Judith Hermann - Where Love Begins

Esther is asleep when she gets back. Or pretends to be asleep, and Stella quietly closes the curtain, does the rest of her work. She cleans the bathroom and the kitchen, straightens the living room table, stacks the entire spring’s newspapers, one on top of the other; she looks to see what Esther has marked in the television listings, the programmes she wants to watch or might watch: a travelogue about Mongolia, a political round table, a concert in Venice, an evening’s discussion of mortality. Stella puts some orange marmalade on a piece of buttered toast and cuts it into tiny squares; she makes coffee, puts the bread and coffee by Esther’s bed and sits down for a while on the chair next to it. She sits next to Esther’s bed the way she sometimes sits next to Ava’s bed. The hands of the large clock on the wall above the bookshelf drop, stand still and drop again.

I’m leaving, Esther, Stella says. The night shift will be here at eight. Take care of yourself; be sensible.

Esther doesn’t reply.

In the record book Stella writes: Sleeping; pretends to be sleeping. In the hall she puts on her rain jacket and closes the front door behind her. Bicycling back to the Community Centre, she signs out on the weekly schedule, and hangs Esther’s key back up on the board behind Paloma’s desk. Paloma has already left; she leaves her office so tidy every day that it looks as if she weren’t ever coming back. The lobby is deserted; the ferns in the big buckets stand motionless as if before an explosion. The idyll of the children’s pictures in the glass case looks suddenly ugly and slightly suspect. At the far end of the hall the janitor is on his knees in the twilight, fiddling with an electric outlet.

Good evening.

Same to you.

The entrance door stands wide open; outside, the real world.

*

Stella picks up Ava from kindergarten.

She can finally pick Ava up from kindergarten. In the cloakroom Stella takes off Ava’s slippers and puts on her street shoes. Ava can do all this by herself already; she’s four, going on five. But at the end of a long day in kindergarten she’s so tired that she forgets her independence and holds out her legs to Stella, little fat legs in tights put on backwards. Stella is grateful. Ava isn’t the last child to be picked up. There are six or seven other kids there; their jackets still hanging on the clothes’ hooks; little pictures of tractors, flowers and butterflies are pasted next to the hooks. A snail is pasted next to Ava’s hook, which she has been and continues to be distressed about since her first day in kindergarten. Ava has the same black hair and eyes as Jason. She’s a loner and just as stubborn as Jason. She’s affectionate and impatient. Maybe as impatient as Stella. The teachers had asked Stella whether she reaffirms Ava sufficiently. Stella had a hard time understanding the question. Whether she reaffirms Ava sufficiently? She reaffirms Ava from morning to night. Sometimes she’s afraid she reaffirms her too much. Why the question? Because Ava lacks confidence. Because she holds back, because she doesn’t dash off right away, doesn’t want to recite any poems and doesn’t want to stand in the middle during their morning circle. Because she doesn’t want to dress up for the carnival, because she only wants to dress up at home. All these things are part of a pattern; the teachers observe Ava carefully. I reaffirm Ava, Stella said; of course I do. She takes Ava’s round face in her hands and kisses her on both cheeks. Ava. Avenka. How was your day.

Rabbits can have shaggy fur, Ava says. Like dogs. They can be as shaggy as a dog, did you know that, and she slides off the bench dragging her jacket behind her; she says, Put out the light, Mama, you shouldn’t forget to put out the light. Why do I have to tell you that over and over again.

Stella switches the light off in the cloakroom. She says to Ava, And you should wave to them, and together they wave to the teachers sitting with the last of the children at the round table outside on the lawn. The children have put their heads down on the tabletop. The inevitable pot of peppermint tea stands on the table, coloured plastic cups next to it. Stella thinks she knows what the tea smells like and how it tastes. She buckles Ava into the child’s seat on the bicycle and pedals out of the courtyard. The paths through the park are so green that they seem almost dark, and out of the thicket at the edge of the path come peacocks heavily dragging their long feather trains through the sand.

*

Stella and Ava cycle home. Through the new development, along Fir Tree, Stone Pine and Pine Tree Lanes, past the shopping centre, across Main Street and into the old development where a few cars are now parked in front of the houses and the front doors are open; it smells of lilac, charcoal grills and lighter fluid, of neighbourhood. Stella unlocks the gate, pushes the bike into the garden, lifts Ava out of the child seat, and hears the gate close behind her; she listens for the solid sound of the lock snapping shut.

What are we having to eat today?

Pancakes. With apple sauce and cinnamon and sugar.

I’m going to eat seven, Ava says. Seven pancakes. Definitely.

*

Stella washes her hands at the kitchen sink. She listens to the telephone answering machine — a message for Jason, one from Paloma about the week’s schedule, and Clara’s voice, relaxed and pleasant: Stella, call me back; I’m thinking of you. Is everything all right?

Stella opens the door to the sunroom all the way. She turns on the radio, empties the washing machine, prepares the pancake batter, sings along with the radio, drinks tea in the basket chair in the garden and watches Ava in the sandpit making spirals with shells; she listens to Ava’s conversations with herself. Questions, counting rhymes, whispered riddles. Tomorrow morning I’ll get the queen’s child.

The evening is cool, the humidity moving into the garden from the field, almost palpable. They eat in the kitchen at the table, sitting across from each other, Ava and Stella under the lamp in the company of the radio voices, the alternation of reports on war, climate catastrophes and jazz.

Don’t take so much sugar, Stella says; better if you take more apple sauce.

I’ll never eat in kindergarten again, Ava says; I’m not going to ever eat anything there. If I ever, one single time, eat something at the kindergarten again, I’m going to throw up. She gives Stella a long, searching look. Stella endures it, doesn’t comment. Ava eats five pancakes. She says, There’s a boy in my group, his name is Stevie. Then she gets up, walks around the table, sits down in Stella’s lap, and wraps her arms tightly around Stella’s neck.

*

Outside the sky turns dark blue and black at the edges. Lights go on in the house next door and in the house across the street. Ava’s bath mixture smells of peach and melon; her quilt rustles, her pyjamas are soft as moleskin. Stella puts Ava to bed, she reads to her, sings to her. The pear tree sways, it sways as in a dream. Stella thinks that she ought to see to it that Ava is more self-assured as she’s going to sleep, to see to it that Ava is more self-confident at the end of her day. She ought to be more pragmatic, the way she is with Esther, Julia, Walter; she ought to close the door to Ava’s room behind her with pragmatic authority and call out in a firm voice, Good night! Sleep well now. Go to sleep! But she finds it hard to do. The room is safe still, and the globe glows; the Atlantic glows. But the night is the more defined, it is the greater constant. Ava doesn’t know that, Stella thinks that she knows it. Tomorrow morning, if God will.

When is Papa coming back, Ava says. Maybe she does know after all.

In three days, Stella says. Three more sleeps, then Papa will come back.