Birgit Vanderbeke - The Mussel Feast

Even when Mum said, he had it hard, your father, this didn’t change our minds; we said to our mother, don’t cop out now, you were being so brave; of course we knew that my father had come from a poor background and had to battle his way upwards, which he managed to do solely by virtue of his huge talent and intelligence; it’s hard to do what he did, my mother said, who had it easier; she didn’t come from the very bottom and so didn’t have to make it the whole way up. When her father died she still had a house, although she was heavily in debt and had to fork out for the mortgage as well as her brothers’ studies; both my mother’s brothers became musicians as they’d wanted to, and as my mother had wanted to as well, but she quickly became a teacher, while my father wanted to become a scientist and study mathematics, coming as he did from the very bottom and out of wedlock, in the village where his mother wove baskets and knitted jumpers for other people. My grandmother was a very poor woman, and was a constant embarrassment to my father as she had so little to give him, nor could he take her anywhere; I can’t be seen anywhere with you, my father said later, when he was already on the verge of being promoted. He didn’t have it easy with his mother, she lived in a dingy and grubby place, she only had a single room and the kitchen smelled as it does in poor people’s houses, because it was a poor person’s house, and my father was always angry with her; later, whenever he visited the village, he preferred to stay at the inn rather than at his mother’s, even though they had no running water. My mother and I used to stay with my mother’s mother, and my father and brother stayed at the inn rather than with my father’s mother, who we always called the other grandmother because she was poor, whereas our proper grandmother wasn’t poor; she had her own house, and everyone in the village knew her and greeted her, whereas almost nobody knew or greeted the other grandmother, who remained a stranger, a foreigner after she came to Germany. And there was another reason why my other grandmother was called the other grandmother: in family photos she always stood to one side, on the periphery, always a gap between her and the rest of the family. My mother reminded us that it wasn’t easy for my father; his mother and his background were huge liabilities, in comparison to the trivial liability on my grandmother’s house when my grandfather died; my father did what he could to paper over his background, but it wasn’t easy, for my other grandmother was tremendously proud of her brilliant son and clung to him wherever possible. Whenever I visited her she would cry, saying how proud she was that my father had made his way from the bottom to the top. I was very attached to my other grandmother, and my father was very attached to his mother, too; to see her living in the village in such poverty broke his heart, a woman who nobody apart from the simple villagers knew or greeted; your other grandmother is a simple woman, my mother would tell us, and because she was a simple woman she was desperate to receive letters; my mother used to write to her mother once a week, she always wrote to her mother on Sunday evenings, whereas my father couldn’t write to his mother; he was a very busy man, and couldn’t do that as well; he didn’t have the time or energy to do everything, and he couldn’t stand being clung to. It’s hard enough coming from a poor background and making your way up in the world, you need to use your fists to escape a background like that, you can’t allow your background to cling and stick to you; my father would churn inside at the thought of it, he couldn’t eat at his mother’s house, either, because it wasn’t clean or inviting; so untidy, my father said, but there was one occasion when he couldn’t avoid it. His mother had said to my mother, you never eat here, you only ever eat there, by which she meant my proper grandmother’s, where we always ate when we were in the village, because my father found her place inviting and tidy. And his own mother was offended that we never ate at hers; she said to my mother, he behaves as if he’s ashamed; my mother understood — she understood everything — and finally my father agreed to eat at his mother’s if she asked someone else to cook: there was no way he was going to eat at hers if she did the cooking herself, he said. In fact she not only paid for the food but the cook, too, so just for once we ate at hers and she was delighted; she was so excited and nervous with delight that she couldn’t keep her hands still; my father couldn’t bear it when she couldn’t keep her hands still. Keep your hands still, he said, but she was too excited about our visit, and after keeping her hands still for barely five minutes, she couldn’t keep them still any longer. All her life she’d had to work very quickly with her hands and these rapid movements had made her hands independent; she’d keep them still for barely five minutes, then her fingers would start up again, executing these work movements independently. Eventually my father’s patience snapped, and the cook who my other grandmother had hired was no