by Sofie Cramer
Clara suddenly gets a lump in her throat when she thinks of yesterday’s visit with her grandparents. Together they sat at the dining room table, which, just like Lisbeth and Willy, is well over seventy years old.
Her grandmother is such a dainty woman, Clara thought as she began slicing up the freshly baked cake. And yet even still she’s robust and strong, and there’s always been a warm radiance about her.
Clara is very close to her, even if she inherited neither her physical features nor any noticeable character traits. She takes more after her grandfather, who just like her father has intense, bright green eyes. Either way, generally speaking the relatives on her father’s side of the family are really much closer to Clara’s heart. Could that be because she lost her father so early?
She was just eleven when he was diagnosed with colon cancer. He died of it a short time later. It all went very fast, and sometimes Clara is ashamed of herself because she can only vaguely remember his voice, his face, or the way he smelled.
Her relationship with her mother has been strained ever since. It’s so much easier for Clara to speak to Lisbeth about all the things weighing on her mind.
“So, my child. You get yourself a nice big dollop to top this with,” her grandmother commanded and reached for the crystal dish with the whipped cream.
“But your cake tastes so delicious just like it is!” Clara replies, knowing full well that any objections on her part will be roundly ignored.
While she was still eating her cake and listening to the usual chitchat about the neighbors and the latest argument they were having—something to do with the introduction of paper recycling bins that were going to be managed by a private company—Willy got up and headed back to the living room.
“How’s he doing these days?” asked Clara as she took another piece of cake.
“Well, you know, he’s struggling along, for better or worse. He really misses riding his bike all the time like he used to.” Usually Lisbeth would smile and change the subject, but this Sunday she lowered her gaze. “I’m afraid he’s getting to the point where he doesn’t want to go on anymore.”
“How come?” Clara could feel her heart beating faster all of a sudden. “What happened?”
“Nothing’s happened, nothing at all. But he’s been saying so little recently. And for a long time now his sleep has been very restless.”
“What do you mean, restless? Could he have had another stroke?”
“No, no, we would have noticed that. He’s still going to the doctor regularly. I just think that he’s . . .” Lisbeth had trouble finding the words. “I think that, emotionally, he’s not doing so well.”
“But Grandma, that’s no wonder! Especially now, when it’s getting to be spring and he can’t do all the things he used to anymore.”
“Well, sure. But I think it’s even worse than that somehow.”
“But what makes you think that?”
“I just sense it.”
“Okay, but what exactly do you sense?”
“I can’t explain it. He’s just not doing very well.”
Clara swallowed hard. She didn’t dare probe any further, but she had the feeling her grandmother was keeping something from her.
“Oh, honey,” sighed Lisbeth. “I know he might seem like a big grump sometimes, but he’s very soft and sensitive at heart. It’s just tearing him up inside that . . . um, well, you know, that so much has changed.”
“You mean since Ben’s been gone?” Clara asked softly, and hearing her own voice as she asked the question she knew there was no need for an answer.
She was stunned. It had never occurred to her that her grandfather might be suffering so much from this horrible turn of events.
“You know him. He always thinks way too much about things,” Lisbeth added and started clearing the table.
Slowly it dawned on Clara. This might not be about Willy at all or at least not completely; maybe it was also about how Lisbeth no longer knew where to turn with her worries. Sure, she had a few old friends and a second son. But the son lived with his family near Frankfurt and rarely came to Lüneburg to visit.
Lisbeth came back to the table with a Tupperware container full of cake.
“But I thought . . . ,” Clara began and hung her head—she couldn’t bear looking at her grandmother’s worried face.
Then Lisbeth reached for her granddaughter’s hand and said: “Grandpa loves you so terribly much. Even if he doesn’t say much, he knows that your sensitive little soul is hurt.”
Even though Clara has firmly resolved never to be a source of worry for her grandmother again, tears still come to her eyes when she thinks back on the scene now. But at this moment, she isn’t sure if she’s weeping on account of Ben or her grandparents. She can’t help but utterly give in to her despair and self-pity. Clara cries harder than she has in weeks. She feels both guilty and, at the same time, like she’s been treated unfairly—as if life had betrayed her.
In moments like these, when all she can feel is sadness and emptiness, the thought sometimes occurs to Clara: Maybe she should just check out, take the same cowardly route that Ben might well have chosen. She would simply take pills and cry herself to sleep, and everything would finally be good again. But she knows that taking such a step would only bring more misery into the world, not less. Her conscience immediately makes itself heard.
What would her grandmother, grandfather, and mother do without her? And Katja and her childhood friend Bea would definitely never forgive her for not confiding in them. It might even be her fault if her grandfather completely lost the will to live afterward.
