I press the doorbell, and before I can waste a single thought on immediately turning on my heel and getting back in my car, my sister is already opening the door.
“Heiko. Nice. Finally. There you are.”
She opens her arms, and I take a hesitant step toward her. Then she pulls me close. I feel stupid because I’m just standing in Manuela’s hug, my arms hanging at my sides. She squeezes several times, so I give up and place a hand on her arm too. This appears to finally satisfy her, and she lets go and says I should come in. I follow her into the main hallway, which leads to all of the rooms in the house. She walks ahead of me and disappears behind the kitchen door to the right. My eyes have to get used to the hazy lighting. Due to the sheer size of the space and because there aren’t any windows, with the exception of the glass front door, it’s usually shrouded in darkness. At the height of summer this was always the best place to be when I wanted to cool down. Stripped to just my underwear, I would lie down on the black floorboards and doze until my mother or Hans would rouse me with a kick, saying I shouldn’t be lying around where people walk. The old glassed-in cabinet is still against the right wall, next to the kitchen. It was already there when the house belonged to my grandparents. I pause right in front and look at the things behind the glass. If a stranger came in, they’d probably ask what kind of taste-impaired people lived here. Admittedly, I ask myself the same thing again and again, but at least I know the strange hodgepodge comes from the fact that three generations have lived here. My mother’s spooky porcelain figurines—angels, cats, and dogs—perch on top of my grandma’s placemats that she crocheted herself. The figurines were apparently not worth taking. Next to them stand little golden Buddha statues with fat bellies and wooden elephants decorated in purple and gold. Mie’s contribution to the jumble. Only now does the idea occur to me that it might not have been Mie who put them in. No real Thai thinks stuff like that is good. It’s more like the bullshit that’s hocked to Western tourists, making them pay through the nose. Maybe my father brought it back and set it up because he thought that way Mie would feel more at home.
“Heiko, are you still there?”
Manuela’s head peered sideways out the doorway. The glasses she didn’t need and only had to look more like a teacher were dangling from her neck. I hear Hans’s voice from the kitchen. He’s saying something. But I can’t understand him.
“All right, Papa,” she said, and then again to me, “Come on. The coffee is getting cold.”
How carefully she pronounced the words. So deliberately prim, just so she wouldn’t say it wrong. Made the hair stand up on the back of my ass. I almost hit my head on the low ceiling, that’s how long I hadn’t been there. Manuela bustles around the small kitchen. Sparse light falls through the window and the patio door. Mie is standing at the sink and washing dishes. My father is sitting at the table, left and right arms resting next to his plate, which is already full of large crumbs. “Hey,” I mumble. Mie briefly turns and whispers a hello. At least I assume so. It used to make me furious how quiet she always is. Today, because I don’t have to live here anymore, I couldn’t care less. Even though she’s discrete, I still see Manuela give our father a poke, and he too produces a “Hey” before he loads another piece of cream-filled almond cake on his plate.
“Sit down, sit down,” Manuela asks and immediately pours me a coffee. I pull out my cigarettes and place them next to my plate. Manuela instantly produces the ashtray and sets it noisily in front of me on the table.
The next minutes, in which no one at the table exchanges glances, are tortured. Mie places a dish with brown balls next to the plate with the cake. Then everyone is finally seated.
“What is that, Mie?”
“Kai nok…” and I don’t understand the rest because it’s Thai and fades into silence.
She appears to ponder how you could translate it but doesn’t come up with a solution. Also because Manuela nods and says, “Aha,” as if she knew exactly what was in those steaming bull balls.
I remove a cigarette from the pack, and while I light up, Manuela loads a piece of cake on my plate. Only then does she ask, “Cake?”
I wave my hand vaguely and tap the ash off my cigarette. My father looks over for the first time. He stares at my cig and runs his tongue over his upper lip. Even though it’s been years since he shaved off his old porn stache, I still haven’t gotten used to the view of his naked upper lip, which is covered in beads of sweat.
“Can I bum one?” he asks and didn’t look at me for a single second, speaking only to the pack.
With relish, I take a long drag on my cigarette, knock off the ash, take another drag, and place it on my ashtray.
Then I flick the pack. It slides across the table, past Manuela, and slams against Hans’s plate. He takes one out and pats down his pants pocket. Doesn’t find anything, and now he looks at me, the butt already between his lips.
“Have a light?”
His eyes are simultaneously watery and glassy. Like an ashtray that someone had accidentally poured liquid into. I flick the lighter right after.
After the whole smoking thing is over and Manuela has quit her hacking, she finally gets to the point. Her disapproving gaze, which fits perfectly with the strict bun she’s tugged her hair into, remains unchanged. She can’t stand us puffing away but has to go along because she’s in the minority and not inside her own four walls. At least she’s learned to have an ashtray handy in situations like these, because neither Hans nor I give a rat’s ass where we put our ashes.
“It’s nice to finally be sitting together.”
No one reacts. Only Mie is smiling somewhere between embarrassment and approval.
“But there’s also an occasion,” Manuela continued. “I was finally able—I have to say with the help of Andreas’s good connections—to secure a spot in rehab for Papa.”
Hans lets loose a scornful grunt that sounds so vulgar, as if his mouth was an asshole. But Manuela doesn’t let herself be fazed. That’s from her years of experience.
“And he has—,” she cleared her throat, “will be going to Bad Zwischenahn until November.”
“Hmmm,” I murmur past the piece of dry cake in my mouth. I’m afraid she must have baked it herself.
I’m wise enough to refrain from asking what all this has to do with me, because I have absolutely no interest in a full-on bargaining session. In a second, she’ll be getting around to saying why it’ll all be my business.
“I’ll probably take him there personally next week,” because she wants to be truly sure that he’ll go, but of course she doesn’t say that.
“Of course, someone will have to tend to Papa’s pigeons during that time”—aha, so that’s the way things roll—“and because I really won’t have any time to take care of that too, with my job—and the kids are so demanding at their age—and I have so much to prepare and get through before and after school, with corrections, I just can’t manage it, and because Mie’s terrified of the birds, we were thinking”—she looks at Hans, probably in the hope she’d catch his gaze, but he keeps staring at his cake—“I was thinking that you could do it, Heiko. You used to always help Gramps feed the birds, right? So you must still know how all that works.”
It’s at least twenty years ago.
“That would be a great relief for all of us, Heiko.” She appears to have repressed the reason why I never again set a foot in the shed, never helped my father with the feeding after he’d taken over the pigeon breeding from grandpa. Suits her agenda.