“What now?”
“I don’t know. He spends all his time in front of the computer, looking for real estate in Turkey. Having been in Germany for forty-two years, he just now learned that he’s a Muslim.”
10
The next day I went to Windmill’s office. His secretary was surprised to see me and asked whether I had made an appointment.
For a brief moment I stood in front of her, a little hesitant. The wall behind her was full of pictures of Windmill either standing or sitting next to important people. For a moment I stared at her, irritated, then went into his office and sat down in one of the visitor chairs facing his desk. As always Windmill was wearing a perfectly ironed white shirt, leaving the top three buttons open. He immediately stopped filling out whatever forms he was filling out and gave me an insecure smile.
“Why don’t you turn on the radiator?”
“It’s not snowing anymore.”
“It’s cold.”
“I didn’t think I’d see you again this soon,” he said.
“I need a job.”
“Those are a little rare at the UN these days.”
Windmill’s expression turned to amusement. I couldn’t name a reason why he should get me a job, but it was worth a shot. His office was as cold as Lenin’s tomb. The interior decoration was neutral and predictable. A soft, lightly colored carpet, a desk with a glass top, above which hung an abstract painting. A large one.
“I want something in Israel.”
“Why Israel of all places?”
“Are you Claude Lanzmann?”
Windmill grinned and I quietly closed the door behind me.
11
Sami parked in the driveway at my house. On the phone I’d explained to him that it was urgent and he’d borrowed his father’s car—a large black company car whose sole raison d’être was to impress.
When I put on the seat belt Sami gave me a concerned look. His eyes went from gray to green to brown, depending on the light and angle. Now they were red from exhaustion. Sami started the car. I rolled down the window and turned the radio all the way up. The full moon shone.
I easily found the path along the narrow rows. Elisha’s marker was clean, with fresh flowers on top. I took a small marble from my pocket and put it on the gravestone. Sami stood back and didn’t let me out of his sight. Eventually he did go back to the car, though. “I’m sorry,” I said to Elisha. I lay down on the marker, reaching out for him.
I had photos with me: two that Elisha had taken of me and two mirror shots of myself that I had taken after his death. I dug a hole next to his gravestone, put the photos inside, and lit them on fire. The photo paper burned quickly and two minutes later it was all over. I shoveled dirt over the hole and flattened the soil.
A few hours must have passed. Sami took me in his arms and carried me to the car. I hugged him and immediately let him go again. We sat silently in the car for a while. Then he pulled the keys from the ignition. He turned toward me, reached out for my hands, turned the palms face up and put them on his cheeks. I remembered his smell and the feeling of kissing him. When our lips almost touched I pushed him away with full force. His head hit the side window. I got out and ran up the road. At some point I stopped and went back to the car. Sami sat on the hood. The hurt look on his face startled me.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry,” he said.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“I know.”
I took his hand and hugged him, our mouths coming close again. Nothing happened.
We went for a walk through the village, wandering the streets in which Elisha had played as a child. Past the detached houses with closed shutters, past his parents’ restaurant, the post office. We crossed a schoolyard, stopping in front of a basketball hoop. No drunk teenage townies in sight. We looked out onto the dark water of the river that ran through the village, its name unknown to us. At the gas station we bought ice cream. The cashier asked Sami where he was from. Frankfurt, said Sami. No, where he was really from. I asked her what she meant. She smiled, a little lost. We tore the packaging off the ice cream. Mine was covered in dark chocolate and almonds, Sami’s was a hazelnut cone.
“Come on, tell her,” I teased. The cashier was ravenous for some exoticism.
“I’m from Madagascar,” Sami said. “We all live in tree houses there and eat nothing but bananas.”
“His first time trying ice cream,” I said. Sami grinned at me. At least things between us were good again.
