The Blind Side of the Heart (51 page)

What had his mother imagined? She wanted to see him – so then what? Did she by any chance want to ask him to forgive her? Was he supposed to forgive her? He couldn’t forgive her, he’d never be able to do that. It wasn’t in his power; even if he had wanted to. What did she hope to find out by seeing him? She was brave, yes. Coming now, after so many years. Just like that. She had picked his seventeenth birthday and now he was spending his birthday hiding in the hayloft. He put his eye to the crack so as not to miss the moment when she left. The falling darkness made it difficult to see. The little light at the entrance had come on. There was light behind the kitchen window. Peter wasn’t cold, but he did feel hungry again. He quietly climbed down the ladder and went over to the milk tank. The darkness didn’t bother him, he knew his way around the cowshed. He turned on the tap and drank. The sucking noises and quiet squeaks of the piglets added up to a comfortable sound. None of them crying or squealing, perhaps the two extra piglets were already dead. Outside, Hasso barked for a moment. Peter wiped his milky mouth on his sleeve; he must hurry, he didn’t want to miss the moment when she left. He quickly climbed the ladder again and took up his post by the crack in the skylight, staring out at the dark-blue farmyard. It was warm in the straw above the animals. He had peed in the corner before when he had to. What else could he do? No one would notice or smell it up here in the cowshed. Peter liked to pee in the straw. What could be nicer? He did it again in a high arc, as far as it would go.

He heard voices coming from the farmyard. Did she still smile sometimes? When she smiled she’d had dimples in her cheeks. Peter remembered those dimples. She hadn’t often smiled. Peter knelt by the crack. In this blue light he saw his mother walking over the thin covering of newly fallen snow, putting on her headscarf and opening the truck door. What was left to him of his mother? Peter thought of the fish, the funny fish carved from horn. No one knew what to make of the fish, not his uncle, not his aunt. Peter had looked at the fish for a long time, every evening he had opened it and looked inside, but there was nothing there, just a hollow space. Down below, his mother had tied her scarf on. From up above it didn’t look as if anyone was smiling, and their goodbyes must have been short and sharp. His mother was carrying her handbag and the net shopping bag. Was she taking the present away again? Or perhaps she hadn’t thought of bringing any present, and it was just provisions for her journey in the net bag. Peter had felt that the hollow space in the fish’s belly was weird. Perhaps it was three years ago, perhaps only two that he had taken the fish to the coast with him and thrown it into the sea. Stupid fish, it wouldn’t sink, it floated on the waves. Peter liked the curve of the horizon. You could see it particularly well from the steep coast to the east, from the Fischland peninsula. Perhaps his mother’s back was a little bent, curved like the horizon? Only very slightly, as if she were grieving. Let her grieve. Peter wanted her to grieve. But he wasn’t going to mind about that, there was just one thing he was quite sure of: he never wanted to see her again in his life. Peter saw his mother take the handle of the truck door and climb in. His uncle closed the door and went round to the other side to get in himself. Peter heard the wind in the poplars. His aunt opened both sides of the gate. The engine was switched on, the little truck turned in the yard and drove out. His aunt was talking to Hasso; she closed the gate. Peter lay down flat. The straw tickled the back of his neck. The darkness soothed him; he was quite calm now.