Authors: Jenny Erpenbeck
The big window that leads from the parlor out to the terrace is now
entirely dark.
On many evenings of many years, from spring into fall, he had sat
with his mother on this terrace. Here she told him of Valentinovka, where they used
to spend their Moscow summers: she, his father, who fell at the battle of Kharkov,
and her friend O. The leaves here smell exactly like the leaves there, she’d always
said. Only in Valentinovka there was a little river across the way where she used to
go swimming every morning before breakfast. No doubt because of these stories his
mother liked to tell, he always imagines trees when someone speaks of Moscow, and
yellow leaves that have come to rest on a damp meadow, he sees not the Kremlin and
its golden towers but a small, sun-dappled river, sees weeds beneath the surface
being swept gently back and forth by the current, and minnows.
Was his mother so afraid of storms back then? For as long as he’s known
her, she’s been terrified not only of thunder and lightning but also of wind that
might suddenly gust through the house, smashing everything to pieces.
Did you
close the terrace door tightly?
Yes
. And the dining room window?
Yes
. Then I’ll go upstairs.
Okay
. The terrace door?
I
said yes. Then she would go upstairs to her bedroom, closing the door there
carefully as well, and she wouldn’t come out again until all that remained of the
storm was the rain.
But on warm evenings he and his mother would often sit until nightfall
on the terrace. She would read, and he would do his homework or write the monthly
report for his
Free German Youth
class group.
Can you help me?
What sort of outing was it?
We went to the Pergamon Museum.
So write: We went to the Pergamon Museum.
That’s not enough.
Oh, I see. So write that you investigated the history of the class
struggle by studying the ancient society of slave holders.
That’s good.
Did you notice how tall the steps are that lead up to the Pergamon
Altar?
Yes.
That’s how they build things when people are supposed to be in awe of
their own gods.
Should I write that?
No.
His mother was sitting outside, close to the light, and he ducked into
the house for a minute to fetch something, a glass of water, a pad of paper, a
ruler. As he returned, he saw her from behind from deep in the interior of the dark
house. His mother had a book on her knees, but she wasn’t reading, she just sat
there gazing out into the night. She didn’t turn around to look at him. After all,
she knew he was on his way back. She had a thick jacket on since it was already
quite chilly.
Why did you call me just plain Sasha and not Alexander?
Why didn’t you ever go up to the attic?
What are the best apples to use for strudel?
Along with his mother, the answers to all these questions have died as
well.
Was there still snow on the ground that April in Ufa when I was
born?
Was the first word I spoke German or Russian?
What was the name of my
niania
?
Along with his mother, the way she looked at him died, and everything
beyond what he himself remembers. He will now never be old enough to learn the
things she hadn’t yet told him, even if he lives to be eighty.
Do you really not have a photograph of my father?
His invisible mother sits with her back to him in silence, giving no
answer.
10
Was her son even listening when she told him about all the new
things they were trying to do here?
In the sunlit silence of a Sabbath, a letter falls from an opening
hand into a hand that someone is holding out.
Why is she only now remembering what her grandmother told her half a
lifetime ago?
But then one of them must be intending to deliver the letter and the
other to receive it, she had replied to her grandmother.
That’s right.
And having these intentions is not work?
If only she could remember her grandmother’s reply to this question, all
would be well again.
But she can’t remember.
She falls.
11
Often he’d been afraid that he would lose her. Sometimes she would
have fainting fits, just keeling over suddenly, breathing with such difficulty that
he thought she might suffocate. At moments like this, she would look different, too,
not like his mother at all. Surviving, that meant for him above all that she was
turning back into the mother he knew.
Could he himself have been responsible for what she called her
“fits”?
As a child he had sometimes forgotten how easily she could get worked
up. Once, for example, he took her linen-cupboard key from its secret hook because
he needed a pillowcase for a carnival costume. How dare he go through her linens
without asking permission? Or when he and his friends exploded homemade fireworks in
the garden. Or jumped off the roof of the terrace with an umbrella to learn how to
fly. Or once he had hidden in a crate up in the attic and waited to see if his
mother would find him — though he knew even then that she never went up to the
attic. When at last he came out of hiding, there were two
Volkspolizei
officers standing in the hall, and his mother was sitting in tears on the
lowest step of the stairs.
The stairs.
And three years ago the
major incident
, as his mother always
calls it. Always called it. His first girlfriend was just visiting him when his
mother returned home from a trip. He hadn’t heard the doorbell. His mother suddenly
came into his room without knocking, and after one look at the young couple kissing,
she’d slammed the door shut again. He had gotten his girlfriend out of the house as
quickly as he could, and she never again came to see him, but nevertheless this
major incident
was perhaps related to his mother’s first heart attack.
Only a few weeks later she collapsed in her study and was taken away with sirens
howling.
*
Whenever his mother was at the hospital being examined, or
off at a resort, or on a journey, he had taken to just staying home with the
housekeeper, who would cook for him after school and then leave. The housekeeper
smelled of perspiration. When he was younger, his mother had hired this or that
nanny to live with him in the house while she was on the road — because she
had readings or premieres of her plays in other cities, or was traveling to Poland
with Writers Union delegations, or to Czechoslovakia or Hungary. One of the nannies
used to spray saliva when she read to him, another pinched his cheek when she said
hello, the third refused to return to his bedside out of principle when he was
afraid of the dark and cried out for her.
This housekeeper smelled of perspiration.
At least he doesn’t have to worry about his mother any
longer.
It’s quite certain now that she will never again turn back into the
mother he knows.
And his father?
He fell in the battle of Kharkov.