The day began, the sky grew brighter, and the glowing neon sign for the autobahn rest stop was turned off. We shared the rest stop with a group of German soldiers. Their uniforms looked like oversized camouflage pajamas and they ate burgers. Entire meal deals with fries, chicken wings, and ice cream. Bellies hung over belts, and the thought crossed my mind that the uniform says a lot about the state of an army. Despite the fact that it was a German uniform, the soldiers looked like big, lazy animals. I couldn’t imagine that they had the license to kill and die somewhere, let alone by choice. I asked myself whether they in all seriousness expected me to respect them for that and I also asked myself whether they thought of African-Americans on their shooting ranges and yelled Motherfucker.
“I have the visa,” Sami said.
“Oh,” was all I could think of as a reply.
Sami regarded me curiously. “After a year. Can you imagine that? I waited for an entire year.”
“You lost an entire year.”
He looked at me. “It was good that I was here. Because of you.” He took a little pause. “All I’m saying is that I’m no terrorist. There was no reason to sleep on my parents’ couch for an entire year. I’m writing my thesis on German idealism. I taught at the university. I had friends and something like a girlfriend.”
“Oh.”
“She dumped me when it became clear that I wouldn’t be back for a while.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“Have you heard anything from Neda?” I tried to say this as casually as possible, but my voice trembled.
“No. What makes you think that I would?” Sami asked, genuinely surprised.
“So, you’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
“When?” I swallowed, trying to keep a businesslike tone, but the word shook.
“Next month. What are you going to do?”
“I got a fixed-term contract with the Tel Aviv office of a German foundation. I shouldn’t worry about Hebrew, they said.”
“But you know Hebrew.”
“No.”
“Why not? You’re Jewish. And your family lives in Israel.”
“Distant relatives. With the exception of one of my cousins. I never learned Hebrew.”
“First time that you admit to not being able to do something.” He smiled at me and then said: “Let’s go, I’m tired.”
12
I started packing everything into boxes. On some I wrote my name, on most the names of Elisha’s parents. More than half a year had passed since his death and his parents had regularly sent me postcards reminding me to send Elisha’s things. The postcards displayed Thuringian landscape shots. They came every week and in white envelopes, so that their content wouldn’t force itself upon the mailman. After a while the motifs started to repeat themselves. The cards were always written with a black ballpoint pen and in Horst’s narrow handwriting. Polite nothings became increasingly rare and often some words were illegible, because Horst was probably drunk and wrote them in phases of emotional turmoil, complaining about the injustice done to him. I didn’t understand why, among all the options, he chose Thuringian landscapes. Thuringia had nothing to do with our subjective sense of justice.
It was not for me to judge, but Horst was anything but a good father. He drank away the proceeds from his wife’s restaurant and now and then coached the local soccer team. Elisha, neve
r one to excel at sports, got a beating after every game. The way he saw it, the coach’s son shouldn’t grow up to be a weakling, or a homosexual. It had taken Elisha a while to comprehend that love isn’t expressed with fists.
Explaining to Horst or Elke that I needed Elisha’s things had been impossible. I needed his things close by, because I would roam our apartment for hours and days on end, telling myself that Elisha would come through the door any minute.
Now I stood in this very apartment, from which I had never ever wanted to move, and packed. It had taken Elias and me a long time to find an apartment. Mostly it was us and thirty other couples looking at a place that was inevitably way too expensive. And then Elisha criticized the layout, the colors, the floor, and the light. If his expression grew sour before we even got up the staircase, I assumed it was my fault.
I started with the kitchen, a big sunny room, semiprofessionally equipped. We had all kinds and sizes of plates, bowls, serving dishes, glasses, forks, knives, spoons, pans, casserole dishes, baking pans, a pasta maker and a rice cooker, but not two matching plates. Our dishes and cutlery had migrated to our kitchen piece by piece. Mostly from restaurants in which Elisha had worked as a sous-chef, or from other places. And because it was difficult for two wineglasses to disappear into a handbag at once, we equipped our table with a wide variety of plates and glasses. We stole everywhere—in cafes, inns, restaurants, snack bars, in Frankfurt and on trips. Everything in our kitchen had a history: the big serving dish with the naked lady was from a diner in New York, the crystal glasses from hotels in which we’d worked, the little baking dishes from Paris.
