Who exactly is Daniel Mandelkern?
In my head this image remains: Elisabeth and I in bed in the Bismarckstrasse apartment, yogurt jars and red wine bottles, on the floor next to us on the right and left our books, on my side:
The Water-Method Man by John Irving
Montauk by Max Frisch
The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth
A Diary in the Strictest Sense of the Term by Bronislaw Malinowski.
Auberge la Fontaine
I first heard the name Dirk Svensson at dinner with Elisabeth’s friends in Venasque (Auberge la Fontaine). Elisabeth and I were again spending a few days in Provence, we were celebrating her thirty-sixth birthday (April 1). We return again and again to our places, we go to the same restaurants and bars, we stay in the same rooms (Brittany, Provence, the Baltic Sea). This time we flew to Marseille and rented a car there (the Renault could no longer handle long distances, said Elisabeth, even though I’d love to sit next to you again for days, Daniel). In the middle of the small restaurant stood a grand piano, around it four tables and only a few audience members. Before dinner we drank and listened to Schubert’s four-hand military marches, then Poulenc (we soaked thoughts in wine like plums). The pianist looked like Woody Allen, his accompanist wore a black evening dress (her heavy body from behind an upside-down heart). Elisabeth didn’t have to introduce me, her friends knew me: the dramatist, the writer (we already had a shared story). At the next table an old woman played along with every single note on the wooden table. They were here to think, said the dramatist, without all the networking and the usual milieu. I salted my soup, whereupon the writer stood up and with an appropriate degree of conspicuousness threw the saltshaker out the window into the village fountain. It was about the genuine gaze, he said, raising his glass: to the natural beauty of meals and women (Elisabeth’s French laugh)! At some point between foie gras and cheese tasting (plateau de fromage), he leaned over to me and asked whether I’d heard of Dirk Svensson, now that was an author a journalist like me should write an article about. A strange man, Mandelkern! Elisabeth nodded, I laughed too.
on Elisabeth’s side
Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Jahrestage by Uwe Johnson
Kinder und Tod by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Das Dekameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
Die Hebammensprechstunde by Ingeborg Stadelmann
Die Besteigung des Mont Ventoux by Francesco Petrarca
Who exactly is Elisabeth Edda Emmerich?
the 3-step system
First we speak about visible things. Because the power is still out (Claasen set a fire, Claasen chopped down trees, Claasen this, Claasen that), we’re sitting in the kitchen and watching and listening to Svensson (a transistor radio sits silently on a shelf). Filetto di persico con salvia, he says, taking a heavy pan from a hook, someone should fetch the sage from the terra-cotta pot in the garden. The boy has already forgotten his cut and wound, and Tuuli allows him to pick the sage by himself (he brings back oleander flowers). From the water we hear the dog coughing. The boy should also take a look in the chicken coop, says Svensson, setting three glasses of wine on the table, maybe they laid an egg this morning. Tuuli is smoking. This is how things look: a late afternoon with friends, the sun will set, and we’ll talk, we’ll pass around Autan (against the mosquitoes), we’ll refill one another’s glasses (against the silence). Svensson takes the packet with the fish from the sink, he praises cooking with gas (the directness of the manual procedure), he explains the secret to cooking good fish, the “3-step system,” he says (filleting, souring, salting — dispels odor and refines taste). Svensson praises the boy and lays out on the table the sage leaves he’s now found (he’s a real botanist, says Svensson, a plant expert and biologist). He drops some butter in the pan and holds up to the light the egg the boy has brought. He lays the soggy wax paper on the table in front of Tuuli, she should operate on the fish, he says, that’s always been the task of the doctor in the house. Svensson laughs, and Tuuli asks whether the fish hasn’t been refrigerated all day. Yes, the power’s out, says Svensson, but the fish here on the lake are almost too fresh to eat. To celebrate the occasion, he says, raising his glass, to celebrate this special occasion (a watery red trail of blood on the table).
Elisabeth (red)
Our honeymoon lasted three days and took us to Kolberg. Everything we needed fit in the Renault. The summer of 2003 was a summer of record-breaking heat (we were wearing a wedding dress and shorts). At the Eimsbüttel marriage bureau the throwing of rice was prohibited, and the paternoster elevator tore a snag in Elisabeth’s red dress. All you have to do is stand still, she said, and it goes continuously up and down. My grandmother brought lilies (Elisabeth’s parents took her between them). After the wedding we ate lunch in the Four Seasons Hotel and set off immediately afterward (we hadn’t even reserved a table). Maybe another life is a simpler life. The language of flowers is a foreign language, Elisabeth said later on the country road. She has been married, she has lost a child, now she wants to risk it again (her bulky baggage). I drove and Elisabeth read to me from an old newspaper, it took us two hours to reach the sea at Lübeck, we’d left everything behind.
wedding dress (red)
In my head this image remains: Elisabeth and I on a Baltic Sea beach beyond the Priwall Peninsula, the red wedding dress spread out under us (sea buckthorn and stunted pines). Elisabeth is eating peppered mackerel directly from the wax paper with her fingers. I fall asleep, and when I wake up storm clouds have blotted out the sun. Lightning flashes, the beach is empty, I’m alone (the wax paper and the dress lie crumpled in the beach grass). No wind, no rain, no thunder. Suddenly Elisabeth surfaces from the completely smooth water and comes toward me (she has nothing on). Behind her the Baltic Sea begins to foam, a balloon wafts over the water (red). When she sits on me, even though she moves much slower than usual, she comes much too fast (outside wet gooseflesh and inside unexpectedly warm). I follow suit, then the thunder, then the rain (as if she were responsible for all this). Elisabeth says that she loves me and wipes herself clean with the wedding dress, I’m forbidden to use that against her. Elisabeth laughs, I laugh too.
our strange preferences
We continued with the red: Elisabeth and I at the balustrade of the Klütz Mill, the wedding dress folded in the Renault. The sun was setting (a small detail). Elisabeth was wearing a white T-shirt, her hair tied back with a rubber band. She ordered plaice with red wine, I hesitated at the thought. If I may, said the waiter, to go with the plaice we have an excellent Chateauneuf du Pape. But it’s not about tailoring things to convention, Elisabeth declared, everyone has his own strange preferences. Isn’t that right, Mandelkern? The sun clear over the fields and flying wheat husks and swarms of mosquitoes. The same for me, I said (back then I thought we were forever). Elisabeth laughed, I laughed too.