Читать книгу More Than Everything - Beatrix Ost - Страница 12

DURING THIS PERIOD, there in our house, Anita and I shared a room. Upstairs on the second floor, a wide corridor separated ours from our parents’ bedroom.

Anita’s bed stood at the window, mine against the wall in the opposite corner of the big rectangular space. Between them stood a cupboard with two flying doors and sides of glass, so that one could see through. In its interior dwelt Anita’s glass menagerie. Tiny fillies stood on glass legs, played with glass mares on glass grass. Piglets suckled at the glass teats of their glass mother sow. Green parrots, birds of the most various kinds, perched on glass boughs. Chickens consorted with a rooster. Kittens slept or played with marbled spheres, a white glass steed reared up, the icy leaves of trees overshadowed a group of sheep with their shepherd, who played on a hair-thin flute. Butterflies.

My favorite animal, the only one Anita permitted me to touch, because it was not made of glass, was a Steif mouse with a button in its ear, soft and larger by far than the other creatures in the crystal world it seemed to have strayed into. It wore soft yellow felt slippers. I was not allowed to open the armoire and could play with the slippers only in the company of Anita, only to put the mouse back in its place immediately. Door closed. To annoy Anita, I ran around the round table in the middle of the room, so that the glass panes of the armoire trembled in their frames and one heard the glass sighs of the fragile glass society within.

On full-moon nights the menagerie played the light through tiny prisms. Opposite this armoire stood a terracotta stove, upheld on its two sides by two fauns, who impatiently wiggled their hoofed terracotta thighs. The light from the Nymphenburg porcelain candelabra in the middle of the room spilled across the wooden floor like a sigh. Whereupon, from the corner where my sister’s bed stood, a sigh intruded into my half-dream, half-sleep. It sounded like sobbing. Then I saw her body at the window against the night sky. And there with her stood a silhouetted figure, laid a silhouette hand on her hair, her neck, bent over her and the two of them melted into a dark whole. Whispering. The figure separated and disappeared. Sleepily I saw through the glass menagerie how my sister tossed on a scarf and crept on tiptoes out of the room. Click went the door, and now, wide awake and bewildered about what it all meant, I saw her silhouette glide along the balcony that ran below our window, connecting the house with the stalls downstairs and the haystack upstairs.

I know something, I said the next day as Anita and Heinz combed the horses in front of the stables. Both looked up right away.

So what is it? said my sister, in an impatient tone which she mainly reserved for me. I was supposedly spoiled and got on her nerves.

What? they both asked now, grown curious because I did not want to come out with it straight off, instead taking a brush in my hand and starting to comb Bella’s breast. No one else was in the courtyard. Now the two of them took the few steps across to me.

So what is it you know? Heinz asked amiably.

Now I could not hold it back any longer.

That you have been standing up here in the night! As I spoke I pointed to the balcony in front of our window.

Rubbish, said my sister cockily. But Heinz held my arm firmly, gently took the brush out of my hand.

Come, we’re going to go over there, I have something to tell you.

We sat down on the green bench next to the stables. Heinz turned my shoulders so I could look directly into his face.

It’s a secret I want to share with you, he smiled. No one is allowed to hear about it, not under any circumstances. I will be taking you with me into town every time I go, and sometimes even on my motorcycle, to go swimming. Very shortly. Anita will ride behind on Bella.

My sister stroked my hair.

That will be fantastic, she said with a new look of excitement.

Heinz pressed his finger across my lips and winked. Secret.

Ahh, now so many things changed. Now I had a sister, the kind I had always wished for. Now she listened to me when I told her my stories at great length. I was allowed to borrow her amber necklace for hours on end, could feel the gentle, light stones around my throat. I got to liberate first one then another of the glass animals from the armoire, too, hold it in my hand like a treasure until it got warm. Then another. Ahhhh.

As soon as Heinz was finished with his work on the farm and in the fields, he and Anita both saddled the horses. The animals needed exercise. They rode through the fruit trees, across the nearest meadow, further on across the stubbly harvested field, then a stretch of country road, over a little bridge, toward the forest, which like a broad charcoal stroke separated the land from the sky. My sister draped herself across the neck of her horse and galloped onward, with Heinz in hot pursuit. Free chunks of earth went flying up from their hooves. A terrified hare zigzagged out in front, a hawk grabbed a mouse and strove high up into the air. I watched them and could not wait until they returned, and I once again felt the power of our secret, which now encircled the three of us like a wall, keeping the others out.

