The Mussel Feast (8 page)

Spätlese
and insubordination, because, after all, my mother couldn’t just wander off to subscription concerts while my father was stirring dry martinis; there was nowhere my mother could have wandered off to in the evenings, except the occasional parents’ evening she had to attend out of duty; she kept these parents’ evenings very short so she could be back home again soon, and when Mum was on a class trip the household routinely fell apart; any absence of my mother from the household, however short, led to the household falling apart altogether. Your father’s like a little child, she’d say on her return from a class trip, when she noticed the charred smell that hung in our flat whenever my father had to take on the housework. My brother and I had eaten the charred dinner, acting as if nothing were wrong, but it was difficult, because we could rarely identify what the dinner was. My mother’s absence on a class trip signalled a far greater disaster for the household than her being ill, because with a temperature of forty degrees she could still look after the household, but she couldn’t while away on a class trip, whereas my father was totally incapable, and even when my mother had to attend her parents’ evenings, he was as helpless as a little child. She would prepare the dinner in advance, but still she had to keep the parents’ evenings as short as possible; even the shortest absence posed a threat to the household, and thus we’d reached the height of insubordination that evening when I said, why do the subscription concerts have to stop; I could have just as easily said that our entire household has to stop. In a way both these statements amounted to the same thing: the sticking together in our household didn’t survive my mother being absent for a minute; it all fell apart immediately. Once, when my mother was in hospital, my father was keen to bring her back home after barely a week; absolutely out of the question, the doctor said, he couldn’t be held responsible for the consequences, but my father said, the family’s falling apart, did he want to be held responsible for that; eventually the doctor said that he, too, had a family, and agreed to let my mother out and back to her family. In that one week so much menial work and washing had piled up that my mother barely managed to get all the washing and ironing and cleaning done, but she gritted her teeth and set about the work. Pyelonephritis is not a subscription concert, however, and my father only accepted my mother’s absence from the household for a week because pyelonephritis is not exactly pleasurable, whereas the subscription concerts were pure pleasure for my mother. My father would never have put up with my mother enjoying herself while letting the household fall apart; deep down he didn’t even put up with pyelonephritis and the falling apart of the entire household this entailed, because it had to go on; my father made every effort to ensure it went on. And when it had gone on, beyond the subscription concert stage, none of us would be able to set foot in the concerts any more, for my father would have already cancelled our subscriptions, that much was clear. Is that clear, my father would say, in case my mother tried to save her subscription before my father cancelled it, have I made myself clear, my father often said, or he’d say, have I not made myself clear enough, and the person being addressed would always reply in haste, oh yes, very clear. My father would also say, do we understand each other, and all of us replied in haste, yes, we do, which in fact meant that there weren’t any misunderstandings in our family, nor any proscriptions; my father never proscribed anything directly, nor did he ever tell my mother not to go to the concerts. If he’d wanted her not to go to the concerts he would have quietly told her that the concerts were only for the senior employees but not the top ones, and if my mother hadn’t understood that straight away, because she loved going to the concerts with their beauty, harmony and balance, qualities which were very important to my mother, he would have helped himself to a cognac and explained the difference to her again. In the end he would have said, do we understand each other, and my mother would have replied in haste that they did understand each other now. There’s no need to proscribe anything in proper families, my father used to say, and it really was unnecessary because we always understood each other; and if on occasion I was stubborn and said, no way, he started from the beginning and went on until I hastily replied to his question, do we understand each other, with: yes, we do. Misunderstanding is almost impossible in a proper family, and that’s why the insubordination in my question, why do the subscription concerts have to stop, couldn’t be subject to any misunderstanding; it was blasphemy. And we were amazed that I wasn’t struck by a sudden bolt of lightning from the heavens. Then my brother said, look, he’s only human like the rest of us, and we felt a weight lift from our shoulders because we’d never dared to consider this before; no lightning bolt struck us, nor did my father appear at the door; we carried on sitting around the table like conspirators until we were seized by a bad conscience. We’re so mean, my mother said sadly, we’re being unfair on him. Then she sat up straight and spoke her favourite line; her favourite line was one from Fontane. There is much goodness in him, and he is as noble as a man without real love can be. Amen, my brother said, and I reminded my mother that these words were almost the last Effi utters before she dies. My mother loved
Effi Briest
, but then she pondered for a moment – fortunately catching sight of those repulsive mussels again – she pondered a while longer and said, on the other hand, hesitating slightly. Come on, say it, we told her, because we knew at once that something was coming that she’d never dared say before, and then it came out that she’d always secretly admired and worshipped Medea. We were horrified to begin with; we were the children, after all, and so would have been the ones to cop it, but my mother said, those are just fantasies, poisoning everyone and then there’s peace. My mother had fanciful and exaggerated ideas, too, and now she’d just voiced them. Funnily enough, the hairs on my arms and on the rest of my body did not stand on end; after the initial shock I was very relieved, even though I would have copped it if Mum had meant it seriously, and my brother, too. No sooner had she said the Medea stuff, poisoning everyone then there’s peace, than she felt absolutely awful; forgive me, dear God, she cried out, because she felt so absolutely awful, even though my mother had never believed in a dear God, not in any god, but only in harmony and human kindness, and she was dismayed at exhibiting pure wickedness rather than her normal kindness. Instead of pulling herself together as she usually did, she said that dear God would punish her dreadfully for sure; being so wicked she was bound to die this minute, but she still insisted that she admired and worshipped Medea; you’re absolutely everything to me, she said, for she couldn’t understand herself; nobody doubted that we were everything to our mother, nobody doubted that Medea loved her children, either; my mother couldn’t understand where the kindness within her had suddenly gone; she’d really blown it with her dear God that evening, the dear God she didn’t believe in. But we didn’t blame our mother for wanting to poison us; we were just relieved that her accommodating, conciliatory nature, which had caused us all to suffer terribly, had disappeared for good. It was very hard for my mother to see her own ideals of harmony and human kindness fall apart; there’s a big difference between silently admiring and worshipping Medea while reading
Effi Briest
, and saying it out loud; and now she had said it. Everything had fallen apart for my mother that evening because my father hadn’t come home at six, as expected, and because at a quarter to ten the mussels were still in their bowl and we’d drunk
Spätlese
and hadn’t switched on the news, which wasn’t normal in our family; it was a quarter to ten when we looked at the clock.

