2

Ivo’s arrival in our family was also an end that started everything.

His mother, with whom my father had had an affair, was dead; his father in prison, where he died a few years later; Ivo himself mute, refusing to say a word to anybody. And I the only one who could understand his language and speak for him. Which was also the reason they left Ivo with us.

I was seven, my sister eleven.

Our parents had split up, and my mother had moved to the United States to work for a big pharmaceutical company, where she mixed various harmful chemicals together in the hope that the harm would be vindicated by a brighter and healthier future. And she had moved there because of James: yes, James, whom she later married. She made us choose, and although, looking back, it’s absolutely inconceivable, my sister and I decided, for very different reasons, to stay with our father, even though he was actually the main reason our family and our life had fallen apart. But that’s how it was.

My mother had to renounce her custody rights; although she was entitled to them, she was tired, very tired. We were all tired. If she had gone to court, we would never have stayed with Papa — they would never have allowed it — but she decided not to.

Similarly, they should never have allowed Papa to adopt Ivo; but strangely enough, we all ended up staying with him.

My sister had turned her back on our mother; she couldn’t understand why she would want to leave a man whom women would literally die for. Leni staying with Papa was an act of defiance, because up until then they hadn’t had much to do with each other. Unlike me, she hadn’t been particularly close to him when she was small; she stayed to hurt Mama, whom she couldn’t forgive for leaving, for loving another man, for fighting for her happiness — without us, if necessary.

I stayed with him because I was afraid they wouldn’t give Ivo to Mama, and we would be separated.

Our mother argued with our father, hysterical and screeching like a Fury. In the end she just sat down in front of my sister and me and asked us where we would like to live. Today, I think that was the most honest, honourable thing she could have done for us: to give us our freedom. Not to make us move against our will to the oppressive foreignness of another country. Nonetheless, my sister never forgave her, and I always had an emptiness inside me, precisely because she had asked us to make this decision to which we could never have been equal.

She handed us over to our father, who was drinking and screwing around more than ever, and who then took in his dead lover’s son. My father, who lost his job and started living at the expense of his children, who were supported by their mother, thanks to the pharmaceutical industry and James. Soon, Papa couldn’t cope at all, and this was the point when Tulia stepped in.

Tulia was my father’s aunt. Several times divorced, middle-aged, with no children, she lived in a converted barn, drove an old truck, and, contrary to expectation, did not have any cats. She loved poems and all dead poets, listened to Italian opera arias, and earned her living from an old boat-hire company she had inherited from her second or third husband. Curiously, she hardly ever talked about her husbands. Her life consisted of a multitude of stories, both true and invented, and she herself eventually believed in them so strongly that they merged into one big life story, and it became impossible to separate reality from fiction. Reality always seemed like fiction with Tulia. She believed in astrology, mysticism, and nature. She had Persian blood in her veins, she said, and a face like a Babylonian queen — you could see it! — with very distinctive features that my father, too, had inherited, and which were thought to be one of the reasons why he was so attractive to women.

*

We went to live with her when I was eight, beside the sea, in a sleepy coastal village called Niendorf. My sister Leni, Ivo, and me. My father had us at weekends, and the month of July was spent in Newark, New Jersey, with Mama and James. During those summers we always pretended our life with Papa was fabulous, and Tulia just a nice little bonus, because our barn, our alcoholic father with his ever-changing women, the dangerous boat trips we undertook by ourselves, Tulia’s revolting quince jam — it all seemed to us much nicer than Newark and Mama’s desperate efforts to bond with us.

The strange thing was that, of the three of us, Ivo was ultimately the only one who gave her the feeling of still being our mother, who conveyed a certainty that we could never replace her, and would never want to. It was always that way; he created for our mother an illusion of closeness.

Our attempted family was a source of suffering for us all. At first, Ivo was silent; I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible — ideally, to become invisible and concentrate solely on serving as a kind of mouthpiece for Ivo; and Leni increasingly shut herself off. She started apportioning blame for everything, especially to our mother and Ivo, and forgot how to smile.

