Stella (8 page)

A rowboat came into view near Bird Island, moving with slow oar strokes and apparently making for Hirtshafen; it unexpectedly turned in our direction, and the oarsman waved a couple of times, indicating that he wanted to tie up to us. My father
lowered his binoculars. “It’s Mathiessen, the old bird warden,” he said, and motioned to me to help the man on board. Falling easily into conversation, he and my father spoke each other’s first names and shook hands. Wilhelm? Andreas? was their form of greeting. They were old friends. Over a rum, they asked one another about their families, their future plans, and their health, and that was when I learned that Mathiessen had finally retired. “I’m packing it in, Wilhelm, it’s my arthritis. The place will be unmanned for now.” He had just been to his hut for the last time, he said, to fetch a few personal items. He reported that over the last year not much had happened. They talked about a naval rescue exercise out at sea in which a sailor had died, and then my father told me to tow Mathiessen back to Hirtshafen. He sat in the inflatable beside me, his pipe in his crooked, arthritic fingers as if he were defending it from attack, and closed his eyes now and then. When I asked him what was going to happen to his hut now, he didn’t seem surprised, just shrugged his shoulders. Was he planning to sell it? I asked, to which he replied, “Such things aren’t for sale, Christian.”

“Is it going to stay there, then?”

“Might as well, so far as I’m concerned. It could come in useful, a place for someone to go, take shelter there.”

“Shelter?”

“From bad weather, yes.”

“People don’t easily lose their way and end up there.”

“Don’t be so sure, there’s been folk in the hut not long ago. Could be they wanted shelter, could be they just wanted time alone together. I notice that sort of thing right away, I can feel it.” He nodded, as if to confirm what he said.

“And does anything ever go missing?” I asked.

“Never,” he said. “I’ve never yet known anything to go missing, and that makes me think. Sometimes people leave something behind, a handkerchief, a half-eaten chocolate bar, a barette for a woman’s hair, but those who want to be alone there have never taken anything, boy, that’s the way it is.”

He had cast out a trolling line as we crossed the water, a long line with two wobblers on it. At the harbor entrance he pulled it in and was pleased to have caught two garfish. After I had secured his boat he gave me the two fish, saying, “Take them home, Christian, I expect your mother will pickle them in aspic,
garfish in aspic, that’s the thing to do with them. See you, then,” he added, clapping me on the shoulder by way of good-bye.

The photo of Stella and me among the sandcastles on the beach had been in my room for several days, and my mother didn’t seem to have noticed it, or at least she didn’t examine it for any length of time or ask questions. She did once turn it toward the light, however, and looked at it inquiringly—that was the day when I was making my way through one of Orwell’s essays. She was about to put it down again when something about it suddenly struck her. She sat down by my window, brought the photograph close to her eyes, and looked at me and then back at the photo. The way her gaze switched from it to me and back again, I could tell she was trying to find something out that she didn’t yet know. A clouded expression appeared on her face; she was obviously registering the fact that she no longer knew everything about me—as she always used to—and in a certain sense she had lost me. She always wanted to know everything, no doubt because when I was a little boy she had wanted to spare me disappointments and pain and mistakes. She spent ages looking at the photo in
silence; I couldn’t suppose that it gave away anything much, and was about to say something, when she finally commented, in her usual thoughtful way, “She looks older than you, Christian. The woman in the photo beside you, I mean.”

“She’s my English teacher,” I said. “We met by chance on the beach.”

“Pretty woman,” said my mother, adding, “Does she have any children?”

“As far as I know she’s not married.”

“A very pretty woman,” my mother repeated.

After that observation, I ventured to suggest, “If you don’t mind, I’ll bring her home for coffee some day.”

“Your teacher?” asked my mother, surprised.

“Why not?” I said. “I’m sure she’ll come if I invite her, she’s very nice.”

“I can see she is,” said my mother. “And you like each other. I can see that too.” Without another word, she put the photo back in its place, caressed my hair, and left me alone.

