“Everyone is leaving. Only Maxi stays with me,” she said. “Promise? At least you still need Oma, right?”
“Of course,” I said, trying desperately to breathe in her embrace.
Nina looked elated as she packed her books and sheet music into moving boxes. In the middle of the room stood a giant pile where she threw scarves, gloves, and random plastic bags. Tschingis sat in the corner and played with a pack of matches. I greeted the two of them and went quickly into Vera’s room.
“At least admit that you’re sad, too,” Vera murmured after I’d assembled a few of the moving boxes my grandfather had brought to the apartment in stacks.
“I’m sad.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re happy to be rid of me. You get this apartment, and you’ll finally have your own room and then, no doubt, soon a girlfriend.”
I smiled at the fact that she had such thoughts.
She threw a rolled-up pair of socks at me. I caught it and sat down on the floor cross-legged.
“What goes in first? Underwear?”
She shrugged and stayed sitting on the bed.
“I don’t know,” she said.
It made me think of how Grandmother normally packed her suitcase. She’d open it on the bed, which she had already covered with foil because naturally suitcases were contaminated with germs. Then she’d throw things into it, haphazardly and with no organization, clean and dirty laundry, swimsuits and wool socks, unopened medicine packages, dried herbs, old maps that had nothing to do with where she was going, slippers, always slippers, little Orthodox travel icons, dish towels, disinfected cutlery. Then she would try to close the suitcase with the aid of brawn and my body weight.
When it didn’t work, she’d dump the contents out in the middle of the room and bemoan the fact that because of her wretched living conditions she was unable to deal with getting things together to travel, until my grandfather would push the pile aside with his foot and quickly and systematically fill the suitcase with the necessary items—though he forgot the toothbrush every single time. It had been the same when we went to Spain. Following that trip, Grandmother had managed to wriggle out of the contract obligating her to take an annual trip to Spain for the rest of her life. It hadn’t occurred to her to look at the fine print before signing it. Though she wouldn’t have understood anyway.
I opened Vera’s drawer and tried to do what my grandfather would have done in this situation. I transferred the manageable contents into the moving boxes, making sure that no heavy items went on top of breakables, that all smaller items were stowed in bags or smaller boxes. Now and again I picked up a sock with a hole in it or an old school notebook. Vera shrugged as if none of it had anything to do with her, and tossed the item in a garbage bag.
At some point my grandparents joined in. Grandmother sat with Tschingis in the corner, took away the matches, kissed him and tried to get him interested in a memory game, while my grandfather and I carried garbage bags down. A little van was waiting in front of the door, and two wiry men carried down the boxes and few pieces of furniture in the tiniest amount of time. The van drove off.
Nina and Vera followed Grandfather outside and got into his light-blue VW. Grandmother carried Tschingis down and ordered me to strap him into his child seat, so many children died because of failure to follow the instructions and it would really be a shame in his case. After that she pressed a cooler bag filled with sandwiches into Nina’s hands. Finally she turned to Vera: “Be respectable. You see what can happen otherwise.”
Vera nodded.
“Drive carefully, Father,” said Grandmother, and something in her voice made me prick up my ears. At the same time I knew that I had better not look her in the face, so I focused on the passenger door, on the other side of which Nina was unfolding a map. “Drive gently. This isn’t construction debris you’re transporting, Father,” Grandmother continued, but Grandfather didn’t seem to hear her. He drove off without turning to look at us.
We stood next to each other, the key to Nina’s apartment in hand, until we could no longer see the taillights. Only then did we stop waving.
“He’s not coming back,” said Grandmother. “Now it’s just you and me. Too bad that the Jewish girl is gone. Would have been good for you because she’s got such a crush on you that she could eat you up. And ugly enough that nobody would steal her from you.”
WILLY WONKA
Grandfather returned after two nights. He put down the car keys on the wobbly cabinet in the entryway that Grandmother had found left out with the garbage and then filled with her own garbage.
Grandfather went silently into the bathroom in order to wash his hands thoroughly even though Tschingis wasn’t there. Grandmother followed him and watched him soap his fingers.
“Are you hungry, Father?”
He nodded.
“Of course. But I haven’t made anything.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Did you set out hungry? Did she not pack you anything for the ride?”
He turned his severe gaze toward her, and she went silent and walked into the kitchen to put on water to boil.
She was too proud to ask him for details. In order to spare her the humiliation, I asked questions in her place even though I wasn’t particularly interested in the answers: What did Nina’s new apartment look like? Did Tschingis really have his own room? What did a little child need his own room for? Had he cried during the trip? How far away was Nina’s new music school? How many bandits were there drifting around the streets of the big city? Could you see anything through all the smog? Did they already have a telephone? The questions shot out of me and Grandfather answered them with a nod, a shake of the head, or a shrug until I was no longer sure anymore which reaction went with which question. Grandmother followed our conversation attentively.
