The last quarrel between Käthe and Eduard had been early this year, 1957, and it had taken place in the room next to Ella and Thomas’s, so that they heard every word: Käthe shouting that she wanted to go to the theatre, he had never once gone with her, he took no interest in anything and blamed her for throwing money out of the window with her visits to the theatre. Throwing money out of the window? Could there be a finer, better, more important window on the world than the theatre? Whose money was it anyway? Who worked for it? In her indignation Käthe set about exploiting his latest symptom of paralysis in the arms; before his eyes she took a chisel and forced the drawer of his desk open. He had to watch, with his arms hanging limp and useless. She found a mountain of money in his desk, over two thousand marks, a whole bundle of banknotes. Käthe had expected almost anything, letters and pictures, documents and souvenirs of dubious merit, she had even thought there might be some money, twenty marks, fifty, perhaps a hundred. But not this. Ella and Thomas stole out into the corridor and watched the scene, unnoticed, through the open door. A painful scene. Its painfulness seemed to egg Käthe on to act like a monster. She threw the notes at Eduard, they wouldn’t stick to him, his limp arms couldn’t catch them, they sailed to the floor. Beside herself with fury, she shouted at him that he lay there idly like an invalid, had left her to provide for a family of six by herself all these years, didn’t bother about anything, drove away their household helps, left her to do all the work on her own — she had to watch every mark! He shouted at her not to treat him like a small child. She had broken open his desk, he shouted, that was a criminal act, she was a criminal, he had to live under the same roof as such a person, he had rights as well. Käthe could give as good as she got when it came to shouting, but now she yapped, short and sharp: he was the criminal. All these years she’d toiled on her own, while behind her back he was hoarding money like a madman! What kind of money was it, anyway, where did it come from, what was it for? That was nothing to do with her, he retorted, he had a right to that money, he’d worked for it. Oh, worked for it, had he? Käthe snapped back. When and where, might she ask, had he been working recently? Did he think she didn’t know what he got up to, lounging about and doing his friends a favour now and then?
Here he interrupted her; he’d fought and suffered, he said, she didn’t understand the first thing about that, he hissed, she’d better shut up or she’d get to know him better, and not just him either. Not just him? It wasn’t for her to put on airs, she knew nothing about doing friends a service. To which she asked if he thought she was stupid? Doing friends a service? Maybe it had never occurred to him that she too did friends a service, but for free, entirely unlike him. He was not a true communist, he was a greedy scoundrel and an old miser, keeping what was theirs from her and the children. He wailed that he was an injured man, maybe she remembered who it was she’d married, and he added further furious recriminations. Käthe said she had married him for the sake of the twins, hoping at least to give them a father — but he was the kind of father to cheat his own children, he was a crook, a miserable villain, keeping money from them, hoarding it in his desk on the quiet for years. He ought to be ashamed of himself, said Käthe, he could go to hell, get out of there, never mind where to, she just wanted him out.
She put her peach-stone necklace round her neck, picked up one of the banknotes and let the door latch behind her. The play she was going to see began in an hour’s time.
And he disappeared. A few weeks later, his room was empty.
Thomas tied the cord round a small branch and knotted it firmly. He took the other end of the cord and wove it into the hanging roof. Ella had said she wanted a little bench, and this afternoon he was going to build one into the tree house for her, he knew where already, he would use the big fork in the branches for it. But the roof wasn’t windproof yet.
Ella’s voice was unusually flat, it sounded almost casuaclass="underline" I hate Eduard.
Oh yes? Then why were you always sitting on his lap?
Wasn’t.
Yes you were, all the time. Thomas was trying to tie the leafy roof of their tree house firmly in place with the cord. He had woven twigs together to stabilise it. Ella sat up, crossing her legs.
It was from longing. I was thinking about our father. And wondering what he was like. I was sitting on his lap, not Eduard’s.
Really and truly? Thomas shook his head; he didn’t like to think about it. Anyone else would have seen you sitting on Eduard’s lap.