We’re the Löwenthals, I reserved the table for us last week. They’re sure to think: oh, what an attractive couple, how young they are. Just married? Ella disguised her voice and rolled her eyes; she enjoyed going out with Thomas as a married couple. Michael had told them about the Johannishof, his parents had celebrated their bronze wedding there with their relations from the West. Ten waiters serving one table, the food was carried over to the customer under a domed cover, the waiters wore snow-white gloves, it was a really classy place. Young people didn’t go there, it was only the upper classes who ate in the Johannishof. Like the Löwenthals.
Thomas took Ella’s hand and led her out of the room and along the corridor to the smoking room. There was a smell of Earl Grey tea in there, and the room was full of the music of stringed instruments.
So there’s my birthday girl, where have you been hiding? Cheerfully, reproachfully Käthe lit the big candle. This child was born sixteen sweet years ago, she sang.
Ella clapped her hands like a small child.
But as soon as Käthe had finished singing her little ditty, she said sternly: I have something really special for you this year. She turned to the green curtain behind her back that, together with the big sliding door, divided her bedroom from the smoking room. Picking up the poker, she waved it like a magic wand. Hocus pocus fidibus, three black cats! Now she opened the drawn curtain with the wand. Abracadabra!
Ella couldn’t see at once what Käthe was conjuring up. She pulled the tea trolley through the doorway. There was a pale mound on the tea trolley, a white hill, a shining, glittering mountain.
Who stole the chocolate out of the pantry at festival time, who stole the nuts and raisins if it wasn’t my magpie of a daughter?
Ella looked at Käthe, shocked.
Maybe you think I don’t notice anything? But I don’t like being robbed, particularly not by my own child. The crystallised ginger and candied grapefruit slices, who stole those out of my Czech bowl in the glass-fronted cupboard? Who nibbles the bacon before it gets to the table? Whose fault is it that I’ve stopped buying such things?
Ella shook her head. It wasn’t me, she said in a hoarse, helplessly indignant voice, knowing that she was a very good liar so long as she believed what she was saying herself. She didn’t know about any theft, anything, she knew nothing at all about it, and she wasn’t a magpie.
Your brother then, was it? There was anger in Käthe’s voice; the simplest way, she thought, to convict Ella of lying was to cast suspicion on her brother. Ella wasn’t going to let Thomas be wrongly accused, she would want to confess.
But Ella shook her head again, looking incredulously at Käthe: Do you really think. . would you believe it of. .? Thomas? How could Käthe drag him into it? Neither Käthe nor Ella took their eyes off each other even for a moment to look aside at Thomas, who didn’t defend himself. He knew as well as the two of them what game they were playing, and he didn’t want to be caught between them.
It was you. Käthe clapped her hands; she wanted to finish this conversation. She had no doubt at all that Ella had been stealing her provisions. That was why she was getting something really special this year. This is your birthday present!
What? Ella stared at the tea trolley.
Sugar. Käthe didn’t reach out a hand to her, did not make any loving gesture, did not wish her a happy birthday. She turned on the very low heel of her Mongolian shoe and walked out of the smoking room.
Sugar? Ella went over to the tea trolley and incredulously touched the white mountain of fine crystals. The sugar rustled beneath her fingertips.
I expect she thinks she’s giving you a treat.
Is that meant to be a comfort? Did Thomas really think that Käthe wanted to give Ella a treat with all this sugar? A real treat? Why not crystallised fruit, then, why not crisp bacon rind, why not onion pie?
My birthday present is sugar? Plain sugar?
The door opened and Käthe came in with a tray. Breakfast for everyone, she filled three cups with tea, put small boards at her place and Thomas’s, held the loaf of bread to her breast and cut several slices. Whenever she cut bread like that, moving the blade of the bread knife towards her body, the bread in front of her full breasts, Ella thought that in the posh nursery of Käthe’s childhood no one had shown her how to cut bread on the table.
Ella sat down at her own place. She had neither a little board nor a knife in front of her. She reached for the bread, but Käthe smartly slapped her hand, making it tingle.
You eat your sugar, she said sternly, triumphantly; there was no doubting that firm voice. Only when you’ve finished it all up do you get something proper to eat again.
Incredulously, Ella looked from Käthe to the tea trolley and back at Käthe again.
I’m sure you’ll manage it easily, little magpie. And then perhaps you’ll be cured, and see for yourself how stupid stealing is.
You want me to eat that whole mountain of sugar?
What do you mean, that whole mountain? It’s a little hill weighing ten pounds, no more, no less. Ought I to have bought sixteen, one for each of your years of life? Ninety, a hundred, one for each pound of your weight? Käthe cut her bread twice, quartered a clove of garlic and put a quarter of the clove on each piece of bread. The salt was in clumps in the salt cellar; Käthe salted her food generously. The first quarter piece of bread and garlic was already disappearing into her mouth, she chewed noisily, munching, smacking her lips. In between meals I shall lock the sugar up here in my cupboard so that you don’t go throwing it away on the sly. That would be a shame. There’ll be nothing else for you until you’ve finished it, only sugar.
Ella rubbed her eyes with her fists; if she went on rubbing like that for some time not only would her eyes be red, she would make tears flow, pitiful, heart-rending tears that would soften any heart. The warm tears ran down her cheeks, her eyelids fluttered, her nostrils widened and quivered.
Don’t make such a fuss, there are millions of people in the world going hungry. You’re too well off here, you’re ungrateful, sly, disrespectful. I’m teaching you respect, that’s all. Käthe cut another slice of bread, broke it in two and gave half to the dog. The arm of the record player made a dragging sound; the disc had come to an end and the needle was scratching over the vinyl. Käthe put the other half of the slice of bread on her board, buttered it and took a mouthful.
Ella’s eyelid twitched; sheer rage took hold of her.
And by the way, there are also postage stamps missing from my desk. Here Käthe opened a thick quarto magazine, Meaning and Form, its title spontaneously arousing Ella’s desire to mock.
To keep herself from snorting with laughter, Ella sucked in her cheeks and bit her lip. Next moment she widened her eyes and puffed out her cheeks. You think I stole them? Her indignation could not have been greater. She felt no shame — although she had in fact been to blame. She had taken postage stamps from Käthe’s desk, and not for the first time. She nodded vigorously, so vigorously that Thomas gently kicked her under the table. Oh yes, of course, I steal everything! Ella was incandescent, shooting sparks. But I left the letters there — the letters you were writing because you wanted to marry a dead man.
You did what? Meaning and Form sank to Käthe’s lap. What letters?
To the Ministry. Ella picked up the dessert spoon on the table in front of her, went over to the tea trolley, pushed the spoon into the sugar and carried it to her mouth as if there could be nothing more delicious in the world. Curiously, she observed Käthe’s wandering eyes. It was beginning to dawn on her what letters Ella meant.