Ever since Ben’s death, Clara feels like she’s in a glass prison. Her family, her friends, her coworkers—she can see them, they’re all gathered around her and are there for her anytime she needs them. But she can’t reach them. Even when she speaks to them, hardly any of them understands what she’s really trying to say. Instinctively she can tell that even the most compassionate people eventually get to the point where they’re no longer capable of dealing with all the things she has to get off her chest again and again. She can feel the loneliness creeping into her; it’s almost a physical sensation. And every additional thought of Ben only separates her even further from everything she used to hold so dear.
Only when she’s lying in bed again does Clara slowly start to calm down. In this moment only a single thought brings her comfort: the thought of texting Ben again.
I think about you all the time. Give me another sign if you’re doing okay. But make it one that doesn’t scare me so bad! Loving you always, your L.
Even though Clara feels very weird about it and is almost a little afraid, she decides to make a daily ritual out of this, to let it become a cherished habit. From now on, every day, she’s going to send a text out into the beyond.
sven
The next day, with his eyebrows raised and his voice rising to a theatrical pitch that disavows all seriousness, Sven reads aloud the following:
Hello, darling! Can you maybe do something for my grandpa from up there? Somehow we’re all missing the laughter we once had—and I’m missing you especially bad today. Your Lilime
Sven is about to tack on another indignant laugh at the end to make it unmistakably clear to Hilke that he finds the contents of the text absolutely ridiculous. But he can’t laugh, because Hilke’s reaction throws him off.
“Well, that’s just heartbreaking. It sounds like a poor sad child talking to God,” Hilke says earnestly and without any trace of a grin. “Give it here!” she quickly adds in a tone of voice that comes close to an order.
Sven hands her his iPhone with extreme reluctance—after all, the device is brand new and still free of any scratches or fingerprints.
“And where are the other two?” she asks. “I want to read all of them—and I mean now!”
Now Sven really does have to laugh. At Hilke. She acts as though he had just told her about a surprise audience with the pope or Elvis Presley coming back to life.
“What?” she asks indignantly.
“Oh, nothing,” Sven says and shakes his head, amused.
“Have you written back yet?”
“No way. Why?”
“Men!” Hilke rolls her eyes and raises one eyebrow. “Well, for one thing you could at least let whoever this is know that they’re going to all this trouble for nothing. After all, this Lilime person has no way of knowing that all their texts are going to the wrong number!”
All of a sudden Sven isn’t so sure of himself.
But Hilke goes on, unmoved: “In fact, the texts are going to a cold, emotionless monster who is hateful to boot and has no sympathy for a poor little child. A child who is clearly very worried about their sick grandpa!”
And suddenly Sven actually does feel guilty. He asks himself if he really is such a dirtbag, one of these guys who only ever thinks about technology and tits.
Angrily he brushes the thought aside and fires back: “Okay, so first of all, a child would never address somebody as ‘darling’ or prattle on in such a corny way. And second of all, in the highly unlikely event that it really is some emotionally disturbed child, it would most certainly be more valuable from a pedagogical standpoint not to rob the kid of every illusion that there is a God or some other kind of heavenly figure out there. So you could also say I’m doing the kid a favor!”
Hilke’s telephone rings and she throws Sven a stinging look across the desk before picking up.
Sven smiles his smug victor’s smile and turns back to his piece on white-collar crime and insider trading at the stock market.
But still his thoughts keep coming back to this strange business with the text messages. Maybe he should try to write a crime novel about it one day.
He lets his imagination run wild as he continues to stare at his computer screen with a look of concentration on his face—this way Hilke can’t interrupt him with one of her biting comments.
The crime novel would be about a murder in the snobby milieu of HafenCity. Some kind of insurance fraud with millions paid out in bribes. An employee catches wind of it and starts blackmailing the crooked boss at the head of the scheme. Then when another guy finds out about it, he ends up strangling the blackmailer in the heat of the moment in an underground parking garage and has to throw his body in the Elbe, not realizing that he was seen by a nine-year-old boy. But the boy is so afraid that he won’t tell anyone. He doesn’t know what to do about what he’s seen, so he looks in the phone book for the number of a private detective. Fearing that a phone call or a handwritten letter could be more easily traced back to him, the boy decides to inform the detective about the murderer by text. He steals a neighbor’s cell phone and uses it to send a text that puts the investigators on the right track and leads to the solving of the case . . .
Sven can’t help but grin all of a sudden at what seems to him a really original idea.
Hilke must have been watching him closely; she immediately lets fly with one of her obligatory comments: “Well, well, have you just discovered your sensitive side?”
“Cute.”
“Yeah, it would really be too funny if it turned out that even you had a heart, my dear Svenny.”
“Don’t call me Svenny!” Sven fires back with indignation.
“Whatever you say, Svenny.”
