The Taste of Apple Seeds (22 page)

Inga had also said on the phone that she loved Peter and that she had come to think that the difference in their ages didn’t matter. Unfortunately she had only realized this in the instant when he kissed her teenage niece, and she wondered whether she would ever be able to look him in the eye again after that. Harriet was concerned but helpless; at any rate Inga wouldn’t talk to her. Christa calmed her sister down and advised her to talk to Peter. Inga said she needed some time to think everything through; she would spend the week in Bremen and then she intended to talk to him. My mother thought that sounded like a good plan, and the telephone conversation was at an end.

But much more would happen that week. After it had run its course it was all over between Aunt Inga and Peter Klaasen, and he had taken up a post somewhere in the Ruhr district.

Chapter XI

IN SPITE OF THE SHADE IT
was now hot on the terrace. The sun was high in the sky; I padded back into the house to drink a glass of water. I went into Hinnerk’s study, sat at the desk, and took a sheet of typewriter paper from a tall stack in the cupboard on the left-hand side. Then I took one of the perfectly sharpened pencils from the drawer and wrote an invitation to Max:
Tonight, at sunset, small reception, festive evening attire
. I added this at the end because I didn’t want to be the only one all dressed up.

I slipped the piece of paper into a white envelope, wrote
Max Ohmstedt
on the front, put it in my bag, and went outside. The heat hit me like a slap in the face. I cycled to Max’s and put the letter in his letterbox. Other letters were in there, so he obviously hadn’t emptied it today and was bound to get my message. But what if he already had something planned? Well, then he could just say no. I wasn’t planning to cook a three-course meal.

I cycled on to the Edeka shop, bought some red wine and a box of After Eights for old time’s sake. No one seemed shocked by my white ball gown. I put everything in my bag and returned to the house, ate some of what was in the fridge, and planned my evening’s reception.

Where should we sit? On the steps outside the house, below the rose bush? Not festive enough, and it was visible from the road. On the terrace under the willow? Given what I wanted to talk to him about, the former conservatory was not the right place. In the copse? Too dark, too many spiky branches. In the chicken shed? Too poky, and anyway it would still smell of paint. In the orchard? In the middle of the lawn in front of the house? Or maybe inside?

I decided on under the apple trees behind the house. The grass was too tall, but there was plenty of garden furniture around to put things on. And behind the orchard the wide pastures began. I went into the barn and fetched Hinnerk’s scythe. Why shouldn’t I be able to do it, too? I tried to remember how my grandfather had wielded the scythe as he made his way easily and slowly through the falling blades of grass. But what had looked so easy was actually very arduous, and the heat didn’t help things. Bravely I cut a rather uneven patch beside the large Boskoop tree in which Bertha and Anna had once had their hideaway. It looked less as if someone had tried to prepare a pleasant spot for a picnic and more like the site of a fight. It was, in fact, and the scythe had won. I hung the blunt tool back in its place. Only blankets would help now. I went upstairs, rummaged through the chests, and found a large patchwork rug, several coarse woolen blankets, and a golden-brown brocade curtain. I hauled them down the stairs as if they were the skins of animals I’d slain, dragged them through the barn and into the meadow at the back.

Those dower chests were wonderful. I went back and fetched a white broderie anglaise tablecloth. As I walked down the stairs again my gaze fixed on the bookshelf. The spines of the books were looking at me. I stopped. There wasn’t any system; things just happened and sometimes the arrangement worked.

I took the tablecloth, grabbed a few dark green satin cushions with gold tassels from the living room, and went outside. The tablecloth fluttered on the rusty square folding table. I raked the freshly cut grass aside and spread out the rug. The woolen blankets came next and then the brocade curtain. I arranged the satin cushions on top and stretched myself out with delight in this wonderful nest and looked up into the tree. I couldn’t see anything because I was gazing into the sunlight. I put my hand over my face.

When I awoke the sun was lower in the sky. Woozily I struggled up from the cushions. I couldn’t remember ever having slept so much at any stage of my life before. But nor could I remember ever having scythed so much. As I lurched up the stairs I fancied I could hear an undertone of resignation—but not an unfriendly one—in their groaning.

