THE GARDENER
IN THE SPRING he puts in a flowerbed along the side of the house that faces the road, filling it at the householder’s request with poppies, peonies and yellow coneflowers, with a big angel’s trumpet in the middle. For the border, he just pokes a few box twigs into the earth all around the flowers, they’ll put down roots and grow. In summer he sets out sprinklers on both lawns, twice each day they will bow to one side and than the other for half an hour, once early in the morning and once at dusk, meanwhile he waters the flowerbed, roses and shrubs. He cuts off the withered blooms and prunes the box tree. In the fall he harvests walnuts for the first time, coaxing the nuts from their soft husks that stain his hands brown, in the fall he gathers the dry branches that have broken off from the oaks and also a few of the pine trees during storms, he saws them into pieces, chops them up for firewood and stacks the logs in the woodshed.
By 1936, the potato beetle had already crossed the Rhine and was continuing on toward the East, in 1937 it reached the Elbe River, and now, in 1938, it is beleaguering the region around Berlin. With great patience the gardener plucks the beetles over and over from the leaves of the angel’s trumpet, which as the only representative of the nightshade family in the garden has been heavily affected by this plague. He crushes the eggs of these pests and even tries to seek out and destroy their pupae by digging up the earth all around the bush. This summer the sandy road is black with beetles for days on end. At the beginning of the infestation, the leaves of the bush with its splendid red blossoms merely have holes in them and display tattered edges, but by summer’s end all that remains of the bush is its skeleton, a few of the leaves’ ribs and the bare main shoots of the bush itself, the blossoms having long since fallen to the ground. On instructions from the householder, the gardener removes what is left of the angel’s trumpet and plants a cypress in its place as the new centerpiece for the flowerbed.
THE CLOTH MANUFACTURER
HERMINE AND ARTHUR, his parents.
He himself, Ludwig, the firstborn.
His sister Elisabeth, married to Ernst.
Their daughter Doris, his niece.
Then his wife Anna.
And now the children: Elliot and baby Elisabeth, named for his sister.
Elliot rolls the ball to his little sister. The ball rolls across the grass, stopping in the rose-bed. Elisabeth doesn’t want to retrieve it, she knows the roses will prick her, and so her brother runs over, twisting his way between the blossoms, bending them to the left and right with his elbows and using his foot to knock the ball back onto the grass. The roses are mingling their red with the deeper red of a bougainvillea growing up the wall of the house and sending its blooms arching across the living room window.
In the morning they drive east in the Adler, following the road that runs along the shore. Adler, says Arthur, the senior partner, quality German workmanship. Yes, he, Ludwig, says. They don’t deliver all the way out here do they? his father asks. Sure they do, Ludwig replies, after all, they delivered to us, didn’t they? Beside him sits his mother Hermine, and in the back seat Arthur, his father, and Anna. Arthur and Hermine, Ludwig’s parents, have come to visit. Two weeks later they go home again. Anna has put on her white suit in honor of her in-laws. 1 jacket and 1 skirt (Peek & Cloppenburg), acquired for purposes of emigration, early 1936, 43 marks 70.
Home. There’s a commotion on the property next door, the surveyors have arrived, a few workmen and their client, an architect from Berlin. He is standing there in knickerbockers and mimes a greeting. Heil. Here, I’ll give you a boost, says Ludwig, the uncle, to Doris, his niece. The pine tree has a sort of wooden hump around shoulder height, he lifts the child up and settles her there. So what do you see, he asks. A church tower, Doris says, pointing at the lake.
Ah, the senior partner says, what a view. Like Paradise, says Hermine, his mother. Arthur and Hermine, Ludwig’s parents, have come to visit. For the photograph taken by some other vacationer, his — Ludwig’s — wife Anna perches on the hood of the Adler while Hermine, his mother, leans against the little wall behind which the mountain descends steeply to the sea. His father Arthur and he are standing behind the women. The mountain range on the far side of the bay becomes a backdrop that holds the four of them together. After lunch they’ll drive down to the lagoon and the beach, perhaps they’ll go swimming, the waters of the Indian Ocean are gentle and warm, quite different from the western coastline where the Atlantic Ocean rages. Two weeks later Arthur and Hermine, Ludwig’s parents, go home again.
I don’t want to anymore, baby Elisabeth says in English and runs into the house. Elliot picks up the ball, lets it bounce a few times between his hand and the ground, and then he too goes inside. It’s so warm now in the house in the middle of summer that the candles on the Christmas tree are drooping again.
Just imagine, the senior partner says, standing with his trouser legs rolled up in the warm water of the lagoon, my racing dinghy capsized this spring, right near the shore. Your father got into the water himself and helped right it again says Hermine, his mother. With rolled-up trouser legs in the Märkisches Meer. With rolled-up trouser legs in the Indian Ocean. The boy from the village who sailed it over from the boatyard was white as a sheet, his mother says. You have to keep in mind that he was under the boat for a moment. That frightened him. Arthur and Hermine, Ludwig’s parents, have come to visit. Two weeks later they go home again.
Home. When it rains, you can smell the leaves in the forest and the sand. It’s all so small and mild, the landscape surrounding the lake, so manageable. The leaves and the sand are so close, it’s as if you might, if you wanted, pull them on over your head. And the lake always laps at the shore so gently, licking the hand you dip into it like a young dog, and the water is soft and shallow.
Ludwig named the little girl Elisabeth after his own sister. As if his sister had slid so far beneath the Earth’s surface that she came out again on the other side, she slid through the entire Earth and that same year was given birth to by his wife on the other side of the world. And what about Elisabeth’s, his sister’s daughter Doris?
The metal of the spade scrapes past pebbles, making a sharp sound on its way into the soil. To the left, on the property next door, a foundation is being dug. Heil.
Elliot leaps with a single bound down the pair of steps leading out of the house onto the lawn and then ambles over to the fig tree to pick a few of its fresh fruits. Anna calls to him from the open window of the living room: Bring some back for Elisabeth too. Elliot replies in English: All right. For his children, Elliot and baby Elisabeth, he planted the fig tree and also the pineapple in the back section of the garden.
Why is there Lametta hanging on the tree, baby Elisabeth asks him, pointing at the tinsel. It’s supposed to look as if the tree, der Baum, were standing in a snowy Winterwald, he replies, replies Ludwig, her father. What is a snowy Winterwald? the baby asks, Elisabeth. A deep forest, he says, in which the ground and all the branches are covered with thick Schnee, and there are icicles dangling from all the branches.
Let’s wait and see how things develop, he says, says Ludwig to his father. But at least the willow will get planted today, his father, Arthur, says to him, holding out the shovel, I promised Doris. From the property next door one can hear the masons’ trowels tapping against the brick. Heil. The owner’s working right alongside them, his father says, he’s not too proud to lend a hand. Ludwig digs the hole for the willow tree. The earth is black and moist so close to the water.