Judith Hermann - Where Love Begins

Mister Pfister breaks off. Livid.

He says, Register a complaint. Register a complaint now, go ahead.

I will, Stella says. I’ll do it.

I’ve painted Chinese motifs on two silk foulards, Clara writes to Stella, lotus blossoms and birds, but there’s something else hidden among the lotus and the birds, something very tiny, rather ugly; you have to search for it. One scarf for you and one for me. Alma is having a lot of trouble getting used to kindergarten, and Ricky is losing all his teeth at the same time; it’s really a strange arrangement, don’t you think, all those nights awake with screaming babies when they’re getting their milk teeth, and five years later they simply spit them all out again. Do you remember Ava’s toothless baby smile? How tired we were then? Alma’s teacher tells me that Alma is still very childish, and I could have said, Yes, what the hell else is she supposed to be; after all, she’s still a child. I always think of such answers too late, only after we’re already home again. Luckily I’m very busy; otherwise I’d just take Alma out of there. But I have to finish two pictures, and I completed the sketch for the mermaid; the mermaid has your face. After I’ve cast her, you’ll have to come and baptise her. Ava is allowed to pick a name for her. If the children don’t see each other soon, they’ll walk right past each other on the street later on and not even recognise each other. That’s a horrible thought, I find. But maybe they’ll recognise each other after all? Recognise something in the other, something indefinite, like a vague memory of something that once was. We ordered wood for the winter; the man who delivered the wood just let it slide out of the truck onto the middle of the lawn, and now I’m stacking the wood into piles; there’s no better work in the world. Stupid and good. The smell of the wood is wonderful, arranging the pieces of wood, extremely calming. Actually, from now on I want to do only things like this. Cleaning up, tidying, sorting, carting off. Is that idiotic? What would you say? I think the older I get, the more I simply want to have my peace and quiet. I want to sit in peace at my kitchen table and smoke, thinking about this and that; I’d never have thought that this would one day be so important to me. The children keep pulling me away from it. That’s the way it is. Quartering apples. Doing laundry, ironing shirts. Before, I used to be able to imagine being someone else. Today I’m only myself. Tired and overextended. But in spite of that the foulards turned out gorgeous, and I keep thinking of you; it feels as if you had just gone out for a little while and would come back right away. I keep thinking you’ll come right back. Stella, how are you? Are the ravens still flying around the tower?

*

I’d like you to pack your things, Jason says on the phone.

I’d like you to pack a bag with sweaters and socks and books for you and for Ava, and I’d like you to get out of there. Go to the country, go to Paloma’s house; stay there a while. I’d like it if, for once, you’d listen to me and do what I say. Just one single time.

When haven’t I listened to you, Stella thinks. What’s that supposed to mean. Were there ever any moments when I should have listened to you, done what you said and instead did something else? What?

She listens to Jason, does what he says. Packs a bag, sweaters and socks, Ava’s hedgehog, two toothbrushes and seven books. Sets the bag down in the front hall. Puts Ava’s rain jacket on top of the bag, puts her rubber boots next to it.

*

This place, the bicycle mechanic says, was here before you, and it’ll still be here after you’re gone. Places do something to you, but you don’t do anything to them. This development will remain whether you happen to be here or not. Your house will continue to be a house; it won’t turn to ashes after you walk out the door for the last time. Everything you feel or experience takes place only within you; there’s only the ‘inside us’ — nothing else. This is sobering. But also obvious — you are the constant.

He sets the wheel he’s just put the spokes into rolling. The wheel rolls evenly. Sunlight catches in the spokes and is flung out.

*

Well, there are this kind of stars and that kind, Ava says. Really little ones with lots of points and regular stars with five points; she indicates the points with the fingers of her left hand. Aunt Sonja says all the stars have been dead for a long time; what’s that supposed to mean anyway. I broke my hairslide, my hairslide is gone now. I’d like to have curly hair some day, very long, curly hair, just once. When you were a child, you didn’t want to be called Stella. Papa told me. You wanted to be called Silvia. Is that right? Is that really true? I only like your food and Papa’s food. I never want to eat in the kindergarten again. Oh, how Stevie can laugh. You have to hear that sometime. Can we drive to the sea? Can we drive to see Papa at the construction site? Will this summer get even hotter? I wished it would always be very hot. We went to the puppet theatre today, and do you know what they had — the play with the three little pigs and the wolf. I want to stay here. Here there’s Stevie. I never want to leave here. Never!

*

The police officer who takes the complaint has melancholy eyes and a moustache, his shirt is wrinkled and he looks as if he’d been on duty for twenty-four hours. He has to leave the room when Stella bursts into tears — she breaks into tears like Ava, can scarcely speak through her sobbing — but he comes back bringing a little packet of tissues and a cup of hot, sweet tea with milk. His office is dreary, the windows are high up below the ceiling, impossible to get a view outside. In spite of that, there’s a plant on his desk, and there are postcards on the wall from the Canary Islands, Mexican pyramids, just as in Paloma’s office.

Stella is interrogated. She is supposed to provide detailed information, but she considers it an interrogation.

Since when do you know Mister Pfister.

I don’t know Mister Pfister at all.

Didn’t you meet him?

I meet him every day. He rings at our house every day, but I still don’t know him; he is fixated on me without knowing me. Don’t you understand what I’m saying; can’t you imagine what this is like, can’t you?

Yes, yes, I know what you mean, I can imagine it, the police officer says, trying to sound reassuring and looking at Stella sceptically. He says, But in spite of that, we have to write it all down step by step, from the beginning.

And Stella pushes the shoebox across the desk; she hands it over. She describes the bell-ringing, the things in the mailbox, the encounter at the shopping centre, the first and the last conversation between her and Mister Pfister. She watches the policeman as he takes the scraps and pieces of paper, the matches, lighters, CDs and dictation machine, and the photos out of the shoebox, and even as he is reformulating and summarising her sentences and entering them into his computer, she can see the shock, anger and fear disintegrate.

Not communicable. The bicycle mechanic had already understood this; that there is only what’s inside us, nothing else.

In spite of that, she says, Do you believe me? I mean do you believe me when I say that I can’t stand it?

The policeman says, I believe you. I can also tell you that you have every reason for coming here. It’s just that you’re coming rather late, I think. By the way, what is your profession?

Nurse, Stella says. I’m a nurse.

She thinks that she can read in the policeman’s face that her profession explains some things for him. Nurses are very stable, but they have a helper syndrome. Can’t defend themselves very well, are always somewhat slow on the uptake.