Mama suffered, too. She argued with James, and showered us with innumerable pointless presents, or took us on fraught outings to various wildlife or national parks. She continued to perch on the edge of our beds when we were long past the age of bedtime stories.

I missed her terribly, but I was too proud to let her know, and always acted as if our life were the quintessence of normality. I feigned the uncomplicated daughter, and Ivo — who already had a remarkable instinct for people — conformed, became soft, affectionate, eventually chatty, brimming with eagerness for the tedious hiking tours and excursions, full of genuine enthusiasm for everything my mother organised for us.

We reconciled ourselves to the situation and, once Leni finally stopped punishing Ivo for being the embodiment of our family’s misfortune, accepted that our life was as it was. So it was an almost happy childhood: a little crazy, a little eccentric, a little neglected, and practically overflowing with love bestowed on us by these troubled adults, which could never really be healthy, or was at least administered in an unhealthy form.

This was the version of my childhood I later confided to my husband, friends, and a few close acquaintances. I went to great lengths to ensure people acknowledged our right to call ourselves a family. The rest I worked out for myself. The rest I worked out with Ivo.

He called after I had washed my puffy, tear-stained face, poured myself another cup of coffee, and abandoned all hope of imposing some sort of order on the day.

He didn’t explain anything, just said he was going to come round, was I there, did I have any objection? I didn’t answer, just nodded mutely. He promised he would be with me in forty minutes; he was already on the way.

I spent the time wrapped in a blanket on my balcony, gazing down at the street. Ships sounded their horns in the distance, lulling me into a dreamlike trance. My brain finally stopped seething and groaning. I didn’t bother to put on make-up, to paint on a face that might conceal my fear.

He was punctual. I stood by the door for a long time, trying to control my breathing, before I opened it. He was wearing a black leather jacket, his hair, as ever, very close-cropped. He seemed taller than I remembered; I wondered whether grown-ups continue to grow, or whether it’s an effect of the passage of time. He was smiling at me, a tiny flower in his hand, a snowdrop from Tulia’s garden — I laughed, despite myself.

We didn’t speak. He started slinking around my apartment like a hyena, surveying the rooms, stopping in front of the photos displayed on a shelf. He stared at a picture of Theo for a long time, then set it back down abruptly. Eventually he sat at our breakfast bar and said:

‘This breakfast bar is so not bourgeois!’

This was the first thing I heard from Ivo after almost eight years. Then he asked if he could have a drink.

‘Gin and tonic or something would be great. You’re bound to have gin and tonic in an apartment like this, right?’

‘Mark and I occasionally drink gin, so we probably do have some, but not because I think we should have some in an apartment like this. And there’s nothing wrong with the breakfast bar!’

‘Hey — are you offended, or what?’

‘Stop it.’

Having said this, I felt a bit surer of myself. And, in an instant, the malicious lightness I remembered from before was back.

I gave in, gave up, and mixed him a gin and tonic. I didn’t have to think long before pouring myself one as well. It was one o’clock in the afternoon.

He smiled and pressed his glass to his lips.

‘You’ve got older. But I like the little laughter lines. And your hair is darker somehow. I think your apartment’s perfectly fine, by the way. It’s just weird that you live like this now … Tulia seems very taken with your husband, anyway, so that’s a good sign.’

Tulia must have lied through her teeth, because she thought Mark was a crashing bore; at first she’d even threatened to ban me from her house when I’d announced that I was going to marry him.

‘Is she now,’ I sighed, sipping my drink. The warming, slightly befuddling effect of alcohol in the daytime liberated me from myself.

‘It’s good to see you. You’re very beautiful. Just as I always imagined you’d look in your mid-thirties. You’re definitely a late bloomer — your best years are yet to come!’

‘Ivo, what the hell is all this? You’ve got a nerve, just showing up here all of a sudden! Where’ve you been all this time? Why did you never get in touch?’

‘That was what you wanted.’

