It was raining. For the first time in weeks. Good for the wine. As Liss pushed the courtyard door open into the dawn, the air, cool and grey, streamed into the kitchen, which was still warm, almost a little sticky with the warmth of summer. She drank her tea standing, leaning against the doorframe. It was a steady pouring rain. There were puddles in the yard. The hens ran from the stable to the barn and back. That was a life, and who was to say it was wrong, just because it looked pointless from a human perspective?
The girl was still asleep. She was sleeping in the room Liss had given her as if it were her own. Liss walked over to the stove and poured herself more tea. Then she leant against the doorframe again and watched the rain. A day when you ought to just leave the world to drink and not bother it. When you ought to just let the hens run without shaking your head over them. A day when you ought to let a sleeping girl sleep. There was a reason for everything, she just couldn’t see it.
Liss stepped back into the kitchen, laid the table and then fetched her waterproofs. She was about to go when she looked back at the table and hesitated briefly, before eventually fetching a piece of dark bread from the larder and laying it beside the bowl of fruit. Then she went out into the rain and exhaled deeply as the first cool drops fell onto her face.
It hadn’t been raining then. But it had sounded like it. It had been thawing. Those days in February were the saddest ever. The icicles on the gutters melted and dripped ceaselessly onto the lead roofs of the hen houses, the rabbit hutches, the woodshed. The sky seemed to have no flavour. The puddles in the unpaved yard were up to her ankles. The fences by the road were still buried, metres deep, beneath the dirty, hard snowdrifts, a whole winter’s worth, and you couldn’t imagine that it would ever be summer again. She’d been doing her schoolwork and staring longingly out of the window. Now she was outside on this quiet Saturday afternoon, and it felt as though she were entirely alone in the village. Everyone else could have been dead or have suddenly vanished. She could hear nothing but the steady dripping and, now and then, the heavy soughing as a load of snow on one of the roofs started to slip, then drummed down onto the yard. She imagined actually being entirely alone. The village was as extinct as the aftermath of a nuclear war in one of the futuristic novels she borrowed from the local library and read when her father wasn’t at home. He didn’t like her reading. She left the farm and walked down Haselau lane, the heroine of a sci-fi novel. The village looked black and white amid the spent snow, like something out of an old film. In the bakery she could see Anni, tidying up the display. The woman gave her a pretzel every morning as she stood with the others outside the shop window, waiting for the bus. Now she was beckoning her in, but she couldn’t go, because she was on a mission and Anni was nothing but a flickering image on one last television running on the last of the electricity in a plundered shop in a deserted city. She walked further down the narrow street, past the Berger farm, past the parsonage garden wall, on which she sometimes lay face down in the summer, her whole body absorbing the heat of the sun-sated stones. Those were special afternoons, and only very rare. When she’d crept away with a book that she then couldn’t read, because as she read, the images sharpened and, if she squinted a little, the air above the parsonage roof gradually turned as blue as a southern sea. When she and the wall she was lying on had travelled away, unnoticed, into a small, hot town by the sea, and she was no longer Elisabeth but Zora, and no longer had any parents, but was free to go wherever she wanted. And shimmering over the rooftops was the sea.
She hunched her shoulders. On a February day like this, it was a certainty that she’d never see the sea; worse still, it wasn’t even certain that there’d ever be another summer day when she could dream, at least for an hour and a half, of being somebody else.
Hey, Elisabeth!
Thomas.
My name’s not Thomas anymore. I’m called Sonny now. Are you coming?
Thomas was odd. Everyone in the village knew that his father was a bit too free with his fists. But he still kept laughing.
What are you doing?
Come and see. I’ll show you.
He ran ahead, fast, kept turning back to see if she was following. At the last farm – which she didn’t know at all because no child ever went there, not even to say their thank-yous at Carnival when you got a mark, or even two, at every house – Thomas ran round the back into the garden.
Look.
Proudly, as if he’d built it himself: a huge concrete basin. At first she thought it was for slurry, but when she leant over the wall she could see that it was perfectly clean. At the bottom was water, maybe a metre deep, floating on which were proper, thick ice floes, as large as tabletops. Thomas was already swinging himself over the wall, holding a stick that he’d taken from one of the woodpiles.
Come on.
She only hesitated briefly. Then she fetched herself a stick too, lay on the wall on her belly and let herself down onto the ice. And was surprised that it held. Cautiously, she pushed herself away from the concrete wall with the stick and drifted slowly over to the other side. Thomas laughed. They grew braver. Their laughter echoed in the concrete basin. They lurched and jumped from one icesheet to another, pushing each other away. And then Thomas tried to push her off the ice with his stick.
Stop that!
You try. Let’s see who’s stronger.
Stop it! I mustn’t go home wet.
Thomas stabbed at her with the stick. She had to brace herself against the wall and pushed her way into the middle, veering between laughter and anger.
Your father’s got the biggest farm in the village. He can buy you new clothes.
She pushed his ice floe away. He wobbled, had to drop to his knees to avoid falling.
Has not.
She didn’t even know whether theirs was the biggest farm. She’d never thought about it.
Thomas had got up and kicked hard at the edge of her ice sheet. She lost her balance, slipped, and then she was standing up to her hips in the ice-cold water. To her surprise, she could feel a delay before the icy water ran into her boots. Thomas seemed far more shocked than she was.
I didn’t mean to.
He was whispering.
Help me out.
She was furious.
It was only then that she noticed that they had to be standing on the ice to reach the wall again. Suddenly, there was the fear.
Help me!
But Thomas had already hopped up, was trying to reach the coping at the top of the wall. She was battling the ice. The sheet kept tipping, breaking, because they were both moving so wildly, with such fear, and was consequently getting smaller.
Help me!
Thomas had reached the coping and pulled himself up.
I’ll get a stick.
He was gone. Impelled by rage and fear, she hurled herself onto an icesheet with a single, furious leap, lay there until she’d calmed down, and then stood up cautiously. Her legs were trembling. She pushed herself against the wall and jumped with shaky knees, gripped the edge, pulled herself up. Her trousers were heavy with water, but she managed it. She saw Thomas standing on the log pile. He still hadn’t found a long stick, but he was laughing again.
Think it’s funny, do you?
Jerk.
She ran home without looking back for him. But that evening, in bed, she thought back to punting on the ice, and it was only then that she understood why Thomas had laughed. After all, it wasn’t an adventure if it wasn’t dangerous. Properly dangerous, not like in a book. From outside she could hear the steady drip of the melting icicles, and she fell asleep with the thought that the ice floes would be shrinking now too.