Not a week had gone by before Grandmother called Nina. Their conversation lasted just a few sentences, then Nina gave the phone to little Tschingis. I noticed the change in Grandmother’s voice, which immediately shot up, tender and high-pitched. Grandmother asked what Tschingis was eating and what he was dreaming about. She told him that she now lived in his apartment and that I, his nephew, had moved into Vera’s room. Grandmother had taken over the living room, and Grandfather was sleeping on the cot in the kitchen, which was folded up each morning and set aside. I had barely noticed the move: more men from Grandfather’s company had packed up our scant belongings in no time at all, driven to Nina’s, and unloaded everything again.
“Are you Willy Wonka?” I had asked Grandfather.
He had nodded as if he knew what I was talking about.
I went into Vera’s room and lay down on the bed that had belonged to her. Grandmother had changed the sheets and disinfected the bedframe, but I still caught the scent of Vera’s hair. From the bed I could see the acacia tree in front of the window. I found it strange that I missed Vera so little.
The move into Nina’s apartment seemed to have sealed for Grandmother the tragic nature of emigration once and for all.
“Now we’re stuck here,” she said, walking from one window to the next and casting frustrated glances into the interior courtyard, at the barren patch of lawn, the laundry lines, and the rusty Ping-Pong table. “All because of you Jews.”
I didn’t point out to her that she’d been stuck here for years already and that she’d been the one who’d initiated the whole exodus in the first place. No other family had held out as long as we had in the refugee home. The atmosphere had changed over the years: the more recent refugees didn’t speak Russian and filled the common hallways with loads of family members and disorganized piles of stuff. Grandmother had used her nail scissors to puncture more than one ball that had rolled to her feet and taken more than one bicycle that she’d stumbled over to the police.
“I actually preferred the Jews,” she’d hissed, kicking box
es of donated clothing and diapers out of her way. “At least they don’t spawn like rabbits and speak a normal language. We need to get out of here, Maxi, or else we’ll wake up one day with our throats cut. Only your grandfather will be spared, the old slit-eye. But what would he do without old Margo?”
Nina’s apartment, our new home, was on the top floor of a five-story gray residential building. It was filled with mustached German married couples and hard-working Turkish families, who lived alongside each other peacefully. They took turns cleaning the staircase, but not Grandmother, who found the system unhygienic and the cleaning plan an imposition.
Since the move she’d lost interest in the dance school, and I worried that the next Nutcracker performance could fall through if the ever-thinner Anastassia had to handle everything on her own. I still liked to do my homework in Grandmother’s office, but I drank cola instead of her tea. During breaks Anastassia came in with an energy drink, sat down on my schoolwork, and insisted I massage her feet.
Instead of taking care of the new student contracts, Grandmother mostly sat on a bench in front of our new home and chatted about life with another grandmother who wore a scarf on her head and was small and round and likewise spoke no German. A thermos sat between the two of them, and Grandmother had brought two cups. Her braid hung down heavily, disheveled, and I had a mean suspicion that she no longer made the effort to redo it each morning. I thought it was long overdue that she dye the roots again, but Grandmother just waved her hand dismissively when I offered my help. She sat there slumped, and the sight made me get a lump in my throat. I only understood what good posture was after Grandmother gave up on it.
When she tossed out a “you miss her, Father, eh?” to my Grandfather when he came home, he and I exchanged worried looks. Grandfather began to take evening strolls with Grandmother, even though she initially protested against it bitterly: “Am I some kind of circus horse that has to always walk in circles?” After Grandmother instructed me not to touch her cigarettes and not to set the apartment on fire as if I were six years old, I watched out the window as they walked around the block side by side.
Sometimes they went farther, and I couldn’t even see them from the balcony. They often came back from longer walks with ice cream cones which they’d eaten all the way down to the end.
Once they had a pizza box upon their return. “Father wanted to indulge old Margo,” said Grandmother, licking strings of cheese from her fingers. “It’s Italian, Maxi. It’s called P-I-Z-Z-A. They know a thing or two, the Italians. I would never have believed it.”
The following week, we got take-out pizza every night, until Grandmother said: “Father, I’m making you poor,” and he caressed her wrist, making her blush. Another day they went together to the movie theater around the corner, though they had to leave the show early and Grandmother came home with red, crying eyes. There’d been a small child in the film the same age as Tschingis.
Fall came and I began to worry about the coming Christmas celebrations. Grandfather still sat on the balcony despite the cold weather, blowing smoke into the still blossoming snapdragons he had planted for Grandmother. I stood there and wondered when I’d be old enough to start smoking, too, when he held up his finger. A bird had started singing in the distance.
“Go get Nina,” Grandfather said to me.
I was sure he’d misspoken. I slowly turned to him to give him a chance to correct his mistake. He looked at me intently as if waiting for something, then looked at the open balcony door and called inside: “Nina dear! Come out here!”
Something clanged deep inside the apartment. Then Grandmother popped out, wiping her hands on her apron, her mouth already open, but the curses lodged in her throat. My grandfather stretched out his hand to her, and as she neared him and put her hand in his, he pulled her onto his lap.
I turned away, pushed past the two of them, and went into my room.
