In the River Darkness

by Marlene Röder

“Please, don’t do this! Don’t leave me. You can’t do this! You promised me!” Alina screamed now. “I CAN’T EXIST WITHOUT YOU, JAY!”

  I wasn’t entirely sure if I could live without her, but I yelled back, “I don’t ever want to see you again! Do you hear me, Alina? I’m forgetting you! I’m forgetting your name! You’re dead to me! Dead and forgotten!”

  My feet were so heavy. Everything had become so heavy. But maybe that’s the way it has to be when you suddenly carry the weight of your life on your own shoulders.

  When I got home, Grandma looked at me with a strange expression on her face. She insisted that I go lie down for a while.

  “Your brother isn’t feeling well, Alexander. So leave him alone for a while.” Skip slinked around me like a cat around a dish of milk, but she firmly shooed him away. I could see the questions burning on the tip of his tongue as Grandma slammed my bedroom door in his face.

  I let her cover me up. “What on earth happened?” she asked.

  “Oh, Grandma, I feel so strange. As if something in me has died.” She muttered something I couldn’t understand and brought me a cup of hot milk with honey in bed, and her rosary. I didn’t touch either one of them.

  Time passed. The time after Alina. I dozed with open eyes. Suddenly, a muffled bang made me sit bolt upright. It sounded as if someone had flung something against my window.

  Slowly, I stood up and dragged myself over to the window to look out. Down on the ground I saw something blue shimmering.

  I stormed down the stairs and outside. It was the kingfisher. Its neck was broken. The little body, still warm, hung lifeless in my hand. Already ashes, dirt.

  I knew what that meant. The bird was a message to me: Alina was trying to get to me, even if she had to send her bleeding minions through panes of glass to do it. She was demanding me back like a lost object she had a fundamental right to.

  You belong to me, you’ll always belong to me, whether you want to or not, said the dead bird. I’ll never let you go, never!

  Yes, I knew what that meant: from now on, there would be war between Alina and me.

  Later, I buried the kingfisher beneath the branches of Grandma’s lilac bush. I cried as the dirt fell on its wings and the black crumbs swallowed up its glistening blue.

  That night, even the rushing of the river sounded like a sob.

  Chapter 19

  Mia

  My dog didn’t come back. I never saw him again.

  At least the floodwaters receded in the following days, and the river returned to its usual boundaries. Except in the curve where the Stonebrooks’ house stood, where for some puzzling reason, the murky water seemed to accumulate. It swept away the fertile topsoil in Iris’s vegetable garden and—in spite of the frantic efforts of the family—finally sloshed sluggishly down the basement stairs. Twice they had to have their basement pumped out by the fire department.

  The damage was enormous, but the thing that made Iris most bitter was that all her carefully canned foods were spoiled. There was nothing to do but throw them away. For days, Alex, Jay, and their father were busy clearing the downstairs rooms of the heavy sludge the river had left behind. I often helped for a few hours; we pushed wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow filled with dirt outside, and scraped it off the walls.

  After a while, the horrid smell was so omnipresent I hardly noticed it anymore. But when I stepped into the foyer that one afternoon, the biting stench overpowered me. It smelled like the house itself was on its deathbed, a living thing rotting away.

  “Hello, is anybody home?” I called. I thought I heard a voice coming from the kitchen and peered in the doorway. There was no light on, so I thought I had been mistaken. But then I noticed the slumped figure at the table.

  It was Iris. With her head propped on her hands, she rocked herself back and forth stiffly. I heard her quietly muttering to herself, but I couldn’t understand the words. She seemed to be deeply immersed in studying something that lay in front of her on the scratched surface of the table. I knew I should leave her alone, but I couldn’t control my curiosity. Just a quick peek . . .

  Cautiously, I crept closer to peer over her shoulder. Now I could understand what she murmured repetitively: it was her daughter’s name! She strung the syllables together like the beads of a rosary until they formed a monotonous liturgy: “Oh, Katarina, Katarina . . .”

