Jenny Erpenbeck - Visitation

This morning she and her husband took the long walk up to the forest, to the bench in whose wood her son had already carved his parents’ initials with his pocket knife years before. The four letters have long since turned gray. They always stop to rest upon this bench for a while before turning around. They sit and gaze, their eyes following the course of the hill that descends gently to the lake, they watch as the wind stirs the grain field, and behind it they see the broad surface of the lake, leaden, from a distance they cannot see how this same wind is rippling the water, nor do they see the house between the hill and the lake, from this perspective it is hidden in the shadow of the Schäferberg. They look at the ground, close by, at their feet, where yesterday’s rain has pressed the sand into little rivulets, they see flint and pebbles of quartz or granite, then they get up again, she takes her husband’s arm and the two of them make their way downhill, back to the house, where today he intends to give the fishing stools, whose red paint is flaking off, a coat of green paint, while up in her study she will sit at her desk and write down what she remembers of her life.

This doctor wasn’t even born yet when she returned to Germany. He has traveled to Japan with one or the other government delegation, to Egypt, to Cuba. I a-m g-o-i-n-g h-o-m-e. Down in the kitchen the cook is making the plates clatter, the gardener is sitting on the threshold to his room, on the meadow her granddaughter and the boy next door are spraying each other with water, her daughter-in-law is sunbathing on the dock, the visitor is lying in a lawn chair, her son is mowing the grass, her husband is painting the fishing stools green. There are things she remembers but does not write. She doesn’t write that she said no when, after Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union a German comrade whose husband had just been arrested came to her with her small child asking to be hidden. No, because her own residence permit had already expired and even she herself could only enter or leave her Moscow quarters at times when no one would see her. She doesn’t write that the manuscript for her radio show about the daily work of the German official was corrected by the Soviet comrades. The episode with the Jews in it was cut. That wouldn’t appeal to German soldiers, she’d been told, it might possibly hurt the cause and in any case was irrelevant in this context. She who had emigrated not because of her Jewish mother but as a communist had, without putting up a fight, cut that part of her report. She doesn’t write that eventually she did begin after all, after several comrades known to be Jews had vanished, to dye her coppery hair that even during her German childhood had caused her to be taunted as a Jew. She doesn’t write about how she and her husband were asked by her Soviet comrades to board a train to Novosibirsk. That they hid instead of getting on the train. A German painter from their circle of friends had obeyed the Party’s order and boarded a similar train, and then he had starved to death building a dam in Kazakhstan. While outside the cuckoo is calling, her fingers rest upon the typewriter keys.

The poet who hid her back then had written a poem in which he described going home as crossing over to the shores of Death. She had learned to remain silent then, and after all the deprivations, this silence was the greatest gift that had ever been given to their dream, which remained so large that every single one of the comrades was utterly alone when he walked about in it.

The poet who hid her back then now lives with his wife in a summer cottage on the other side of the lake, and this afternoon they will perhaps land at the dock in their motorboat made of dark shiny wood, and then her friend will toss the rope to her husband, her husband will catch the rope and tie it to the dock, and the granddaughter will watch her grandfather and take note of the figure eight the rope makes when it is wound around the cleat.

I a-m g-o-i-n-g h-o-m-e. The actor who built a bungalow a few properties down recently stayed behind in the West after a performance there and will soon be having his wife and son join him. The bungalow has already been sealed. He had wanted light blue tiles for his bathroom. Light blue tiles did not exist in this part of Germany. Where the new person is to begin, he can only grow out of the old one. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. The new world is to devour the old one, the old one puts up a fight, and now new and old are living side by side in a single body. Where much is asked, more is left out.

When they returned to Germany, it was a long time before she and her husband could bring themselves to shake hands with people they didn’t know. They had felt a virtually physical revulsion when faced with all these people who had willingly remained behind. After his return, her husband had even hesitated to visit his mother and sisters, who lived in the Western part of Germany. The only visit they ever made to this West German city was undertaken with the sole purpose of showing their son his grandmother, and neither she nor her husband shook hands with his mother or sisters when they greeted them. They saw, too, that this omission occurred by mutual consent. Immediately before they fled to Prague, they had deposited a picture and a few pieces of furniture with her husband’s sisters. Her husband’s mother and sisters were now sitting at this table, on these chairs, and the picture hung on the wall. And she and her husband now sat on these chairs as if they had come to their own house for a visit. The two Communists were at a loss for the words they would have needed to demand their own possessions back from these Germans to whom they had once been related. Later, when their son was old enough to travel by train without them, they let him make the trip twice on his own when he expressed the desire to visit his grandmother.

Now the gong is calling her to lunch. She walks through the closet room and the hallway to the bathroom, where she washes her hands, her fingertips are smudged with black from changing the ribbon, she looks into the mirror, arranges her hair, closes the right-hand wing of the small window that had been open for air, now the mosaic of colorful squares is complete again. Before she goes down to eat, she quickly steps back into the Little Bird Room to get a jacket from the wall closet, since it’s always chillier than you’d expect inside the house, even in summer. The Little Bird Room got its name from the small iron bird forged to the railing of the balcony. During school holidays, her granddaughter sleeps here. The granddaughter now strikes the gong downstairs for a second time, possibly out of impatience, or else because it’s fun.

Even at midday, what strikes the long table through the colorfully glazed windows is more penumbra than light, and around this table sit her husband, their son with his wife and her granddaughter, and often also friends and colleagues from Berlin, comrades or, as today, the visitor, then the cook and finally the gardener. After the soup is brought out, her husband speaks about this and that, her son about something else, her daughter-in-law contributes a remark, the visitor remains silent, the gardener remains silent, the cook serves the main course, she herself elaborates, her daughter-in-law has yet another question, her son says: I don’t see how that’s possible, her husband says: But it is. She herself says: That’s certainly interesting, and: Do take some more potatoes, the visitor says: No thank you, the gardener remains silent, her granddaughter shakes her head, her son says: Send them over, the daughter-in-law: That was delicious, she herself says: It truly was, the gardener says: Thank you, the cook: The soup was a bit too salty, her son says: Not at all, the cook stacks up the dirty plates and balances them out into the kitchen, she returns with tiny little bowls on a tray, distribution of the compote, everyone gets busy with their spoons, general quiet reigns, the door handle is depressed from the outside, giving off a metallic sigh, the boy next door wants her granddaughter to come out and play, he remains standing beside the stove, waiting until everyone has finished eating, the visitor brings her compote cup to her lips and sips the last dregs of juice, her daughter-in-law says to the little girl: But first help clear the table, her husband says: Well, then, she herself nods to the cook. They all get up and leave the room in one direction or other.