The Mussel Feast (6 page)

We forfeited all our father’s sympathy, we said that evening, also saying that any sympathy we might have felt for our father had vanished; we even said that the sole reason our sympathy had vanished was because any sympathy he’d had for us had also vanished long ago; the fact that we were always there, ruining his life, had drained all sympathy from him, as he sometimes said; I wish you weren’t born, he once remarked, adding that he deeply regretted having fathered first me – by accident – and then my brother, who had been planned, but who he regarded as a mistake, a disastrous one when he looked at the result: his son a complete and utter failure, which he blamed on my mother and the school system which had relentlessly mollycoddled him in the most irresponsible way; while from the outset he’d hated my obduracy, my unappealing side; that evening my mother said that from the outset my father hadn’t shown the slightest sympathy for my unattractiveness. The first time he saw me, apparently, he cried out in horror, it’s a monkey, tearing his hair out because there was no way that ugly thing could be his daughter, let alone the son he was meant to have had. I was very ugly when I was born, my mother said, but that didn’t bother her; I didn’t notice, she said; she didn’t realize until the midwife consoled her by saying, don’t worry, it can all change; Mum found me exceptionally pretty all the same and loved me straight away, even though she could see what the midwife had meant when she said, don’t worry, it can all change. I was covered in hair from top to bottom, there was black hair over my entire body – apparently even my face was hairy like a monkey’s – my entire body right down to my toes; I was so plug-ugly when I was born that my father was disgusted by the sight of me; my mother always said she found me exceptionally lovely straight away, only later did she notice that I looked like a black monkey. The hair fell out after a few days, and from then on I looked like all other babies, but it was too late for my father, who had already formed a negative impression of me, there was no way of salvaging this impression; my father is a good-looking man, you see, and he felt aggrieved that he of all people should have fathered a little black monkey. My father’s hair grows quickly, he needs to shave twice a day to avoid a shadow on his chin, and he was especially proud of his hair, because other men went bald, but my father had such thick black hair that he didn’t have to worry about going bald; he thought bald men plain silly, apart from Uwe Seeler, who he didn’t find quite so silly. Whenever someone said to him after I was born, she’s just like her father, he’d go mad; apparently he went straight from the clinic to get drunk, unable as he was to cope with his daughter’s ugliness while sober; my mother didn’t notice any ugliness, she said, but he showed not the slightest sympathy from the outset. Apparently my father said how ashamed he felt to have such a monkey for a daughter, and was inconsolable that a handsome person like him could be cursed with such an ugly child; in fact my unappealing side, as he often said, became more pronounced as time went on. Whereas other children were cute and clean, I was forever filthy; they dressed me in clean clothes, but the moment they tried to take me out in a clean coat, I spoiled it; I incessantly puked up the fresh and delicious food they fed me, and while other parents wheeled their rosy, cute-looking children in pushchairs through the village and castle gardens, my mother had to turn back in a hurry, because I’d puked up my entire lunch; they used to say, no matter what you give this child, she pukes it up again immediately, but the truth was – terribly unappealing, I know – I waited until the very moment my mother sat me in the pushchair and was about to go to the castle gardens before puking up, not a second earlier, which meant that everyone could see me puking up my entire lunch. I’d bring up my entire lunch in public, whereas other children would do their burps at home behind closed doors, and right after being fed. I never burped to order after being fed, and I didn’t just do one burp, either, but many burps, and not until I’d been put in a clean coat; I never puked up twice on the same coat, my mother said, besides I howled from morning to night, and Mum could have fed me from morning to night; I must have been such a glutton, no sooner had I downed a bottle of formula than I’d start howling again for more, even though I hadn’t puked up the first bottle yet. I was only quiet, my mother said, when I had the bottle of formula in my mouth, and hence I became a very chubby baby. There are photos of how chubby I was, so chubby I couldn’t move, all the same I continued to howl the second my bottle was empty; my father, thank God, was studying at the time, he was renting a room in Berlin and only came home at the weekends, but he couldn’t bear those weekends, because I didn’t just howl from morning to night, but from night to morning, too: all night, every night. My parents put my cot in the room furthest away from theirs and closed the doors, but still neither of them could sleep a wink, my howling must have been so ghastly; my mother told me that my father said, she’s not a monkey, she’s the devil incarnate, so my mother spent her weekends comforting and placating my irate father; he was not to be comforted or placated, however, particularly not at night, as he couldn’t sleep through my howling; his devilish child, this spawn of Satan, enraged him so much that once he picked me up and threw me against the wall. My father later said that this was the first time I was quiet, and I asked, what happened