High as the Waters Rise

by Anja Kampmann

  The big table from which he watched it all was coated with wax, and it was a while before he noticed that he’d started making notches in it. Many thin lines. In the next days, he’d thought sometimes of the falconers in the deserts. Of the radar station in the hills of Tangier. What kind of borders those were.

  All that now passed by him as he turned the Fiorino north. That afternoon he’d picked it up from the garage, a young female mechanic had welded the gas tank, and he’d left more money than he’d meant to, just because he could.

  34

  Bananas

  Then he’d driven. A little town on the coast, north of Słupsk, where his father had filled his lungs with sea air those last years. There were dunes, the dim Baltic Sea, the attic room with the oval window. They’d expanded an old military base somewhere nearby, he’d understood that much. They’d sold the house to pay for the place in the home, the paper crown, the plastic mouth organ.

  Buildings had sprung up around the little hut and then more buildings, the sea air squeezed between the villas as between a gap in teeth. The ornamental hazel now had a solid trunk. The land at the seaside for which his father had saved for years, the thing he’d been driving toward all that time underground, the place that was supposed to be a home, tiled, a structure without weight.

  Bigger houses had been built all around, massive, with high, narrow windows. The sea was only a sense, with the wide sky above it. He drew his legs in. His arms poked out of the sleeves of his anorak. It was a down jacket, and it was new.

  The house was even tinier than he remembered. Once he’d driven to Schwerin with his father, they wanted to see the castle, spend some time, it had been Waclaw’s suggestion, after he’d been out for months. In the Philippines he’d seen them bury a live chicken before the drilling began. The moths were as big as postcards, and around the floodlights it stank of burned and slowly rotting meat. They walked knee-deep through dead moths, the drill floor was dirty, the cabins small and hot, their teeth red from betel nuts. Sacks of chemicals, the airplanes so old that they had to be started with two wires, like in a bad movie. After that he’d known that he never wanted to work on land again. The jungle seemed more dangerous than the sea. Maybe he’d been a bit homesick out there, the soapstone animal like a protective idol on the windowsill. On land, Waclaw had bought a Land Rover and picked his father up in Słupsk. From there they drove all afternoon to Schwerin. On the drive, his father was so quiet next to him that Waclaw sometimes wondered if he were only imagining him. Sometimes he seemed like a shadow, escaped from the time with Alois. Like the light over the houses on a winter afternoon, which had a different color, white, and weaker, and, perhaps for that reason, strangely beautiful behind the bare branches. His father coughed. Waclaw drove on a field next to the road, kicking up sand behind them. They laughed.

  What do you say, Waclaw asked.

  There was a long pause before his father answered.

  We can leave the road, but only for a little while.

  Then he nodded, and they zigzagged over the brown fields. When they finally got out, a biting wind was coming off the water. It was too cold for a walk in the castle gardens. The huge parking lot was empty but for a few cars. Waclaw walked close behind him, and they hardly took any notice of the walls as they approached. Waclaw noticed how tense his father was as they went into the hall to warm up. He studied the menu. Only later did Waclaw understand that his father was considering his order. When the waitress came, he showered her with his best German: blueberries, sponge cake, whipped cream, hot chocolate, coffee, and all he wanted in return was a smile. But she placed their order on the table so indifferently that he hardly touched it. Waclaw tried to talk to him, but it was if there were nothing more to the afternoon than the few recordings of classic Beatles songs and the red armchairs. As they left, Tomek looked at the waitress so coldly that his jaw clenched, as if she were the whole country that didn’t want the love he’d saved up in all those shifts deep underground.

  A harsh wind was still blowing in front of the castle. The light came in long streaks over the big lake, gristly old trees on the bank, their bare branches striking one another. The wind wasn’t strong, just very cold.

  The windows of the pickup were fogged from inside, Waclaw had spent the night in it. He’d gambled, the streets were a casino, black, white, the numbers of the highways, he’d driven through forests, foxes lay crushed at the sides of the road, flat land, fields. And the wheel didn’t stop, and the ball didn’t hit the number. No one watched him through a hole in the wall, there were no black-and-white cameras. He’d seen the old pope with his red slippers on the television, he knew nothing of their Rome or of Mátyás’s hand, stroking his back, Waclaw wanted to believe in that hand.

  He’d stopped on the coast where he’d thought that, with a little imagination, he’d be able to see Sweden on the other side. But he’d seen nothing. A closed carnival, swans on the rusty tracks of a fairy-tale train.

  In the little harbor town, the market was being broken down for the day. Men in thick anoraks walked under the vegetable stands, punching water out of the tarps. It slapped the cobblestones.

