Cafe Babanussa (8 page)

Ruby secretly watched everyone and wondered what they thought of her. Did they like her? Had Werner brought many other girlfriends home? Did they think or expect that she and Werner would marry?

People were always dropping by, bringing gifts of homemade fruit wine and plum schnapps. In contrast to the commercial frenzy back home, presents, if any, were simple: a book here, a framed photograph there, a box of cookies and treats. Aware of how different their festive traditions were, Heike proposed that they roast a turkey in Ruby's honour.

The days at Werner's parents' house were generally cheery. However, Ruby was not feeling cheerful about Werner. He continued to be demanding, and she squirmed more and
more under his restricting influence. In addition, she hadn't been able to let go of the feeling that he had deserted her when she needed him most and that she wouldn't have faced such turmoil if he had travelled with her. She kept emotionally and physically distant from him, and when he asked what was wrong, simply said, “You know what is wrong.” Her family had done a good job of teaching her not to wallow when ill; to pick herself up, dust herself off and carry on.

Finally, one day she started crying, and told him all that she felt. After listening to her he said quietly, “I'm so sorry that you have had such a hard time. But Ruby, you are not a baby, and I can't hold your hand through every situation you face.”

Ruby was furious. “What do you mean? You try to hold my hand literally and figuratively all the time! You treat me like your child when I don't want you to! So why can't you help me when I actually
need
you?”

“I'm just telling you, I can't always be there for you.”

Ruby left the bedroom with nothing more to say.

Christmas came and went relatively quietly. On the twenty-sixth, Ruby, Werner and his sister Ulli hiked up the mountain to a restaurant where they drank wine made from rosehips and gorged on schnitzel and spaetzle. Visitors continued to stop by the house in a steady stream, the tinkle of laughter and happy voices filling the soundscape. During all these activities Werner was there, watching her every move, giving directions all the time. She was irked, but decided it was just one of his things about being in control around his family and chose to ignore him.

Before going out on New Year's Eve, family and friends gathered at the dining room table for
Bleigiessen
, the annual ritual of pouring lead to predict the future. The talk was lively as everyone was given a small, rugged piece of unformed lead cast off from Heike's sculptures. Each person melted their piece on a large spoon held over a Bunsen burner until it was liquid and almost glowing. Then the lead was poured into a cauldron of cold water. It hissed and whistled and sputtered until a new shape floated atop the water. Everyone else around the table would take the piece in their hands and make a prediction based on the shape of the lead. Ruby's piece of lead looked much like a little pig, and Hermann exclaimed, “Good luck—that means good luck for you!”

The conversation turned to a new movie,
Das Boot
, just out in the cinema, and from there it turned to talk of war. Hermann asked Ruby if her father had fought in World War II. Ruby said her father had been in the army and he had been in combat in France. His foot had been shot badly within the first two weeks of his being there, so he was sent home. But he had had a chance to see the devastation all around him.

“There's a funny thing about war,” said Hermann. “Sometimes both sides do terrible things. My father was a Nazi, and what he and all the others did was despicable. But when I was nine years old, the Russians came and made me and my family watch while he was executed in public. That was also wrong. A child should never have to see such things.”

Ruby looked down. “I'm so sorry.” A pang surged through her as she imagined losing her own father in such a manner.
She couldn't fathom the sense of loss it would beget. The relentless questions a child would grapple with unforgivingly. She had already been learning that there was more than one side to the story of World War II, things she had never heard about before, like the bombing of Dresden.

Ruby was surprised at how comfortable she was with Werner's mother and his family and how easily she fit into their life in Stuttgart. Her stereotype of a German family had been shattered. She wondered how they had produced someone as hard-nosed as Werner. He was so different from the rest of them.

R
UBY RESUMED HER LIFE WITH
W
ERNER IN
B
ERLIN
with a cheerful forbearance. But she still couldn't get a work visa, and she wanted to move on from her cleaning jobs.