  A floorboard creaked under my weight and her head immediately turned around. For an instant, a strange mixture of fear and joy shone in her eyes. Then she recognized me—and it was extinguished again. “Oh, it’s just you,” she said dully.

  “Yes, it’s me. Who were you expecting?”

  “Hmmm. For a minute there, dumb old woman that I am, I thought it would be my daughter,” Iris said with a sad little smile, running a hand across her face. It occurred to me that it might not have been age that had carved the folds into her skin but deep suffering. It was shocking, even frightening, to see how old and fragile she seemed today and how much I had come to care for her, my “adoptive grandmother.”

  “Could I maybe make you a cup of tea?” I asked.

  “Just sit with me for a minute, Mia. In this house full of men I’m happy for a little female company.” Obediently, I pulled up a chair. On the table lay a photograph—so that’s what she had been studying so carefully. I recognized the picture; it was the family portrait that had caught my attention the first time I visited the Stonebrooks’ house. Katarina’s smile was just as mysterious as it had been then.

  “You never did tell me how your daughter’s story continued . . . why she finally went away,” I said, driven by sudden curiosity.

  “Right you are,” the grandmother murmured. “Well. I did tell you how dissatisfied Katarina was with her life in this small town. There was no way to have a career, or travel to faraway places. At some point, she started to hold Eric responsible for all her broken dreams. She noticeably cut herself off from him, Katarina did, and spent more and more time with the children. They built that tree house over there on the island together. They created their own little world, and no one else could get in. Not even Eric.” With her index finger, Iris bored holes in the air in the kitchen. “Such craziness! Instead of taking care of her household, like a decent woman should. Often there wasn’t so much as a crust of bread in the house when I came to visit!” the old woman said with indignation. “I asked what she did with the money for the groceries and such. And my daughter ran off to proudly present some new lens for her camera. It didn’t take long before the neighbors started talking, saying that Katarina let her children run wild, that she wandered up and down the river with them and only did as she pleased—without paying any heed at all to her husband! She was a walking scandal, our Katarina!” Shaking her head, Iris looked down at her folded hands. As if praying would have been any use.

  “Of course Eric heard the rumors, too. In the bar, the men gave him a hard time about not having his ‘wild woman’ under control and did he need help taming her? It wasn’t long before everyone in town had decided that the young lady was leading him by the nose—and that Eric was blinded by love and let it happen. It was clear who wore the pants in the Stonebrook household. Katarina made him a laughingstock. It must have been hard for a man as proud as Eric.”

  I looked at the family photograph. Until now, Eric had always been something of a side note to Katarina’s story. But now I asked myself how he must have felt about all of this.

  “The most painful part of it for him was probably that there was a bit of truth in the mockery,” Iris continued. “You have to know that Eric has always idolized his wife. It’s a terrible thing when one person loves more than the other, my dear. Because the one who loves more is always weaker, more easily hurt. Eric knew that. ‘I should have let her go back then,’ he once told me later, when everything was long over. ‘I should have let her go, but I couldn’t. Katarina was my life.’ Eric was distraught. He forbade her to swim naked in the river. But of course she did it anyway,” Iris
added with a snort. “She did it more than ever! That’s how she was, our Katarina. The more Eric tried to hold on to her, the more fiercely she struggled against him. But all he wanted was for her to stay home and take care of her responsibilities, just like everyone else.”

  She shrugged her shoulders in a small, resigned gesture. It was clear that she had never understood her daughter. But I wanted to understand this. Spellbound, I hung on the older woman’s every word, entirely wrapped up in Katarina’s story.

  “Because their financial situation wasn’t exactly rosy, Eric started to check how Katarina was spending their money . . . and then there was no more expensive camera equipment. From then on, Katarina was supposed to keep records and account for what she spent. They had some terrible fights because of it. Their battles raged through the house and shook the walls.” A chill ran through her at the memory of it. “Katarina was a fearsome opponent! A terrible hothead. When she was in a rage, she fought with any means. She even threw dishes!

