Summer Lies (18 page)

As he took the pan out of the cupboard, it slipped from his hand and landed on the stone floor with a clatter. He picked it up and listened to the house. After a few seconds he heard his wife’s steps on the stairs. She came into the kitchen in her nightshirt and looked around.

Now, he thought. He took her in his arms. She felt awkward. I probably feel awkward too, he thought. When did we last take each other in our arms? He held her close, and she didn’t soften into his embrace but she did put her arms around him. “What are you doing in the kitchen?”

“Pancakes—I want to make a test one first. I’ll cook the rest when everyone’s at the breakfast table. I’m sorry I woke you.”

She looked at the table, where there were still flour, eggs, and margarine, and the bowl with the batter. “You made that?”

“Do you want to try the test one?” He let go of his wife, turned on the stove, and set the pan on the flame, looked at the cookbook, heated margarine, poured a little batter into the pan, then took the half-cooked pancake out and put it on a plate, heated more margarine, flipped the pancake and put it back in the pan, and finally presented it all golden yellow to his wife.

She ate. “It tastes like a real pancake.”

“It is a real pancake. Do I get a kiss?”

“A kiss?” She stared at him, astonished. How long is it, he wondered again, since we last kissed each other? She slowly put down the fork and the plate, came to him at the stove, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and stayed standing next to him, as if she didn’t know what to do next.

Then Meike was standing in the door looking questioningly at her grandparents. “What’s going on?”

“He’s making pancakes.”

“Grandfather’s making pancakes?” She couldn’t believe it. But there all the components were, the bowl with the batter, the pan, the half pancake on the plate, and Grandfather in an apron. Meike turned, ran up the stairs, and banged on the doors. “Grandfather’s making pancakes!”

Today he didn’t withdraw to the bench by the lake. He fetched a chair from the boathouse and sat down on the deck. He opened a book, but didn’t read; he watched his grandchildren.

Yes, David was in love with Meike. The way he tried to impress her, the way he strove to be casual in every posture and every movement, the way he checked before he did a dive with a somersault and a flip to see if she was watching, the way he showed off about the books he’d read and the films he’d seen, the way he talked with superiority about his future. Did Meike not notice, or was she playing with David? She seemed unimpressed and quite natural, and paid no more attention to David or bestowed any more of her good mood on him than she did on the others.

The pains of first love! He saw David’s uncertainty and felt once again the uncertainty he himself had been plagued by fifty years before. He too had wanted to be everything back then and sometimes he felt he was, and then again sometimes he felt as if he were nothing. Back then he too thought that if Barbara saw who he was and how he loved her, she would love him too, but he could neither show who he was nor tell her that he loved her. He too had sought to find a promise in every tiny gesture of attention and familiarity and yet still knew that Barbara was promising him nothing. He too took refuge in a heroic indifference in which he believed in nothing and hoped
for nothing and needed nothing. Until longing overwhelmed him again.

He was seized by pity for his grandson—and for himself. The pains of first love, the pains of growing up, the disappointments of adult life—he would have liked to say something comforting or encouraging to David. What could be of help to him anyway? He stood up and went to sit down cross-legged with the two of them on the deck.

“Honestly, Grandfather, I would never have believed you and the pancakes.”

“I had fun cooking. Will the two of you help me tomorrow? I don’t want to get too cocky, but I should be able to manage spaghetti Bolognese and salad with your assistance.”

“Chocolate mousse for dessert?”

“If it’s in Dr. Oetker’s cookbook for beginners.”

Then they sat together in silence. He had interrupted their conversation, and didn’t know how to get the three of them talking. “Then I’ll go back. Tomorrow at eleven? Shopping first, then cooking?”

Meike laughed at him. “Cool, Grandfather, but we’ll see each other again today.”

He sat in his chair again. Matthias and Ferdinand had found a flat place in the lake a few yards from the shore, had dragged over all the stones they could find, and were building an island. He looked for David and Matthias’s sister. “Where’s Ariane?”

“On your bench.”