‘Fuck that. I was worried about you. I —’

‘Frank always knew where I was living. So Tulia would have known as well. And I bet Gesi gave you news of me every week.’

‘You know what I mean. You don’t seriously think I would ask anyone else about you — where you’re living, what continent you happen to be on?!’

‘That’s how you wanted it, Stella. So don’t reproach me. It was your decision.’

‘So if it was my decision that we wouldn’t see each other anymore, what are you doing here?’

‘Because I never stick to agreements, on principle.’

I looked at him, and had to suppress a laugh. He was as beautiful as ever — the sad, almost alarming beauty of a lonely man. A man who despaired of himself. His almond-shaped eyes — dark grey, watery, with long lashes — were still full of secrets I had tried for so long to decode, and the slight, impish grin around the corners of his mouth hadn’t changed, either. My love for him was like a wound that had never really healed.

‘Long story short: I still live in New York. If you can call it a life.’

He took his cigarettes out of his pocket. I tried to remember when I had last smoked.

‘I travel a lot; I’ve gone freelance. The contracts are pretty good; I take everything the others won’t do. I’ve been in Kabul the past three months. It got a bit uncomfortable sometimes. But my friend War and I still get along brilliantly. I’m not married: I would definitely have invited the family to my wedding. I see Gesi quite often. James hasn’t been too well lately, but Gesi comes and visits when I’m in New York. We still argue about toxins and experiments on animals, but it doesn’t matter. The world hasn’t changed; astonishingly, I still haven’t managed to save it. You see, Stella, I’m doing fine. I missed you sometimes. That’s all, really. And my love life works out pretty well for the two or three months I spend in any one place.’

He had stood up, and was looking out of the window.

‘I’d like to see your son,’ he said suddenly, and I noticed that speaking mostly English had softened his German, and that it suited his voice.

‘You can meet him.’

‘Will I meet your husband, too?’

‘Yes, you can meet my husband, too.’

We both looked out of the window for a while. Finally, I mustered the courage to ask: ‘Why did you come back?’

‘I suddenly felt I didn’t know who I was anymore. I don’t think you can put your life on fast-forward. I did, though, and it worked for quite a while. But now I have to rewind. I have to rewind, and I can’t do that without Frank, and Tulia — maybe I even need Leni — but most of all I need you, Stella. I have to be here again; I have to do this for a while. You mix an excellent G&T. You didn’t use to. A skill acquired in recent years, I suspect.’

‘We closed that chapter, Ivo. And I don’t think it would be a good idea now to —’

‘We didn’t close anything. Don’t kid yourself.’

His voice suddenly became cold, distant, slightly scornful: that incredible coldness he emanated whenever he was afraid of being rejected. How he hurt me with that, even though I knew it was put on, that he was only acting; but he acted so convincingly that it was impossible, in the moment, not to be affected by it.

‘It’s closed, Ivo. I have a new life. I have other priorities now. Above all, I have a child, whose happiness is more important to me than feeling a certain way. I’ve found my peace.’

‘You’ve found your peace, have you? Wow, that’s great. Listen, Stella. You have to help me, and maybe I can help you.’

‘Help? You, help me? I’ve already been helped. I don’t need any more help. And you — how am I supposed to help you? How do you see that working? You went your own way. You’re a different person to who you were back then. You’ve had different experiences, you have different feelings, different thoughts. I can’t act as if no time’s gone by. It unsettles me, still — I’m confused; it’s all a bit much, because you’re here, and I’m happy that you are, maybe even relieved. But I don’t know what I can do. If you want to talk, we can talk, but that’s all, Ivo.’

‘I just need to try to remember. And you can help me with that, can’t you?’

I wouldn’t answer him, so for a while we both stared into our glasses in silence. The telephone rang, and I jumped up to look for it. The hated phone offered me a reprieve, the possibility of escape. I wondered why I felt so hopelessly exposed again — to Ivo, our past, to whatever was going to happen next — but I was relieved when I heard a woman’s voice on the line.

