Letti Park

by Judith Hermann

  Good evening, Iris.

  Martha. Nice to see you.

  Most of the time it’s Martha who starts the conversation; it’s easier for her, today as it was back then, easier for her than for me. It’s not that she’s entirely without inhibitions; at first her tone of voice is ironic and her body language quite formal; she looks as if she actually wanted to bow. But behind this, behind the formality, there’s still this great fondness, a boundless warmth – almost irresistible for me. This lasts a little while. Ten minutes, a quarter of an hour – then we’re talking together as if nothing had happened. As if almost nothing had happened. About mutual acquaintances, separations, weddings. Inevitably, about work. We talk about our children, Martha also has a daughter; both our children are doing poorly in school; their worst subject is maths.

  How is that possible?

  With such intelligent, exceptional mothers.

  If we’ve had a lot to drink, and Martha still drinks too much – which probably won’t change any more – we also talk about other things. About partings. Illnesses. About funerals. If Martha is completely drunk, she’ll tell me, every time, that she can’t help imagining that she’s standing at my grave. She imagines I died and she had to go to my funeral, and as she describes this scene, she eventually bursts into tears. But still, that doesn’t change anything. It changes nothing; we don’t connect with each other any more.

  Twenty years ago we lived together in America for a while. We had intended to emigrate, but came back to Europe; towards the end of our stay we had spent several weeks with a friend of Martha’s in the Antilles – with Zach, and that’s where this photo must have been taken. Zach lived in a dilapidated place in the hills, a one-storey building with a tower in the middle from which you could see across the entire jungle down to the bay. In that house I had a room next to the kitchen. Martha slept up in the lighthouse tower together with Zach. Later I sometimes thought that Martha had prostituted herself so that we could spend some time – would have time for each other. Swimming, driving around in the Jeep, drinking rum, picking mangoes, and lying in a hammock, smoking – so that we could do things like that. I’m not sure any more whether I merely thought this or possibly even said it aloud. But then Martha and Zach knew each other from the old days. Maybe that is all there was to it.

  The house had a staff of two, a dark-skinned man and a dark-skinned woman.

  Bumpy and Squeaky.

  Martha and I couldn’t get to the bottom of why they had these awful names, nor could we find out what their relationship to each other was. Brother and sister? Husband and wife? Cousins? We couldn’t figure out their relationship to Zach either; Martha claimed Squeaky had moved out of Zach’s room the day she moved in, that she had seen Squeaky carry her few belongings down the spiral staircase. Who knows. Clearly, things were happening behind the scenes. They were not what they seemed; the first night I lay sleepless on my back in my little room next to the kitchen – a room with a mattress under a mosquito net, a three-legged stool, and a turquoise-painted board on two sawhorses for a table – listening to the rustling and breathing outside my window; rustling and breathing that sounded as if it might have been almost anything. But the next morning it turned out that it was only wild dogs. Playful wild dogs in the wet grass.

  And then there was the boy. A white boy, sixteen or seventeen years old. He could have been eighteen too, a delicate eighteen-year-old with fine, almost-white hair. Thin; he gave the impression of having experienced something really bad; he hardly ever spoke; sometimes he laughed at a joke, but his laugh was tinged with anxiety as if he actually knew better. He slept a lot. He slept all day on the sofa downstairs in the kitchen; he didn’t wake up till evening.

  He wasn’t really a guest. But just what was he then?

  I can’t remember his name, and I’m sure Martha can’t remember it either, that neither one of us can recall what his name was.

  And after a while Zach drove off. Perhaps he dealt drugs or he had interests in drugs or other shady operations; he never said a word about how he actually financed the house, his employees, the three cars and the flights to Los Angeles. In any case, he drove off, intending to be away for some time, but before he said goodbye, he stocked the pantry and counted the gallon jugs of water and showed Martha how she could switch on the alarm system before she went to sleep in the evening up in the tower without him. It was as if he counted on being away for a while, but he didn’t say anything about that. He didn’t talk about it. He left the house at the crack of dawn, and that day, I remember exactly, it wouldn’t stop raining, and Martha and I and Bumpy and Squeaky sat in the kitchen with the terrace door open, hour after hour, playing Pick-up-sticks while this constant, misty rain fell outside. The boy lay on the sofa and watched us. Bumpy was a fantastic Pick-up-sticks player. The best.

