Almost Everything Very Fast (11 page)

Fred dropped his noodle into the pond. “She should show me, too!”

Klondi laid her hand on Fred’s back. “I could do that. But then it wouldn’t be a surprise anymore.”

“A surprise for me?”

“Among others,” said Klondi.

Fred opened his backpack and retrieved the encyclopedia, then rolled onto his belly, and started reading at page one. Albert wanted to say something nice to him, but all that came to mind was “We won’t be long.”

The chill inside Klondi’s house, which had succeeded in holding fast against the surrounding summer, made Albert wish he had, in fact, accepted some of the spaghetti. A little inner warmth against the shivers. He followed Klondi into the kitchen, a replica of one of those cozy Alpine rooms you find pictured in German furniture-store brochures. A little seating area with wooden chairs whose backrests had heart-shaped holes sawed into them, white-and-blue-checked clay beer steins on the windowsill, a tiled stove, and a low ceiling supported by old, petrified beams, which even Albert, in spite of his undistinguished size, had to duck his head to clear.

“Cigarette?”

Klondi extended a packet of Gauloises, just as she had five years before.

“I don’t smoke,” he said coolly.

“Fibber. Want one or not?”

Klondi plucked two cigarettes from the pack, lit them both, stuck one between Albert’s lips, and drew deeply on the other, as if it were providing her with air. “God, finally! Were you the one who told Fred about lung cancer and smoker’s leg?”

Silently Albert shook his head; as always, Klondi had an overwhelming effect on him: in her presence he felt so young and inexperienced.

“Anyway, you can’t smoke anywhere near him without him going completely nuts.” Her cigarette bobbed up and down as she spoke. “I always have to find some excuse for the smell.”

“What color was your hair when you were younger?”

“At least sit down first.”

“No thanks.” Albert ground his cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. “Look, are you my mother, or what?”

From somewhere in the depths of the house came a creak, eerily extended, like the parody of an opening door in a horror movie—though to Albert it also sounded a bit like indigestion—and as silence fell again, Klondi said, “Ah, well.”

Albert wasn’t surprised. Hundreds of times, thousands of times, he’d imagined this moment, fearing he might faint, hoping he’d be able to react without reproach, wondering whether they’d embrace, or smile, or weep, or all three at once, expecting to feel in every fiber of his body, and perhaps even beyond it, relief, confidence, joy.

But there was nothing.

He sat down on one of the chairs and looked at Klondi, who just stood there, tapping ash from her cigarette and letting it fall to the floor like snow.

“I expected the thought would occur to you someday.” She turned one of the chairs back to front and straddled it, shaking her head. “But my hair used to be blond, not dark blond, not platinum blond, and definitely not strawberry blond. Sorry.”

Albert glanced through the four-paned window. Outside, Fred lay stretched flat on his belly, his head resting on the encyclopedia, like somebody who’d been shot from behind.

“What were you looking for in the sewers?” Klondi asked.

“The truth.”

“But let’s be honest here, do you actually
want
to find it? Or just your own version of it?”

“There’s only ever one truth. That’s what makes it truth.”

“I’ve heard,” said Klondi, without responding to his commentary, “that Dickens and Rowling are both strangely beloved by orphans.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Those kinds of stories can arouse false expectations,” she said, poking around in the ashtray with her fingers. “Who, after all, turns out to be a Harry Potter or an Oliver Twist? Who actually discovers something special about themselves, or develops some magical power? Most orphans aren’t princes or students of magic; they’re just kids who’ve gotten less love than the rest.”

Of course Albert knew that, and yet it hurt to have it said so baldly, right to his face. What was Klondi up to? He asked himself whether it wasn’t time to go.

Klondi ground out her cigarette. “Maybe I can tell you who your mother is.”

Albert coughed.

“I said maybe.” She smiled at him sympathetically. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

“Don’t bother yourself too much about me,” he said as calmly as possible, avoiding her eyes. When somebody asked him not to get his hopes up, he could do nothing but get his hopes up.

A husky laugh. “You’d be a miserable poker player.” She bent forward, so that her chair stood shakily on two legs, grabbed his head with both hands, and pressed a kiss onto the cheek with the cops-and-robbers scar. “But not such a bad son.”

Albert pushed her back onto all four chair legs, and she let rip with her truth. The sunshine falling through the window lacked warmth, and there wasn’t much to spare in Albert, either. His body felt stiff, he shivered, but he was too exhausted to do anything about it. So he listened.

It all began with Klondi bringing a little girl into the world in 1971. She’d been pleased about the prospect, actually—she could hardly wait to hold the child in her arms. Just before the delivery she’d switched hospitals because, as she’d discovered very late, in the clinic where it was supposed to happen, all the babies were washed after birth, before being passed to their parents, and Klondi wanted no part of that, she wanted to hold her daughter in her arms while the baby was slick and bloody—in for a penny, in for a pound—and so she and her husband, Ludwig, hailed another taxi and shouted to the driver, “Next hospital!” And he answered, “But there’s one right here!” And they tossed all the cash they had onto the passenger seat. And the driver put his car into gear.

