“I’m Philipp,” he said. His Russian sounded strange, as if he hadn’t spoken it in years.
“I’m Max,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
I hiccupped and muttered that I needed fresh air. I staggered out of the office past him, leaned against a sycamore tree, and tried to breathe out Grandmother’s tea, which seemed to have filled me from head to toe. The man followed me and stood next to me, visibly overwhelmed. When I swayed, he moved as if to catch me.
I looked at him and knew that he was the very man Grandmother had always warned me about. His shirt was ironed and was wet with sweat under the arms, which I could also feel running down my back, the day was unusually warm.
“Sir, are you the red-haired Jew?” my heavy tongue asked without checking with me first. I stared at his hair, which was streaked with silver strands.
“I used to be.” He was putting great effort into not showing how much the sight of me disturbed him. “Is there someplace around here to get a coffee?”
I led him on shaky legs to the pedestrian zone, where two competing ice cream cafés had put chairs out on the sidewalk. I slumped with relief into a wicker chair at a small table. He sat down opposite me, his eyelid twitched, and the sight brought back a distant memory that I’d always thought was from a dream.
“It’s nice here,” said the man, and I nodded. The rest of this part of town consisted of apartment blocks and row houses, and the area had a bad reputation because of all the Russians. I leaned back and closed my eyes to try to slow the spinning.
“Would you like an ice cream?” asked the man.
I shook my head, which made me feel sicker.
“Have you been waiting for me?”
I shrugged.
“I found the dance school because of your grandmother’s last name,” he said. “She had threatened to have her husband kill me. She said he had a company.”
I felt my lips forming a smile.
“I would be very grateful if you’d open your eyes.”
I sighed. Even with my eyes open I could barely see anything, colorful mosquitos danced between me and the rest of the world, the man was blurry around the edges.
“What’s your name anyway, sir?” I asked.
He dug around frantically in his chest pocket and put a business card down on the table in front of me. “Philipp,” he said, and I realized he’d already told me that. His twitching eyelid was driving me crazy.
“What is it you want, sir?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps it would be nice if you addressed me less formally. What do you want?”
“Can you leave me a million?”
“What would you do with a million?”
I scratched my neck. “I’d buy my grandmother a house. She already has a dance school.”
I enjoyed the look of horror on his face. Then I stood up and staggered off.
THE NUTCRACKER
I didn’t tell anyone about it. Grandmother was so happy. She said so herself: “I’m so happy, Maxi. I don’t know what I did to deserve it. Look at you, for instance. Nobody could tell what a failed mess you were just a few years ago. Imagine people meeting you in the street one day, people who didn’t know you in the past, and having them think: the kid is totally normal. I never would have dared to dream that.” Her left eye teared up with emotion.
Since I didn’t know how to react to this, she continued: “My greatest joy is this wonder of a child. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I look at him and think, God has personally kissed me. I don’t believe in God. But I never reckoned with the fact that he would bless me again with such a child.” Now her right eye, too, was welling up, and she sniffled energetically and wiped her face.
“Look, Maxi. I have everything. I have children. I have a husband who respects me. He set up a dance school for me, and I have a chance to bestow on Germany a little beauty and taste. What more could I want?”
I didn’t know, either.
“I even have a piano,” said Grandmother triumphantly.
She had found it in a classified ad under the category “Free Stuff.” The dark men in overalls had brought it in a van and carried it into the corner of the dance studio with their unwashed hands.
“What can one do? Animals,” Grandmother said to me. “What do you think of the instrument, Maxi?”
I walked around it and touched it cautiously after I’d made sure my hands were clean. It was a strange light-yellow color, there was a piece of moth-eaten felt on the keys, and it was hopelessly out of tune. Nina said that, too, when Grandmother showed her the acquisition.
“Now we’ll have live music for the Nutcracker,” said Grandmother, who, thanks to her new status as piano owner, seemed to have grown a few centimeters taller.
“And who is supposed to play this thing?” asked Nina.
“Maxi here, of course.”
I choked on my own spit. “Me? I can’t.”
“Why did you take lessons for all that time? And who was your teacher?” thundered Grandmother.
“He only had a broken-down keyboard to practice on. How was I supposed to do serious work with him?”
Grandmother sighed theatrically. “In that case old Margo will have to pay someone to play even though the family is full of musicians.”
That year Grandmother experienced, as she put it, the most beautiful Christmas celebration of her life. “We have a child now and must be part of it,” she said.
“And what was I the whole time—a poodle?” I asked.
She looked at me pityingly. “What is with you? The Germans are crazy about Christmas. You’ll like it!”
My knowledge of German Christmas traditions had been supplied mostly by comics and television. Every year Christmas surprised me anew. In school I was out of my depth when the class did Secret Santa and everyone drew the name of a classmate from a hat to anonymously give gifts to. I never managed to stick to the specified price limit, and I put myself wholeheartedly into finding something adequate: a necklace or a nice bracelet that the recipient—I always drew a girl—would appreciate rather than laugh scornfully at every time. I’d never received anything other than soap or candles from my Secret Santa. Christmas flashed by me year after year without leaving a trace. I liked the peaceful days afterwards, though, when the shops were finally closed. In the kitchen were piles of cut-rate chocolate Santas that Grandmother had brought home and forbidden me to eat in the early years. I remembered suddenly how even then Grandfather had occasionally slipped me a piece.
