Jenny Erpenbeck - Visitation

Doris says: Now the sun is going down already. Even when you are an old woman, says her grandfather Arthur, you’ll still come sit here on the shore to watch the sun slipping behind the lake. Home. Why, the girl asks. Because everyone likes to watch the sun as long as possible, says Hermine, Ludwig’s mother, grandmother of Doris.

Sometimes when you’re lucky you can see the tablecloth hanging down around Table Mountain, a veil of fog that displays a pale pink tint at sunrise. He left behind the table silver but packed the Christmas tree decorations. Twelve aluminum clips to hold the candles, Christmas tree ornaments, stars made of straw, tinsel and the glass topper. Purchased in 1928 for 14 marks 70. What are icicles, his little girl asks him, Elisabeth. On that one winter day he spent at the lake, Anna, his future wife, taught his niece Doris how to ice-skate. What is snow, his little girl asks him, Elisabeth.

Hermine and Arthur, his parents.

He himself, Ludwig, the firstborn.

His sister Elisabeth, married to Ernst.

Their daughter, his niece, Doris.

Then his wife Anna.

And now the children: Elliot and baby Elisabeth, named for his sister.

In March ’36, at the end of the winter, he, Ludwig, went chasing the winter together with his future wife Anna, traveling through the Strait of Gibraltar, the coast of Europe to the right, the coast of Africa to the left. They traveled through all of this from winter to winter. Here there is no snow in winter, only rain, lots of rain, and nonetheless he feels colder here than he ever did at home. In 1937 his parents came to visit them for two weeks, his mother says, it’s so nice here, and then returns home. His father says, but what a shame about your inheritance, and returns home together with Ludwig’s mother. Baby Elisabeth is still far from being born yet, even Elliot isn’t there yet, the two of them are still swimming around in Abraham’s sausage pot. His parents came to visit. Arthur and Hermine from Guben came to visit their son Ludwig, who has emigrated to Cape Town, and now they are traveling back to Guben, going home again, from summer to summer, through the Strait of Gibraltar, to the right the coast of Africa, to the left the coast of Europe. He and his wife Anna remain standing for a while at the harbor. He doesn’t say a word, and his wife doesn’t say a word either.

When in 1939 Arthur and Hermine do apply for an exit visa after all, they sell Ludwig’s property along with the dock and the bathing house for half its market value to the architect next door. On account of the profit he is making on this transaction, the architect pays the National Finance Authority a 6 % De-Judification Gains Tax.

The proceeds from the sale, which the parents, Arthur and Hermine, are to use to pay for their passage, which Ludwig is pleading with them to do as quickly as possible, must be transferred to a frozen bank account until their passports are ready. At approximately the same time, they are forbidden to set foot in public parks. Elliot learns to walk down the three steps to the garden without holding his mother’s hand. Ludwig plants, together with his gardener, whose hair is so curly that a pencil stuck into it remains there, a fig tree and the first of the three pineapple palms.

When Holland enters the war the passports for Ludwig’s parents are ready, but it is no longer possible to wire the money to the steamship company. Ludwig knows that it is not without its dangers to lie down to rest beneath a eucalyptus tree. But he loves the rustling sound. Even when the gardener shakes his head the pencil does not fall out. Elliot speaks his first word: Mum. Anna is pregnant for the second time.

Two months after Arthur and Hermine get into the gas truck in Kulmhof outside of Łodz, after Arthur’s eyes pop out of their sockets as he asphyxiates, and Hermine in her death throes defecates on the feet of a woman she’s never seen before, all their assets, together with the assets remaining in Germany that belonged to their son, Ludwig, who has emigrated, are seized, all the frozen bank accounts dissolved and their household goods auctioned off. All the possessions of Arthur and Hermine, including the proceeds from the sale of the property beside the lake containing 1 bathing house and 1 dock, become the property of the German Reich, represented by the Reich Finance Minister.

The town is also called Moederstadt, the Mother City. Shortly before Christmas, Ernst, Ludwig’s brother-in-law, the father of Doris, contracts spotted fever while performing forced labor at the autobahn construction site and dies several days later. On Easter Monday it is Elisabeth’s and Doris’s turn to make the trip. It’s only supposed to be a short journey, Elisabeth writes to him, Ludwig, her brother, still sitting in the train. 1 letter opener, ebony with a tin handle, purchased in 1927 for 2 marks 30. Ludwig’s reply from Cape Town to Warsaw takes six weeks to get there and six weeks to come back, it is returned to him unopened. Three months later baby Elisabeth is born. In the Mother City, at the most beautiful end of the world.

WHEN THE PROPERTY is expanded, the householder assigns his gardener the job of tearing down the fence and felling the pine trees on the highest part of what used to be the next-door property. The gardener saws the wood into pieces, chops it up for firewood and stacks the logs in the woodshed. He also uproots the bushes on the level clearing at the highest point of the newly acquired land and in late fall begins to dig holes for fruit trees. Five apple trees, three cherries and three pears at the householder’s request. As he digs he works his way through a thin layer of humus and then strikes bedrock and breaks through it, uncovering a layer of sand with groundwater coursing through it that displays a wave-like pattern showing how, thousands of years ago, the wind blew across the lake, and finally beneath this sand is the blue clay found everywhere in the region. The gardener digs the holes to a depth of 80 centimeters and then fills them with composted earth so the fruit trees will flourish. He diverts a few pipes from the underground drainage system he had set up on the original property so the young fruit trees will receive additional water. The gardener adds topsoil and sows grass seed between the young trees. By the time the first frost arrives, grass has sprouted on the bare soil.

HAVE YOU HEARD this one? OK, here goes.

She can’t help laughing all over again, even though she’s told the joke many times now, she laughs, and the others are already laughing in any case, she really does like to laugh, sometimes as a child she’d gotten stuck in her laughter, that’s what her father called it, getting stuck in laughter, as though her body were holding on to the laughter and absolutely refusing to give it up, convulsive laughter that just went on and on without her. Even her big sisters who had to take her, their little sister, everywhere they went, would laugh when she crossed her eyes and made faces or let them talk her into trying sneezing powder as healing salts for her nose or hot chilies in place of sweet peppers. She would sneeze, snort or spit, and the others would laugh. A tightrope walker is what she wanted to be, or else a lion tamer, but this she confided to no one, not even her father, the chief mogul , who was really chief consul, all she wanted to do was laugh and travel for the rest of her life while her sisters went on growing, got fat and had children. Unlike them, she would go on tour forever and ever. As soon as she was old enough to balance on a tightrope or start training lions, the chief mogul, who was really chief consul, recommended she take a course in stenography. Stenography, said the mogul to the lion tamer, was worth as much as six foreign languages. Stenographers and typists were in demand all over the world, the chief mogul said. Now she was sitting with her husband and a few friends out on the terrace around a big pot in which crabs were floating that she had caught herself in the lake that afternoon and then boiled until they turned red, in her hand she held a crab’s pincer and was continuing to laugh. Even before the war she’d sat here like this with her husband and several of the neighbors, or else with friends, a practice she continued during the war as well, sitting out on the terrace until late at night with a view of the lake, and still she was sitting here. She would happily keep sitting here like this unto all eternity.