Visitation (2 page)

This is the key to the garden / for which three girls are waiting. / The first is named Binka, / the second Bibeldebinka. / The third’s name is Zickzettzack Nobel de / Bobel de Bibel de Binka. / Then Binka took a stone / and struck Bibeldebinka’s leg bone. / Then Zick, Zett, Zack, / Nobel de Bobel de Bibel de Binka / began to weep and to moan.

And then nothing further happens except that Grete and Hedwig and Emma and even Klara grow older, and their father grows old. Nothing further happens except that in Klara’s Wood one of the old oak tree’s branches breaks off, remains lying there in the grass and rots. All the villagers have long since gotten used to the Mayor’s Old Maid, as Klara is now called by the villagers, sometimes limping through the village with two different shoes on her feet or perhaps only socks, walking as far as the butcher shop, the school, the brickyard but never farther, and if you ask her: Where are you going? she will reply: Dunno.

Last glove / I lost my autumn. / I had to find three days / before I looked for it. / Then I walked past a garden, / and saw a gentleman there. / Around the gentleman sat three tables. / Then I took off my day / and wished them all a good hat, sirs. / Then the gentlemen laughed to begin / until their bursts bellied.

Old Wurrach sells the first third of Klara’s Wood to a coffee and tea importer from Frankfurt an der Oder, the second third to a cloth manufacturer from Guben, who enters his son’s name in the contract of sale in order to arrange for his inheritance, and finally Wurrach sells the third third, the part where the big oak tree stands, to an architect from Berlin who discovered this sloping shoreline with its trees and bushes while out for a steamboat ride and wishes to build a summer cottage there for himself and his fiancée. The village mayor enters into conversations about so-and-so-many square meters first with the coffee and tea importer, then with the cloth manufacturer, and finally with the architect, for the first time in his life he is measuring ground not in hides or hectares, for the first time in his life he is speaking of parcels of land. For several hundred years Klara’s Wood was considered logging grounds, every thirty years all the land surrounding the big oak tree was cleared and then reforested, and now a number of the trees are to remain there forever just as they stand, the architect’s fiancée says: For the shade. While her father is negotiating the price for the third third, Klara, whom everyone now calls the Mayor’s Old Maid, goes limping through the village as always, one of her feet shod, the other with just a stocking on, she limps past the butcher shop, then past the school, then past the brickyard, and later back again. At dusk, snow falls for the first time. As the seller of the third parcel of land on Schäferberg, Old Wurrach signs the contract in the name of his incapacitated daughter, and on behalf of the architect, the architect’s young fiancée signs as the new landowner.

Not until the next day does Emma discover Klara’s footprints in the freshly fallen snow, down at the public bathing area they lead directly into the gray water, always in alternation: a shoe, a stocking, a shoe, a stocking, a shoe. Soon thereafter her body is found as well, near the shore beside the brickyard it has gotten entangled in the pine roots laid bare when the soil washed away beneath them. The pastor doesn’t want to give the suicide a Christian burial, but the mayor, who has meanwhile, despite his advanced age, been chosen as the local leader of the Reich Farmers League, puts his foot down.

In a household where a death has taken place, the clock must be stopped at once. The mirror is covered with a cloth, otherwise you will see two dead people. The uppermost windows are opened, and if the roof has no dormers, one roof tile is removed so that the soul can escape. The dead person is washed and dressed. A man is dressed in a black walking coat, a woman in her black dress. The dead person’s shoes are put on. A virgin is buried adorned as a bride in a white dress, myrtle wreath and veil. The dead person is placed on a bed of straw. The dead person’s face is covered with a cloth soaked in brandy or vinegar. Nettles are strewn on the body to keep it from turning blue. On either side of a male corpse an axe must be placed. A female corpse has an axe placed upon her torso with the handle pointing toward her feet. When the corpses are placed in their coffins, the axes are removed. The vessel containing the water with which the corpse was washed must be buried beneath a rain spout. The straw on which the dead person lay is burned or buried together with his old clothes. The death is announced to the animals in the stable and the trees in the garden with the words: Your master is dead. Before the coffin is carried across the threshold it must be set down three times. To prevent the soul from entering the house once the coffin has crossed the threshold, all the windows and doors must be closed at once. Pour water on the floor and sweep the floors with a broom. The chairs the coffin rested on are turned upside-down on the floor. To exclude every possibility of return, water from a bowl is thrown after the funeral procession as it moves away, just as one does when the doctor or knacker leaves the farm.