I shared my—predominantly theoretical—knowledge with Grandmother. The stuff about the cookies she found foolish, but she had tried stollen once and while she didn’t like it, she did respect it. The fact that so many Germans went to church at least on Christmas Eve surprised her disagreeably, and she asked with a trace of bad conscience whether there was a Christmas mass at the synagogue, where she hadn’t shown up in ages.
She was, however, familiar with gift giving, from Russian New Year’s celebrations. The tree for our celebration we usually got from the sidewalk shortly before New Year’s Eve—if we were lucky it still had some tinsel on it—and we welcomed the new year with red beet salad and sparklers. I didn’t know why we suddenly had to do everything differently now, but Grandmother seemed determined.
“Bring a tree home now, Father,” she proclaimed at the beginning of December, wanting to do everything like the Germans this year. Nina contributed old Soviet tree decorations that were beautiful and fragile, like her. The Nutcracker rehearsals grew ever more intense, and there were the first cases of fainting in the studio and fistfights in the changing room, which made Grandmother proud: “We may be just a small outpost of the Russian ballet. But it’s just like the real thing here.”
The week before Christmas I heard Grandmother laughing upstairs at our door as I en
tered the staircase to our apartment building. A moment later the parcel deliveryman went past me panting and said he’d just left a Christmas gift for me with my darling mother.
Outside of the Secret Santa soap and candles, I’d never received a Christmas present, and I climbed the steps excitedly, two at a time.
“Did I get a package, Oma?”
I noticed in the hectic grimace that crossed her face for a moment that something wasn’t right.
It might possibly have been due to my voice. Lately she’d kept telling me to speak more quietly, I was becoming a man too soon, and men’s voices made her nervous. A shudder seemed to go through her, then she disappeared into the adjoining room and returned with the package.
I ripped it open and pulled out a dark blue ski jacket. From the sleeve fell the already familiar business card. I packed everything back into the box and pushed the package and its contents over to Grandmother.
“It’s not a good color for you anyway,” she said under her breath, and the panic in her voice made my heart flutter.
The Nutcracker performance on December 23rd was a total success. I’d never seen so many pretty girls at one time before. Anastassia was so radiant that Grandmother put her hand on her forehead. “You’re glowing, dear girl, it must be scarlet fever.”
Noise and light flickered in my head. The costumes were tasteful and restrained, but as for the room, Grandmother had been unable to contain herself: she probably bought up the town’s entire tinsel stock. A grandiose twinkling Christmas tree blocked the entryway.
So as not to be petty, she gave a few of the flower bouquets that parents of the dancers handed her during extended calls of bravo to Anastassia and Nina. “I really must congratulate you: you barely made any mistakes, Nina.”
Grandfather, who’d sat next to me during the performance, stashed the leftover flowers, wine, and gift baskets in the car. I suspected he had fallen asleep during the show. Though maybe he had just listened with his eyes closed. But then little Tschingis got restless on my lap, and Grandfather had sat up with a start and taken him outside.
“What did you think of the premiere, Father?” asked Grandmother before Grandfather squeezed into the car among the gift baskets.
“It was lovely. But nobody danced better than you, Rita.”
“And what did you think, my little treasure?”
“I was blown away.”
“Nina played nicely, too, don’t you think?” Grandmother was generous in her moment of joy.
“Yeah, the music was very nice.”
At this point Vera cleared her throat. I waited for her to stop on her own, but eventually I hit her between the shoulder blades with all my strength, and she finally fell silent. Among all the red-cheeked glitter-girls she looked small and unimpressive in her brown sweater, and I could have sworn that she knew it.
Anastassia was standing next to us. It looked as if she would like to have come home with us to celebrate the premiere and the impending Christmas holiday. But Grandmother patted her on the cheek.
“I’m sorry, dear child. Find yourself an invitation somewhere else. It’s just for closest family, you understand?”
“Sounds like a funeral,” muttered Nina.
FATHER FROST
On Christmas Eve I was awakened by Grandmother frantically and loudly crinkling the chocolate out of the advent calendar that was sitting in front of her on the table.
“Who is that from?” I asked.
“From me. Who else would give you something?”
“It’s for me?”
“Who else? How many grandchildren do I have? But I forgot it in the cabinet.” She shoved the last piece of chocolate into her mouth. “Don’t bother me. I need to concentrate.”
It could almost have been a real Christmas, but then she pushed things too far. We sat down to eat far too early—supposedly because little Tschingis was getting impatient. In reality it was Grandmother who couldn’t stand waiting any longer. After everyone had poked around in the Russian herring appetizer from the nearby supermarket, she got up secretively and left the room. Vera and I exchanged glances. Nina arranged red beets on a plate, not paying attention. Grandfather rocked little Tschingis on his knee.
