The Center of the World

by Andreas Steinhöfel

  This didn’t seem to bother Mr. Troht. He was an institution among the Little People, many of whom still remained loyal to him after the supermarket opened in competition, even if it meant buying just a bit of butter, some cigarettes, or the daily newspaper. Possibly it might have been better for Mr. Troht’s takings if he’d sold information instead of groceries, for he knew everyone, just as one and all knew him, and he always had time for a little chat. In view of this it would have been surprising if he’d never heard anything about the American whore and the witch children. But regardless of what he may have heard, it never stopped him from chatting with Glass like an old friend. At the time I could have sworn blind that it was Mr. Troht’s sweets that won me over. Today I believe it was his way of treating people without any prejudice.

  “Been in several wars,” he explained to Glass on more than one occasion in words as dry as if his ancient vocal cords had been wrapped in blotting paper. “You want to have fun? Then have fun! Life’s too short to waste it on wars. You give love? Good for you, I say! Too little of it about, too little love in the world. Everyone should make love, that’s my opinion, old Troht’s opinion. All these wars, and not enough love.” With that the enormous slit eyes rolled in Dianne’s and my direction. “And you two little birds, have you done a good deed?”

  From time to time the two little birds received one of the alluring sweets. These brightly colored gobstoppers were incredibly hard. Dianne and I were in the first year at school, and in the whole class Mr. Troht’s sweets were legendary. Some children maintained he had them made specially in some exotic Asian country—no doubt Mr. Troht’s slit eyes behind the lenses were the source of this assumption—and it was said that the sweets didn’t break or even get the slightest scratch if hurled with full force against a stone wall or on an asphalt pavement. Which neither Dianne or I ever did, the sweets being far too precious. What mattered to us was that by reason of their absolutely magical hardness, they lasted for many hours. But we didn’t get the sweets for absolutely nothing in return—the question whether the little birds had performed a good deed was asked so regularly by Mr. Troht that I soon arrived at the conclusion that for some reason best known to himself he thought we were Scouts or our mother a representative of the Salvation Army. Whereas initially I would reply that I’d caught a grasshopper and then let it go again, I’d picked a bunch of flowers for my mum while out on a walk, I’d stuck some chewing gum under a desk at school but taken it off again immediately—I used to rack my brains before each visit to the shop in order to come up with as attractive a good deed as possible and pocket an accordingly generous reward as a result—Dianne would always give the same answer: “I sat on the toilet to do a wee.” And she would thereupon unfairly receive exactly the same number of sweets as me.

  And so I realized that Mr. Troht didn’t really care what our good deeds were. Shortsighted to the point of blindness as he was, he seemed to ask the questions just in order to hear our voices, for regardless of the answers we would be showered with sweets as he called out, “To love, to love in the world!” I would have loved to sit on his lap, just to listen to him, to hear his voice, as he heard ours. But I never saw Mr. Troht sitting down; he always stood behind the counter. It was as if he had no lower abdomen, or as if it had long since melded into the counter. Mr. Troht must already have been old before Glass came into the world; perhaps he was already old when he himself was born. “In any case, he’s by far the dearest old heart this town has ever seen,” Glass once said. Dianne and I both agreed that was the greatest compliment we’d ever heard our mother utter about one of Those Out There, even though it didn’t seem quite proper, as we thought she’d said fart instead of heart.

  When Mr. Troht wasn’t deploring the lack of love in the world, he would talk about the war. “Bee-dven-dyets,” he would keep saying, and it wasn’t till years later that I realized he meant B-28 bombers. “Those were the worst! Came from America, like you! Hatch open and all hell let loose, and d’you know, my little birds, we deserved it! We did terrible things in the war and long before, for which no God can ever forgive us! I’ve had it with all those wars.” He shook his wrinkled head slowly. “You’re Yanks as well, you little birds, but so what, there’s too little love in the world.”