longer good enough to avoid the mood being spoiled. It’s impossible to eat here, my father said in a strop because once more he felt ashamed at his mother, who’d led a menial life and had never been able to shake it off, no matter how many times he’d told her to keep her hands still instead of fidgeting. And then he stopped going to hers, whereas I liked going to my grandmother’s, because although she was unable to keep her hands still, she did something which never happened in our family, it was forbidden — the other grandmother, they used to say, spends hours staring out of the window. I didn’t really understand what there was to disapprove of; I wanted my grandmother to teach me how to stare out of the window for hours, and I liked going to her place; when I was at my grandmother’s we did nothing at all. In our house doing nothing didn’t exist; it was absolutely imperative that everybody was doing something, all the time; when I went to cafés later on, I merely carried on in secret with what I’d picked up from my other grandmother: doing nothing. I never thought my grandmother was a simple woman; I thought she was an extraordinary woman, because she was capable of doing nothing, whereas everybody else was always doing something; your mother is an extraordinary woman, I’d often say to my father; he felt flattered, and then said, look at me, nothing comes from nothing. Clearly, he didn’t understand what I meant. In any case, he resented her for her menial life and for the fact that she couldn’t keep her hands still as a consequence of those years when she’d had to graft so that her son could reach the top. He was very attached to her, however, and was so distraught when she died that my mother thought he’d gone crazy with pain; he mourned his mother and tore his hair out; he holed up in the bedroom, locking himself in, and refused to come out for days. When he did come out he swore that his mother would have the loveliest grave in the whole village; he made all the arrangements for this lovely grave, which wasn’t easy because we were in the West and the village in the East. But he managed to arrange for the most splendid grave in the whole village; he invited the entire village to the funeral, everybody who was anybody, and reserved the restaurant in the town hall for a meal that nobody was going to forget in a hurry. He made a precise note of who came to the funeral and who didn’t, and thank God almost everybody came; there were more than a hundred people at his mother’s funeral, more than had ever known or greeted her, and the grave lies in a lovely spot, not too close to the perimeter, under trees, not in the part of the cemetery for poor people; it’s the only grave with a gold-leaf inscription — my father ordered gold leaf specially from the West because there was no gold leaf over there. He could not rest until his mother’s grave was the only one with gold leaf, and only then did he find peace — apart from with me. I didn’t come to the funeral; he never forgave me for not coming, you of all people, he reproached me, you of all people, and he reproached me for being stubborn and cold-hearted, he had no sympathy; in our family I was always known as the stubborn and cold-hearted one, and my stubbornness and cold-heartedness, which developed from my unappealing nature, were in evidence yet again when I refused to go to my grandmother’s funeral, to a place I’d always enjoyed going and where I felt happy. My father never forgave me for this act of spite and irreverence, as he called it. But he couldn’t force me, because I’d come of age; my grandmother died at the very moment when I came of age, just a few days afterwards; and when I came of age my stubbornness and cold-heartedness really showed, my father said, but unlike in the past, before I’d come of age, now there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t beat the stuffing out of me; I’ll beat the stuffing out of you, he’d have said in the past, I’ll give you what for, and I really would have been given what for if he’d beaten the stuffing out of me. My mother would have stood with my brother in the hall by the living-room door, while my father locked the door behind him and fetched a cognac from the bar in the wall unit, the key to the living-room door in his trouser pocket as ever, and my father would have tried to identify the reasons for my stubbornness; could you explain it to me, he’d have asked, and I wouldn’t have been able to, because I wasn’t able to explain anything if my father yelled at me, and so I’d have been given what for. The more insistently he harangued me, the more stubborn I became, refusing to say a word, all speech abandoning me in one fell swoop. I never knew what to say when my father said, answer me for God’s sake; just once, when I was a child, I managed an answer, but it was the wrong one, and wrong answers incensed my father, then he really gave you what for. Since then I’ve never managed a single answer when my father says, answer me for God’s sake, I asked you a question, what have you got to say to me. Out of sheer disappointment he’d have drunk another cognac, leaving me to wonder what I might break if I jumped from the first-floor