Julia Franck - The Blind Side of the Heart

Peter looked out from under his fringe and had to smile. He looked mischievous, smiling like that. He couldn’t believe she was so upset just over a silly rhyme.

What sort of people are Jews? Peter was still smiling. He really wanted to know, but he would have to accept the fact that Helene wasn’t going to answer him. She felt inadequate, painfully inadequate. Was she being cowardly? How could she explain what kind of people Jews were to her son, who she was herself, why she couldn’t talk about it? No one knew where a child of Peter’s age might take what he knew; he could come out with it tomorrow at school, telling the teacher or the other children. Helene didn’t want that. She didn’t want to think of him in danger. He understood her, Helene was sure of that, Peter was a clever child. Jews were just people, surely that was enough by way of explanation? Helene did not respond to his smile; they ate their fish in silence.

Mother, he said when he had cleaned his plate, thank you for the mackerel, that was a fabulous mackerel. Peter could tell most fish apart, he liked the differences, their different names and flavours. Helene didn’t like the word fabulous. Everyone was using it, yet it was a very vague word, totally misleading. When she gave him the clasp knife in November it would be too late for fishing near the city, most of the river banks would be frozen, the fish would be swimming too far down, he probably wouldn’t be able to catch anything edible. Helene sketched a smile. Where did these sudden polite thanks come from? Had she ever told him he ought to thank her for a meal? The cat down in the yard would get the fish bones. No one knew whose cat it was; it was a beautiful animal that looked like a Siamese, white with brown paws and bright, clear eyes. Peter was going to wash the dishes, and Helene thanked him in advance. He liked doing it, he helped his mother whenever he could. Helene took her ironed overall and said goodnight. She was on night duty.

Dense mist lay over the water, the ships’ sirens were sounding in unison. Up in the city, the golden sun shone, casting long shadows as day dawned.

Let’s go picking mushrooms, said Helene on her day off. After repeated requests, she had been given a Sunday off because of the child. She packed her basket. Conditions couldn’t be better; it had rained yesterday and last night the moon had been full. Half the city might be out and about in the woods on a Sunday, but Helene knew her way around and would find the really remote clearings. A tea towel, two knives, some newspaper, because she didn’t want the mushrooms rubbing against each other and bruising when they were lying in her basket.

They took the train to Messenthin and soon left its thatched, half-timbered houses behind. Helene knew her way through the forest. The spruce trees stood close together, then beech and oak trees were foremost. The air was cool, with the scents of early autumn, of mushrooms and earth. Smooth beech leaves, many of them already turning bronze, shrivelled oak saplings. Helene went first, walking fast. She was familiar with these woods and the clearings in them. She felt hungry, which was not ideal when you wanted to find mushrooms. Her eyes searched the thickets, the undergrowth, it was too dark here, too dry there, they’d have to go further into the forest, to places where bees still settled on the tree trunks and basked on the wood, moving sluggishly now as the coming cold weather numbed them.

Mother, wait, you’re going so fast. Peter must be twenty or thirty paces behind her. Helene turned to look at him. He was young, he had nimble legs; don’t dawdle, she told him. She went on, climbing over fallen branches, twigs cracked underfoot. She didn’t like the agarics that grow on trees, let them stay on their mouldering stumps; she kept going, she was looking for ceps and chestnut mushrooms. Light broke through the trees, further on she saw green, the tender dry green of a small clearing, perhaps it was there, yes, it must be there that she’d find one or two, or a whole fairy ring of mushrooms to be plundered. Helene strode on, hardly hearing Peter as he stumbled along after her, calling. Ah, there was one. It had an old, brown cap, not what she might have expected to find on a morning like this. Hadn’t it rained last night and hadn’t there been a full moon? Late dew still hung on many grasses. There was only one explanation, someone had been here before her, poaching mushrooms in her wood, on the outskirts of her clearing. Helene stopped, out of breath, and looked around her. Had that branch over there only recently broken?

Wait for me, called Peter, who hadn’t yet reached the clearing, as she turned to go further on into the thickets. She didn’t wait, she just went more slowly. She heard a dog barking in the distance, then a whistle and another. Surely no foresters went hunting on Sunday? Rabbit with chanterelles. Helene thought of the tender rabbit she had once braised for Wilhelm, a long time ago. She wished she had a gun. Chanterelles, or even better ceps. Helene’s eyes wandered over the ground, almost straining from their sockets. A fly agaric with a big cap, young and plump, straight out of a picture book. Helene went on, with Peter still behind her. They crossed the railway line. A breathtaking stench blew towards them. A stench of carrion, of urine and excrement. Some way off a cattle train stood on the tracks. The sides of the rusty trucks were closed. Helene went along the tracks with Peter after her. From a distance she saw a policeman. Perhaps the locomotive had broken down and the cattle in the trucks were in distress on a long train journey. A dog barked and Helene just said: Come on.

She went back towards the woods. They had to skirt round the cattle train, giving it a wide berth to escape the stink and avoid the dogs.

Why are you running, Mother?

Couldn’t Peter smell the stench? She retched, she had to breathe through her mouth, better not to breathe at all. Helene went on, twigs snapped, whipped into her face, she shielded her eyes with her arms, rotten wood broke beneath her feet, there was something slippery under her feet, she nearly stumbled and fell on it, there was a mushroom, probably just a bitter boletus, she didn’t want to stop, she wasn’t going to spend time hanging around, she must go on towards the smell for now. Once they were to the north-west of the train it would be better, the stink was drifting south-east with the wind off the sea. Helene heard the whistle again. Perhaps some of the cattle had escaped? Perhaps they were hunting cows in the woods this Sunday, or little piglets. Helene felt hungry and thought of potato dumplings with mushrooms. Beechnuts crunched under her feet. She mustn’t bend down, pretty as they were, those bristly husks with their three chambers, the smooth threefold nuts inside, they had a nice nutty flavour if you roasted them; she wanted to show Peter the beechnuts, but she mustn’t stop for that now.

They had done it; obviously they had rounded the train and the stink was gone. The silence of the forest, the humming of insects, a woodpecker.

Mother, I can see a squirrel.

Helene wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.

The thick trunk of a tall beech tree lay in her path, its bark still shimmering silver grey. Flat-shelled beetles with red and black spots were swarming between the knotholes, hooked together in pairs, little Pushmi-Pullyous. She could at least have read Dr Dolittle to Peter, if not Hauff’s fairy tale The Cold Heart , which she thought too scary. So it would have to be Dr Dolittle , if she ever got round to reading it to him he’d enjoy it, but there was plenty of time for that, she’d just have to get home from the hospital early for once and go to the library — the book must be there for her to borrow. A big fallen tree trunk was in their way, they’d have to climb over that. Helene put down her basket and braced her hands on the trunk, she didn’t want to crush any of the beetles, the trunk seemed quite steady.