In Times of Fading Light (8 page)

“But Granny, there isn’t really any God.”

“No, there really isn’t any God,” said Granny, and she told him how the gods founded the fifth world. “Because the world,” said Granny, “had come to an end four times already, and it was dark and cold, with no sun left in the sky. A single flame still burned on the Great Pyramid of Teotihuacán, that was all, and the gods assembled to take counsel. They came to the conclusion that only if one of them sacrificed himself would a new sun be born.”

“Granny, what does
sacrifice
mean?”

“It means that one of them had to throw himself into the fire so that he could rise again in the sky as a new sun.”

“Why?”

“One god had to sacrifice himself so that the lives of the others could go on.”

An amazing discovery.

Mama put him to bed.

“Will you come into bed with me?”

“Not tonight,” said Mama. “I’ve only just done my hair.”

Her dress rustled as she left.

This evening he felt particularly uneasy. Pictures haunted him in the dark. He thought of God having to throw himself into the fire. A word came into his head: kipitalism. It sounded like heat; in Russian
kipit
means “it’s boiling.” Piranhas swam around in bubbling broth. Don’t put your finger in there, said his father. Aztecs danced barefoot in the desert sand, their faces twisted with pain. Wilhelm, Wilhelm, shouted Granny. Wilhelm came and put everything out with the brine from the pickles. Mama, in her chic dress, distributed shoes to the Aztecs. They were ladies’ shoes that had gone out of fashion. The Aztecs looked at them in great surprise, but all the same they put them on. Then they went on wandering through the desert, which was now drenched in brine. The heels of their shoes sank in yellow mud.

Alexander woke and threw up; it tasted of lemon cream. After that he ran a high temperature for three days.

In April it was his birthday. He got a scooter (with rubber tires), a swimming ring, and a electric caterpillar tractor.

Peter Hofmann, Matze Schöneberg, Katrin Mählich, and quiet Renate came to his party. Peter Hofmann ate three slices of cake. They played Hit the Pan, taking turns being blindfolded and then trying to locate the pan and hit it with a wooden spoon, when they would find a little present under it.

Now that he was five, the question came up again.

“Mama, when are we going to see Baba Nadya?”

“At the beginning of September.”

“When will it be September?”

“It’s only May now, so there will be June, July, and August, and then it will be September.”

Alexander was furious. “You said time goes faster when you get older.”

“When you’re older than now, Sashenka. Really grown up.”

“When will I be really grown up?”

“You’ll be really grown up when you’re eighteen.”

“How big will I be then? As big as Papa?”

“Bigger, for sure.”

“Why?”

“Children usually grow up to be bigger than their parents. And parents get a little bit smaller again in their old age.”

She said to the salesgirl, in German:

“A pound of ground beef, please.”

The summer began.

At first you had to bargain to be allowed to wear short pants. But soon, after a few days, summer really set in, spread almost unnoticed, occupied the last little nooks and crannies of Neuendorf, drove the chill out of the moist earth. The grass was warm now, the air was full of hovering insects, and no one remembered getting goose bumps, not on the first day when you could wear short pants; no one could imagine that this summer would ever end.

Roller-skating. Steel roller skates were the latest thing. They made a tremendous clattering noise. Wilhelm came out.

“This is too much! Talk about farcical!”

Making bows and arrows: the arrows twigs from some bush with a name no one knows, copper wire wound around the arrowheads. Uwe Ewald shoots Frank Petzold in the eye. Off to the hospital, everyone gets bawled out.

Drawing on the street in chalk. Peter Hofmann draws a swastika, but next moment he turns it into a window—just by making the lines longer.

Also strictly forbidden is going into the bunker. The big kids do it all the same. When Alexander goes into the bunker a ghost appears from the depths of it, only a head with bright red cheeks. Alexander’s hair stands on end with horror. He runs for the exit in silence.

Not forbidden, but somehow not allowed either, is playing rider and horse with Renate Klumb. She has to lie down on her tummy in the grass with her skirt up. He sits on top of her. Renate doesn’t have to make any movements in this game. It’s enough for their bare skin to touch here and there.

Eating unripe apples with Matze. The result is diarrhea.

Katrin Mählich gets her finger jammed in a deck chair.

