THE SUMMER STORMS ARRIVED IN August. The wind gusts dug their claws into the roof and tore at the walls, which whined like old men, like Karl on his worst nights.
Vera stood at the window and watched the trees in her garden hunch over like people who’d been beaten. They appeared to be waving frantically at her, as if they wanted her to let them in.
You couldn’t stay seated on nights like this, never mind lie down. You had to stand with your legs apart like a helmsman, waiting for the breakers and the flashes of lightning, and hope that the ship wouldn’t go down this time either.
* * *
They were making good progress. You could hardly recognize the facade with its new windows and sound timber frame. Nothing had been plastered yet. They were finishing the side walls first, and by the spring they wanted to be up on the roof.
Vera had grown accustomed to the journeymen with their black hats, their long hair, and the rings in their ears, noses, and eyebrows. A couple of them had tattoos on their arms like sailors, and that’s what they moved like too. Always calmly, as though they had all the time in the world.
When their pace slacked too much, Anne revved them up again. They stood head and shoulders above her, but woe betide any of the tattooed guys who got lippy with her.
The house held its ground beneath the hammer blows.
At first Vera had expected an accident every day, reckoned there would be blood and severed fingers, men falling down from the scaffolding, young children running into saws or stepping on large nails with their bare feet. She had feared the worst right from the day that Anne had knocked the first little window out of the wall.
But summer came and the house stood like an old horse that was letting itself be shoed, lifting its hooves dutifully instead of defending itself, and for the first time in many years, the thought struck Vera that this house might just be nothing more than a house. Not an avenging angel that sent old women up to the attic with a clothesline if an old cupboard was moved or thrust young men down on their hands and knees into the shards of a punch bowl just because an old side door was replaced.
It was a ridiculous childish belief. She knew that and was ashamed of it by day.
But she firmly believed in it again at night. As soon as it got quiet and dark, and the forgotten ones shuffled through the hallway, and the old voices whispered to her from the walls, she believed the house capable of anything.
The following summer, when the thatched roof was finished, they would start on the inside—the walls, the floors, and the ceilings—and perhaps after that there would finally be peace, even in the night.
* * *
It seemed to Vera that in addition to the house, they had also refurbished Heinrich.
He played skat with them long into the night and didn’t set his alarm for the morning. He was suddenly breaking his own rules. Maybe Heinrich Luehrs sensed that he had been a slave to rather than the master of his life, and that his strict rules weren’t much use.
Vera had never done the right thing and yet everything seemed to be turning out well for her. She had a little boy who sat in the kitchen in the mornings drawing, and a niece who resembled her and dared to ride her horses. And her house was now being put in order for her, even though she had never done anything to it.
He, on the other hand, was all alone in his house, took care of his yard for nothing and no one, and his grandchildren trampled his flower beds and pelted him with chocolate chicks.
On Easter Sunday, Heinrich Luehrs must have decided to become a different person, the stupid kid no more.
He’d told Steffi there would be no more Easter egg hunts in his yard, nor any birthday or Christmas visits. He didn’t even find it difficult. Only Jochen should come, on his own, for three or four days in September. That was enough for him.
It was possible to say things like that. You could decide to no longer invite your grandchildren and daughter-in-law over and nothing bad happened, life just carried on.
* * *
Heinrich built a big pen for Leon’s pygmy rabbit behind Vera’s shed. Willy was no longer alone because Theis zum Felde had taken the matter into his own hands.
He had lent Leon a rabbit and put it in the hutch with Willy, and now they had six little ones.
Heinrich picked dandelions every morning because Leon couldn’t manage it on his own yet.
And also because he liked sitting on an overturned pail next to the rabbits, as he had done as a boy, breeding German Giants. Back then, the rabbits couldn’t be big enough, and today everyone wanted dwarves. Heinrich Luehrs didn’t understand it, but he liked the little ones too.
Vera saw him sitting on his pail with two rabbits on his lap. Heinrich Luehrs, the best.
He had taught Anne how to dance in the hallway. Put his cards down and rolled up his sleeves, then shook his head at her socks with the large holes in them.
“What can you young women actually do? You can’t mend socks and you can’t dance!”