I washed myself from head to toe at the basin, put up my hair, and slipped into the midnight-blue tulle dress that had once belonged to Inga. The layers of the skirt were made up of endless honeycombs of nothing, defined only by a blue thread. And the more these holes piled on top of one another, the more they concealed what was hiding beneath them. This dress had always been mine when I played with Rosmarie and Mira.

I thought of how we had met Mira. Max had been there, too. Rosmarie and I were playing ball out on the drive. We would throw it against the wall of the house and before it bounced back we had to clap: first once, then twice, then three times, and so on. The person who dropped the ball or forgot to clap the right number of times was the loser. We would also play it with other rules: having to turn right around between rebounds, say tongue twisters, and whatever else we could think of. All of a sudden, there in the middle of the drive was this girl with black hair and her little brother. Rosmarie knew who the girl was and where she lived. They went to the same school but the girl was one year above Rosmarie. It was clear that her brother was much, much younger than me, at least a year, you could see that right away. Poker-faced, the girl picked up little stones from the ground and started throwing them at Rosmarie. I was eager to see how my volatile cousin would react, and was outraged when she didn’t do anything at all. She actually seemed flattered and showed the gaps in her teeth. She still had her pointy canines, but both her upper incisors were missing. This made her look even wilder and rather ferocious, too. I took a stone and threw it at the girl. But I only hit her little brother and he immediately started howling. So we let the two of them join our game.

I wondered what Max remembered. He must have been six at the time, his sister nine, me seven, and Rosmarie eight. Now we were twenty years older. But not Rosmarie, of course. She would remain almost sixteen forever.

I gathered my tulle dress and went downstairs to get some crystal glasses from the cupboard in the living room. Just as I was again mulling over what to do if he didn’t come, if he had gone out with friends, perhaps to the cinema straight after work, I heard the doorbell ring. The glasses clinked in my hands. I went to the front door and opened it. Max was standing there, holding a bunch of marguerites. He was wearing a white shirt and black jeans and gave me a shy smile.

“Thanks for the invitation.”

“Come in.”

“You look . . . I mean, you’re . . .”

“Thank you. Come on, give me a hand.”

“What sort of invitation is that? Is it all self-service?”

But he appeared very happy as he followed me into the kitchen. I put the flowers in a vase and then placed it in one of his arms, the bottles of wine in the other. I retrieved the basket from the kitchen cupboard and filled it with glasses, plates, knives, cheese, bread, carrots, melons, chocolate, After Eights, and large linen napkins. And so we made our way through the barn to the orchard.

“Hey, what’s that?” He obviously meant the blankets under the tree.

“I had to put all this stuff on the ground because underneath there’s a patch of grass I hacked at with a scythe. But I’ve already had a delicious sleep on it today.”

“I see. So you’ve been lying around here, stretching out your sinful body.”

“For someone who races into a black lake in a panic at the sight of my sinful body, you’ve got nerve.”

“Touché. Iris, I—”

“Shut up and pour the wine.”

“Of course, madam.”

We both took a few sips, and then we sat down beneath the apple tree.

“This is all a little frugal, but you’re not here to eat.”

Max gave me a sidelong glance. “No? I’m not?”

“Quiet. I need to talk to you.”

“Fine. I’m listening.”

“About the house. What happens if I don’t want my inheritance?”

“We’d be better off talking about this in my office.”

“But what would happen, in theory?”

“It would go to your mother and father. And then to you again at some point. Don’t you want the house? I thought Bertha’s decision to leave it to you was a stroke of genius.”

“I love the house, but it’s a difficult legacy.”

“I can well imagine.”

“Does your sister know I’m here?”

“Yes, I called her.”

“What did she say?”

“Not a lot. She wanted to know if we’d talked about Rosmarie.”

“No, we haven’t.”

“No.”

“Would you like to talk about her?”

“I never got much of what was going on. I was younger than you and I was a boy. And perhaps you remember what things were like for us back then. I mean with my mother. After Rosmarie’s death Mira was never the same again. She didn’t talk to anyone anymore, not even my parents—especially not my parents.”

“What about to you?”

“To me she did. At least sometimes.”

“Is that why you stayed here? To mediate between your parents and your sister?”

“No, not at all!”

“I was only asking.”