WHEN THE FIRST VACATION
homes are built on the shores of the lake, many of them with thatched roofs, the gardener helps cut the reeds for the roofs as soon as the lake freezes over, and here too he proves unusually deft, the frozen stems crack like glass before him, he manipulates the board used to transport the stalks so skillfully that the roofer finds it difficult to believe he has never before helped out during the reed harvest. With great vigor he pounds the stalks across his left knee without ever growing weary, the short pieces and bits of grass fall to the ground straightaway, then he lays the neat bundles off to the side.

The gardener doesn’t speak much, and he’s never been heard to say anything at all about events in the village, whether someone has drowned in the lake, a smallholder has secretly changed the position of a border stone, or Schmeling has knocked out the American boxer Louis in the twelfth round. That’s our Schmeling, the roofer says from his perch high up on the thatching stool down to where the gardener is handing him the bundles of reeds, our Schmeling going up against the Brown Bomber, that was something, or don’t you have a radio? The gardener shakes his head. The house upon whose roof the roofer is currently sitting belongs to Schmeling. I put the roof on the Thorak place too, the roofer told the gardener when they were first beginning to work together, perhaps in the hope of impressing the gardener, who was known for being taciturn, and moving him to speak, but probably the gardener didn’t even know who Thorak was, and in any case his only response had been a silent nod.

Many in the village find the gardener’s silence unsettling, they declare him cold, call the expression in his eyes fishy, suspect his high forehead of harboring traces of madness. Some, on the other hand, point out that while his communications with others are kept to a minimum, when he thinks he is alone in a garden or field, they’ve clearly seen him moving his lips constantly as he hoes, digs, weeds and prunes or waters plants—in other words, he prefers talking with vegetables. No one is admitted into his hut, and children who peek through the window when he isn’t home see only a table, chair, bed and a few items of clothing that have been tossed over hooks. So the hut, too, is silent, just like its owner, and as is always the case with silences, this might indicate that it is hiding a secret, or else simply that it is empty through and through.

When the thatch roof on the house that a Berlin architect is having built for himself and his wife on Klara Wurrach’s land is already almost finished—the roofer and the gardener are just taking a break before they incorporate the last bundles of reeds into the roof—the householder-to-be joins them and asks the two villagers whether they might know someone in the area who could help transform the woods into a garden. And as is to be expected, the roofer recommends the gardener who is sitting right beside him and continues to maintain his silence but then, by giving the architect a brief nod, he indicates his assent.

The landscape architect, a cousin of the householder who resides in the nearby spa town, now comes by on a daily basis to discuss the plans with the householder and gardener and oversee the work. On the flat upper stretch of land between house and lake, the pine forest is to be cleared away and topsoil added so that the lawn will take root well. The smaller part of the meadow on the left-hand side, directly in front of the house, is to be ringed with evergreens and elderberry, and only a rose-bed will separate it from the terrace.

The boundary of the larger part of the meadow, to the right of the path that leads down to the water, will be defined in back by the wooden fence running between it and the next-door property, which is still in its natural state, the edge facing the hill by the big oak tree and a grouping of fir shrubs, the edge nearest the house by forsythia, lilac and a few rhododendrons, and the edge fronting the sandy road by shrubs planted along the row of fieldstones marking the border of the property.

The addition of a few new trees will contribute to the impression of a natural gradation: a hawthorn at the edge of the meadow to the left, and on the meadow to the right a Japanese cherry, a walnut and a blue spruce—in each case placed so as to lead up to the bushes or the larger trees already standing in the background.

To supplement the pines, the young oak saplings and the little hazelnut shrubs that grow naturally on the slope leading down to the lake, additional bushes will be planted close together to make it more stable.

A path paved with broken flagstones leading down the slope in eight times eight steps will provide access to the lake.

