A couple of days later Marina wore the dress out. When she showed it to Klondi, Marina proclaimed that it was moon-white, Ludwig had taught her that, moon-white, and Klondi, who wanted to make an effort to do her part as a parent, said, “White is the brightest achromatic color.” “Moon-white,” said Marina, “sounds much prettier, though.” The dress’s shoulders were covered with ruffles that Ludwig had had a seamstress work up from cuttings of its fine old material. For that, Marina had given Ludwig an extra kiss, she told Klondi, even though it scratched a bit because he didn’t shave regularly.
Klondi saw her limited skills as a mother confirmed by the fact that it had never occurred to her that when she sent her daughter “home,” Marina might not, in fact, go home. Even today, she explained to Albert, she often imagined what had happened next. Klondi knew that her daughter had wandered through the village, showing her dress to everyone she was acquainted with, and even to those she didn’t know at all, telling everyone her father had given her this dress because he loved her so terribly much, even though it was actually much too old and big.
It had been midsummer, and because the shadow thrown by the church was particularly cool, Marina had presumably decided to go there. She knew the way well enough, Ludwig always took her with him to Mass. The people there always became very serious very quickly, and Marina found this funny. Marina skipped past the church entrance and pressed herself against the cool walls, maybe she even licked the salty stone with her tongue, the way Klondi had shown her, and that must have been the moment when she caught sight of the old oak tree on Wolf Hill. Marina knew that, for Klondi, it was the loveliest tree there was, because it was just as big as a tree ought to be, with leaves just as green as leaves ought to be. Before Marina was born, Klondi and Ludwig had walked there together all the time. But after the separation, Klondi preferred to walk alone. Anyway, she had more than enough trees in her garden.
Marina ran to the oak, excited, yet there was a certain oppressive feeling in her belly, too, because she knew that her parents, especially Ludwig, wouldn’t want her to climb a tree in a dress, definitely not one this new, and moon-white to boot. But Marina was five years old, she believed that from up there you’d be able to wave to climbers on the mountains, and sailors out at sea, all she had to do was be careful and nothing would happen. And now she was climbing the old oak, she knew precisely which branches would bear her weight, and which were the quickest pathway to the canopy. Marina was a talented climber. In no time at all she’d reached the thin upper branches and looked around and was so entranced by the radiant colors of the church’s rose window opposite her on the Segenhügel that she didn’t notice the pastor leaving that same church with a battered briefcase under his arm. On this sort of hot day he tended to walk with a stoop, as Klondi had noticed, but on this particular afternoon he actually stumbled, as he later explained, when he stepped on one of his own shoelaces, and as he was standing again after having retied them, he glanced up and saw Marina in the crown of the oak, much too high, and in his terror he let his briefcase fall, took off at a run, and shouted as loudly as he could for her to come down.
At first, Marina didn’t hear him. But then, when one of the cries of the pastor, who had meanwhile reached the dip between the Segenhügel and Wolf Hill, finally reached her ear, she turned with a jerk. At which point a pair of branches broke: the one she’d been gripping with her hand and the one on which she’d been standing. The pastor made it to the base of the oak. Marina fell with a short, high shriek. And stopped short, suspended. The frills on the shoulders of her dress had been skewered by a branch, and Marina dangled like a ripe fruit among the oak boughs. That seamstress who’d altered the old bridal gown into Marina’s moon-white dress would curse herself later — the old-fashioned ruffles had smelled so pleasantly of dried flowers that she hadn’t had the heart to replace the almost antique material with new fabric.
When the ruffles tore, Marina didn’t scream a second time. Maybe because she thought she’d gotten off with a simple scare. She hit the ground a few feet in front of the pastor.
When it was time for the burial, the whole community gathered at Königsdorf’s cemetery, which had never been so lively. Klondi didn’t know how to act, she wanted to take Ludwig’s hand, but he wouldn’t let her. No one gave her a friendly glance, they all thought it was her fault, and all of them sympathized with Ludwig, who had lost a daughter. Why would they feel anything for Klondi? Everybody in this one-horse town knew she’d withdrawn from her role as mother, that she’d wanted little to do with Marina. They thought: she’s probably glad. Klondi couldn’t reveal to anyone that there was, actually, something to that. Naturally she would have done anything to save Marina’s life, naturally she would have traded her own life for her daughter’s, naturally she cried herself to sleep every night, naturally she’d started smoking weed again — yet for the first time she felt that strange happiness she’d been waiting for since Marina’s birth. She’d loved her daughter, she could see it only now that she was standing by her grave, she was grateful for every day she’d spent with Marina, and if someday she should succeed in showing this happiness to Ludwig, then maybe he’d forgive her and take her hand.
And Ludwig, the bus driver on line 479, who now lived alone in the semidetached house where he’d originally moved with his family, and who never answered Klondi’s phone calls, burned the bridal gown on his compost heap, using a bit too much ethanol, so that he nearly went up with it, and the neighbors had to call the fire department. That was all the same to Ludwig, as long as the white scrap of bad luck was destroyed. He bawled drunkenly while they extinguished the bonfire in his garden. The next morning he resolved that he’d let himself grow a full beard, since his unshaven cheeks would not bother anyone ever again. After the divorce, he’d allowed himself to drink only after Marina had gone to sleep and it was dark outside. After Marina’s death he started drinking even before the sun was up. That’s how it was in October, November, and nothing had changed in December. In January he frequently found himself wondering whether it had just gotten dark, or whether it was going to be light soon. In February he went raging, blind drunk, through Klondi’s garden, nearly drowning himself in the frog pond, at which point she had him committed to a rehab clinic. And in March, after a long talk with Klondi, he finally grew sick and tired of his self-pitying existence, shaved himself, had a successful interview with his former employer, and for the first time after a six-month hiatus, sat sober again behind the wheel of a bus.
For three days, everything went smoothly. On the fourth day, a doddery old one-legged man asked him whether that sweet little Marina of his was already in school. Ludwig asked him to get off the bus. On the fifth day he saw Marina in his rearview mirror, dancing in the bus’s central aisle in her moon-white dress. On the sixth day she sat in his lap while he made his rounds, and criticized his driving. On the seventh day he drank a thimbleful of vodka for breakfast, and she disappeared, and that was a tremendous relief. On the eighth day he filled a 1.5-liter mineral-water bottle with vodka, and took a swig from it at every stop. From the ninth to the twenty-first day he emptied half a bottle daily, despite which he was the most punctual and friendliest driver in the whole district. On the twenty-second day, the boss choked on a cough drop during their weekly meeting, and Ludwig offered him a drink of water. On the evening of the twenty-second day, Ludwig was dismissed. For a week after that, things were dark, black.