All that time we hadn’t looked at the clock. But when the telephone rang, the three of us looked at the clock as if by command; we felt panic and in our panic could think of nothing else, and so the first thing we did was to look at the clock, and it read a quarter to ten. Our hearts stopped, for the telephone scythed into our wickedness like God’s retribution; it was the sort of telephone ring which made us think, oh, the Day of Judgement begins at a quarter to ten, we didn’t know that. The ringing heralded the end of the world, at precisely the same time that everything had fallen apart for my mother, because she’d confessed that, like Medea, she’d wanted to poison us all, a thought she’d at least not had to lose much sleep over, because she never imagined she’d ever betray her fantasy, and the telephone would have to ring at that very moment, we thought. We were petrified, each of us gazed at the others’ petrified faces, each one of us saw the others’ bulging eyes, our faces were ashen, and once we were aware that the Day of Judgement had begun at a quarter to ten, we were aware of nothing else; we just continued staring at each other. With the telephone refusing to stop ringing I looked down at my hands and noticed that I’d chewed my nails over the fingertips to the raw skin; my chewed fingernails had red, bloody edges; when I couldn’t look at the red edges any more I balled my chewed fingernails inside my fist and gazed over at my mother. My mother hadn’t noticed the nail-chewing that evening, her fingernails were painted a mother-of-pearl pink and looked very pretty and groomed; she had lacquered them that day. When my father was away on business my mother didn’t have painted nails; the paint flakes off when you do the housework, she said, and she found it a bore to paint her nails every other day. Besides, my mother didn’t think you needed painted nails to look beautiful, even though my father spoke highly of his secretary’s fingernails, painted ox-blood red, he raved about them; take a leaf out of her book, he told my mother; it’s easy for you to say, my mother replied, when your secretary comes home in the evening she’s got all the time in the world to look after herself, because your secretary is young, single and childless, and so has time to groom herself and dye her hair blonde; but then my mother did paint her nails, she painted them mother-of-pearl pink rather than ox-blood red, but hers were hands that were worn from work, and if she’d chosen ox-blood red it would have been more noticeable that my mother’s hands were worn from work. I looked at my brother while the telephone continued ringing, my brother noticed me looking at his hands and at once balled them into a fist so that I couldn’t see the bloody edges on all ten fingers. Now I broke into a sweat; I no longer knew where to look. Amidst the ringing of the Day of Judgement my brother said hoarsely, maybe it’s someone else, but no one felt the need to answer, it was just an attempt; the telephone went on ringing. And then Mum stood up. I thought, she’s going to fall over; swaying, she took a few steps towards the telephone; she swayed so slowly towards the telephone that I thought, maybe she wants to give it one last chance to stop before she gets there; nobody counted but it must have rung twenty times, and none of us believed that the ringing would ever stop; for us, time after had ceased to exist, all the time in the world had shrivelled up into this ringing, none of us thought that in a quarter of an hour it would be ten o’clock, there could be no ten o’clock, time would be no more in a quarter of an hour, only this ringing, after which there’d be nothing, that much was certain. My mother walked to the living-room door with this swaying, wobbling movement, but didn’t go in; she stopped at the door and held on to the frame, but the telephone didn’t do her the favour of stopping. She peered into the room from the door. We couldn’t see what Mum could see, or whether she’d closed her eyes; all we saw was her back in the door frame, which she held on to for a time; I’m sure the time was no longer than a second, but it was a long time, too; I felt nothing except time, which was no longer laid out before us, but had shrivelled up into this ringing of the telephone. Then my mother turned round and looked at us, not with her eyes agog as before, but calmly and thoughtfully, and then said, very clearly, on the other hand; the telephone went on ringing and my mother came back; all of a sudden she was walking fairly upright again, with just the odd sway. When she reached the table she repeated, on the other hand, louder and with determination, glaring in sheer disgust at the mussels in their bowl. She took the bowl, which had sat in front of us all evening with those vile mussels; she went into the kitchen with the mussels, and all we could hear were the shells rattling, we couldn’t hear the telephone, only the shells rattling as my mother emptied the mussels into the dustbin, then she came back in and said to my brother, would you mind taking the rubbish out?

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