Clemens Meyer - All the Lights

And he’s still thinking about it as he walks down the road to the village. He stops at the old Konsum cooperative shop and looks in the window at the empty room. The shop’s been closed for years now, and there’s nowhere to shop in the next village any more either. He doesn’t like the big supermarket in the middle of the fields just outside town. They used to meet here outside the Konsum when they came home from work, from the cooperative or the fields. They used to drink beer and talk, sometimes they drank beer and didn’t talk, before they went back to their farms and into their houses. Fred, Wee Henry, Walfried, Jochen Schuster and Jochen Meyer — all long gone now or dead.

He wants to remember their faces and their voices, here outside the shop, but there’s nothing, and he starts walking again.

‘What was that tavern called again?’ he asks, fetching the little tree stump he keeps next to the watering cans and the rakes. ‘In town, I mean, on the harbour front. You always used to like it there. Maybe we should have gone more often. You should have said something.’ He carries the tree stump over to her, his back aching slightly, and then he sits down. He takes the pipe out of his breast pocket and then he realises he’s left the tobacco at home, but he clamps it between his teeth anyway. The mouthpiece fits exactly into the gap. The other old villagers envied him his good teeth; there’s just that double gap at the top left. He looks at the empty gravesite next to her. He wants to say something to her, like he always does, he wants to tell her about the last few days, what he’s been up to and who he’s met, but the old man just chews on the mouthpiece of his pipe and blinks at the sun. He knows most of the people buried round here, he’s been to most of the funerals in the last few years, scattered earth and flowers on coffins and urns, and every time he couldn’t help thinking of his wife, who he’d buried more than ten years ago. The Konsum was still open back then, and afterwards they stood outside the shop window in their suits and drank beer before they went to the village pub, for the ‘funeral meats’, as he called it. The tree stump he’s sitting on has been exposed to the weather and is riddled with woodworm, but it’s soft to sit on, as if there were a cushion on top of it. He sits in the sun for a while, closing his eyes. A dog barks somewhere but it’s not Kurt. Kurt only knew his wife for two years; they chose him together when old Schultze’s Alsatian bitch had a litter. The old man thinks of how his wife trained the dog — Kurt was the fourth dog she’d trained — he thinks of how she sometimes let him in the house at night, when the winter was cold. She got sick that winter but it wasn’t the cold to blame. Kurt howled and whimpered for days when she died. It was quick enough. The thing in her head, that’s what she called it, and Kurt howled and whimpered so much that he let him in the house, and he ran around looking for her in the house, and then he went quiet. Once, she’d not been gone long, he took the dog along to the graveyard one night. The small iron gate’s always open. Do you think he can smell her, down there under the earth, he thought. He let him off the lead but Kurt just ran aimlessly to and fro between the gravestones while he stood by his wife.

The old man wants to think of something good, of the wedding more than forty years ago, but he can hardly remember it any more; all he can see is him dancing with her — was that in the Seaman’s Heart? No, they married here in the village, at the Farmer’s Inn. How could he have forgotten that, even for a moment? But he forgets a lot and he knows it’ll get worse. They celebrated their thirtieth anniversary at the Seaman’s Heart, just him and his wife and no guests, and that’s the dance — he knows that now — that he remembers. All on their own between the tables.

He carries the tree stump back to the watering cans and the rakes. It’s his tree stump but he’s not the only one who uses it. He saw old Schultze sitting on it once; he’s so old he’s buried two wives here.

He walks along the empty village road. It’s Friday and he has his appointment at the Farmer’s Inn. Once a month he gets his hair cut. Hardly anyone goes to the Farmer’s Inn any more, since the last young people left the village and the old ones have been disappearing one by one, but Gerhild doesn’t want to shut the place down; she owns the house and she lives above the pub. ‘You’re pretty much my only customer,’ Gerhild always says. The bar room’s cleared out, only the round table with the large ‘Regulars’ sign in the middle’s left now.

‘Haircut and a beer as usual?’ Gerhild’s behind the bar doing something with glasses. She doesn’t look up; she knows it’s him. His footsteps echo in the empty room and he stops still. ‘I’ll have a Korn with it. And bring me the whole bottle.’

The glasses stop clinking; Gerhild looks at him. ‘Something to celebrate, Albrecht?’

‘Nice weather today. It’s stopped raining.’

She nods. ‘You take a seat. I’ll bring it over and then I’ll get the scissors.’

He goes over to the table, pushing one of the chairs out into the room. He hears her opening a beer bottle; the pumps aren’t in use any more. Werner, the landlord, died six years ago — or was it seven? He was fifteen years older than her and she’s been on her own ever since. She was fifty-nine back then, the best catch in the village, they’d joked outside the Konsum , and they’d thought she’d sell the pub and move to town, but she stayed.

She comes over with the beer and a shot glass. The bottle’s in her apron pocket, and she puts everything down on the table behind him.

‘How are your lads, Albrecht?’

‘They want to come and visit again soon. Maybe in September.’

‘They should be ashamed of themselves. If I …’

‘Don’t, Gerhild.’

‘Sorry. I’ll get my scissors.’

‘It’s all right. You have a glass of wine with me.’ She turns around to him and smiles. ‘You want me to cut your ears off or something? No, no, you drink on your own, Albrecht.’ She walks across the bar room, his eyes following her. He drinks his schnapps and washes it down with beer.

He’s drunk three shots by the time she gets back with the scissors and the towel. She spreads the towel over his shoulders. He looks at the tiny white tips of hair falling on the towel and the floor. He doesn’t really need to come every month; he’s been coming for eight years and it’s only a few millimetres of hair every time. He hears the sound of the scissors, feels her fingers on his head. His wife used to cut his hair, before. When she died he left his hair to grow, for over a year. He’d almost gone to seed, like some of the men he knew from the village or the neighbouring villages, who didn’t take care of their farms and themselves once they were on their own, until they went too, not long afterwards. But Schultze and Gerhild and her husband the landlord helped him. It took him nearly two years to get back on his feet, more or less. He’d been so tired back then, as tired as he was again now. ‘There we are, you’re done. Your hair’s not growing any faster either.’ She laughs. She shakes the hair off the towel and goes to the counter. The old man watches her go, stroking his shoulders and his chest. A few tiny hairs sparkle on his shirt. He fills the glass again and drinks, washing the schnapps down with the remaining beer. He puts a twenty under the bottle and gets up. ‘Are you off already?’ She’s holding a broom and a dustpan.

‘Got things to do,’ he says, walking past her. ‘Bye then.’

‘Come by next week. Old Schultze comes in every Wednesday again now.’