Now both of them have to laugh. Sven finally gives up and asks his colleague if she wants to join him for lunch.
clara
After her first week back at work, Clara is looking forward to having two days off. Still, she doesn’t really know what to do with her time. Other than meeting up for coffee with Ben’s sister, Dorothea, on Sunday, she has frighteningly little planned. Katja is off on another of her trips to who knows where. Sometimes Clara envies her for the independence her career as an interior designer gives her and for not having any set times when she has to be in a sterile office. It’s true that oftentimes her friend has to work late into the night, especially when clients come up with spontaneous ideas that require her to throw out all her original plans. But Katja never complains. She seems to have really found her calling. Usually her work is even more important to her than the men in her life, who never stick around too long anyway.
Katja is always urging Clara to look for a new job as fast as she can. She says Clara is letting herself be taken advantage of and is extremely underpaid.
And in fact last summer there was a time when things really weren’t looking too good for the agency. After an important client had bailed, Niklas had had to let four people go, two of them from the graphic design department. As a result, Clara had to put in an inhuman amount of overtime and for a monthly salary that was equivalent to what Katja makes in a single week.
But Clara feels a sense of responsibility for the agency’s fortunes, especially in bad times. She likes Niklas and most of her coworkers, too. And anyway it’s not like there are a ton of advertising agencies in this small city, which means she would be forced to find a job elsewhere. But driving the thirty miles to Hamburg every day and having to deal with all that crazy traffic? How often had she argued about this with Ben?
Generally speaking they had always gotten along very well. Most of the time they spent together, things were relaxed and harmonious. But as soon as a subject like money or responsibility came up, it was like someone had flipped a switch, and all of a sudden they were at each other’s throats.
Of course Ben and Katja had good arguments when it came to Clara’s advancing in her career. But Ben sure was one to talk, Clara would think at such moments. He paid just a measly portion of their rent each month, and other than that he tended to just live from hand to mouth.
If Clara ever were to quit her job, it would only be because she’d found a solid alternative. And another thing to consider: A position in Hamburg would also bring with it additional costs for the commute.
But the two of them didn’t want to hear such small-minded arguments. Instead, Ben and Katja would insinuate that Clara simply enjoyed being number one at the agency, she enjoyed being indispensable, and she enjoyed letting herself be blatantly exploited.
After these conversations, Clara usually felt very lonely and misunderstood, above all by Ben. The way she saw it, he seemed incapable of even beginning to see the problems in their larger context. The plain truth was that from the very beginning she had had to take on the role of the sensible one in the relationship.
When they decided to move in together and went looking for an apartment, it was only because Clara had taken the initiative. Ben was staying over at her studio apartment most of the time, and she was tired of feeling crowded. He had moved out of the house after his parents’ divorce, back when he was still in high school, and since then had lived in a string of different apartments with different roommates. Marijuana, alcohol, and even harder drugs were almost an everyday thing for him. Clara had never really wanted to know anything about all that. Finally they had reached an agreement that he could continue partying and amusing himself with what Clara thought of as his sketchy friends—but only two nights a week at the most.
This arrangement worked astonishingly well for the first two years. Sure, they still fought about it every now and then. She would accuse Ben of being selfish and hedonistic, and he would accuse Clara of being, as he put it, uptight. But on the other hand his exuberant attitude toward life could be infectious, and he was fairly good at freeing Clara from her tight corset at least every now and then, for example by stopping by on her lunch break and taking her out for a surprise picnic.
But before her last birthday, things had come to a head and they’d had a big fight. Clara wanted to go away somewhere for her thirtieth birthday so that she wouldn’t have to deal with any silly idea of her mother’s, like a
n over-the-top dinner or something like that. She wanted more than anything to just get out of town for a few days. But when, after several exhausting attempts to win him over to her plan, Ben made it clear to her that he just couldn’t afford a trip, she gave up the idea. She’d countered by saying that she would of course pay for it all, but Ben wouldn’t even hear of it. He was too proud to let Clara support him over and above their day-to-day expenses. Just like he was too proud to accept financial support from his parents.
And yet he had a knack for coming up with unconventional ideas to cheer Clara up. And in the end Ben had turned this birthday into something really special.
When she got home from work the night before her birthday, Ben intercepted her at the door, handed her a packed travel bag, and told her to get in the car. He blindfolded her with a handkerchief, cranked the volume all the way up on the Wir sind Helden CD, and drove her around the neighborhood for half an hour before he told her she could get out. Then he picked her up, carried her up a few stairs, took her shoes off, and set her down barefoot in warm, fine-grained sand. That this sand didn’t come from any beach on the Baltic or any other nice vacation spot, Clara actually only realized when she was allowed to take the blindfold off. She was standing in the middle of their living room, where Ben had laid out a tarp and covered it in sand from the hardware store. Before it hit her that Ben had brought the vacation home just for her, his bandmates Knut and Michi started playing their acoustic guitars. Ben had written a song specially for Clara to celebrate her on her birthday. Taking inspiration from Ben and Clara’s favorite album The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, the song was about longing.
Whenever I see the moon
I wish to come back as soon