balcony, but because of the neighbours the windows and balcony door were of course closed, and I couldn’t escape. Now my father would have looked completely wild, because I hadn’t answered him, he’d have asked me again and again, haranguing me, but ultimately he wouldn’t have been able to help himself and he’d be forced to punish my stubbornness, since no understanding or answer had been forthcoming. My father would have said, I’m not going to put up with that, you don’t do that with me, and he’d have drunk another cognac and finally said, take your hands away from your face; after the second cognac I’d have already put my hands to my face, hidden my face in my hands — I didn’t want my father to hit me in the face — and I’d have said, please, not my face; my father would have said, for God’s sake take your hands away from your face, it would have made him livid that I hadn’t taken my hands away from my face, it makes me furious, he said again and again, I’m not going to put up with it, but I never took my hands away, he had to remove them himself, both of them, he had to grip both of my hands in his left so he could hit my face with his right and that really made him furious. My stubbornness; he tried to use violence to knock the stubbornness out of me, just as he tried to use violence to knock the wimpishness out of my brother. All my stubbornness was trying to achieve, however, was to avoid flying head first through the bullseye glass; it would have been a catastrophe to fly head first through the bullseye glass, I’d have cowered under his blows, fallen to the floor without saying a word, and I’d have whimpered that he should stop; no, no, I’d have said if my father had started kicking me in the head with his clogs, but my stubbornness would have been absolute. Only later, in my room, where I’d have been locked, would the words return, wicked and vengeful words lacking all understanding. Whenever my brother was locked in his room he always sang loudly, he always sang, always the same song, a folk song, ‘ Hänschen klein ’, which put my father in an even fouler temper; often my brother was hauled out of his room again, but my father couldn’t knock the folk song out of him; he could knock the wimpishness out of him, but not the folk song; he severely reproached my mother because of this; my mother said, but I’m doing my best, don’t be so hard on them, and my father said, I’m not putting up with it, they’re not going to do that with me, they should know me better. We’d got to know our father very well over many years, but when my grandmother died he had to stop because I’d come of age; of course, he didn’t speak to me for several weeks after the funeral, he refused to speak to me till I’d apologized for my behaviour, and every day my mother came into my room and said, go on, apologize. She couldn’t cope when people didn’t speak to each other. But I could cope, because in the evenings I was able to read instead of having to play skat; nobody spoke to me, anyhow, because if my father wasn’t speaking to me then the other two weren’t allowed to, either; they only spoke to me secretly when he was away. My brother always apologized that same evening, so we all spoke to him, whereas I rarely apologize straight away; sometimes I didn’t apologize at all, but sometimes I apologized when my mother said, go on, apologize, can’t you see how this pains me. Although I could see how my behaviour pained her, I spent months reading books in my room in the evenings and doing nothing. Sometimes I’d wonder what I’d done, and when I remembered I’d wonder what was so bad about it, but when I missed the funeral, I realized straight away what was bad about that . Even then I didn’t go, however much that meant betraying my family. In the past, on the other hand, I seldom knew what I’d done wrong. Sometimes I asked. I soon realized this question wasn’t a good idea, this question drove my father into a blinding rage, and then he certainly gave me what for; afterwards, when I was in my room, he used to come in and say, now you’ve got time to think about it. My father could always spot and condemn my wickedness, even when I was totally unaware of it; he showed me how wicked I was, making it very clear, just as he showed my brother what a wimp he was, making that perfectly clear, too. My brother also wondered what he might break if he jumped from the first-floor balcony, he said that evening; when I’m in a closed room, he said, I’m always drawn to the window, I can’t help but be drawn to windows in closed rooms, I always want to jump out of the window, I’m obsessed by this urge. My mother fetched another bottle of Spätlese and we carried on drinking. At this point she said, I’m to blame for it all; she always said that, she always took the blame completely, adding, I did it all wrong, and we had to comfort her and say, absolutely not, you didn’t do anything wrong, but she said, I’m a wreck; caught between you two and your father I’ve been ground down to exhaustion. And we were worried that she might sit down at the piano and play Schubert songs, which she was particularly wont to do when she thought she was to blame for everything, or after a domestic scene when my father would