  He saw how the rain ran into their black fingerless gloves, and he saw the turned-up collars and ragged hoods under which the men tried to protect themselves. They stacked the crates and filled a few of them with rotten fruit. They seemed tired from shouting, and hardly took any notice of the passersby. Behind a cash table stood a gas cylinder with a metal pan, through which little blue flames spat their warmth into the area. Waclaw walked toward it, past the men. The rubber hose that connected the canister and flame was wrapped in flaking silver, aluminum foil, the device had seen better days. Waclaw came closer and stretched his hands toward the warmth. How much does this cost? he asked. He turned slowly to the man in the fur hood who stood next to him. The man laughed. He shook his head. We need it, he said. You can see that. He looked at the square, where the wind was rolling a few empty plastic cups. Waclaw didn’t move. I mean, how much does this cost? He pointed at the machine again. The man looked at him.

  Waclaw dug in his pocket, then gave him a bill. The man unfolded it. He looked at Waclaw for a while. Then he shook his head again. No, he said, you won’t pay that much for it. Anywhere.

  How do you turn it off? Waclaw asked, as if he hadn’t heard him.

  The man helped him carry the gas cylinder to the pickup. Then they stood for a moment and watched as the metal cooled down. Five hundred, the man said again. He fished in his pocket and took out a few crumpled bills, but Waclaw pretended not to notice. The money rustled, and it sounded pointless, like a paper crown. The merchant put his money back away.

  After he’d stowed everything on the truck bed, Waclaw sat down in the cab. The man closed the tailgate, then he tossed two crates on the truck bed and waved a banana in the air. Take them, at least.

  He drove. He didn’t know the way, but he kept heading northeast. He had two crates of bananas and a heater, and night was falling. The stars distant behind the clouds.

  35

  Falcons

  And he was far away, and he sat with his back to the rocks in front of the rolling surf and saw the hoisted red flag and saw the footprints washed away in the sand and he felt the salt on his skin, the salty wetness of the sea that came with the wind.

  He hugged the duffel, wrapped his legs around it and rocked it back and forth. Like a child. He’d let himself drop into the sand, and the sand whipped his face, and he gritted his teeth as he had so many times before and he looked over the edge of his anorak and over the edge of the dunes and at the sea, where he could see them rising. With their steely gray feathers like projectiles or like distant flashes in the sky. It made him think of Alois. He’d squeezed himself into a phone booth, rain against the glass, a coin-operated phone. He’d tried to call him, imagined what he’d say. When did you let her go? Yesterday. On a day like yesterday. How’s it looking, was she in good form? And he would say nothing and stand ther
e and look into the darkness outside the phone booth and read the many little scribbles on the glass, inside this lit yellow cell. He would read I love you and he would read the names and he would hear the coins dropping and think of Alois in his little stone house on the mountainside, and he would think of the pigeon and the lights of the refineries in the night, of Alois’s good dry loft with fresh water from the river in the mountains. And he would say: all the falcons. He would say that he’d seen them. The white domes in Tangier. The lights beyond the fence. Perhaps he just stood in the booth and held the dead receiver in his hand and listened to the rain that whipped the glass like something that was coming closer.

  He lay on the back seat of Flavio’s pickup, covered with a thin blanket. He could feel the warmth in his armpits, his head lay heavy on the rain jacket that he’d balled up. He could smell the dampness and the mineral cold of the earth. It was winter now. The rain mixed with snow, but the flakes didn’t stick. Grains of pigeon feed glowed in the night sky. He knew it, but he couldn’t see it. The roof of the pickup was above him, it was warm under the blanket, a few feathers welled out of the sleeves of his down jacket, and he could see his breath. His nose was cold. The trees and bushes had been chopped down some distance from the high fence, in the darkness he saw the rolls of wire like hairballs on the Y posts, he looked at the other side for a while, two jeeps drove over the landing strip, and a bit of sleet glowed in their headlights. He looked through the fence as if something would come from that direction, something he’d been waiting for this whole time. Since when. Since Milena was gone. Since he’d stood with Mátyás in the workshop, the wideness of the seven seas before them. Since he’d watched her wrapping potato peelings in old newspaper for the pig. Sometimes it had been nothing more than that he’d awoken in the night and stood in the doorway, looking out into the rain. And that she’d stood behind him for a while. Nothing more. The moon like a flashlight, shining under white sheets. That they needed no more than these wet gardens.

  The wind came cold from the northeast. Before him, he knew, a few miles as the crow flies, lay the coast, dead trees rose out of the sand like forgotten markings. On the Polish side there were no tourists searching for amber with rolled-up pants. Not now. Not in the winter. He thought of the unreal light of infrared cameras, the shimmering of the bodies that moved in the darkness between bushes, bright spots, as in a dream. And the ground was soft and heavy, it wasn’t yet frozen. What little grass there was suffocated in the continuous rain.

  That afternoon he’d walked the path between the dunes once more. The tiny house with the oval window, his father’s wheezing, which he could hear as the soft sand gave under his feet. He hadn’t stayed long. An unfamiliar child had stuck cutouts on the inside of the windows. The window frames clung to nothing. Then he’d driven through the night. The rain had begun just after midnight. The blades of the windshield wipers were torn, and the oncoming lights blended on the windshield into a diffuse film of grime. He had to stop twice for gas before Redzikowo. The best Pumas flew seven hundred miles on a tank, they whirred high over the Gulf of Mexico, they carried the tired and the thirsty, this wasn’t Mexico. The rain pelted like sand.

