“There’s not much I can say in response to that. Any attempt to try to demonstrate my understanding is doomed to failure. Even if I were to use the word ‘tragedy,’ it seems to me it would probably sound like an arrogant attempt to encapsulate your fate in a conveniently empty phrase that could never possibly express the full extent of your situation.”
“You are absolutely right about that,” I say.
“But there is one thing I have to say,” he says, and he sounds helpless and forlorn. Ms. Mahler shifts her gaze from me to him.
He turns to her and nods. I watch, astonished, as she stands up, politely pushes her chair in, offers me a pained smile and “goodbye and best wishes,” and leaves the room.
“Actually,” I say amid the silence, “I wanted to talk to her.”
The man leans back and puts his hands on the table. “What would you have said to her?”
“That her article was shameless and stupid.”
“You already made that clear. And besides,” he says, pausing to push the plate of cookies toward me, “besides, she already knows that.”
“What? I’m sorry?”
“She knows because I already told her.”
I look at the cookies. There are square and round ones with chocolate icing, shortbread, star-shaped cookies with a dollop of jam in the middle, and some that look like spirals.
“Please help yourself,” says the man. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Mineral water? We have cola in the canteen—I can go get one for you.”
I shake my head.
“I want to tell you something, something I would otherwise never tell an outsider,” he says, taking a round cookie. “Then perhaps you will understand a little better why Ms. Mahler isn’t here for our conversation. Perhaps you will also not find the article so . . . outrageous. Ms. Mahler is an intern. She is working here as part of a work experience program. And—just between you and me—she’s not one of the best of our interns. Not even a decent one.”
I look at him. He has taken a bite of his cookie and is turning what’s left around in his fingers.
“I was out of the office when her piece was published,” he says. “Ms. Mahler wrote it up quickly after her thrilling visit to the prison, there was space open on the page, and so it appeared the next day. There it was in the paper. For your information, we have a policy whereby anything written by an intern must be read by an editor and, if necessary, rewritten. Within our strict standards for what we consider worthy of publication, there is some room for discretion. It can depend on the individual taste of the editor, on time pressures, or on any number of other factors. I must admit the person responsible for editing this piece did not exercise due diligence. To call what this piece needed ‘editing’ is itself a euphemism. Because the problems in Ms. Mahler’s piece are not limited to a few stylistic mistakes. If you are going to take on this subject, it can’t be done the way she did it. It should have been approached completely differently. And I’m afraid Ms. Mahler was not the right person for the assignment. Her reporting was completely unacceptable. For you, someone affected by the events, it was even less acceptable. There’s no way else to say it.”
I listen silently as if hypnotized by the rotating motion of the half-eaten cookie.
“I find myself having to take responsibility for something that cannot be justified. Whatever you criticize us about, you will be completely in the right.”
“Why do you have to?” I ask.
“I’m sorry?”
“Why do you have to take responsibility?”
“Because I’m the section editor,” says the man flatly. “I am in charge of the local news. When I came back from vacation, I gave Ms. Mahler and my co-worker who ran the piece an earful. That’s why she was a bit nervous when you honored us with your unannounced visit. I had told Ms. Mahler that, as a result of her little ditty, for the first time in my career I hoped our paper wasn’t being read and that the family of the victims never came across it. My wish was not answered. I ask for your forgiveness from the bottom of my heart.”
He sticks the rest of the cookie in his mouth and smiles at me. It’s a crooked smile because his left cheek is bulging out.
“I’m so sorry,” he says suddenly with his mouth full. “I followed the news about the case two years ago. And not just for professional reasons. It created a sense of shock and dismay in me that exceeded anything I had experienced in the course of my work in years. I’m very sorry.”
I nod.
Then we’re both silent for a while. I listen as he chews up the cookie and swallows it. Then he pours himself a cup of coffee and reaches for the cream.
“What can I do for you, Sascha?” he says as he does. “You can dismiss that as an empty offer, but I would actually be willing to do a lot to try to ease things for you. Do you have any ideas about how I could do that?”
I try to think. Not that I expect to come up with something, but I want to be able to answer in a way that doesn’t sound stupid for once. My best moments so far have been silent ones.
A white rectangle with letters on it pops into my field of vision. I put out my hand. The rectangle is put into the palm of my hand.
You are capable of reading, Ms. Naimann, I think to myself. You taught yourself how to read when you were four. And ever since you’ve read everything you could get your hands on.
So read it.
I read: Volker Trebur, Editor, City Section. There’s an address, telephone number, email, private address, and phone number.
I look at him quizzically.
“Call me when you think of something I can do,” he says. “Hang on, my mobile number’s not on there.” He pulls a pen out of his chest pocket, takes the white rectangle from my hand, writes a row of numbers on it, and puts the card back in my hand. “It would be an honor,” he says flatly.
I try to shove the business card into my pants pocket. But when I stand up to do that, I drop it on the floor. I bend over to pick it up and crumple it in my fist.
“Is it a deal?”
“What? I’m sorry?”
“You’ll come up with something?”
“I don’t know if I’ll think of anything,” I mumble. “I’m not very creative.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Then don’t.” I pull my backpack onto my shoulders. The man stands up quickly.