slam the door behind him and leave; then she was to blame because my father couldn’t bear her pedantry any longer, her stinginess. He’d drive off and not come back until the middle of the night, always after they’d tried to complete their tax return; Mum couldn’t do the tax return on her own because she needed bills and receipts, which my father didn’t keep because he was generous rather than a nit-picker; and my mother would calculate that we couldn’t afford this or that, but my father calculated that he couldn’t afford her nit-picking any more; my father didn’t scrimp on his generosity on business trips, not with himself, nor with others he met while away and who he’d automatically pay for; out of generosity he’d always pay the bill, and my mother would say, these bills are huge; my father always chucked away the receipts for these bills and never calculated his expenses; he refused to calculate expenses, he would have felt ashamed to do so with the firm. They were both irritated by these discarded expenses; my father would say to my mother, you’re so pernickety, and we’d hear them argue, which was rare in our house, because my mother loved harmony and hated arguing; usually she’d give in, so we’d only hear our parents arguing loudly when they filled in the tax return, and also when my father bought Japanese shares. The Japanese firms had a tendency to file for bankruptcy the instant my father put all his money into the shares; my mother took against Japanese shares, she was prejudiced against them since the first bankruptcy; but as soon as another financial adviser visited us and started talking up Japanese shares, my father would offer him Spätlese , and after a few bottles of Spätlese he’d put all our money into Japanese shares once more. On several occasions all our money was lost from one day to the next and practically overnight, although this didn’t stop my father, who was very popular with the financial advisers, from buying Japanese shares the next time. We haven’t even paid back all our debts, my mother said, how do you imagine we’re going to pay our debts back, and she’d also say, wouldn’t it be a dream just to be able to go into a shop and buy a dress; even when my father had climbed the career ladder from the bottom to near the top she continued to imagine what a dream it would be to be able to afford a blouse without fretting over the cost, to be frivolous, she said. But her stinginess didn’t allow for such frivolity; my mother always bought our clothes in end-of-season sales, for herself, my brother and me; another special offer, my father would sneer when she showed him a new purchase — a skirt or a jumper — which she had indeed bought at a reduced price; she never dared tell him how cheap it really was, however, as my father would have felt ashamed. When she said, reduced from seventy to thirty, my father said, I’m not going out with you in that reject; my parents rarely went out because of the cut-price rejects my mother always wore. My father, on the other hand, was not only quite a bit younger than my mother, he also wore made-to-measure suits, from day one; only the best was good enough for him once he’d secured the job at his firm. You can spot off-the-peg clothing from miles away, my father said, and whenever my mother wore a new dress he immediately spotted that it was another reject. You don’t have any style, he said; my mother agreed that she didn’t have any style, how could I have any style when I need to ensure that we have enough, while you’re throwing heaps of money out the window; but my father said, it’s not heaps, and, I can’t help it if you’re stingy, and then the door would slam and my father rushed out, coming back in the early hours, drunk. On those evenings Mum would always sing Schubert songs, having first said, I’m to blame for it all, and the mood was grim: my mother sobbing at the piano and the entire flat shrouded in melancholy. That’s why when my mother said, I did it all wrong, we were worried that she’d start on the Schubert songs again; whenever my mother said, I did it all wrong or I’m to blame for it all, then that’s what usually happened, and she’d add afterwards that she was old and ugly and dull — a Plain Jane — and not sophisticated enough for my father. He desperately needed her to be sophisticated. The men all brought their wives along to firm dos, apart from my father, who couldn’t bring my mother because she wasn’t sophisticated enough, and because of the special offers and rejects she wore; she didn’t understand the etiquette, either, and the one time he did take her along, she embarrassed him horribly. At the very start of the evening my mother was asked whether she’d like a martini, and she said, yes, please, and then she was asked how she’d like her martini, would she like it dry, and she said I only know wet martini, and my father felt utterly humiliated that such a worldly man as himself should be fated to have a wife who didn’t know what a dry martini was; my parents never invited people to our house for my father’s fear of shattering the positive impression he’d made at work with his efficiency, natural charm and intelligence. Just imagine if my father’s boss, who