The Center of the World

by Andreas Steinhöfel

  Maybe my blindness is brought on by the sleet that begins to come down just before it gets dark. It turns Visible into a glittering crystal palace, spreading out over the white landscape like a glass tablecloth over a feather quilt, and transforms the Little People’s town into a raft sailing on an unreal reflection of a royal blue sky. The sleet also turns the roads into icy toboggan runs; Tereza and Pascal arrive at Visible two hours later than planned for the New Year’s Eve party.

  “It’s only because you’re buggering off tomorrow, otherwise we would never have ventured out on this ice rink,” snorts Pascal. She throws her rucksack at me—on loan for my trip. “There’s a sleeping bag inside. But don’t you dare mess it up using it with some guy, got it?”

  “Oh, Pascal, do shut it! Come here, Phil.” Tereza clasps me to her, then pulls me by one ear.

  “Careful, they’re only sewn on!”

  “They need pulling all the same. You might have let us know earlier what you’re planning.”

  “Just like you told me you’re going to Holland?”

  “One-nil to you.” Tereza smiles. “What do you actually intend to be when you’re grown up?”

  The entire evening is centred on Gable’s and my imminent departure. Tereza and Pascal have cooked and baked ahead like

  crazy and immediately requisition the kitchen, alternately laughing and arguing as usual. Glass and Dianne have carried the kitchen table into the room with the fireplace and set it with all the odd, mismatched dishes, glasses, and cutlery from Visible’s kitchen, making it look as festive as if we’re about to celebrate some millennium jubilee. Michael has raided his wine cellar and to Pascal’s utter consternation has brought along shiny gold and silver party hats with elastic chin straps.

  “You’re trying to make me look a complete dolt with that thing on my head!” Pascal fights him off as Michael grabs her near the oven and attempts to fit the little hat on her head.

  “It’s all a question of habit,” replies Michael “Or could it be we’re vain, by any chance?”

  Pascal grunts, reaches out for a carrot, and demonstratively saws it in two under his eyes. Michael shrinks back in feigned horror. Later, as Pascal serves the first course—fish soup—together with Tereza, she’s still wearing the mini-hat.

  The feast goes on and on. It’s fantastic and worth every moment. The wine—although I’m hardly a judge—could inspire even a hardened connoisseur of the rank of Handel to write an ode to the sun. For the hundredth time everyone wishes Gable and me, but specially me, all the very best. If at all possible, the mood is even more harmonious and more relaxed than it had already been at Christmas. And today Gable restricts himself to stories of beauty and wonders, as if he didn’t want to frighten me unnecessarily before we set out. I make up my mind to ask him about his scar once we’re away.

  I don’t know why, but I postpone packing. When I finally leave the table and go up to my room with Pascal’s huge rucksack over my arm, it’s already eleven o’clock. Barely an hour to go before midnight and the New Year. This time tomorrow Gable and I will already have finished the first leg of our journey and embarked. I pack the bare minimum. Gable warned me that I might have to carry the rucksack for days, mile after mile across country, once I’m in America. Once last time I look at the two wall maps: America. The world. I go over to the shelf, stroke Mr. Troht’s sweet jars, peace be to his ashes, and place my hand where for years and years Paleiko used to sit and look out at me serenely. With one last look out of the window at the river and the lights of the town, I put out the light and leave the room. I put the rucksack down in the hall. Now there’s just one more thing I’m going to pack.

  Moonlight reflected by the snow and ice falls into the library through the tall double windows. This is all the light I need. I go over to one of the shelves and let my hand wander across the backs of the books.

  “You’d never go without a book, would you?” I hear Glass say behind me.

  “No.”

  I turn slowly to face her. She’s sitting on my story throne, barely visible in the moonlight. Her hands blend into the arms of the chair. Her head is leaned back in deepest shadow. I can’t make out her face.

  “Which one are you going to take?”

