Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything (4 page)

We wolf down our cake, quickly swallowing a second piece, and then go up. Such excitement. At first I can't see anything; it's
pitch-black in the room, unbearably hot, and it reeks of chemicals. Johannes leads me to a chair, then turns on the light.

Along the wall in front of me is a worktop, and on it a large, mysterious contraption and several shallow plastic trays containing liquid, as well as bottles labeled “Developer” and “Fixer,” and some boxes of photographic paper. Above this hangs a washing line with pegged-up photographs, and I am in every one of them: asleep in bed in the morning, brushing my teeth naked, bent over
The Brothers Karamazov
, lying in the garden in the sun, leaning against the old shed by the dam—naked again, my hair in a braid. Johannes smiles and says, “Now I know what I want to do: I'm going to study art. We're going to get away from here.” He gives me a piercing look. “Dad wants me to take over the farm. Now that we're allowed to own the land again, he says, we might be able to make some money. But I need to get away.” I feel dizzy, I don't know what to say, he looks so happy. But what about me? I've only just gotten here. He goes on and on, without saying very much: “Do you know what? I'd have done what Hartmut did, I'd have applied to leave, and just like Hartmut I wouldn't have said a word to anyone. But now we can go wherever we like, we can do what we like.” He swings his right hand through the air emphatically. “You would have been barred from going to college, Maria,” he continues. “You didn't go through the state initiation ceremony. But you've still got to finish school. We'll wait until then; it's too late for me to start this semester anyway. I'll go on working for Dad for a while, and then we'll be off.” His eyes are bulging with happiness about his future prospects. Then I think of Henner and feel the place where he touched my breast. It's burning. Johannes kneels on the floor in front of me and puts his head in my lap. “Oh, Maria . . . ,” he says, “we're going to have such a different life from the one we'd imagined.” It's only then that I notice the pictures on the wall. Five of them, in small black frames. Five children. Three girls, two boys, lying down with their eyes closed. Because they're all dead.

5

The house is abuzz with excitement. It's the third week in July. The visit is imminent. You can't communicate with Frieda; the usual order in the kitchen has given way to chaos. Baking, cooking, cleaning. Now the entire village knows: tomorrow the Westerners are coming!

Frieda and I are bent over a mountain of leavened dough; she shows me what it should feel like when it's just right: like the soft breast of a woman. I feel my own breast to compare; Frieda lets out a hearty laugh. There's definitely a certain similarity in the consistency. We're making
gugelhupf
and fruitcake—I can do it in my sleep these days—and for lunch we're going to have vegetable soup with semolina dumplings, followed by roast beef with potato dumplings and
red cabbage, and a sabayon with real vanilla for pudding. Henner got us the real vanilla. He was over in the West yesterday and brought us back a few presents, because Marianne is always generous toward him. When he has been feeling down she has occasionally given him something: a chicken, or a few onions and vegetables. So he's very much in her debt. He brought me something, too: a bag of caramels and a butterfly hairclip inlaid with ruby-red stones. This earned me a suspicious glance from Marianne. Henner's much better, they say. There's a chance farmers will get back the land that once belonged to their parents. At least that's what Siegfried is hoping. No one knows any details at this stage. In the GDR, the Brendels were one of the few families that were not collective farmers. Henner, on the other hand, worked for years in the agricultural collective before giving it up to be at the farm because the rest of his family had died. And that probably suited him fine.

After expropriation Heinrich and Frieda were allowed to keep three-quarters of a hectare. That was a lot by GDR standards, and yet they had to reduce their livestock holding, which now wasn't enough to live off, so Siegfried came up with the idea of the sawmill. The rest of the land, forty hectares at least, went to the collective. The large hay meadows down by the river were only the Brendels' on lease. The same happened to Henner's family.

I've heard he's been clearing up a bit at the farm. The dogs are quiet at the moment, the horses clean and well groomed. I can go for a ride if I like, he said, with Johannes of course, but I don't trust his horses.

Frieda releases me from the kitchen for an hour, so Johannes and I go to the river. Until only a few weeks ago the water here would look different every day—green, blue, yellow, rust-red—and it stank of rotten eggs. That was because of the chemical factory upstream, where my mother worked. Now on hot days the cattle go to the riverbank and drink their fill.

I have discovered why Zossima prostrated himself before Dmitry. Shortly before his death he said to Alexey, “I bowed down yesterday to the great suffering in store for him.” Alexey was beside himself with worry.

We're sitting by the river with our feet in the water. Johannes only ever sees me through the camera lens these days. Every gesture becomes a picture, every look becomes infinity. He delivers me from time and captures a moment, which is then immediately lost forever—every picture is a small death.

