Authors: Peter Stamm
For the time being Sophie stayed in our bedroom. We set the crib right next to our bed, afraid we might not hear her otherwise. When she cried at night, Sonia picked her up automatically and took her out. I rolled over and fell right back to sleep.
The following morning, I paid one more visit to Ivona in the hospital. She didn’t say a word, and I didn’t say much either. I didn’t mention Sophie, only asked her how she was feeling, and when she would be able to go home, and if she had everything she needed. When I offered to support her financially, she shook her head, and turned to the wall. Then Hartmeier came in with a little bunch of flowers, and I left.
A
ntje looked at me silently. After a while she said she had thought it couldn’t get any worse. Is it so bad then?, I asked. What do you think? Try and put yourself in her shoes. She falls in love with a man who uses her as he pleases, and ends up paying her for it too. She gets pregnant, and hopes they will now start a family together, instead of which he takes her baby away from her, and she’s left with nothing. I said I had recently heard a sentence in a film that made sense to me: you are what you love, not who loves you. I need to think about that, said Antje, and she filled up her glass. After a while, she said the sentence sounded very Catholic to her. What did I mean by it? That Ivona’s happiness didn’t depend on me. Someone in love is always to be envied, whether his love is fulfilled or not. That’s stupid, said Antje. It would mean that an unfulfilled love is just as happy as a fulfilled one. That’s not how I meant it, I said, all I meant is that it’s worse not to love than not to be loved. It sounds as though you’re trying to get off the hook. Just the opposite, I said. My guilt has nothing to do with Ivona, just as her love has nothing to do with me. That’s all too theoretical for me, said Antje. The fact remains that you’ve taken advantage of her. She furrowed her brow and looked skeptical. Somehow I still have the feeling that you haven’t played any real part in this whole business. It was you who did the damage, but somehow it’s all about Ivona. Ivona and Sonia. And Sophie, I said. I knew about Sophie, said Antje. More or less. Sonia told me about it three years ago during your crisis. She said Sophie was the daughter of your lover, but that’s not really a true description.
Basically, everything was perfect, I said, there was nothing I didn’t like about Sonia, and my life was exactly the way I wanted it. Then I saw Ivona again, and it was as though she had some power over me. I knew what harm I was doing, and that there was next to no chance that Sonia wouldn’t find out. But I had no choice, I couldn’t help myself. Antje said I was making things a bit too easy for myself. She believed in free will. Has it never happened to you, I said, that you did something, even though you knew it was wrong? That’s a part of free will too. Antje shrugged her shoulders. Maybe if you’re a kid or something.
I wondered what sort of image Sonia had of Ivona. She had never seen her, and I never talked about her either. I suppose she assumed Ivona must be superior to her in some respect, voluptuous or passionate or whatever. I had to laugh. Antje asked me what I was thinking about, and I told her. Would you like to meet the man with whom Sonia deceived you?, she asked. There was a fling she had once with an old school friend I vaguely knew, I said, but she was tipsy. For her, that was extenuating circumstances, for me it only made it worse. I wanted to know who it was, until she finally told me. After that, I wished I’d never known. For a while I was completely paranoid. Every time she left the office, I thought she was on her way to him. Antje said as long as Sonia didn’t know Ivona, she could pretend she didn’t really exist. Ivona’s just a name to her. Only if Sonia were to meet her would the name acquire a face, never mind how attractive or otherwise.
Antje asked whether Sophie knew who her mother was. She doesn’t even know she’s adopted, I said, and if Sonia has her way, she never will either. You’ll see, said Antje. But one day you’ll have to tell her. I asked her how Sonia was doing. Shouldn’t you ask her yourself? If I ask her, it’s always the same, she’s fine. Antje smiled. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? She asked me if I’d ever really loved Sonia. As if it was easy to say, I said. I had to think of our wedding, and the promises we made to one another, promises I didn’t believe in at the time. I shook my head. I don’t know. Did you love Ivona then?, asked Antje. I’ve got to go to bed, I said. If you like, I’ll continue tomorrow. I more or less know the rest, said Antje. I met Ivona again. Antje raised her eyebrows. Well, well. She got up and said she’d better get to sleep, there was always tomorrow. Do you need anything?, I asked. Antje shook her head. Good night. I remained seated, I wasn’t tired yet. I asked myself whether Antje didn’t have a point, whether we’d have to tell Sophie that Sonia wasn’t her biological mother. It wouldn’t have been any trouble for me, if I’d had the least hope that Ivona had any feelings for the girl. But she seemed not to. Perhaps she’d denied them to herself.
