The Taste of Apple Seeds (5 page)

Besides a few electronics textbooks, her bookshelves contained fat, sad romance novels. My mother told us that when they were young the thing Inga enjoyed reading most of all was one particular story in the tattered old book of fairy tales that had belonged to my great-grandmother Käthe: the tale of the Amber Witch. Maybe Inga thought she was an amber witch herself, living at the bottom of the sea, luring people into the depths. She had started wearing amber jewelry as a child, because in one of the electronics textbooks she had read that
elektron
was the Greek word for amber, a substance particularly good at absorbing electric charges.

After finishing school she did a photography apprenticeship and now had her own highly regarded studio in Bremen. She specialized in photographing trees and plants, held small exhibitions from time to time, and received ever larger commissions for waiting rooms, conference halls, and other spaces where people stared at walls for hours on end and discovered for the first time that tree trunks could be as smooth as a woman’s legs in silk stockings, that the fruits of the cranesbill really did look like cranes’ bills, and that most old trees had human features. Inga never married. She was now in her mid-fifties and more beautiful than most women of twenty-five.

Rosmarie, Mira, and I were convinced that she had lovers. Aunt Harriet had once hinted that the DIY friend who made the record player had revealed his feelings for Inga, but she was still living at home at the time: for the three sisters, love affairs under Hinnerk’s gaze were out of the question.

Rosmarie used to wonder what happened to our aunt’s lovers. Did they die from heart failure just as they reached the most satisfying and blissful moment of their lives? What a glorious death, Rosmarie thought. Mira said that maybe Inga avoided all skin contact by doing everything in a wafer-thin rubber suit. “A black one, of course,” she added.

I said that she probably did it like everyone else, only she might have to be earthed to a radiator or something similar beforehand.

“Do you think it hurts her?” Mira wondered.

“Shall we ask?”

But not even Rosmarie dared do that.

Inga photographed people, too, but only family members. More precisely, she only ever photographed her mother. The more Bertha’s personality faded, the more obsessively Inga took portraits of her. In the end she only took photographs with a flash, partly because my grandmother hardly ever left her room in the care home—by then she had forgotten how to walk—but also because, however irrational she knew it was, Inga hoped that the flash would help her cut through the fog that was settling ever more thickly on Bertha’s brain.

After my visit to Bertha four years earlier, Aunt Inga had showed me a whole crate of black-and-white photos of her mother. In the last four films Bertha always wore the same expression of uncomprehending horror, her mouth slightly open and her eyes wide, pinpricked with tiny pupils that had contracted instinctively. But there was no sign of awareness or discomfort. Bertha no longer knew anything nor wanted anything. The photos were well thumbed. Some were out of focus or blurred; that wasn’t like Aunt Inga. The blaze of the camera flash had burned off the deep wrinkles on Bertha’s face so that it stood out smooth and white against the hazy gray background. As white as the plastic table she wiped with her hand, and just as empty.

After I had given the photos back to Aunt Inga she gave her pictures another good look before putting them back in the crate. It was plain that Inga knew each individual picture in great detail and was able to distinguish them all from one another, because when she sorted them she seemed compelled to put them in a specific order. I wanted to put my arm around my aunt, but that was not so easily done, so I squeezed her hand tight in both of mine. She was totally absorbed with ordering her grotesque, identical portraits, and all the while her amber bracelet knocked against the crate with a clunk.

The metallic creak of a kickstand in the yard below and then the snap of a pannier rack sounded through the open window. I leaned out, but the visitor had already gone around the corner to ring at the front door. I thought I recognized the bicycle. The doorbell chimed, a real bell with a clapper. I dashed down the stairs, ran along the corridor, and tried to spy who it was through the glass panes. It was an old man; he was standing by the window so I could see who he was.

Surprised, I opened the door. “Herr Lexow!”

The friendly smile he had intended to greet me with gave way to an expression of uncertainty when he saw me. I remembered what I was wearing and felt embarrassed. He must have thought I was some kind of morbid lunatic, rummaging naked through the wardrobes upstairs and dancing wildly in bizarre costumes across the landing or even on the roof; after all, some family members had been known to do this in the past.

