Britta doesn’t really like playgrounds. It makes her sad to see what becomes of people whose sole interest is their children. Fathers whose arms wear out from hours of swing pushing. Mothers who crawl on all fours, grunting like pigs, through big plastic tubes. Couples enthusiastically building a sand castle while their bored three-year-old stares into space. Britta dislikes sippy cups and rice crackers. She loathes listening to women who spend half the afternoon talking about what kind of extraordinary giftedness their offspring’s whims might portend. Britta loves her daughter too. But unlike other parents, she doesn’t try to replace, with Vera’s help, what all of them have lost: politics, religion, a sense of community, and the belief in a better world.
Nevertheless, every few days she finds herself once again on the edge of the adventure playground in the city park, with Janina at her side and a green-tea go-cup in her hand. Richard often stays at work until late in the evening these days, and Britta gets bored alone in the house with Vera. Britta’s not good at paging through picture books, changing doll diapers, or buying miniature loaves of bread in make-believe shops. Shooting at stuffed animals with Mega-Melanie and Mega-Martin is the very last thing she wants to do. She’d rather sit in the park with Janina, watching the two little girls romp and the other parents parent.
Janina’s wearing her long hair loose and lying on the grass with her coffee cup, draped like a figure in a Klimt painting. Britta sits next to her, holding her torso upright so that as little of her body as possible comes into contact with the green blades. Behind her, a “Sport Is Public” group is practicing yoga. When they all raise their arms and bend forward at the same time, they look as though they’re worshiping Britta and Janina.
“How are things with Richard?”
“He has a lot on his plate.”
“Is his swapping venture doing any better?”
“Not really. Emil and Jonas continue to behave like little children.”
Whereas Britta calmly pedals to work, where she drinks coffee with Babak—whom she’s always glad to see—while they discuss the latest Silicon Valley gossip, Richard must spend every day with conceited venture capitalists, endure the marriage-like running battle his partners conduct, and not even make any money. In Richard’s place she’d be envious. The fact that he’s not counts for a lot in her eyes. He’s happy for her success, even though in reality he has no idea what she does. It doesn’t even bother him that she earns money and he doesn’t; he’s just as loving and funny as he ever was.
“I’ve got a couple of out-of-town appointments in the next few days. Can Vera come to your house after school?”
“Sure,” says Janina, without hesitation.
In the meantime, Vera and Cora have called a halt to running around and moved on to building a large-scale sand castle. For this undertaking, they carefully wet sand and then, with the help of plastic buckets, shape it into the blocks that become the foundation. After Janina has watched them for a while, she sinks down on her back and stares at the sky.
“And you?” she asks.
“What about me?”
“How are things with your practice?”
“Fabulous.” Which is no lie; they’re only in the second quarter, and already it’s clear that this year’s income will almost double last year’s.
“Really funny, isn’t it?” Janina’s voice sounds lethargic. “The worse off people are, the better you and Babak do.”
A chubby little boy has appeared, and he’s circling the girls’ construction site. Britta’s sitting too far away to hear what’s being said, but it’s obvious that Vera and Cora don’t want to let the fat kid play with them.
Janina rolls herself up onto her elbows. “Actually, do you have an explanation for that? For the rising suicide rate?”
Entire walls could be papered with theories about the suicide phenomenon. Fear of the future. Burnout. The dissolution of gender roles. The second financial crisis. Europe’s disintegration. The neglect of the underclass. Increasing discrimination against fringe groups. Poor nutrition. Growing isolation. Too little exercise. Decadence. Guilt complexes. The parents of the 1990s and their failure at child rearing.
“I think there’s a hole in us, deep inside us,” says Britta.
The chubby boy stomps over to the swing, unenthusiastically pushes himself back and forth a few times, and then returns to the half-finished sand castle. He watches as Vera and Cora tirelessly moisten sand, pack it into buckets, and place one block after another on the castle walls.
“We have no idea who we are. Or want to be. Or should be.”
“I don’t feel any hole.”
“And therefore you’ll never wind up in my practice.”
Janina laughs. For a moment, Britta imagines what it would be like to put a woman like Janina through the program. In all these years, Britta has only ever worked with men.
The fat kid has started to throw sand at the sand castle. Vera tells him to stop, or something like that: in any case, Britta recognizes, even at a distance, her daughter’s No! face. Then the boy kicks the outer wall, causing a large part of it to collapse.
“Mama!” scream Cora and Vera in chorus.
“Such a little asshole,” says Janina.
The boy kicks again, then several times, one after another, and tramples what he’s brought down into the ground.
“Mama!” Vera bawls. “He’s ruining our castle!”
“Whack him one!” Britta calls back.