Y
ears passed after Sophie’s birth, in which I heard nothing from Ivona. To begin with, I still used to call Hartmeier from time to time and ask after her, but once he said she had stopped going to the Bible group, and he had lost contact with her. She’d become a burden on all of us, he said. The whole business with the baby and her stubborn silence. Ivona hadn’t wanted to see what terrible mistakes she had perpetrated, so they had suggested she stop coming. And some seeds, he said, fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked them.
I had expected Ivona to get in touch on Sophie’s birthday, and send a gift or at the very least a card. When we heard nothing from her, I tried to call, but the number was no longer valid, and I made no further attempt to find her. Maybe she’s gone back to Poland, I thought, it would be the best thing for all of us.
It had taken us a while to adjust to Sophie. Other parents have nine months in which to get used to the idea of having a baby. Even after Sophie came to us, we still weren’t sure we would be able to keep her. Only when we got Ivona’s final release form in our hands at the end of eight weeks did we dare to see Sophie as ours, and include her in our plans and thoughts.
Even so, our initial feeling of strangeness was slow to yield. Sometimes I forgot about Sophie, and was surprised, coming home at night, to run into her with the nanny, who was looking after her for the first six months. Sonia often got home later than I did, her new role took even more getting used to than mine did. But however difficult the changes, she never talked about them, and she never let Sophie sense them either. On the contrary, she was very tender to her, and almost overprotective. She was forever putting her to her breast. And whatever Sophie managed to pick up, Sonia saw it as a potential threat, poisonous paints, sharp edges, little objects that she might swallow. Just imagine if something were to happen to her, she said. Nothing will happen to her, I said.
Sometimes I would gaze at Sophie for a long time, and seek similarities to Ivona or to me, and not find any. She’s like you, I would say to Sonia, who would laugh and say, she’s not like anyone, she’s unique. And then I would catch her watching Sophie, and I wondered what was going through her head.
At the end of six months, we left Sophie in day care. When I took her in the very first time, I felt terrible, it was as though I was setting her out in the wilderness. But she seemed happy enough to be together with other children. At night she didn’t want to come home, and she started crying when I picked her up and took her in my arms.
Sophie was a quiet, placid child, and little trouble. She had a healthy appetite, and put on weight so quickly that Sonia said she was getting fat, we had to keep an eye on her diet. Even at an early age, Sophie was capable of amusing herself. Sometimes I watched her lying on a blanket on the floor, raptly watching something, or endlessly repeating the same gesture with her hand, reaching for a toy or a stuffed animal nearby. When she was older she looked after her dolls with the devotion of a real mother. She fed them and put them to bed, and told them weird goodnight stories that she’d gotten from God knows where. When I asked her about them, she didn’t say anything. She wasn’t an unfriendly girl, but she was very wrapped up in herself, and seemed to live in a world of her own. Sometimes I had the impression that nothing of the love I felt for her was reciprocated, as though my feelings vanished into a black hole.
Sophie was slower than the other kids in everything, it was a long time before she was walking, and at the age of two she still didn’t speak a word. Birgit, Sonia’s gynecologist and Sophie’s godmother, said none of that mattered. The main thing was that she was healthy. Sonia seemed disappointed, though she would never have admitted it. She wanted Birgit to conduct some tests, but Birgit refused. Just give her time, she has her own rhythm.
Birgit and Sonia usually arranged their medical appointments at the end of the afternoon, and we would go out together afterward. Once, Birgit said Tania had written to her. She had three children with her Swiss fellow, and was living in a sort of commune with several other families on a remote farmhouse not far from Lake Constance. They strove to be self-sufficient, and the children were home-schooled. It was evident she wanted a reconciliation with her, said Birgit.
The organization had jettisoned its former nationalist views, and was now busy opposing war and the threat of Islam. Tania had written that she couldn’t very well fight for peace on earth if there was disharmony in her own backyard, and so she wanted to ask Birgit’s forgiveness.