“Oh, please excuse my outfit, Herr Lexow.” I was stammering as I struggled to find an explanation. “I-I’m afraid my dress had a terrible stain on it and as I’ve hardly got any spare clothes—it’s so sticky in the house, you see . . .”

His friendly smile had quickly returned. He raised his hand sympathetically. “That’s your aunt Inga’s dress, isn’t it? It looks fantastic on you. The thing is, I thought that someone might want to stay in the house. And as there’s practically nothing in the kitchen I thought—I took the liberty—well, I simply wanted . . .”

Now it was Herr Lexow who was stammering. I took a step backward to let him in, closed the front door, and took the cotton bag that he had been holding out to me while he spoke. Before I could think about which room to show him into, he asked permission to go ahead and walked along the hallway to the kitchen. There he gently took the bag back from me, fished out a large tupperware bowl, opened one of the lower cupboards without much deliberation, grabbed a saucepan and put it on the cooker. I moved a few steps closer. He didn’t say anything more, but moved around Bertha’s kitchen with calm familiarity. Now I no longer needed to ask Mira’s brother who had been looking after the house and garden in Bertha’s absence. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other indecisively. Although the kitchen was large I was getting in the way.

“Would you mind fetching some parsley from the garden, my dear child?” Herr Lexow passed me some scissors.

From the yard the path led between the two lime trees into Bertha’s kitchen garden. Italian honeysuckle rambled over the fence; the garden gate was ajar and it squeaked when I pushed it. There was parsley right at the front, overgrown with nasturtiums—“capers,” as Bertha and her daughters used to call them. In late summer my mother always kept in the fridge a small jar of the bright green fruits from these flowers, but I didn’t recall them ever being used in any cooking. What was this thin row of parsley doing growing here, anyway? Someone must have sown it. The same went for the unkempt pea and bean plants that were blossoming white and pink and orange. Here was a crooked row of leeks. On the ground, hairy cucumber vines were crawling between couch grass and camomile, trying to cast aside the weeds with their gray leaves, or at least infect them with blight.

Lemon balm and mint had taken over the beds and were running riot between the white currants, the ailing gooseberry bushes, and the blackberry canes, which were escaping over the fence into the neighboring copse. Herr Lexow must have tried to maintain Bertha’s kitchen garden, but he didn’t have her talent for allotting every plant its rightful space and gently coercing the best out of it.

I walked through the kitchen garden to take a look at Bertha’s old perennials, which either honored my grandmother’s memory or defied its disintegration—it amounted to the same thing. The billowing thicket of phlox had a delicate fragrance. Delphiniums thrust blue spikes into the evening sky. Lupins and marigolds shone above the soil, bellflowers nodded at me. The plump, heart-shaped hosta leaves barely left a patch of earth visible; behind these, hydrangeas, a whole hedge full, frothed bluish-pink and pinkish-blue from their foliage. Dark yellow and rosy parasols of yarrow swayed over the paths, and when I’d pushed them back my hands smelled of herbs and summer holidays.

Between the currants and the brambles was the wilder part of the garden. But now it had hidden itself in its own shadows. Behind the garden the pine copse began. Here the ground was rust red and consisted entirely of fallen needles. With every step you sank before springing back up, softly and silently, and you walked through as if spellbound until reaching the large orchard on the other side. In the past, Rosmarie, Mira, and I had hung old net curtains between the trees and built fairy houses in which we acted out long, complicated romantic dramas. To begin with these were just tales of three princesses who had been abducted and sold by a disloyal chamberlain, managed to escape from their ghastly foster parents after years of servitude, and now were living in the forest where, by happy coincidence, they were reunited with their real parents. After that the princesses went back and punished all those who’d ever done them an injustice. Rosmarie performed the “escape,” I did the “reunion” and Mira the “revenge.”

I went to the gate that led to the copse and peered into the dark green. I was met with a resinous and chilly greeting. I froze, gripped the scissors more firmly, and returned to the parsley. No sooner had I cut a large bunch than I caught its smell of earth and cooking, even though the herb’s leaves were yellowing. Should I cut a bunch of lovage, too? Best not. I thought of that long-ago afternoon in the garden with Rosmarie and Mira. That was the last time I had spoken to Mira.