‘Who’s speaking?’ I didn’t recognise the name.

‘I’m calling from Theo’s school. He hasn’t been picked up, and I just wanted to —’

Immediately, I hated the phone again.

‘Oh my God! I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Could you look after him until then … ?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘My husband and I got things mixed up.’ I was lying again.

Ivo had got up and had gone back to looking at the family photos on the shelf.

‘I have to go. I have to pick up Theo.’

‘We can do that together.’

‘I think it’s better if I go alone.’

‘No, come on. That way I can meet him, can’t I?’

‘This really isn’t the best time, Ivo!’

But he had already emptied his glass and picked up his leather jacket. I could feel the effects of the alcohol, which I wasn’t at all used to during the day. My ears were buzzing as if I’d developed a weird form of tinnitus, and I was sweating.

We hurried down the stairs, me throwing on my coat as I ran. Ivo seemed relaxed and mildly amused, as ever.

When I tried to unlock the car and the key slipped out of my hand, he grinned, and indicated that I should take the passenger seat.

‘Let me,’ he said, and I acquiesced with relief. For the second time that day, I felt I was about to burst into tears.

He drove fast and with confidence, aware that he was exuding that characteristic complacency that so annoyed me. I wondered whether he came across as this confident and laid-back in all his damned conflict zones, where he had to go to research his oh-so-truthful and revealing reports. Whether he strolled around this casually, this amused, in bombed-out cities, streets littered with corpses. Sure of himself, always a little superior, a little more self-aware than the others, always a little freer, more assured, more inscrutable.

I knew — I remembered precisely — when he had started to be like this. How he began to smoke cigarettes right down to the filter, bite his fingernails, and eye up women hungrily; I remembered his sad gaze, which others always thought was a challenge, and the notebooks that he would fill right to the edges, like casting a little anchor into the ocean.

‘Left here.’ A few brief directions were all I could manage on the way to Theo’s school.

He smoked, although it was Mark’s car and he would notice the stink and be cross about it, but I didn’t dare point this out to Ivo; I couldn’t stop thinking about the ‘not bourgeois’ breakfast bar and didn’t want him to go on judging me.

He had rolled down the window and was looking around, as curious as a schoolboy. He seemed to be recognising the city again, or not recognising it and marvelling at it for the first time; I couldn’t tell.

I made him wait in the car. Theo was sitting in a ground-floor classroom, chewing a carrot. He made a sulky face, but apparently wasn’t sulky enough not to leap to his feet immediately and run to me. I thanked the teacher and tried to look relaxed and confident, as if it had all just been a misunderstanding.

For a long time, I didn’t want to have children; in fact, I had never really wanted to have children, precisely because I didn’t feel equal to the task of being a mother, and long before I became pregnant with Theo I sensed that, no matter what I did, I would never be good enough. Not for myself, and not for my child, either.

‘Where’s Papa?’ asked Theo, sticking the remains of the carrot in his jacket pocket. The other children, who were mostly older, sat quietly drawing or doing their homework, ignoring Theo. He didn’t say goodbye to anyone, either, except the teacher.

‘It’s me this afternoon. You know that.’

‘So why did you forget to pick me up?’

‘I didn’t forget you. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m just a bit late.’

‘Were you working?’

‘No, I’m late because we have a visitor.’

‘A visitor?’

His dark-brown eyes lit up, and his anger at my lateness seemed forgotten.

‘Someone very important to me. A member of the family. I’ve already told you about him, if you remember.’

‘Your family or Papa’s family?’

‘My family.’

I hadn’t said brother for years to describe Ivo. No one in our family referred to him as my brother. But I was surprised that I didn’t say it now to Theo. I tried to deal with him seriously and respectfully, to be as honest as Tulia had been with us. Perhaps it had taken the lightheartedness out of our relationship, but it had made all three of us independent people.

We approached the car park where the car was waiting. Ivo was looking out of the window, smoking another cigarette. He was watching us, I knew, although I couldn’t see his face at that distance.