“Iris, you don’t have a monopoly on love for the bog lake and the birchwoods, the lock and the rain clouds above cow pastures. Think about it for a second.”

“You’re a romantic.”

“So are you. Anyway, what I wanted to say . . . about Mira. After your cousin died she didn’t flip out, didn’t take drugs, and didn’t fall apart. She sat in her room all day long, working for her school-leaver’s exams. She did the best math paper in the entire school, got top grades across the board, and studied law in record time. She’s now got a PhD.”

“In what? The Abortion Act? Paragraph 218?” That just slipped out.

Max’s eyes narrowed. He glared at me. “No. Construction law.”

An uncomfortable pause followed. Max stroked his face. Then he said, a little too casually, “I’ve got a short article about her here. It’s more of an announcement that she’s now a partner at this Berlin firm. It was in a legal newspaper a few weeks back. Do you want to see it?”

I nodded.

Max made a show of pulling out two torn out and double-folded pieces of paper from his back trouser pocket. So he had intended to talk about his sister all along. Did he have any other plans for this evening?

“There’s . . . there’s also a photo of Mira.”

“A photo of Mira? Show me!” I grabbed the pieces of paper. And then I saw the picture.

Everything started spinning. The face on the paper came closer and then spun away again. I started to sweat. There was a pounding in my ears, an ugly metallic hammering. Please don’t let me faint now, I thought; fainting would mean the end. I pulled myself together.

The face on the paper. Mira’s face. I had expected a stylish haircut, black and gleaming like a helmet; a chic outfit, if not black then at least gray or even an eccentric purple—why not? Sexy and sophisticated, still the silent movie star.

But what I held in my hands was the picture of a beautiful woman with long copper-red hair and copper-red eyebrows, wearing a vanilla-yellow satin dress that shimmered almost as if it were gold. Without the thick eyeliner her eyes looked completely different. There was dark mascara on her lashes. She looked at me with a languid smile on her dark red lips.

I dropped the picture and gave Max a hostile stare. “What . . . what
is
that? Is she sick, or has she just got a sick sense of humor?”

“She let her hair grow and then dyed it red instead of black. As far as I know lots of people do it.” Max returned my stare. Somewhat coolly, I felt. He hadn’t yet forgiven me for the comment about Paragraph 218.

“But, Max! Just look at her!”

“Her hair’s been like that for a while now. I mean, hair doesn’t grow overnight. She stopped dyeing it black as soon as the thing with Rosmarie happened. Then she let it grow. She didn’t dye it red till later.”

“But surely you can see that . . .”

“. . . she looks like Rosmarie. Yes, but I didn’t see it till I got this picture. Maybe it’s the golden dress, too. I haven’t got a clue what it means. Why does it bother you so much?”

I didn’t know exactly. All of us had had to come to terms with Rosmarie’s death in our own way, hadn’t we? Harriet had joined a sect, Mira had disguised herself. Maybe her way was more honest than mine. I shrugged and avoided Max’s eye. The wine glistened dark in the large glasses. It was the color of Mira’s lipstick. I didn’t want to drink any more. It was making me stupid. And forgetful.

Mira and Max’s mother, Frau Ohmstedt, had been a drinker. When her children came home from school and rang the bell, they could roughly calculate how drunk she was by the time it took her to get to the door and open it. “The longer it takes, the more smashed she is,” Mira told us in a deadpan voice. Mira spent as little time at home as possible. Her parents disapproved of her black clothes, and on the day of her oral examination she moved into a friend’s house, and soon after that to Berlin. It was different for Max. Because Mira was so difficult he had to be considerate. He would clear away the empty bottles and cover his mother up if she couldn’t make it to bed from the sofa.

Herr Ohmstedt was seldom at home; he built bridges and dams, and spent most of his time in Turkey, Greece, or Spain. In the past Frau Ohmstedt had gone with him; they had lived for more than three years in Istanbul. Frau Ohmstedt had loved it there: the Turkish bazaars, the parties and events organized by the embassy, the other German women, the climate, the lovely big house. When she fell pregnant with Max they decided to come back. After all, they hadn’t planned to emigrate and they wanted to bring up their children in Germany. But what they hadn’t realized was that it was much easier to go away than to come home.