Jenny Erpenbeck - The End of Days

Now he, her seventeen-year-old son, is sitting on this sofa in front of the bouquet that has not yet even begun to wilt, gazing at his invisible mother, who sits in the armchair she always sat in when visitors came.

And my father?

He fell in the battle of Kharkov.

As darkness gradually falls, he tries to imagine the enormous quantity of time he will now spend without his mother. Along with her life, the memories he might have of her have stopped growing as well. Be grateful for what you’ve got, his mother always said. But sooner or later, because of his forgetfulness, he will lose his mother all over again — this time piecemeal.

The big window that leads from the parlor out to the terrace is now entirely dark.

On many evenings of many years, from spring into fall, he had sat with his mother on this terrace. Here she told him of Valentinovka, where they used to spend their Moscow summers: she, his father, who fell at the battle of Kharkov, and her friend O. The leaves here smell exactly like the leaves there, she’d always said. Only in Valentinovka there was a little river across the way where she used to go swimming every morning before breakfast. No doubt because of these stories his mother liked to tell, he always imagines trees when someone speaks of Moscow, and yellow leaves that have come to rest on a damp meadow, he sees not the Kremlin and its golden towers but a small, sun-dappled river, sees weeds beneath the surface being swept gently back and forth by the current, and minnows.

Was his mother so afraid of storms back then? For as long as he’s known her, she’s been terrified not only of thunder and lightning but also of wind that might suddenly gust through the house, smashing everything to pieces. Did you close the terrace door tightly? Yes . And the dining room window? Yes . Then I’ll go upstairs. Okay . The terrace door? I said yes. Then she would go upstairs to her bedroom, closing the door there carefully as well, and she wouldn’t come out again until all that remained of the storm was the rain.

But on warm evenings he and his mother would often sit until nightfall on the terrace. She would read, and he would do his homework or write the monthly report for his Free German Youth class group.

Can you help me?

What sort of outing was it?

We went to the Pergamon Museum.

So write: We went to the Pergamon Museum.

That’s not enough.

Oh, I see. So write that you investigated the history of the class struggle by studying the ancient society of slave holders.

That’s good.

Did you notice how tall the steps are that lead up to the Pergamon Altar?

Yes.

That’s how they build things when people are supposed to be in awe of their own gods.

Should I write that?

No.

His mother was sitting outside, close to the light, and he ducked into the house for a minute to fetch something, a glass of water, a pad of paper, a ruler. As he returned, he saw her from behind from deep in the interior of the dark house. His mother had a book on her knees, but she wasn’t reading, she just sat there gazing out into the night. She didn’t turn around to look at him. After all, she knew he was on his way back. She had a thick jacket on since it was already quite chilly.

Why did you call me just plain Sasha and not Alexander?

Why didn’t you ever go up to the attic?

What are the best apples to use for strudel?

Along with his mother, the answers to all these questions have died as well.

Was there still snow on the ground that April in Ufa when I was born?

Was the first word I spoke German or Russian?

What was the name of my niania ?

Along with his mother, the way she looked at him died, and everything beyond what he himself remembers. He will now never be old enough to learn the things she hadn’t yet told him, even if he lives to be eighty.

Do you really not have a photograph of my father?

His invisible mother sits with her back to him in silence, giving no answer.

Was her son even listening when she told him about all the new things they were trying to do here?

In the sunlit silence of a Sabbath, a letter falls from an opening hand into a hand that someone is holding out.

Why is she only now remembering what her grandmother told her half a lifetime ago?

But then one of them must be intending to deliver the letter and the other to receive it, she had replied to her grandmother.

That’s right.

And having these intentions is not work?

If only she could remember her grandmother’s reply to this question, all would be well again.

But she can’t remember.

She falls.

Often he’d been afraid that he would lose her. Sometimes she would have fainting fits, just keeling over suddenly, breathing with such difficulty that he thought she might suffocate. At moments like this, she would look different, too, not like his mother at all. Surviving, that meant for him above all that she was turning back into the mother he knew.

Could he himself have been responsible for what she called her “fits”?

As a child he had sometimes forgotten how easily she could get worked up. Once, for example, he took her linen-cupboard key from its secret hook because he needed a pillowcase for a carnival costume. How dare he go through her linens without asking permission? Or when he and his friends exploded homemade fireworks in the garden. Or jumped off the roof of the terrace with an umbrella to learn how to fly. Or once he had hidden in a crate up in the attic and waited to see if his mother would find him — though he knew even then that she never went up to the attic. When at last he came out of hiding, there were two Volkspolizei officers standing in the hall, and his mother was sitting in tears on the lowest step of the stairs.

The stairs.

And three years ago the major incident , as his mother always calls it. Always called it. His first girlfriend was just visiting him when his mother returned home from a trip. He hadn’t heard the doorbell. His mother suddenly came into his room without knocking, and after one look at the young couple kissing, she’d slammed the door shut again. He had gotten his girlfriend out of the house as quickly as he could, and she never again came to see him, but nevertheless this major incident was perhaps related to his mother’s first heart attack. Only a few weeks later she collapsed in her study and was taken away with sirens howling.

*

Whenever his mother was at the hospital being examined, or off at a resort, or on a journey, he had taken to just staying home with the housekeeper, who would cook for him after school and then leave. The housekeeper smelled of perspiration. When he was younger, his mother had hired this or that nanny to live with him in the house while she was on the road — because she had readings or premieres of her plays in other cities, or was traveling to Poland with Writers Union delegations, or to Czechoslovakia or Hungary. One of the nannies used to spray saliva when she read to him, another pinched his cheek when she said hello, the third refused to return to his bedside out of principle when he was afraid of the dark and cried out for her.

This housekeeper smelled of perspiration.

At least he doesn’t have to worry about his mother any longer.

It’s quite certain now that she will never again turn back into the mother he knows.

And his father?

He fell in the battle of Kharkov.

As if one final moment existed within another, simultaneously present, she can remember exactly what that morning was like when she said goodbye to her grandmother. One day before she traveled to Prague under a false name. The miniature grandfather clock was just striking eleven with tinny strokes; her grandmother wrapped a pair of challahs in a cloth for her and gave her a slip of paper on which she’d written the recipe. The skin on her grandmother’s hands was so thin the veins showed through, violet.