regrettably he’d never been able to invite over, had asked for a martini, and my mother hadn’t known what a martini was, thinking that a Cinzano Rosso was a martini, and had served my father’s boss a glass of Cinzano Rosso instead; my father’s positive impression would have been shattered in the boss’s eyes. I can’t take the risk, my father said, when my mother said how she’d missed having guests since our arrival in the West, because there hadn’t been the right sort of people; nor had there been the right sort of friends around for my brother and me; they came from poor families and so weren’t right for us because they wouldn’t have had proper table manners. You could tell their poor backgrounds from both how they spoke and the way they looked, in particular that long hair of theirs; my father said, don’t let me catch either of you with such a mop of hair. We always had very short hair, my brother and I; for many years people thought I was a boy and said, come on, be a gentleman and pick up the lady’s bag for her; if a lady ever dropped anything everybody would look straight at me to bend down, because with my short hair I had to be a gentleman. My brother and I visited the barber’s regularly; our heads were shaved from front to back with clippers; my mother would console me, hair grows more nicely if you cut it regularly; I found, however, that it grew better if you let it grow and I wanted to have long hair like my friend, whose poor background you could spot at once on account of her long hair. My other friend wasn’t right for me, either, because she was hideously nouveau riche. My parents said that being nouveau riche didn’t turn you into a cultured person. This nouveau riche friend of mine was allowed to eat ice cream from the ice-cream van, as much and as often as she wanted, and ice cream from the ice-cream van was not cultured. In any case, my father didn’t like coming home in the evening to find other children there, and so my friends, as well as my brother’s, always had to leave before supper; it was barely worth them coming at all because my brother and I had to have finished our homework by the time my father came home in the evening, besides our one hour’s piano practice, no more and no less. Our friends wouldn’t have known what to do in that time, because they did their homework later, in the evening, when we were watching television and playing skat, because we were a proper family and did things together in the evenings, whereas my friends, without exception, didn’t come from proper families where they enjoyed things together. Actually I never met anyone who came from a proper family; I was forever meeting people who, without exception, didn’t come from proper families, rather from families where the children did their homework in the evenings when their parents had guests or went to the cinema, which as far as I can remember my parents never did. Once a month we’d go to a concert together; we had a subscription, and all senior employees had the same concert subscription as us; my mother was delighted, she loved the concerts, and couldn’t stop praising the quality of the music. I’m so starved, she’d say, and we always listened to first-rate international symphony orchestras from London, Tokyo and Philadelphia; the programmes, too, were also well put together; balanced, my mother called them. Haydn would be followed by a modern piece, and then some Brahms after the interval. The applause at the end of these concerts always went on and on until they played an encore, and the encores usually consisted of a brash piece, wild even, mostly another modern composition, but short, which pleased my mother greatly as she wasn’t especially fond of this modern music. For me, she said, art finished at the end of the nineteenth century, she even found Mahler a bit odd; I’m not especially fond of Mahler, my mother said on many an occasion, but they never played Mahler at the concerts, and the modern stuff was kept tastefully short because the programmes were balanced. I didn’t get to know modern music at these concerts, in short bursts, but from listening to it secretly on the radio, and from the radio I gained the impression that music and mathematics were not so dissimilar, but closely related, they went hand in hand, I told my mother. My mother didn’t like twelve-tone music, however, it doesn’t have the same harmony, she said; she preferred harmonious music, but not when it went dum-dee-dum-dee-dum like Verdi, who she didn’t rate as a serious composer. My father didn’t really look forward to these concerts; not again, he’d say, but he had to go along because of the senior employees who milled about in the interval with their drinks; he was always delighted when the concert had finished, and he’d duly said hello to all the senior employees; in fact my father would have been happy to leave after the interval, and he did leave early on a few occasions, but then his colleagues noticed the empty seat. With a subscription you keep the same seat for years, and senior employees greet each other not only in the interval, but also in the concert hall; my father stopped leaving after the interval and saw these concerts through to the end, so that