“Thanks for letting me in,” I say. “It’s nice to be taken seriously. I’m off.”
“I’ll take you down,” he says and opens the door for me. We ride the elevator silently. The card wriggles in my hand like a captured butterfly. Maybe it just feels that way because my hand is shaking.
At the glass door I turn to him. I’m expecting to have to shake hands goodbye. I don’t like shaking hands and don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.
But he doesn’t try to shake my hand. He puts his hand on my shoulder and says “Good day.”
“Good day,” I answer like an echo.
I take the subway, the commuter rail line, and the tram. The business card in my hand has stopped wriggling. I open the apartment door with the other hand and toss my backpack in the corner beneath the jackets.
That’s when I see them—the shoes.
I wouldn’t have noticed them if I hadn’t tripped over them. They’re big, stained leather shoes. The laces hang limply from them.
Huh, I think lethargically, and shove them aside with my foot. I want to go straight to my room. But I stop at the door to my room and turn around to look back at the shoes again.
It’s a riddle, I think. A pear, a banana, an apple, and a circular saw: which one of these things is not like the rest?
It’s nice operating in a gray fog, I think to myself. Gray is a nice color. It’s underrated. Ignored. Has a bad reputation. But I’m warming up to it.
“Maria,” I call out, surprising even myself, “there are some shoes out here.”
The answer comes quickly, high-pitched, kind of surprised. It’s
not a word so much as an “Oh!”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I say angrily.
Maria appears in the kitchen doorway. She’s in flesh-colored tights and a floral-pattern blouse. She’s frantically patting down her hair.
“Little Sascha,” she says, her eyes wide. “You’re home so early today. We . . . I hadn’t expected you.”
“What do you mean early?” I say. “I’m not early.”
“You always have your get-together Friday afternoons,” Maria says.
“My club,” I correct her, realizing she’s right. Fridays the philosophy club meets after school. I’d forgotten. “And so what? Aren’t I allowed to come home when I want?”
“Yes, yes,” Maria says quickly. “Of course, of course.”
She looks a little pale to me today.
The circular saw is the correct answer. It is the only one of the four things that doesn’t rot.
Instead of going into my room, I go to the kitchen. Maria blocks my path. I have to shout at her for a second before she steps aside. I take a step forward and make the big discovery.
Sitting at our kitchen table is Grigorij, the father of Anna’s friend Angela. I recognize him from seeing him around. We always say hi to each other. He’s short and wiry, has a black moustache and a messy head of salt-and-pepper-colored hair. He’s in an undershirt and sweatpants, trying to hide behind his teacup. But he can’t, even though it’s a big cup. Steam rises from the cup. Grigorij’s holding onto a spoon, the other end of which is in a jar of jam. The still life is completed by a plate of cookies.
“Hi, Uncle Grischa,” I say out of habit.
Grigorij puts the spoon in his mouth and licks it off—probably just a displacement activity as he ponders his next move.
“Hello, Sascha,” he says. I hear an unfamiliar rustle. I frown, concentrating, until I realize it’s the sound of Grigorij’s feet—in blue socks—fidgeting around beneath the table. Probably looking for his shoes.
“Your shoes are in the entryway,” I say coolly. “Or do you already have a pair of slippers you keep here? Just don’t tell me you use mine. I wouldn’t know, because before today our paths haven’t crossed in this house, have they?”
“You’ve got it all wrong, Sascha,” he says. This gets me briefly fired up, because there’s nothing I hate more than people talking ridiculous bullshit.
“What exactly have I got wrong?” I ask. Maria disappears like a shadow at noon and reappears just as quickly with Grigorij’s shoes in her hand. She lays them deferentially at his feet.
“You might as well put them on for him, too,” I say, looking at the wall. “Why half-ass it?”
Grigorij slips out of his chair and squats to tie his shoes.
“It’s not right, acting this way, Sascha,” he says, lifting his wrinkled face toward me.
“What’s not right?” I ask loudly. It comes out that way because my anger is being tempered by a gnawing, sudden sense of pity. Just what I need, I think. Her genes. At exactly the wrong moment.
Couldn’t I have gotten her beautiful eyes instead? Please?
Grigorij stands up. Even upright he’s half a head shorter than I am. He still has to raise his head to look at me. And he does.
“What?” I ask. “What did I say? How’s Angela? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“Angela’s not doing too well,” Grigorij says. “She had her wisdom teeth removed, but they did a crappy job. Her whole face has been swollen for a week now. She can only eat through a straw. Her only consolation is that she’s lost a bit of weight because she can’t really eat. She’s been jealous of all the skinny girls for years—especially you.”
I grunt.
“I make her banana milk,” Grigorij says, looking up at me from below. “With an electric mixer. It’s cold and nutritious, and she can drink it. She complains, though—she’s had it with milk. But I can’t just wave a magic wand and make the swelling go away.”
“It sounds awful,” I say. “I hadn’t heard.”
Grigorij shrugs his shoulders and shuffles toward the door. Maria follows him to the entryway. They don’t say a word to each other. Maria keeps her eyes fixed on his slumped back. She closes the door behind him. Maybe they had a chance to exchange glances as she did.