Birgit laughed. It doesn’t matter if those people campaign for spelling reform or against animal experiments, they never change. Well, asked Sonia, will you forgive her? There’s nothing to forgive, said Birgit. She enclosed a couple of editions of a magazine that her organization puts out. The things they say seem pretty sensible at first glance. But if you read them more closely, you’ll see it’s the same blend of authoritarianism, naturopathy, and conspiracy theories. I bet you didn’t know that the twin towers in New York were blown up by the American government. If only the world were that simple! Sonia reckoned Birgit should write to Tania, what did she have to lose. But Birgit only shook her head. No, she said, I’m not getting into that. It’s wrong to support those mad systems.
I had heard of several cases of women getting pregnant after adopting children, and secretly I hoped we would have a second child. When I mentioned it to Sonia one day, she said she had been fitted with a coil. I was shocked, and said, couldn’t we at least have talked about it first? It’s not you that has to hump the weight around, said Sonia. Anyway, we’ve got a child. I said, wouldn’t it be nice if Sophie had a little brother or sister, but Sonia said we didn’t even have time to look after one properly. She seemed not to understand my consternation. Since Sophie was with us, she struck me as being more distant than before. She was often in a bad mood, critical of me, no longer jokingly as once before, but with a tetchiness I hadn’t seen in her before. Family life seemed to bore her. When we went out for a stroll on a Sunday and later sat down at a café, the three of us, there was often an awkward silence. Then Sophie would get up and start running around the café, until Sonia called her, and said, can’t you sit still for a moment? She finished her coffee silently and got up. Is it all right if we go now?
Outside it was getting dark already. Sophie was holding our hands and alternately pulling us along and letting us drag her. Sonia was still irritated. Stop it!, she said, stop that nonsense! Sophie didn’t seem to hear. She carried on, then Sonia pulled her hand away and stalked off ahead of us. At home she disappeared into her office and didn’t emerge till I called her down to dinner. Then she was in a good mood again, and said she had been able to get something done. You shouldn’t be so hard on Sophie, I said. I’m not hard on her, said Sonia, but she knows exactly how to infuriate me.
During supper, Sophie kept squinting across at Sonia. She wrinkled her nose, and her expression had something cunning. After we ate, she played by herself, but she stayed close to Sonia, until Sonia asked her if she wanted to make up.
Sonia’s parents came to visit more often. They spoiled Sophie, and brought her expensive presents, but they never passed up a chance to say what a bright child Sonia had been. Sonia’s father had read up on adoption, and had turned into an impassioned opponent. He was especially influenced by the texts of a former priest who had studied to become a psychotherapist. This man insisted that adoptive parents could never replace birth parents, and shouldn’t even make the attempt. An adopted child had a right to know about its birth parents, it needed to know what they could not give him, only in that way was there any chance for the child to break free of its origins and build a good relationship with its adoptive parents.
Sonia’s father sat on the sofa, feet apart. He looked from one of us to the other, as though on the brink of saying something vastly important. Then he stared at me, and said it would be an improvement if children were fostered, and adoption given up entirely. I stood and said that was stupid. Sophie wouldn’t have to know she was adopted. Not to tell an adopted child the truth can have grave consequences, said Sonia’s father. Children usually sensed sooner or later that there was something amiss. There was the Zurwehme case, if we remembered that. He was leaning forward now, and eyeing Sonia. A murderer and rapist.
Dieter Zurwehme had been arrested following a spectacular flight a few years back, his name had been all over the papers. He was the child of a German woman and a Polish forced laborer, and given up for adoption immediately after his birth, Sonia’s father explained. At the age of eleven, he found a letter from his birth mother. Look after my little sweetheart for me. But his adoptive parents refused to tell him about his parents. From that moment on, things went downhill with him. He resisted all efforts to discipline him, and at the age of twelve committed his first assault, on a fifteen-year-old girl. I think you know the rest of the story, said Sonia’s father.