How she knew more than she was letting on was her own secret. Or if she didn’t know, she guessed, she sensed it. They were talking about me in bed, and I
could hear them through the door, which happened to be not quite shut. They had come home late.

My father hadn’t noticed the photo yet, and at first it didn’t seem to surprise him that I had a picture of Stella and myself on my desk. “Oh, come on, Jutta,” he said, “these things happen all the time. Every boy wants to admire someone, and it’s all the more likely if this teacher is pretty.”

“If only it were just admiration,” said my mother. “I’ve nothing against admiration, but it’s more than that with Christian, believe me, it’s more than that.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“The way they’re sitting happily on the beach, hand in hand, he’s hand in hand with his teacher, and the way they’re looking at each other. You’d think they’d just been waiting for one another.”

“Maybe Christian took a bit of a fancy to her, that’ll be all. I know his teacher; she’s very good-looking.”

“In that picture you’d think they were about to fall into each other’s arms any moment. I really do think you should take this seriously.”

“Christian is eighteen, Jutta.”

“Yes, well,” said my mother, “and this teacher is considerably older.”

“So? A difference in age is sometimes an advantage.”

I couldn’t help smiling to myself when, after a pause, he said in a different and amused voice, “We both discussed that once ourselves, a long time ago.”

Even after this reference to some shared experience of theirs, my mother’s mind didn’t seem to have been set at rest. She mentioned Christine, my friend at school, who had called several times to invite me to a barbecue and always went away disappointed. My father took his time before replying. “Sometimes you just don’t know what hit you, you’re defenseless.” I instinctively sat up in bed—I’d never heard my father talk like that before. I was thinking of opening the door a little wider, but I didn’t, because it seemed that was all they had to say, and they wished each other good night.

It won’t surprise you, Stella, that I picked up our photo first thing the next morning to look for signs of what my mother thought she had seen in it, but I couldn’t see anything to confirm her suspicions or guesses.

As if it would bring me closer to Stella, I went back to Orwell’s essays. I admit that I didn’t know the background well enough to understand everything he was
saying, but what he wrote about the critics’ reception of
Animal Farm
made me think. He had expected his book to be understood as a parable about the rise and the theory and practice of all dictatorships—with one exception: the Russian dictatorship, which mustn’t be exposed to comparisons showing it in a bad light. I decided to talk to Stella not just about that but also—like Orwell himself—about the freedom of the press in extreme situations, for instance during a war. I imagined all of us discussing the subject in class, and all the students being invited to give their opinions. That never happened.

And I remembered the time recently when sleepy little Hirtshafen woke up; all of a sudden it rose to the rank of a conference center. Fisheries experts from seven nations met here to discuss the projects closest to their hearts, come to an agreement on them, and most important of all to work out proposals to present to their governments. The experts—two of them of ministerial rank—stayed at the Seaview Hotel, and a green VW transporter van decked out with flags stood outside the hotel day and night.

I could never have dreamed that, during this event, Stella would acknowledge me publicly for once, not
with words but with a gesture. She had been asked to act as interpreter for the Scottish expert, standing in for his simultaneous translator, who had come down with the flu. Pleased, but a little apprehensive, she told me about this assignment. She was apprehensive because, she said, she had to confess she didn’t know enough about fish species. “You see, Christian, there’s always a chance to learn something new.” And she made sure she knew the English names of gurnard, flounder, and pike perch. Herring and mackerel in English were very much the same as their German counterparts and presented no problems. The reception to mark the opening of the conference surprised me for more than one reason: the fisheries experts from seven nations greeted one another at length, as exuberantly as if they had really missed each other and the joy of their reunion called for particularly strong expression. All that hand shaking, clapping one another on the back, hugs and exclamations: you’d have thought it was a long-anticipated family party in progress on the terrace of the Seaview Hotel.

