14

Mark was back. We didn’t talk to each other. I was present, fulfilled my duties, didn’t complain, went on being Theo’s mother, his scandalous mother.

We celebrated Theo’s seventh birthday and had the party at his grandparents’ in Blankenese, where the children could listen to loud music and romp undisturbed, eat cake, brandish water pistols and flood the garden.

I sat in the corner of the garden at a long table laden with sweet drinks and cakes. Mark was chatting to some of the other fathers and attending to the barbecue. I didn’t make a particular effort to talk to anyone. The sun was shining. The day had turned warm, and I let the individual sunbeams dance along my arms, like a juggler. I observed my fingers, which looked so pale, bony, bare and ineffectual. I looked at my wedding ring and started twisting it; I pulled it up slightly, tried to take it off, then pushed it down again. With or without a ring, I had failed.

*

Abi had slapped me, then started to sob as I packed my things. Xerxes, frightened, had crept into a corner and watched with bewildered eyes as his world was split in two. I hadn’t found another apartment; it was a hot summer, and the university vacation had just begun, so I’d decided to spend the next few weeks with Tulia until I had something lined up.

I spent the days in Niendorf in a hammock Tulia and I had strung up, staring at the sky. In the evening I went to the beach or wrote articles for the university magazine. I smoked, and listened to old records in the basement. Sometimes I helped Tulia with the boat hire business; we spent the days alongside each other in silence, asking no questions. From time to time she would make her famous apple cake and invite some cackling old ladies over, and I would get to serve them brandy and chauffeur them home. I hadn’t told anyone where I was, and I hardly left the house or garden.

My mourning was not excessive, not bloody. It was tender, almost meek, patient even, and wonderfully assuaged by Tulia’s liqueurs.

One Sunday evening — I had been at the beach, reading and making notes — I got back to the house and realised that something was different. At first I thought Papa had come to visit, but there was no sign of his car. The gate was open, and the old children’s swing under the treehouse was swaying back and forth as if someone had brought it back to life.

I stood still and listened. Tulia was chattering excitedly, with a happy rasp in her voice, and I knew that he had come.

I ran inside and saw Ivo sitting at the table, his cheeks flushed, eating Tulia’s soup. His big rucksack and his shoes stood in the hall.

I wasn’t prepared for his visit, and it made me rather uncomfortable, because I didn’t know what Tulia had written to him, whether he knew that I had left Hamburg. However, I shook off my confusion and rushed over to him. In this place it seemed so easy to sit beside him, with none of the tension, none of the hurt of recent years.

He was back from a trip, and wanted to hide away here at Tulia’s for a week, he said. I had to laugh. Would it always be like this? Would we always be seeking refuge in the past and the places that belonged to it, always hiding away in order to remember?

‘That sounds good. Eat, eat! Our girl is here with me too, hiding away from the world and its sorrows,’ said Tulia, putting an arm around my shoulders as if to check I was still there. ‘Come on, Stella, you must eat something as well. It’s not good for you, spending all day down by the water and not eating properly!’

And she warmed the soup for me.

At night we sat on the swing, which creaked and groaned, humming songs to ourselves. I tried not to ask any questions; he had said in his letter that he didn’t have any answers.

*

Those were good days. I remember that week very clearly. It was as if, in that one week, I was able to catch up on my lost childhood with Ivo. We took the boat out, even though the sea was rough and Tulia had forbidden it; we lay on the beach, played four-handed accordion, ate goulash, and sat on the patio in the evening listening to the night. He asked nothing, and I said nothing. This calm, this closeness was only possible because, in that week, we were brother and sister again, a brother and sister who had consciously chosen each other.

*

We were helping Tulia in the garden; the heavy coastal rains had destroyed the flowerbeds. I was wearing old rubber boots, and Ivo had taken off his shirt. I was helping dig over the earth and staking the plants that could still be saved. By chance, my elbow touched his spine: he was bent over slightly, hands dirty from the damp soil. Suddenly I was gripped by furious lust; I felt the urge to scream. I screamed. Ivo turned, lost his balance, landed in the dirt; I knelt down and kissed him. Mumbling, he pushed me away. He was looking around, looking for Tulia.

My throat constricted. I jumped up and ran from the garden as fast as I could. This time I didn’t run to the beach, but into the house, under the shower. I hoped the hot water would wash off this new defeat. I pressed myself against the steamed-up wall of the shower stall.

The door handle turned, and he entered the bathroom. I opened the shower door.

‘Go away!’ I screamed, wrapping my arms around my body. I didn’t want him to see me naked.

He stood there, not moving, only his nostrils quivering slightly. He was afraid, I could see it, and that made my defeat even more crushing. I turned my back on him, rubbed myself with Tulia’s rose soap, and hid my face in my wet hair. Then I felt his hand on my behind. He stepped towards me and started to take off his clothes. The shower stall smelled of earth; he stepped inside and put his hand over my mouth.

We made love covertly, because he didn’t want our love to leave any traces in the room. He took me that afternoon, took me as you take on a burden; he took me like an addict, without question; he surrendered to his lust, but he did not surrender to me.

