Anna looks at him and picks up the berry bowl, then comes up onto the veranda. ‘What did you say?’
Koberling doesn’t look up but gazes into his empty coffee cup and says, ‘For Janis. Your father always used to say that, long ago, when he poured leftover wine into the garden, “For Janis, for Janis Joplin.”’
‘Yes,’ Anna says simply.
Koberling doesn’t dare look up. Suddenly he feels terribly embarrassed about something. He stares at Anna’s feet, at her dirty little toes.
She hides her left foot behind the right. Says, ‘I thought I’d stay behind. Otherwise you would have woken up and found us all gone.’
Koberling looks up now, and acts preoccupied. Anna tilts her head and smiles at him, unsure. ‘Wasn’t it okay to wake you?’
What can one say to that? Nothing. And Anna doesn’t seem to expect an answer. She sits down next to him, lights a cigarette, and inhales deeply. ‘Tom likes it here. I do too. It’s so peaceful, and besides we are having an Indian summer.’
Koberling makes a sound that could be interpreted as agreement or disapproval. Anna stares at him sideways. Koberling becomes restless and turns the empty cup in his hands; he can feel that Anna is slowly tensing up.
‘Do you want to show me the Oderbruch or don’t you? I mean, do you feel like going for a walk with me, or would you rather keep on sitting here?’ With the last words her voice gets louder, almost stern.
Cry a little, Koberling thinks. Cry a little because you don’t know how to deal with me, and also because I remind you of the time I slapped you. He too lights a cigarette, then gets up, and says, ‘Yes, well. We can go for a little walk if you want.’
As Koberling closes the garden gate behind him he feels he’s in unsafe territory. The house, the garden, the veranda, and above all Napoleon Hill are no longer protecting him. His back against the wall. Anna stands in the road, shifting from one foot to the other and looking almost the way she did long ago, like the child from back then, across the bridge over the river, into the woods, and away.
Koberling marches off resolutely, Anna hurries along beside him, dust whirling up between their feet. The country road becomes narrower. At the foot of the hills it becomes a small path that winds upward, through fruit trees, up into the green. Koberling, hands in his pockets, stares straight ahead. He feels a tension in his back and is already grinding his teeth again. Anna aside. Even without Anna, he has never liked the walks into the Oderbruch. Constance does. Ever since Lunow has been there for her, Constance walks off every afternoon with a happy face and comes back with an even happier face. ‘The hills, Koberling. Sometimes I think it’s the hills. I find them calming.’
Koberling finds the hills disturbing. For him it’s all too beautiful, too enchanted, a Tarkovsky landscape, almost sinister. Once last summer he went into the Oderbruch by himself. In a tree on one of the more distant hills – he could already see the Oder – hung a piece of meat. A big piece of meat, almost the size of a man – a cow or a pig – skinned, bloody, putrid, flies buzzing around it. Koberling, panting up the hill, ready to see the Oder, to savour it, stopped and felt his heart lurch. The meat hung from one of the upper branches, the rope by which it was attached creaking and twisting. It looked like a vision, like a nightmare image, a monstrous and incomprehensible message, and Koberling turned, ran back down the hill, and screamed. Later Constance, sitting in the wicker chair on the veranda and smelling of violets, laughed and said, ‘Don’t be silly, Koberling. You only dreamed it.’
The next day, when they went to the Oderbruch together, the piece of meat had disappeared. Nothing was there any more. No rope, no flies, no message. They never talked about it again.
Anna kicks little pebbles, is smiling again, and whistles through the gap in her teeth. ‘You don’t want to talk, do you?’
‘No,’ Koberling says, ‘I don’t want to talk.’ Says to himself, Talk about what, and peers through the fruit trees, straining to see. There is no vision. Nothing that he would see but Anna would not.
‘That’s all right,’ Anna says. ‘I don’t want to talk either. Often I don’t.’ Koberling looks at her in ironic surprise, but she ignores him.
The last tall stalks of wheat still stand along the edge of the path. The trees have yellow edges, and a swarm of birds forms a triangle in the sky. In the distance the Oder gleams, a blue ribbon perforated by green river islands. The air above the meadows shimmers. Anna is breathing heavily. She twists her hair into a bun at the back of her neck.