everybody realized that he saw things through to the bitter end. Another reason my father disliked these concerts was that he knew he didn’t want to be a senior employee, but a top one; his mind had been set on the top the very first day he joined the firm and he executed the pursuit of this goal not gradually and with patience, but extremely rapidly; indeed, he carried out his plan at the highest speed possible and he considered his attendance at these subscription concerts purely as a means to an end. And that evening my mother suspected that as soon as my father was promoted the subscription would be cancelled. I’m delighted for him, my mother said, but no one seriously believed that he’d ever go to another subscription concert, because he’d now conquered the senior-employee stage, and my mother said that what followed the subscription concerts was the dry-martini stage, the drinks stage; that’s what she saw in store for herself. That evening, however, as she was no longer stable on her feet and also insubordinate for the first time in her life, she let slip that she’d definitely prefer the subscription concerts to the drinks stage; I’ve played along, she said, by which she meant ever more expensive cars and holidays to ever more un-village-like resorts instead of Austrian mountain lakes with plenty of meadows and flowers. And in fact, shortly before leaving on his business trip — which was almost certainly the last stop on his way to promotion — my father had announced that he was looking to cancel his subscription; instead he intended to go to Bayreuth in the summer; all his life he’d misjudged Wagner, and that was a mistake — to misjudge Wagner — so now he intended to correct this mistake. My mother put Bayreuth and the dry drinks and the ever more expensive cars in the same bracket, because she’d never cared in the least for Wagner or dry drinks; that evening she said, I’ve played along with everything, but at some point it has to stop, by which she meant it stopped at Wagner and the dry drinks; in truth it had already stopped with the Spätlese , we replied, but she contradicted us, she really loved the subscription concerts; they were what my mother called classical harmony and she believed in classical harmony. She may not have been religious, but she did believe in classical harmony, in the dominant and subdominant; my mother loved it when we sang quodlibets together; although he came after Brahms, my mother thought that Hindemith was the only composer more skilled in the use of counterpoint; she loathed atonal counterpoint, it hurts my ears, she said, and was happy that the concerts were balanced and that the modern pieces were short, whereas I always felt the modern element of the subscription concerts was a bit pathetic in its balance-inducing brevity. I find classical harmony, with its dominants and subdominants, extremely suspect, I said; I had the suspicion that composers merely stuffed everything into this harmony; those poor voices, I said to my mother, they’re being forcibly stuffed into the harmony; but my mother shouted out, no way, harmony’s got nothing to do with force, and she talked of coherence and consonance, which didn’t exist in twelve-tone music; I said, twelve-tone music equals pure control. My mother tried to get me to appreciate the Schubert songs, but without success; her attempts to push Schubert on me were in vain. I already knew that Schubert used enharmonic modulations, yet my mother never once succeeded in getting me to like the Schubert songs or even appreciate them. No sooner had my mother sat at the piano and started to sing a Schubert song from Winterreise than the hairs on my arms, indeed all over my body, would stand on end, because my mother could only sing Schubert songs with a broken voice, on the verge of crying; no sooner had she sat at the piano and started playing Schubert songs than tears would appear, which I called my mother’s Schubert tears; maybe it wasn’t the Schubert songs but the Schubert tears which made the hairs on my arms stand on end, I used to think, and that evening I was relieved she didn’t go to the piano. Having said that at some point it had to stop, however, she didn’t know what would happen if it did stop, because until that evening she’d always thought it had to go on. My brother, meanwhile, was happy that these subscription concerts were going to stop; the concerts were pure torment for him, he said; we had to sit still and the top button of his shirt tormented him, and the music went straight over his head. We’d always go to the concerts very well dressed, the four of us in our best clothes; my father never failed to point out that my mother didn’t have any best clothes, only rejects, which spoiled his mood; in this spoiled mood he would look at my brother and me to see whether we, at least, were sufficiently well dressed, then he’d say to my brother, no, you can’t leave your top button open, do your button up, and if my brother said, but it itches and scratches, he’d say, those are just your tics, for my brother was sensitive about certain things, one of which was itchy and scratchy closed collars. As soon as he was made to fasten the top button on his shirt my brother