Giovanna's Navel

by Ernest Van der Kwast

  Suddenly Frieda appeared by his side. ‘Luis was picked up in a helicopter yesterday,’ she said. ‘He ought to cut down on his smoking and drinking. This is his third time in hospital.’

  Heinrich knew Luis, an electrician with tall tales. He used to take the cable car every day. And every year he packed on another kilo.

  ‘Asthma,’ Frieda said disapprovingly. ‘And to think he lives as though he’s invincible.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll pull through?’

  ‘He always pulls through.’

  Heinrich wondered how Johanna Egger was doing. Was she married? Did she still live in San Genesio? Frieda would know.

  ‘That’s the problem,’ the landlady said. ‘He never learns.’

  Heinrich took a sip of wine. He’d seen a lot of men disappear. Walter Durnwalder had lost control of his car after one too many. Franz Laimer had collapsed during a hike. And only recently, his former colleague Stefano Calvo had died in his sleep.

  Frieda looked at him.

  ‘It’s a beautiful spring,’ Heinrich finally said.

  When the sun’s light began to mellow, he rose to his feet. He walked back to the cable car, past the rolling meadow, past the most beautiful house he’d ever laid eyes on. He saw a stooped man, and although he was far away, Heinrich could see him quite clearly. In the rich glow of the evening sun, the man was feeding animals in cages — rabbits who’d survived Christmas.

  Maybe he hadn’t missed any opportunities, he thought to himself while waiting for the cable car. Maybe there hadn’t been any. He’d got to know quite a few people in the cabin of San Genesio Cableway, and with some he’d established a bond. He used to talk to them and listen to their stories — nine minutes one way in the morning, and nine minutes back at the end of the day. It wasn’t much, but then again, how much time do married couples spend talking to each other?

  It goes without saying that Heinrich had also spent time watching — feasting his eyes on women, that is. He liked a perfect face: youth, unadulterated beauty. There were some women he missed when they didn’t take the cable car, women he’d been watching for years. But most of them were the mothers of young children. He also remembered a tourist from Germany. Her hair was blonde and her mouth delicate, with the lips of a princess. He’d seen her for fifty-four minutes of his life. It was a simple sum, but the rest would be forever shrouded in mystery. She was staying at the inn with a female friend. Heinrich looked into her eyes and she looked back. She kept looking.

  It all happened very fast: the longing, the conversations in the cabin about walking trails and their lives, her hands touching his. ‘We’re travelling home today,’ she’d said as she disembarked. His heart was beating twice as fast; he could feel it pounding, palpitating almost. Had this been the opportunity life had offered him? Had this girl been the woman with whom Heinrich Kienzl could have grown old?

  The cable-car door opened and the first few passengers started boarding. Heinrich remained seated. There was time. In two, three minutes, a signal would sound, as the conductor down in the valley pressed the lower button on the control panel and gave the all-clear for departure.

  Inside the cabin, people talked about the weather: the sun, the heat. A hiker had been high up in the mountains where he’d seen a sea of crocuses. His arms and nose were sunburnt. Heinrich looked at the meadows below him, which were as pretty as a travel-guide picture. Having seen it many times, he knew how green the grass would grow. The first few years, he’d been oblivious to the process. The world appeared to have turned a different colour overnight. In reality, though, it happened very, very gradually. It wasn’t a wave, not a single broad movement. Some areas of land were less drab, scattered patches that grew lighter, that appeared to come to life, before slowly, day by day, weaving the carpet into an even surface until everything was deep green.

  He knew what came next: the blush of dandelions sweeping across, followed by the other colours, the buzzing bees and the singing cicadas, and then, finally, the last butterflies of the year.

  Down in the valley, it was five degrees warmer. Heinrich waited for the bus that would take him to the town centre. Across the road was a sawmill. On rainy days, he used to stand under the awning outside the entrance, breathing in the scent of wet timber.

