ON FRIDAYS WHEN we met in the cave above the weir after school I always brought Trude something—some chocolates or some left-over wine I’d smuggled out of the house or a few flowers from the garden Mutti wouldn’t miss—and in exchange she would give me a kiss. But after a few weeks my little gifts began to get on her nerves and one afternoon towards the end of autumn when I arrived with a handful of marigolds, she told me she was bored of my presents and the only thing she could think of that was interesting enough for her to want me to bring it to her, the only thing she could think of I could give her that would ever persuade her to kiss me again, was the heart of Magdalena Hirsch.
From this I concluded that she was bored of me, that she didn’t really want to see me anymore, and this was her way of telling me to get lost. I went home, throwing the marigolds in the river on the way and told myself I’d better forget about Trude.
But I couldn’t. Trude’s lips were so soft and warm and kissing her in the cool cave after school was the best thing I’d ever done. I kept thinking about her and I kept thinking about what she’d said about bringing her the heart of Magdalena Hirsch. It was a stupid thing I knew it was, but somehow it caught hold of my imagination and wouldn’t let it go and in the end one evening when supper was over and the washing up was done and everything was put away in its proper place, and Vati had settled down in front of the TV with his newspaper and his pipe, I told Mutti I was going over to Dieter’s for an hour or so and I’d be back later and then I set off in the direction of the Hauptallee and from there I made my way to the cinder path that led into the woods.
‘Don’t be too long, Peter,’ Mutti called after me.
‘I won’t.’
I’d never been near Magdalena’s cabin in my whole life. I had no idea where to head for. I’d been into the woods many times to pick blackberries and elderflower and to take our old dachshund, Lili, for walks, but in my whole life I’d never gone beyond the point where the cinder path stopped and the dense middle part of the woods began. I don’t know how long I walked through the thick wood. It was dark and drizzling and even through the trees the drizzle came down onto my face and hands.
When I came to it there was no clearing and no garden, only a low wall that ran round the cabin; no gate in the wall, just an opening you had to walk through to get to the door. I knocked but there was no reply.
It was years since I’d thought about Magdalena Hirsch, let alone seen her, and I’d never heard of anyone ever coming out here to visit her.
I walked into a small sitting room with bare timbered walls, a plain wooden table and a single chair next to it. On the floorboards lay striped woven rugs, the kind people like my Oma used to make during the war out of torn-up rags. In the corner there was a fireplace with a neat pile of logs next to it, a scattering of ash and cinders in the grate. There was a bed, cupboards and pans that hung from hooks in the ceiling; an oblong sink on cast iron legs. In the sink there was a plate sprinkled with crumbs, a knife smeared with butter. A little water had been run on top of the plate and some of the crumbs were floating in it. The bed was neatly made and covered from head to foot with a rough wool blanket. Beneath the blanket, when I lifted it, I found her pillow in a white cotton slip, small and flat and square; a flowery eiderdown, silky and cold. On the wall there was a bamboo mirror with a narrow dresser beneath it and on top of the dresser there was a white cloth and on top of the cloth there was a black lacquered box with a lid, oval in shape and roughly the size of my fist.
I have taken out my heart and put it in a box where no more harm can ever come to it.
Magdalena’s words had terrified us all when we were children. The thought of her warm wet heart in its chilly little box, fluttering and beating beneath the lid like some small, frightened animal—it was like something out of Grimm.
Every once in a while, she came into town for something—a bag of tea from Gephardts’ or a ball of wool from Greta Fahr’s shop, matches or fuel from Dortmund’s—and always at some point she’d alight on someone, Greta Fahr or Herr Gephardt or one of the Dortmund girls or one of our mothers if they happened to be in any of those places when she was there, and she would tell them in a confidential whisper what she’d done and sometimes, crouching down in her old black coat and her long skirt and her funny smock, she’d confide in one of us children as well.
We used to wonder what had made her do it, but she never told us that part. Whatever it was that had happened to her she’d never spoken about it. There was no gossip, no rumours or stories. Whatever it was, it was buried in some dark place, as secret and hidden as the heart she said she’d pulled from her body and locked away, out of sight and out of mind, and when we’d asked our parents, or Herr Gephardt or Fräulein Fahr, or any of the other grown-ups if they knew, they just shrugged and shook their heads and said she was just a poor creature who should have gone years ago to the hospital in Euskirchen where she could be looked after instead of living out in the woods in that little cabin by herself.
I didn’t hear her come in.
I didn’t hear her set down the logs on the floor next to the hearth, I didn’t hear her step onto the woven rug and walk up behind me. I didn’t know she was there until we were standing together in front of the mirror, the two of us, me in front and her behind, me and Magdalena Hirsch.
I had never seen her up close before and it was ages since I’d seen her in town; years since I’d happened to be there when she’d paid one of her rare visits to the shops in the Hauptallee. She looked, to me, neither young nor old. She was slender and tall and her brownish-greyish hair was very straight and soft-looking. Her eyes were grey and the skin of her face was pale from living in the woods. She still had on her black coat from being outside but the buttons at the front were open and I could see her smock underneath. It was dark and rough looking and loosely woven and hung in folds from her shoulders and behind the folds I could see her shape. I thought of Trude. Trude with her starched white blouse and her straw-coloured plaits and the stingy kisses she’d sold to me in the cave above the weir. My face had grown suddenly very hot, I could see it in the mirror, red and burning beneath my short dark hair that was still damp from the rain. Behind us I could see the bed, the white pillow and the flowery eiderdown that had been cold when I’d touched it, and I could feel Magdalena’s breath, very quick and warm on the back of my neck. She smelled of milk and woodsmoke.
‘You?’ she whispered, bewildered, amazed.
A rose-coloured flush had spread into her waxy face and her mouth was open. I didn’t know what to say. Her eyes were wide and her face was taut and very still and she was staring into the bamboo mirror at my reflection as if she had seen a ghost. I swallowed and waited and she said it again—You?—and then her arms came up around me and quick as a snake she reached past me to the dresser and snatched up the little fist-sized box that was on top of the cloth and sprang away from me.
‘Get out,’ she said softly, clutching the shiny black container against her open coat, hugging it and pressing down with her thumbs on its lacquered lid as if her life depended on it, and then her voice rose and she shouted at me at the top of her lungs, to get away from her, right now, and never come back, to go back through the woods the way I’d come, back to my wife and my baby son, she didn’t want to see me ever again, she didn’t need me anymore, everything was fine now just the way it was and if I ever tried coming back to her ever again, she would kill me.