Summer Lies: Stories Read online

  He loved his children, their spouses, and his grandchildren. He liked having them around him, liked their bustle, their talk, and their games, even their noise and their arguments. What he liked best was to sit in a corner of the sofa, lost in his own thoughts, amid them all and yet self-contained. He also liked working in libraries and cafés; he found it easy to concentrate while surrounded by the rustle of paper and conversation and movement. Sometimes he joined the others in a game of bowls, sometimes he accompanied them on the flute when they made music, sometimes he dropped a remark into their conversations. They would be surprised, as he himself was to find himself part of their games or their music or their talk.

  He also loved his wife. “Of course I love my wife,” he would have said if anyone had asked him. It was wonderful when he was sitting in the corner of the sofa and she came and sat next to him. It was even more wonderful to watch her in the circle of the family. Among the young ones she herself became young, as if she were the student again from the first semester, whom he met just when he was taking his exams. She was without sophistication and without malice, she had none of the traits that were both desirable and repellent in Helena. He felt back then as if loving her purified him of the experience of using and being used that was the residue of his relationship with Helena. They got married when she too had completed her education and become a teacher. The two children came in quick succession, and his wife soon returned to teaching half-time. She did everything effortlessly: the children, school, the apartment in the city, and the house in the country, even occasionally a semester with him and the children in New York.

  No, he told himself, he mustn’t be afraid to think about his happiness in his marriage and with his family. It was real. Just as the first days of their shared summer had been real; his grandchildren were busy among themselves, his children and their spouses enjoyed time for its own sake, and his wife was happy working in the garden. Fourteen-year-old David was in love with thirteen-year-old Meike—he could see this, though the others seemed not to. The weather was beautiful day after day, weather fit for a king, his wife said with a smile, and the thunderstorm on their second evening was fit for a king too; he sat out on the veranda and was overwhelmed by the blackness of the clouds, the lightning and thunder, and finally the liberating downpour.

  Even if what he had collected once again was no more than the components of happiness, even if the happiness of this last shared summer concealed a misfortune—so what? He wouldn’t be around to experience it.

  4

  When night came and they were in bed, he asked his wife, “Were you happy with me?”

  “I’m glad we’re here. We couldn’t have been happier if we’d gone to Norway.”

  “No, I mean, were you happy with me?”

  She sat up and looked at him. “All the years we’ve been married?”

  “Yes.”

  She lay down again. “I didn’t like it that you were away so often. That I was alone a lot. And that I had to raise the children on my own. When Dagmar ran away when she was fifteen and was gone for six months, you were there, I admit, but you were in such despair you retreated into yourself and I was alone again. When Helmut … but what am I talking about? You know yourself when things were fine with me and when they weren’t. I know the same about you. When the children were small and I had started teaching again, you got the short end of the stick. You would have liked me to play more of a role in your working life, like reading the things you wrote. You would also have liked to have sex more often.” She turned onto her side with her back to him. “I would have liked to cuddle with you more often.”

  After a while he heard her quiet breathing. Did this mean there was nothing more to say?

  His left hip hurt. The pain wasn’t acute, but regular and constant and felt as if it wanted to become a permanent part of him. Or was it already a permanent part? Hadn’t his left hip and his left leg been hurting for days, no, weeks when he climbed the stairs? Hadn’t there been a long-standing weakness that he had to overcome with increasing effort and stabbing pain? He hadn’t paid attention. Once he’d climbed the stairs, the weakness disappeared. But the stabbing pain that accompanied the climb could have heralded the pain he was feeling now, and it made him afraid. Hadn’t the CT scan shown tumors spreading in his left hip?

  He no longer remembered. He didn’t want to be one of those sick people who know everything about their illness, who research on the Internet and in books and conversations and embarrass their doctors. Left hip, right hip—he hadn’t been paying attention when the doctor told him which bones were already affected. He’d told himself he would notice soon enough.

  He turned on his side too. Did his left hip still hurt? Or was it the right hip now? He listened to his insides, at the same time hearing the wind in the trees outside the open window and the croaking of the frogs by the lake. He saw stars up in the sky and thought, they’re not golden and they’re not resplendent, they’re hard and cold like little distant neon bulbs.

  His left hip was indeed still hurting. His right hip too. When he touched his legs, the pain was there, and also when he felt his spine and up into his neck and arms. Wherever he felt, the pain was waiting for him, saying, I live here now. This is my home.

  5

  He slept badly and was up with the sun. He tiptoed to the door, opened it cautiously, and closed it the same way. The floors, the stairs, the doors, everything creaked. He made tea in the kitchen and took the cup out onto the veranda. The sky was light, and the birds were singing.

  Occasionally he helped his wife with cooking or laying the table or doing the dishes. He had never put a single meal on the table by himself. In earlier days, if his wife had to be away, breakfast went by the board and he took the children to a restaurant for lunch and supper. But in earlier days he had also had no time. Now he had time.