And sometimes, when it was very hot, when the day had heated up like a tile stove, I rolled my woolen bathing suit into a towel and waited impatiently next to Heinz’s motorbike, until he was finally at the point where he would let me on it. We raced up the road at unimaginable speed, the smell of dirt whirled about us, my hair tried to cling to my mouth, I clung to his body, the hot dusty air rushed by, the motor sang higher and higher like a circular saw. I was infinitely happy. And then, quite unexpectedly, the forest opened up and we had arrived at the lake.

Heinz switched off the shrill motorbike and leaned it on a tree stump. He spread out the blanket. I undressed ceremoniously beneath my dress and put on my bathing suit, which I hated so much, as it itched my skin. But Heinz thought it pretty, because it was red.

After a while one heard the tram, tram, tram of horses’ hooves from the forest, and an instant later Anita stood before us. She dismounted, hot and happy. They embraced, with a fleeting kiss I was allowed to see as part of the Great Secret.

Watch the things, we’re really headed into the water now. Later on I will take you on my shoulders, said Heinz cheerily.

Bella was tethered to a tree and flapped her tail at the flies. The motorcycle stood, leaning there. I slid down the embankment to the dark pond and looked for flat stones to send skipping across the water. Little slime farts. A cheeky dragonfly sat himself down on my thigh, frogs gaped through the mesh of water lilies. Swamp grass and rushes stood as masters of ceremony between me and the water out there. Suddenly, there was the splashing of a swamp thrush.

Floop! A fish sprang up to snatch a bug. Bees and bugs and swarms of mosquitoes. Something was creeping up on me. This was getting claustrophobic, there was too much of an uproar around me. Suddenly I could no longer bear being so alone in the heat.

Aaaannnniiiiiittttaaaaaa! I screamed.

Heeeeeeiiiiinz! IIIItaaaaa! EEiiiinnz! came echoing back.

Heinz! Anita! I cried again.

I was standing up at the edge of the lake, by our blue-and-white blanket, using my hand to shield me from the light that glowed and pierced.

And, from far away, from the lake opposite, the answer came back, tired and hesitant: Just a minute, just a minute, we’ll be there! Splashing, slaps on water, water rings that came nearer and nearer, and there was Heinz, finally surfacing. Come on, he laughed up from the water, and turned his broad back toward me so I could climb aboard.

Anita lay on the black swamp-water sky. She moved her arms only a little, so as not to sink. Her hair had seeped into the algae and floated sluggishly about her. We left her…

•

When we played which flower each family member should be, Anita was the peony, and I was columbine. What about Heinz, I asked? Iris, with the leaves a great saber, Anita answered, laughing.

“Class pretensions,” Heinz had often said in a dismissive tone, when they discussed the parents, and my sister nodded and snuggled up to him. For her, Heinz was the cosmopolitan who had catapulted himself beyond the provincial thinking of my parents. Who had proven himself a strong man despite everything placed in his way. What a victory! They had their horses in common, the blue forest that adjoined the meadow, the sweet scent of hay, the poems, the motorbike with the wondrous velocity that balled up her skirt as they rode, whipped down her hair. They had one another.

One day Heinz asked my father for Anita’s hand. Neither of them could keep the secret to themselves any longer. They were sure that it was time to share their happiness, that it would convince everyone. On the contrary. The parents, who tried to bridge the social chasm between us and our workers with friendly sympathy, indeed with a genuine interest in their fates, were suddenly confused. The thought that someone from the working class would step so close to them was a blow that shattered their accustomed framework. It was completely unthinkable.

Whereupon everyone awoke from their Sleeping Beauty nap. Habitual assumptions no longer had any validity. Suddenly there were the most frightful scenes. Heinz was declared a murderer, an absolute villain, who had kidnapped, seduced, stolen one’s daughter. No one even asked Anita, the object of the parental confusion, what her feelings were.

This upstart nobody posed as some kind of manager! my father bellowed senselessly into the room.

How could you get mixed up with this prole, child?! comes my mother’s choked cry.

My sister sits on the bench that encloses the tiled stove, beneath which the dogs would otherwise be sleeping. But this uproar has sent them fleeing into the hall. Anita leans her head against the warmth of the oven. Her hands lie open in her lap. Tears run down her cheeks, ceaselessly, down the edge of her blouse. Leaning on his cane, my father limps to the window, to cool his brow on the glass. At his throat a bulging vein pulsates from a raging heart.