Of course we hadn’t thought of it as stealing, but rather a strike against the system. If we were exploited in badly paid jobs and our superiors treated us like serfs, then at least a few steak knives should be a part of the deal. The system owed us that much, we thought. Which system didn’t matter.
Elisha was very picky about the table being set right. He always hummed when setting the table and started with the large knives, one thumb’s width from the edge of the table and at a right angle to the chair. Then the large forks, the fish cutlery—if necessary, the small knives, the small forks, and the dessert fork and spoon. At this point Elisha would stop humming and his forehead would wrinkle, as if he mistrusted his composition. If there was nothing to find fault with anymore, Elisha would repolish the glasses, set the glass for red wine down in line with the knife for the main course, next to it the glass for white wine and then the water glass, most often arranged in a cluster. This mise en place seemed almost archaic in combination with our stolen tableware.
I saw Elisha standing by the stove, saw him sitting at the table, saw him pouring coffee into his cereal. My body missed him, reflexively my hand reached out for his and if I forgot, I sometimes leaned onto nothing. I saw silhouettes that resembled his. Sometimes I waited in bed for him to come home. He was still out with friends and had just forgotten to let me know. Sometimes I stood at the Hauptwache S-Bahn stop and waited. The entire station was filled with waiting people and I checked my watch impatiently, thinking that he’d be late again and that I would have to wait just a little bit longer. I looked for his face in every S-Bahn car. And in the line at the supermarket. I still bought double the amount of groceries that I needed.
Now I was wrapping everything in newspaper and storing it in boxes. In two days Horst would lock the boxes up in the basement of his house in Apolda. I opened the windows as wide as I could. The little herb garden that had grown in a window box had wilted.
I got lost in pots, pans, and flowers, thinking of our old apartment in Baku. How mother sold everything, how our belongings dwindled over time and found new owners. When our sofa was picked up and lost a leg on the staircase, my mother made a chicken that she pushed into the oven with a fatty layer of mayonnaise covering the skin. It must have been during the time when groceries were available again. I got to pick what I wanted to take to Germany. When we stood in front of the shelter for asylum seekers we had three suitcases and soon learned that we couldn’t use any of what we’d brought.
I resumed my packing. Cameras, lenses, tripods, photometers, chemicals. Dozens of frames that Elisha had bought at flea markets and restored himself. Art monographs, sketches, notepads, drawings. I took pictures of Elisha’s things, put up Elisha’s video camera and filmed myself while packing.
The bedroom. I took his pullovers from the dresser where they lay neatly stacked. I had not touched them since he’d put them there. Had only moved his worn T-shirts, which I draped over his side of the bed at night. Now I put everything into a box. I folded every piece of clothing multiple times until it fit perfectly. In the pockets of his jeans were crumpled train tickets. I didn’t remember where he had gone, or why. In another pair of pants I found a gum wrapper, for long-lasting fresh breath. His mouth had sometimes tasted like this gum. In between Elisha’s winter clothes I found a big box that I’d never seen before. Taped shut and covered with a fine layer of dust. I didn’t know whether I had the right to open it.
Besides, I was afraid. Afraid to find his notes. Afraid of what he had written. Of his thoughts. Maybe I would discover that he didn’t love me. Or not enough. Ever since seeing him for the first time I’d wanted to be loved by him. I was addicted to his love, because he was somebody who loved with his entire body and soul. What if I had constructed that love, because Elisha had an altruistic tendency? He wanted everybody around him to be happy. What if he didn’t love me, but just wanted to make me happy?
I made a coffee for myself and while I waited for the water to boil I took a knife, went back to the bedroom, and cut open the tape.