  On the bus, Heinrich realised just how tired he was. His shirt stuck to his back. At home he’d have a quick lie-down and then prepare a simple meal. He’d bought asparagus at the market and there was some ham in the fridge. There was still not a cloud in the sky. The constellations would shine brightly tonight.

  She recognised him at once. Her heart missed a beat. Johanna Egger was covering a night shift for a colleague with a sick child and leaned over the body. There was blood on Heinrich Kienzl’s face. She also noticed a big bruise. He’d taken a nasty tumble, hitting his temple on the bannister or on some other blunt object — the edge of the table or the stone kitchen floor, the various options flashed through her mind. His pulse was weak. He was unconscious, in what looked like a very deep sleep. For a split second, she thought she might faint, but she managed to hold onto something just in time. She needed to send him to another ward, through the swing doors, into the lift up to the fifth floor. Instead, she cradled his face in her hands.

  Summer

  He’d learned to swim with squashes: green Flaschenkürbisse. Or Pitterlen, as the butternut squashes are referred to in the local dialect. They’d been dried. Klaus Mair, six years old and with short, spiky blond hair, had picked them with his father in the garden. Some of the gourds were bigger than he was.

  It was the summer of 1936, the end of the summer of an innocent year. It was September, but still warm and bright. The whole Mair family — his mother and father, his brother and two sisters, and himself — had been sleeping with the windows open for the past four months, with the sounds of crickets and cicadas drifting in through the windows and lulling them to sleep.

  In the morning, the sunlight was so intense that Klaus would open his eyes beneath the sheets. And then he’d pretend he wasn’t awake yet, not here anyway, but elsewhere, in a dream, in a fairytale forest of light.

  The mornings in September were less dazzling than those in August, but otherwise there was very little to suggest that summer was coming to a close. The days were balmy and everyone was thirsty all the time. The noises of children playing in the water could be heard until late. His brother and sisters could swim, just like their friends, who all lived in the village by the lake as well. Screaming, they’d jump off a rock or swing from a branch into the Montiggler See. The boys would push the girls under the water. Little Klaus would just sit by the water’s edge. He couldn’t stay afloat. The water wouldn’t carry him.

  At the start of summer he’d tried, egged on by his sisters.

  ‘Jump!’ Helene and Renate had shouted. ‘Go on, Klaus, jump!’

  He’d been too scared and had waded into the water instead, deeper and deeper, until his feet no longer touched the bottom. He moved his arms and legs the way he’d seen the others do, but didn’t manage to stay afloat. The underwater world, murky and pale green, flashed briefly before his eyes, until he was pulled up. Holding him tight, his sisters swam back to the shore. Klaus clambered up the bank, from where he watched the water-based fun: the jumping and the diving, the glistening columns of water spurting into the air. He cried, but nobody noticed.

  Further attempts followed. Klaus tried to swim on his side, on his back, holding onto a branch or a tree stump. He thrashed about and swallowed water. The lake refused to keep him afloat.

  ‘You’re quiet today,’ his father observed at lunchtime.

  Klaus didn’t react. They were sitting outside, at the long wooden table, six plates with home-grown beans in front of them. Perhaps the garden displayed the clearest signs of the end of summer. Dark purple figs lay scattered in the grass.

  ‘He can’t swim,’ said Helene, th
e younger of the two sisters. ‘He just can’t do it.’

  Klaus stabbed as many beans as he could with his fork and shovelled them into his mouth. Tears rolled down his cheeks, one after another.

  When the meal was over, his father took him down to the basement, the darkest and coolest place in the house. On the back wall were shelves stacked with dozens of small jam jars: apricot, plum, raspberry, rosehip. Klaus had helped his mother with the apricot jam. While his sisters and brother were swimming in the lake, he’d removed the stones from the fruit. The sadness had been dispelled by the aroma of melting sugar.

  ‘Let’s carry the smallest ones upstairs,’ his father said.