She can feel Janina’s astonished look. Vera too is briefly startled before sizing up the boy, who’s a good deal bigger than she is. Then—having apparently decided against punching and in favor of kicking—she springs forward and takes aim at her opponent’s swinging leg. Not bad at all, Britta thinks, as the tip of Vera’s sneaker bangs against the chubby boy’s shin. He howls, more in disbelief than in real pain, beats a whiny retreat, and goes off in search of his mama.
“Hey, what are you thinking?” calls a woman who’s sitting on the grass a few yards away and rocking a baby in her arms. “Is that what you want to teach your daughter? To resolve conflicts by force?”
“Have you got a better idea?” Britta asks in turn. “Shall I teach her to hold her tongue later on, when she’s being raped?”
The other mother shakes her head, grabs her things, stands up, and looks around for another place to sit.
“Or maybe to keep her eyes on the train platform and do nothing, along with ten other people, while a man’s being beaten to death?” The farther away the other woman gets, the louder Britta shouts. “You think you’re superior because you’ve been ducking all your life? You believe doing nothing makes the world a better place?”
When the other woman is out of earshot, Britta sinks back down, exhausted.
“What was that about?” Janina’s sitting up and laughing.
“No idea. I have to stretch my legs.” Britta gets to her feet. Often, walking around a little helps her overcome her nausea spells. She circles the playground, where Vera and Cora are busy rebuilding their ruined castle, and when she feels better, she goes back to Janina.
“You’re not pregnant by any chance, are you?”
“Nonsense,” says Britta. “Are you ready?”
“At your service, Madam.”
They call this the dilemma game. One of them describes a difficult situation in which a decision has to be made; the other must say what she would do. Britta finishes her tea and throws the cup away. “Do you see that trash bin over there?” she asks.
Janina looks in that direction and nods.
“Inside it there’s a bomb that’s going to explode in five minutes.”
This example is fun for Britta, because she knows with nearly one hundred percent certainty that the trash bin in question will not blow up, not today or tomorrow or in the coming weeks, because there won’t be an attack anywhere in the whole country. At any rate, that’s what she would have claimed to know for certain twenty-four hours ago.
“As it happens, you’ve observed the terrorist and captured him. He alone knows the code for defusing the bomb. What do you do?”
“I pull the bomb out and throw it in the pond.”
“It’s set to explode the moment anyone touches it. You’ll die, and so will all the other people here.”
Janina sighs. Britta invented this game, and Janina plays it for her sake, but the truth is, she finds it pretty exhausting. “I appeal to the terrorist’s conscience.”
“He laughs at you.”
“I call the police.”
“Not enough time.”
“You want to know if I’d beat him until he defused the bomb?”
Britta shrugs. “What would you do?”
Janina reflects for a moment. “Honestly? I’d pick up Cora and Vera and run as fast as I could. Until we reached safety.”
“And let the other children die?”
“I’ve answered the question. It’s my turn.”
Britta smiles and nods. She can take deep breaths now; the remaining traces of nausea have disappeared. The dilemma game brings her relief, every time.
“You’re driving through the neighborhood when a cat suddenly runs in front of your car. You hit the little animal, but it’s not dead.”
“Didn’t we have something like this recently, but with a dog?”
“The cat’s lying on the side of the road, panting and whimpering. It’s obvious that it has no chance of surviving. What do you do?”
“The same as the last time. I keep on driving.”
“You don’t even get out of the car?”
“What for?”
“You could get help.”
“But you just said there’s no chance the cat can survive.”
“Suppose it belongs to a family? The children find their pet dying in a gutter.”
“Then they’ll learn never to run into the street. Who knows, maybe that lesson will save one of their lives.”
“I don’t know.” Janina shakes herself. “I find that pretty…brutal.”
Britta watches a grandma shuffling along the gravel path and pulling a tiny dog on a leash behind her, the sort of dog you acquire in life’s last stage only so that you can still have someone to bawl out.
“But you ran away from the bomb, didn’t you?” Britta says. “Spare me the hypocrisy.”
It sounds harsher than she intended, which doesn’t escape Janina’s notice either. She looks pensively at Britta. “You seem odd today, somehow.”
“I’m sorry. A bit of stress at work.”
“Well, I know what that’s like.” Janina nods earnestly, even though both of them realize she hasn’t the remotest idea what that’s like. She’s familiar with dwindling orders and extended slack periods. Stress at work is something people like Knut and Janina wish they suffered from. A sudden wave of affection breaks over Britta. She knows Janina’s about to ask her a question, and she knows what that question will be. Britta herself is often astounded by the accuracy with which she can predict the behavior of others. It’s as if a part of Lassie’s abilities has rubbed off on her.
“If we really decide to buy this house,” Janina says, twirling a strand of her hair around one finger and staring at the ground, “would you lend us some money?”