Carsten fiddled around with the kitchen radio until he found the Hits Station.
“May I have the pleasure?”
Heinrich was a good dancer, always had been.
And it only had to be good enough for the party at the Cherry Orchard Dance Bar, the volunteer fire department’s ball. Anne had received a written invitation from a blond man with dimples, and sure enough, she wanted to go.
“Nothing serious, Vera,” she said with a grin. “Just a bit of fun.”
Dirk and Britta went every year. The local fire department turned out in force, its members in formal uniform. It was an important event in the village, even bigger than the hunters’ ball.
People would have something to look at this year: a woman with dark curls in a dress that wasn’t all that long.
Vera hadn’t ever been to a ball. Who would have danced with her anyway? She had given most of the men her age a pounding behind the school or out on the street at some time or other when she was young, because they had called her names.
On one occasion, Vera had danced with Heinrich, a Viennese waltz in the hallway. Karl had had to play it three, four, five times over, before she started to get the hang of it.
And before she had worked it out completely, Hinni’s father had arrived and drunk the strawberry punch from the bowl.
Vera Eckhoff couldn’t waltz to this day.
Watching Heinrich Luehrs dance with Anne, she wished she were young again, but properly this time.
* * *
At the beginning of September, the days became bright and cool, the sky turned a serious shade of blue, and there was a rasp in the air, as if someone were about to make a farewell speech.
The apples turned red, and in the mornings, the first plums started falling onto the damp grass. Only the swallows and bumblebees were acting as though they didn’t yet sense that it was autumn.
It was very quiet in the house. All of the journeymen had left, and Anne hadn’t hired any new ones yet, because Vera needed to listen to the walls again for a few days.
Only Carsten was allowed to come, on the weekends as usual, since he never disturbed anyone during his rounds of the house.
Toward evening, Vera and Anne would fetch the horses from the paddock and ride to the Elbe. They’d encounter Heino Gerdes on his folding bike. He never raised his eyes when he saw them, just looked at the road, but he always tipped his cap with one finger by way of greeting.
They saw Hedwig Levens with her skinny dog. Both of them looked as though they were afraid of being beaten, as if they were running away to avoid being punished.
Gradually Anne was starting to remember everyone’s names. Vera always repeated them for her, including the names of all the birds they met along the way. She explained their forms and characteristics to Anne. She classified people in the same way as animals. She didn’t differentiate between them.
When they got to the sandy shore, they would let the horses gallop.
Anne played requests on the weekends, when the others were playing skat in the kitchen. “Für Elise” over and over, although Heinrich also liked Chopin, but not the wild pieces. Carsten wanted to hear boogie, while Vera made no requests. She liked hearing everything except the “Turkish March.”
One time when Anne played the opening bars, Vera jumped up, ran out into the hallway, and slammed the piano lid shut. “NOT THAT!”
Anne had just managed to get her hands out of the way. For a couple of seconds everything seemed to stop. Carsten and Heinrich sat rigid at the kitchen table, and Anne’s hands hung in the air.
“Not that,” said Vera.
“Are there any other pieces that are banned?” Anne asked once she had pulled herself together. “If so, tell me now!”
“No,” Vera said, “just that one.”
* * *
During the week, Anne played lullabies for Leon. She would leave his door ajar and play until he fell asleep.
And she continued playing if she saw Vera sitting in the kitchen, flipping through some sort of travel magazine with her blue hands. Anne played until Vera sank back in her chair, took off her reading glasses, placed her hands in her lap, and fell asleep, as only Vera Eckhoff was capable of sleeping, sitting up, with her back perfectly straight. Only her eyes closed.
She often had to play for a long time, and some nights only Satie helped, in halting three-four time, lent et douloureux. Anne would almost fall asleep herself while playing it.
It was a while before she finally dared to send Vera off to bed. “Vera, go lie down. I’ll hold the fort.”
Vera just laughed at first and shook her head, as though Anne were joking. She had to repeat it the next day, and the day after that. It wasn’t until the winter, in fact, that Vera Eckhoff finally got up the nerve to go to bed.
Two doors were left open in her house, two people slept—an old woman, a little boy. Someone stayed awake and watched over their dreams.
The house stood still.