then, but my parents couldn’t remember what happened then. I even limped like the devil himself, forever dragging one leg behind me, from the moment I could walk, because there was a problem with the way my hip bone had developed, which of course nobody could anticipate and detect in a small child before they could walk. My mother was pleased that my father wasn’t at home the whole time, for my howling was unreasonable; my grandmother, too, thought that this child wasn’t appealing and cute like the other children who were all pretty and clean, and who didn’t howl, certainly not all night long, especially not the girls; puking and howling are unseemly; boys might do those things from time to time, although my brother was one of those cute babies, he never brought up his food and never howled, nor was my brother such a glutton. He was gentle. My father pitied his gentleness and his permanent cuteness enraged him, while he found it lacking in me. And my parents assumed their unappealing daughter would never find a husband, whereas my brother’s girly nature – he even wanted to wear dresses when he was little – made my father suspicious from the outset, my mother said. My brother was blond and rosy and always smiling, a child with a permanent smile, apparently; from the outset my father found my brother’s smile peculiar, and my father always said, that’s meant to be my son; I was supposed to have been his son, and my father showed no sympathy for the fact that I wasn’t his son; I was too ugly and unappealing to be his daughter, I was my father’s monkey, whereas my brother was my mother’s golden boy; she saw nothing peculiar about his smile, just as she’d seen nothing monkey-like about me and my initial hirsuteness. Only later did she realize that her daughter was a little devil; she worried a lot about both her children, but showed sympathy, too; my mother always showed sympathy for everybody. And that evening, even though she was being insubordinate for the first time in her life, she tried to persuade us to show some sympathy for our father, which we absolutely refused to do because our sympathy had vanished, it never having been aroused in my father, as my mother said, but forfeited from the outset.

Even when Mum said, he had it hard, your father, this didn’t change our minds; we said to our mother, don’t cop out now, you were being so brave; of course we knew that my father had come from a poor background and had to battle his way upwards, which he managed to do solely by virtue of his huge talent and intelligence; it’s hard to do what he did, my mother said, who had it easier; she didn’t come from the very bottom and so didn’t have to make it the whole way up. When her father died she still had a house, although she was heavily in debt and had to fork out for the mortgage as well as her brothers’ studies; both my mother’s brothers became musicians as they’d wanted to, and as my mother had wanted to as well, but she quickly became a teacher, while my father wanted to become a scientist and study mathematics, coming as he did from the very bottom and out of wedlock, in the village where his mother wove baskets and knitted jumpers for other people. My grandmother was a very poor woman, and was a constant embarrassment to my father as she had so little to give him, nor could he take her anywhere; I can’t be seen anywhere with you, my father said later, when he was already on the verge of being promoted. He didn’t have it easy with his mother, she lived in a dingy and grubby place, she only had a single room and the kitchen smelled as it does in poor people’s houses, because it
was
a poor person’s house, and my father was always angry with her; later, whenever he visited the village, he preferred to stay at the inn rather than at his mother’s, even though they had no running water. My mother and I used to stay with my mother’s mother, and my father and brother stayed at the inn rather than with my father’s mother, who we always called the other grandmother because she was poor, whereas our proper grandmother wasn’t poor; she had her own house, and everyone in the village knew her and greeted her, whereas almost nobody knew or greeted the other grandmother, who remained a stranger, a foreigner after she came to Germany. And there was another reason why my other grandmother was called the other grandmother: in family photos she always stood to one side, on the periphery, always a gap between her and the rest of the family. My mother reminded us that it wasn’t easy for my father; his mother and his background were huge liabilities, in comparison to the trivial liability on my grandmother’s house when my grandfather died; my father did what he could to paper over his background, but it wasn’t easy, for my other grandmother was tremendously proud of her brilliant son and clung to him wherever possible. Whenever I visited her she would cry, saying how proud she was that my father had made his way from the bottom to the top. I was very attached to my other grandmother, and my father was very attached to his mother, too; to see her living in the village in such poverty broke his heart, a woman who nobody apart from the simple villagers knew or greeted; your other grandmother is a simple woman, my mother would tell us, and because she was a simple woman she was desperate to receive letters; my mother used to write to her mother once a week, she always wrote to her mother on Sunday evenings, whereas my father couldn’t write to his mother; he was a very busy man, and couldn’t do that as well; he didn’t have the time or energy to do everything, and he couldn’t stand being clung to. It’s hard enough coming from a poor background and making your way up in the world, you need to use your