“You know what we have to do, don't you?” said Werner.

“Yeah, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. Getting married, I mean.”

“Listen, I'm not jumping up and down about this either, but if you want to get a decent job, we'll have to do it. We can both work for a few years and then I'd be able to go to Canada with you.”

“That's what you're thinking of doing? Going to Canada?”

“I've always wanted to go there, you know that,” said Werner.

“But I'm just beginning to like it here. I've found my groove—aside from work, that is.”

“That's just the point, Ruby—you need to find a better job. And you can't do that unless we get married.”

“What else would change? I don't know much about your laws here.”

“You'd have to change your name,” said Werner. “Or hyphenate it.”

“Never. I will not change my name. I'm not your chattel, Werner. And besides, I like my family and their name. It means a lot to me.”

“Who knows, maybe they'd make an exception.”

“They'll have to. I'll argue that since I'm a Canadian, Canadian law should be considered. I absolutely refuse to change my name.”

“Okay, Ruby. Just give it some thought.”

After a week of hemming and hawing, Ruby agreed to tie the knot on the conditions that she could spend the end of summer picking grapes in France with her friend Emma, and that she be allowed to keep the name Edwards.

Emma was her closest friend, whom she'd met in her German classes. She was a little on the wild side, but Ruby loved her. She was a great conversationalist and had a fine sense of humour, and Ruby knew that they would have a lot of fun travelling together. As a francophile and someone who loved to cook, Ruby was ecstatic about the trip. The rain had been unrelenting so far that summer in Berlin. She was determined to find a change of climate, and with it, perhaps, some peace of mind.

Neither she nor Werner thought of marriage as sacred. It was a practical way to further their plans. So instead of thinking about her upcoming wedding, over the next few weeks
Ruby busied herself with gathering things for her trip and packing up her knapsack. Werner hovered around her all the while. Although he wouldn't say it, he was unhappy.

“It's harder than I thought, to let you go off without me,” he said to her. “I'm afraid you'll get involved with other men. You know I haven't had sex with anyone else since we've been together.”

Despite his early statements that he wanted his freedom, the issue had never arisen. But she was hoping that would change while she was in France, if only to give her a little breathing room in the relationship. Still, she tried to reassure him.

“Werner, I'm coming back, I promise. We're getting married, remember? I
have
to come back!”

“I'm just worried about what kind of trouble you'll get into while you're there.”

“No trouble at all, just lots of fun and exercise,” said Ruby.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes, I do,” said Ruby. “Of course I love you.”

Werner stood looking at her, shaking his head. “Yeah, well, think about this relationship of ours some more while you're away,” he said before walking away.

Emma slept over the night before they left, and both of them were brimming with excitement when they took the subway and the bus at dawn down past Grunewald towards the highway and check point. They planned to hitchhike to France to save money. They figured they could make it to Alsace in ten hours and then to Burgundy in another three
or four hours. Ruby was carrying a can of mace. They agreed, somewhat naively, that the safest rides would be with truckers; because the drivers were working, the girls assumed that they were somewhat less likely to commit a crime.

They got their first ride after an hour with an old man in a beat-up Benz. He asked them a lot of questions about where they were going and poked fun at their German. He was heading for Frankfurt. That would take them close to Alsace, a few hours from Strasbourg. He dropped them off at a rest station outside Frankfurt, and there, Emma flagged down a couple in a red Audi with French licence plates who agreed to take them to the border. When they hit the autobahn, Ruby lay her head down on Emma's lap, she was so afraid of the speed and the lane-swerving. She almost threw up when they got out at the border, still a ways north of Strasbourg. Pretty soon after that they caught a lift with a truck driver. The going would be slower, but Ruby was happier. From Alsace to Burgundy, low-lying, densely forested hills grazed the sky as the river Oise flowed alongside, and relief bubbled up now that she was in France. Here she was escaping Werner, her surrogate father. No one would tell her what to do every day, and she would be able to speak and hear her mother's language once again.