MIDDLE C
Grandmother had arranged for the piano from the dance studio to be transported home and made Anastassia use a tape player instead. The piano would need to be retuned again. In our apartment it seemed big and miserable like a dog tied up at a highway rest stop.
“The woman has no conscience,” said my grandmother. “I would never just leave a piano behind. She knows that nobody will play it since she drove the music out of Maxi.”
If I came home from school and quietly opened the door with my own key—Vera had secretly given me hers, because I’d never have gotten my own from Grandmother—sometimes I would hear her talking aloud: “Sitting there all alone, you poor thing. But Margo will take care. She’ll dust you off nicely, then we’ll get a tuner. It doesn’t matter that you’re old. You’re not a woman, for you a few years don’t matter as long as everything inside is in order.” She knocked gently on the wood with a dirty laugh.
When I entered the room she pulled her hand back and hid it behind her back. “Can’t you see? I’m dusting.” To prove it she held up one of Grandfather’s old ribbed undershirts. “Do you think you can clean the keys with dishwashing detergent?”
“No idea,” I said.
Once I came home and heard from the staircase that someone was fooling around on the keys. I sat on the steps and listened, smiling. Sometimes I recognized a couple notes and realized Grandmother was trying to play one of the German children’s songs from my old beginner’s music book. I waited until the piano fell silent and only then went inside the apartment.
When, later that same night, I took down the garbage, I found Grandfather on the staircase. He was standing a floor below ours and alternately staring at one of the doors, where a dried wreath hung, and the key ring in his hand. I took him by the hand and wanted to go upstairs with him, but he balked and gestured toward an open window facing the courtyard. Now I, too, heard the melody wafting into our staircase, having made its labyrinthine way from some other apartment. It was the song “Greek Wine,” and Grandfather seesawed in rhythm to it. His eyes glistened. I wanted to ask him whether he liked the song, but then I felt as if it would be intrusive. We stood silently next to each other until the song ended.
Afterwards we went upstairs together. He sat in the chair in the entryway for a long time before taking off his shoes. It didn’t escape Grandmother’s notice that he reacted to the sound of her voice with a cringe. She immediately went quiet and served him his dinner silently.
I showed Grandmother where middle C was and how she could count out all the other notes from there. She was impressed: “It wasn’t all for nothing, the expensive lessons!” Ever since I’d sat on the staircase most afternoons, smoking or reading, while Grandmother practiced simple melodies. I knew that she’d jump up immediately as soon as she heard me, as if she didn’t want to be caught in the middle of an obscene act.
Once I fell asleep and only woke up when the cigarette I’d been smoking fell and burned a hole in my sneaker. I stomped it out, put the still-hot butt in the cup of my hand, which I hid behind my back, and went into the apartment. Grandmother’s voice came loud and excited from the kitchen.
“Have you no conscience? Being together with a man is more than whoring. It’s a duty, like with a child. It means making soup and ironing socks. You’re chained to him forever, and if he needs you, you can’t moan that the wife is always responsible for everything.”
I leaned against the wall and held my breath. The palm of my hand burned. Next to my head was a framed picture of a rural winter landscape that Nina had left behind.
“That’s the way upstanding people are,” said my grandmother. “It’s not a question of having fun, this isn’t a brothel.”
Once she’d been silent for a while, I slammed the apartment door demonstratively and stuck my head into the kitchen. “Who were you on the phone with?”
“Nobody,” said Grandmother irritated.
“But I heard your voice.”
“I wasn’t on the phone!
” she shouted. “When will you stop snooping around behind my back? The soup’s on the stove!”
That night I was awoken by an unfamiliar noise. It sounded as if at least a dozen feet were tromping past my door, and a babble of voices filled the air. I filtered a few words out, which were vaguely reminiscent of Russian.
I jumped up and ran out of my room, past strange men in stained overalls who stepped aside respectfully. Grandfather was sitting in the kitchen, a trail of blood had followed along behind him. His right hand was oddly twisted, siting on the kitchen table, and Grandmother was pouring water over it. Grandfather smiled as if it all had nothing to do with him. Blood flowed down his face from a large wound on his forehead.
“What happened?” I whispered, and Grandmother yelled: “What is the child doing in the kitchen?”
“Psst, little one,” said my grandfather, stretching out his uninjured hand. “Come here, Maya my treasure, your mother doesn’t mean any harm. The loudest dogs don’t bite.”
I took a step back. Grandmother froze. “Father, this is Maxi. Maya’s son. Your children look like they all came off the same conveyor belt. No wonder you mix them up.”
“Tschingis Tschingisovich was up on the scaffolding,” said one of the mustachioed men standing at the very front of the group. “I’m sorry, madam, nobody expected this.”
“That’s how it always is,” said Grandmother. “None of you expect anything. What’s wrong, Father? Stop! Stop it immediately!” She let out a piercing scream. At first I thought she was upset about the bloodstain on her nightgown. Then I realized that she was propping up my slumping grandfather with her entire body.
GENERAL DIET MEAL
Why did you bring the child with you?” hissed my grandmother.
My Grandmother's Braid Page 11