I had to laugh. Do you think Sophie’s going to grow up to be a serial killer then? What do you think we should do? Put her out? Sonia too thought her father was overdoing it. She got up and stood next to me. Her father remained quite calm, he was now sitting back again. We knew how they loved our little Sophie more than anything in the world, and that they respected our decision. He just thought we should tell her the truth as early as possible, and give her a chance to know her biological parents. Sonia’s parents didn’t know that Sophie was mine, we had told them it was an anonymous adoption, and that we had no idea who the parents were. She’s five, I said.
To give up a child for adoption is an attack on life and nature’s way, Sonia’s father said, quoting his psychotherapist-priest, having a child adopted is a form of abortion. The child is refused space in its life. The birth parents often felt as though they’d murdered their child, and were therefore at risk of suicide. There were cases where the guilt of the parents was transmitted to the children, who then proceeded to be self-destructive.
I could have slapped him. There are perfectly good reasons for giving up a child for adoption, I said, for instance there are people who aren’t as well off as you are. It was the first time I had argued for Ivona. Poverty is no excuse for emotional obtuseness, said Sonia’s father. Sophie came wandering in, and he set her on his knee, as though to protect her from us. If anyone is emotionally obtuse here, then it’s you in your stupidity, I said, you and your tidy lives. I’d like to see you get by on a thousand marks a month. Sonia’s father remained perfectly calm. They hadn’t always been so wealthy as they were now. And unlike me, he knew what it was like to be poor, really dirt poor. After the war, they didn’t know on any one day what they’d get to eat on the next, and so on and so forth. That doesn’t give you the right to condemn other people, I said. He smiled agreeably. That’s a side of you I haven’t encountered before, the socialist. I said I had to make a few calls, and disappeared into my office in the basement.
Deep down he despises me, I thought, the fact that I hadn’t managed to get his daughter pregnant, and pass his genes on to another generation. He was completely different with the children of Sonia’s sister Carla than with Sophie, not more loving or doting, perhaps even a tad stricter. But he took them seriously, stimulated and challenged them, expected things from them. With Sophie he was so indulgent, it felt almost hurtful. It’s because she’s the youngest of his grandchildren, said Sonia. And because she’s a girl. Go on then, I said, protect him too. At least from that day forth, the subject of adoption was taboo in the house.
For all my passionate opposition to Sonia’s father, the argument with him had its effect. I was more and more surprised at Ivona’s failure to get in touch. She had to know that I would never keep her daughter from her, that I would have no objection if she occasionally—under some pretext, if necessary—spent an afternoon with Sophie. The more I thought about it, the more heartless I found her behavior. When I mentioned Ivona, Sonia never said anything, though we could talk about everything else much better than we could before. Perhaps our relationship was becoming more objective, but our shared responsibility gave it a new quality. Sophie was the most challenging project we had ever taken on together. Even though she was anything but difficult as a child. She had a lot of willpower, but she didn’t use it the way other children did, with hysterics and stubbornness. When we told her she had to do what we said, she would just look at us in silence, and the minute we turned away, do whatever she wanted. Basically, we were relieved that she didn’t require much in the way of attention, and was happy so long as she was left alone and not bothered overmuch.
School admission was a bit of a problem for her. The kindergarten teacher said Sophie was still emotionally unprepared. Sonia was indignant. A few days later she brought home some forms for a Waldorf school in Schwabing. I wasn’t wild about the idea. What little I knew about Rudolf Steiner was suspect, and his notion of architecture struck me as frankly idiotic. Someone had once referred to him as an overenthusiastic village schoolmaster, and that seemed about right to me. The school syllabus didn’t convince me either. In geometry they’ll be studying Nordic weaving patterns, I said, do you know what they are? Sonia shook her head. I’m sure it’s perfectly okay. Eurythmics, I read, parts of speech expressed through movement. I looked at Sonia. It’s just the beginning, she said. At least it’s a day school, and they give them organic lunches.
We took Sophie to look at the school, and she seemed to like it. An older girl took us on a tour of the buildings, and showed us everything. She wore a T-shirt that read:
I CAN DANCE MY NAME
. I looked at Sonia and smirked. She motioned to me to keep quiet.
I had read up a little on Rudolf Steiner by now, and asked the headmaster a few critical questions, to which he gave evasive answers. I had the feeling he himself kept a healthy distance from the more abstruse ideas of the master. In the end we decided to send Sophie there on a trial basis.