My mother’s great love.
I never asked either of them, but I am sure she was Harry’s first. At most his second. He was seven years younger than she was and would have been more inexperienced even if he’d lived two hundred years. What sane woman would take up with someone who was the very embodiment of helplessness? My mother. Nobody else would. I could certainly never imagine myself with someone like that.
But I could understand what my mother liked about him.
He was the exact opposite of Vadim, who left two and a half nervous wrecks behind when he finally moved out. My mother, Anton, and little Alissa. I was not a nervous wreck. I was a simmering cauldron of hatred. Once he was gone, my mother popped a bottle of champagne and she and I clinked glasses — her hand was shaking and she had tears in her eyes.
“I’m lucky,” she said. “I’ve got a chance to really do some living now.” And she did start living, and she bumped into Harry. She met him in the offices of the little local paper in which her column on Russian-Germans appeared. She would write pieces on things like the fact that you could get Russian-language books at the local library, or that there was story time there every Thursday, or that there were cheap gymnastics classes available somewhere. She approached the column with real devotion. She liked helping those who were less knowledgeable or less capable than she was. She ran our phone number in the paper for anyone who had questions — and the phone rang a lot.
My mother was very proud of that job. Next to each of her columns was a small photo of her, and she could never get used to seeing her name and face in print. The fact that the paper had a circulation of five thousand and was filled for the most part with ads for plumbers and beer gardens didn’t bother her. She sat and worked on her articles for hours, agonizing over each phrase, only to have me proofread everything and change it all around again.
Harry was freelancing for the paper too. It was his latest job. He had just failed miserably as a waiter. The paper paid about ten cents a line and nobody who thought anything of themselves would write for that rate. Before Harry and my mother showed up, the only writers had been officers of sports clubs who wrote up pieces on things like their clubs’ end-of-season banquets — they would have paid to have their stuff published.
I’m thinking about all of this as I ring the bell at Ingrid and Hans’s front gate. It takes a while before the door opens and Ingrid steps out into the yard, squinting and unsure, blinded by the sun.
“Sascha?” she says when she finally hits upon the idea of using her hand to shield her eyes and is able to see me. “What a pleasant surprise. Come in, my child.”
I walk across the moss-covered cobblestones that lead from the gate to the door. I had told her I was coming a week ago. Ingrid must have forgotten — but she’s always home anyway.
She wraps her arms around me and holds me close for a long time — until my back starts to hurt. She’s short and I have to stoop.
When she lets go, I can see in her face that she’s trying to suppress sobs. She’s not able to. I don’t look away. I’m feeling tired and indifferent. I don’t cry, either. I’m not sure why Ingrid does.
“This is going to make Hans happy,” she whispers. “How nice of you to come see us again.”
She quickly puts on a pot of coffee and sets the table in the living room. It’s become routine for me to eat in the living room. There’s almost nothing that can shock me these days. Ingrid has discreetly wiped the tears away with a cloth handkerchief — as if she could hide something like that from me — and returns upbeat, almost cheerful. She fumbles awkwardly with the coffee cups and they clink against one another, and all the while she smiles at me with Harry’s smile. I think she’s even humming a melody.
The smell of the coffee fills the air.
“Hans, Hans,” she calls, a little louder than necessary. “Can you look to see whether we have any cake in the freezer? The one with the crumb topping? Or the cheesecake?”
“Please don’t go to any trouble,” I mutter, but she doesn’t pay any attention. Which is fine.
“Sugar, cream,” she says, setting down the jar of sugar and a creamer on the table. She puts them right in front of me, as if I’m the only one who will be having anything. “How are your little sister and brother, my child? How’s their health?”
“Anton’s never healthy,” I say, regretting it immediately as I see the look on her face darken. Her question wasn’t just small talk. Her gloominess had been lifted for a moment by my visit, but it disturbs deeply her to hear about an unhealthy child. When someone hurts, Ingrid hurts with them. She can’t watch the news without crying.
“Nothing serious,” I say. “Just nerves — just psychological.”
“Psychological,” she repeats. “That’s the most serious of all, my child.”
I don’t contradict her. But that stuff has never been an issue for me. A Russian children’s poem comes to mind: “My nerves are made of steel, no, actually I don’t have any at all.” It’s like it was written about me. I don’t have any.
I wonder whether I should tell Ingrid that I want to kill Vadim. Maybe it’ll cheer her up the way it did me and Anton.
Hans comes through the door.
He’s friendly as he greets me, but seems emotionally distant. He holds my hand in his for a long time. I’ve stood up from my chair to greet him and it has apparently surprised him. He’s a bit unsteady on his feet, though he’s not really that old. Not even sixty, I don’t think. He’s become grizzled. The skin of his face hangs in flabby folds.
He tries to put on a smile, but what he musters is more of a horrible grimace. It pains me to look at him. I would like to tell him he doesn’t need to smile on my account, but I can’t think of how to say it.
We have coffee and a crumb cake Ingrid has thawed in the microwave. For the first fifteen minutes Ingrid talks nonstop. It’s all a bit muddled: geraniums, the neighbors, water pipes, a broken vacuum cleaner. I nod throughout. Then she stops. We sit there silently. The clock ticks. It seems quite natural to me.
Hans has a faraway look on his face, Ingrid stirs her coffee, and I look at the photos on the walls. I’m already pretty familiar with them. All shots of Harry, or nearly all, at least. Harry as a boy, with matted blond hair and freckles. Harry with a wiener dog. Harry in a sun hat, sitting in the passenger seat of an antique car. Harry building a sand castle. Harry with his book bag. Harry with a young Ingrid and Harry with a young Hans. In a tender hug with his mom, looking serious standing stiffly next to his father.
Harry as a child, but never with friends. Or girlfriends. In a lounge chair, in the woods, on a bike. A portrait of a somewhat older Harry. White teeth and freckles. A good photo.
How can something like that happen, I think to myself. Harry had loving parents, a sheltered childhood in a prosperous country, a dog, a house with a garden. This house, where I am sitting right now. And yet Harry was unhappy, because he was never any good at anything. What did his parents do wrong — were they just too nice to him?
If I had grown up here, I would be a completely different person, I think. I wouldn’t be so combative and I probably wouldn’t be so obsessed about my grades in school — especially in subjects I’m not interested in, like medieval history. I would have been born to succeed, and I wouldn’t have to bust my ass all the time just trying to prove to everyone that I’m a somebody.
At the Alfred Delp School they wouldn’t risk snickering about me behind my back or scrutinizing my no-name sneakers out of the corners of their eyes. I would be somebody. Even if I wore the exact same shoes I do now it just wouldn’t matter.