And so, at that next hospital, Klondi gave birth to a girl, her name was Marina because Ludwig had wanted it that way, Marina, it sounded almost like Mina, which had been Ludwig’s mother’s name. Marina fidgeted and squalled just like Klondi had imagined she would, and Klondi smiled, because she felt like she’d made up for the two abortions she’d had earlier in her life, or at least one of them, and she pressed Marina to her breast and cupped a hand over her head like a helmet, and sniffed her. They say that babies don’t smell, but this baby, Klondi’s baby,
did
smell—though not good, somehow. That’s what she got for absolutely having to hold her daughter in her arms right away, thought Klondi, nobody had told her about the smell, they all talked about the miracle of having a living being slide out of you, the miracle of creating—with a little masculine help—a brand-new life, but nobody warned you how badly said life could stink. Klondi didn’t want to do any violence to her nose, her body had already been through enough, and she passed Marina to the nurse, so that she could get started with the washing. “Make sure she’s really clean,” Klondi said, and added, because the nurse had shot her a confused look, “Give her a mirror finish!” and when she was alone, she gave her hands a sniff and made a face. Klondi slept for a few hours, waking just when she started to dream she was going into labor. Marina was brought back to her, this time spotlessly clean, wrapped in white blankets, what a sight, and Klondi took her, full of joy, she wanted to hold her daughter, this creature who had never been separated from her for so long, she raised the little bundle to her face, wanting to kiss it, and pursed her lips and pushed her head forward, and just couldn’t do it. That simply didn’t smell good. Maybe it had something to do with hormones, maybe it was an allergic reaction, the doctor couldn’t explain it. Marina smelled fantastic, he assured her, and Ludwig seconded him, and Klondi didn’t like that at all, they were making it sound as if it were her fault, yet her nose was just fine, as later investigations confirmed. Possibly it was the hospital’s fault, the doctor interjected, whereupon Klondi decided to go home immediately.

Half an hour later Ludwig was steering their car toward the house in Königsdorf, and Marina lay in a little basket on the backseat beside Klondi, who wasn’t sad or frightened in the least, only confused, because she couldn’t say where her happiness had gone. For nine months she’d waited, for nine months she’d restrained herself, hadn’t gone out dancing until dawn or gotten drunk, hadn’t gone swimming in the frigid Isar or smoked any grass, had followed through with the whole maternity program, heavy breathing and listening to music and letting them run tests on her and the whole nine yards, everything that was meant to do you good, in order to stay the course at least once in her life, and now she wanted her reward, she wanted the happiness.

The car pulled to a stop in front of their semidetached house, for which they’d recently made the down payment, in Osterhofen, a neighborhood of Königsdorf that borders the moor, and Klondi got out and carried Marina in her little basket through the garden, taking no notice of the pink banner above the front door that read
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
, waited for Ludwig to let her in, then brought Marina into her room with its green walls. There Klondi unwrapped Marina, tossed the basket and everything else that had been in contact with her out onto the porch, and washed Marina again with her own hands. Maybe they hadn’t done it thoroughly in the hospital. Gently she ran the sponge across Marina’s skin and through every fold, speaking to her, explaining to the little whiner that she was sorry, it had to be like this, but not to worry, it would all be over soon. Then she dried Marina off and wrapped her up in towels that had been washed with their own usual detergent, line-dried in their garden, stored in their linen closet, and she carried Marina into the living room, where Ludwig was waiting, the sweetheart, though at the moment she couldn’t spare a thought for him, he could look as confused as he liked, there were other things to worry about, and she sat down on her chair in the solarium, which she’d arranged there because during her pregnancy she’d thought how nice it would be to sit in this chair with its view of the garden and a couple of houses and the expanse of moor, and suckle her daughter, and Klondi opened her blouse and lifted her breast from the bra and smelled Marina and clutched her breasts and smelled her again and stood up and passed her daughter to her husband.

The marriage held out for another seven months.

In 1976, Marina, five years old, discovered a slightly bitter-smelling bridal gown in a box of rags in the basement of the house where Ludwig was now living alone. Later on, Ludwig told Klondi that their daughter had insisted on wearing the dress, even though he, Ludwig, had explained that it was much too big and old for her. Marina merely stamped her feet and said that Mama would certainly have let her do it, and moreover, at Mama’s house she could stay up as late and eat as much chocolate as she wanted. Ludwig, whom this hurt more than he could show, did not reply that Mama took care of her only on the weekends, Mama had left her behind, Mama loved her from the depths of her heart, but not enough to actually be a mother to her. Instead, Ludwig said, “That’s just Mama.” And Marina said, “Mama is much nicer.” And Ludwig said nothing.

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.