Birgit Vanderbeke - The Mussel Feast

My mother had fled from the East with this pot, she told us; it was indispensable for washing nappies, and she used to wash our nappies by hand, or rather with a wooden spoon. I asked whether it wasn’t impractical to flee with a massive pot like that; in my mind I had a ridiculous picture of her escaping over the barbed wire, dragging the enormous pot behind her, but Mum said, you’ve got completely the wrong idea about the flight, I mean we didn’t just make a dash for it, we prepared well in advance. We loved listening to how she managed to move all our stuff to West Berlin, and to the story about the bananas, too. My father was almost arrested at the border, on his very first and in fact last trip to Berlin. He must have acted very awkwardly; even he admits that he’s no good at such clandestine business. The only time he dared to bring anything across the border, he was too cocky, trying to take back two kilos of bananas from the West. They caught him immediately, hauled him out of the underground, interrogated him and everything, but in the end they let him go. I don’t know if they really arrested people for a few bananas, seeing as half the country was trying to escape; I can’t imagine that was the case, but my father says that it was resistance, political resistance. In any event he never went back and my mother brought the big enamel pot to her friend. She always took me with her when she went to Berlin; mother and child looked less suspicious and anyhow she needed to go to the Charité Hospital because I had a problem with my hip. She simply got out of the train en route and handed the things to her friend, that’s what she always told us; on the way there we were wrapped up in winter clothes, on the way back we weren’t wearing very much. It was risky; your father’s no good at such clandestine business, my mother said when we showed surprise at the story with the bananas.

Anyway, the noise came from the pot and as I glanced over I couldn’t help looking at the clock, too: it said three minutes past six. And at that moment my mood changed abruptly. I stared at the noisy pot and although I knew that the mussels were still alive, I didn’t know that they made noises in the pot, because I was never around when my parents cooked mussels. Initially I wondered whether the noise was coming from somewhere else, but it was distinctly coming from the pot, and it was a distinctly strange noise, which made me feel creepy; we were already twitchy and nervous, and now there was this noise. I stared at the pot and I stopped cutting the potatoes into batons, because the noise was driving me mad, and the hair on my arms stood on end. This always happens when I get a creepy feeling, and unfortunately it shows, because the hair on my arms is black, so now my mother could see that I was spooked, although she didn’t realize the cause was the noise of the mussels from the pot, as for her it wasn’t a strange noise. Can’t you hear anything, I asked. Listen! It’s the mussels, my mother said, and I remember saying, isn’t it awful, I mean I knew that they were still alive, it’s just that I’d never imagined that they would make that rattling noise with their shells. I’d imagined they’d be cooked, eaten, and that was it. And my mother said, they’re opening up and then the entire heap of mussels will start moving. How horrible, I thought, the entire heap of mussels will move because they’re opening; of course I didn’t empathize with them; I do eat them, after all, even if I don’t particularly care for mussels, and it’s obvious that they’re alive beforehand and not alive when I eat them. I eat oysters, too, even though I know that they’re still alive when I eat them, but they don’t make that noise. Actually I was kind of angry at the mussels for opening instead of lying silently in a heap; I said, don’t you find it obscene that they open and make that noise, obscene and indiscreet, but at the same time I probably thought it was indiscreet because we were going to kill them. I’d rather not have had to think about the fact that they were alive beforehand; when they’re lying there, jet-black and closed, you don’t really need to imagine that they’re alive, you can pretty much regard them as objects, and then there’s no problem tipping them into boiling water, but if you consider that they’re alive then it’s creepy. If we were to cook them now I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking that we were killing them. I’m quite happy for animals to be killed for food, it’s just that I don’t want to be involved in the killing — other people can do that — nor do I want to have to think about it.

Although I found the mussels creepy, I went over, as I didn’t want to be cowardly; and they looked revolting, lying there, some opening slowly, fairly slowly, and then the entire heap of them started to move with this rattling sound. Unbelievable, I said, how revolting these creatures are, gasping as instead of seawater they get air, which they can’t breathe, and they’re also being scalded in the boiling water, and then they all open, which means they’re dead. The thought suddenly occurred to me that maybe it was only revolting because I knew we were killing them. Maybe it wouldn’t have looked so disgusting otherwise; I remembered having seen half-open mussels on the beach without feeling anything. I even threw some of them back into the sea, not out of any real pity and not all of them — just for fun. Anyway, I didn’t find them creepy or revolting like these ones here. My mother and brother cut the last few potatoes into batons, acting as if they hadn’t been listening, and finally I said that if you knew someone was going to die in an hour, let’s say, do you think you’d find them revolting; I’m positive you would, simply because you knew, and it would be even worse if you had to kill them yourself, like we were killing the mussels. Such thoughts plunged me into a really morbid mood, while the other two acted as if they weren’t listening; it’s mass murder, I said, all of them at once, at the same time, by boiling water; the mussels got me so worked up, the mussels had created a morbid atmosphere in the room. It’s unbearable, I said, to which my mother replied sternly, what are you talking about, although Mum harboured plenty of fanciful ideas herself; when my father was on business trips the three of us told each other the most fanciful stories, without ever being appalled. Before my father came home, however, all these fanciful ideas vanished, especially my mother’s. My father regarded flights of fancy as childish, my father stood for sober objectivity and reason, and of course my mother showed consideration for his objectivity and reason, conforming and switching to wifey mode when he came home. And when my mother said, what are you talking about, I knew at once that she’d switched to wifey mode, and the rage of disgust which I felt towards the mussels was now directed at my mother. Aren’t we allowed to think any more, I said, but my mother said, is that what you call thinking, can’t you think something useful rather than those sinister thoughts. In our family sinister thoughts and fantasies were regarded as squandered thoughts, especially when my father was at home, and although he wasn’t there yet he might arrive at any moment. Can’t we make them close again, I asked. I don’t think thoughts can be squandered, because by their very nature they’re the loveliest way to while away the time. Eventually I discovered that the mussels close when you put a knife into them; it triggers some sort of reflex and the mussels close rapidly again. Look, I said, taking the small kitchen knife that Mum had used for cleaning, and stabbing it into the mussels, one by one, the rattling no longer bothering me; they closed instantly. I stabbed and stabbed again. I actually encouraged all the mussels to close, and watching them close was comforting; I wasn’t at all bothered when my brother said, you’re crazy.

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