  The policemen came at dusk. They came driving up the meadow in two cars, which looked dramatic – the headlights in the twilight, the fine drizzle caught in the beams of the headlights – and they all got out at the same time, a detective in a shiny rain slicker and five police officers with machine guns. They approached the terrace not in any particular hurry, but very purposefully, and Martha made an attempt to slide the terrace door closed; that’s also what Martha was like; she felt responsible. And of course that was foolish; the detective was already standing on the threshold, and he slid the door open again and said, We have a warrant to search this house; and that’s all he said.

  I was sure they had no search warrant.

  They searched the house. They separated us, pushing us all into different rooms. The detective pushed me into my little room with the mattress, the mosquito net, the three-legged stool and the turquoise board, and he dumped the contents of the metal box in which for some absurd reason I’d collected and saved the things from my trip with Martha out on the floor. He stamped on them with the toe of his shoe – shells, barrettes, matchboxes; he stamped on them the way you stamp out the glowing tip of a cigarette.

  They took the boy away. They took Squeaky and Bumpy too, but we got the impression that they’d let them out again at the next street corner. Above all, they took the boy, and he was wearing nothing except for a pair of white underpants as they pushed him into the car; he was bleeding and holding his hands over his genitals, and that was the last we saw of him.

  Bumpy and Squeaky said nothing to us in parting. The detective got into the car, and then he got out again and came back to the terrace where Martha and I were standing, with the ravaged house behind us and the broken sticks from the Pick-up-sticks game; and he said that he wanted to point out to us that from now on we would be alone up here.

  Totally and utterly alone and on our own; he wanted us to realise this; it was important to him. It mattered to him. He added that they would come again; that this was the only thing that he could say with certainty – they would be back.

  And then? What would happen then.

  What else still comes to mind when I look at that photo – Martha and me in front of a hut of weathered wood with a closed door and a dirty little window behind blinds made of straw – and who in the world had taken this photo; who saw us like this. It certainly wasn’t Zach. I’m also reminded of the special way Martha would pronounce my name; her habit of always weaving my name into the sentences she said to me as if she really meant me or as if she wanted to show me how very seriously she meant me. But I’m afraid in the end I never reacted to it.

  Yes – what happened then.

  If you were to ask us that question today, on an evening like this – at a birthday party, a vernissage, a concert or a funeral; as we’re leaning against a wall; each of us holding a glass of champagne, and both of us, independently of each other, prone to saying little, to silence, to long inward pauses in the conversation – if you were to ask us this question today, we couldn’t give you an answer. I’m sure that Martha couldn’t give you an answer either. Neither Martha nor I can remember what happened after that. We don’t remember.
Basically, we’re standing there to the present day; we’re still standing hand in hand and barefoot on the terrace of that house on the island, and night is already approaching in long strides over the beautiful blue mountains.

  Poplar Pollen

  Markovic kept the engine running as if his sister Bojana were robbing a bank. Selma was sitting in the back. It must have been winter; it was freezing cold, already dark, and stormy. Bojana came running across the car park, dropped into the passenger seat, and Markovic stepped on the gas even before she could pull the car door shut. He pointed back over his shoulder at Selma and said, That’s my new girlfriend. Take a look at her; do you like her?

  Bojana turned around to look at Selma; then she said, Striking.

  They were simply picking Bojana up from work. Like that. That’s how Selma first met Bojana.

  Ten years later Selma and Markovic get divorced. Selma divorces Markovic. Could be she might remarry him, but for the time being she divorces him; right now she is exhausted. She’ll have to see what’s going to happen next. She is in her mid-forties; something in her life has to calm down. She herself has to calm down, and that’s simply not possible as long as she’s living with Markovic.

