In the River Darkness

by Marlene Röder

  Lying around doing nothing wasn’t good for me. In the quiet of my room, my thoughts rioted . . . those thoughts that had made me wake with a start, bathed in sweat, every night since the big scare.

  The more I tried to ignore them, the deeper they ate their way into my brain, like a tumor, until they filled every nook and cranny of my head. Until just the one question burned in me . . .

  Should I really ask my dad? I was afraid of the answer. A moment longer I hesitated, then it burst out of me: “When . . . when I was in the hole in the ice, I heard something. It seemed like someone was calling me. A woman.”

  Dad didn’t say anything. My heart pounded like crazy, but there was no going back now. I just had to know!

  “Mom isn’t a photographer traveling around to different foreign countries, is she?” I asked quietly, and couldn’t keep my voice from trembling. “She’s dead. That’s what happened.”

  My father didn’t speak for a long while. He didn’t look at me when he finally started to talk. “Yes. Katarina drowned in the river eleven years ago.”

  The sun still cast rings on the floor. Our kitchen looked just the way it had before. How was that possible, now that everything had changed in an instant? Now that I was finally sure. To hear Dad say aloud what I had hardly dared to think was a shock. It was as if his words, the sadness in his eyes, made it an irreversible reality: my mother was dead.

  Now I could feel it with my fingertips like the grain of the wood of the kitchen table. I could smell it like the mellow, sweetness of Grandma’s winter apples. Suddenly, I perceived everything around me with exceptional clarity. But at the same time, nothing seemed to fit together anymore. The apples. The rings of sunlight. Death.

  “I . . . I don’t understand. What happened to Mom?” I asked, confused.

  “Yeah, what did happen?” my father sighed. He continued to sit and brood. I was just about to repeat my question when he finally started talking again: “The night that it happened, I woke up. The bed was empty next to me. Katarina was missing, and you kids, too.”

  Dad balled his hands into fists and opened them again, as if he were trying in vain to hold on to something precious that was running through his fingers like water. “The sight of your empty beds still haunts my dreams. I called, but no one answered. I searched the entire house but I couldn’t find you. And then I found the letter. Katarina had written me that she couldn’t stand it anymore. That she was going away and wanted to be free forever. And that she would take you with her. Finally, I ran like a crazy person, ran down to the edge of the river. It was a bright late summer night. An enormous full moon hung over the river, so low it seemed like you could touch it. Its cold light shone on the dark water and in your wide-open eyes. So I had found my little boys again, cowering together in the reeds. You were drenched to the bone, you and your brother. I tried to find out what had happened. You didn’t make a sound the entire time, but Jay answered my questions. ‘Mama went swimming,’ he said. ‘She wanted us to go in the water with her. But Skip said the water is too cold, and we don’t want to . . .’”

  I shuddered. I bit my teeth together to keep them from chattering. My father didn’t notice; he continued the story.

  “I brought you two into the house. Then I called Iris—someone had to stay with you. As soon as she arrived, I ran back outside to look for Katarina. I rowed the boat out on the river. I called for her, hoping desperately for an answer, even though reason told me that she was dead.

  “Finally I found her. Drowned. She had gotten caught in the tangled roots of a weeping willow. I brought her to your island and rocked her in my arms until dawn. I was out of my mind with grief, but at some point, I grasped that she wouldn’t come to life again. I . . . I didn’t know what I should do. And I was afraid. Afraid of what people would say. That they would blame me for Katarina’s death. Everyone in town knew we had problems and that we had fought more bitterly than ever that day. That I had hit Katarina. . . . The thought that someone might take you two away from me nearly made me lose my mind.

  “I got Iris and we sat next to Katarina and grieved and thought about what we should do. She was scared, too, and she felt partially responsible for her daughter’s death. So we buried Katarina on the island. In town, I told everyone that she had left us.”

  “But why all the lies? Why did you tell us for years and years that she was still alive?” I was about to hit him.

  Dad couldn’t look me in the eyes. “It was easier with Jay. He never asked about Katarina again. But you . . . you seemed to have completely forgotten that night at the river. Again and again, you drilled us: where did Mama go, and when was she coming back? How do you tell two little boys that their mother is never coming back? That she’s dead? I just couldn’t do it. And in the end, that’s why I told you the tales about her travels.”

  My father looked at his hands lying in front of him on the table: big and powerless, like fish lying out to dry. There was dirt under his fingernails.

  “Your grandmother warned me from the very beginning. ‘There are no merciful lies, Eric,’ she always preached. ‘Only lies.’ But I didn’t listen to her. Maybe because I wanted so badly to believe them myself. I wanted to believe Katarina was strolling along a beach in a foreign country and not lying dead and buried in the ground.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense!” I contradicted hotly. “If Mom is really dead, then who sent me all those photographs?”