When the delegation began moving into the large conference room—Stella had asked me to be there as well, saying “Just come along and listen”—I followed
a couple walking arm in arm. Both had badges with Norwegian names pinned to their lapels, showing a leaping fish, probably a sea trout. Stella too was wearing a badge with her name on it. Before I entered the conference room I felt a firm grip on my upper arm. I was taken aside, and a tall security man asked me, in a not unfriendly tone, “Are you a delegate?” As I did not reply at once, he signaled to a colleague to join him. The second security man took my wrist and, with the words “Don’t give us any trouble now!” was about to lead me away to a corner full of house plants. Stella had seen this episode, and came purposefully toward us. In a tone of voice I had never heard from her before, she tapped her own name badge and told the two men sharply, “This is my adviser, so kindly let go of him at once.” You took my hand, and the two men looked at each other undecidedly, but they did let go of me, and we walked into the big room as if we belonged together. I found a chair in the front row with a good view of the stage, and Stella climbed up on it to join her Scottish delegate, who sported side-whiskers and looked relaxed.

A Norwegian expert opened the conference by welcoming the company in almost melodious English, as
“My dear friends and colleagues.” Through his interpreter, he announced the good news that the latest ruling on quotas for herring fishing in the North Sea had had the expected result. This information was received with applause; I got the impression that all present had contributed to the successful outcome. Two more short lectures followed, one given by the Scottish expert, who, speaking with the help of key points he had jotted down, mentioned the precarious state of eel fishing today; he felt obliged, he said, to predict that the eel would soon disappear from our waters if we did not introduce measures to protect it. He blamed this situation not only on unauthorized fishing for eel but also on the changing Atlantic currents that no longer brought us the little elvers from the Sargasso Sea. Stella had to ask what he meant only once or twice; she sometimes got around a problem by paraphrasing his English, as I noticed from her hesitation and the extra number of words she used. The Scottish expert thanked her by making her a little bow and giving her a piece of paper. I assumed it was a written note of appreciation, but later I discovered that the Scotsman was good at doing lightning sketches, and as he spoke had been drawing Stella as a mermaid with a
prettily curving fish tail. You looked like some fairytale beauty, Stella, and I would have followed you anywhere, even to the bottom of the sea.

Later, it was the Scottish expert again who announced a break by pointing to the buffet, its dishes until now covered by cloths, and saying in English, “The bazaar is open!”

Stella nodded to him, and we went over to the buffet together. She ignored my compliment. As if it were her job, she took my plate and filled it with little tasters. What a spread! There were at least twelve different kinds of herring dishes alone: in aspic, with herbs, smoked, baked, and of course
matjes
, soused herring. There were also herring fillets rolled up with pieces of gherkin and herring fillets with slices of hard-boiled egg. In addition, there were glistening pink pieces of salmon, fillets of halibut, and dark red diced tuna. Fillets of sole were also on offer, along with rolled fillets of hake and pale pieces of monkfish. In fact, all the bounty of the sea was served up to the fisheries experts of those seven countries, and the absence of eel did not surprise me. Once I bumped into the Scottish expert, who glanced appreciatively at my plate and asked if I was “a native fisherman.” When I said, also
in English, “We only fish for stones,” he laughed, obviously thinking it was a joke.

It did not escape me that he was seeking Stella’s company. Whoever he was talking to, he kept looking past that person or over his head in search of Stella. Over the steamed mackerel that we were eating at a long table, she showed me his lightning sketch; he had drawn her with long hair and large, dreamy eyes, and at the sight of your curving fish tail covered with scales, Stella, I had to touch you then and there. She did not withdraw her hand from mine, but waved casually to a Polish fisheries expert—“Coming, I’ll be with you in a moment.” As she turned away she said to me, “This evening, Christian, I’ll be expecting you, just tap on the window.” And looking down at the witty portrait of herself, she added, smiling, “Come and see me this evening.”

The fisheries experts enjoyed a musical interlude, welcoming a singer who had been engaged by their chairman. Accompanying himself on his guitar, he sang about their own element, the oceans which were the subject of their longing and their concern, conjuring up the sea and the wind and, not least, an anxious mother waiting for the return home of her nearest and
dearest from far away. They clapped in time to the music. Stella joined in, but when several of the fisheries experts later went to the bar, she did not go with them.