We gave that jerk every possible chance! Thus my mother’s wail. In her helplessness she starts to cry.

I sit further off on a chair, confused. Just yesterday Heinz was with us at table, my father telling his stories. I know this chaos is tied up with our secret, its magic now lost. Heinz left the house an hour earlier, without saying goodbye, climbed onto his motorbike and drove off.

I hate Anita. I despise her, because she makes our strong mother so weak. That my mother is crying is terrifying to behold; her helplessness, her weakness, which I feel, is unbearable. I cry too, out of fear and confusion. We avoid looking at one another, and struggle for air as if we were suffocating.

My father moans, and we all look at him. He throws his cane into the room; it hits the floor with a loud noise. He is about to burst with rage—nothing like the Fritz of yesterday at the dinner table.

My mother leaps up and hurls herself upon my sister like a hawk, slapping her across the face.

Don’t go to that bastard! she cries. That prole! She spits the word out in disgust.

Adi’s face has twisted itself into a grimace. She strikes Anita again, aimlessly, wherever the blow lands. My sister does not stir; only her form changes, with every blow. She ducks and pays the price of not giving up the price.

You must be polite and kind to all the people who work for us, my mother had always said. I had grown up in that spirit. But now she was repugnant to me. I did not understand her any more.

For a long time I held this scene inside me like a wound, as if I had been the one beaten. The cane on the wood floor, the sigh of the bench where my mother sat down in exhaustion, the sobs of the three of us and the stillness that followed, where one could hear the shrill buzzing of a fly in its death dance.

The truce had brought the dogs back into the room, going from one person to another to lick our hands. Emissaries of love.

•

My parents still lived in the time when they themselves had been young, in the unshatterable class consciousness that set limits. Only Max, my mother’s father, had, when he was already a very old man, married his cook, who was very pretty and brought her wonderfully cute son with her into the marriage. The family had swallowed this “mistaken liaison,” since Anni was uncommonly loving to Max, and he could not have cared less what others thought about him.

In the mirror of his helplessness, his powerlessness, the sinister idea came to my father of getting around the “matter” with money. Heinz had already been gone some time from our farm, and once again it was I who carried a secret about with me; for only I knew Heinz was still around. Anita wrote letters she shoved into her jacket pocket when she went riding.

My father also wrote a letter that turned him into an attorney and completely destroyed his dignity. He sat firmly screwed into his desk chair, the roll-top of the monstrous piece of furniture pushed back, so that it seemed even larger, and he himself looked small and stunned.

Come on, Fritzl! my mother urged, stroking his remaining hair. He answered with a groan, until morbid reflection made him burst out in a sweat, and he gave birth to the damnable idea of offering Heinz not just money but also a sea journey to America. Contingent on a declaration of renunciation, which Heinz was to sign.

In this oppressive interim Anita acted like an animal—a lethargic, dark snake that seemed to have made its way into an unsuitable climate, to which it was unable to adapt. She reduced herself to the barest necessities: Breath Light Bread Poop Sleep Sleep. And now she truly sobbed in her bed every night. When it woke me up, I saw through the glass the dancing prisms of the glass menagerie in the armoire and the twitching of Anita’s body.

Should I bring you some water? I whispered. She did not answer, drew her pillow over her head, and the room became silent.

That was at night. But on some days one could also clearly see her other side, the powerful animal of love—a leopard that nourished itself on the helplessness of our parents. She spoke little, climbed onto her Bella and rode off.

My mother reclaimed her strength, and, as if to calm herself, she sighed out Cassandra warnings:

My God, that would never have worked! That much one can count on five fingers. A catastrophe. They had nothing in common. No family, nothing. That always goes wrong.

Our father no longer spoke much. His own volubility had betrayed him. He had swallowed the listener’s bait, something that had never happened to him before. Heinz, whom he had valued so highly, whom one could rely on, had exploited him in the shabbiest imaginable way, crucified him. Fritz simply could not have dreamed that Heinz, who was fifteen years older than his daughter and brought nothing with him but a future that existed only courtesy of Fritz himself—that this creep would have the audacity even to cast a single glance at this beautiful, forbidden creature.

As the strength disappeared from my father’s legs, he also felt his other powers dwindling.

Heinz, for his part, with the decisiveness of love, did not sign the letter of renunciation that was supposed to shove him off to America.