  “Katarina had a close friend named Ruth, who had worked with her in the photography studio. They had always dreamed of traveling to exotic places together. Ruth did become a photojournalist. Although she was on the road a lot, the two of them stayed in touch until Katarina died. Ruth was very upset about her death. Apart from your grandmother, she was the only one I told the truth. ‘You can come to me any time you need help, Eric,’ she offered. And when you constantly demanded to know why your mother didn’t write to you . . .”

  “You asked Ruth to do it.”

  “Exactly. Ruth was happy to do it. It probably made her feel like she could do something for Katarina. And I thought, what could be the harm? You were so happy every time you got mail.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to ruin that for you. You were just a kid! I thought you could handle the truth better when you were a little older. ‘Next year I’ll talk to them,’ I swore again and again. But instead of getting easier, it got even harder over time. And every time I found a new excuse to avoid speaking up.

  “Until this year, your grandmother insisted that this game finally had to end. ‘Alexander is almost an adult now!’ she said. I knew she was right. So I called Ruth and asked her not to send anymore pictures. But I didn’t manage to talk with you boys. After all these years . . . I just didn’t know where to start. I guess the whole thing snowballed out of control,” he confessed. “I’m sorry, Alexander.”

  “I think some part of me has always sensed that she’s dead,” I said slowly. “The traveling, the photos—that was a beautiful dream that I held on to. But I guess you have to wake up sometime, right?”

  “Yes. At some point you have to wake up, even if it hurts.”

  I swallowed, and forced out the words that were eating me up inside, burning a hole in my soul: “Do you think . . . do you think Katarina . . . Mom . . . wanted to kill us?” My voice sounded unfamiliar in my own ears, frail and thin like a child’s.

  “I’ve asked myself that question so many times,” Dad finally responded. “Even after all these years, I don’t have an answer to it. I can’t tell you. I wasn’t there.”

  Despite the sunshine streaming through the kitchen windows, I was cold. I was freezing—still stuck in that hole in the ice. “The only thing I can remember is this image of her standing knee-deep in the water of the river and waving at us to come to her,” I whispered haltingly. “Then nothing else.”

  For a short moment, my father placed his hand on mine and squeezed it. “Maybe it’s better if some things are left in the dark and forgotten,�
�� he said gently. “Your grandmother always thought it was a blessing God granted you two.”

  We sat in the kitchen together for a while longer, not saying anything, and listened to the plastic fish sing for us. And it didn’t matter at all that we were crying.

  Chapter 24

  Jay

  One day recently, Mia appeared at our front door with her cello. My brother led her up to his room, and they stayed there for a long time. Mia made the cello sing for him. Her singing heart.

  No, I didn’t eavesdrop on them on purpose! But the deep tones resonated in the brittle bones of our house. I stood downstairs in the foyer and could feel them when I put my hand on the banister.

  That’s how everything had begun: with this sound that drew me to Mia’s window, into a new and different life. The music was like melting snow on my face. And although I knew it wasn’t meant for me, I had to smile.

  I would have liked to thank Mia for everything she had given me. I got my chance a few days later when we bumped into each other in our kitchen. “I have a present for you,” I said. Mia studied the CD I slipped into her hand with curiosity.

  “Jay’s Four Seasons,” she read. “These are your recordings?” I nodded. Everything was on the CD, our entire last year in a nutshell: my springtime birds; the singing fish above our kitchen table; Grandma’s vigorous clanging of pots and pans; the murmur of the river; the heavy summer silence, interrupted by ripe cherries falling from the tree; the jingling of Mia’s shell earrings; the splashing of the dives at Skip’s birthday party; then the screeching of a kingfisher; the crackling of frost.

  And for the finale, the sound of a cello, like the distant hope that it will soon be spring again.

  “Thank you, Jay,” Mia said, and seemed to be unsure whether or not she should hug me. “You know, Alex and I are thinking about maybe going to the ocean for a few days during spring break,” she related, trying in vain not to let the anticipation be heard in her voice. “Well, I don’t know yet if it will work out. But if it does, we’ll bring you a recording of the pounding surf. That’s a promise!”

  “That would be great.” I smiled at her.

  “Gosh, Jay, you seem so . . . different.” Mia studied me with amazement, like a familiar map where the roads had suddenly changed course. “It’s your left eye, the brown one!” she finally decided. “Usually when we were talking to each other, I always had the feeling it was looking right through me.” She laughed, as if her words seemed a little silly even to herself. “As if only half of you was here, and the other half was somewhere far, far away. As if your brown eye were actually looking at someone completely different.”

  She was right. “It was always watching Alina,” I admitted. “But not anymore.”

  She was quiet for a while, searching for the words. “The old legends are filled with river spirits and mermaids and . . .”