  Stella didn’t leave many books, but there’s one that I must have read a dozen times. It’s appropriate for a sea voyage, but I’d also take it if I were flying to the moon. I take it down from the shelf. “Moby Dick,” I say in the direction of the story throne.

  “Is it good?”

  “Yes. It’s …”

  I stop. All at once I know why Glass has been waiting for me here. My hands close round the book and begin to sweat.

  “I have a suggestion,” says Glass. “You ask me whatever you want to know. Either I’ll answer or I won’t. But I’m not prepared for a discussion.”

  “Agreed.” Inside my head everything is in turmoil. I take a deep breath and try to put my thoughts in order. ‘Right. What’s his name?”

  “Next question.”

  “Oh, thanks! Very encouraging.”

  “Phil …”

  “It’s all right, OK.” My head feels like it’s made of wood. I think hard. “What was he like?”

  Glass hesitates. For a long time she says nothing. So long that I’m tempted to abandon this stupid game, almost before it’s started. Then I hear Glass take a deep breath.

  “He was wonderful, Phil. He was the most wonderful man you could ever imagine. The best.”

  The words strike me like blows below the belt. Gold and blood-red stars flash before my eyes. “If he was so wonderful, what made him walk out on you?”

  “He didn’t,” comes the answer out of the dark. “He loved me too much for that.”

  My anger fades away almost before it has flared up. And only now it dawns on me that I’ve roused phantoms better left asleep. I recall the bubbling up of dark air during that dim and distant night following the Battle of the Big Eye. Then, even before Dianne confessed she had been aiming her arrow at the Hulk’s heart, I’d already sensed she was going to say something I didn’t want to hear. It’s the same now. Once again the air is dark, but instead of Dianne’s whispering there is just the smell of old books here and the relentless voice of my mother.

  “He was so gentle,” I hear her say. “When he touched a flower, it would bloom soon after, I swear, Phil. I saw it. Once we went to a circus. We walked past the cages with the big cats, and the creatures that had been pacing up and down and roaring as we approached just lay down quietly. Your father put his hand through the bars and stroked the head of a lion. He was unafraid.”

  My chest is too tight to contain my pounding heart.

  “Dianne was just like him,” said the darkness. “Just as sensitive. When she was little she could hear the world breathe, just like her father. That’s why I thought her just as vulnerable. That’s why I wanted to protect her.”

  My hands grip the book more tightly, so tight that my fingernails dig deep into the cover. “What happened then?” I whisper.

  “I became pregnant. From that moment on your father didn’t just love me, he worshiped me. He was as pleased as a little child and planned our future. He wanted to marry me. He wanted to build us a house. And he would have done all that.”

  “What happened?”

  “He had a friend. A best friend. Gordon paid court to me, and I was so mad for him that I felt drunk just to think of him touching me. I couldn’t get enough love, never mind who from. I was so damned grateful that the very thought makes me quite ill now. I would have taken any man. Later on that’s just what I did, to extremes.”

  Glass laughs out loud, a short, bitter sound. I lower my head. The parquet floor at my feet shimmers. Dianne and I used to play hopscotch here long ago. Somewhere in the cracks between the individual floorboards there are ancient remnants of chalk dust. I remember how the dry dust lit up and shone when it was caught in the light of God’s fingers. “Phil?”

  “Yes?”
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  “Look at me.”

  I raise my head. Glass has leaned forward. Her face looks like a ghostly mask. Her lips are thin dark lines.

  “I behaved like a whore.”

  “No, Mom. Please …”

  “Your father caught us. His pregnant girlfriend in bed with his best friend. After that I couldn’t look him in the face any longer.” Glass gives a weak smile. Tiny dots of light dance in her pupils. “With you at least I want to do so.”

  “Mom, you mustn’t say things like that.” My entire body feels paralyzed. “It simply isn’t true.”

