After the death of the old householder, his son, the young householder, leases the workshop as weekend quarters to a young married couple from the district capital who keep their sailboat docked in the village harbor. In exchange, the two agree to regularly mow the lawn on the big and small meadows in summer. The daughter of the young householder and her friend from the neighborhood are allowed to hold the funnel when the gardener helps the subtenants fill the lawnmower with gasoline.
THE SUBTENANTS
YOU HAVE TO DECIDE that on your own, he’d said. And she had said yes. And after this yes she collapsed into a weeping ball without his knowing at first what the matter was. His wife who hadn’t even cried the first time she sat across from him in the visitation room at the prison. At the time he had said: I would have sent for you. And she had replied: I know. Nothing more than that. Let alone bursting into tears. Shortly after his release he had then quietly married her. Today, thirty years later, all he had done was say in the course of a conversation: You have to decide that on your own. And she had said something that sounded like “yes,” though admittedly the “yes” hadn’t been completely clear, and then she had begun to tremble, and since he’d thought she was cold, he’d put his arm around her. On many evenings they’d sat out of doors like that until late at night, side by side on the garden swing beneath the light of the lantern, chatting or in silence, gazing out in parallel lines into the blackness, at the lake whose waves softly lapped in the darkness. Startled by the sound of her crying, he at once withdrew his arm and looked at his wife as he had never before looked at her in thirty years of marriage. Then he got up and walked over to the dock without first, as usual, using his hands to part the branches of the old willow tree that hung down like a curtain above it. So now he stands there, gazing out into the night as his wife continues to sob on the shore behind him. Bawling on the bench, he thinks and can’t help grinning. And this grin pulls the corners of his mouth into so wide a grimace that he cannot pull them back again. He stands there on the dock, just at the point where it meets the shore, that place he had stepped to so decisively when his wife had suddenly begun to cry, as though he were striding into a staff dining room or over to the cash register at a department store, not even paying attention to how the branches of the old willow tree scratched against his face, just stands there, grinning out into the night. Lord only knows. Today during the day they’d gone for a sail, the wind was light. She’d held the sheets, he’d hoisted the sails and now and then steered a little.
Sailing is a beautiful thing. Because they loved the water so much, he and his wife had camped out for many years near the harbor before they seized the opportunity to set themselves up here. They were allowed to renovate the workshop down by the water to turn it into a weekend dwelling, but had kept a few useful items such as the workbench with its vice, the shelf for the fishing rods and a small washbasin. Among the nails, ropes and chisels, screwdrivers and rubber boots they had made themselves at home, television, table and bed, everything they needed was here, and now from here they could see their boat bobbing between two buoys near the dock. Sailing is a beautiful thing. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the mistress of the house was working abroad and neither she nor her father were taking care of the property, his wife had begun to decorate the small bit of lawn between the shed and the shoreline with stones, had planted asparagus beside the fence and also hung little baskets of flowers from the lower branches of the trees to the right and left of the garden swing, as she had done before in the campground. Beginning in springtime when the boat was put into the water, they would go sailing in virtually all weathers. They might also, for a change, go out in the paddleboat that was hanging on the back wall of the shed. The mistress of the house had given them permission. But they knew nothing more beautiful than just letting the wind carry them along. Sailing is a beautiful thing.
When he is sailing, everything seems so quiet. Even when the wind drives into the sails and tugs at the sheets, even then. You don’t hear the sound of your own blood either, he thinks, unless you hold your hand to your ear, and he holds his hand to his ear. When they are sailing, he and his wife exchange only the most necessary words. Sailing is like a service. What sort of service he really couldn’t say, and just as little does he know who has called for this silence that he and his wife maintain without ever having spoken of it. When he is sailing, the water seems infinite to him. Even when the shoreline is always in view. Even when they sail in circles or from one end of the lake to the other and then back again, over and over. Probably the sense of infinity comes from the motion, he thinks, but this is yet another thing he has never discussed with his wife. Should I call my sister or not, his wife had asked him, and he had said: You have to decide that on your own. Lord only knows. Now the water is lying black before his feet and lapping at the shore, and behind him his wife is sobbing. Perhaps this sobbing is only an inward-turned lapping of the water that is now, as she weeps, running from her eyes and nose, he thinks, and can’t help grinning once more. That one time, when he tried to swim to the opposite shore of the river, the water had been so black and had made faint splashing noises like this. He hadn’t gotten terribly far that night. Just like today. Today he stands grinning at the end of the dock and is already caught again, already nabbed once more from behind, without ropes — that time just by shouts from the shore, threats and curses, and tonight by sounds, that time without a boat under his rear end, swimming, and tonight standing at the end of the dock. His wife who didn’t cry even that first time when she sat across from him in the visitation room at the prison now is crying.
At the time he had known that he had to turn back. His friend hadn’t turned back. On this river, where swimming was forbidden, the water flowed downstream just like other rivers, he and his friend had often swum for pleasure in other rivers, had dived down to the bottom or let themselves be swirled around by the current. Still swimming that night, he had felt surprise that this thing that was utterly prohibited here was nonetheless so much like all the other swimming. Even today he knows that sooner or later he must turn back, return to the circle of light beneath the lantern where his crying wife is sitting on the garden swing. When he learned to ride a motorcycle, not even sixteen years old, he practiced together with his friends in a place close by here, on an unfinished bit of autobahn up in the woods, one of those strips of concrete leading from nowhere to nowhere that you could find everywhere in these parts if you knew your way around. A sandy path suddenly turns into highway and then just as suddenly reverts to a path again or else just stops somewhere right at the edge of the woods as if there were a wall. Back then, when he borrowed a motorcycle from an older friend for the first time to practice on this autobahn in the woods, he knew how to step on the gas but had forgotten to ask how to brake. When the autobahn then ended at the edge of the woods as if there were a wall, he had ridden at full tilt into the woods and swerved wildly around the oaks and pines with the wide mirrors his friend had mounted on the handlebars, not knowing how to stop a machine of this sort. Shit, he had thought, and steered and steered, searching for the way out of these woods more with his gut than with his eyes. It never occurred to him to just take his foot off the gas. Sometimes it happens that a joke has a hard seed inside and when he bares his teeth to laugh he finds himself biting down too hard and then he can’t let go. Shit. His wife is still crying. Shit, he thinks, standing with his back to her. Whether a single word can itself be a thought is something he doesn’t know, but in any case this one word is everything he is thinking, thinking more with his gut than his head. If so, it’s probably the sort of thought that suddenly appears without warning, just like the woods he’d gone zooming into that time, and then just as suddenly it’s over again. It’s just that the route between the oaks and pine trees planted much too close together appears infinitely long when you are swerving between their trunks, and the forest’s shade does not cool you as you careen through it, instead it burns from within. Shit. When after infinitely many twists and turns he felt the autobahn beneath his tires again just as suddenly as it had vanished before, he was grateful to Hitler for the first time in his life. All the mirrors were still intact.