They build cities for firebugs in the Hofmanns’ sandbox. There are any number of firebugs. The stones are warm from the sun, and troops of the bugs bask on them, never moving.

And just as summer is finally slowing right down, when the days no longer move from the spot, when time, in spite of all assurances to the contrary, stops passing, and Alexander has almost forgotten about it, his mother says:

“We’re going to see Baba Nadya next week.”

“Next week,” announces Alexander, “I’m going to the Soviet Union.” Achim Schliepner doesn’t seem greatly impressed.

“The Soviet Union is the biggest country in the world,” says Alexander.

But Achim Schliepner says, “America is bigger.”

The journey: a green railroad car. A sleeping car, as comfortable as a little house on wheels. You could order tea, too. The tea glasses had a picture of the Kremlin on them. And a little
Sputnik
circling around the Kremlin.

The wheels are changed in Brest. A broader gauge for the Soviet Union. “Mama, the Soviet Union is the biggest country in the world, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course.”

He didn’t remember anything. But he
knew
it all. Even the smell of the Moscow taxis: half burned rubber, half gasoline. All Moscow seemed to smell a bit like a taxi.

Red Square: a line of people waiting in front of the mausoleum.

“No, Sashenka, we don’t have time.”

But there’s time for Eskimo ice cream. And
prostokvasha,
fermented milk, with sugar.

The Metro: it’s gigantic. He’s a little scared of the escalator. And even more scared of the doors.

Then three more days of rail travel. Changing trains at Sverdlovsk. Then another half a day. And then, at last, Slava.

The rail station was outside the town. A jeep met them, and drove around the potholes in the road. Not so much potholes as craters.

The little housing estate. Board fences. Wooden houses. And every one of them looked as if Baba Nadya might live in it.

The driver honked. Baba Nadya came out of her door. “Why is Baba Nadya crying?”

“Because she’s happy,” said Mama.

The house was small. A kitchen, a living room. A stove in the middle of the house. Baba Nadya slept on the tiled stove, Mama and Alexander slept in the bed.

The yard: a sauna, an outhouse. The black-and-white dog on his chain was called Drushba. Drushba meant Friendship. Friendship barked. His chain rattled.

Baba Nadya said crossly, “Friendship, shut up!”

The cow and the pig lived in the outhouse. The cow was brown and was called Marfa. The pig was simply called Pig. Just as Wilhelm was simply called Wilhelm.

He was scared of the pig. If you let it out, it raced around the yard, squealing. Friendship was afraid of the pig, too. However, there was no need to be afraid of Friendship.

Instead, he was allowed to go for walks with Friendship. He was allowed to do all sorts of things. He was allowed up on the roof. He was allowed to wade through huge puddles. Only he mustn’t go into the forest.

“Not a step into the forest,” said Baba Nadya.

Because you could get lost in the forest. And then the wolves would eat you up.

“And all we’d find of you would be your bones,” said Baba Nadya. “Oh, do stop that,” said Mama.

All the same, he wasn’t allowed to go into the forest.

“Even the midges could eat you up,” said Mama.

But he didn’t believe that. The wolves were a more likely story.

Fetching water from the well: very interesting. Baba Nadya had a kind of framework thing that she put over her shoulders, with a bucket on it to her left and another to her right, and then off they went. You hung your bucket on a hook, and it went down the well all by itself. Alexander was allowed to help turn the handle to wind it up to the surface again.

Bread came once a week. On that day a long line of people stood outside the store. Each of them got three loaves of bread. Even Alexander, so altogether that came to nine. They ate three of the loaves themselves, and gave the cow six. Softened in water. The cow smacked her lips. She liked the bread.

Baba Nadya had electricity in her house, but no gas. She cooked everything in a niche in the tiled stove. The samovar was heated for tea. You drank black tea first thing in the morning, at midday, in the evening. The samovar hummed. Baba Nadya played the card game called Fool with him.

In the evening there was a visitor: Pavel Avgustovitch, who wore a suit and tie. A strange man, thin and old-fashioned. He kissed Mama’s hand.

“Such a shame,” said Mama to Baba Nadya. “Pavel Avgustovitch studied at the conservatory.”

“What can any of us do?” replied Baba Nadya. “It was God’s will.”