He stood up again and walked to his bench. His left hip hurt. Ariane was reading with one foot on the bench and the book on her knee; she heard him coming and looked up. “Is it okay for me to sit here?”

“Of course. Can I come and sit with you?”

She took her foot off the bench, closed the book, and slid sideways. She saw him reading the title:
The Postman Always
Rings Twice
. “It was in your bookcase. Maybe it’s not for me, but it’s gripping. I thought we’d be doing more stuff together. But David’s only got eyes for Meike, and Meike only has eyes for David, even if she’s pretending it’s not the case, and he doesn’t notice.”

“Are you sure?”

Her look was as precocious as it was pitying, and she nodded. She will be a beautiful woman, he thought, and imagined her taking off her glasses one day, shaking her hair loose, and pouting. “So that’s what’s with David and Meike. Shall the two of us do something together?”

“What?”

“We could go look at churches and castles, or we could visit a painter I know, or a car mechanic who’s got a workshop that looks exactly the way it did fifty years ago.”

She thought. Then she stood up. “Good, let’s go visit the painter.”

After a week his wife asked, “What’s going on? If this summer’s right, every previous summer was wrong, and if every previous summer was right, this one’s not. You’re not reading anymore and you aren’t writing. All you do is go around with the grandchildren or your children, and yesterday you came into the garden and wanted to clip the hedge. Any time there’s an opportunity to grab me, you grab me. Really, it’s as if you can’t keep your hands off me. I’m not saying you can’t grab me. You can …” She blushed and shook her head. “Anyhow, things aren’t the same and I want to know why.”

They were sitting on the veranda. Their children and spouses
were spending the evening with friends, and the grandchildren were in bed. He had lit a candle, opened a bottle of wine, and poured glasses for the two of them.

“Wine by candlelight—that’s a first too.”

“Isn’t it time for me to start—that and the grandchildren and the children and the hedge? And for me to know how good you feel again?” He put his arm around her.

But she shook him off. “No, Thomas Wellmer. It’s not okay. I’m not a machine you can switch off and switch on. I had imagined our marriage differently, but that’s apparently not how it went, and so I came to terms with the way it actually was. I’m not going to get caught up in a particular mood, in a single summer that’s over after a few weeks. I’d rather cut my hedge myself.”

“I retired three years ago. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize about the freedom that retirement brings. Retirement from a university isn’t as complete as it would be from a business; there are still doctoral students and a seminar here and a seat on a commission there, and you think now’s the time to do the writing you always wanted to do and never had the time for before. It’s like switching off the engine and your car keeps rolling in neutral. If the road then slopes a bit …”

“You’re the car, and retirement has switched off your engine. But who’s the slope?”

“Everyone who’s still behaving as if the engine were still running.”

“So I have to give you special treatment. Not the way I would if the engine were still running, but as if it were off. Then …”

“No, you don’t have to do anything. After three years the car’s stopped.”

“…   so from now on you take care of the grandchildren and trim the hedge?”

He laughed. “And never take my hands off you.”

They sat side by side and he could feel her skepticism. He felt it in her shoulder, her arm, her hip, her thigh. If he put his arm around her again, maybe she wouldn’t shake it off—they’d talked and listened to each other. But she would wait for him to remove it. Or would she lay her head on his shoulder after a while? The way she’d put her arm around him while he was making the pancakes, not in agreement, not as a promise, but just like that.

He courted her. In the mornings, he brought her tea in bed; when she was working in the garden, he brought her lemonade; he trimmed the hedge and mowed the lawn; he made it a rule to cook in the evenings, mostly assisted by Ariane; he was there for the grandchildren when they were bored; he made sure the supplies of apple juice, mineral water, and milk didn’t run out. Every day he invited his wife to go for a walk, just the two of them, and at first she wanted to get back to the house and her tasks as quickly as possible, but then she let him extend the distances and sometimes hold her hand—until she needed it to lift something or pluck it and examine it. One evening he drove her to the restaurant on the far side of the lake; it had one star, and dinner was served in the meadow under fruit trees. They looked out at the water glinting like molten metal in the evening sun, lead perhaps with a tinge of bronze, smooth, until two swans came in to land, their wings flapping noisily.