  36

  At the Edge

  And he walked on the coast and through the bright sand, ground small and fine over the years, sand of parrot cages, sand of the seas, blue for the last faded posters of the travel agencies, he walked.

  He’d rolled up the tarp and taken it with him, and on the search for something edible he’d found the last of Alois’s red cans, and he took it with him. The light was bright and the wind piercingly cold. Bales of seagrass were washed up. He’d stuck his pants into his work boots and his sweater into his pants, but still it wasn’t warm. Summer was long over. For a few days he’d had a cough that kept coming back. The wind pressed against the land, he felt it at his back and on his neck, and there was no one else there, the waves somersaulted over themselves, glided out flat, pulled back, a few seagulls sailed over the water, and he walked for a long time, until he found a spot between the dunes, in the sharp grass, the fine sand came toward him over the crest.

  And it was later, after he’d rested and warmed up a bit, that he sat up and looked for a long time at the horizon. He stood up, the can at his side, and the cold penetrated his clothes, all the way to his skin. It required courage, he thought. And he thought, he could go now. And he went. To the edge of the dunes. Only a narrow strip of sand separated him from the sea. And there were no sandcastles and no footprints, just the water rolling in. He had the can at his side, the red can, whose edge had become rusty. He felt its weight, which was slight.

  For a while he stood there, freezing. The wind in his face. Then, very slowly, he raised his arm. Closed his eyes. Poured the whole last portion into his hand. The nuts, the seeds. Stretched his arm slowly, very calmly, in front of him and lifted it with closed eyes toward the horizon. Toward where the dragons lived. He stood, and he waited a long time.

  No sound. But as he opened his eyes, there was something like a bright flash, which he saw through the crest of his eyelashes. A bright apparition like a mouth that opened and came down toward him. He stood calm and closed his eyes, and then there was a very distinct feeling on his empty hand.

  Epilogue

  One evening on the way back from Alois’s he’d taken a detour and found the door of the gymnasium slightly ajar. As if someone had forgotten it.

  He went home. They sat on the pine bench, their dinner in front of them. Red tea and the warmth and the conversations, all the voices that were familiar to him.

  In the night, he slipped out again. Pulled an anorak over his dark pajamas with the yellow patches. First he stopped for a while in the bushes next to the gymnasium and listened. Whether there were voices, or someone there. Then he went out through the branches, and in the shadow of the bushes, crouched, he slowly made his way inside. It smelled of the rubber mats and sweat, and he could just smell the leather of the vaults from the equipment room. The wood of the parallel bars.

  He stood very still against the wall.

  There was no one there.

  Then, very quietly, he felt his way forward, until his hands touched the long pole with the hook. He stretched it up. After a few tries he found the chains and let down the rings.

  Both of them. His heart was pounding. The chains clinked.

  Everything in the big room seemed too clear, and the hall, without light, seemed even bigger.

  Again he stopped and listened. Then he went along the wall to the equipment room, to the big dish with the block of chalk. The powder crumbled in his hand. As he clapped it off, he could see the white clouds around him in a strip of moonlight. His hands shimmered white as he went back into the hall. As if they weren’t his.

  The rings swayed lightly above him on the ropes.

  He jumped up.

  The wooden rings hit lightly against each other. Then it was quiet again.

  His grip was firm.

  With his whole body, he swung himself back and forth. Back and forth. Ever higher.

  He felt his breath, and how fast he flew.

  He flew in the dark. Back and forth.

  His arms stretched above his head. He could see the tips of his toes stretching out into the darkness. Back and forth. And then he had the feeling he wasn’t even holding on, just a light wind at his sides. He felt a grin between his teeth, and he gained momentum, everything so light.

  Acknowledgments

  Between the first drafts of this book and the finished manuscript lie countless conversations, journeys, and encounters that have helped me shape and condense the material. Particular thanks go to Phil Jorgensen, Peter Müller, and Miłosz Biedrzycki, who helped me with technical questions and research material, the Else Heiliger Fund for the financial freedom to begin, Frank for accompanying me over the Mediterranean, my family for memories of the Ruhr Valley, Michael Krüger, Elisa Tamaschke, and Dorota Stroińska and Piero Salabè for help with the langua
ges.

  © Juliane Henrich

  ANJA KAMPMANN was born in Hamburg and resides in Leipzig. High as the Waters Rise is her first novel, for which she received the Mara Cassens Prize for best German debut novel and the Lessing Promotion Prize. She was also awarded the Bergen-Enkheim prize and was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize and the German Book Prize.

  © Carleen Coulter

  ANNE POSTEN translates prose, poetry, and drama from the German. Her translations of authors such as Peter Bichsel, Carl Seelig, Thomas Brasch, Tankred Dorst, Anna Katharina Hahn, and Paul Scheerbart have appeared with New Directions, The University of Chicago Press, n+1, and VICE, among other publications. She is based in Berlin.