12
As if one final moment existed within another, simultaneously
present, she can remember exactly what that morning was like when she said goodbye
to her grandmother. One day before she traveled to Prague under a false name. The
miniature grandfather clock was just striking eleven with tinny strokes; her
grandmother wrapped a pair of challahs in a cloth for her and gave her a slip of
paper on which she’d written the recipe. The skin on her grandmother’s hands was so
thin the veins showed through, violet.
But time has blurred all those things that happened for the last time
without it being called the last time. At some point her mother had pinned up her
hair for her for the last time. At some point she herself had washed the dishes for
the last time while her sister sat at the kitchen table doing her homework. At some
point she sat in Krasni Mak for the last time. At many points during her life she
had done something for the last time without knowing it. Did that mean that death
was not a moment but a front, one that was as long as life? And so was she tumbling
not only out of this world, but out of all possible worlds? Was she tumbling out of
Vienna, out of Prague and Moscow, out of Berlin, out of the Socialist sister
countries and the western world? Tumbling out of the entire world, out of all the
time there ever was, would be, is? But now what will happen to her son?
13
At the funeral, the urn containing his mother’s ashes sits on a
pedestal up front between two flags. The red flag on the left is draped as if it
were blowing to the left, and the national flag on the right as if it were blowing
to the right. Whose idea was it to drape the flags to look as if a storm were rising
from the urn? Ridiculous, his mother would have said.
His mother had just recently been to the hairdresser’s to have her color
touched up. Now her freshly coiffed hair has been incinerated, and her face is also
ash, her shoulders, too, are there in this bronze-colored canister, and her hands as
well with their fleshy fingertips, her round knees, her feet, and even her toes,
painted mother-of-pearl. He’s never seen his mother naked, but he’s seen how she
looks when she is asleep, or how she crosses one leg over the other when she is
sitting, he’s seen how she waits, how she pours herself a glass of water, how she
gets up, puts on a coat, how she reaches for her handbag, how she walks. The body of
his mother was the landscape he knew best among all the landscapes in the world.
14
In front of her, an ancient woman is shaking what looks like a
child’s rattle made of ivory, with silver bells. She stops. Shakes. Stops. When the
bells have rung for the third time, she goes into the theater.
15
In the middle, leaning up against the pedestal with the urn, is
his wreath with the ribbon printed in black script:
For my mother.
In front
of it: the wreath sent by the Central Committee of the Party:
Our estimable
comrade
; the wreath from the Council of Ministers:
Stalwart in the
struggle
; the wreath from the People’s Parliament:
With Socialist
salutations
; the wreath from the Magistrate of Berlin, the capital of the
GDR:
To an honorary citizen of our city
; the wreath sent by the Writers
Union:
To a great writer
; and:
Unforgotten
, the wreath of the
Cultural Association of the GDR.
Who arranged the ribbons in such a way that you can read all the
farewells?
A fortnight ago it was still a fortnight before he would be sitting here
in front of her urn, but he hadn’t known it yet.
Just to the right of the urn is a little stand with a velvet cushion on
which his mother’s medals are displayed: The Comrade G. Medal, the Patriotic Order
of Merit, the Goethe Prize, and, twice, the Workers’ Pennant.
Ten days ago it was ten days before.
And just to the right of the urn, a table with her books.
The music they are playing is by Beethoven, according to the program.
Who picked the music?
So did time keep rushing ever more rapidly away until it was gone? Why
hadn’t he noticed? Why hadn’t his mother?
16
It is she herself who slices through the paper, splitting the
entire stack from top to bottom at one go.
17
The Minister of Culture gives the first speech.
In Ufa his wife gave me the first two diapers for you.
Then there’s music again, this time the dirge:
Victims immortal, you
sank into dust. We stand here and mourn as our hearts say we must.
I like the lyrics better in Russian.
Then the second speech, given by the President of the Academy of
Arts.
He’s one of those functionaries who write on the side.
One week ago today, his mother was still alive. The lees of her
life were already slipping away, but she had moved around just as deliberately as
ever. He had never once, for example, seen his mother running. From a distance, she
had always looked like an old woman, bent over and somehow crooked, even when she
was just fifty.
18
What are all these people waiting in line for? Are they giving
away darkness for free? But that won’t curb anyone’s hunger.
19
At the end they play a piece by Haydn, during which everyone
stands up, and her son goes to the front of the room in order to carry his wreath
himself, as arranged with the funeral director. The urn, the velvet cushion with his
mother’s medals, the books, the flags, and the official wreaths are picked up by
soldiers of the Guards Regiment and carried, at the head of the funeral procession,
to the gravesite. The son, in his role as first mourner, walks right behind the
soldier carrying the urn, but because the urn-bearer is leading the procession so
slowly, he has to pay attention not to step on the man’s heels. Is the Guards
Regiment trying to compel the guests to assume a mournful state with this slow pace?
Is the Guards Regiment standing guard over the mourners’ sentiments to ensure that
the officially prescribed levels of grief are maintained?
20
From the darkness a small hand reaches out to her, something
yellow in its palm. Ah, finally Sasha is handing her the lemon she’s been waiting
for all this time.
21
When they reach the grave, the flag bearers dip their two flags
while the urn is lowered into the pit.
Forward, brothers and sisters, and the
Last Judgment let us face.
Oops, must have misheard — he knows
perfectly well that the trumpets of the working class call the brothers and sisters
to the last fight, not the Last Judgment. But isn’t the last fight death?
The
Internationa-a-le. Unites. The hu. Man race.
The son now takes up position, as arranged, to the left of the
grave, behind him the table with his mother’s books. On the other side of the grave,
the velvet cushion with the medals has been set on a pedestal again, and between the
medals and the grave stands a cemetery worker offering the mourners rose petals from
five baskets.