would start twisting and stretching his neck this way and that; my father, with his mood already spoiled by the rejects my mother had put on, never failed to notice if my brother tried to slip into the concert with his top button undone; he didn’t have a chance, my brother, he had to fasten his top button immediately, because open collars look sloppy; and if my father’s mood was particularly spoiled, he really gave my brother what for, and he’d be forced to wear a tie or bow tie over the fastened button; from that moment all music went straight over his head and his tics wouldn’t leave him alone the entire evening; he’d sit in the concert and twist and stretch his head this way and that because of the torment; my father, who couldn’t show his despair and bitter disappointment at a subscription concert, felt humiliated, for everybody could see how my brother was afflicted by his tics. Over time my brother started to have difficulties swallowing; as soon as he fastened his top button he could hardly swallow a single mouthful without making a peculiar guttural sound with his throat. This noise could drive my father up the wall; in our family my brother was likened to Christian Buddenbrook; leave him, my mother begged, when my brother’s coughs and throat-clearing got my father’s goat, as he put it, but my father couldn’t leave him; I don’t want a Christian Buddenbrook in my family, he said, and wouldn’t tolerate it; my brother didn’t want to be a Christian Buddenbrook, either, he merely didn’t want to fasten his top button. This is how odd habits start, my father said; there was no question of leaving his top button undone. My father was convinced that this is how it all started, and that with his shirt collar open my brother was even more like that oddball Christian Buddenbrook. Music thus went over my brother’s head and he was delighted when Mum said, at some point it has to stop, although she meant Wagner and the martinis rather than the concerts. All the same I asked my mother, why do the subscription concerts have to stop, if you like them so much; this was a highly insubordinate question, and suddenly we felt light-headed from the Spätlese and insubordination, because, after all, my mother couldn’t just wander off to subscription concerts while my father was stirring dry martinis; there was nowhere my mother could have wandered off to in the evenings, except the occasional parents’ evening she had to attend out of duty; she kept these parents’ evenings very short so she could be back home again soon, and when Mum was on a class trip the household routinely fell apart; any absence of my mother from the household, however short, led to the household falling apart altogether. Your father’s like a little child, she’d say on her return from a class trip, when she noticed the charred smell that hung in our flat whenever my father had to take on the housework. My brother and I had eaten the charred dinner, acting as if nothing were wrong, but it was difficult, because we could rarely identify what the dinner was. My mother’s absence on a class trip signalled a far greater disaster for the household than her being ill, because with a temperature of forty degrees she could still look after the household, but she couldn’t while away on a class trip, whereas my father was totally incapable, and even when my mother had to attend her parents’ evenings, he was as helpless as a little child. She would prepare the dinner in advance, but still she had to keep the parents’ evenings as short as possible; even the shortest absence posed a threat to the household, and thus we’d reached the height of insubordination that evening when I said, why do the subscription concerts have to stop; I could have just as easily said that our entire household has to stop. In a way both these statements amounted to the same thing: the sticking together in our household didn’t survive my mother being absent for a minute; it all fell apart immediately. Once, when my mother was in hospital, my father was keen to bring her back home after barely a week; absolutely out of the question, the doctor said, he couldn’t be held responsible for the consequences, but my father said, the family’s falling apart, did he want to be held responsible for that; eventually the doctor said that he, too, had a family, and agreed to let my mother out and back to her family. In that one week so much menial work and washing had piled up that my mother barely managed to get all the washing and ironing and cleaning done, but she gritted her teeth and set about the work. Pyelonephritis is not a subscription concert, however, and my father only accepted my mother’s absence from the household for a week because pyelonephritis is not exactly pleasurable, whereas the subscription concerts were pure pleasure for my mother. My father would never have put up with my mother enjoying herself while letting the household fall apart; deep down he didn’t even put up with pyelonephritis and the falling apart of the entire household this entailed, because it had to go on; my father made every effort to ensure it went on. And when it had gone on, beyond the subscription concert stage, none of us would be able to