‘That’s Papa’s car,’ said Theo. And at that moment, I could have shaken him for demonstrating this possessive mentality, this capitalistic childhood disease, as Tulia would call it, so openly. There wasn’t much about my childhood that I was proud of. Our freedom, perhaps; Ivo; the fact that we could always swim better than others, and that we always shared everything. Possessions were frowned on in our house. Mark’s childhood didn’t resemble mine in the slightest. He didn’t see anything wrong with his son learning early on what he was entitled to; he even encouraged it.

‘Mine’s at the garage, darling,’ I said, clutching Theo’s small hand a little tighter. He tried to loosen my grip but I wouldn’t let him, and in the throes of our little power struggle we found we were already standing by the car. Ivo got out and offered my son his hand. Theo looked up at him, wrested his hand from mine, and shook it.

‘This is Ivo, Theo,’ I said, watching them expectantly. Seeing the two of them together was disconcerting; it augured a huge change for which I was absolutely not ready.

‘You’ve got a funny name,’ said my six-year-old son, climbing into the car. ‘We’ve got a photo of you at home.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. But you look different in it. Your hair’s different.’

‘That’s true. I think it wasn’t just my hair that was different.’

‘What else was?’

It occurred to me that perhaps I should have warned Ivo not to get drawn into answering Theo’s questions, because they would never end. As a rule, Theo hardly showed any interest in other people or anything around him, but once his curiosity was awakened, it was apparently limitless. I sometimes wished it were possible to direct this curiosity, because not everything he was interested in interested me — and vice versa.

‘Well, everything, I reckon.’

Theo seemed to consider this.

Ivo gave me an enquiring look. ‘Where to, ladies and gentlemen?’ he cried, acting jolly.

‘Home first — I have to change quickly. Then on to football. I can’t be late, okay?’ said Theo, dictating from the back seat. I didn’t reply, just accepted his imperious tone and nodded.

On the way there, Theo wouldn’t stop asking questions. Where had Ivo been, why hadn’t he visited us more often, and why did he smoke, because Papa didn’t actually want smokers in his car; he told him about his football practice and his best friend, whose father bred rabbits; about the really big building where his father worked, where he was sometimes allowed to go; he told him he had beaten Tulia once in arm-wrestling, and that he thought Leni’s eldest son was silly because he liked girls and had got really stuck-up ever since he had been given an electric bike.

When we got home, I made Theo a sandwich; I didn’t have the time or imagination to prepare something hot. I was also completely preoccupied with Ivo’s presence and the question of what his being there would mean for me.

Theo took the remains of his carrot out of his pocket and demonstratively placed it in the fruit bowl. When I suggested that we throw the carrot away because it didn’t look very appetising, he got angry, insisting that it was his carrot and he could do what he liked with it. Ivo seemed amused by this glimpse into our everyday life, glancing curiously first at me, then at Theo.

I felt an irrepressible desire to barricade myself in the bedroom until very late that night and just be left alone. I gave in, yet again. The half-eaten carrot sat on top of the fruit, a symbol of Tulia’s capitalistic childhood disease, a token of my impotence.

The three of us drove to my son’s football pitch in my husband’s car. Seen from outside, the picture looked fine, with one small exception: the husband was wrong. The husband who actually belonged in this picture was probably in the studio right now, editing one of his documentaries: my husband, who had not the faintest idea that, this morning, the entire life we had fought to build together — our daily routine, our habits, our promises, our similarities and differences, our nights, our holiday plans, our parties that we so enjoyed planning and hosting together — was all being called into question. And that I was doing nothing to stop it. On the contrary: I was driving to the football pitch with a borrowed life, in a borrowed car, with a borrowed husband, and wondering how it was possible for it to happen so quickly — for everything, absolutely everything around me to feel so wrong. How much was I risking for a relationship that had finished long ago, that had never promised any kind of happiness, that, in all the thirty-six years I had been on this earth, I had never been able to name.