  “The poor boys were completely upset, and I often took them to my house. Oh, I tried to talk some sense into Katarina. But it was pointless, absolutely pointless! It only made her more bitter. Sometimes, she didn’t even let me into the house. ‘I’m grounded,’ she said through the screen with no expression on her face. And once she had a black eye.”

  “What? You mean Eric actually . . . he hit her?” I cried with shock. What an idiot to treat his wife that way. No wonder she ran away from him.

  “I don’t know if that’s really true,” Iris replied. Her arthritic fingers reached for my hand to soothe me. “You never met her, but Katarina always knew how to make things appear the way she wanted them to . . .”

  I freed my hand from her grasp. “That sounds as if you were on Eric’s side. I don’t understand. Katarina is your daughter! Why didn’t you help her?” My words sounded harsher than I had intended. Like an accusation. Iris sank her gaze.

  “Well, my husband and I didn’t want to interfere,” she explained, more to the kitchen table and the family photo than to me. “We thought we had raised her too leniently, spoiled her too much—she was our only child, after all. We thought it was our fault that she had turned out so wild, so headstrong.” She touched the cold glass covering the photograph thoughtfully, as if she wanted to stroke her daughter’s face. Her stern features softened. “Maybe you’re right, dear. Maybe we were too hard on her. She was still so young, our Katarina.”

  I couldn’t bear to say another harsh word in reply. I felt sorry for her, the way she sat there, bent like an old tree growing on cliffs with its roots clinging to the sparse dirt. No matter how much Iris still clung to her infallible righteousness, she had long sensed that this was only her truth. She could recite the Hail Mary into eternity, but it wouldn’t undo the mistakes she had made.

  Maybe that was why she had told me Katarina’s story, to receive some kind of absolution. But I couldn’t give it to her. We both knew that.

  Looking lost, Iris continued her story. “When I came to visit, I often found Katarina at the river. She always loved to be down by the water. ‘The river is my heart,’ she would often say with a laugh. But that day she didn’t laugh as she stared into the stream. ‘Do you know where the water goes, Mom?’ she asked me quietly, throwing sticks in the water to be carried away by the current. That penetrating tone in her voice. But I didn’t have an answer for her. So she answered herself: ‘Away, just away from here. . . . If it weren’t for the boys . . .’ She didn’t end the sentence, and I didn’t ask her to. That was the last time I spoke with my daughter. A few days later, I moved in with them—my husband had already died by then. And you know the rest of the story.”

  I nodded glumly and didn’t want to see the family photo anymore. Because now I knew that it was only an illusion of happy days that they had never had. This time I let Iris pat my hand. “I’m afraid when I have such an attentive listener I just babble on and on,” she sighed, and it sounded as if she almost regretted having told me so much. “Don’t worry your pretty head about an old woman’s talk! That’s all ancient history.”

  Oh, how wrong she was!

  But she meant well when she added, “Now go! The boys finished their work in the basement earlier. Alexander wanted to take a shower. I’m sure he’s already waiting for you.” So I stood up and left her alone with the faded picture of her daughter.

  Before I left, I saw her dry lips start to form words again: answers that it was too late for now. I saw the mother call the beloved name without a sound, knowing she would never receive an answer. Then I closed the kitchen door behind me.

  After that talk, and the feel of the elderly woman’s wrinkled hand on mine, it was good to be with Alex, who felt warm and alive.

  He had just gotten out of the shower, and his curly hair was still dark with wet. Now he lay resting next to me on the bed, naked and entirely unself-conscious. I, however, still wore my underwear. In the beginning, Alex had had to woo me with a thousand sweet words every time he slipped the clothes off my body. That wasn’t the case anymore, but I was still always on my guard when we were together.

  At that moment, though, as I lay in Alex’s arms and felt his calm breathing, I felt at peace. Even though it certainly was odd to know so much about his vanished mother . . . maybe even more than Alex himself. I would have liked to talk to him about it, but we had an unspoken agreement that the subject of Katarina—as well as questions about my ex-boyfriend—were strictly off limits between us. His grandmother was right, all of that belonged to the distant past.