  As with all men, I also stared at Mr. Troht’s hands. They were repulsive, ugly—as big as shovels, with thick blue veins that branched out on the back of his hands like a river delta. These fingers fished about in the sweet jars like tweezers, because that was the only way Mr. Troht could get through their narrow necks to the contents that Dianne and I were excitedly waiting for. “And what does a polite child say?” he would ask after he had stuffed our greedy little mouths full, after which, prompted by a light tap on the back of our heads from Glass, Dianne and I would thank him politely. My gratitude went so far as to make me consider at length whether to give him a kiss on the cheek sometime, in spite of his ugly hands. The impulse was there every time, but respect for a man who had been in several wars—who might not even be able to see me if I came up to him with pursed lips and might even take me for an approaching Bee-dven-dyet, which might be too much for his heart—canceled out the impulse, and so Mr. Troht remained unkissed by me. Which I truly regretted when one day he simply wasn’t there any longer. “Where is he?” I asked Glass. I’d wanted to pop into Mr. Troht’s shop on the way home from school in the hope of a sweet. But the door was locked.

  “He was too old to carry on with his shop. His daughter came to collect him. Mr. Troht lives in an old people’s home now.”

  “Is it far away?”

  “Much too far,” answered Glass.

  “Further than the moon?”

  “Nothing’s further than the moon, darling.”

  I was surprised that Mr. Troht had children of his own; he’d never mentioned them. His shop remained closed for a long time. For months on my way home from school I squashed my nose hat against the dirty small windowpanes, behind which there was nothing to be seen apart from a few capped electric cables dangling sadly from the ceiling, the broken clock on the wall, and the emptied shelves slowly disappearing under a layer of dust. The cash register had vanished. In the end the shop was refurbished, the old windows removed and replaced by new, bigger ones. A fashion boutique opened there, and for me the world was the poorer by one form of magic. I wondered what had happened to the glass sweet jars and angrily came to the conclusion that Mr. Troht must have taken them with him to the old people’s home, where the colored balls were disappearing in exchange for good deeds between shriveled lips and toothless mouths.

  One long, sweetless year later a well-groomed older woman was standing in front of Visible. She introduced herself to Glass as Fraulein Troht and told her in a matter-of-fact way that a week ago Mr. Troht had died peacefully in his sleep. Then she handed Glass the three huge glass jars, filled to the top with gobstoppers in all colors of the rainbow.

  “Expressly for the children,” said Fraulein Troht, “and I was to tell you that you should continue as before. Do you know what he meant by that?”

  Glass nodded.

  ‘“Died peacefully in his sleep’ means,” she explained when Dianne and I arrived home from school to be surprised by the treasures, “that you shouldn’t mourn for Mr. Troht. He came to the end of his road peacefully and with a smile on his lips.”

  I never heard her speak the same way again after that.

  “Is he dead?” asked Dianne.

  “Of course he’s dead,” sniffed Glass.

  “And will he be buried?”

  “Naturally, sweetheart. Everyone gets buried when they die, you know that. Like Tereza’s father.” Glass sniffed again and then pointed to the enticing shining glass jars. “But Mr. Troht left you these sweets. They ought to last until you’re at least as old as he was.” She smacked each of us lightly on the backside. “Well, and now both of you go and write a thank-you letter to his daughter.”

  Dianne and I nodded obediently, cre
pt into our room with a day’s ration of sweets, and wrote old Fraulein Troht in our best rounded children’s handwriting telling her not to be upset, because although her father was gone, he hadn’t gone nearly as far as the moon. Apart from which, he was the nicest old fart the town had ever known, with best wishes. Dianne and I thought this incomparably long for a letter—it took us half an hour to cobble the sentences together—and so Fraulein Troht was spared a postscript saying it would have been all right to send us the sweets by post. We thought it really great that she had taken the time to come all the way to Visible after all the trouble she must have had after her father died, what with the three sacks of potatoes and the burial in her garden.

  “I knew him too. And it’s true those sweets of his were awesome.” Nicholas taps the empty jar. “Have you got any more of them hidden away somewhere?”