  They were standing in front of a shelf with butternut squashes. Klaus had picked them the previous autumn, together with his father and brother. His mother had used the first few gourds to make creamy soup. Soup was another harbinger, a sign that one season was ending and another beginning. But for a six-year-old child, time passes imperceptibly. The squashes that didn’t end up in deep plates were dried in the sun and stored in the cellar. They sounded hollow when you tapped them.

  Klaus picked up the smallest butternut squash with both hands, while his father carried a slightly bigger one upstairs. And that’s how they walked to the lake a little later, down the winding, narrow path through the forest. Father and son, Pitterlen under their arms.

  ‘Daddy,’ Klaus asked. ‘Will the water keep me afloat now?’

  ‘Yes, this time it will.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone with squashes in the water.’

  ‘Your dad learned to swim with them when he was a boy.’

  In the same way that his own father had once tied squashes to his son’s torso, Alfons Mair now tied them to Klaus’s upper body on the shores of the Montiggler See.

  They entered the water together, step by step by step. At some point, his feet no longer touched the bottom, and Klaus could feel himself lifting free and floating. He laughed. He couldn’t believe it. The lake was keeping him afloat!

  It was as if summer began all over again; as if now, finally, it poured its golden glow all over Klaus and he saw its true nature for the first time. He swam towards the other children, screaming with joy, splashing and kicking, and at the end of the day he pushed a girl under the water: Evi Hofer. She had dark, gleaming eyes, long hair, and skin as pale as white pebbles.

  Klaus walked her back home, up the winding path through the forest, along the cobblestone street. He was carrying the bigger squash, Evi the smaller one. She lived three hundred metres down the road. Her mother was the most beautiful woman in the village. The baker trembled every time he served her.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ Klaus said when he stood in front of his house.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ Evi replied, and waved at him.

  The following morning, Klaus and his brother and sisters passed the squashes between them as they walked to the lake together. By the shore, he waited for Evi. He waited with the gourds tied around his upper body. It was an image she’d never forget.

  Hand in hand, they jumped into the lake. They spent their time chasing each other, spitting jets of water up into the air, and swimming to the far side with the others — the others to whom he now belonged, who were now his friends. By the time they reached the shore, they were exhausted, and lay in the sun like lizards. But only seconds later, they leapt back into the water. There were competitions to see who was the fastest, who could stay underwater the longest, and who could produce the loudest splash. Groups were formed: the girls against the boys. There was pushing and pulling, and everywhere Klaus looked water splashed up in the air, creating shimmery curtains, dripping rainbows. When Evi yelled his name, the sound reverberated endlessly in the lingering light.

  At the end of the day, they ate figs on a toppled tree trunk. Their cheeks were red, their fingers sticky. The lake was as smooth as a pebble.

  All the summers merged into one. All of his childhood summers, all of his friends’ summers, they became one big melting pot of warm weather, water, and sweet fruit. Klaus saw it happen when he was old enough to see time pass, when time split his life in two, and he realised that some was ahead and some behind him.

  Klaus Mair, sixteen years old and with straight dark hair, was packed off to the vocational school in Bozen by his father. He now spent one day a week in school, the other five in an engineering workshop. Those days were full of screeching machines, flashing metal, and filings. His hands were black. He made constructions for hangars, farming machinery, and ski lifts. In the evenings, he was so tired he went straight to bed after dinner. He shared a dormitory with a bunch of other lads. Some were bench fitters, like him, while others were training to be mechanics, plumbers, or blacksmiths. They all had black hands, too, but nobody spoke to him. He was alone again.

  On Saturday afternoons, he walked home and devoured huge quantities of food. Sometimes his mother refilled his plate no fewer than three times. It was the hard work and the long walk, not to mention the fresh produce from the garden: kohlrabi, carrots, squashes, aubergines, beans, sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, and courgettes. Every year, his mother would draw up a plan for the garden in a small notepad, outlining which vegetables — and which flowers, herbs, and berries — would go where. She loved her garden like she loved her family. At the end of every autumn, she wrapped paper bags around the sprouts so they could still be eaten in winter. She buried eggshells around the roots of the brassicas and used ashes as compost for the spring onions. Old leather soles were soaked in rainwater and the resulting liquid was used for irrigating her most precious plants. She knew which week was best for sowing and what day to fold over the onion tops. The rosebush was more than fifty years old.