I had a creeping dread about what was coming, but hoped that I was wrong. I gave up hope when a violent rumble shook the hallway. Through the doorway, which suddenly seemed too narrow, came a fat figure in a red coat. It had on heavy boots and a conspicuous pillow that was supposed to pass for a fat belly. A red pointy hat was pulled down over the eyebrows, but the worst of all was the matted gray beard.
“Are there any good children here?” bellowed the figure. Vera cringed. The eyes of the figure, hopelessly familiar and strange at the same time, glanced at me and begged for support.
“Here,” I croaked.
“Can you recite a poem for Ded Moroz?”
Grandfather looked up from his plate. Nina was speechless. Vera giggled into my shoulder. I shoved her away and stood up. I had to play along so that Grandmother could save face. But at that moment a deafening scream rose, one that sounded more like a siren than a human voice.
“No, don’t!” Grandmother ripped down the beard and fell to her knees in front of little Tschingis. “It’s just me, your Margo! Don’t you recognize me?”
Tschingis turned away, burying his face in my grandfather’s chest and pushing away Grandmother’s hands.
“The costume is too good! He believed it, my little sparrow!” Grandmother was near tears herself. She quickly took off the coat, trying to show it to Tschingis, but he didn’t want to look and just quietly whimpered.
“It’s me! Don’t cry! Ded Moroz brought you many gifts. Look, socks. Mittens. The watch is for Father, but he’ll let you play with it. Just look now, don’t cry. This bottle here, this is for your mother. Don’t try to tell me that anyone has ever given you anything like this before, Nina. This is Chanel No. 5, I would have killed for it at your age. Though you’re not so young anymore. A calculator for Maxi and a dictionary so he won’t make so many mistakes. Shower gel for the girl Vera, never hurts. Why are you crying, my little treasure? Tschingis! Maya! I was just having a bit of fun!”
THE MOVE
I had long since figured out that it was a law of nature: Grandmother and Nina couldn’t both be doing well at the same time. Grandmother was completely convinced that she had become a successful entrepreneur and artist and had pulled off a fantastic Christmas for her family. She talked about it for months afterwards. So, naturally, I asked Vera how Nina was doing and my fears were confirmed.
“Today she talked about France,” said Vera. “She read recently that Russian musicians are still valued there. But it was in a book that was pretty old.”
“What does she want to do in France?” I asked.
“No idea,” said Vera, shrugging. A few days later she gave me the latest: “Canada. She saw a postcard. The nature is breathtaking.”
“It’s cold in Canada. She gets cold so easily.”
“I’ll tell her,” promised Vera and reported back at the next chance. “No, it’s the US. She says it’s a land of limitless opportunities.”
We usually lay in my grandfather’s cot, as I thought it inappropriate to invite a girl onto our shared couch in Grandmother’s absence. Once she found a strand of Vera’s light-brown hair on it and broke out in tears. I’d stood next to her and helplessly patted her shoulder.
“Leave Oma, Maxi,” she’d murmured. “You’ve gotten so big, I can’t understand a word of what you say anymore. Sometimes I think you can’t speak Russian anymore.”
“I don’t believe you’re going to leave,” I said to Vera.
“Shut your mouth. You haven’t even managed to move out of the home.” She looked at me for a long time; I met her gaze until she looked away, disappointed.
In June, on the way home fr
om school Vera said we wouldn’t be in the same class anymore. Nina had found a job and an apartment somewhere else. It wasn’t France and not even Berlin, but the nearest big city, which you could get to in forty minutes on the regional train. I answered: “That’s a lot closer than Canada, too bad for you!” and I was surprised at Vera’s hurt expression.
At home, Grandmother was sitting on the couch crying. I knelt down in front of her and took her hand. Her back, which was always so straight, was hunched. Her hair hung down, stringy. The powder on her face was clotted and allowed red splotches on her cheeks to show. She must have been sitting there a long time, and though she slowly managed to stop the flow of tears, she couldn’t stop sobbing.
“Who died?” I asked. She had told me frequently of late that this or that great aunt was no longer among the living. Since I’d spent many years under the impression that I had no family beyond my grandparents, it was difficult for me to feign much sorrow. Grandmother didn’t go to any of the funerals since her Russian passport had expired years ago.
“Nina,” she rasped, taking her hand away from me. “Nina is leaving.”
“Is that really so bad?” I asked.
The short pause had allowed my grandmother to replenish her supply of tears and they began to flow again.
“Is Opa going with her?” I asked.
She looked at me as if I were crazy.
“She wants to take Tschingis with her,” she whispered. “She doesn’t have any idea what he needs. How will the child get by without me?”
“You don’t see him so often anymore. You’re so busy.”
“I’m always there when he needs me. She doesn’t have any family there. Everything she has is here in this backwater.”
I silently stroked her arm. Since she’d been running the dance school she’d lost weight, her arms were bony, the first age spots covered with a makeup pencil. Her nails were cut short and unpolished. Suddenly she wrapped both hands around my head and pulled me to her chest so that I could hear her fast, sometimes stuttering heartbeat.
My Grandmother's Braid Page 10