  “Eaten up, the lot of them. Years ago.”

  “All those good deeds?” Nicholas turns the sweet jar slowly, very carefully, in his hands, as if it’s made of the thinnest crystal. “Troht. I’d forgotten the name. No, actually, my mother wasn’t too keen on the shop either. Too dark and stuffy for her.”

  “So why did she go there then?”

  “Just for small things.” He places the jar back on the shelf. “Amazing that you remember all these old stories so clearly …”

  “Everyone has stories like that in their past.”

  “I don’t.”

  He goes over to one of the windows and opens it wide. Cool air flows into the room. Leaning on the window seat, Nicholas looks out. I look at his upper body, dark against the dull light, like a painting bordered by the light window frame, black on gray surrounded by white. His back leaning forward slightly, the narrow hips, the two handfuls of tight bottom, the long legs, all of it so perfect, his black hair curling into his neck. I don’t know why my heart has chosen to rest on him of all people, has opted for his silence and his irritating reticence. I feel like stretching out my arms to reduce the distance between us. Nicholas could at this moment turn round and leave the room without another word, without even looking at me. He could fall victim to a lightning flash of amnesia, could forget me before his hands even leave the window seat. He could, like Stella in her time, fall out of the window—maybe it’s this very window beneath which she lay on the drive with a broken neck and blood dripping from her nose; I’ve never asked Glass about it. He could—

  “Would you like to come and visit me? At my place?” Nicholas turns round to me and crosses the room with long strides. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  “When?”

  “Whenever you want.”

  “Do you parents know about us?”

  “No.”

  He sits down on my mattress, pats the space beside him, and as I sit down next to him he clasps my face with both his hands. He touches me as gently as he touched the glass jar before. I look into his eyes, trying to fathom their blackness, but there is nothing, only the mirror of my blindness, and for the moment that’s enough for me.

  He kisses me.

  chapter 13

  a

  room

  of

  his own

  The stinging nettles at the foot of the castle tower are so heavy they can hardly stay upright. They prop each other up like the lances of exhausted battle-worn soldiers. Kat and I are wearing coats; as it’s turned distinctly cold. The wind tears through our hair and turns our foreheads and cheeks a raw red. October is almost over; it’s one of the last chances to go up the castle tower again with a visitor before winter sets in. The past few days have been stormy. The treetops are almost completely bare; as we look down on them, they’re like a dark rustling sea of thousands of opened but hole-filled umbrellas. A broad bank of mist rolls over the town from the hills. It makes me think of a huge roll of gray, grainy gift wrap unfurled by some mighty hand to wrap up the toy houses of the town.

  “Well, are you going to take it back?”

  “What?”

  “Saying he’s superficial.”

  Kat gives a sniff. “If he ever decides to talk a bit more about himself, then maybe.”

  “Blank spots?”

  “By the acre, I guess.”

  I look down on the river, disappearing into misty nothingness in the hollow of the valley below, opaque and sluggish. “He doesn’t let it all hang out like I do.”

  “Adds to the attraction.” Kat reaches into her coat pocket and pulls something out. It’s small red plane made of folded paper. “Have you been to his house yet?”

  “No. But he asked whether I’d like to come sometime.”

  “And?”

  “His parents have no idea. I don’t feel like putting on an act in front of them.”

  “Maybe you’ll want to put on act once you’ve met them.”

  “They live on Fox Pass.” I point to the right, where a large hill rises out of the mist with a single extended row of houses nestling up against it. “I always thought the rich were so decadent that a gay person in the family wouldn’t make any waves.”

  “Money doesn’t necessarily breed tolerance.”

  “Does make it easier to put up with all sorts of pain, though.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Kat gives a quiet laugh. “Well, then, I hope I won’t ever have to suffer pain. My credit’s next to nowhere.”

  The paper plane whizzes past with an elegant swoop over the tower, sails straight ahead a little way, and then spirals downward, getting ever smaller till its outline is lost among the treetops and the red shape is swallowed up in the mist.