Later we wander through the meadow as far as the railway tracks. We walk along the tracks until we reach a bridge. It crosses the river diagonally and is about fifty meters long. To get to the other side you have to walk down the middle of the tracks, on the rotten sleepers; there's barely any space to either side. We put our heads on the tracks to listen out for any humming and check for slight vibrations indicating an oncoming train. No humming. We can't see any track workers, either. You can't escape a train by jumping into the river; it's too shallow at this point, and full of large stones. But over there, on the other side, there are the prettiest wild flowers and a spot that no one else knows about. When we reach it I undress and paddle in the river. Johannes shouts something at me; he's tinkering with his camera. I shout back that he should join me, it's lovely in the water, but he doesn't hear me.

We don't get home until evening. Frieda's grumbling, wondering where I've been all this time. “I could have done with her help,” she says. Then she smiles and says, “Why doesn't she just go and fetch me some chives from the garden?” I dash out.

For dinner there's black bread with butter, thin slices of hard-boiled egg sprinkled with chives, and salad with a dressing of oil, vinegar, water, and sugar.
Dressing
is a word we've learned only recently. Siegfried gets a fried schnitzel as well. We're sitting at the
table in the yard, among the flower tubs, when Siegfried says that he's really looking forward to seeing Hartmut. He would have been quite happy to disappear back then, too; he only stayed because it would have broken his mother's heart. That's how he puts it. Frieda doesn't stir. Marianne looks from one to the other. Perhaps she's wondering what to say, but in the end decides it would be better to keep quiet. They'll be here tomorrow, the Westerners, from Rosenheim, from Bavaria.

I decide I will go back to my mother's after all, to fetch my suitcase. In it are some clothes I'd like to wear when our visitors are here. I've heard that they make fun of us over there; I can't get that magazine cover out of my head; the one with the picture of a girl holding a cucumber and saying “my first banana.” It's still a lovely, bright summer's evening, but there's a distinct chill drifting up from the river. I borrow a scarf from Marianne, tell Johannes I might be back late, and set off.

When I get there, my grandparents are sitting on the bench outside the house. I stop to talk, but I don't go into any detail. Then I ask about my father, Ulrich, the eldest of their four sons. So it's true, he is going to marry this Nastja, a nineteen-year-old. My grandmother asks whether I'm going to move back in, now that the house is being renovated. “We're even getting a flush toilet,” she says. And the old washhouse is being converted into a toolshed. My grandmother used to do the laundry there once a week. It was so hot that the steam rose to the ceiling in huge clouds before dripping back down. The laundry tub was almost the size of my grandmother. She would stir the washing with a long wooden paddle, first to the left, then to the right, until it was clean. The dirtiest items were scrubbed on the washboard.

Mom is going to have her own bathroom with a shower. The old boiler and the tub where we'd have a bath every Friday, one after
the other, are being ripped out. The small room behind my grandparents' kitchen is going to be a guest room. It's awkward for all of them that Mom's still living here. We had our own house for a few years, over in the new part of the village. I was ten when we moved in, and before then we'd lived here, with my grandparents. I had a lovely, bright room on the second floor, a fold-down bed, blue-and-white-checked curtains, and lilac wallpaper with a flower pattern. The living room had an open hearth where we'd light a fire every day around Christmastime. It was a brand-new house and Dad had built it himself.

After the divorce, when Dad disappeared to the Soviet Union for good, we stayed on there. I was thirteen, Mom was thirty-three. But six months later we packed our things into boxes and Grandma got our old rooms ready again. We couldn't keep the house without Dad's income. My mother sold it.

I chose the attic bedroom at my grandparents'. I was on my own up there; the other rooms were full of old furniture and junk, no one slept in them. I had a chamber pot under my bed again, because it was a long, cold walk to the outside toilet. The night's deposits were tipped out in the morning, and Grandma would rinse the chamber pots with hot water.

This backward move didn't particularly bother me. But Mom suffered terribly.

I can hear her steps—such tiny, delicate, careful steps, as if she's creeping about. But she always walks like that. She's brought my case down. The weight of it pulls her over to one side; she drops it beside me. My grandparents ask me to pass on their greetings to Frieda; say hello from Traudel and Lorenz, they reiterate, as if I didn't know their names. Mom gives me a nod that she's ready to leave. I feel more cheerful.

Mom brings the Trabant out of the garage. Dad left it behind; he couldn't drive it all those thousands of kilometers to the Soviet
Union; it would have been too much for an old car. The tank is almost empty, but there'll be enough to get us to the farm—it's downhill practically all the way. I sit in the passenger seat beside Mom, wedge the suitcase between my knees, and quickly crank the window down. I don't know why, but I feel a slight chill.