Koberling remembers the beginning of a poem, On the far side of the Oder, where the plain so wide, or something like that, one of the countless poems that he used to recite to Anna’s clown father on those lunatic walks at night on the moors. ‘Listen to this one, and this one,’ a helpless recital, a gush of words. Koberling walks along behind Anna, and his inability to describe, to express why the words sound so heart-wrenching – On the far side of the Oder, where the plain so wide – leaves him breathless. ‘I understand,’ Anna’s father had said, again and again. ‘I do understand.’ But he couldn’t have understood because Koberling himself didn’t comprehend anything. He would like to grab Anna by the hair now, to shake her and slap her for the years of self-deception, for the years themselves. He wants to slap her again, to repeat himself. The Oder is dazzling, and the flat fields flow together into a green sea. Koberling calls her name and hears his voice, but as if coming from a great distance. Anna turns around, her red dress swinging into a wave. Koberling closes his eyes and thinks he is falling.
‘Koberling? Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ Koberling says. ‘Everything’s fine. I just want to go back now.’
Shortly before they reach Lunow – they can already see the country road, and behind the bend the house is about to appear – Anna touches his arm. Koberling takes a deep breath. The Oder is behind him, behind the hills, the distant unease already nearly forgotten. This will be the last time that he surrenders to it. Koberling quickens his pace. He would like to walk fast, to run, perhaps even to sing. An enormous relief spreads through him.
Anna stops and says, ‘Koberling, I’d really like to know what there was between my father and you. I mean, I’d like to know why you no longer see each other, why you broke off the relationship.’
Koberling also stops and looks at her. She is smiling and looks hurt. ‘There’s no reason. There’s no story there.’ Koberling is surprised he even answered her. ‘We had a few really good years together, then we saw each other less and less frequently, and at some point not at all anymore. Maybe it was because he had women I didn’t like. And you got older, later on he spent a lot of time taking care of you. There were minor arguments we didn’t clear up, some disagreements. We lived different lives, I think. That’s all. No tragedies, nothing decisive.’
Anna turns around and takes the path through the meadow down to the road. She walks very quickly. Koberling follows her and would like to call out, ‘Life isn’t theatre, Anna!’ He doesn’t know whether she can still hear him. She is running.
That evening Koberling is sitting on the veranda with Constance. Anna has gone back to the Oderbruch with the pothead. They had eaten supper together, and Koberling had three glasses of wine. He feels the alcohol in his knees and in his stomach. A cloud of mosquitoes hangs over the plum trees, and Constance is blowing smoke rings into space.
‘I hope that Max will never do that. I’m not just hoping he won’t, I simply won’t have it,’ Koberling says, not looking at Constance but at the plum trees, out into the darkness of the garden.
‘What?’ says Constance sleepily. ‘What … will never do what?’
‘What Anna did here,’ says Koberling and hears a note of spite in his voice that he can’t help. ‘What she did by turning up here unexpectedly and under false pretences. When he grows up I don’t want Max to turn up at Anna’s father’s place with some floozy on his arm and say – Hey, clown father!’ Koberling raises his voice and mimics Anna. ‘Hey
, clown father, can we stay with you a couple of days? Only a couple of days, nothing special, just hang out, and at some point or other you can tell me why you stopped being friends with my father back then.’
Constance laughs and forms a big smoke ring with her lips. It glides away and dissolves. ‘You’re crazy, Koberling. Max doesn’t even know Anna’s father. And you probably aren’t going to tell him anything either. And by the time Max grows up Anna’s father may no longer be around.’
Next morning Constance and Max are singing along with the radio in the kitchen. Koberling is awakened by their voices, which mix in with that of the radio announcer. The sun is streaming through the window. No Anna in the room, no dreams during the night.
A summer day, Koberling thinks, picture perfect. He rumbles down the stairs, and pulls open the kitchen door. Max is sitting at the table, his mouth smeared with egg, looking blissful. Constance stands at the stove, her face a dark shadow against the sunlight. She doesn’t look up, sings along with the radio, says, ‘Good morning, Koberling.’
‘Yes,’ Koberling says, looking out into the garden, to the veranda, towards Napoleon Hill. Then says much too quickly, ‘Where are they?’
The kettle begins to whistle. Constance turns off the gas and says, ‘They left already. Anna wanted to go to some lake or other before it got really hot.’
Koberling goes over to the radio and turns it off. It becomes quiet in the kitchen. ‘What? I don’t understand. Why did they leave so soon?’