fists to escape a background like that, you can’t allow your background to cling and stick to you; my father would churn inside at the thought of it, he couldn’t eat at his mother’s house, either, because it wasn’t clean or inviting; so untidy, my father said, but there was one occasion when he couldn’t avoid it. His mother had said to my mother, you never eat here, you only ever eat there, by which she meant my proper grandmother’s, where we always ate when we were in the village, because my father found her place inviting and tidy. And his own mother was offended that we never ate at hers; she said to my mother, he behaves as if he’s ashamed; my mother understood – she understood everything – and finally my father agreed to eat at his mother’s if she asked someone else to cook: there was no way he was going to eat at hers if she did the cooking herself, he said. In fact she not only paid for the food but the cook, too, so just for once we ate at hers and she was delighted; she was so excited and nervous with delight that she couldn’t keep her hands still; my father couldn’t bear it when she couldn’t keep her hands still. Keep your hands still, he said, but she was too excited about our visit, and after keeping her hands still for barely five minutes, she couldn’t keep them still any longer. All her life she’d had to work very quickly with her hands and these rapid movements had made her hands independent; she’d keep them still for barely five minutes, then her fingers would start up again, executing these work movements independently. Eventually my father’s patience snapped, and the cook who my other
grandmother
had hired was no longer good enough to avoid the mood being spoiled. It’s impossible to eat here, my father said in a strop because once more he felt ashamed at his mother, who’d led a menial life and had never been able to shake it off, no matter how many times he’d told her to keep her hands still instead of fidgeting. And then he stopped going to hers, whereas I liked going to my grandmother’s, because although she was unable to keep her hands still, she did something which never happened in our family, it was forbidden – the other grandmother, they used to say, spends hours staring out of the window. I didn’t really understand what there was to disapprove of; I wanted my grandmother to teach me how to stare out of the window for hours, and I liked going to her place; when I was at my grandmother’s we did nothing at all. In our house doing nothing didn’t exist; it was absolutely imperative that everybody was doing something, all the time; when I went to cafés later on, I merely carried on in secret with what I’d picked up from my other
grandmother
: doing nothing. I never thought my grandmother was a simple woman; I thought she was an extraordinary woman, because she was capable of doing nothing, whereas everybody else was always doing something; your mother is an extraordinary woman, I’d often say to my father; he felt flattered, and then said, look at me, nothing comes from nothing. Clearly, he didn’t understand what I meant. In any case, he resented her for her menial life and for the fact that she couldn’t keep her hands still as a consequence of those years when she’d had to graft so that her son could reach the top. He was very attached to her, however, and was so distraught when she died that my mother thought he’d gone crazy with pain; he mourned his mother and tore his hair out; he holed up in the bedroom, locking himself in, and refused to come out for days. When he did come out he swore that his mother would have the loveliest grave in the whole village; he made all the arrangements for this lovely grave, which wasn’t easy because we were in the West and the village in the East. But he managed to arrange for the most splendid grave in the whole village; he invited the entire village to the funeral, everybody who was anybody, and reserved the restaurant in the town hall for a meal that nobody was going to forget in a hurry. He made a precise note of who came to the funeral and who didn’t, and thank God almost everybody came; there were more than a hundred people at his mother’s funeral, more than had ever known or greeted her, and the grave lies in a lovely spot, not too close to the perimeter, under trees, not in the part of the cemetery for poor people; it’s the only grave with a gold-leaf inscription – my father ordered gold leaf specially from the West because there was no gold leaf over there. He could not rest until his mother’s grave was the only one with gold leaf, and only then did he find peace – apart from with me. I didn’t come to the funeral; he never forgave me for not coming, you of all people, he reproached me, you of all people, and he reproached me for being stubborn and cold-hearted, he had no sympathy; in our family I was always known as the stubborn and cold-hearted one, and my stubbornness and cold-heartedness, which developed from my unappealing nature, were in evidence yet again when I refused to go to my grandmother’s funeral, to a place I’d always enjoyed going and where I felt happy. My father never forgave me for this act of spite and irreverence, as he called it. But he couldn’t force me, because I’d come of age; my grandmother died at the very moment when I came of age, just a few days afterwards; and when I came of age my stubbornness and cold-heartedness really showed, my father said, but unlike in the past, before I’d come of age, now there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t beat the stuffing out of me; I’ll beat the stuffing out of you, he’d have said in the past, I’ll give you what for, and I really would have been given what for if he’d beaten the stuffing out of me. My mother would have stood