set foot in the concerts any more, for my father would have already cancelled our subscriptions, that much was clear. Is that clear, my father would say, in case my mother tried to save her subscription before my father cancelled it, have I made myself clear, my father often said, or he’d say, have I not made myself clear enough, and the person being addressed would always reply in haste, oh yes, very clear. My father would also say, do we understand each other, and all of us replied in haste, yes, we do, which in fact meant that there weren’t any misunderstandings in our family, nor any proscriptions; my father never proscribed anything directly, nor did he ever tell my mother not to go to the concerts. If he’d wanted her not to go to the concerts he would have quietly told her that the concerts were only for the senior employees but not the top ones, and if my mother hadn’t understood that straight away, because she loved going to the concerts with their beauty, harmony and balance, qualities which were very important to my mother, he would have helped himself to a cognac and explained the difference to her again. In the end he would have said, do we understand each other, and my mother would have replied in haste that they did understand each other now. There’s no need to proscribe anything in proper families, my father used to say, and it really was unnecessary because we always understood each other; and if on occasion I was stubborn and said, no way, he started from the beginning and went on until I hastily replied to his question, do we understand each other, with: yes, we do. Misunderstanding is almost impossible in a proper family, and that’s why the insubordination in my question, why do the subscription concerts have to stop, couldn’t be subject to any misunderstanding; it was blasphemy. And we were amazed that I wasn’t struck by a sudden bolt of lightning from the heavens. Then my brother said, look, he’s only human like the rest of us, and we felt a weight lift from our shoulders because we’d never dared to consider this before; no lightning bolt struck us, nor did my father appear at the door; we carried on sitting around the table like conspirators until we were seized by a bad conscience. We’re so mean, my mother said sadly, we’re being unfair on him. Then she sat up straight and spoke her favourite line; her favourite line was one from Fontane. There is much goodness in him, and he is as noble as a man without real love can be. Amen, my brother said, and I reminded my mother that these words were almost the last Effi utters before she dies. My mother loved Effi Briest , but then she pondered for a moment — fortunately catching sight of those repulsive mussels again — she pondered a while longer and said, on the other hand, hesitating slightly. Come on, say it, we told her, because we knew at once that something was coming that she’d never dared say before, and then it came out that she’d always secretly admired and worshipped Medea. We were horrified to begin with; we were the children, after all, and so would have been the ones to cop it, but my mother said, those are just fantasies, poisoning everyone and then there’s peace. My mother had fanciful and exaggerated ideas, too, and now she’d just voiced them. Funnily enough, the hairs on my arms and on the rest of my body did not stand on end; after the initial shock I was very relieved, even though I would have copped it if Mum had meant it seriously, and my brother, too. No sooner had she said the Medea stuff, poisoning everyone then there’s peace, than she felt absolutely awful; forgive me, dear God, she cried out, because she felt so absolutely awful, even though my mother had never believed in a dear God, not in any god, but only in harmony and human kindness, and she was dismayed at exhibiting pure wickedness rather than her normal kindness. Instead of pulling herself together as she usually did, she said that dear God would punish her dreadfully for sure; being so wicked she was bound to die this minute, but she still insisted that she admired and worshipped Medea; you’re absolutely everything to me, she said, for she couldn’t understand herself; nobody doubted that we were everything to our mother, nobody doubted that Medea loved her children, either; my mother couldn’t understand where the kindness within her had suddenly gone; she’d really blown it with her dear God that evening, the dear God she didn’t believe in. But we didn’t blame our mother for wanting to poison us; we were just relieved that her accommodating, conciliatory nature, which had caused us all to suffer terribly, had disappeared for good. It was very hard for my mother to see her own ideals of harmony and human kindness fall apart; there’s a big difference between silently admiring and worshipping Medea while reading Effi Briest , and saying it out loud; and now she had said it. Everything had fallen apart for my mother that evening because my father hadn’t come home at six, as expected, and because at a quarter to ten the mussels were still in their bowl and we’d drunk Spätlese and hadn’t switched on the news, which wasn’t normal in our family; it was a quarter to ten when we looked at the clock.