  He found Dr. Oetker’s cookbook for beginners in the kitchen and took it out to the veranda. With a cookbook even he, the philosopher with an expertise in analytical philosophy, had to be able to make pancakes for breakfast. Even he? Most specifically! “What can be described can also take place,” as Wittgenstein teaches in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

  At first he didn’t find pancakes in the cookbook. Did pancakes have another name? What cannot be named, cannot be found. What cannot be found, cannot be cooked.

  But then he found the recipe and calculated up the quantity of ingredients for eleven people. He set to work in the kitchen. It took him a long time to assemble 1⅓ pounds of flour, eleven eggs, 2⅓ pints of milk, a generous ¾ pint of mineral water, just under a pound of margarine, sugar, and salt. He was annoyed that there were no specific quantities for sugar, and salt. How was he supposed to divide sugar and salt by four and multiply by eleven? He was also annoyed that he found no instructions on how to separate the egg whites from the egg yolks and beat them stiff. He would like to have made the pancakes or egg pancakes soft and light. But he managed the sieving and the beating and the stirring without making any lumps.

  As he took the pan out of the cupboard, it slipped from his hand and landed on the stone floor with a clatter. He picked it up and listened to the house. After a few seconds he heard his wife’s steps on the stairs. She came into the kitchen in her nightshirt and looked around.

  Now, he thought. He took her in his arms. She felt awkward. I probably feel awkward too, he thought. When did we last take each other in our arms? He held her close, and she didn’t soften into his embrace but she did put her arms around him. “What are you doing in the kitchen?”

  “Pancakes—I want to make a test one first. I’ll cook the rest when everyone’s at the breakfast table. I’m sorry I woke you.”

  She looked at the table, where there were still flour, eggs, and margarine, and the bowl with the batter. “You made that?”

  “Do you want to try the test one?” He let go of his wife, turned on the stove, and set the pan on the flame, looked at the cookbook, heated margarine, poure
d a little batter into the pan, then took the half-cooked pancake out and put it on a plate, heated more margarine, flipped the pancake and put it back in the pan, and finally presented it all golden yellow to his wife.

  She ate. “It tastes like a real pancake.”

  “It is a real pancake. Do I get a kiss?”

  “A kiss?” She stared at him, astonished. How long is it, he wondered again, since we last kissed each other? She slowly put down the fork and the plate, came to him at the stove, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and stayed standing next to him, as if she didn’t know what to do next.

  Then Meike was standing in the door looking questioningly at her grandparents. “What’s going on?”

  “He’s making pancakes.”

  “Grandfather’s making pancakes?” She couldn’t believe it. But there all the components were, the bowl with the batter, the pan, the half pancake on the plate, and Grandfather in an apron. Meike turned, ran up the stairs, and banged on the doors. “Grandfather’s making pancakes!”

  6

  Today he didn’t withdraw to the bench by the lake. He fetched a chair from the boathouse and sat down on the deck. He opened a book, but didn’t read; he watched his grandchildren.

  Yes, David was in love with Meike. The way he tried to impress her, the way he strove to be casual in every posture and every movement, the way he checked before he did a dive with a somersault and a flip to see if she was watching, the way he showed off about the books he’d read and the films he’d seen, the way he talked with superiority about his future. Did Meike not notice, or was she playing with David? She seemed unimpressed and quite natural, and paid no more attention to David or bestowed any more of her good mood on him than she did on the others.

  The pains of first love! He saw David’s uncertainty and felt once again the uncertainty he himself had been plagued by fifty years before. He too had wanted to be everything back then and sometimes he felt he was, and then again sometimes he felt as if he were nothing. Back then he too thought that if Barbara saw who he was and how he loved her, she would love him too, but he could neither show who he was nor tell her that he loved her. He too had sought to find a promise in every tiny gesture of attention and familiarity and yet still knew that Barbara was promising him nothing. He too took refuge in a heroic indifference in which he believed in nothing and hoped for nothing and needed nothing. Until longing overwhelmed him again.

  He was seized by pity for his grandson—and for himself. The pains of first love, the pains of growing up, the disappointments of adult life—he would have liked to say something comforting or encouraging to David. What could be of help to him anyway? He stood up and went to sit down cross-legged with the two of them on the deck.

  “Honestly, Grandfather, I would never have believed you and the pancakes.”

  “I had fun cooking. Will the two of you help me tomorrow? I don’t want to get too cocky, but I should be able to manage spaghetti Bolognese and salad with your assistance.”

  “Chocolate mousse for dessert?”

  “If it’s in Dr. Oetker’s cookbook for beginners.”

  Then they sat together in silence. He had interrupted their conversation, and didn’t know how to get the three of them talking. “Then I’ll go back. Tomorrow at eleven? Shopping first, then cooking?”

  Meike laughed at him. “Cool, Grandfather, but we’ll see each other again today.”

  He sat in his chair again. Matthias and Ferdinand had found a flat place in the lake a few yards from the shore, had dragged over all the stones they could find, and were building an island. He looked for David and Matthias’s sister. “Where’s Ariane?”

  “On your bench.”