After arriving in Mâcon in the early evening, they stood in line with a motley assortment of people seeking fruit-picking jobs. One African fellow didn't have all his papers, and the official at the desk began yelling at him. Then a tall man around forty years old, with straggly red hair and beard,
stepped out of the line. His sly grin revealed several missing front teeth.

“Mais qu'est ce que vous faites? Vous devez avoir honte de traiter les gens comme ça!”

When several others echoed the tall man, saying the official should be ashamed of treating people like that, the official shrugged and simply asked the African to come back the next day with all his papers. The redhead remained boisterous in the line, complaining constantly about the wait to his much quieter companion, a brown-skinned, black-haired teenager wearing a David Crosby–type fringed suede jacket. It seemed so seventies and out of place in this new era.

When Ruby and Emma turned in their papers, they were told that there was a potential job for them if they returned the next day. They were handed tickets to use at a campground half an hour away by foot. As they stood mulling their options, the tall redhead began speaking to Emma, also a redhead, in broken English.

“Ladies, I ask you, where are you from?”

“Canada . . . England,” was their joint response.

“Well, well. Pleased to meet you. I am Jean-Claude and this”—he gestured to his friend—“is Willie. May we take you to the campground in our car?”

Ruby wasn't sure about these two characters, but Emma jumped at the chance. As the foursome walked over to the road, Ruby recoiled when she saw a bright red sports car with a sprawling naked woman spray-painted in silver across the hood. The side and rear windows were covered in foil.

“Emma, no, we can't go anywhere in
that
!”

Emma replied rather testily, “We're just getting a ride. Nothing's going to happen.”

Ruby climbed reluctantly into the back seat with the teenager. In the front, Jean-Claude and Emma hit it off instantly, nattering endlessly, while Willie and Ruby did not speak a word. At the campsite, they pitched their tents and shared some fruit and cheese, sausage and bread. Jean-Claude and Willie supplied a few bottles of red wine and brandy. Willie loosened up enough to tell Ruby that his father was an indigenous Peruvian and that his mother was French. Ruby told him about her own mixed background, but she still felt strangely awkward.

Things worsened as the night wore on. Emma and Jean-Claude were all over each other, while Willie cast longing looks at Ruby. She felt sorry for him, but not enough to invite him into her tent. He was only eighteen and looked sixteen—too young for her. Willie eventually retreated to sleep in the red car, where he was less likely to hear the grunts and squeals emanating from the tent where the redheads were busy.

The next day, Jean-Claude and Willie left for town, promising to look for work for the four of them. Ruby wasn't too sure about letting these guys—one loud and obnoxious, the other quiet and unassuming—take charge of their working future in France. But Emma was game, reasoning that being French, they knew the ropes. Hours later, they were back: they had secured a job on a pear farm about thirty kilometres down the road.

The next morning, hung over, Ruby was still feeling uncomfortable about riding in the car. Jean-Claude sped through Mâcon, running red lights and almost running down several pedestrians. Ruby yelled at him to slow down. But he just laughed. “If you're anarchist, this is the only way to drive.”

Ruby could have told him that her lover was also an anarchist but would never drive so recklessly, but she knew it would fall on deaf ears. The car careened through the streets of the town and eventually onto country roads, the high speed reducing Ruby to a huddled ball in the back seat. She hated the smile on Emma's face.

Willie only talked when Jean-Claude addressed him directly. Then he would babble about how his father had led his people into rebellion in Peru many years ago and how he too possessed the ability to rouse people to revolt. Jean-Claude talked about his experiences in the 1968 student uprisings in Paris and how he hoped to repeat a similar situation, this time enlisting workers from across the country.