Then she walks past me back into the kitchen. I stand in the hall for a while and then go into the kitchen.
Maria’s sitting at the table stirring the jam with a spoon.
“How come you didn’t say goodbye to each other properly?” I snap. Though given the situation it’s not what I really want to know. “Is that how they do it in your generation? No goodbye kisses and not so much as a see-you-later?”
Maria doesn’t answer.
“How long has it been going on?” I ask.
She looks up at me. Her little blue eyes are welling up.
“Don’t cry,” I warn. “And where are my siblings?”
“Alissa is at Katja’s,” Maria answers immediately.
“Who is that?”
“A friend of hers. Lives on the third floor. They play together a lot.”
“I had no idea they played with each other a lot these days.”
“And Anton has soccer practice at school.”
I look at her.
“Sascha,” she says, “I look after those kids as if they were my own. In fact, I consider them my own.”
“But they’re not,” I say curtly.
“I’ve never once left them unattended. They are always my first priority. I would never do anything to harm them.”
“You send them away and fuck around!” I scream. “Thank god I didn’t get home any earlier. If I had caught you in the act—if I’d seen that old wrinkle bag with not just his shoes off but his ugly-assed pants off, too, I would have puked.”
“It’s not right, acting this way,” Maria says glumly. It occurs to me that I’ve already heard this sentence once in here today. I turn around and go into my room. I throw myself on the bed and press my face into the pillow. I feel sick.
The door I just slammed closed begins to quietly open.
“Get out,” I shout.
“Sascha,” Maria says quietly, “what have I done wrong?”
I sit up. Maria comes in slowly, gingerly, as if she’s entering a lion’s den. Then she sits on the corner of the bed, close enough that I can smell her perfume. It makes me feel even sicker.
“He so nice, Sascha. He’s a good man.”
“I don’t want to hear that,” I say. “I don’t care.”
“It’s not as if it’s just . . . it’s not just about . . . the bedroom,” Maria says, blushing. “But you’re a big girl. So I can say that’s not totally unimportant.”
“Maria,” I say wearily, “get out of my room. Spare me the details. I have a weak stomach.”
“Do you know what it’s like to be alone?” she asks.
I stare at her. “Who is alone?”
“Me,” Maria says, surprised—as if I’ve asked her something so obvious. “I love living here with you and taking care of the place, and I love the children. But I’m a grown woman, Sascha.”
All of a sudden I remember she’s not 50, she’s 37.
“Et tu, Brute,” I say bitterly. “What is it you all find so great about it? Why can’t you live your lives in peace, without wrinkly old cocks . . . anyway, you know what I mean. I trusted you. I thought we were your family.”
“You are,” says Maria.
“I should have known,” I say. “You didn’t come here for us. You wanted to find a man here, a better one than you could find in Novosibirsk. And all you managed to find was Grigorij. What now? Are you going to marry him and move out? Or is he going to move in here? Or will he just stop by for a quick fuck now and then and make you wash his laundry?”
“That’s awful,” Maria says. “It’s just awful, what you’re saying.”
“The truth is always ugly,” I say. “Around here they say the truth hurts worse than a punch in
the face.” She’ll never figure out that I just made this up.
“Listen to me, Sascha,” she says, trying desperately to lock eyes with me. “Grigorij is a nice man. He can’t do anything about the fact that he’s been a widower for so long. And he doesn’t have it easy with that fat brat of his. He washes his own laundry, by the way—and even irons Angela’s skirts. And he’s always been so helpful when I run into him on the street or at the supermarket. He’s explained so much to me.”
“What didn’t I explain to you?”
“And now for three months he’s been coming here. I never go to his place. I don’t like his daughter and she likes me even less. And anyway, I prefer to be here. I feel safer than I would someplace else. I’ve also told him he can only come when the little ones aren’t here. And he’s sticking to that. I call him when I can. I have so much time.”
“That’s the least you can do—make sure the kids aren’t around for it,” I say and am horrified to see Maria’s crying. “What’s the problem?” I say with malice. “What grounds could you possibly have to cry?”
Maria shakes her head and wipes her tears away with the sleeve of her shirt. Then she pulls out a big, floral-pattern handkerchief from the waistband of her tights and blows her nose. It sounds like a clap of thunder.
“I’m so lonely here,” she sniffles into her handkerchief. “I never thought it would be so awful here. I don’t understand anything here. Not even the TV shows. And the Russians here in the neighborhood all look at me funny. Grigorij’s the only one who is always nice to me.”
“Why does everyone look at you funny?” I ask, surprised. “Half the people around here are from Kazakhstan or wherever. Haven’t you been able to make any friends?”
Maria shakes her head like a wet horse. “I think it might have something to do with the whole history.”
“What history?”
“They all know I’m related to him. And, you know, when something like that happens to a family they are shunned. It’s like a disease, and nobody wants to get infected. It was like that even in Novosibirsk.”
“I don’t give a shit what happened in Novosibirsk,” I say and drop myself down onto my pillows.
Broken Glass Park Page 6