  On Mondays, Klaus got up at the crack of dawn to walk back to Bozen. More often than not it was still dark, even in summer. Inside the workshop, his eyes had to get used to the light. He was no longer a child; his childhood was behind him.

  The others were working, too — his friends from the neighbourhood, his brother and sisters. Helene was working as a shop assistant and Renate was a housekeeper for a family in Eppan. His brother helped his father in the apple orchard. As the eldest son, he was expected to take over the business.

  Time, the ocean of time, was rolling on and was unstoppable.

  His father was the first to die. It began innocently enough: a rash in his neck, the occasional headache in the evening. Then one day he couldn’t get out of bed. The doctor attended to him and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Prayers were said. The family fed him creamy soup and lengthened his life by two days.

  Klaus made an iron cross. His mother laid dahlias from the garden on his grave — the dahlias she loved so dearly because they flower for so long.

  His sisters got married. Their husbands were lanky men, farmers from across the valley. They had children with strong teeth and white-blond hair. Klaus was named godfather of one of the girls and he taught her the sounds of the woodland animals.

  He remained alone. He’d moved to Bozen and now worked at the plant where he’d started as a youngster. After all these years, he could no longer get his hands clean under the tap. Lunchtimes were spent in a canteen with a hundred other men; in the evenings he ate smoked bacon and gherkins in his own kitchen. He relished the silence, the absence of men and machines. The only thing he missed was his mother’s garden.

  Fate brought him back home. While walking the road between Kaltern and Eppan, his brother was hit by a truck. The driver hadn’t seen him. It was a summer’s day, shortly before the green-and-red Gravenstein was due to be harvested. His brother didn’t recover from his injuries. For three days and two nights, he suffered the most excruciating pain. Then he lost his life, the cicadas lulling him to sleep for good.

  Now it was up to Klaus to take care of the business. Picking red, yellow, and green apples with his black hands, he filled large wooden crates and took
them to the fruit association. Twenty journeys a day, with the sun blazing over his head. The sound of children swimming and playing in the lake could be heard until late.

  Since it was just the two of them now, his mother allotted less space to vegetables in her notepad. The empty spaces were filled with the names of flowers: asters, lilies, hydrangeas, gladioli, poppies, cornflowers, lady’s smock, and sunflowers. In March, they were sown and fertilised with chicken manure. Two months later, his mother carried the first bouquet from the garden to the cemetery. Every week, she put new flowers on the graves of both her husband and son.

  And so time passed, leaving more and more of itself behind Klaus. His pace slackened and his hair turned grey. The only person he ever spoke with was his mother. She talked to him about the garden, about what to sow and when, which herbs needed chalky soil, and how to get rid of slugs. ‘Use my tights to stake up top-heavy plants,’ she advised.

  She died on the day he was supposed to sow parsley, 13 June, Anthony of Padua’s feast day.

  Klaus placed a bunch of purple snapdragons on her grave.

  The land was leased to two brothers from the village. They planted new apple varieties: Pink Lady, Rubens, Kanzi. Later, some of the land was used for wine-growing.

  Meanwhile, Klaus looked after his mother’s garden. He disassembled his parents’ old bed and used the iron mesh base as a support for runner beans. The weeds, he tackled with broken roll-down shutters, which he put down for paths between the vegetable beds. In summer, he ate at the long wooden table.

  The rosebush was almost a hundred years old.

  Every once in a blue moon he’d walk over to the lake. It was always quite a challenge, since the path’s many twists and turns wore him out. From a bench, he’d watch the children jump off rocks. He’d hear them laugh and scream as they had their competitions and fights. Water splashed up all over the place. A boy dunked a girl, just as he’d once done to Evi Hofer.