How different they sounded from Werner. He was an intellectual who lived through his books, his days of fighting in the streets a thing of the past. He had wanted to change the world; however, he had told her that he gave it up when he realized that it had become more about the excitement than about the cause. Now he was only involved in his books, studying German language and history. She tried to picture Werner dressed in black, from balaclava to boots, setting barricades on fire. What a different person that would have been!

Arriving at the farm, Ruby gazed over a vast expanse of
woods and fields; at the top of a ridge, she could see row after row of pear trees. They were immediately approached by a man who introduced himself as Monsieur Ranier. Short, pudgy and balding, he perched his sunglasses atop his shiny head as he looked over the group.

“I hope you all know that this is hard work. You'll get a break for lunch at one and then work until dinner at six. Pitch your tents and then come back ready to work.”

They found a beautiful little lake surrounded by trees and rocks and a little sandy tract of beach. Just above the beach was flat ground where they pitched their tents.

“This is heaven,” said Ruby. “I can swim!”

Heading back up the hill, they found Ranier waiting for them with the others. Ranier hooted when he found out that Ruby was Canadian.

“You are a cousin of ours, after all.”

Ranier teased her about her slightly Québécois accent. From then on, everybody referred to her as “
La Canadienne
.”

Ranier sent Emma, Jean-Claude and Willie off to the pear trees to start picking. Then he said to Ruby,
“Eh, la Canadienne! Venez ici.” And, you, the Canadian! Come over here
.

Ruby was told to drive a tractor that held dozens of wooden flats of pears.
“Mais, vous vous moquez de moi. Je n'en sais rien,”
Ruby said.
You must be joking. I don't know how to do that
.

“Ça ne fais rien. Venez avec moi.” Doesn't matter. Come with me.

Ruby said, “But I don't even know how to drive a stick shift.”

As Ranier continued to insist, Ruby thought he was trying to humiliate her. They walked up a long row of pear trees. The tractor at the top of the hill seemed like some mythical beast. Ranier made her climb onto the shiny red tractor and told her she was to back it slowly down the row, stopping every few metres so that more flats could be loaded. Each flat was about a metre square and would be filled with rows of barely ripe pears. Ruby was terrified. What if all the pears fell off? She fumbled nervously with her feet, trying to figure out the clutch. Finally she decided to shift into first gear without it and see what would happen. The gears screeched and groaned as they tried to find their place. As she heard the flats shifting behind her, she started shaking.

“Mais arrêtez donc,”
Ranier urged, telling her to be more careful.
“Tout va tomber. Vous foutez la transmission. Lentement, lentement!”

Ruby finally managed to move the machine backwards with a bit of a lurch, not enough to make the fruit fall off. But how was she going to keep this up? The tractor stopped with a shudder, and two guys grabbed the flats that the pickers had filled with fat, ruddy pears and stacked them on top of the others on the tractor. Ruby felt her heart in her mouth each time the tractor stopped, afraid of losing the precious cargo. But as the hours passed, she learned to move her feet in sync and felt less shaky. The tractor's transmission had been spared.

By the lunch break Ruby was famished. She washed up and found her way back to the farmhouse dining room, where there was a long table with many chairs. Soon she was joined by Emma, Jean-Claude, Willie and another young man of stocky build with wavy brown hair and dark brown eyes. Ruby thought he was cute. She caught his eye and said
bonjour
. Introducing himself as Jean-Pierre, he smiled and sat down directly across from her. Ruby sighed and thought:
Not another hyphenated Jean!

Slowly people took their places around the table, a dozen in all. The room buzzed with conversation. In the middle of the table was a platter of peppery veal loin chops with mushroom sauce, another large plate chock full of roasted potatoes, and several dishes of green bean and tomato salad. Ruby's mouth was watering and she dug in, chatting through the meal with those around her. Then, from the other end of the table, an elderly man called out to Ruby,
“Eh, vous, la Canadienne! Contez-nous une histoire de votre pays, une histoire de Québec.” Canadian! Tell us a story of your country, a story of Quebec
.