Peter Stamm - Seven Years

Antje asked whether Sophie knew who her mother was. She doesn’t even know she’s adopted, I said, and if Sonia has her way, she never will either. You’ll see, said Antje. But one day you’ll have to tell her. I asked her how Sonia was doing. Shouldn’t you ask her yourself? If I ask her, it’s always the same, she’s fine. Antje smiled. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? She asked me if I’d ever really loved Sonia. As if it was easy to say, I said. I had to think of our wedding, and the promises we made to one another, promises I didn’t believe in at the time. I shook my head. I don’t know. Did you love Ivona then? asked Antje. I’ve got to go to bed, I said. If you like, I’ll continue tomorrow. I more or less know the rest, said Antje. I met Ivona again. Antje raised her eyebrows. Well, well. She got up and said she’d better get to sleep, there was always tomorrow. Do you need anything? I asked. Antje shook her head. Good night. I remained seated, I wasn’t tired yet. I asked myself whether Antje didn’t have a point, whether we’d have to tell Sophie that Sonia wasn’t her biological mother. It wouldn’t have been any trouble for me, if I’d had the least hope that Ivona had any feelings for the girl. But she seemed not to. Perhaps she’d denied them to herself.

Years passed after Sophie’s birth, in which I heard nothing from Ivona. To begin with, I still used to call Hartmeier from time to time and ask after her, but once he said she had stopped going to the Bible group, and he had lost contact with her. She’d become a burden on all of us, he said. The whole business with the baby and her stubborn silence. Ivona hadn’t wanted to see what terrible mistakes she had perpetrated, so they had suggested she stop coming. And some seeds, he said, fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked them.

I had expected Ivona to get in touch on Sophie’s birthday, and send a gift or at the very least a card. When we heard nothing from her, I tried to call, but the number was no longer valid, and I made no further attempt to find her. Maybe she’s gone back to Poland, I thought, it would be the best thing for all of us.

It had taken us a while to adjust to Sophie. Other parents have nine months in which to get used to the idea of having a baby. Even after Sophie came to us, we still weren’t sure we would be able to keep her. Only when we got Ivona’s final release form in our hands at the end of eight weeks did we dare to see Sophie as ours, and include her in our plans and thoughts.

Even so, our initial feeling of strangeness was slow to yield. Sometimes I forgot about Sophie, and was surprised, coming home at night, to run into her with the nanny, who was looking after her for the first six months. Sonia often got home later than I did, her new role took even more getting used to than mine did. But however difficult the changes, she never talked about them, and she never let Sophie sense them either. On the contrary, she was very tender to her, and almost overprotective. She was forever putting her to her breast. And whatever Sophie managed to pick up, Sonia saw it as a potential threat, poisonous paints, sharp edges, little objects that she might swallow. Just imagine if something were to happen to her, she said. Nothing will happen to her, I said.

Sometimes I would gaze at Sophie for a long time, and seek similarities to Ivona or to me, and not find any. She’s like you, I would say to Sonia, who would laugh and say, she’s not like anyone, she’s unique. And then I would catch her watching Sophie, and I wondered what was going through her head.

At the end of six months, we left Sophie in day care. When I took her in the very first time, I felt terrible, it was as though I was setting her out in the wilderness. But she seemed happy enough to be together with other children. At night she didn’t want to come home, and she started crying when I picked her up and took her in my arms.

Sophie was a quiet, placid child, and little trouble. She had a healthy appetite, and put on weight so quickly that Sonia said she was getting fat, we had to keep an eye on her diet. Even at an early age, Sophie was capable of amusing herself. Sometimes I watched her lying on a blanket on the floor, raptly watching something, or endlessly repeating the same gesture with her hand, reaching for a toy or a stuffed animal nearby. When she was older she looked after her dolls with the devotion of a real mother. She fed them and put them to bed, and told them weird goodnight stories that she’d gotten from God knows where. When I asked her about them, she didn’t say anything. She wasn’t an unfriendly girl, but she was very wrapped up in herself, and seemed to live in a world of her own. Sometimes I had the impression that nothing of the love I felt for her was reciprocated, as though my feelings vanished into a black hole.

Sophie was slower than the other kids in everything, it was a long time before she was walking, and at the age of two she still didn’t speak a word. Birgit, Sonia’s gynecologist and Sophie’s godmother, said none of that mattered. The main thing was that she was healthy. Sonia seemed disappointed, though she would never have admitted it. She wanted Birgit to conduct some tests, but Birgit refused. Just give her time, she has her own rhythm.

Birgit and Sonia usually arranged their medical appointments at the end of the afternoon, and we would go out together afterward. Once, Birgit said Tania had written to her. She had three children with her Swiss fellow, and was living in a sort of commune with several other families on a remote farmhouse not far from Lake Constance. They strove to be self-sufficient, and the children were home-schooled. It was evident she wanted a reconciliation with her, said Birgit.

The organization had jettisoned its former nationalist views, and was now busy opposing war and the threat of Islam. Tania had written that she couldn’t very well fight for peace on earth if there was disharmony in her own backyard, and so she wanted to ask Birgit’s forgiveness.

Birgit laughed. It doesn’t matter if those people campaign for spelling reform or against animal experiments, they never change. Well, asked Sonia, will you forgive her? There’s nothing to forgive, said Birgit. She enclosed a couple of editions of a magazine that her organization puts out. The things they say seem pretty sensible at first glance. But if you read them more closely, you’ll see it’s the same blend of authoritarianism, naturopathy, and conspiracy theories. I bet you didn’t know that the twin towers in New York were blown up by the American government. If only the world were that simple! Sonia reckoned Birgit should write to Tania, what did she have to lose. But Birgit only shook her head. No, she said, I’m not getting into that. It’s wrong to support those mad systems.

I had heard of several cases of women getting pregnant after adopting children, and secretly I hoped we would have a second child. When I mentioned it to Sonia one day, she said she had been fitted with a coil. I was shocked, and said, couldn’t we at least have talked about it first? It’s not you that has to hump the weight around, said Sonia. Anyway, we’ve got a child. I said, wouldn’t it be nice if Sophie had a little brother or sister, but Sonia said we didn’t even have time to look after one properly. She seemed not to understand my consternation. Since Sophie was with us, she struck me as being more distant than before. She was often in a bad mood, critical of me, no longer jokingly as once before, but with a tetchiness I hadn’t seen in her before. Family life seemed to bore her. When we went out for a stroll on a Sunday and later sat down at a café, the three of us, there was often an awkward silence. Then Sophie would get up and start running around the café, until Sonia called her, and said, can’t you sit still for a moment? She finished her coffee silently and got up. Is it all right if we go now?