He put his left hand on the table. “You know that swans …”

“I know.” She lay her hand on his.

“I’d like to make love to you when we get home.”

She didn’t pull her hand away. “Do you know when the last time was that we made love?”

“Before your operation?”

“No, after that. You told me I’m as beautiful as I was before and you love the new breast as much as you loved the old one. But then I had to take a bath and I saw the red scar and I knew it wasn’t okay and everything was just an effort, I made an effort and you made an effort. You were very understanding and very considerate, and said you didn’t want to pressure me, and I should give you a signal when things were better. But when I didn’t give you a signal, that was fine with you too, and you didn’t give me one, either. Then I realized it had been the same way before the operation and nothing happened back then, either, unless I was the one to give a signal. I didn’t want to give any more signals.”

He nodded. “Lost years—I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Back then I thought I had to prove to myself and everyone else that I could become rector of the university or get into politics, and because you didn’t take part in any of that I felt you’d betrayed me. But you were right. I look back on those years and they were pointless. All they were was noisy and rushed.”

“Did you have a lover?”

“Oh, no. I never let anyone or anything near me outside work. I’d never have got anything done otherwise.”

She laughed softly. Because she was remembering his craze for work back then? Because she was relieved he’d had no lover?

He asked for the check.

“Do you think we still can?”

“I’m as anxious as I was the first time. Maybe more anxious. I don’t know how it will be.”

It wasn’t. Pain struck in the middle of things, exploding in his coccyx and sending waves into his back and his hips and thighs. It was worse than the worst pain he’d had thus far. It annihilated his desire, his sensations, his mind, and made him its creature, unable to escape its grip or even to long for it to stop. Without intending to or even being aware of it, he groaned aloud.

“What is it?”

He rolled onto his back and pressed both hands against his forehead. What should he say? “I have sciatica like I’ve never had.” He struggled to his feet. In the bathroom he swallowed some of the Oxycontin the doctor had prescribed for crises. He propped his arms on the sink and looked into the mirror. Although he felt different from any way he’d felt in his life, his face was the same as usual. His dark blond hair with streaks of gray and gray sideburns, his gray-green eyes, the deep creases around his nose and from his nose to his mouth, the tiny hairs in his nostrils that he would trim tomorrow, his thin lips—it did him good to share the pain with this familiar face and to reassure it and himself with an obstinate expression that there was life in the old dog yet. When the pain eased, he went back into the bedroom.

His wife had fallen asleep. He sat down on the edge of the bed, careful not to wake her. Her eyelids trembled. Was she half asleep and half awake? Was she dreaming? What was she dreaming? He knew her face so well. The young face that lived within it, and the old one. The childlike, happy, innocent one, and the tired, bitter one. How did the two faces coexist?

He stayed sitting there, not wanting to provoke the pain. It
had shown him that it was not only at home in his body, but that it now ruled the house. For now it had retreated into a back room, but left the doors open in order to be right there if insufficient respect was shown.

He was touched by his wife’s hair. Dyed brown, with the gray and the white growing back through it—the battle against age, fought again and again, lost but never abandoned. If his wife didn’t dye her hair, with her aquiline nose, high cheekbones, deep eyes and lines, she’d look like a wise old Indian woman. He had never worked out if her eyes were sometimes unfathomable because her feelings and thoughts were so profound, or because they were so empty. He would never work it out now.

She apologized the next morning. “I’m sorry. The champagne, the wine, the food, the sex, your sciatica just when it was getting good—it was all a little much. I just went to sleep.”

“No, I’m the one who should be sorry. The doctor told me that I had to expect sciatica and take pills if I had an attack. I had no idea it would be so strong, and come at exactly the wrong moment.” He was afraid of turning on his side, and stretched out his arm.

She laid her head on his shoulder. “I have to make breakfast.”