I straightened, walked through the barn door—the tamped-earth floor was ice-cold—bolted the door behind me, lifting the iron bars onto their hook, ran up the steps to the kitchen and almost became giddy at the smell of vegetable soup wafting through the room. I placed the bundle of parsley beside the steaming pan. Herr Lexow thanked me and glanced up. I had been away a long time for such a short errand.

“Almost there. I’ve set the table here in the kitchen.”

And indeed, there was a white bowl on the kitchen table, and next to it a large silver spoon.

“But you’ve got to have some, too! Please, Herr Lexow.”

“All right then, dear Iris. I’d love to.”

We sat at the table, the pan of soup in front of us, the finely chopped parsley on a board beside it. We ate the wonderful broth, which was swimming with thick pieces of carrot and chunks of potato, peas, diced green beans, and a huge number of translucent leek rings. Herr Lexow fidgeted. He wanted to say something but I didn’t realize this until I looked up to say something myself.

“HerrLexowdearIris,” we began together.

“You first,” I said.

“No, please, you.”

“Okay. I just wanted to thank you for this soup at just the right time—what must the time be now? Also for having kept an eye on the house and looking after the garden. Thank you so much. I don’t know how we can ever repay you, all the time and . . . love you’ve put in here, and . . .”

Herr Lexow interrupted me. “Stop. I want to tell you something, something that not many people know. To be precise, there are only two of us now; we buried the third yesterday, and I wonder if even she remembered. Now look, seeing as you were talking of love, well, when you opened the door wearing this dress, I—”

“I’m sorry, I can see just how tasteless it must have seemed to you, but I—”

“No, no, no. When you opened the door, I thought . . . You see, your aunt Inga—well, Inga and I . . .”

“You’re in love with her? She’s gorgeous.”

Herr Lexow frowned. “Yes. No, not what you’re thinking, maybe. I love her as a, as a . . . father.”

“Yes, of course. I understand.”

“No, I can see that you don’t. I love her as a father because that’s what I am.”

“A father.”

“Yes. No.
Her
father.
I’m
Inga’s father. I loved Bertha. Always, to the very end. For me it was an honor, an obligation, a duty to keep an eye on her house. Please, don’t thank me, I find it embarrassing, it was the very least I could do for her, I mean, after all . . .”

Beads of sweat were appearing on Herr Lexow’s forehead. He was almost in tears. I had stopped eating. Inga’s father. I hadn’t expected that. But actually, why not? Did Inga know?

“Inga does know, I wrote to tell her when Bertha went into the home. I offered to check that everything was in order until . . . well, for as long as Bertha stayed there.” Herr Lexow recovered his composure, his voice becoming steadier.

I got up, went into my grandparents’ bedroom, and fetched myself a pair of Hinnerk’s woolen socks and a gray-brown cardigan of Bertha’s from the oak wardrobe. I sat on the stool by the dressing table to put the socks on. Bertha an adulteress? I staggered back into the kitchen. The soup had been cleared away and two mugs were on the table. Herr Lexow—my aunt’s father, so my great-uncle of sorts—was stirring something in a small pan on the cooker. I sat on my chair and drew my feet onto the seat under me. Shortly afterward, milk was steaming in the mugs. Herr Lexow sat back down and told me, in a few words, what had happened.

Chapter IV

CARSTEN LEXOW ARRIVED IN BOOTSHAVEN
as a young teacher. He was only twenty and came from Geeste, a village near Bremen. The school in Bootshaven had one large classroom in which all children of school age were lumped together. A single teacher taught everything and to everyone at the same time. Just once a year, a week after the end of the summer holidays, the pastor turned up and greeted the new confirmands.

Carsten’s father had been a haberdasher and had died of a war injury four years before his son moved to Bootshaven. A French rifle bullet had roamed around his body for almost eight years before one day finally ending its wanderings in his lung and thus also ending the life of the haberdasher Carsten Lexow Senior. Carsten’s father was a taciturn man who spent so much time in his shop that he forever remained a stranger to the family. Carsten’s mother blamed this on the roaming bullet, which had stopped him from ever really coming home, but maybe it was just his manner. Much about him was short, not only the needles and pins he sold, but also his legs, his nose, and his hair, as well as his sentences and his temper. The only thing that was long was the path that the rifle bullet had traveled in his squat body, but when it finally reached its goal his death—just like his life—was short.