  During the divorce proceedings, she avoids Bojana. Maybe she’s afraid Bojana might try to make her change her mind. Perhaps seeing Bojana is painful because Bojana is married and staying married. She has been married to Robert for an unbelievable twenty-seven years. Selma, at the beginning of her own marriage, had said to Markovic, We’ll be like your sister and her husband. She had visualised it like that. A long time ago. After the divorce she starts to meet with Bojana again. It takes a while; then she’s ready. She loves Bojana; it’s absurd to avoid her.

  Bojana phones Selma and says, Why don’t you come over. Come for a glass of wine.

  Selma assumes that Markovic is far away on the days when Bojana phones her. That he won’t just happen to drop in at Bojana’s for a glass of wine too. She has actually never talked about this with Bojana; she believes that they have an unspoken agreement. There’s a large table in the middle of the kitchen in the apartment in which Bojana and Robert have been living for twenty-five years; above the table there’s a rotating mobile of the planets that Bojana’s youngest daughter made. The balcony door opens out to the courtyard; old paper is piled up in one corner; the wooden floor is worn; on the wall hang colourful scribbles by Bojana’s grandchildren, group photos from family birthdays, the horoscopes Bojana drew up for her daughters, their husbands and her daughters’ girlfriends, for Robert and for Markovic. At the very beginning, more than ten years ago, there was also a joint horoscope for Selma and Markovic. A promising horoscope, a rosy future; Bojana had been surprised at the unusually favourable constellation, but she also had misgivings; she had expressed some warnings. Neither Selma nor Markovic thought it was worth talking about. They didn’t pay any attention to it.

  Robert lays the table. He sets out little wooden boards and wine glasses; puts out cheese, olives and bread. He’s always the one who sets the table; his penchant for the wooden boards bothers Selma although she can’t say why. Bojana keeps starting to do things, stops, and starts doing something else. She puts a bottle of wine on the table and says, I’m going to open a good bottle of wine for us. But then she puts the corkscrew down on top of the dishwasher and opens the refrigerator without taking anything out; and then she goes to get her cigarettes. Robert uncorks the wine.

  Bojana says, It’s quite obvious that you had to come over today, Selma. Couldn’t be any other way, what with such a wonderful Venus in Pisces and Saturn in the Seventh House. Really quite obvious!

  Robert is a sculptor. The centaur with two tails in front of the lilac hedge in the courtyard is his. He calls Bojana’s astrological readings hocus-pocus. In spite of that he likes listening to them – apparently he likes the words, the world of images behind them, all these planets and transits, directions of the sun’s arc, the radix, the idea of a seventh house. At first Robert was rather reserved vis-à-vis Selma; he had treated her, strictly speaking, as if she were a spy. Now it’s different. Ever since she divorced Markovic it’s been different.

  He says, Sit down, Selma. Have something to eat. Eat and drink.

  Bojana and Robert had been to Georgia together. They brought back dried pomegranates and Georgian brandy.

  Bojana says, Robert and I drank this make of brandy in the hotel with a pimp and his whore.

  And what was it you asked him, Robert says. He wants her to act it out; she’s supposed to act out the way it was in the Georgian hotel. What exactly did you ask the pimp.

  I asked the pimp about love, Bojana says with dignity. I said, What do you think of love?

  And what was the pimp’s answer, Robert says.

  He said, I’ll smack you in the kisser, Bojana says. That’s what he said.

  And then she laughs, uproariously, indignantly and delightedly all at the same time.

  Good gracious, Robert says. Dear God in heaven. Just imagine it. How can anyone ask something like that, Selma. Be honest. Would this sort of thing have happened to you too? Would you be capable of asking something like that?

  I’d certainly like to know what a pimp thinks about love, Selma says affably.

  Well what is a pimp supposed to think about it, Robert says.

  He pours more wine into their glasses and pushes the board with the cheese and olives towards Selma; he cuts some fresh, thick slices of bread. He shakes his head – how can anyone be so stupid.