  “No one believes in that kind of stuff!” I interrupted her.

  “That might be exactly the point: no one believes in them anymore!” Mia exclaimed. Her hands drew exclamation points behind her sentences. “But maybe it was the people believing in all these creatures that made them real and powerful in the first place. What if it’s the same with Alina? Who knows, maybe you brought her to life, Jay!”

  “Me?” I asked, feeling as if I had just stepped into a mudhole and felt the ground slipping away under my feet.

  “Yes, you! I mean, Katarina died when you were still very young. That must have been hard for you. You must have wished she was still with you.”

  Oh, how I had wished that! And then at some point, Alina was just there. There for me like a star that blossomed in the night. Had my wishes alone given her form? Had my thousand vows of loyalty been the blood that first made her heart beat?

  Promise you’ll never forget me, Jay!

  I can’t exist without you, Jay!

  And then I realized that Mia’s suggestion wasn’t so absurd, after all.

  “So you mean I conjured the spirit of my mother.” I looked out the kitchen window, toward the river, shining in the weak light of the winter sun like a tentative greeting. The willows along the shore cowered, freezing in the sharp wind. “I only know that Alina is still out there,” I said quietly. “Weaker now, only a shadow of what she was. She’s unhappy and lonely. That’s the only reason she tried to take Skip into the river with her. What on earth should I do now, Mia?”

  Her smile was warm and encouraging like the sound of a cello. “Only you can decide that, Jay. But I think you already know what you have to do, don’t you?”

  Yes, I knew. That evening, I stood on the dock when the blue twilight came. With it came Alina. Her pale reflection wavered on the water like the sputtering flame of a candle.

  She was silent. There was nothing to hear but the rustling of the wind and the constant dripping of water from the willow twigs. They were already starting to bud.

  I found it hard to speak into the expectant silence. “I want to talk with you, Alina!” I said loudly. “Until recently I thought you were the one holding on to me. But I see now that’s not true. I didn’t want to let go of you, either.”

  The trees along the shore creaked their disapproval of my idiocy. I could feel tears forming in my eyes. “That was wrong, Alina. No one can keep things from changing. The river can’t stop moving. And people, too . . . they learn, they love, they grow up. Or they die, that happens, too. People can’t stay the way they are forever. No one can! It’s not natural, and it’s dangerous. And that’s why . . . that’s why it’s time for me to say good-bye to you,” I managed to croak in spite of the lump in my throat, and the knots in my heart.

  “I release you, Alina. I’m letting you be Katarina again and go to the ocean.” Slowly, I raised my hand to wave to Alina, and she waved, too . . . waved back one last time.

  A gust of wind blew through the branches like a sigh. It gave the river’s surface goose bumps and made the image of Alina quiver. Its outline blurred in the dark water and dissolved.

  And then she was gone, forever.

  There was nothing on the water but my own reflection.

  Acknowledgements

  A big, fat thank you goes to my godmother Dida, who always believed in me. Through her constructive critique, she helped me set this story on the right path.

  To Sophia and Nadja for seriously engaging with my strange questions (“What do you associate with blood oaths?”)

  To my family, many thanks for your understanding and your great support.

  Furthermore, I’d like to thank my friends and critics Julia, Johannes v.D and others for pointing out that dimples aren’t located at the corners of the mouth, and Anissa for her lists of mistakes. As well as Johnny, who eagerly beats the advertising drum for me, and my most loyal “fans,” the Jorkowski family. Thanks also to Zoran Drvenkar, who as a professional found time to read through the first chapters.

  Above all, I thank my editor, Ulrike Metzger, who with clear vision and enthusiasm helped make this novel a success.

  Note To Our Readers

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Publishers, Inc.

  Scarlet Voyage, an imprint of Enslow Publishers, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

  Title of the German original edition(s): Im Fluss by Marlene Röder © 2007 by Ravensburger Buchverlag Otto Maier GmbH, Ravensburg (Germany) Translated from the German edition by Tammi Reichel

  The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs

  LCCN: 2013933047

  Röder, Marlene.

  In the River Darkness / Marlene Röder.

  Summary: Mia, the new girl in town by the river, starts dating Alex Stonebrook. She strikes a friendship with Jay, Alex’s brother. The relationships between the characters become more complicated as Mia learns about the Stonebrooks. Jay’s mysterious friend, Alina, is also jealous of Mia. Strange things start to happen, and they all seem to stem from the river.

  ISBN 978-1-62324-010-3

  Future Editions:

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-62324-011-0

  EPUB ISBN: 978-1-62324-013-4

  Single-User PDF ISBN: 978-1-62324-014-1

  Multi-User PDF ISBN: 978-1-62324-017-2

  This is the EPUB version 1.0.

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  ISBN-13: 978-1-62324-005-9

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