The box was filled with stacks of paper, held together by rubber bands and paper clips. They were photocopies, printed articles, scientific essays, a few maps torn from books, and notes by hand. All in all, an impressive, unsorted collection of material on the Caucasus. The notebooks were filled with names, dates, numbers, and, in some cases, even coordinates. On the side there were little drawings. And occasionally my name appeared with a question mark next to it.
I sat at the kitchen table and spread the photos out in front of me. Most of them were familiar from my elementary school days. Cattle cars filled with refugees, famished children, burned-down villages, frozen toes scantily bound with rags. Tents, wounds, dead bodies. Protesters, buses riddled with gun shots, smashed cars. Red carnations on the graves. Open casket processions. Aliyev the first, second, third. Azeri-style.
I put everything back into the box, rolled a joint, and put my laptop on the table. I had underestimated Elisha’s desire to understand me. We had fought a lot, often about Elisha being jealous of Sami. That was something he’d never forgiven me for. But mostly we argued about me. He thought I didn’t trust him, but I was simply of the opinion that what had happened was of no importance to us. I didn’t want a genocide to be the key to my personality.
I’d read about people with posttraumatic stress disorders—not that I would ever classify myself as such—that we destroy the people we love. And Elisha was a casualty of that.
On YouTube I listened to Mugam, Azerbaijani jazz, Aziza Mustafa Zadeh, and Muslim Magomayev. I sang along. Azeri, one of the languages of my childhood. All that remained were nursery rhymes and a few poems that I had learned by heart.
I took out Elisha’s photos and held them up, two at a time. I cleared out Elisha’s desk and closet: pictures of Frankfurt, Apolda, mountains of garbage in Eastern Germany, portraits of me. In most I look at the camera somewhat distantly. Or my face is concealed by my hair. On the outside I’m hardly different from his other models. Similar body shapes, poses, posture. It was his love and his fascination with me that made the difference. I taped the negatives to the window and looked at them until the sun went down. I would have none of them developed.
13
Cem and I sat next to each other on the sofa smoking. The apartment was empty and quiet. There was nothing much left to say, so we smoked one
cigarette after the other. The boxes waited in the hallway. Horst was late. A sense of calm had come over me—not due to my natural composure, but thanks to the double dose of sedatives I’d taken this morning.
The doorbell rang. Horst was standing in the doorway. A bulky figure, with a rough face and a mouth that made him look brutal. His hands were clenched into fists and in his eyes shone uncompromising hatred. I was afraid of him. But that was nothing new.
Horst said nothing. Only stood there, his nostrils flaring. We didn’t say a word either. He stared at us.
“The boxes are here,” I muttered, focusing on the delicate silver teapot that had once belonged to my grandmother. I poured him a cup, but he didn’t take it. So I put the cup back down.
“Can I help you?” Cem asked, ostentatiously polite as always. Horst shook his head and picked up two boxes at once. His grip was clumsy and the boxes shook precariously. He stormed out. His stomps reverberated in the hallway. I peeked through the window and saw him load the boxes into a red van. Cem rolled another cigarette.
When he got back up to the apartment his forehead was glistening with sweat.
“Are you sure you don’t need help?” Cem asked.
“Everything in there?” Horst asked.
Cem shrugged.
“Doesn’t seem like much,” Horst said.
“Seriously? What are you afraid of? Do you think she’s keeping a fucking sweater as a memento?” Cem yelled.
“I’m done with you guys,” Horst yelled back.
Cem’s body was tense, his throat covered with red spots. He was about to lose it. I took his hand in mine, our eyes met and I whispered: “Don’t. Please don’t.”
Horst stood in the door and didn’t move. His face was distorted with rage. Then he started to cry. First quietly, then more audibly, until his crying broke down into loud sobs. I took a step toward him but couldn’t fully bridge the distance and stopped abruptly. It was Cem who took Horst in his arms and tried to console him. I stood by, unable to move or speak.
All Russians Love Birch Trees Page 10