Since the patch of land down near the water is particularly shady and damp thanks to the alders that grow along the shore, the landscape architect in consultation with the householder instructs the gardener to fell several of the trees there and drain the land along the shoreline. In order to make the most of this spot, which isn’t terribly inviting, the householder decides to have a workshop and a woodshed built there according to his own specifications. Later it can be established where a good place will be to build a dock.

Each of the two upper meadows with its natural frame will become an arena, the landscape architect says to his cousin, the householder, while the gardener is dumping out a wheelbarrow full of compost-rich soil on the site of the future rose-bed in front of the terrace. The householder says: Basically it’s always just a matter of framing the view. And providing variety, the landscape architect says: light and shade, open spaces and thickly overgrown ones, looking down from above, looking up from below. With the edge of his shovel, the gardener distributes the soil evenly across the bed. The vertical and the horizontal must stand in a salutary relationship to one another, the householder says. Precisely, says the landscape architect, and that’s why this naturally cascading slope leading down to the water is ideal. The gardener wheels the empty barrow away. The two men stand on the terrace and from this vantage point gaze down at the lake, which is gleaming and sparkling between the reddish trunks of the pines. The gardener wheels up the next barrowful of soil and dumps it out. To tame the wilderness and then make it intersect with culture—that’s what art is, the householder says. Precisely, says his cousin, nodding. With the edge of his shovel, the gardener distributes the soil evenly across the bed. To avail oneself of beauty regardless of where one finds it, the owner says. Precisely. The gardener wheels his empty barrow past the two men standing on the terrace, both of them now silent.

And so the gardener fells several pine trees, saws them up and stacks the wood in the woodshed, he clears the roots and spreads a generous layer of topsoil over the Brandenburg sand, the gardener lays the path between the small and large meadows, and then extends it down the hill, eight times eight steps made of natural sandstone, he sows grass, plants the roses, plants shrubs to frame the small and large meadows, plants bushes on the slope, sets out hawthorn, walnut, Japanese cherry and blue spruce, as he digs he works his way through a thin layer of humus and then strikes bedrock that has to be broken up with the spade, for only beneath this is the layer of sand with the groundwater coursing through it, and finally beneath this sand is the blue clay that is found everywhere in this region. Once upon a time the waters of the lake washed over this rise that is called the Schäferberg or Shepherd’s Mountain by the locals, and thousands of years ago the Schäferberg was nothing but a shoal beneath the surface of the water, just as the Gurkenberg is today, or the Black Horn, the Keperling, the Hoffte, the Bulzenberg, the Nackliger, whose name means “naked man,” or Mindach’s Hill. The layer of sand beneath the bedrock that the gardener uncovers when he is digging his holes still displays a wave-like pattern, immortalizing the winds that blew across the water long ago. The gardener excavates the holes for the plants up to a depth of 80 centimeters and fills the bottom with composted soil so that the shrubs, bushes, Japanese cherry, hawthorn, blue spruce and walnut will flourish. Down beside the shore of the lake the gardener chops down five alder trees, clears the roots, braids green spruce twigs and places them in the boreholes so the black earth at the bottom will dry out. The gardener waters the roses, shrubs and young trees twice a day during the summer, once early in the morning and once at dusk, and he continues to water the bare soil of both meadows until the grass begins to sprout.

The gardener prunes all the bushes that overhang the stone perimeter in the fall, and prunes the forsythia and lilac the following spring as soon as they have blossomed. He removes the weeds from between the roses, prunes the roses, and has the farmers give him cattle dung that he uses to fertilize the hawthorn, walnut and Japanese cherry as well as the forsythia, lilac and rhododendron; he waters the roses and bushes twice a day during the summer, once early in the morning and once at dusk, on each of the meadows he places a sprinkler that bows to one side and then the other for half an hour twice a day, once early in the morning, and once when dusk is already beginning to gather, the gardener mows the grass once every two or three weeks. In fall, he saws the dry branches from the big trees with a long saw and smokes out the moles, in fall he rakes up the leaves from the meadows and burns them, when fall is coming to an end he empties all the water pipes in the house and shuts off the main valve, in winter he heats the house when the architect and his wife will be arriving and turns the water back on for the length of their stay.