  “I know. But for years I thought it was. And that’s why I had to say it at least once.” Glass leans back again into the shelter of the shadows. “Whatever, I decided to leave. At first I didn’t know where; finally I thought of Stella. Your father … he begged me on his knees not to leave him. He beat the floor with his hands till they bled. My God, he humiliated himself before me. And I felt so ashamed, Phil.”

  “You could have stayed with him.”

  “No. I couldn’t guarantee that the same thing wouldn’t happen again. And again, and again. I would have kept on wounding him. He didn’t deserve that. No one deserves that.” A hand detaches itself from the arm of the throne. I don’t know when Glass started to cry. Perhaps she couldn’t help thinking of how my father felt when she left him. He must have said it was as if someone had torn away his skin and rubbed salt in.

  “Couldn’t you have … with the other one?”

  “Gordon wasn’t interested in a pregnant woman,” came the short reply. “Nor I in him for the long term. We were kids, Phil. He wanted his freedom, I wanted mine.”

  The irony of the story doesn’t escape me. For years all my thoughts had centered on Number Three. But the real reason I never got to know my father is Number Four, the man whose name is next on the list. No, I correct myself, that’s also wrong. The real reason is Glass herself, who grabbed at love or what she thought was love whenever and wherever she could. And once we go down that road, searching for the explanation for her conduct, then we get to—oh, then we’re back with the passions and the question of the when and the where of the beginning of all things. Better, ladies and gentlemen, to get on with the story, if we don’t want to do our heads in.

  “Why did you never tell Dianne and me?” I ask into the darkness. “Why did you make such a huge secret of it?”

  “Because of Tereza, darling.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “I lied to her,” Glass interrupts me. “The first time she asked me about your father I told her he’d walked out on me and I’d been so badly hurt that I never wanted to talk about it again. Tereza accepted that and never broached the subject again. Instead she helped me and put me back on my feet. Without Tereza there wouldn’t be you or Dianne, there wouldn’t be Visible. There’d be nothing.”

  “You could have explained to her later on. She’d have understood.”

  “Maybe … But I kept putting it off, and every day that passed convinced me that I’d done the right thing. To make myself out as the victim made everything a whole lot easier. What I have and what I am all comes from this one lie. With time it began to weigh more and more heavily on me. But at the beginning it didn’t seem such a high price to pay.”

  Silence returns to the library. It’s as if Visible is straining to catch Glass’s every word. I can’t hate Glass. We’ve all paid for her lie, Dianne far more than me. But Glass is the one who’s punished herself all through her life for this lie, with every entry on her list, to confirm to herself and others that she deserved the label she’d given herself—the label one of Those Out There had also promptly scratched on the paintwork of her car one day.

  “You have told Michael, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, he knows… . He may be moving to Visible,” she adds after a while.

  “That’s good.”

  “Maybe.”

  My fingers can’t keep hold of the book any longer. I put it back on the shelf. My hands slide over one of the herbaries, and I shrink back as if I’ve had an electric shock.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Dianne takes after him. A bit. She has his hair.” In the darkness two flat palms open wide in a gesture of regret. “It’s crazy, but I can’t really remember much else.”

  “What’s his name?”

  The hands drop. “No, Phil.”

  “Mom, please! I could try.”

  “That’s not a good idea. He may well be married by now, have a wife and children, who knows. Would you want to destroy him?”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “No, of course not. He might also be holed up in some corner still waiting for a miracle. He would build a shrine to you. He would worship you as he worshiped me. Is that what you want?”

  I hang my head. Everything’s been said; the audience is at an end. When I look up again, Glass has got off the throne. She goes to the door and opens it. Light from the hall falls into the library.

  I look at Glass, and I can’t help myself—I have to grin.

  She looks down at herself uncomprehendingly, then places a hand on her hip. “What is it?”

  “Mom, how … how could you tell me all that with both of us wearing these ridiculous party hats?”