A few hundred meters before the Brendels' farm Mom turns off the engine and lets the car coast. She's trying to save gas, seeing as it's all downhill from here. I watch as she removes the key from the ignition. That's odd.

To the left of the road there's an embankment; to the right, meadows and woodland extend down into the valley. All of a sudden I hear a click. The steering wheel locks. At this point the road bends around to the right, but the car keeps going straight. I grab Mom's arm and she looks at me, her eyes wide with fright, as the Trabant climbs the embankment, slowly, very slowly, veers right, tips onto its side, and finally, as if in slow motion, rolls onto the roof. We're not strapped in so we fall, noiselessly, first sideways, then onto our heads, and end up lying there stiff with shock. For a few seconds there's silence. I can't even hear her breathing.

I'm the first to try to open the door, but after several futile attempts I climb out through the window. My mother follows me. She still hasn't said a word.

And then we're sitting there trembling by the side of the road, next to an upturned, sky-blue Trabant. In Mom's hand is the key, which for some unfathomable reason she'd taken out of the ignition. Yes, she actually did. She says nothing. I say nothing. I feel ashamed for her. I don't know how long we've been sitting there—it can't be more than a few minutes—but it feels like an eternity. Suddenly I hear dogs behind us. Their barking brings me out of my stupor and back into the present. It's Henner coming from the woods. He has a sack over his shoulder and I find myself wondering what's in it. He must be hiding something. Seeing us sitting there he approaches, looks at
the car, and shakes his head. “We'll get that back the right way up,” he says. My mind is now empty. I watch Henner put down the sack and I don't let it out of my sight. He's talking to my mother, and now she's shaking her head. But then she stands up, both of them lift the car in one single movement—all the power coming from Henner, no doubt—and set it back on its four wheels. My mother takes out the suitcase, puts it down by my feet—just like that, without even looking at me—then gets into the car and drives off.

Later I'd sometimes say that everything that happened must have been because of the shock. Some things, for sure, but not everything.

I pick up the case and start walking. Henner slings the sack back over his shoulder. With large strides he catches up with me, takes the suitcase, and says, “Come with me!” His house is not far. We turn right onto the path and walk to the farm in silence. The dogs jump up at me, and I let them; I'm looking at the sack, but there's nothing moving inside it. I follow him into the house, into the kitchen. He puts the case onto a chair and drops the sack by the cooker. Wood, I tell myself, it's just wood, but why does he need to heat the place? It's summer. He pushes me toward the table, sits me on a chair with armrests, shakes his head, and says, “That was something else.” Beside me is a glass with clear liquid. I pick it up and drink—vodka. Henner takes the scarf from my shoulders. His big dogs are scratching at the door. He's shut them out. He doesn't want witnesses, I think, they could bark it to the whole world. I like this image so much that I almost burst out laughing. Something in the sack moves, it can't be wood after all. Standing behind me he puts his hands around my neck. I'm going to die. If I don't die now I'll never be afraid again. The dogs are making a racket. I have another sip. He lets me go again and I finish my drink. Now I can see my bare feet. I don't have my shoes on anymore; Henner has them in his hands and he tosses them carelessly into the corner by the sack. I'm not mistaken: something
is
moving inside. “Now I've caught you,” he jokes, “and dragged you back to my den.” Then he laughs, and it sounds to me like the rumble of thunder.

A hare, I think, there's a hare in the sack. He's set a trap and caught a hare. For the dogs, those beasts of his.

I don't know how he got me into the other room. Perhaps I just followed him. There's an open window, a yellowed curtain is billowing in the evening breeze. Between the lime trees I can see the gable of the Brendels' farmhouse and the light on in the window. Johannes is waiting for me. My dress has a side zip, my fingertips are touching the top of the window frame, small pieces of paint flake off, and Henner's hands are rough. Like a sleepwalker I step out of my knickers and dress, which is now covering my feet. He's breathing gently and rhythmically on my neck, and I'm sure my heart is about to stop. It misses a beat, then sparks back into life: a shudder flashes through my body, an uncontrollable shudder, and then several more. He holds me firmly until it stops. I can feel small stones beneath my feet; the dogs have quieted down. From behind his hands press against my pelvic bone and inch downward to my inner thighs. Then, with gentle force, he pushes my legs apart. I support myself on the windowsill so I don't fall over. Zossima springs to mind as he quotes from St. John's Gospel, saying to Alexey, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

Then I fall onto the bed and into a deep ecstasy.

I don't deny him anything, not even when he lifts me from the bed and says I must kneel. Not even when he wraps my braid around his hand and watches me from above, doing what he tells me to. Now it's him trembling. I'm going to be seventeen soon. In the old days that made you a woman. My grandmother had her first child at seventeen; that's what it used to be like.