  He stood up again and walked to his bench. His left hip hurt. Ariane was reading with one foot on the bench and the book on her knee; she heard him coming and looked up. “Is it okay for me to sit here?”

  “Of course. Can I come and sit with you?”

  She took her foot off the bench, closed the book, and slid sideways. She saw him reading the title: The Postman Always Rings Twice. “It was in your bookcase. Maybe it’s not for me, but it’s gripping. I thought we’d be doing more stuff together. But David’s only got eyes for Meike, and Meike only has eyes for David, even if she’s pretending it’s not the case, and he doesn’t notice.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Her look was as precocious as it was pitying, and she nodded. She will be a beautiful woman, he thought, and imagined her taking off her glasses one day, shaking her hair loose, and pouting. “So that’s what’s with David and Meike. Shall the two of us do something together?”

  “What?”

  “We could go look at churches and castles, or we could visit a painter I know, or a car mechanic who’s got a workshop that looks exactly the way it did fifty years ago.”

  She thought. Then she stood up. “Good, let’s go visit the painter.”

  7

  After a week his wife asked, “What’s going on? If this summer’s right, every previous summer was wrong, and if every previous summer was right, this one’s not. You’re not reading anymore and you aren’t writing. All you do is go around with the grandchildren or your children, and yesterday you came into the garden and wanted to clip the hedge. Any time there’s an opportunity to grab me, you grab me. Really, it’s as if you can’t keep your hands off me. I’m not saying you can’t grab me. You can …” She blushed and shook her head. “Anyhow, things aren’t the same and I want to know why.”

  They were sitting on the veranda. Their children and spouses were spending the evening with friends, and the grandchildren were in bed. He had lit a candle, opened a bottle of wine, and poured glasses for the two of them.

  “Wine by candlelight—that’s a first too.”

  “Isn’t it time for me to start—that and the grandchildren and the children and the hedge? And for me to know how good you feel again?” He put his arm around her.

  But she shook him off. “No, Thomas Wellmer. It’s not okay. I’m not a machine you can switch off and switch on. I had imagined our marriage differently, but that’s apparently not how it went, and so I came to terms with the way it actually was. I’m not going to get caught up in a particular mood, in a single summer that’s over after a few weeks. I’d rather cut my hedge myself.”

  “I retired three years ago. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize about the freedom that retirement brings. Retirement from a university isn’t as complete as it would be from a business; there are still doctoral students and a seminar here and a seat on a commission there, and you think now’s the time to do the writing you always wanted to do and never had the time for before. It’s like switching off the engine and your car keeps rolling in neutral. If the road then slopes a bit …”

  “You’re the car, and retirement has switched off your engine. But who’s the slope?”

  “Everyone who’s still behaving as if the engine were still running.”

  “So I have to give you special treatment. Not the way I would if the engine were still running, but as if it were off. Then …”

  “No, you don’t have to do anything. After three years the car’s stopped.”

  “… so from now on you take care of the grandchildren and trim the hedge?”

  He laughed. “And never take my hands off you.”

  They sat side by side and he could feel her skepticism. He felt it in her shoulder, her arm, her hip, her thigh. If he put his arm around her again, maybe she wouldn’t shake it off—they’d talked and listened to each other. But she would wait for him to remove it. Or would she lay her head on his shoulder after a while? The way she’d put her arm around him while he was making the pancakes, not in agreement, not as a promise, but just like that.

  8

  He courted her. In the mornings, he brought her tea in bed; when she was working in the garden, he brought her lemonade; he trimmed the hedge and mowed the lawn; he made it a rule to cook in the evenings, mostly assisted by Ariane; he was there
for the grandchildren when they were bored; he made sure the supplies of apple juice, mineral water, and milk didn’t run out. Every day he invited his wife to go for a walk, just the two of them, and at first she wanted to get back to the house and her tasks as quickly as possible, but then she let him extend the distances and sometimes hold her hand—until she needed it to lift something or pluck it and examine it. One evening he drove her to the restaurant on the far side of the lake; it had one star, and dinner was served in the meadow under fruit trees. They looked out at the water glinting like molten metal in the evening sun, lead perhaps with a tinge of bronze, smooth, until two swans came in to land, their wings flapping noisily.

  He put his left hand on the table. “You know that swans …”

  “I know.” She lay her hand on his.

  “I’d like to make love to you when we get home.”

  She didn’t pull her hand away. “Do you know when the last time was that we made love?”

  “Before your operation?”

  “No, after that. You told me I’m as beautiful as I was before and you love the new breast as much as you loved the old one. But then I had to take a bath and I saw the red scar and I knew it wasn’t okay and everything was just an effort, I made an effort and you made an effort. You were very understanding and very considerate, and said you didn’t want to pressure me, and I should give you a signal when things were better. But when I didn’t give you a signal, that was fine with you too, and you didn’t give me one, either. Then I realized it had been the same way before the operation and nothing happened back then, either, unless I was the one to give a signal. I didn’t want to give any more signals.”