  The plots along Fox Pass are much bigger, the houses more imposing, the gardens more luxuriant, and the fences higher than in any other part of town. The unrestricted view they offer across the valley is magnificent. The town is a sea of red roofs, Visible a splodge crowned with tiny pewter ridges at the far end of the world. I’ve only ever been here once, on a brilliant summer day when I was a little kid exploring his world and its close borders on my bike. If God should ever decide to take up residence among the Little People, I thought at the time, he would choose Fox Pass. In the eyes of the kid I was then, the sky had stretched itself across the land like a canopy of deep blue silk. Today it’s gray and sad. I find the house number Nicholas told me on a shuttered garage. To the right a winding stairway of black basalt slabs flanked by nodding shrubs leads upward. There is a mailbox and another for newspapers.

  The house itself, a complex structure of snow-white bricks that drops away at the rear, appears to grow directly out of the hillside. Above it, all the way up to the broad crest of the mountain, there is nothing but wild vegetation and dense thickets of trees. I ask myself how a three-person household can fill this enormous house. Visible is bigger, but we use only a fraction of the rooms. Fearful of discovering possible damage to ceilings, walls, or any of the wiring, there are rooms that Glass hasn’t looked into for years.

  I ring at the door, and Nicholas answers. Immediately I notice he’s wearing a dark blue shirt. He never usually wears shirts, only T-shirts or sweaters. Maybe there’s a different dress code up here among the rich. He smiles, steps outside the door, and lets it close behind him. Without stopping to greet me, he grabs me by the arm and pulls me along behind him.

  “Come along. This way.”

  I stumble along after him. Dull grass fans out damply under my footsteps from yesterday’s rain. In between islands of shrubs and flower beds, most of which are already covered with mulch and fir branches to protect them from early frost, we go across a carefully tended enormous lawn around the house.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “To meet my mother.”

  “And where’s your father?”

  “Abroad, on business.”

  “Is he away often?”

  “As often as possible. He’s away more than he’s here.”

  His mother is very slim. She has black hair, like Nicholas. She wea
rs a figure-hugging lime-green dress and a necklace of tiny silver-white beads. She has a preoccupied introverted look. Her mouth opens and closes soundlessly. She’s talking to herself and walks up and down as she does so, six steps one way, six steps back, to and fro, forward and back again. Nicholas and I are standing behind a box hedge. I’m staring through an enormous floor-length window at this unhappy automaton behind glass. I don’t like to look, because the spectacle upsets me so much. But I can’t turn my eyes away.

  ‘ This isn’t at all what I expected,” I whisper.

  Nicholas shrugs indifferently. “This is as near as you can approach her safely.” He doesn’t even bother to lower his voice. “That applies to me as well.”

  “That sounds really awful.”

  He doesn’t look at me. His gaze is fixed spellbound on the spectacle behind the window. He nods gently in time to his mother’s pacings.

  “Doesn’t your father ever take her along with him when he travels abroad?”

  “The two of them hate each other. One of these days they’ll kill each other.”

  “Would that make you feel better?”

  Now he throws me a sidelong glance, his forehead furrowed. “You do ask the strangest questions, Phil. Come along, let’s move on.”

  Again I stumble along behind him. Something inside me is gasping for air. I’ll never be able to ask him why he detests his parents so much. I’ll never get anything other than evasive answers from him. His mother and I may stay on different sides of this window, but Nicholas remains behind glass as far as the two of us are concerned.

  We cross the stone slabs set into the grass to go round the house and pass several windows fitted with wrought-iron grilles. Several items of garden furniture made of heavy, weatherproof timber stand on a spacious terrace. A pale marble birdbath filled with water from yesterday’s rain waits for visitors. Behind the terrace is a single-story annex—two windows and a door—that may once have housed garden implements. Now it’s where Nicholas lives. He takes a key from his trouser pocket, unlocks the door, and steps aside.