with my brother in the hall by the living-room door, while my father locked the door behind him and fetched a cognac from the bar in the wall unit, the key to the living-room door in his trouser pocket as ever, and my father would have tried to identify the reasons for my stubbornness; could you explain it to me, he’d have asked, and I wouldn’t have been able to, because I wasn’t able to explain anything if my father yelled at me, and so I’d have been given what for. The more insistently he harangued me, the more stubborn I became, refusing to say a word, all speech abandoning me in one fell swoop. I never knew what to say when my father said, answer me for God’s sake; just once, when I was a child, I managed an answer, but it was the wrong one, and wrong answers incensed my father, then he really gave you what for. Since then I’ve never managed a single answer when my father says, answer me for God’s sake, I asked you a question, what have you got to say to me. Out of sheer disappointment he’d have drunk another cognac, leaving me to wonder what I might break if I jumped from the first-floor balcony, but because of the neighbours the windows and balcony door were of course closed, and I couldn’t escape. Now my father would have looked completely wild, because I hadn’t answered him, he’d have asked me again and again, haranguing me, but ultimately he wouldn’t have been able to help himself and he’d be forced to punish my stubbornness, since no understanding or answer had been forthcoming. My father would have said, I’m not going to put up with that, you don’t do that with me, and he’d have drunk another cognac and finally said, take your hands away from your face; after the second cognac I’d have already put my hands to my face, hidden my face in my hands – I didn’t want my father to hit me in the face – and I’d have said, please, not my face; my father would have said, for God’s sake take your hands away from your face, it would have made him livid that I hadn’t taken my hands away from my face, it makes me furious, he said again and again, I’m not going to put up with it, but I never took my hands away, he had to remove them himself, both of them, he had to grip both of my hands in his left so he could hit my face with his right and that really made him furious. My stubbornness; he tried to use violence to knock the stubbornness out of me, just as he tried to use violence to knock the wimpishness out of my brother. All my stubbornness was trying to achieve, however, was to avoid flying head first through the bullseye glass; it would have been a catastrophe to fly head first through the bullseye glass, I’d have cowered under his blows, fallen to the floor without saying a word, and I’d have whimpered that he should stop; no, no, I’d have said if my father had started kicking me in the head with his clogs, but my stubbornness would have been absolute. Only later, in my room, where I’d have been locked, would the words return, wicked and vengeful words lacking all understanding. Whenever my brother was locked in his room he always sang loudly, he always sang, always the same song, a folk song, ‘
Hänschen klein
’, which put my father in an even fouler temper; often my brother was hauled out of his room again, but my father couldn’t knock the folk song out of him; he could knock the wimpishness out of him, but not the folk song; he severely reproached my mother because of this; my mother said, but I’m doing my best, don’t be so hard on them, and my father said, I’m not putting up with it, they’re not going to do that with me, they should know me better. We’d got to know our father very well over many years, but when my grandmother died he had to stop because I’d come of age; of course, he didn’t speak to me for several weeks after the funeral, he refused to speak to me till I’d apologized for my behaviour, and every day my mother came into my room and said, go on, apologize. She couldn’t cope when people didn’t speak to each other. But I could cope, because in the evenings I was able to read instead of having to play skat; nobody spoke to me, anyhow, because if my father wasn’t speaking to me then the other two weren’t allowed to, either; they only spoke to me secretly when he was away. My brother always apologized that same evening, so we all spoke to him, whereas I rarely apologize straight away; sometimes I didn’t apologize at all, but sometimes I apologized when my mother said, go on, apologize, can’t you see how this pains me. Although I could see how my behaviour pained her, I spent months reading books in my room in the evenings and doing nothing. Sometimes I’d wonder what I’d done, and when I remembered I’d wonder what was so bad about it, but when I missed the funeral, I realized straight away what was bad about
that
. Even then I didn’t go, however much that meant betraying my family. In the past, on the other hand, I seldom knew what I’d done wrong. Sometimes I asked. I soon realized this question wasn’t a good idea, this question drove my father into a blinding rage, and then he certainly gave me what for; afterwards, when I was in my room, he used to come in and say, now you’ve got time to think about it. My father could always spot and condemn my wickedness, even when I was totally unaware of it; he showed me how wicked I was, making it very clear, just as he showed my brother what a wimp he was, making that perfectly clear, too. My brother also wondered what he might break if he jumped from the first-floor balcony, he said that evening; when I’m in a closed room, he said, I’m always drawn to the window, I can’t help but be drawn to windows in closed rooms, I always want to jump out of the window, I’m obsessed by this urge. My mother fetched another bottle of