Constance pours hot water into the coffee filter, her expression strained, “They didn’t want to wake you again, Koberling. To abuse your hospitality. They left their address in Berlin and said they’d be happy if we visited them in the autumn.’
Koberling stares at Max. Max stares back and lets his egg spoon sink slowly onto the table. Koberling feels an ache in his stomach, like a tremendous insult. He opens the door to the veranda and pokes his left hand through a spider web between the doorposts. Indian summer. He says, ‘By the time we go back to Berlin in the fall I’m sure they won’t be together anymore,’ the only pathetic put-down he can think of. Constance doesn’t answer.
If you enjoyed The Summer House, Later, check out these other great Judith Hermann titles.
Judith Hermann's first book, ‘The Summer House, Later’ was described as ‘a book about a certain kind of young woman, trying to get a boyfriend, to get some fun out of life, but with a sense of melancholy and a sense of loneliness that seems to define a generation’.
Now in Hermann’s second collection, ‘Nothing but Ghosts’, that generation has moved on, grown up perhaps, and the women have indeed found boyfriends but the relationships, described here with painstaking honesty, are all on the turn in some way and have passed their first flush of romantic love. We join many of these characters just as they have stopped communicating; the talking has stopped and the women, with their lives in stasis, have become watchful and disappointed and are starting to turn their gaze elsewhere…
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the Autorenwerkstatt Prosa (Prose Writers’ Workshop) of the Literarische Colloquium Berlin, the Kulturfond, the Akademie der Künste, the Alfred Döblin Haus in Wewelsfleth and especially Katja Lange-Müller, Burkhard Spinnen and Monika Maron for their support during her work on this book.
About the Author
Judith Hermann was born in 1970, and lives in Berlin. The Summer House, Later is her first book.
Praise
From the international reviews for The Summer House, Later:
‘This debut from a young German writer has created quite a stir in her home country. The Summer House, Later is an exquisite and powerful collection of melancholic snapshots of everyday life. The ghosts of Carver and Chekhov stalk the pages, and Hermann’s precise use of language, unstinting lack of bathos and cool, glacial tones are often spellbinding. Through her economic use of words, the author succeeds in drawing the reader irrevocably into each of the nine stories.’
Scotland on Sunday
‘The fragility of life’s decisions are relayed without sentimentality, yet with a quiet melancholy. An exceptional debut that gives rise to great hope.’
Die Zeit
‘A book about a certain kind of young woman, trying to get a boyfriend, to get some fun out of life, but with a sense of melancholy, a sense of loneliness, that seems to define a generation.’
Publishers Weekly
‘A bittersweet collection that manages to capture perfectly the feeling of just-out-of-reach satisfaction. Margot Bettauer Dembo’s sensitive translation means that Hermann’s prose remains as clear and measured as it is in the original German.’
Sunday Tribune (Dublin)
‘One of the great revelations of contemporary German literature … Hermann knows exactly how to choose the right details, and makes her music with them. On finishing this book, the reader is held by it still and regards the world in a different light.’
Le Monde
Further reviews overleaf
‘With her first short story collection, Judith Hermann reveals herself to be a remarkable writer with a sure grasp of her craft and an almost overwhelming sense of humanity. Her stories, principally set in the peeling city of Berlin, are elevated above the urban landscape by an elegantly filed prose that captures the world that survives underneath the fingernails of the everyday.’
RTE Guide
‘Exceptional … In Hermann’s fiction, intricately fashioned worlds reveal themselves, worlds which are utterly absorbing, sometimes heartbreaking, and always starkly original … a collection of striking distinction and poise … Every story here is worth reading. All of them possess merit and some of them touch on brilliance. When Hermann is on form, she can rival the best contemporary exponents of short fiction.’
Sunday Business Post
‘The Summer House, Later has an irresistible power … No word is too much and none out of place.’
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
‘Melancholy, muted, sometimes dramatic, but always pointed, precise and without pathos … The drama of Judith Hermann’s stories comes from what is unsaid, from a tension between artful staging and that which really happens, but is only glimpsed.’
Tagesspiegel
‘Beautifully written, haunting stories … The settings range from urban squalor to Costa Rica, but the characters mirror each other’s aimlessness, depression and fear. These people are living fractured lives, remembering the past without learning from it, frightened of the future, and unable to engage with the present.’
Tablet
‘An elegant and perceptive reading on the emptiness that fills our lives … Judith Hermann is a master storyteller.’
Independent
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