I saw it, I saw it in his eyes as they evaded mine, I saw it in his hands that perceived my flesh as an impediment, and I ought to have screamed, to have freed myself, but instead I stretched, adjusted, made it easier for him to abuse my body and humiliate me.

*

He dried himself off while I stayed under the shower; my body ached and burned, and I let the water wash it clean. He looked at himself in the mirror; he seemed calm, himself again, in control of the situation. I crouched down and pressed my legs tightly together, hoping the pain would subside if I just pinched it off.

‘It wouldn’t be good if Tulia and the others …’ he whispered suddenly, and hastily started to get dressed. ‘I’ll go out and carry on in the garden. You wait for a bit.’

He said this very calmly, methodically, gazing at his face and running his hand over his cheeks, checking that the prints of his lust had faded. I think it was this calmness, the confidence in his voice, that made me explode, that gave me strength, even though I was crouching mutely under the shower. I don’t know how else to explain why I reacted as I did. Why I suddenly felt filled with such strength that I leaped out of the cubicle in a single bound.

I stood before him, wet and naked, and looked him dead in the eye. Something in my expression made him step back; he froze, and stood stock-still.

‘I’m not going to wait so much as a second, and I don’t give a shit whether it’ll be bad, worse, or worst for the others. I can’t take this anymore. What do I care about the others? I’ve spent long enough thinking about the others. You hear me, Ivo? A man who loved me, who I loved and could have been happy with, has just left me — do you know why? Do you want to guess? Do you? I reckon you know the reason — yes, I think you do, although you always act surprised by it, this fucking reason! I’m not going to wait a single second, and you can’t hold my mouth shut for ever. I’ve tried for years, ever since that shitty day on the beach, I’ve tried to do everything right, the way you think is right, and I realise now that this right is only right for you. For me, it’s totally, utterly wrong. So I won’t keep my mouth shut. If it’s going to hurt, let’s have it all at once. That I can cope with, but this — not like this.’

I stared into his eyes the whole time. His pupils were dilated, and for the first time I had a sense of myself as the person I wanted to be, the person I would be, were it not for this man who only had to blink an eye to thwart all my self-determination and all my plans. Day after day, year after year. And despite my pitiful situation, I sensed I had the strength to hold my ground.

‘I want you, Ivo. I want you beside me. Yes — hear this. Look at me,’ I continued.

‘Please, stop it …’

‘No, you are not going to shut me up! No!’ This time I shouted, and he instinctively placed a finger on his lips. His fear in this bathroom, in this confined space, liberated me at last. ‘No, you’re not! Stop telling me how to behave. We weren’t like that — our relationship wasn’t like that, it was always reciprocal, until you started to be ashamed of what I feel, of what you might feel, too, if you … I don’t want this anymore, Ivo. Do you really not understand me? Is it so hard to understand?’

‘How do you see this working? I mean, should we get married and make cute little babies and let Frank and Leni be godparents?’

‘You’re not hurting me; I can’t fall any further. My God, Ivo — is it just this?’ I put my hand between my legs. ‘Is it? It can’t be, it can’t just be that? It’s not worth all this trouble just for that? I love you, Ivo.’

He lowered his eyes and stared at his bare feet. I couldn’t help smiling; in that moment, just as so much seemed to be falling apart, I felt something start to heal. I smiled; I smiled at him.

‘I love you — Ivo in the past, Ivo in the present, and Ivo in the future. I love you, perhaps because we were so lonely, so small and weak, and we still made it; because you needed my voice, because in spite of everything you appointed me to speak for you when you were silent, to look out at the world for you with my eyes. Because you expected it of me, and in doing that you gave me a mission, a purpose. Because I need that from you. I love the little birthmark on your right thigh, I love the way you smoke, I love your fear of my body, I love your anger at the world because it’s so unfair to you; I love your kisses and your political discussions, I love the way you write, I love the way you peel a cucumber and bite into it with such relish; I love all your attempts to protect our family from everyone else, to defend it; and I want you to listen to me, to allow me to ask your forgiveness.’

There was a knock at the door. The water was still running, the abandoned shower head spraying the entire floor.

‘Are you in there, you two?’ asked Tulia, and in her voice I heard concern, the insecurity she usually hid so well, as if she were the most fearless person on earth, as if fear were one of the deadly sins.

Staring at me, aghast, he called, ‘Everything’s fine, Tulia. Stella cut her finger in the garden; we’re just patching up her hand.’ His voice sounded so cheerful, completely carefree, and again I did something I might not have done if he had been a little more sincere, less exultant.

Before he could grab me by the arm and hold me back, I ran to the door, opened it, and strolled past Tulia naked, leaving the battlefield exposed behind me. I no longer recall what I felt. All I remember is Tulia backing away in shock, Ivo shouting something and falling silent. I walked down the corridor, leaving a trail of damp footprints, and I walked with pride. With every step I was regaining the dignity he had taken away by making love to me while holding my mouth and eyes shut.