  Glass reaches under her chin. She pulls off the little gold hat, and even as she is still considering it in amazement like a foreign body, a small alien that chose her head for an emergency landing, we both burst out laughing. Tears follow the laughter, and after the tears we sober up. Nothing seems to have changed, yet everything is different than it was before. My knees are shaking. Nothing is simple.

  “Oh and I mustn’t forget this,” sniffs Glass. She pulls an envelope out of her pants pocket and hands it to me. “Happy New Year, darling!”

  I open the envelope, look inside, and gasp. “Glass, you’re crazy! Where did you … ?”

  I rush past her into the kitchen. The table is still in the other room with the chimney, where laughter rings out. My eyes run across the shelves and countertop.

  “She’s dead,” says Glass. She stands in the doorway and dangles the little gold paper hat by its elastic from her index finger.

  “You slaughtered Rosella?”

  “Oh, it was very quick,” replies Glass. “I can promise you, she didn’t feel a thing.”

  “I can’t take this money. It belongs to you.”

  “Don’t get the wrong idea, darling.” Glass puts the little hat back on her head. “I’m not the welfare department. I’ve divided it into three—a third for me, a third for Dianne, and a third for you.”

  “Mom …”

  “I won’t take no for an answer, understand?” Her voice has dropped to a whisper. “I had nothing when I arrived here, Phil. Just the two of you and a little suitcase, and I was scared out of my bloody mind.”

  Only now does the tension that’s been keeping me together evaporate. I feel I’m swaying, and I’m afraid I’ll collapse any moment. With her revelation about Number Three she’s pulled the rug from under my feet. I don’t know how to cope with my confusion, with the disappointment that for the moment at least is greater than the hesitant understanding I’m beginning to feel for my mother. All I know is that it’s good to go off with Gable, to put some distance between me and Visible and my life, which feels incomplete through and through and which I’m slowly losing sight of.

  “Come here,” says Glass. She folds her arms around me and holds me close. We stay like that for a while, embracing like a pair of lovers, clinging to each other like little children afraid of the dark. “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself, sweetheart.”

  “Cross my heart and—’’

  “Shh … don’t say that.”

  Glass lets go of me, places her hands on my shoulders, and looks at me intently. “I lied to you. I can remember him very well. Dianne has his hair, but you have his eyes. And his mou
th.”

  “Do I have his ears as well?”

  “No, absolutely not.” She wrinkles her nose. “Only Dumbo has your ears. And even he’s far better-looking than you.”

  Tiny furrows appear at the corner of her mouth. I wait. Slowly Glass bends forward. She rises on tiptoe. I close my eyes in expectation of her goodbye kiss. Then I feel her lips close to my ears, feel them open and close.

  She whispers his name.

  It is the final minute of the old year. We all troop outside and gather on the veranda, where we chant the remaining seconds out loud. Then the booming of the church bells crashes through the air, the first rockets shoot up into the clear star-studded sky and explode, rainbow-colored fountains rush toward the ground. Whooping, we all fall into each others arms. Corks pop, champagne foams from ice-cold bottles, and everyone clinks glasses. Glass strikes up the first bars of “Auld Lang Syne,” and we all join in, Gable leading us in his deep bass voice. In the sky above Visible a firework bursts open, growing bigger and bigger and ever more glorious. It turns the winter night to day and is reflected on the icy landscape in a blurred and strangely magnified form. Michael has bought jumping jacks and firecrackers—the noise is meant to drive away the ghosts of the old year—and we greet each explosion by cheering loudly.

  Later Pascal and Tereza fool around in the icy snow, which crackles like splinters of the thinnest glass. Dianne has promised she will look after the cypress. She sips at her champagne and keeps nodding as Gable talks to her quietly. Now and again the two of them laugh out loud. Arms round each other, Glass and Michael sway in the semidarkness of the veranda to old songs by Billie Holiday. I stand in the driveway looking up at Visible’s walls and wish I could embrace the house. I still feel as if the ground is swaying under my feet, but I’m no longer afraid of falling. It’s a lovely feeling. It’s the feeling of life in motion.