The next day some old women wearing headscarves came visiting. They sang until late into the night. First they sang funny songs. As they sang they clapped their hands; some of them even danced. Then they sang sad songs. Then they cried. At the end everyone hugged everyone else and wiped the tears away.

“What a pity,” said Alexander, “that we don’t all live in one room at home.”

Back home again. This time he had a story of his own to tell at Granny’s on Second Friday. “We rode in a train for five days!”

“That’s very interesting,” said Granny. “But wouldn’t you like to tell me about it later, over supper? Then Wilhelm can hear it, too. It will all be very interesting for Wilhelm as well.”

He didn’t feel too happy about that. Granny encouraged him.

“We’ll do it this way: I’ll give you a cue, and then you begin your story.”

Cue?

“For instance, ‘Soviet Union,’” explained Granny. “I’ll say, for instance, I’d love to go on vacation to the So-viet U-nion! And that’s your cue.”

Wilhelm slapped butter down on his bread.

“The Indians,” he told Alexander, “are the poorest of the poor today. Oppressed, exploited, robbed of their land.”

Granny said, “There’s no exploitation and no oppression in the Soviet Union.”

“I should think not,” said Wilhelm.

Granny looked at Alexander and repeated, “There’s no exploitation and no oppression in the So-viet U-nion.”

“Oh yes,” said Wilhelm. “You’ve just been to the Soviet Union. Tell us about it!”

Suddenly Alexander’s head was empty.

“Come on,” said Wilhelm. “Don’t you talk to ordinary people?”

“At Baba Nadya’s,” said Alexander, “the water comes out of a well.”

Wilhelm cleared his throat.

“Hmm, yes,” he said. “That may be so. When we were in the Soviet Union, there were still wells even in Moscow, do you remember, Lotti? In Moscow, imagine that! And today? You were in Moscow, weren’t you?”

Alexander nodded.

“Well, there you are,” said Wilhelm. “And when you’re grown up, no one will still have to draw water from a well anywhere in the Soviet Union. Long before you’re as big as your father, communism will have spread all over the Soviet Union—maybe all over the world.”

Alexander didn’t like the idea that all the wells would be gone, but he didn’t want to disappoint Wilhelm again. So he said, “The Soviet Union is the biggest and greatest country in the world.”

Wilhelm nodded, pleased. Looked at him expectantly. Granny was also looking at him expectantly. So Alexander added:

“But Achim Schliepner is silly. He says America is bigger and greater.”

“Ah,” said Wilhelm. “Interesting.” And he said to Granny: “As usual, those Schliepners didn’t turn out to vote. But we’ll nail them yet.”

Back at kindergarten. Now he was one of the larger kids. Achim Schliepner had gone on to big school. So Alexander was the cleverest now. He had evidence of the fact.

“I’ve been to Moscow.”

Not even Frau Remschel had been there.

“And when I’m grown up I’m going to Mexico.”

Because when he’s grown up, componism will have spread everywhere. The Indians won’t be exploited and oppressed anymore then. No one will have to sacrifice himself. Only of course there’ll still be rattlesnakes. And scorpions getting into your shoes, but he knows what to do about those: you shake out your shoes first thing in the morning—it’s a simple trick. Granny told him about it.

It’s Sunday. Alexander is going down the street with his parents. The street is Thälmannstrasse. The trees have brightly colored leaves. The air smells of smoke. People are raking up the leaves into little heaps and burning them. You can throw sweet chestnuts into the embers, and after a while they go pop.

They’re walking down the middle of the street, hand in hand: Mama on the left, Papa on the right, and Alexander is explaining how he sees things.

“I’ll get big, then you two will get little again. And then you’ll get big again and I’ll get little again. And so on.”

“No,” says his father. “It’s not exactly like that. We’ll get rather smaller as time goes on, but we won’t get any younger. We’ll get older, and one day we’ll die.”

“Does everyone die?”

“Yes, Sasha.”

“Will I die, too?”

“Yes, you will die someday, too, but that time is still far, far, far away—so
infinitely
far away that you don’t have to think about it yet.”

Another of those amazing discoveries.

Infinity: over there, where everything was lost in smoke, where the trees were gradually getting smaller, that’s where it must be. That’s where they’re going, he and his parents. The cool air caressed his cheeks. They walked and walked, with such alarmingly light steps, yet almost without moving from the spot.