Ferdi refused to come downstairs as long as I was in the living room. He shouted something about frightening glasses. Claudia assured Tamara not very convincingly that it wasn’t so bad. I said I was used to children crossing the street because of me. Adults, too. Tamara looked at me. “Why?”

I wasn’t sure whether she was pretending or she was really that stupid. I couldn’t remember anymore what she’d been like in the brains department. I watched as she fumed around her tiled home, changed outfits, called somebody, broke down crying, screamed at Ferdi, made tea and left it sitting around, went out to the postbox to get the latest condolence cards. The entire town of Einhausen seemed in a hurry to proclaim their sorrow over Father in writing. In some envelopes was money that made its way into Tamara’s jeans.

“You should write it all down,” said Claudia. “You need to keep track so you can send personal thank you notes to everyone.”

“I will.” Tamara tossed the envelopes behind the sofa.

I
had to admit that my father had chosen a death that you didn’t need to be ashamed of. He didn’t die miserably of cancer or just keel over, leaving me to worry about what health problems he’d passed on to me. He died while climbing a mountain in Switzerland.

“He climbed mountains?” I asked, pleasantly surprised. The father I remembered had a big belly and hamster cheeks, and everything on him drooped. The idea of him outfitted for a climb, on the side of a mountain, exceeded my powers of imagination.

“He had just started.” Tamara didn’t bother to try to wipe away the steady stream of tears. “And now he’s fallen!” She buried her face in a sofa cushion.

I patted her back awkwardly. “At least it was a cool way to die.”

“It’s an idiotic way to die,” groaned Tamara through the pillow. “Why does someone who’s nearly sixty suddenly need to start climbing mountains?”