  I was here with Alex in the present, and that’s all that mattered.

  Lazily, I stretched out my arm and nudged the globe standing on the nightstand. Its warm light wandered over the walls and bathed our faces in a sea-blue and ochre-yellow glow. Our little world . . . I turned the globe again and let my fingers glide across the continents.

  “Where would you most like to go, Alex?” I asked. I loved to laze around talking with him about curious and silly things. “Come on, what’s your dream destination?”

  Alex grumbled, “Anywhere there’s no muck that needs to be hauled out of the basement! My dream destination is where you are.” He blew in my ear and whispered, “I love you, Mia. And I want to sleep with you.” Playfully, he tugged at the strap of my bra.

  It was as if someone had poured a bucket of ice-cold water over me. How was it possible that those few words could simultaneously plunge me into a state of rapture and panic? Heart-pounding, stomach-wrenching, limb-freezing panic.

  For in that moment it became clear to me how close, how dangerously close, Alex had gotten to me. How ridiculous my halfhearted attempts to keep him at a distance had been. Just like my refusal to play the cello for him, even though all my inner soundscapes leaned toward him . . .

  For a heartbeat, I longed to just give in to that gravity, to let myself fall. To tell Alex everything.

  But that would mean throwing my painstakingly repaired glass heart at him and trusting that he would catch it. No, I couldn’t take the risk! If I did, I’d be defenseless, utterly exposed.

  And I already felt so naked! There was only my thin skin as a protective wall. And when Alex touched me, like now, it was as if his fingers could sink deep into my innermost self. I was like hot wax under those hands. Pliable, without a shape, with no will of my own.

  How could I have let things get so far again? Hadn’t I learned anything from the disaster with Nicolas? How could I ever get out of this situation unharmed? I was caught in a trap. Chaos reigned in my head, everything swayed. But maybe that was just me.

  Driftwood.

  “What is it, Mia? Are you okay?” Alex asked anxiously.

  I sat up straight. I had sworn to myself that I’d never be driftwood again. Never again!

  And suddenly those mean words came to me. Honed to a sharp edge, they lay on the tip of my tongue. All I had to do was open my mouth, and they shot out: “I kissed Jay, out on the island.”

  I s
aw how the words slowly sank into his consciousness, like stones thrown into deep water. “What?” Alex asked, as if he hadn’t quite understood. As if he wanted to give me a chance to say “Just kidding!” or “Oh, nothing. You must have misunderstood.”

  But I didn’t do him the favor. Mercilessly, I repeated the sentence, hammered the words into his very being: “I kissed your brother!” This time he got the message. I could see it. Something broke.

  “You did what? Why . . . why did you do that?” he stammered. His face was white as chalk. I had just thrown his world out of alignment. Our world.

  Continents drifted apart, were abandoned. Islands were swallowed up by cold ocean waters.

  And it was me that had caused it! ME! With just a few words. It was strange that I seemed to possess such power over another person. He was the one who loved more. His weakness gave me strength. His falling apart gave me form.

  For just a brief moment, a feeling of triumph I had never known before coursed through me. It was as if I had done it for Katarina, too. As if I had shown everyone who thought they could treat their women like driftwood, all the idiots like Nicolas and Eric.

  But then I realized with painful clarity that it was Alex who sat there next to me on the bed. My boyfriend, who had trusted me. Who had just told me that he loved me.

  He wrapped his arms around himself as if he had just realized that he was naked. As if he wanted to cover his bareness. Then I had to turn my gaze away. I jumped up from the bed and turned on the normal light. The magical glow of our globe was extinguished in the relentless brightness of the overhead light, which burned my eyes. Hectically, I started to gather my strewn-about clothes.

  “What’s going on between you and Jay?” Alex asked very quietly behind me. Then louder. “Talk to me, Mia! Please!”

  That was the first time he had asked me for something. But I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

  With one leg in my jeans, I hopped to the door. Get away, I just had to get away from here! I couldn’t bear it one second longer!