  He says, Well anyway, Bojana has bought herself a horse. Did you know about that? Has she already told you? That’s the latest. She bought herself a horse and a piece of pasture-land, and she drives out to see the horse every day and feeds it apples and nuts.

  And carrots, Bojana says. Apples, nuts and carrots, and I also add linseed oil; just imagine. The horse is incredibly beautiful. It’s far too beautiful. The cars on the road stop, and people get out and call to the horse and pet it, and then they stuff it full of bad sugar. If I didn’t feed it linseed oil and carrots, it would die. It would die miserably.

  Can you ride it, Selma says. She has the feeling she ought to be saying something too for a change.

  Well, not yet, Bojana says evasively. It’s too young. It’s still too young. At some point I’ll ride it. In the future. Maybe.

  The fact is, Robert says, it’s not quite clear yet who is more afraid of whom. Bojana of the horse or the horse of Bojana. But that will change, right, Bojana? It will change. Once the Moon is in Pisces, then this will all be different.

  And he strokes Bojana’s hair with his large hand.

  In the kitchen that evening towards midnight Robert notices there’s a smell of burning.

  Can you smell it? Oh well, Bojana, you can scarcely smell anything any more, but Selma, can you smell it; it definitely smells of smoke.

  He’s right, it does smell of smoke. Oddly enough Bojana and Selma aren’t worried. They think nothing of it. Robert goes out into the hallway. The neighbours’ doors open and slam shut again, and someone calls the fire department. Bojana leans over the balcony balustrade and says calmly, Well, the courtyard is already filled with smoke. Then she gets the Georgian brandy and two little glasses out of the cabinet, sits back down at the table, opens the bottle and pours some for Selma and some for herself.

  Are we sitting in a burning house, Selma says.

  We are indeed, Bojana says. So we are. We’re sitting in a burning house. We’re clinking glasses with each other in a burning house, and moreover we’re doing it on principle.

  They raise their glasses and drink, and then they kiss each other on both cheeks.

  How is Markovic, Selma asks. The question escapes from her lips plain and simple; she can’t take it back.

  How’s he doing.

  Oh, Markovic, Bojana says. Markovic. How should he be doing?

  In the end it was only poplar pollen. The white, fluffy, light snow of poplar sperm driven by the wind into
a corner of the courtyard, driven behind the centaur with the two tails, spontaneous combustion. It happens sometimes, and that was all it was, nothing more. After the fire department had left, the kitchen smelled of damp soil, of smoke, and of summer.

  As she was leaving Robert said to Selma, You’ve learned to set limits. With Markovic you’ve learned, once and for all, where your limit is.

  He had been drunk and had embraced her in a way he hadn’t done in all those years she was with Markovic, and Selma had gone home with that sentence, and the next morning it was the very first thing she remembered.

  What kind of limit?

  And why was it at once both comforting and terrible.

  And all this happened quite a while ago. Several years ago. At some point Robert did leave Bojana after all; from one day to the next he filed for a divorce, and now it seems he’s living with a woman who is five years older than Bojana, who favours net stockings and dyes her long hair henna red. That’s what Selma has heard; she doesn’t see Robert any more. She does see Bojana. Bojana goes out just about every evening to see her horse and standing shoulder to shoulder with the horse in the meadow, she holds her hand up to the soft horse’s muzzle, and they walk along the path for a while and back again. Sometimes Selma drives out with her and watches. Bojana tells Selma that she doesn’t know whether she’ll ever have enough time to understand it all. To understand why Robert left her. With whom exactly she had been living almost her entire life, had spent more than half her life.

  Sometimes Selma thinks back to that night with the poplar pollen. About the words, spontaneous combustion, about this term. She thinks, Love might be a form of spontaneous combustion, but that thought has no substance either, so she dismisses it.

  Some Memories

  Greta is lying on the chaise longue; she says she doesn’t feel herself. Nothing bad, no pain, she simply doesn’t feel herself.