He walked up to the top field, where last year he had put in a second PVC tunnel. The tomato vines were gray with the stone dust he had powdered them with, but if it carried on so wet, he would have to spray them with copper or he would lose them as well. The bell peppers were at least two weeks in arrears, only the cucumbers were more or less on schedule. He worked for a while with the hoe, even though he had weeded the tunnel only a couple of days ago. At least it was better than sitting around indoors, thinking how everything was going to rack and ruin.
He had already begun to ask himself how he was going to get the lease together in November, twenty thousand for the land and the farm buildings. Every month so far, he was relieved to make the rent on the house. He had exhausted his business credit line with the purchase of the lettuce seedlings and a new seed drill, the bank wasn’t about to offer him more. If worse came to worse, he would have to go to his father for a loan, or to Kurt, his brother, who was running the family farm with his father. Alfons could vividly remember their reaction when he told them he had found a farm on the ridge over the lake. As far as they were concerned, someone who grew vegetables wasn’t a farmer. A farmer was someone who kept cattle, produced milk, and pastured his animals in the mountains over the summer.
ALFONS NEVER LIKED COWS. As a child he had been afraid of the enormous, cumbersome beasts; later on it was having to shovel their dung, the stink of which seemed to get into everything and stay there. Even the milk smelled of dung, and the butter and the cheese. Nor did he get along with the other animals on his parents’ farm: the hens, the rabbits, the pigs. He didn’t even like the dog, an aggressive little Appenzeller, who seemed to feel his dislike and return it. All three children helped out in the cow barn, but even his younger sister Verena was a better hand at milking than he was. Whenever he found himself with some free time, he would be in his mother’s vegetable patch, where he worked selflessly. He loved the smell of the earth, the dusty savory aroma of the tomato plants and the mint, and the subtle, endlessly varied smells of compost. He managed to get things to grow that otherwise didn’t thrive in the rough climate of the Lower Alps, things like peppers and eggplants, which his mother didn’t know how to prepare.
After he finished school, he helped his father for another year, while Kurt was at agricultural college. From the outset, it was clear that his brother was going to take over the farm. His parents shrugged their shoulders when Alfons told them he had found a place with a vegetable grower by Lake Constance.
The farm was on a gently sloping northeast incline. Alfons loved the soft hills and the long views. While working, he could see the enormous body of water below him that seemed to look different in different weather. When it was clear, he could see right across to Langenargen on the German side, but what he liked best were days when the lake was hazed over, and seemed perfectly endless. That was how Alfons liked to think of the sea, an infinite expanse, behind which another world began, and a different sort of life. From day one, he felt more at home in this landscape than he ever had at home.
During his time as a trainee he lived on the top floor of the administration center, a plain and functional building that had a couple of bare rooms. He shared the bathroom and shower with a couple of Croats with whom he got on pretty well, but whom he never saw outside of working hours. He made no friends at agricultural college. He was always the outsider in the class. Most of his classmates were local, had grown up on big farms, had cars or motorbikes, and dressed like young townies. They made fun of Alfons’s clothes and the way he spoke, until he said no more than he had to. The teachers liked him, he was a good pupil, and on the practical side he was also one of the best.
WHEN HIS APPRENTICESHIP was over, Alfons stayed on for a while. He was still living in the little upstairs room over the offices, even though he could have afforded something better. But he didn’t need an apartment, he was saving to fulfill his own dream, a farm of his own, where he could put his ideas into effect.
Perhaps he acquired the farm too soon. He was only twenty-three when he responded to the advertisement. This farm was also on the ridge, but on the side facing away from the lake, on the edge of a small village. There was a small patch of woods that went with it, and twelve hectares of arable land, just enough for him on his own. The property belonged to a rich farmer from the Canton of Zurich, who had bought it for his son, who chose to follow a different calling, and so the farm was on the market. Alfons asked himself why it was that he, out of the twenty interested parties, had got the lease. Maybe the farmer saw a son in him, the young man with dreams, working to make his fortune. Alfons’s father helped with the down payment. They signed the lease in the pub and wet it with a glass of wine. Now all you need is a wife to keep the business together, said the man from Zurich. Alfons nodded vaguely and mumbled something.
His parents were always on at him about it as well. Have you got a girlfriend yet? What are the girls like in Thurgau? When can we expect to become grandparents? What do you do all the time? asked his brother. You can’t always be sitting around at home. That won’t get you anywhere. But Alfons wasn’t thinking in terms of weeks or months or years. He thought in days, and every day he said to himself, Not today, I’m tired, I need to make the payments, prepare the sower, check up on the bees. In that way three years passed, imperceptibly, without him taking any steps to find a wife.
Kurt had married a girl he went to school with. Verena had been in a steady relationship for years, and it was only a matter of time until she tied the knot. Only Alfons was still single. He was a member of the rifle club, but that didn’t take women. In the gymnastics association there was too much drinking and not enough gymnastics for his liking, and he didn’t want to join the choir, though he enjoyed singing. Once he had gone to a meeting of the rural young people, but all the others had known each other forever, and he felt excluded. Some evenings he went to the local bar, he liked the waitress there, but he didn’t know how to tell her, not under the eyes of the entire village. And with her looks, becoming a farmer’s wife was probably the last thing on her mind. He spent most of his evenings at home, doing sums. He kept precise accounts on each crop he grew, calculated the returns, compared them to those of last year and with the averages of the co-op. Every morning and every night he took note of the temperature, the air pressure, and the humidity. He made graphs and observed the changes in the weather. He also kept track of his expenditures on heating oil, water, and electricity. Whatever could be expressed in figures, he wrote it down.
At noon the rain stopped, and the gray murk turned into a layer of small clouds. Alfons picked up the lettuce seedlings in the barn and tossed them on the compost. It felt like throwing away money, but he had no choice, it was pointless to produce more than the market demanded. In the news they said the weather was on the mend. Still, by the time his fields had dried out sufficiently for him to go out on the tractor, another two or three days would be gone.
While he rinsed the plates, he heard engine noise from outside. He wiped his hands and looked out the window. A big truck stood on his neighbor’s meadow, the other side of the road, and a couple of young men were rolling up the canvas cover. Then they separated, as though each was searching for something.